Chapter 1
Elise found the world more beautiful when she closed her eyes.
Melancholic jazz music rode the soft sea breeze around the pier, each note lingering like a clandestine kiss. Quiet and unseeing, Elise felt the most herself. Her other senses opened up and softened the edges of her anxieties, making her feel grounded.
Then she opened her eyes. Chelsea Piers came into view around her, the massive docking ocean liner just beyond the piers’ entrance ablaze with the glow of the setting sun.
Her pulse thundered in her ears and the jazz notes grew fuzzy.
Trying to purge the clamminess from her earlier panic, she wiped her hands across her skirt, then stepped toward the waiting car.
Once finished loading Elise’s luggage into the trunk, Colm, her family’s driver, helped her into the automobile.
“Your ship docked late. My apologies, Miss Saint, but we’re in a race against the sunset.
Your father is already in a mood.” He glanced at her through the rearview mirror as the engine roared to life. “Welcome home, by the way.”
Elise thought facing her father again sounded worse than being out after the sun went down. As far as she was concerned, the house in Harlem was no longer her home. Not in a city full of monsters who craved the taste of her blood. Monsters like the one her best friend had become.
The car turned north, and though the sky over Manhattan darkened, the streets were still full of people, hats held down against the evening breeze and faces twisted with fear.
Colm stepped on the gas. To settle her nerves, Elise peeked into her bag for what she knew was the fifth time that hour.
The letter with the lovely golden seal of the Paris Conservatory was still there, staring back up at her.
Her fingers plucked at the loose threads on her coat seven times, her chest growing tighter while the residential buildings of Riverside Drive whipped past her window.
They quickly neared Sugar Hill. Elise wondered how much had changed in five years. Whether Layla was even still alive—
Colm cursed in the front seat as he hit the brakes. Pedestrians rushed the intersection the car was trying to cross. “Everyone wants to be close to Saint territory at night,” he explained.
Elise nodded. When she was younger and word had spread about her family’s reaper-hunting services, it seemed like new neighbors introduced themselves to her father every day.
Some wanted to bargain with him for more of his steel bullets; only the ones made with the alloy he’d devised could reliably kill the reapers.
Others wanted protection. The empire went from just distributing Saint steel to hiring ex-military who needed jobs and training young men around the neighborhood who were brave enough to hunt reapers.
Back then, Elise enjoyed the fullness of their home.
People who desired to enter the Saint inner circle brought with them some of her lifelong friends.
Though none, not even Mrs. Gray, with her scientific advancements and a tentative hope for a better future, were as special as the Quinns, who had been the ones to welcome the Saints to New York.
But friendship wasn’t enough to keep people safe.
The business grew larger every year, though the number of reapers seemed to keep up. Elise almost couldn’t believe her father had gone from a steelworker in Texas to a top steel manufacturer and distributor in New York.
The car crossed Amsterdam Avenue into the Sugar Hill neighborhood, the noisy traffic fading.
The Saint mansion stood on what had once been a block of brownstones, which had been leveled on Mr. Saint’s order.
Now the iron gates of the Saint estate rose before them, guarded by two of the Saint security officers, their silver badges and guns glinting in the dying light as they moved to let the car in.
Elise waited while Colm opened her door. But he suddenly shoved it shut again as one of the guards called out, “Miss, this is private property—”
Elise looked out the passenger window to see a brown-haired young woman standing just inside the gate.
“The monsters are in my neighborhood, and you must do something about them,” she told the guard.
For a moment the young woman looked so familiar, a bitter name lodged in Elise’s throat, and her heart lurched. But when she turned to get a better look, Elise realized she saw a stranger—not the girl she had left behind years ago, bloody and bruised.
The Saint guard tried to lead her away from the gate. “Tomorrow we’ll send a patrol over—”
“No. They must be dealt with now,” the woman snarled.
She stepped toward the car and her sharp eyes met Elise’s, her lips pulling back to reveal fangs.
Elise scrambled back in her seat, though the car door separated them.
Bloodlust swirled in the woman’s dark irises, her veins bulging and ripe with hunger.
But other than her shining eyes and fangs, the reaper looked utterly human.
“Murderers. Layla Quinn will be avenged—”
A gunshot cracked through the air. The reaper’s head exploded, and her body collapsed onto the pavement.
“All clear. Someone clean it up,” a guard ordered.
Elise let out a shaky breath and shoved the car door open, avoiding the bloody mess at her feet. As she stumbled out, a gentle voice halted her panic.
“Relax, Lise. She’s dead.”
Elise looked up. “Sterling,” she breathed.
She could hardly believe she was looking Sterling Walker in the eye after five years of only exchanging letters.
Blood covered her friend’s shirtfront, and he held his gun arm steady, but he still smiled.
He had gone from a young boy seeking refuge in their home to one of the Saint’s leading reaper hunters.
His thumb traced a cross over the handle of his gun, then he lowered it.
“Welcome home, Lise.” Sterling leaned toward Elise, his amber eyes glowing in the dusk, and kissed her cheek.
He had always been beautiful with his smooth brown skin and perfectly styled curls.
But Elise thought he looked even more beautiful now.
She eyed his gun, knowing every day he worked as a reaper hunter, he put his life on the line for the citizens of Harlem. And for her father.
Elise swallowed. Her music studies had kept her father content for this long, but she had no idea how it measured up to the bloody work his people did for him every day.
Elise wanted to hug Sterling, but the blood kept her back. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m perfect. As always. The blood isn’t mine; I’ve been on a patrol.
I’ve still got an hour or two left of work, but I wanted to catch you as soon as you got home.
” That overly confident grin of his hadn’t waned, and Elise was glad.
People said distance made the heart grow fonder, but time also changed people.
And she wasn’t sure she could handle Sterling changing.
Not when everything else in her life had changed so abruptly.
Elise glanced over at the body by the gate. “The reapers know I’m back now.” She couldn’t even bring herself to say Layla’s name out loud.
Sterling shook his head. “Just that one. Whichever guard let her onto our street is getting fired. Though I will admit, it’s getting harder to tell the reapers from us. Good thing I caught her just now, otherwise the whole Harlem reaper clan might know you’re here. We can’t have that.”