My pay upgrade is quite substantial, enough that I can actually afford to take myself out to a nice dinner and buy some shoes. And all to perform a task that the king truly believes can never be met. The safe option here would be to keep my new job for the rest of...eternity? Or at least until a new king is crowned, or the current one actually gives up and takes a queen.

Vampires might be immortal, but they’re hardly eternal.

Vesnic’s dad, Besser—who would’ve been the one to imprison my mom if my hunches are right—only ruled for fifty years before he was murdered by the queen of a rival house...who was then quickly dispatched by Vesnic himself. Ah, the struggle is real.

“What do you think?” I ask Harry, sitting in The Dragonfly and sipping some blue nightmare my ogre friend calls Caribbean Sea. Sigh. Unsurprisingly, it tastes like gin and tequila. “Do I just sit pretty and enjoy that I have all the time in the world to hang out here and get drunk with you? Or do I push?”

We’re sitting alone in the bar while Harry cleans glasses and tries not to continuously bring up the ogre girl he took home last week—the very same one he pointed out the night I slept with Vyce and Sorrow—for the hundredth time. He actually managed to convince her to sleep with him and, also unsurprisingly, she was not happy with the size of his dick. They never are; I just wish he would learn.

With just the two of us in there, I feel safe enough to talk vamp business. The walls of the bar are spelled to keep out scrying spells and block outsiders from hearing anything that goes on inside, no matter how good their supernatural senses are.

“You stay put with this gig and stop pushing boundaries before you get yourself killed,” he mutters, finishing his glass polishing and then going for his silver shaker. Damn it. I’m getting another mixed drink, aren’t I? What’s wrong with plain Scotch?

“I’d be queen, Harry. Queen. These fuckers have treated me like shit since birth. My mom never even got to have a life of her own because of them.”

“You don’t know if it was House Verenim for sure,” he mumbles as he pours...gin and tequila into the shaker and I sigh.

“I meant vampires in general,” I say as Harry purses his lips. His upper one is about twice as full as the lower giving him this pouty look that helps draw those ogre girls in in the first place. Without that, I doubt he’d be able to pick them up at all.

“If you become queen, they’ll exhaust their resources trying to murder you, and the king won’t do shit to stop them.”

“If I bargain with the Stiltz—” I start, just before the door opens and Miri waltzes in with this big huge grin on her face.

“There are already three people dead outside House Verenim,” she says, bringing along a wave of fresh gossip with her sickeningly sweet floral perfume. “Two were mages who used spells to make the straw look like gold. And the third was this high-ranking royal vamp who didn’t even try. Basically volunteered and then offered her family’s fortune to the crown.”

“Humility and common sense don’t exactly run rampant in the vampire community,” I murmur. Now, I’m not the only person in the world who knows who the Stiltz are and how to make a bargain with them, but knowledge of them is pretty rare. Anyone who makes a deal with Rumpel Stiltz’ kin—or even Rumpel himself—is bound to secrecy. My mother was an exception; she was immune to magic. We had no idea why because she was entirely human, but spells just didn’t work on her or my grandparents either. It was how they were human and yet still ran in supernatural circles.

Once, my grandfather cheated at cards and an angry mage threw a spell his way. Didn’t work. Bounced right the fuck off. So the guy hired him as a bodyguard and well, Grandpa’s inclusion into high-ranking circles is what got Mom into trouble in the first place.

So. Mom escaped with me and then told me everything she knew about this world within a world.

Fuck, I miss you so much, I whisper to her, closing my eyes and tamping down the feelings of heartache. It’d taken over twenty years, but someone in Rumpel’s employ had finally found her and ripped her to pieces.

She’d given her life for mine and I wasn’t going to waste it skulking in shadows for the rest of my life. But isn’t it better to actually have a life? You’re going to get yourself killed. Huh. My inner conscious apparently agrees with Harry, but fuck them both.

I know what my life is going to look like if I keep living it the way it is. But the mystery, the promise of something different if I take the path shrouded in shadows and beset by thorns? I can’t resist that.

Thing is, I can’t decide if I’m making a smart decision or a stupid one. The brave choice or the weak one.

“You’re going to do it anyway, aren’t you?” Harry growls, shoving a hot pink drink on the counter next to me. “This is called the Broken Heart, by the way. Might as well enjoy it since it could be the last drink you ever have. I’ll make sure to provide free alcohol at your funeral.”

I smirk and cross my arms over my chest.

“Why not think positively? I’ll hire you on at the Family House.”

Harry snorts; we both know the vampires would never accept an ogre in their ranks, especially not one that’s mixed with human.

“Besides,” I continue, “we never listen to each other anyway. We each give good advice and the other person ignores it. That’s why our friendship works so well.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Miri asks, blinking long thick lashes at us. Her dark hair hangs in a braid over her shoulder and she tugs loose strands out of it as she looks between me and Harry.

“Nothing,” he growls out, shaking his head at me as I sigh and uncross my arms. I reach for the blue drink, finish it off while stifling a grimace, and move onto the pink one. It, too, tastes like gin and tequila.

Oh, Harry.

“Go clean the tables off.” He chucks a rag at Miri and she frowns, spinning away with a huff and storming to the back corner to scrub rings off the polished wood.

“She has a thing for you, you know,” I tell him and I swear to God, the look he gives me is pure hell. “What? She does. Since she’s only a quarter-ogre...” I wag my eyebrows at him and he curls his lips. “She’d probably be pleasantly surprised with—”

“Don’t even go there,” he warns, pointing a finger at me as I laugh and suck down the rest of my drink in search of what warm, pleasant little buzzed feeling. It’s been about a week since I slept with Vyce and Sorrow, and I can’t help but wonder what their reaction will be when I call the number on that card. “Get on with you and go make your stupid mistake, so I can heckle your ghost about what a dumb decision it was to pursue the literal monsters from your past.”

“I still think you should sleep with Miri,” I say with a grin, sliding off the stool and lifting the pink drink in salute. Harry narrows his eyes but ignores me as I make my way out the front door of The Dragonfly and into the early morning dark.

The phone number on the card sends me straight to a pre-recorded message with an address. I wait till high noon when vampires are at their weakest before I head over there and find myself outside the nondescript door of a downtown office. It’s painted matte black, and the long stretch of windows on either side are blocked with a colorful graphic of skateboards with the name Sweet Surf Brothers in the bottom right corner.

Clearly, it’s a ruse to throw people off. Super-duper secret magic hiding behind the walls of a skateboard company? Totally stupid, right? I mean it’s so stupid that I almost question if I’m at the right place.

I press the buzzer near the door and wait to be let in, the distinct click of a lock letting me know it’s open before I step into a cool, shadowy foyer with a set of stairs directly in front of me. Sucking in a deep breath, I head up and find another door propped open at the top.

“Hello?” I ask as I head inside the most boring goddamn office known to man. It’s clean, professional, nondescript. I’ll probably forget what it looks like in about two seconds, which is most certainly the point.

The door behind the desk opens and a man steps out.

It’s Wolfe, the asshole who brushed me off at the bar.

As soon as he sees me, his gray eyes darken, and his beautiful mouth turns down in a frown.

“You,” he says as I smile sweetly.

“I’m here to see Vyce. He in?”

“He doesn’t have time for booty calls today,” Wolfe growls—literally growls—at me. His teeth flash in that absurdly handsome face of his. I can’t believe he used to be human. It’s rare that I’ve ever seen a born vamp this attractive, let alone this powerful. “Show yourself the door.”

Crossing my arms, I lift my chin haughtily and stare him down. He might be a good six inches taller than me, but fuck it. I’m used to being the underdog in both magic and physical strength. Ethel is tucked under my jacket along with Ricky. I stuffed him under a pink trench coat and used the high collar to hide the hilt of the sword. Luckily, this area is full of hipsters, cosplayers, and weirdos, so a girl with a sword isn’t really that far outside the scope of a human’s reality.

“Listen, dude,” I say and he cocks an eyebrow at my surfer slang, “I’m not here to fuck your friend again; I’m here to make a deal.”

“I knew I was right about you,” Vyce whispers, suddenly behind me, pulling back strands of blond hair with his fingers. Fuck. I hadn’t even heard him come up the stairs. And he had to have just come in; there’s nowhere in here to hide. Either I need to up my game or else this guy is just that goddamn good. “Potential client.”

He slides around me as Wolfe sits down at the desk, murmuring curses under his breath. Vyce perches on the edge of it and crosses his arms, mimicking my pose. His blue-turquoise-purple hair is styled the same as it was last week, and his red eyes shimmer with amusement. He’s dressed all in leather again, with a short-sleeved navy-blue leather tank, black pants, and black boots. To be quite frank, he looks like a kick ass video game hero.

“What do you want, Cameron Darke?” he purrs, smiling at me with a seductive edge. It’s sharp enough to cut.

“You learned my full name, good for you. There aren’t a lot of dhampirs in this area anyway.”

Vyce just laughs at me, the sound as dark as shadows in the night, black on black.

“You should tell that bartender girl to keep your identity secret,” Vyce says, putting a finger to his lips in a shushing motion. I ignore him and smile my own sexy little smile.

“I want to spin straw into gold,” I say and his dark brows go up. Behind him, Wolfe snorts. “For real though. And I want the transmogrification to be permanent. I know you’ve got the magic for that stashed away in here somewhere.”

“And how the hell would you know that?” Wolfe asks. “You don’t know shit. Get the fuck out.”

“Wolfe,” Vyce snaps, turning a look over his shoulder that’s all flashing teeth and irritation. “Enough.” He looks back at him and soothes his facial expression some. “You have inside information about the Stiltz family business, do you?”

“Let’s just say a little bartender told me,” I quip, lying through my fucking teeth. “She serves a lot of supernaturals, so gossip makes its way around. The Dragonfly is a hotbed for it. And anyone who’s ever heard of Rumpel Stiltz knows there was a woman once upon a time who asked him to spin straw into gold for her.”

“It worked, too,” Vyce says, standing up from the desk with a small sigh. “Coffee?”

I shrug, and he heads to the machine on the far side of the room. Even from here, I can tell it’s a fucking Jura, the Rolls Royce of coffee makers. Those things cost over a thousand bucks! I want it so bad I start to drool. When I become queen, first thing I’m doing is getting one. Shit, I’ll get an even better one, something professional, plus, a whole team of highly trained baristas to make drinks for me.

Crap.

I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Can’t help it though. Coffee just excites me.

“So, you want to be queen of House Verenim, huh? Have a crush on Vesnic, like everyone else?” he asks as he goes about preparing me a cup of coffee. I’m almost as excited for the java as I am to be queen. Also, I get to check out Vyce’s ass as he goes about making it. With those leather pants clinging to his tight cheeks, it’s a criminally delicious sight.

“Actually, I could give two fucks less about him. I’m tired of being poor, tired of living in shadows, tired of vampire scraps and sneers and bullshit. This is about power and respect.”

Vyce chuckles as the door at the bottom of the steps opens and I glance over my shoulder in time to see Sorrow making his way up. He doesn’t try to sneak like Vyce did, his boot steps loud against the carpeted stairs.

He grins at me as he hits the landing, coming to stand just in front and to the side of me. He purposefully rakes his blue eyes over me and shoves some red and white hair from his face.

“Damn, it’s good to see you again,” he says, smiling just brightly enough to flash a single fang. It’d be cute if he hadn’t come inside me and then scrambled out the door with no shirt on.

“I wish I could say the same,” I say, letting my voice get this icy coolness that I don’t feel. Fuck no. Standing here with Vyce and Sorrow, I’m hot as hell inside. My cunt is pulsing, my nipples are hard, and I feel like I could quite easily tear my clothes off and go at it right here on Wolfe’s desk. Hell, he can even watch if he wants. “Not in as big a hurry today, I see.”

Sorrow frowns and steps around me, heading for the Jura and stealing the cup from Vyce’s hands as he turns toward me.

“That was for our guest, asshole,” he says, but at least Sorrow does actually bring the cup to me.

“Peace offering?” he queries as I raise a blonde brow.

“You didn’t even make the damn coffee,” I say, but holy shit, his blood smells good, and I can’t resist reaching out to take the cup, just so our fingers can tangle together for a moment. Prickles of white-hot magic trace up my skin and then slide down my spine, reminding me of Sorrow’s tongue on my inner thigh, his lips on my clit, his cock buried deep inside of me.

Fuck.

My hormones are going crazy around these guys.

“Your weird tattoo have any reason for you making a run for it?” I ask and he shrugs, his red leather motorcycle jacket crinkling. He’s got on dark blue jeans and a white t-shirt that’s so tight I can see his erect nipples through the fabric when he moves.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, heading back over to the coffee machine without bothering to answer my question. The next mug he steals from Vyce’s hands, he takes for himself, breathing in the aroma of freshly brewed beans with his eyes half-closed. After a moment, he sets it down on the table and grabs a small creamer, tilting it into his cup until thick red liquid pours out.

Yup.

It’s blood with some sort of preservative in it to keep it from coagulating or going bad. Vamps call it red sunrise for whatever reason.

Me, I take my coffee black like a fuckin’ Mundane.

“Is this a booty call?” Sorrow asks, coming back over to stand next to me, his mouth twisted in a smile, the skin at the edges of his eyes crinkled. “Please tell me it’s a booty call and not a bargain you’re looking for.”

“Straw into gold,” Wolfe barks, sitting in the desk chair with his arms crossed over his chest. He’s wearing a black button-up with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and a two-piece waist coat with a silver vest on top and one underneath that’s as red as Vyce’s eyes. Wolfe catches my gaze, frowns even more severely than before, a shocking feat I didn’t quite think was possible, and then opens his laptop. “An expensive favor.”

“Why would you want that?” Sorrow asks as he moves over to the off-white sofa on one side of the room and lounges in it like it was put there specifically to fulfill all his needs—and he damn well knows it. But that’s normal. All vampires are like that: entitled, stuck-up, overconfident. It comes with the ten fingers and ten toes, straight out of the womb. “Oh, fuck, the king?”

“I want power and respect,” I say, somehow bothered by the idea of these guys thinking I’m in it to bag the king. I mean, he’s not bad looking so I guess we could shag? But it’s not my primary motivation. Hell, it doesn’t even factor in except for the fact that it’s not a total deterrent. “Queen of the Verenim Family House sounds like a pretty sweet gig to me.”

Vyce hands another cup of coffee to Wolfe and takes one for himself, sitting on the edge of the desk and lighting up a cigarette while his friend scowls menacingly at him.

“This is a big favor and a big price you’re asking,” Wolfe says, turning his raging glare over to me. If anything, it gets even meaner once it’s focused on my face. “We’ll have to consult Rumpel on this one.”

My heart shudders inside my chest, seizing at the mention of that name. Fuck. If that man ever finds out who I really am, I’m screwed. Maybe Harry was right about me coming over here.

“We’ll be able to do it...for the right price,” Vyce continues, all three vampires studying me with entirely different facial expressions. I can’t quite interpret a single one of them. “For example, a firstborn child.”

“I’m willing to pay the price,” I say, keeping a straight face. My infertility isn’t known by anyone but me, my dead mother, and a long-ago dhampir doctor. If the Stiltz’ brothers decide to make the bargain with me, they’ll want me tested to make sure that I am fertile. They’ll send me to a vampire doctor who’ll most likely do a spell that’ll bounce right off. It won’t tell her shit. If she does examine me, she won’t know enough half-breeds to tell the difference, I’m sure of it.

“That was awfully quick,” Vyce purrs with a raised brow, tilting his head to one side to study me with is blood-red eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want to think about it? Giving one’s child up is the hardest thing most people will ever go through.”

“I’ve thought about it all week,” I say, feeling tenseness in my throat. I really have. Ever since the king made that proclamation, I felt the tiny bubble surrounding me pop, the shadows fall away, the door to a new future opening. Metaphors aside, I need this. It’s the only way I’ll be worth more than the shit on a vampire’s shoe.

Fuck.

Maybe I’m not such an unemotional little eggplant after all?

“I’ve thought about it,” I repeat, looking at Vyce and trying not to imagine how good it felt to have his teeth sunk into my neck, hot blood welling, tongue lapping at the wound. I shiver and take a step back, finishing my coffee and setting the cup down on a side table next to a decorative plant. “Talk to the boss and then come find me when you’re ready to seal the deal,” I tell them, turning and heading down the steps before those three unnerving stares get to me.