AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Our car’s gone,” Dom said. “I’ll pay you a fair rate to take us to the summit.”
“For Pete’s sake, you need the money.” Emmy pulled me to the Honda, then nodded over her shoulder. “Get in the back, you two.”
At Emmy’s urging, I climbed into the driver’s seat. My fingers clamped the steering wheel and locked there. Dominic climbed in one side and his girlfriend the other, and I couldn’t help a peek in the rearview mirror. There was something unsettling about having two rich, attractive people in my backseat. They definitely looked like they didn’t belong.
“Apologies to your girlfriend, Mr. Kent,” I said dryly. “We’re out of Perrier and mints in your chariot.”
“I’m not his girlfriend,” Vix said at the same time Dominic looked out the other window and barked, “Not my girlfriend.”
Emmy glanced over to me and mouthed, “Touchy subject?”
I shrugged and pulled out into traffic. This year the summit was being held at the finest hotel in The Hollow. It was a place so far out of my price range that I couldn’t afford a bottle of water from the bar. But it was only the best for The Circle—our ruling governing body.
“Have you driven a vehicle before?” Dominic wondered, sounding cross. “The light was red.”
“My wheels were in the intersection when it was yellow,” I said. “I had to speed up.”
Dom cursed as a big Ford truck narrowly missed clipping the back of the car. “Three hundred years of life, and I’m going to go out in a rusty Honda.”
Vix gave a derisive snort. “I warned you. You didn’t listen. By the way, how do you two know one another?”
“Who, Dominic and me?” I asked. “We don’t. We had a run-in behind the building the other day. That’s all.”
“Pretty strong reaction to meeting your neighbor.” Vix raised perfectly manicured eyebrows. “Seems like the two of you harbor a lot of hatred for each other after just one tiny interaction.”
“It’s pretty easy to dislike a person when they’re the reason your whole life is falling apart,” I muttered.
Vix looked to Dominic. “I know you can be a force, but even I’m impressed at the rate you’ve gotten her to dislike you.”
“How am I ruining your life?” Dominic asked me darkly. He did not seem amused by my accusation.
“You’re kicking us all out of our homes,” I blurted, the fear and panic of the situation really starting to settle into my shoulders. It seemed real now, the fact that the clock was ticking on the amount of time I had left to find a new place to live.
My neck was tense. My head was tense. My pinky toes were tense. Everything was tense. It was unsettling to be sitting this close to Dominic Kent.
The thing was, it wasn’t easy for people like me to find a new place to live. People with somewhat lackluster savings accounts and somewhat sad paychecks. The only reason I’d been able to keep my mother’s place was because of an old rule grandfathered into The Hollow about family members passing a place down from one generation to the next.
However, there were exceptions to that rule. Like if someone named Dominic Kent got approval from The Circle to sell the entire apartment building. Probably to develop the property into something bigger and flashier. In special cases like that, we indeed could be kicked out.
If Dominic Kent was allowed to sell his apartment building—the building I called home—it would leave me with no place to go. Rent had skyrocketed in The Hollow, and we were a lot of paranormals cramped into a not-all-that-large radius in the middle of New York City. Apartments didn’t grow on trees, and I’d be looking at having to move out of The Hollow completely to find a place within my budget. I’d have to start looking into some really exotic places like the suburbs of New Jersey.
Dominic scowled, then looked out of the window again. “It’s not personal.”
“Not for you,” I said. “Though it’s pretty crappy for everyone else.”
“Find a new place to live,” he said. “It’s just an apartment. There are plenty of them.”
Obviously, this guy lived in a different universe than I did. One where he’d had centuries to build wealth. One in which he’d probably changed addresses so many times that he didn’t know what it was like to have a place he cared about.
But it wasn’t just the financial side that was a problem. It was more than that. Leaving this apartment meant leaving behind the last remnants of the life I’d shared with my mother behind—the only place that held the good memories captive for me.
My home was like a snow globe, a fragile ornament holding a glimpse of a magical former life that actually meant something. If I shook it, it was like I could watch the glittering memories sparkle for mere seconds before reality hit me again.
It sucked that Dominic Kent had probably been alive for so long that he’d already lost everyone he’d loved. He probably couldn’t remember what it was like to care about another place, another person. It was sad for him, and it double-sucked that it was affecting me.
“You really don’t have a heart,” I said. “You don’t care about anybody but yourself. Don’t you have enough money without uprooting the whole lot of us for a stupid profit?”
Dominic eyed me curiously, as if he wanted to say something more, but I gave a pathetic shake of my head, knowing my words sounded pitiful. Unfortunately fanged words were all I had as a defense right now.
