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  “Thank you.” I snapped the tablet closed and tucked the rod into the back pocket of my purse.

  “That’s your desk right there.” She gestured to the one opposite hers, also flanking Bressov’s intimidating doors. “You can move your workspace seamlessly between the tablet to your mainframe and back, but you’ll find the tablet most useful for day to day functions. I expect Lord Bressov will need you on call for many of his appointments,” Heron said.

  My throat closed up. I was expected to spend hours at a time in proximity of that . . . monster? I hadn’t forgotten that day at my Secondary graduation four years ago, not by a long shot. The cold, soulless stare of his eyes as he squeezed my neck.

  I tugged at the strand of fake pearls around my neck and managed a slight nod. “Of course. I’ll plan on it.”

  Heron nodded in a way that brooked no dissent. “Excellent. Anything else I can help you with before you get started?”

  “Umm.” I shifted my weight on my heels. “Restrooms? Coffee machine?”

  Heron stared at me, and the room quieted as several fingers ceased flying across their keys. “You drink coffee?” Heron asked. Then, incredulously: “Regularly?”

  “It’s not like we’re Donors,” I said, taking a step back. “I mean, sure, I have to sacrifice other rations for it, but . . .” Man, if this was how she stared at me about coffee, I’d hate to see her stare when I did something really wrong.

  Heron sniffed. “Lord Bressov can still smell it on your blood. He encourages us all to follow diets and practices similar to Donors’, at least while we’re in the office. I’d advise you to do the same. It makes life much more . . . pleasant for us all.”

  Thirteen Families. Bressov was not going to make this easy on me, that much was obvious. “Fine. How do you stay awake on a dreary Monday like this, then?”

  Heron slipped back behind her desk and settled into her chair, a smirk on her plum lips. “Fear. Of me, and of our boss. Lord Victor Bressov. What more do you need?”

  I gritted my teeth and showed myself to my new desk.

  Even with my Bressov Industries accounts transferred over and all my files in order, it took me far too long to get everything on my mainframe the way I wanted it, and within minutes, Heron was pushing tasks to me through the company’s internal stream. I tried poking through the data storage systems to see where the Bressovs might be hiding their most sensitive files, but it quickly became clear that Heron wasn’t going to give me a moment to catch my breath, much less do any surreptitious snooping. Just as well. I needed to take it slow. No sense tripping any sort of network monitoring program on my first day, even if Finch would get his boxer briefs all in a bunch if I came back empty-handed today.

  The Resistance needs you, he’d plead, leaning in close, his breath thick with coffee and the grain alcohol brewed in the backroom of his favorite Undertown dive. And, if he knew I was tired, if he knew I was vulnerable and lonely and in need of a little push, he’d brush the back of his hand against my face and lean closer. I need you, too.

  It worked more often than I liked to admit.

  At the far end of the Executive Chamber, I could barely hear the faint ding of the elevator at the far end of the hall, but every time it went off, it was like an electric current shooting up my spine. From the tasks Heron was shooting me, I guessed that Victor had some kind of big financial presentation this afternoon, and he was bound to strut in sooner or later, possibly with the usual Bressov entourage in tow.

  I’d managed to avoid direct contact with Vampyrs for nearly four years. Minor Bressovs showed up to check on our work at the steel factory, of course, and you’d get the occasional bastard of a bastard of a Vampyr bastard riding the mag lift into Undertown, usually prowling around for illicit Donations or to see how the other half—humanity—lives. But I liked my life away from their prying eyes. All I ever saw of Vampyrs was the evidence of their existence. From our city, New Sanguinus, to the Stream channels, to my monthly Donation, to invisible hand ever pressing down on humankind, reminding us of our place in the pecking order after the Onyx Queen’s death, evidence of the Vampyr rule was everywhere. But I’d be damned if I subjected myself to the sight of the monsters for one second more than I had to.

  All that was about to change.

  I flicked through screen after screen on my mainframe—had to make my exhaustive hunt of the file directories look accidental, after all—and stumbled across an oddly-named subcompartment. I checked the properties for it, and found that the archive had been created five years ago by Violetta Stregazzi. Well, the Stregazzi and Bressov families had plenty of joint business ventures together, and then the very public drama between Violetta and Victor—

  Ding.

  I committed the archive’s location to memory and started the hand gesture to close out of the archive.

  “What are you doing?” Heron hissed at me from her desk. “Stand up!”

  She’d interrupted my concentration. I had to start the gesture again—

  “Now!” she whisper-screamed.

  Oh, hell. I leapt to my feet, the open archive glaring back at me as I mirrored Heron’s rigid-backed, simpering posture. Out of the corner of my eye, shadows fluttered and spiraled through the endless arches and columns. When a cluster of Vampyrs enter human establishments in Undertown, they fill the taverns with gaudy giggling and snarky comments and generally sound like a herd of graceless cows stampeding around, heedless of who they bother, but not the Bressov entourage. Even their footsteps, soft as they were, sounded choreographed.

  But then Victor Bressov appeared, and my vision swam.

  Chapter Two

  I’d like to think it was the irritating lack of caffeine coursing through my system, or my stunted brainpower from the already stressful morning, but when I saw that aquiline nose and gleaming dark blue eyes, I forgot how to breathe for a moment. His dark hair was groomed, but still managed to be a bit rebellious; his suit, while tailored and fully business-savvy, hinted at an old world sense of power that the modern executive’s suit can’t exude. He even smelled commanding—cedar and leather, like a warm cabin on a dreary winter’s day.

  In my fog-brained state, I even imagined I could hear his immortal heart thrumming after a fresh meal, but thankfully I recognized the thought as ridiculous as soon as it crossed me.

  “Good morning, Lord Bressov,” Heron chirped, swooping out from behind her desk and extending one arm with his tablet already loaded with the morning’s reporting. “May I take your coat?”

  “No need. It’s what I keep these sycophants around for.” He tossed a grin over his shoulder at his Vampyr entourage. I noticed Violetta missing from their ranks; since Lucio Bressov’s murder, their overall quality seemed to have dropped, as well, as I could only identify the Families of about a third of them. Victor pitched his suit jacket behind him and one of the parchment-skinned Vampyr girls caught it with a giggle.

  Heron scrolled through the displays on the tablet. “You’ll have a comm with the Burdrak Family heads over in East Drovia in an hour about the possible merger of our Drovian plants. Remember that they’re several hours ahead of us, so you’ll be butting against their feeding time—we can use their irritation to our advantage if we tread carefully. Here’s the financial spread showing potential outcomes of the merger . . .”

  Victor rose one spindly finger into the air to silence her. I watched the back of his head as he glanced upward, sniffed once at the air, then turned slowly away from Heron’s desk.

  Toward mine.

  His head tilted to the side, like a bird assessing a worm. I suddenly felt very out of place, not just because I was a human among Vampyrs, or a spy among the faithful—though all those things were true, and added to my fear. It was my scratchy polyester dress, the cheap blend so common in the Undertown shops, because few humans besides Donors could afford better. The eggplant color was off, a little too bright in this elegant cloud-crested cathedral. My skin was insufficiently moisturized, my dark
hair a little frizzy in its bun, my breath probably not at its freshest, my makeup (also cheap) applied with a shaky, tired hand. All these things compounded to make me feel inadequate. And I felt it in every bone of my body as Victor looked at me. I felt it in every drop of my blood.

  But all he said was, “I know you.”

  Suddenly I could think of nothing more terrifying he could possibly have said. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw the open archive on my mainframe, proof positive that I was snooping where I shouldn’t, but the thought of him remembering that awful day at my Secondary graduation pinned me to the spot as if I were some Donor, splayed out for his enjoyment.

  “Yes . . .” He took a step toward the desk, his footfalls silent as a predatory cat’s. “It’s the smell of your blood. Where do I know it from? Come here, little bird. What is your name?”

  “R—Raven,” I stammered. If he took one more step, he could see my mainframe system’s screen. He could also be close enough to seize my neck again—a prospect that thrilled me almost as much as it terrified me.

  “Raven. Where do I know that name?” Victor frowned. “Who are you, really?”

  Heron, of all people, jumped to my rescue. “Your new financial assistant. I’m afraid she wasn’t warned in advance to stick to a Donor diet while on the premises—if her smell offends you, my lord, I’m more than happy to kick her down to the accounting floor for the rest of the day.”

  Victor spun away, and I finally dared let loose the breath I’d been holding in. “You’ll do no such thing,” he said. “Forgive me, Heron—you were walking me through my upcoming meetings. Where were we?”

  With Victor’s back turned and his entourage’s attention safely shunted away from me, I hastily made the hand gesture to exit out of the archive and return my mainframe to some innocuous spreadsheets for Victor’s upcoming meeting. I slumped back into the black metal and leather chair at my desk and let the numbers wash over me. Safe, boring numbers. No teeth nor sinister gaze to be found.

  “Don’t let him rattle you,” someone said, with such a soft and silky voice I almost thought it was a recording at first.

  I looked up to meet the gaze of the pale-skinned girl who’d caught Victor’s jacket earlier. Her honey-colored blond hair was set in curls around her face and tucked under a pillbox hat that matched her tweed jacket and skirt. If I didn’t know better, I would have mistaken her for an exceptionally well-kept human, and for a second, I considered that she might be Victor’s current meal on wheels, but her skin was too smooth and flush for that. None of the telltale blue veins bubbling up against her pallor, or premature wrinkles etching their way across her face. No subtle whiff of encroaching death, like rotting leaves and formaldehyde.

  “Nastasya Faudre,” she said, extending a gloved hand toward me.

  “The Faudre family,” I said, shaking her hand. “You must manage the Bressovs’ media spinoffs on the Stream.”

  She chuckled softly. “Oh, I’m not nearly important enough for that. Lowly as we Faudres are, I’m further down the pecking order still. It’s been scarcely fifty years since I was turned. But Lord Bressov has been very kind to me personally, and my family as a whole.”

  She spoke truthfully—the Faudres were so lowly a Family as to not merit a seat at the Coven of Families, cobbled together as they were of Vampyrs both from the old world and the new. Still, to hear one admit as much was refreshing—disarming, even. I permitted myself a small smile. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Raven?” Heron’s voice sliced through the air. “Raven? If you’re quite done slacking off, your job needs you.”

  Nastasya Faudre gave me a sheepish look, like we were sharing a secret, then she scampered off to join the rest of the entourage. I leapt back up from my chair. “I’m here, I’m ready. What do you need?”

  “He needs you.” She jerked her head toward the carved black doors. “The merger hypotheticals presentation? You do have it ready, don’t you?”

  Shit. My heart slammed into my chest. It was one thing to face Victor Bressov in front of an audience—I’d done so before, and survived, though just barely—but now she wanted me to head right into his lair? Alone?

  “Of course I do.” I snatched the cylinder for my tablet off the table, straightened my blazer, and started my grim funeral march up the stairs to Bressov’s office door.

  The black glass carvings on the door leered at me—horrible scenes of dragons and Vampyrs and gargoyles writhing up from the depths of the earth, crawling along skyscrapers and mountain cliffs, as humans sank into the cracked ground and into roiling seas. The glass was like ice under my palm as I pressed it open. It swung inward silently—revealing only more darkness within.

  The silhouette of Victor Bressov stood at the far end of the room, before the enormous glass panorama of New Sanguinus below us. My weak human eyes could only pick out a few shapes here and there—a rack of samurai swords, some urns or vases that I couldn’t identify but were no doubt exorbitantly expensive, random Vampyr relics I’d never learned the names for—as I stepped carefully across the wide ebony wood planks. At the massive desk, his mainframe sat, dark and untouched. How long had he been brooding here in the dark?

  “You remember that day, too.” His voice hummed deep in his chest. Was that sadness tinging its edge? “You know precisely where I know you from.”

  I took another step closer, the plank groaning. “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you say it, before? Do I . . . embarrass you, Miss Meadows?”

  “Just Raven,” I said, but he kept talking over me.

  “Pour yourself a drink—I can tell you have need of one. There’s a well-aged scotch out on the bar.”

  I tightened my free hand into a fist. “I was told you want your Administratives to keep to a Donor diet while we’re in the building, sir.” I cleared my throat. “My lord, that is.”

  “It is true that I detest the stench of impurities in your blood. You would, too, if you had our sense of smell.” His head lowered, like he was composing himself. “But I can tolerate this once, for your comfort, Miss . . . Raven. Unless you expect to be Donating this morning . . . ?”

  His head turned so I could see his profile against the rain-flecked window, and I imagined I caught a glint of light against his white teeth, but I quickly banished the thought from my mind. My sight was finally starting to adjust to the darkened room—more like a chapel, really, with its soaring vaulted ceilings—and I located the bar. I dropped a perfect sphere of ice into a tumbler with a satisfying clunk.

  “I’m scheduled for my weekly Donation this evening,” I said, pouring the scotch—one for me, and one for my boss—“but I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time.”

  “That’s not quite what I meant.” He turned from the window and strode toward me. With a flick of one hand, the advanced sensors in the room picked up his gesture and lit the wrought iron chandelier overhead, though only just barely. “Are you satisfied with your dreary life as a secretary so far?”

  I took a sip of my scotch and held his out for him. It scorched all the way down, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t relish that pain, like an alarm going off in my chest, reminding me I was still alive. “It’s a lot better than other paths available to my kind.”

  “Mechanics for the mag trains, trashmen, factory workers? Or are you referring to Donors?” He accepted the scotch, but just looked at it, watching the oily sheen of the alcohol roll off the sphere of ice as he rotated the tumbler back and forth.

  “Take your pick,” I said.

  “A Donor burns bright but is quickly snuffed out. Is it better to live swiftly, or not at all?” Victor asked.

  I gritted my teeth. “I’m not sure why those are the only two options we get.”

  The words hung between us, dangerous as a knife, and about as sharp. Victor curved one dark brow upward as he regarded me, then he looked back down at his drink.

  “Unless you’re auditioning for the role as my top political advisor,” he said finally, “I
suggest you stick to the financials, Raven.”

  “Yes, sir. Lord.” I took another hasty swallow of scotch, then snapped my tablet open. “The merger looks promising, but only if you can get the Burdraks to agree to some specific terms.” I flicked from to the first set of charts. “In this scenario, you cut their marketing division entirely, or else absorb no more than ten percent into our own, but it’ll increase our annual output by twenty percent.” Next set. “This has to do with their Donation distribution wing, which is so much less efficient in Drovia than our own here in the Westlands . . .”

  Victor’s gaze had pulled inward as I spoke; I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but I was fairly certain it wasn’t about the charts I was holding up. I lowered my tablet. “Is there something I have missed, my lord?”

  “No, no, your figures are fine.” He set the scotch down on the desk behind him and reached for the hem of my dress.

  I gave a tiny yelp, pulling away from him, but he already had it pinched between his fingers. “My lord—”

  “This is . . . what? Polyester? Carboweave? Something dreadful from Undertown, that much is certain.” Victor glanced up at me as he dropped the hem, lip curling in disgust. “You will not wear such cheapness in my presence again, do you understand?”

  I took a deep breath. “And what do you expect me to wear instead? I don’t earn anywhere near enough for an Uptown shop, assuming they even let me through the doors—”

  “They will let you through the doors.” He made another gesture, activating a comm to Heron’s desk. “Heron, please ensure that Raven is on the Approved Humans list for all the Uptown shops, and open her a line of credit with the corporate account.”

  My nostrils flared as I watched him, that smug grin carved into his immortal face. “I didn’t ask you to do that for me.”

  “Well, I didn’t ask to be attended by a sloppily-dressed human with an attitude problem, but we can’t all get what we want.” He closed the comm and propped himself on the edge of the desk. “Please—continue with your report.”