The shades are drawn on the beachside mansion, but now that I know who’s inside, it feels much more forbidding than times we passed by imagining celebrity parties. I’ve never felt so exposed as I do with my back to the old highway, staring blankly at a door that might have an enemy on the other side, instead of a friend.

Yeah, you have so many friends among the undead, Sasha. “You know,” I mutter under my breath, “I’m getting really tired of having such a mouthy conscience.”

I couldn’t even blame Nicolai for the rash of internal conversations I’d had lately. I’d always talked to myself, even as a child. That voice had helped me argue through scientific equations and difficult choices. Lately, it’s just a pain in my ass, and unfortunately, I’d started letting it know.

The first sign of insanity… it started to remind me. “I know, is talking to oneself.” Or hanging out with vampires…on purpose. I even smile, though it shouldn’t be funny. It is funny though, in a suicidal, adrenaline junky, sky-diving without a parachute, not-at-all humorous kind of way.

The door opens a crack and I see one silver eye glaring back at me. Wonderful. For the first time in a while, I’m not at all conflicted. Claudette glares out at me for an eternity without speaking and belatedly, I realize I should’ve just left after the first ten seconds.

“I need to speak to Arsen, Claudette. Either go get him, or let me in, please.” Just go get him, just go get him, just go get him. “Now, Claudette, this is important.”

“You said leave was an option, so leave. Arsen wouldn’t want you even if you weren’t trying to push Nikolai’s dirty leftovers on him.” She glances up at the ridge above us, as though measuring how much sunlight is left to protect me. “I should kill you now, but I’m feeling generous.”

“Generous about what, Claudette?” A gruff voice behind her makes her eyes fly open wide. I stifle the smile, because I already know that the devil I haven’t seen yet might be worse, but I hope not, because I want to kiss him for catching her like that. “Sasha? Please, come in, I will retrieve the master for you.”

Claudette disappears from the crack in the door and opens it, letting me and the what little sunlight still creeps over the northwest corner of the compound wall into the house. The male vampire bows at the neck from the top of the stairs leading to the subterranean level and I return it as I try to remember his name.

“Jacob, right?” He nods, and I grin. “Thank you, Jacob. I appreciate the assistance.”

The door slams behind me, and I silently curse at myself for jumping. I know what to expect with this vampire. She’s angry, cruel, and a door slam is the smallest insult I can think of, coming from her. But Jacob has disappeared down below, and I’m trapped with Claudette until Arsen comes.

“Look, Claudette, I just got done with school and the lab. I need to talk to Arsen about the illness. Where is he?”

She scoffs and rolls her eyes at me before striding towards the mansion library “Come on, you can wait in here.” The library is almost as big as the town library back home, full of books in more languages than I knew existed, from ancient texts, to trashy modern romance novels.

It’s my favorite room in the mansion, and one reason I risk showing up to Arsen’s compound after being expressly forbid to by Nikolai. Anyone who loves books enough to collect them like this, not just the old ones for value, but every kind of book, for reading can’t be all bad.

The room is dim, the only light coming from a table lamp near the quartet of reading chairs on the far side of the massive room. I follow her to the chairs and she turns and walks back the way we came, not even glancing in my direction.

“God damnit, Claudette, is Arsen even here? Has he left the country and I just didn’t know? Why do I believe you’d just tell him I left and never let on I’m in here?” She whirls and is in my face before I can even think about running.

“Do not test me, girl. I could rip your head off as easily as breaking a matchstick.”

I scoff and stick out my chin a little. “Big talk, so why don’t you?” I don’t

Claudette glowers at me, her body that terrifying level of stillness that only the dead can achieve. “It never ceases to amaze me how ignorant humans are to their own weakness.”

“Says the chick who has to hide from sunlight.” I’m pushing her, and my internal voice is screaming in my head to stop, but I’ve had enough of her threats. I know that survival of the vampire race is too important for Arsen or Nikolai to let her kill me without getting killed herself, and she does too.

She doesn’t attack, but rocks back on her heels and folds her arms across her chest. “How long have you been waiting to use that line on a vampire?”

I cough and manage a chuckle at my own expense, grateful she seems calmer. “Too long, frankly. I’m tired of being constantly reminded that I am weak,” I say, ticking them off on my fingers, “unimportant, and only as valuable as a McDonald’s cheeseburger.” I tap my wrist with two fingers. “This blood saved you, saved Nikolai and his clan. I can’t believe I have to beg for my life from someone who, despite being hundreds of years old, still wears her makeup like it’s the eighties.”

“Why are you insulting Claudette, Sasha?” Arsen is just… there, right over Claudette’s shoulder, and her smirk tells me she heard him coming, because of course she did.

“I refuse to have my life threatened every time I try to help you, Arsen. If I’m not safe here, then why should I keep working on the virus for you, instead of obeying Nikolai and staying away?” I stare over Claudette’s shoulder and she shifts her posture to block my view.

Suddenly, she tumbles out of the way and when she jumps up, hissing, Arsen bares his fangs at her, sending her zipping for the doorway so fast she’s a pale blur to me. He offers me a seat and realizing my legs have turned to noodles I accept, sinking into the leather with a sigh I hope he doesn’t notice.

“Why are you here, Sasha? You know you aren’t safe here, why would you come, and alone? Do you wish for an early death?”

I chew my lip, hurt that he’s angry with me for being brave enough to come, instead of proud of me. “Wow. You and Nikolai have a lot more in common than you think, you know. Maybe I can bring the two of you together, you can sit, drink my blood, share stories about how stupid you both think I am…”

“I do not think you’re stupid. I think you’re…naïve, to think vampires will not harm you because it is better for them. They were once human you know, self-destruction is as much a temptation here as it is on your campus.”

I twist my fingers in a knot in my lap, unsure now of why I did come. I haven’t found anything conclusive yet, surely it would’ve been smarter for me to wait until I did to risk Nikolai’s wrath.”

“Niko doesn’t want me sharing the cure with your clan. I honestly thought I would never get out of that place. I woke up this morning not sure I had, even as I walked across the campus to my classes.”

Arsen takes my hand and smooths his thumb over the backs of my knuckles. “I know you have had a terrible time and I’m glad you came to me, Sasha. What was it like, being captive inside his home. How did you escape?”

“I didn’t, actually. He let me go.”

“But, you did attempt an escape, he simply let you walk out the door?” Arsen presses me for details of my escape, but I’m still not sure I was ever outside the room, or if the escape was an elaborate joke Niko played on me. I suspect the latter, and I tell Arsen so.

“I ran through a maze of stone tunnels, and never reached the surface. But, when I thought I was close to freedom, I found myself back in my room again.”

“These stone tunnels, were there many doors along them? Like a prison maybe, with viewing holes, or plain?”

“I don’t remember there being doors, Arsen,” I reply, my anxiety growing. “I felt like I was in a labyrinth.”

He pulls me to my feet and presses me to his chest, where I inhale his scent, something woodsy, and mint from the breath mints every vampire seemed to be constantly sucking on, and very faintly, underneath it, the metallic tang of copper. The scent of blood. Arsen had eaten before he came to me.

“It sounds very terrible, Sasha, but you did see at least one door, are you certain it didn’t lead to the surface?”

“Oh God, I don’t know, Arsen, I can’t stand to think it, that I was that close and turned around.”

He kisses the top of my head, smoothing my hair down, and I imagine the contrast of my hair on his skin, making my heart bounce and my pulse pick up speed. “But he led you out, you said? And that time he let you see everything, no mind games or endless hallways?”

I glance up at him, confused. “Does it really matter?” Why does it matter?

He kisses my temple, my cheek, and his lips brush over my mouth once, twice, before he kisses me in earnest, exploring my mouth with his tongue and teeth until I whimper and cling to him, tasting him and pressing my body to his until he lifts me, and I wrap my legs around him for stability as my fingers thread through his hair.

My mind is lost to desire, but for that one small voice that won’t let me forget that I am only human, and I’m in the arms of a predator, no matter how I try to shut her out. I am in the arms of a vampire who has fed. He kisses me while the blood of another courses through his veins. Sometime in the not too distant future, that little tidbit is going to make me scream.

But for now, I push away the warning, and revel in his touch, his cool skin against my hot face and neck, the taste of mint and wine and even the copper on his tongue. Because the little voice inside my head is right. I’m already in over my head.