Page 23 of Midnight Kiss

I was up and on her before she could go much further. I grabbed her arm, and she grasped my throat, both of us baring our fangs.

“Who?” I asked. “Who will kill her? You?”

“You.” Cassia spat it out.

I released her, and she did the same, taking a step back, a sneer on her lips. “If you don’t kill her,” Cassia said, “and bring back the book, I’ll report you for negligence. And then they’ll put me on the job, and I assure you, Alexander, I won’t have any compunction about ripping her limb from limb.” She leaped off the roof and transformed into a cloud of bats before I could reach her.

The bats tittered and swept off into the sky, and I gritted my teeth. Cassia had gotten what she wanted out of me. A rise. And that meant she would use what she’d discovered to her advantage. If Emily hadn’t been a target before, she was now, simply because Cassia knew that I cared.

And that was my fault. I was the fool for allowing her the knowledge that I cared.

But why do you care?

I stepped off the roof and fell toward the sidewalk, my coat billowing and whipping at my back. I landed easily and strode toward Emily’s apartment building. The night embraced me, and I made myself invisible as I approached.

The cracked glass door was shut, but I unlocked it with a wave of my hand and entered, striding up the stairs toward her floor, my thoughts running wild with how I could reach the book and?—

Michael, the neighbor who despised me, was in the hall outside her apartment. He stood there, holding a single red rose, his fist raised to knock on her door.

Anger swept through me, a cloying sensation that struck me motionless.

“Hi, Emily,” he muttered. “I’m sorry to wake you, but I’ve been thinking a lot about—” He shook his head. “Emily, I know that you’ve been seeing this other guy, but I wanted to tell you how I feel because I?—”

Emily’s apartment door scraped open, and her roommate, Morgan, the enthusiastic one, nearly ran into him.

“Michael? What the—?” Her gaze fell to the rose in his hand. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“It’s not what you think,” he said, clearly his throat.

“Not what I think? I think that you’ve got an unhealthy obsession with Emily,” Morgan said. “And that you’d better back off, bucko.”

I added Morgan to the list of humans who weren’t as annoying as I’d first thought.

“Bucko?” Michael stiffened. “I found this rose out here. I thought maybe you?—”

“Okay, so you’re a liar too. Cool. I’ll be sure Emily knows that,” Morgan said. “Look, do yourself a favor and just leave her alone. You’re acting weird and possessive, and you don’t even know her that well.”

“We’ve been friends for like a year.”

“Friends?” Morgan rolled her eyes heavenward. “Friends. You’re not friends. You’re just trying to get into her pants.”

“Keep your damn voice down.”

“Get lost, freak.” And then Morgan pushed past him and pointedly shut the front door.

I stepped out of her path as she hurried down the hall and toward the staircase.

Michael glared at her retreating back, the rose clutched in his fist. He swore under his breath then backed away from the door slowly. Finally, he returned to his apartment, rose in hand.

I waited until the door was shut until I approached Emily’s apartment, irritated at my own desire for her. She was a human. A regular girl. Beautiful, yes, and kind, even though it didn’t pay to be in this world, but human nevertheless. Weak. And a weakness for any vampire.

The only way a vampire could keep a human partner was to turn them, and that was a fate worse than death. To be trapped in a state of forever, to be dependent on blood and subterfuge. Humans didn’t know what they had until they had lost it, and that included their mortality.

I braced my hands either side of the door to her apartment, bowed my head, and felt for the ward. It was difficult to pinpoint through the door, but it was in there, and I had to get it out if I wanted to get the book and distance myself from this woman.

The longer I spent near her, the worse the attraction became.

What are you? Where are you? I sent a sliver of crimson magic through the keyhole, and it spilled onto the kitchen floor, traveling and seeking, moving through the apartment. While I couldn’t physically enter the apartment, my magic could—the tiniest amount, slipping through the cracks.