How a Vampire Falls (Apex: Bloodbound #1)

1. One

One

I f only Leslie could lie out on a flat rock and bask in the sun’s lovely rays, but the pleasure of Tennessee’s late-July heat wasn’t worth a week of slathering herself in aloe. Not that she’d burn the way humans did, much less catch fire as humans once believed. No, she’d just dry out like ancient papyrus.

Sitting behind her exhibit table, she dug into her purse for her organic sunscreen and reapplied to her face, arms, and the tops of her feet. She finished as a young family with two strollers passed on the other side of the dusty aisle. The heat was keeping some humans at home, no doubt. Today’s turnout was about two-thirds the usual number for a Harmony Ridge art fair.

But Leslie could count on one person to show up, even when no one else did. That person was now skipping toward her wearing a yellow sundress sprinkled with a blue wildflower print. Her sandals made puffs of dust with every skip.

“Oh wow! It’s Leslie Snow, the genius diorama artist! Hey y’all, check out Leslie Snow’s exhibit!”

The family with the strollers halted and turned back.

“Oh wow,” Leslie deadpanned. “It’s my friend Hannah, who has never brought embarrassing attention to me at an art fair before.”

“You love me.” Hannah stopped and leaned toward the diorama in the center of the booth, a little bigger than the rest—not in scale but in scope. Her black ponytail brushed the model’s highest cliff. “Ooh. The waterfall looks like actual water now.”

“That’s the goal.”

“Is this the one you were trying to finish in time for the fair?”

“Yeah. I may or may not have skipped sleeping on Thursday.”

Hannah glanced up, then continued to study the model. “I love the cliff details too.”

“Thanks.”

“When did you sleep last?”

The family was meandering their way back to Leslie’s exhibit thanks to Hannah’s beckoning. Leslie lowered her voice. “No worries. It’s only been nine days.”

“Right, of course, only nine days. But you’re one of the few people I know who maintains an actual work/life balance, so I guess you’re fine.”

“And if I weren’t, my bestie wouldn’t hesitate to lecture me on self-care.”

Hannah flounced her skirt. “You’d best believe it.”

The family reached them. The younger girls remained in their strollers. The boy, about eight years old, stepped right up to the display table and shoved his hands into his pockets.

“I’m not supposed to touch anything,” he said to Leslie.

“Thank you very much,” she said.

“I definitely wouldn’t hurt your stuff, though.”

“I believe you. But this way no accidents can happen.”

He nodded and homed in on a model of a back country road surrounded by trees and populated by a single vehicle, an off- roader splashed with mud and driven by a man wearing a puffy jacket, jeans, boots, and a helmet.

“Cool,” the kid said.

“How many hours does one of these take to create?” his mom said.

As always, the word create warmed Leslie’s soul. “On average, about ten hours. The waterfall was closer to fifteen.”

“Mom, can we buy one?”

“Not today, buddy.”

“But what if…?” He sidled up to her and leaned against her hip. “What if it was my birthday present, and I got the one with the guy driving on the dirt road, and it went on top of my dresser? There’s nothing on top of my dresser right now.”

“Well, today, we’re here to look, but that’s a very good point to consider in the future.”

The father had been studying the waterfall since he’d reached Leslie’s booth. “Can we find you online?”

“Absolutely.” She took a business card from the holder at one corner of the table and handed it to him. “I ship, but it can get expensive. We can meet up in town if you’re local.”

“We are. Thanks.”

When they moved on, Hannah beamed. “I make the best publicist.”

“You really do.”

They caught up on random small-town small talk for about an hour between the minutes Leslie spent explaining her work to various fairgoers. Then Hannah’s phone vibrated in her pocket.

“Are you ignoring your texts, or did you not notice your phone just vibrated against your body?” Leslie couldn’t imagine life with such dull senses.

“Oh, thanks.” Hannah tugged her phone from the pocket of her sundress. “Oh! It’s after four. Jake’s wondering if I’m going to stand him up on his birthday.”

“Well, don’t do that.”

“We’ve got a reservation at your steakhouse for 5:30.”

“Then get out of here.”

It wasn’t her steakhouse, but she’d long ago given up trying to tell Jake and Hannah. When she’d been promoted to head waitress two years ago, her parents and her friends had celebrated as if she’d bought the restaurant, though all of them understood her first love would always be art.

If only art could pay the bills.

Fair traffic began to dwindle. Leslie flipped through her sales receipts and smiled. With the lowest price point, her pocket-sized overhead dioramas always sold the most. But today she’d also sold five larger models, including a winter-scape that she’d been bringing to the fair since last January. An elderly couple had proclaimed it the perfect way to defy the July heat and laughed together as they paid for it. Both were so amused, there must be some inside joke involved.

Leslie’s head snapped up, and she lost track of her math. Her nostrils flared. Yes. That was a perfectly balanced scent—equal parts salt and acid—without a drop of sweat. And it belonged to neither of her parents.

She watched the cluster of people heading toward her. All human. She peered past them, and…there. The scent belonged to a man who appeared roughly her age, though age wasn’t determinable from appearance among her kind.

The man approached her with a liquid stride he didn’t bother restraining. He stopped in front of her booth and smiled without his teeth, a slow curve of his mouth that rose higher on one side. His eyes were pure blue, glittering with flecks of silver. Leslie blinked to cancel the appealing effect of him. It didn’t work.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hello. Welcome to Harmony Ridge.”

“Thank you. It’s great to see you, Leslie.” The voice of a vampire was never unpleasant, never clumsy, but this guy should be reading audiobooks for a living. Romance audiobooks.

Wait. “Sorry, do we know each other?”

He cocked his head, and a little crinkle formed between his eyes though his smile didn’t fade. “Don’t we?”

She took a moment to study. He clearly didn’t mind, stood still and held her gaze while she catalogued details and tried to match them to a memory. Those eyes—silver chips dancing in ocean blue, a perfect fringe of lash. Textured like a model’s, his blond hair was parted on the side and made interesting with natural sandy lowlights. His chin was stronger than his jaw, and his jaw was no slouch. He dressed like a model too—a snug beige Henley, attractively fitted light-wash jeans, and pale green boat shoes.

She wanted to keep studying him, but his smile was turning into a smirk. She blinked away the impact of his presence.

“I’m sorry; if we’ve met before, I don’t remember where.”

“I’m Ryker Maddox.” He grinned, a flash of pearl. “Your husband.”