Page 1 of Midnight Kiss
1
EMILY
The pages of the book were stained with blood.
The realization hit me as I held the thick paper between my fingers, admiring the artwork that depicted scenes of violence in sweeping strokes. Images of men with their heads torn off, of creatures feeding from their necks or sipping blood from chalices made of bone.
It was brutal. Brutal but beautiful, and a slow thrum started up in my core. An excitement that mingled with fear.
This was the best part of my job. It was the reason I’d chosen to work in the rare book division at the New York Public Library. Not the blood stains—that was disturbing—but the rarity of the tome.
It was leatherbound and heavy and … ancient. The words on each page were handwritten, neatly, in looping French, and it made my soul sing.
Something precious and old and morbid. But that wasn’t the most exciting part.
“Vampires,” I murmured.
The fluorescent lights in the rare book division flickered and ticked overhead, and I glanced around at the shelves, most of them holding books behind glass or cages of metal. You couldn’t “check out” books in this section of the library. You couldn’t even touch them.
Basically, it was like working in the forbidden section of the library at Hogwarts, which had to be, like, every girl’s dream.
I swallowed, my excitement building, turned another page, and was instantly confronted with the image of a … man. A vampire?
He was short, balding, with a stare that seemed to penetrate ink and soul alike, and he stared up at me with such hatred that?—
“Hey!”
I jumped and let out a shriek.
“Whoops, sorry,” Jenna said, grinning at me and shifting her backpack up her shoulder. “Didn’t mean to scare ya.”
Being scared came with the territory for me at this point. It was a legacy of having grown up in the foster system and always having to watch my back.
Jenna gave me an apologetic smile. “What you working on? Wait … is that new?”
I nodded enthusiastically. “Just got it in today,” I said. “It’s ancient. Like … I don’t even know how we got our hands on this one.” I turned, frowning at the box of books that had come by my desk earlier in the day. I’d cataloged most of them already, but it was getting late, and I ought to leave the rest of them, including this “tome” for tomorrow.
“Can I see it?” Jenna asked, drawing closer.
A strange emotion unfurled in my chest. A moment of jealousy or something equally dark, and I nearly shut the book and pulled it away from her.
I shook my head at myself then shifted the book so she could get a better view. “Sure,” I said. “Go ahead.”
Jenna was one of five employees in our division, and she had the same accolades and more experience than me.
She pressed one palm to my polished wooden desk and leaned over, flipping through the pages of the book, her head tilted to one side, the beads in her braids clacking together. “That’s weird.”
“What?”
“I mean, it’s handwritten right? It’s almost like a journal. And all in French?”
“We’ve seen stranger things,” I said. “There was that personal diary of that Italian violinist, remember?” French was another of my obsessions, and I’d studied it as an elective during college.
“Yeah, but we had to give that over to the Met. This is different. Is this blood?” Jenna recoiled, wiping her hand off on her jeans. It was a more normal reaction than the one I’d had.
But then, Jenna probably hadn’t had her nose broken before or?—
I cut the negative train of thought and tucked a couple of strands of auburn hair behind my ear. “I have no idea,” I lied, “but it’s fascinating. Look here.” I pointed to a word on the page. “Vampire.” I gave it the French pronunciation.