Chapter 2
Aster Castelmar hadn’t always been a vampire, but she’d always slept like one—both eyes open, mind awake, barely dreaming. Her brain came out of the womb that way, on overdrive; the doctor who delivered her told her parents that she had the eyes of a gargoyle.
Sylvia Maroven had always been a vampire, but she slept like a mortal. Twisting and turning and snorting like a pig in her sleep. Sometimes her noises were so egregious that Aster could hear them several doors down, and she would walk her way to Sylvia’s room just to swat her with a pillow.
But that night—or rather day, vampires got their best shut eye from nine am to six pm—both of them were abuzz. For very different reasons.
Sylvia had gone full research mode. It was her most natural state, really; one Aster had seen her occupy thousands of times before: bent over an ancient scroll, an intercepted envelope, a bloodied murder weapon, or now, a laptop.
Completely, utterly consumed by whatever question she’d committed herself to.
She was on the couch in the same exact position Aster had left her hours before, only now with a bag of potato chips cradled under one arm, and creases under her eyes from squinting at the screen too long.
Aster suspected she hadn’t moved once—maybe except to get the chips—since Aster went to get some shut-eye.
Of course she had not gotten any shut eye. Not because Sylvia was being particularly noisy, for once, but because she had left Aster in a state of utter confusion.
The bite stared at Aster in the reflection of the TV; it was barely there now—vampire skin tended to heal like that, quicker than a bat of an eyelash—but Aster found that she didn’t want it to disappear. Not before they addressed it. She didn’t want Sylvia to be able to pretend it didn’t happen.
“Thank God you’re finally awake,” Sylvia mumbled without looking up at her. She shoved another chip into her mouth, chewing noisily as she made room for Aster on the couch. “You won’t believe how good this plan is. Potentially my best work.”
“Sylvia—”
Completely ignoring her, Sylvia shoved the laptop in front of her on the table, tapping the screen with her red acrylic nail.
“Tommy, the spoiled CEO kid, is absolutely our way in. His company is recruiting for a bunch of roles, and by a happy little coincidence, we just happen to have resumes that match those roles. Who knew you were so talented in…” Sylvia squinted at her notes.
“Backend Kubernetes cluster system programming.”
Aster opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. This woman.
“Sylvia, I don’t even own a computer.”
Sylvia crossed her arms, as if to say and?
“I’m sure plenty of Backend Kubernetes Cluster programmers don’t have computers.”
“Do you know what a single one of those words means?”
Sylvia shrugged. “I don’t have to. That’s your forte. I’m going to be a…” She clicked the mousepad, and a new resume appeared. “Human Resources specialist.”
Aster snorted. For the first time in hours, an easy smile fell on her face. She couldn’t help it. Sylvia was just being so… Sylvia.
“Well, that’s not completely off-brand for you,” she said, crossing her arms. “You certainly do see humans as resources.”
Sylvia clapped the computer shut, then reached up and tapped Aster on the nose.
“Exactly.”
Aster’s smile fell, the shock of contact reminding her what she’d come over to discuss.
“Sylvia,” she restated, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice. The other vampire cocked her head to the side, raised her eyebrows, and made an annoyed ‘what?’ gesture with her hands. Aster sucked in a breath. “Why did you—why did you bite me?”
Sylvia blinked. Her nose scrunched just so, her eyebrows furrowed. She had a sudden look of uncertainty, which on anyone else would be nothing to write home about, but Sylvia Maroven didn’t have looks of uncertainty. They weren’t part of her facial vocabulary.
Behind Sylvia’s grass green eyes, Aster could see her picking through a police file of possible explanations. Aster had seen this look on Sylvia before, she realized belatedly, only it happened so rarely these days, she’d forgotten what it looked like.
Sylvia felt cornered. Tied up, jailed, questioned. Aster’s question had clearly triggered her panic button.
“Oh, come on. That wasn’t a bite,” Sylvia settled on, punctuating the point with a scoff. “My fangs just grazed you by accident. I was trying to…”
Sylvia’s mouth opened, then closed. She gestured awkwardly with her hands.
“Trying to…?”
“Trying to get my phone back,” Sylvia groaned, eyes looking anywhere but at Aster. “I don’t know. I wasn’t kidding when I said I was hungry. I was getting a little bloodlusty all day doing apartment viewings. I mean did you see the veins on our rental agent?”
Seemingly satisfied with her own answer, Sylvia slid by Aster and toward the kitchen.
Her silk robe fluttered as she walked, the breeze from the open window making it wisp like a cape.
She seized open the fridge and grabbed a mason jar full of red liquid.
Then, looking back at Aster briefly, she grabbed another jar, and poured them both into proper wine glasses from the cabinet.
Sylvia was a persuasive woman, but Aster had six hundred years of experience dealing with her bullshit, and she could see the crater-sized holes in Sylvia’s explanation. The woman wasn’t even trying to hide how bad of an answer it was. The blatant lie left Aster with a hollow feeling in her chest.
“Here.”
A hand on her hip, Sylvia stood in front of her, offering her a tall glass of hemoglobin.
Aster frowned at it. Sylvia frowned at her frown.
“Can we seriously just drop this? I didn’t mean to do it.
I just…” Sylvia groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose and squeezing her eyes shut.
“Yesterday was terrible. The last week has been terrible. We’re running out of money, and we haven’t been able to afford the premium stuff in months.
” She gestured toward the glass for emphasis.
“So sue me if you smelled good, alright?”
Aster’s mouth went dry. Did she just say—
“I’m sorry. I smelled good?”
“Are you suffering from hearing loss?”
Sylvia was far past annoyed. She was downright uncomfortable.
Oh. Seeing her like this filled Aster with renewed relief.
She was starting to understand it now. Everything was becoming crystal clear.
The bite hadn’t been some crazy ploy to mess with her.
The bite had been as simple as Sylvia Maroven being so desperately tired of eating discount blood from the blood bank that she experienced a Bloodlust Blackout, and had consequently tried to chew on Aster like she was livestock.
“Oh my god,” Aster giggled.
Sylvia wasn’t lying. Wasn’t trying to hide something.
The cockiest woman on Earth was just delightfully humiliated.
Sylvia snarled at her. “Aster, if you don’t stop laughing right now, I will stake you.”
“So you can spill more of my blood to sniff?”
“Oh, fuck you. I’m grabbing the pitchfork.”
***
With Aster’s blooming existential crisis now squashed, she and Sylvia moved swiftly onwards with their plan. Well, Sylvia’s plan.
Aster would never divine something so stupidly ambitious.
“Your name today is going to be Aster Valdez,” Sylvia explained as they walked through the streets of downtown Manhattan, the sun beating over their hat-covered heads. “And I’ll be Selene Wilkstone. My interview is at ten thirty, and yours is at twelve. Did you read the notes I gave you?”
“Wait, why do you get a different first name and I don’t?”
Sylvia halted on the street, turned around, and glared at her.
“Because you never respond to aliases, Aster. You just get confused and blow our cover like fifteen minutes in.”
“That’s not true.”
“Are you going to make me call you something else for the rest of the day just to prove my point?”
Aster considered it, then nodded. “Yes.”
Sylvia patted her warmly on the cheek. “No chance in hell. Now pick up the pace, the sun is melting my eyelash extensions off.”
VioCroft Labs reigned at the very tip of the Financial District, tall and thin like a twenty-four-story needle.
The building was wall-to-wall glass, like a body with the organs exposed.
The organs in question were mostly twenty-two-year-olds fresh out of various Ivy Leagues, busy-bodies who wore ripped jeans to the office, took “meetings” all day, and had those megawatt pearly-white smiles that only people with money did.
Aster immediately detested them.
Sylvia, on the other hand, was schmoozing. They had arrived in the door only ten minutes ago and she’d already assembled a small posse around her. All interns, if Aster had heard correctly. They were looking at Sylvia in her slim-fit pantsuit like she ruled the world.
Aster couldn’t really blame them.
“And then I told Steve Jobs to stuff it!” Sylvia was somehow whispering and shouting at the same time. Watching their gaping faces, she dropped her voice conspiratorially low. “But don’t tell anyone that. I’m technically still under NDA.”
“You’re amazing,” one of them said. The others fervently nodded.
Aster withheld a groan.
“Ms. Wilkstone?” The secretary had come to interrupt what would likely have spiraled into Sylvia signing autographs. “Mr. Hernandez is ready to speak with you.”
Sylvia laid a hand on the secretary’s back, her eyes shining red.
“Oh, wonderful.”
***
Sylvia’s interview, evidently, went very well. Mr. Hernandez emerged from the room first, a loopy smile on his face that didn’t fade even as he walked back to his office. Sylvia followed out soon after, her pockets mysteriously full of something where they had been empty before.
Aster raised her eyebrow, pointing at her pockets.
“What?” Sylvia asked innocently. “I just felt like the candy in there needed liberating.”
Aster couldn’t help but laugh. Of course.
“Seriously? Stealing candy? Are you ten years old?”
Sylvia popped a red and white mint into her mouth and grinned. “Something like that. Give or take a few thousand. Now come on, stop being so grumpy. You’re up next.”
Aster followed Sylvia’s gaze over her shoulder, where a blonde woman in a no-nonsense suit was fastly approaching.
Unlike Hernandez, this woman did not seem like an easy charmer.
She was wearing a frown when she asked Aster to sit down, and that frown didn’t leave her face for a solid twenty minutes into their interview. In fact, it grew into a scowl.
“If I may speak frankly, Ms. Valdez,” the woman said, cutting Aster off mid-explanation about what a CPU was. Which was fortuitous timing, because Aster had zero idea. “Despite your qualifications, I feel like you do not have a great sense for backend programming.”
Aster wanted to say no shit, Sherlock, but she knew Sylvia would yell at her for sabotaging the plan or whatever later, so instead, she smiled.
“I’m sorry to hear you think that. May I ask why you’ve come to that conclusion?”
The woman blinked incredulously at her.
“Where do I start? You’ve disastrously failed every single programming problem I’ve laid out for you so far.
You’ve misunderstood basic terminology several times over—I mean, recursion is a basic principle of computer science, not a genre of television—and every time I speak, it only takes a few seconds before you start staring out of the window and looking at that woman sitting in the hallway. ”
The lady jutted her thumb out toward Sylvia, who grinned, and waved back.
Aster bit down on her lip to stifle a laugh. Jesus Christ.
She turned back to the woman, and gave her an apologetic smile. Not for the terrible interview, which was actually pretty entertaining—the vein on this woman’s forehead bulged every time Aster gave an answer—but for what she was about to do next.
“Listen.” Aster placed her hand over the woman’s own, where it was fidgeting with a pencil.
The woman looked at it, stunned, but didn’t pull away as Aster’s eyes began to glow red.
“This has been a great conversation. I’ve been a phenomenal candidate.
I mean like, probably the best you’ve ever interviewed.
I answered all of your questions perfectly, and went the extra mile with my answers.
I’m super good at Kubernetes, or whatever the hell it’s called.
You’re going to go back to your boss with rave reviews about me, and tomorrow I’ll wake up with an email saying I got the job. Alright?”
The woman’s eyebrows furrowed as her own eyes began to turn crimson. She looked halfway between nodding yes and nodding no.
“I’m not sure that’s true…” the woman mumbled noncommittally. “I feel like the interview went poorly, actually.”
“It is. Super true. All of it. It was a great interview. Why would it not be?”
Aster was growing agitated. Suggestion was really Sylvia’s forte, not hers. She could do it, sure, but half the time her victims snapped out of it before it could really take hold.
The woman’s eyes began to clear, and her frown was returning. Damn it.
The door to the office snapped open. Long brown hair whisked in. Sylvia gave Aster a shit-eating grin.
“I’ve got this under control,” Aster muttered.
“Sure you do,” Sylvia laughed meanly.
The other vampire didn’t even have to lay a hand on the blonde. Sylvia just stood there, a hand on her hip, eyebrow cocked, eyes red, and the woman turned to her like a devout nun turning to God.
“You’re going to hire her,” Sylvia said, pointing to Aster. “Okay?”
The woman swallowed hard, blinked twice, then nodded.
“Okay.”
Aster groaned. “For fuck’s sake.”