As Moira glanced at the heavily tinted exterior of the natural science building, the only piece of non-gothic architecture on campus, she was certain she could finally put a name to the face.

Russ Tanner—dreamy escort and stalker extraordinaire—had been following her, on and off, for the last week. She was sure of it. Although she had never seen his face straight on, she had caught enough glimpses by now to finally make a positive identification.

After all, he had an impossible face to forget. Those shadowy eyes and kissable lips, that royal nose and gritty facial hair. Cheekbones models lusted after. He’d towered over her on that night, and the man she had pinned as Russ was pretty tall too. Well-built. The kind of man who made her stomach lurch and her heart race—and her sex tingle with interest.

He wore some variation of hat during the day, and always kept his distance, but she was sure of it. As she stared at him in the reflection of the nat-sci building’s dark grey windows, Moira was certain. Dressed in a pair of fitted light-wash jeans, a faded purple tee, a grey hoodie, unzipped, and a red hat, he had been following her between classes this morning. Not only that, but he had sat in on her thirty-person Issues in Postcolonial Gendered Art seminar; not exactly subtle, given he had never attended a session before and half the class had been absent anyway—which also wasn’t surprising, given the grad club hosted booze-filled ragers every Thursday night, and this was an eight AM seminar on a Friday morning.

From there, he had been a permanent fixture in her usual routine, always in the corner of her eye, always following, tracking, prowling at a safe distance. She couldn’t imagine why; in her hurry to get the hell out of that eerily quiet hotel room, she’d left the money behind. As if she’d had the nerve to stand there and argue—or ask for change, given he hadn’t met the requirements she’d set out before their appointment. That night had been intense—more so than she’d expected—but it had eventually dissolved into a puddle of suck, just like all her sexual encounters had in the past, when she got too deep inside her own head.

It couldn’t have been the first time a client left unsatisfied. Sex was personal. Intimate. Unique to the individual. He might have been stunning, but there was no way Russ could please everyone. It just wasn’t possible.

So, why the fuck was he following her?

She lingered in front of the reflective building, ignoring the throng of first-year science kids chattering noisily as they swarmed around her and up the steps, then pretended to check her phone. Moira stood there as innocently as possible, tapping at the screen—all the while studying his lurking figure under her heavily mascara’d eyelashes. As soon as she’d stopped strolling around the FHU campus, so had he, and she rolled her eyes when he too dug out his phone, mirroring her almost exactly.

“Fucker,” she muttered, then tucked her phone inside her bag and took off toward the Hills. Sure enough, a casual glance over her shoulder confirmed that he had resumed tracking her. Sometimes she lost him in the crowd; noon at FHU meant most classes had paused for lunch. The food court was about to get swamped. Given the warmish spring weather and relatively dry week Farrow’s Hollow had experienced, most would be taking their midday meal on the grass or at a picnic bench within the university’s very own Central Park.

She wasn’t under the impression she could lose him. That sensation of being closely watched had plagued her since last week, and now that she’d identified the source, Moira had a feeling Russ wasn’t someone you could shake. More likely—he needed to be confronted. She couldn’t go to the police because that would shed light on their shady beginnings, but as Moira darted down the three steps separating the Hills from concrete and glass buildings behind her, she assumed he wouldn’t want much attention brought on him either.

Maybe it was time to use that to her advantage.

When she was sure he had followed her onto the main pathway of the Hills, the wide-set unpaved one that branched off in every direction, Moira picked up the pace and power-walked along one of the offshoots, leading him into a more heavily treed area. Another quick glance over her shoulder, and, yup, there he was—prowling. Given the crowd had thinned and most people were sitting on the grass, he was obvious as sin behind her. Couldn’t he see that?

Moira put him to the test, taking less traveled paths, darting across the lawn and around trees. At one point she thought she’d lost him, but then he’d turned up in her peripherals again. Finally, she slowed to a near stop, then whirled around. About fifteen feet stood between the pair, and Russ turned sharply under the guise of tying his shoe, foot propped up on a bench.

Right. No one was buying that. Biting the insides of her cheeks, Moira grabbed her phone again.

“Ella!” she cried. “Oh my god, girl, how is your day going?”

She pretended to listen, nothing but dead air greeting her, and then laughed as she started a slow march down the path away from him. This time, Russ followed almost right away, as if giving up on the whole lurking-at-a-distance thing. Her heartbeat quickened the nearer he drew, his pace unrelenting, his footsteps growing louder. When she peeked over her shoulder, smiling but not talking, phone pressed to her ear, he looked like he meant to brush by her and keep going, his dark gaze lifted to something in the distance.

No. This ends now.

Moira waited, her entire body tense, until he was in the exact right position…

Her fist slammed into his gut as soon as he was right beside her, their bodies too close for comfort, and she leapt back when he exhaled noisily and collapsed to his knees.

“Stop following me!” she shrieked, her voice carrying through the trees around them, and then shoved his shoulders as hard as she could. He went down fast, catching himself in the nick of time so he didn’t faceplant. Instead, he rolled himself onto his back, baseball cap tilted and face exposed. Russ Tanner. In the flesh. Staring up at her with that dusky, unflinching stare, his brow furrowed.

Moira stared right back, refusing to be bullied by that look, her hands clenched to tight fists. A hurricane of feeling roiled about inside her. Revulsion, her suspicions now confirmed. Betrayal, that this man who had appeared so professional had decided to stalk her. Humiliation, blended with desire, at the memory of what had happened that night.

And curiosity. That was the one that surprised her the most. Intrigue. A strange, unwelcome sense of attraction. Interest in him, in what went on behind his onyx stare.

She could feel that familiar, unwelcome blush charging across her skin, and she tugged at her wool cap—fern-green today, to match her leggings—like that would hide it.

Moira knew her strength had been growing—changing, intensifying. She’d broken more things lately than just her bike wheel, but Russ appeared unfazed by the attack. Surprised, yes. Startled, maybe a little. But as he stared up at her, she saw the same curiosity she felt deep within herself, the same unsettling sense of intrigue that made her stay fixed where she was—rather than running like she should have.

“What are you?” he asked. Murmured so low, so softly, it seemed more a question for him than Moira. When he sat up on his elbows, his eyebrows lifted slightly, those sensual lips quirked. “You’re not human. Not entirely, anyway.”

She blinked, a flash of cold unease taking root. “W-what did you just say?”

Moira had wondered it herself sometimes, usually as she stared in the mirror after a shower, hating what she had become. Hating the changes. Hating that she didn’t see herself staring back anymore. Was she dying—or was this just a new stage of living?

Her mom had warned her before she’d died that twenty-two would be a banner year in her life, that nothing would be the same. At the time, Moira had chalked the premonitions and warnings up to the insane dosage of painkillers the hospital had her on. People say the craziest things when they’re high as a kite.

Yet her words rang true. Moira wasn’t the same, not even close, and it had all started after her twenty-second birthday. Glaring at her reflection, she thought herself reptilian, artificial, corpse-like—inhuman.

And now someone else had said it, aloud, for all the world to hear.

Russ drew a breath, as if to speak again, but the booming footsteps of a newcomer had his lips pressed right back together, his intense curiosity shifting to exasperation.

“Hey, are you okay?” Moira looked the new arrival over: tall, blond, athletic build, already wearing shorts despite the fact it was still sweater weather. Behind him, a group of wide-eyed undergrads looked on. His words, however, were muffled by the combination of a high-pitched whining and what felt like thick, unyielding cotton between her ears. The hand he placed on her shoulder—Moira hardly felt it, his touch nothing more than a ghostly caress. Just like all physical contact in her life lately—all except for Russ.

“I—”

“Is this guy bothering you?” he asked again, jabbing a finger at Russ as he stood. “Do I need to call campus security?”

“What?” She shook her head, forcing herself to tuck the shock, the fear, over what Russ had just said away for later. The brain fog dissipated, the world suddenly too loud. She fidgeted with her cap. “Him? No, no. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“She said she was fine,” Russ growled, his voice sharpening from the velvety purr she had become accustomed to, his glare positively withering. Her white knight rounded on the spot to face at him, but suddenly the color drained from his cheeks, and he shuffled back to his friends without another word.

“Thanks anyway,” Moira called after him, but he didn’t look back. Odd. Russ, meanwhile, looked as though the interruption hadn’t even happened, dusting himself off as his gaze swept up and down her body. She crossed her arms, scowling. Hadn’t he gotten a good enough look spying on her from across the courtyard all week?

Or, you know, when he’d fucked her, almost fully clothed while she wore nothing at all?

Moira bit her lower lip, cheeks colouring at the thought—and darkening further when he grinned somewhat smugly down at her.

“What did you mean when you said I wasn’t…human?” she demanded, lowering her voice and stepping closer—mostly to show he didn’t affect her, that his roguish good looks and penetrating stare did nothing to rattle her. However, just as she’d felt that first night, Moira found herself inexplicably eager to be close to him, too. It had frightened her then, and it should have frightened her now.

“I think you know exactly what I meant,” Russ told her. He waited for a moment, lips still twisted in that sinful smirk, until the silence dragged on long enough to make her shift about uncomfortably. With a soft clearing of his throat, he slid his hands into his pockets, then leaned closer. “Don’t you?”

“Obviously not,” she hissed back, her stomach looping and her head thick with fog again. “I don’t understand any of this, but clearly you seem to have some inkling of—”

“Can we speak somewhere less public?” he asked, scanning the area and once again towering over her. “Somewhere with fewer idiots watching.”

While there weren’t many lunching students around, the few that were, seated under shady trees or on top of picnic tables, feet on the benches, openly stared like she and Russ were performing an impromptu skit. Flustered, Moira readjusted her cap again, tugging it down as far as it would go, and shook her head.

“I don’t—”

“I know you know I’ve been following you,” he stated, far too frank for her liking, “and you’ve no reason to trust me. But I know you aren’t…all that you appear. After the other night, I’d like to talk.”

The last thing Moira knew she should do was take him somewhere private to “talk,” but for the first time in a long time, alarm bells weren’t shrieking inside her head. Sure, her stomach continued to loop over and over itself, and her sweaty palms had to mean something, and the head fog, and the way little tendrils of pleasure licked up her body the longer they held eye contact…

She ought to run.

But she didn’t.

“Fine, we can talk somewhere,” she agreed, then cleared her throat and hardened her tone. “But if you touch me, I will literally put you through a wall.”

“Oh, little Moira…” Russ smiled his most dangerous smile yet. “I bet you will.”