Page 32 of Nocturne

Something about who I am.

Tomorrow, I tell myself. Tomorrow I’ll approach this professionally. Ask the right questions. Maintain appropriate distance.

But even as I form this resolution, I know it’s a lie. There’s nothing professional about what’s happening between us. Nothing appropriate about the raw hunger that rises when I think of her.

And nothing rational about the certainty that she feels it too.

9

LENA

The cold wakes me first.

One moment I’m deep in dreamless sleep, the next my eyes snap open, body tense with the instinctual awareness that something is wrong. The bedroom is pitch dark save for the red glow of the clock on my nightstand. 1:17 a.m.

My apartment is never cold—the ancient radiator beneath the window hisses and clanks through the night, keeping the space almost uncomfortably warm. Yet now my breath fogs in front of my face, visible even in the darkness. Impossible. I don’t feel cold the way humans do.

That’s when I suddenly know.

Someone is in my apartment.

I lie perfectly still, extending my senses beyond the bedroom door. The familiar creaks and settling sounds of the building continue their nighttime chorus, but beneath them is a different quality of silence.

The careful quiet of someone trying not to be heard.

A shadow passes beneath my bedroom door—a momentary darkening of the thin strip of space between door and floor.

Then gone.

Fuck me.

I slide silently from the bed, bare feet meeting the icy wooden floor. The temperature has dropped unnaturally, far beyond what the January night should cause in a heated apartment. This isn’t just an intruder. This is something else.

Listening intently, I move toward the door. Nothing. Not even the sound of breathing from the hallway beyond. I press my ear against the wood, straining my vampire hearing.

Silence.

Then I sniff quietly, smelling nothing out of the ordinary.

I ease the door open, peering into the darkened hallway. Empty. But the bathroom door at the end of the short corridor is closed, a thin line of shadow beneath it. I never close that door when I’m alone in the apartment.

Every instinct screams at me to flee, to use my speed and strength to escape whatever waits on the other side of that bathroom door.

And yet curiosity killed the cat.

I creep down the hallway, the floorboards mercifully silent beneath my careful steps. Outside the bathroom door, I pause, listening again. Nothing.

My hand closes around the doorknob. I turn it slowly.

Locked.

It’slocked.

How can that be? It has to be locked from the inside…

Oh, god, oh god.

I’m about to try the knob again when I glance down and gasp—a dark liquid is seeping beneath the door, spreading across the hallway floor in a widening pool. The metallic scent hits me immediately.

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