Chapter 1
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I touched my cheek, hesitating with my fingers a half inch from the blooming purple bruise.
Stupid girl, the tiny, nagging voice in my head whispered. This isn’t how you improve things.
I’d put myself at a disadvantage. I wasn’t that pretty to begin with, and now they’d think I was a troublemaker. That cut out all the bidders who didn’t want to bother with a troublesome slave.
Leaving behind only those willing or eager to hurt and break a human girl.
I rested both palms on the edge of the filthy gas station sink. In another minute, Franklin would expect me to open the door. He’d expect me to be cleaned up and ready to put on a show. He’d blame me if I was anything less, even though he’d done this to me himself earlier.
I was too tired to cry over it anymore. A year ago, I might have. Even six months ago, maybe. But now? Nah. Not worth it.
My hands shook as I rinsed my face. My jaw clenched as I caught my own reflection above the sink and looked myself in the eye. Pretty eyes, my boyfriend used to say. Blue like the ocean. That was back when I had normal things like a boyfriend, back when I was allowed to look anyone in the eye.
I carefully pulled my mouse-brown hair off my face and into a ponytail, smoothing it with water. At least my long-sleeved sweater hid most of my bruises.
“Trixie!”
I jumped.
“Trixie.” Franklin hissed my name through the door again, his fingers tapping on it softly. He didn’t have to yell. He didn’t have to pound. He knew I wouldn’t disobey. I’d resisted him in the beginning, but weeks of beatings had taught me it wasn’t worth the trouble. I’d tried everything in the captive handbook: crying, begging, pleading, obeying, disobeying, trying to get Franklin to see me as human, trying to seduce him, trying to escape…
Nothing worked. So I just moved on to coping.
Off, the tiny voice in the back of my mind said, and I let my expression go vacant, let emotion and fear slip out of me like water from an open faucet.
It was so easy not to care anymore, so easy to shut off the parts of myself that mattered. That used to matter.
Remember getting bagels with your friends before school? Remember feeling invincible when you got the “Star Runner” award for Track and Field? Remember playing Frisbee with your neighbor’s dog?
My brain liked to cruelly remind me that plenty of people had normal lives, that I used to have a normal life. Now I just had this.
I opened the door. I didn’t need to look worse before we arrived at our destination. Franklin’s huge hand closed on my upper arm, and he dragged me back toward the car.
He was tall and burly, with a perpetual scowl on his chiseled face. His eyes were always half-hidden by his dark hair, not that I found myself looking up at them very often.
Another rough tug of my arm. “Quit dragging your feet, Trixie.”
Trixie is not my name, asshole, I wanted to say, but I’d already gotten myself hit enough tonight. I’d been with him for a year, and I didn’t think he’d start calling me my real name hours before we were parted for good.
As if he could read my mind, he said, “Trixie, because you’re my perfect little trick. And now I’m going to trick some other bitch into buying your troublesome ass.”
That seemed a little unfair. I hadn’t truly resisted him in ages. I hadn’t tried to escape since my second week with him, when it seemed like I’d be able to make a run for a well-lit rest station while Franklin changed a blown tire. That had earned me a beating so bad I hadn’t been able to sit down for a week, and Franklin had tightened up on what few freedoms I had. For months, I looked for another chance but never found one.
I stumbled along toward the car, eyes on the ground, barely paying attention. There was nothing here. No one else at the pumps, not even a car racing by on the road despite not being that far outside the city. Just a disinterested attendant behind bars and Plexiglas, fifty yards away, staring down at his phone and ignoring us.
“My little trick, who’s going to earn me a lot of money tonight,” Franklin went on, thrusting me into the passenger seat and slamming the door.
The only good thing about being inside the car with Franklin was that it was a warm reprieve from the cold winter air.
“I’m not going to say good luck,” he told me. He started the engine. “You think you’re fucked now, girl? You just wait. Tonight will be worse.”
I stared straight ahead down the dark road and took a deep breath. It didn’t matter anymore. None of this mattered. It didn’t matter that tomorrow was my nineteenth birthday. It didn’t matter that one terrible year of my life was ending and another beginning. It didn’t matter that my real name was Arianna Ward.
Each mile was bringing me closer to an auction filled with buyers. Vampire buyers who would at best kill me quickly because my blood spoke to them like a fine vintage or at worst keep me as a human slave for who knew how long and in what condition.
As far as I was concerned, my life had ended a long time ago.
Chapter 2
Franklin had taken me to a few of these auctions before. I hadn’t been for sale those times. I’d just been his “guest” while he searched for his next meal.
Franklin didn’t have a lot of money, so they’d often been in the basements of dive bars, musty and dark. At the first one, there were only twenty or so vampires, browsing the three dozen humans for sale. The humans were the lowest quality, all scared vagrants—old people, homeless crazies, migrant workers. People who wouldn’t be missed.
Meant only for food.
Franklin bought two and gorged himself that night, while I hid in the bathroom with my hands over my ears and cried. That was back when I still cried at all, back when I couldn’t turn off the pain and misery and shock like a switch.
This auction was a different story. After driving into the city, he pulled the car up to the side door of an upscale hotel. It was taken by a valet who ushered us quickly inside. A guard pointed down the hall to a service elevator. A vampire.
I’d come to notice the signs. If it had been possible for a vampire to walk out in broad daylight without the sun burning them to a crisp, they would’ve been recognized for what they were. They were creatures of the night—just like the legends—and the shadows they lived in hid their most alien features. Large pupils and extra white around the irises of their eyes, which got dark, and brownish, and murky when they were hungry. Ashen skin—pastier than most humans, with a purplish-green tinge that made them look like corpses. Their fingernails were dark, almost purple. Their veins bulged, especially when they were hungry. If you touched one, you’d find that their skin was cold and firm, like dead flesh. Their canines were pointed, more than a normal human’s, and their lips were pale.
Any one of those things might be something a person could brush off. Weird genetics. Disease. Heroin addiction. But together? They looked vaguely inhuman. Only dark streets, the smoky light of bars, and the shadowy corners of the earth kept vampires inconspicuous.
Along with blood, of course. Newer vampires needed blood every week. Older ones needed blood maybe every couple of months. But they liked it, and it plumped and brightened their skin, making them look prettier and somewhat approachable.