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“Even if I could convince him, I couldn’t by ten.”

“Why not?”

“Because he doesn’t even come in until midnight.”

“Oh. Right. Well… call him.”

“He doesn’t have a phone.”

“He doesn’t have a phone,” Mr. Lane repeated, like the words didn’t even make sense. “Well, I don’t care. Go to his house. We have his address. Yes, actually, that’s exactly what you’re going to do.” He grabbed the folder, closing it, and thrusting it at me. “Right now.”

His house?

No.

Absolutely not.

I couldn’t think of a place I wanted to go less. And I’d once been to a centaur milking farm. Where, well, the male centaurs signed up to be “milked” for some medication or other made out of their, yeah, you get the point.

It was after that day that I never allowed Margo to pick out the destinations of our little outings without input again.

“It’s the middle of the day, Mr. Lane.”

“So what?”

“So, Silas is nocturnal. He’s sleeping.”

“Well, wake him up!” I jerked back at his tone. Mr. Lane had often been exacting, demanding, and a little rude. But he’d never been close to yelling. “Get this done. Nothing else matters until it’s signed.”

With that, he strode out, slamming my door as he went.

Alone, I sank down into my chair. My stomach was sloshing around, and I worried that if I didn’t calm myself down, I would be bent over a toilet in a minute while Rupert roasted my outfit or Ashlee told me some story about how many times she had to hold one of her sorority sisters’ hair back while they got sick.

Once I was sure I wasn’t going to get sick, I looked up Silas’s address again and steeled myself for a trip over there.

It would be alright. Better than running into him in the hallway, where I had to try to make pleasant small talk. This would be a quick all-business discussion. As soon as he signed the stupid contract, I could get right back out of there. Then maybe I wouldn’t be so tense at work, because we would have already interacted, and it didn’t lead to any awkwardness.

At least that was what I convinced myself on the long walk from the station to Silas’s home.

While some part of me did still love to romanticize the idea of vampires in their gothic mansions, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Silas lived in an old warehouse.

It was all penny brick and old factory windows, their glass sectioned off into grids of small squares. And there were a lot of them. What did he do in the daytime if he had to get up for some reason? Slither on the floor chasing shadows like a worm? Because it was daylight, and all the drapes (if they even existed) were open.

I guess I was about to find out.

I made my way toward the tall steel utility stairs that led up to the apartment, the open-grate slats ringing hollow under my feet.

“Silas?” I called, knocking on the door. “It’s Maggie! Silas!”

I reached for the handle and was surprised to find it turned in my hand. Why would he leave his door open? I mean, he was vulnerable when he was sleeping. Then again, he was also a vampire, so I guess maybe that superseded his fears.

I pushed open the door and found myself in a sprawling loft.

As expected, the space was drenched in light, giving the surprisingly large number of houseplants the sunshine they needed not only to survive but thrive.

The plants weren’t the only surprise.

There was a state-of-the-art kitchen pressed into the far wall, with an island cutting it off from the rest of the space. While there was, obviously, no fruit sitting in a bowl or a fresh loaf of bread waiting to be sliced into, there was one of those insanely expensive espresso machines and an exposed shelf lined with various bags of beans from a local shop.