Chapter 1
Cassandra
Adamp combination of mud and slush soaks through the fabric of my leggings as I rush down the stone trail towards my lecture hall.
Though I look forward to the beautiful spectacle of a winter blizzard all year long, the consequence of hundreds of students stomping over layers of mud and ice in order to make it to their next class creates quite a humbling obstacle.
A wave of shivers vibrates down my shoulders as I finally reach the cool handle of the door and happily slide into the stuffy warmth of the auditorium.
“Cass, over here!”
A smile spreads over my lips at the sound of Sophia’s voice.
I search the room, finally spotting my best friend nestled in the corner, her purse resting on the seat beside her to save me a place.
The sight of her familiar blonde head bent over her notebook sends a warm flutter through my chest—one of the few things that can cut through my perpetual college-induced anxiety.
Soph and I met in Junior year History Seminar, and despite belonging to completely different departments in the school, we’ve been inseparable ever since.
She found me drowning in assignments and desperate for human connection, and proceeded to practically sew her ass to mine for the foreseeable future.
We’ve had each other’s backs ever since.
“You? Early? I guess there’s a first time for everything,” I quip, stripping off my heavy coat and settling in beside her.
“Don’t count on a repeat anytime soon. It’ll hurt my reputation.” She shoots me a grin, but I catch the exhaustion lurking beneath it.
Slipping my computer from my bag, I flip out my desk and settle my sore back into the stiff, wooden seat. I study her profile as she pretends to organize her notes—the slight tremor in her hands, the way she keeps stifling yawns.
“Don’t worry, slacker. Your secret’s safe with me.” I lean closer, catching the familiar scent of lab chemicals clinging to her dark sweatshirt. “God, I can practically smell the formaldehyde off of you. Were you even supposed to go in today, or were you taking extra shifts again?”
She rolls her eyes at my antics, but doesn’t deny it. “First of all, I don’t use formaldehyde because I work with bacteria, not corpses, you little shit. And, fine, I just wanted to check on my cultures. Little guys are growing up so fast, Cass. I don’t want to miss a thing!”
“You know, sometimes I wonder who you’d choose if I found myself tied to the train tracks alongside your demented little lab projects—”
“The ultimate Sophie’s Choice,” Soph says, shaking her head with a coy smile. A low laugh breaks loose from my throat, and I feel some tension ease from my shoulders. This is what I missed most during those lonely underclass years.
“Did you at least eat lunch yet?” I ask, shooting her a knowing look.
Sophia is brilliant, but she works herself to the bone in her research lab, taking on way more responsibility than anyone else while balancing her difficult classes.
If two days went by without her sneaking off to the lab to check on her ongoing projects, I’d call in Homeland Security.
“Yeah, I got a bar from the vending machine before I came in. Don’t worry about me, Cass, I’ll eat afterwards. I’m done for the day.”
Uh-huh. I give her my best bullshit look. “You always say that. And you always find something to check on or a study group to run. When’s the last time you had an actual meal that didn’t come wrapped in plastic?”
“Well, this time I’m serious. Wanna know why?” She probes with a mischievous grin that immediately puts me on high alert.
I sigh. “Alright, I’ll bite. Why is tonight different?”
“I’m so glad you asked!” She exclaims. I snort. “Tonight I have passes for Empire.” She holds two thin, chain bracelets in front of my face, the small links swinging in the air.
I tilt my head in confusion. “Empire? Is that like a film premiere or something?”
I earn an unnecessarily condescending look.
“Seriously? How could you not know the name of one of the most exclusive clubs in the city?”
“Uh, cause I live in New York State,” I respond. My best friend curls her brows, looking at me like I’ve grown a second nose. “So it’s just a club, then?”
She and I have never been big club people, and we only venture out to bars and stuff once or twice a month, so I’m kind of surprised that she seems so excited about this one.
“Just a club.” She shakes her head like I’m a petulant child asking where colors come from.
“New people are literally waitlisted for months to get into this thing. I only managed to score these because my cousin practically killed herself to get onto one of those lists. You should’ve heard how mad she was on the phone; she tested positive for the flu this morning.
Luckily, I talked her into giving us her tickets so they wouldn’t go to waste! ”
“Wow. How come I’ve never even heard of it?” I ask, lowering my voice when I spot our professor walking up to the podium.
“Because you exist in a cave, hermit. Thank God you have a sexy Sisyphus-type like me to roll the rocks away, or you’d never see the sun, Cass.”
My giggle is cut short by the start of the lecture.
I straighten into my shitty, stiff seat and open my class notes, but my mind keeps drifting to the word city.
Something cold and charged shoots down my spine every time I think about it.
Memories I’ve tried so hard to forget rumble to the surface, but I shove them back down, refocusing on the low drone of the professor’s lecture.
After a grueling hour and a half of droning boredom, Sof and I are finally released into the thrall of bodies rushing from the hall. An onslaught of snowflakes smacks into us as we slip through the door, throwing us into each other’s huddled warmth.
“How about I give you a ride to your place?” I say through a laugh, grabbing the crook of her arm just in time to prevent her ass from sliding down the icy path. “Can’t have you breaking your neck before we feed you a proper dinner.”
“Such a caring friend,” she deadpans, but squeezes my arm in return.
When we reach my car, both of us have snow sticking to our soggy butts from slipping on the pavement, and we’re both losing battles with our fits of laughter.
I crank the heating as soon as we slip into the vehicle, pull out of the lot, and turn toward Sophia’s place.
This weather sure doesn’t seem the most night-out-friendly.
This club had better be a once-in-a-lifetime experience after having to brave all of this wind and snow, I think, as I switch the windshield wipers on faster.
By the time I finally fit my key into my apartment door and yank it open, one thing is astoundingly clear. It’s gonna take some serious self-convincing to get my ass back out into that glacial weather.
I kick off my shoes and crank the small, rickety radiator in the corner of the room to full blast. I decide to remain there, shivering and rotating around it like a rotisserie chicken, for an embarrassingly long time, until I eventually deem myself de-popsicled enough to go put away my stuff.
Being a proper degenerate in a New York winter is not for the weak.
Since my college, Riverside U, is about forty minutes from the city, many students end up taking the night train down on Friday evening, finishing their weekend benders on Sunday with just enough time to scramble through their homework and have a nasty hangover in their Monday morning classes.
Soph and I tried that routine once. When Monday morning rolled by, Sophia was completely fine.
Me? I spent an unfortunate amount of bonding time with the bathroom trash can in the Marketing department building.
I couldn’t attend a single class in that building for the rest of the semester without being bombarded with vomit-inducing stomach-curdling memories.
I’m the aforementioned weak.
I bristle at the trail of thought, remembering what happened the last time I headed into the city. Before I can ravel it up again like I did earlier, the memory unfurls in my mind, hitting like a physical blow to my chest. My fingers grip the edge of the nearby dresser.
Unbidden, my gaze leaps toward the bottom of my bed, where I’ve poorly hidden the last dregs of evidence from that night. The bloodstained shirt I should have thrown away weeks ago, but can’t bring myself to touch.
I know I should’ve gotten rid of every shred of evidence from that night, but every time I thought about it, this irrational worry would erupt, ultimately dissuading me.
What if the evidence is the only thing that makes it all real?
Without those bloody scraps, I have absolutely no proof that any of it actually happened. That meeting him happened.
More often than I’d like to admit, I find my mind wandering to the bite of iron and sweaty musk. That tired gaze, a deep ocean blue that seemed to see straight through me, even as the life was draining out of him.
My pulse quickens traitorously. Even now, the memory of his hand gripping my wrist, strong and desperate, makes my skin flush with heat I have no business feeling.
So many useless questions spawn in the memory, and I hate that one drifts far above the rest, accompanied by a flutter of something dangerously close to longing.
Did he survive?
And worse, the question I refuse to even fully form: What would happen if I saw him again?
Like always, I shut the desperate line of curiosity down before I start stewing, but not before my body betrays me with a shiver that has nothing to do with the cold.
I just need to move on.
The more I dig, the deeper the shit I’ll be in.
I shake my head in an attempt to physically dismantle the thought. The more I ignore it, the more it will inevitably fade into a questionable nightmare I left behind in that dark alley on 5th.
Hopefully.
But as I pull articles of clothing out of my dresser drawers, trying to distract myself by considering which outfit has the least chance of freezing my tits off tonight, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m preparing for something more than just a night out.
The city has always felt like a living thing to me, but now it feels like his domain. Every street corner could hide those piercing blue eyes, every shadow could conceal that broad frame. The thought should terrify me.
It does terrify me.
But it also makes my cheeks heat in a thoroughly inconvenient way.
After careful contemplation, I settled on a fitted, long-sleeve black dress with an open back. The seam hits me mid-thigh, so I pull out some sheer black tights and knee-high boots, throwing them onto the bed as my phone screen lights up against the pillow.
Unlocking my phone, I check the message.
Sophia:
Be ready to go in about an hour?
I text back a confirmation and start getting ready, ignoring the slight way my hands shake as I apply my makeup. It’s just the cold—nothing more.
Luckily for us, Sophia’s sister lives in the city and lets us crash at her place whenever we come down for the night. No 3 AM drunk-Riverside-bound-train for us.
I pack a few things in my bag for the night and double-check to make sure all of my assignments were turned in. I’m just putting on the finishing touches to my makeup when my phone lights up again.
I swipe my keys from the hook by the door and flick off the lights.
“Fuck, it’s cold out here!”
Sophia shivers in her own skimpy dress as I pull up to her apartment complex and unlock the door. The second the door clicks open, she lunges into the car like her nipples are already suffering the effects of frostbite.
“Stop laughing at me, witch!” She says as she rubs her icy palms together in front of the small heating vent.
I laugh harder, diligently rubbing her exposed arms with my palms to warm her up. “You’re the one who insisted on not wearing tights. I tried to warn you about hypothermia, but nooo, you had to look ‘hot enough to melt the bouncers’ hearts.’”
“It’s only gonna get colder when the sun goes down. Still think this swanky club is worth it?”
She shakes her head, not even deeming to respond. Once the warmth returns to her flushed cheeks, she turns to examine me.
“You may have taken forever, but at least you look fantastic.” She says with a cheeky grin. “Very ‘mysterious woman with secrets’ vibes.”
I preen under her assessment. “It takes more time for some of us to look presentable than it does for others,” I say as I reroute us to her sister’s place in the city.
“Don’t give me that shit, you probably just rotted in your bed for an hour overthinking whether this dress makes you look like a serial killer or a femme fatale.”
I snap my teeth at her in a playful bite, pulling onto the street. “A wiser friend would be much nicer to her personal chauffeur.”
The rest of the drive goes by quickly enough, Sophia almost immediately gaining control of the aux and blasting her music through the confines of the car like the true passenger princess she is.
It’s not until I spot the glimmering lights of the city and the towering buildings lining the river that I fall into an uneasy silence. The Manhattan skyline rises before us like a fence of glass and steel, beautiful and terrible in the dying light.
There was a reason I’d been avoiding going back since the incident.
Even though the logical side of my brain knew there was little to no possibility of running into him by chance again, some part of my subconscious was convinced that the man I saw that night was this powerful, otherworldly creature.
That the city itself was his web, and I was just another fly stepping back into his domain.
That, somehow, the second I stepped back into his territory, he’d be there, waiting in the shadows between skyscrapers to tie up his rogue loose end.
I’m not an idiot.
I know that night I saw something that I shouldn’t have.
And I know that makes me one thing only. A liability.