A Light in the Dusk

by K J Sutton

  Gladly leaving the sweat-dampened bedsheets behind, I pull on jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. After that, I secure my hair back in a long ponytail. Everything simple, like me.

  Whoever is at the door knocks again, even harder this time. Swearing, I hurry to open it, wary of it waking anyone who has the day off—not all the humans who live here work in the sewer sector. Clarissa, for instance, is owned by a vampire in Sul, and she’s the receptionist at his art gallery.

  I open the door and look down at Penelope, who seems to obtain more wrinkles by the day. “There’s someone out front for you,” she says with her usual scowl.

  “Oh, thank—” I start, but she’s already hurrying away, moving surprisingly fast for someone her age. Gritting my teeth to ride a sudden wave of frustration, I close my bedroom door and follow her downstairs. I glance into the dining room. There’s no sign of Drew or Nina, and no hint of their voices in the air, which means they’re probably still sleeping.

  Sensing eyes on me, I turn. A shock goes through my system when I see Noah Forrest standing in the open doorway.

  “Before you whine about your shift tonight, I should inform you that our dear friend Bill already knows you won’t be there,” is his greeting, his hair stirring in a breeze.

  I don’t waste my energy arguing—swallowing a sigh, I take my coat off the hook and follow him onto the street. The door closes with a resounding thud behind me.

  Better let Drew and Nina know where I am, I think as we walk in the direction of Midtown. I reach for my pocket before I remember that I no longer have a working cell phone to call him on. Cursing inwardly, I bite my lip and agonize over what I’m about to say. “Can I ask you a favor?” I venture to Noah.

  He angles his dark head, as though he’s deeply contemplating this. “I like the sound of that,” he decides. “Sure, Charlotte. You can ask for a favor. However, it must involve nipple clamps or one of us being tied down.”

  After spending a week underground with him, I’ve gotten used to Noah’s attempts to disarm me. I don’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction. “Don’t be gross,” is all I say. “I just need to use your phone.”

  Noah arches his brow at me, which I’ve recently learned is one of his signature responses. “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “If you’re going to survive this city, halfling, you should really work on your comebacks,” Noah sighs, sounding genuinely disappointed. I cross my arms over my chest. Sighing some more, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and holds it out to me. “You owe me for this one, I hope you realize.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I take his phone and call Drew. You know, in case Noah decides to murder me, which still doesn’t feel outside the realm of possibility. After three rings, his voicemail answers. “If you’re calling to talk to me, then I’m away from the phone right now. Since I have a life, I really don’t know when I’ll return this call. Theoretically, I’ll get to it eventually, but don’t expect miracles. However, if this is my stalker, then you already know where I am—remember the distance on your restraining order.”

  Worried my voice will betray how I feel about Drew, I disconnect the call without leaving a message and hand Noah his phone back.

  “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” I ask as we make our way through one of Midtown’s lesser-traveled areas. The roads are unmaintained, mostly dirt and crumbling concrete, and the weeds on either side are overgrown.

  Noah acts as though I haven’t spoken. He frowns at his phone, and his fingers move in a blur as he types out a text message. Probably to one of his many female admirers.

  I let out a brief, exasperated breath. “Fine. Be an ass. Let’s just get this over with.”

  That gets his attention. “Interesting,” Noah murmurs, regarding me thoughtfully.

  “What?” I say through my teeth.

  He flicks his tongue over his bottom lip before his mouth curves into a grin. “In my many, many trips around the moon, I honestly don’t think a woman—or a man, for that matter—has ever said those words to me.”

  “You act like a big, bad detective, and yet you can’t figure out why I’m always excited to get away from you,” I mutter under my breath, and Noah chuckles as we enter the undertaker sector.

  Shadows from the trees bend and curl over the ground. Completely at a loss for how to have a conversation with this sharp-tongued bounty hunter, I look to the sky instead. Overhead, through a layer of smog, I can make out the faint light of stars. For some reason, stars always make me think of humans, how bright and fleeting their existences are.

  And I wonder… what would it be like to peer up at a bright, blue sky?

  “Sunlight and flowers may inspire, but we’ve the stars and planets to admire,” Noah whispers in my ear.

  I edge away from him and raise my brows. “Are you a poet?”

  Noah smirks at the obvious distance I’ve put between us. “Hardly. It’s something my mother used to say.”

  “Your mother?” I echo.

  “Yes. Did you think I hatched from an egg?”

  “You know, they say things happen for a reason,” I tell him calmly. “So remember, when I murder you with a blunt object, I had a reason.”

  Another glimmer of amusement flickers across Noah’s face, and his elongated, razor-sharp canines flash before sliding back into his gums. My stomach clenches. I push away a whisper of desire and charge forward, putting even more space between us, stopping only when we reach the hospital entrance.

  CARPE NOCTEM, it reads above the doorway, etched into the very stone. The automatic doors slide open. We cross a marble lobby, the cavernous room eerily empty. At the elevators, Noah speaks under his breath. “Oh, it should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway—don’t embarrass me in here, halfling.”

  “Or what? Are you going to bend me over your knee?” I snap without thinking, stepping onto the elevator. Noah does the same, and the doors close.

  In a flash, the vampire pulls me against his chest. His breath of laughter stirs the hair at my temple, while his mouth traces the shell of my ear, sending shivers through me. “I get the sense you’d enjoy it too much for a spanking to constitute punishment.”

  I shove him back and mutter, “Bite me.”

  Noah arches a perfectly-shaped brow at me again, and I think about how much I hate his smirk. How much I hate the smug gleam in his eyes. “With pleasure,” he says to me. “Unfortunately, we have to put a pin in this—the case always comes first. Remember that, baby vampire.”

  “I have a name, you know. Not that you’ve ever asked, but it’s Charlie.”

  “We’re here to look at a body,” Noah says, completely disregarding me. “When the city ends up with a weeper body, the procedure is to immediately burn it. But I pulled some strings—G-strings, to be exact—to have one discreetly removed from the scene and brought to the morgue.”

  I hug my jacket tighter when we step off the elevator and into the morgue. Wincing at the harsh fluorescent lighting and the sharp scent of high-grade disinfectant, I turn to watch Noah. His bright eyes scan the room and land on a figure standing with her back to us. A flowered hijab rests starkly against a white lab coat.

  “Is this a bad time?” Noah calls, his voice smooth and oddly professional.

  When the female turns, I see that she’s a vampire with red eyes. A silver hoop around one of her nostrils glints in the light. “Good to see you too, Noah,” she says casually, removing her rubber gloves. “Keeping out of trouble?”

  He laughs, and that stiff facade vanishes. “Don’t you know me at all, Kyndra?”

  My eyes go back and forth between them. They’re chatting like friends, not as if we’re not here for an investigation involving rampaging weepers. The undertaker scoffs halfheartedly, pushing her sleeves up. “I know you too well, Forrest.”

  He smiles fondly. “It’s been—”

  “Can we focus, please?” I cut in, then force a smile at Kyndra. “Sorry. Hi, I’m Charlie.”


  “I know who you are,” she says not unkindly, but my stomach drops anyway. “It’s hard not to around here.”

  “Right.” I fall silent. Why do I feel the need to apologize? It’s not as if I chose to be a Lavender. A Travesty.

  “Don’t worry,” Kyndra continues, “not everyone blames you for who your family is.”

  My brows lift. “Really?”

  “Well, I don’t. I suppose I can’t speak for others, though. Right, Noah?” she asks, looking at him sidelong.

  “I’m reserving the right to make a judgment,” he tells her.

  “Seriously?” I snap. “Who the hell are you to—”

  He whirls around, his green eyes blazing. “You know nothing, Charlotte Travesty,” he snaps back. “So just shut your mouth and keep out of the way.”

  Squaring my shoulders, I step toward the table and focus on the reason we’re here. “Have you examined the body?” I ask Kyndra.

  “Yes. I’m almost finished with my examination, actually. Right this way.” The undertaker moves in a blur and stops next to a wall of enormous drawers.

  As she pulls one open, my eyes feel huge, like they’re about to swallow the rest of my face. The thing laying on that metal slab is so hideous that I can’t think of any monster or nightmare that compares—this one is much, much older than the weeper I saw at Rowan’s. Its skin is creased and stiff, like old leather, and its eyes are bottomless holes.

  No, not it, I think. Him. This was a person once. Although it’s difficult to remember, the longer I look down at the dead weeper. The hair on his head is patchy and open scabs make his scalp ooze. He’s wearing clothes so torn that they hang on his emaciated body, exposing pale strips of flesh.

  I jump when Noah speaks beside me. “No marks or wounds on his hands. He didn’t struggle to get in, which means there really could be an opening somewhere.”

  “You doubted?” I lean away from the body and glance at him.

  “Correction, princess. I doubt.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “Fine. So, what, you think someone might be… letting them in? That’s kind of a leap.”

  “Is it? Use that brain in your skull—I promise it has other uses besides picking out pretty clothes or absorbing blood cocktails. If there was really a breach big enough to let weepers through, it would’ve been found by now. Bill knew it, too, or he would’ve handled this himself.”

  My eyes meet his, and there’s a challenge there, an invitation. “If this has been your theory, why did we spend days searching the perimeter of the entire city?”

  “Because Sylvia and I are known for being the best, baby vampire. We’re thorough.”

  Exasperated, I turn my attention to Kyndra again. “What can you tell us? Did you find anything out of the ordinary?” I say, hoping the more questions I ask, the faster I’ll be out of this room.

  Kyndra purses her lips. “Not with the body itself.”

  “What does that mean?” Noah asks, still staring down at the weeper.

  “I found something in the body.”

  “Well, yes. Bodies tend to have things inside them, Madame Undertaker. You know, blood, tissues, organs… sometimes other people’s.” He shoots her a wink.

  My cheeks burn, and I turn my face away. “What did you find?” I manage in a level voice.

  “Check it out,” Kyndra says, walking toward another metal table with a silver dish on top. Noah and I step up on either side of her and look into it. Inside, there’s a partially disintegrated piece of parchment, stained brown with something I choose not to think about.

  “I found it in his mouth.” Kyndra reaches past me and grabbing a pair of tweezers off a table on wheels. Slowly, she peels the parchment open. It sticks together, and I have to shove down my gag reflex. Noah leans in, squinting as he gets closer to the dish. The room is quiet, so silent the jump in his pulse is as loud as thunder.

  Panic rises in me at his expression. “What does it say?”

  Noah’s voice is flat as he reads. “‘For every day Alexander Travesty sits on the throne, a weeper will invade the city.’”

  I lean forward and read it for myself. The handwriting is messy and blurred from, well, being inside the mouth of a dead weeper, so the letters are tricky to make out. I have to focus my inhuman sight. It picks up the texture in the parchment—as well as what’s covering it—and each of the letters.

  For every day Alexander Travesty sits on the throne, a weeper will invade the city.

  “Jesus Christ, way to bury the fucking lead,” Noah says to Kyndra.

  “I hadn’t read it yet,” she says, glaring at him. As she gingerly returns the letter to its protective dish, she lowers her voice. “You know what this means.”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “I don’t,” I cut in, my heart rate kicking up.

  “This isn’t just about weepers anymore,” Kyndra says after a moment, taking pity on me when Noah remains silent. How strange it is to go from being royalty to being completely disregarded.

  “Clearly.” I knew that. “But why is someone blaming my father’s reign as the cause of weepers invading the city?”

  I catch the tail end another pitying glance from Kyndra’s, and an instant later, I realize why. My father, I’d said. He’s not. I know that.

  Indifferent to my obvious inner turmoil, Noah shrugs. “Maybe it’s not about blame—maybe it’s just about opportunity. Whoever wrote this is giving the king an ultimatum.”

  The notion is so preposterous that I have to smother a laugh. “My fath—Alexander Travesty will never step down. It’ll take a sword through his neck to remove him from the throne.”

  “Is that why you’ve picked up sword fighting?” Noah asks. An obvious jab.

  I open my mouth to respond in kind, but the fire inside me shrinks when I remember my first time using a sword. Weeper’s head rolling. Black blood clinging to steel. Shaky breaths. “I think we should—” I start, my voice tight.

  “Destroy that,” Noah says to Kyndra, cutting me off.

  “Are you sure?” she asks, darting a glance in my direction. I begin backing toward the door, sensing that our time here has come to an end. I want nothing more than to get away from Noah Forrest.

  “Yes,” he says, still focused on the pretty undertaker.

  She nods as a coy smile touches her lips. “Was that… everything you came for?”

  “You know I’ll use any excuse to visit. But yes, unfortunately, that’s everything. For now. Thanks for your help.”

  I jab the elevator button with my thumb and it glows brightly. “It was nice meeting you,” I call.

  Before Kyndra can respond, Noah wraps his arm around her in a quick side hug. “Let’s keep this meeting between us, yes?” I hear him murmur. “And if anyone else inquires, you didn’t find anything unusual.”

  “You got it,” she says, then finds me again. She jerks her thumb at Noah. “Don’t let this guy get under your skin, okay?”

  My only response is a tight-lipped smile. Too fucking late.

  There’s a cheerful ding, and then the doors open. Noah and I step on at the same moment, but neither of us look at each other. The doors close and we’re silent on the entire ride to the main floor.

  Once we’re back on the street, Noah and I part ways, but not before he tells me not to speak of what we saw today. I barely manage not to flip him the bird as he turns away.

  After a few seconds of internal debating, I hurry toward the Public Works building in hopes of catching Drew and Nina. As I walk, I think back on the night. I’m finding it near impossible to get a grip on Noah’s personality, to understand him. He may be nice to look at, but then he opens his mouth with some crude or arrogant remark, and I find myself wanting to tear his head off. He’s the complete opposite of Drew in every way—where Drew is soft and kind and light, Noah is sharp and wicked and dark.

  Feeling another surge of exasperation, I shake the thoughts of them away.

  At least, I try to, but the butte
rflies in my stomach flutter to life when I spot Drew walking down the sidewalk toward me. He looks like every other person on the street, bundled up in a coat and scarf, but familiar eyes shine from behind that tangled mess of hair.

  “Hey you,” he says with a grin.

  “Hey yourself,” I say back, feeling warmer, suddenly. “What are you doing here? This neighborhood is out of your way, isn’t it?”

  “One of the others overheard Forrest telling Bill about checking out a lead at the hospital, so I thought I’d stop by and make sure things went okay. I know you’re not his biggest fan.

  “To put it lightly. If I never see that arrogant ass again, it would be too soon.”

  Drew laughs. “Sounds about right. Come on, let’s go home. If I remember correctly, Ada said she’s making fajitas.”

  My stomach grumbles in response. “Oh, I could destroy some fajitas.”

  Grinning, Drew offers me his hand, and I don’t hesitate to take it. Friends can hold hands, I tell myself. But the way Drew holds mine, brushing his thumb back and forth across my skin as we walk toward home, I know it means something more.

  And that terrifies me.

  Chapter Six

  I wake in a terrible mood.

  Rain lashes against the window, and it speaks to me in hisses and whispers. Son of a bitch. I’m hungry again. Not for food, but for a throbbing, bloated vein—doing manual labor has proved terrible for my metabolism. I can’t stop a wistful thought of my life before, when I could just press a button on my wall and summon a feeder. My days at the mansion feels like a bedtime story about someone else.

  As the minutes tick by, I resist the temptation to tug the blanket over my head. Though I’ve been living in the boardinghouse for a while now, I’m still not used to waking at the crack of dusk. But the sounds of breakfast are starting below, and the smell of frying bacon lures me from bed at last. Today is my morning to help Ada in the kitchen—she’ll already be irritated by my tardiness.

  As I pull on the clothes I bought with Nina, I make a mental note to stop by the feeding facility on the way home from work. Okay. Time to go. Stay in control, Charlotte. Breathe through your mouth. Feeling hot, I put my hand on the cool window, stretching my fingers over the misted glass. Something about the simple gesture soothes me. After a moment, I move to the door, and as I close it behind me, I catch sight of the window, where my handprint remains. Almost as though it’s waving goodbye.