“Oh, I—I’m certain one of the inns might have space—though they normally don’t. With the Harvest Moon approaching, the wolves have probably booked it all—but?—”
“Claude.”
He stopped mid-ramble.
I smiled again. “Sleeping on the sidewalk in front of my newly purchased, questionably haunted property is not an option. So, I’m going inside. However, if you wish to flee in terror, please just do so with dignity.”
His shoulders sagged. “Very good, Miss Laurent. Enjoy your new home.”
With that, he delivered a polite but jerky bow, then turned on his heel and fled. So fast, in fact, the poor dear nearly tripped over the cracked cobblestone.
“Men,” I muttered, before pushing open the bar door and revealing my new domain.
And oh. The inside was a damn catastrophe. I supposed I deserved it. I had bought the place sight-unseen, after all. Some spontaneity was nice after two hundred years of life. But perhaps I’d gone a little overboard this time.
The smell was the first thing I noticed. The entire place reeked of musty wood, expired alcohol, and was that…? Yup, the distinct tang of something long-dead. A lovely aroma. Truly.
I drew a deep breath of clean air before stepping inside, grateful vampires didn’t have to breathe. We could go hours without, if the need presented itself. Which it just had. Extensively.
Braving a few steps, I slowly took stock. Across from me, running the back length of the wall, was a battered bar, likely from many years of pouring drinks. Behind that was a series of shelves, each lined with cracked bottles and broken glasses. Booths lined the other three walls, their cushions looking like something with claws had eviscerated them. Overturned tables, scattered seating, broken flooring, cracked walls… And on top of all that lay a blanket of dust that had my nose twitching.
I ventured behind the bar and started rifling through the drawers. One creaked ominously, another resisted my efforts entirely, and a third contained a mouse skeleton.
“Oh, lovely,” I muttered to myself.
I quickly closed the drawers and deemed that a problem for another day. I pressed onward. The ad had listed an upstairs loft, which was where I planned to live. But if it was anything like the downstairs, perhaps I would find a park bench to sleep on. Surely, that would be better than sleeping next to skeletons.
I guess there was only one way to find out.
I climbed the creaky stairs and was dismayed to find the loft was, in fact, worse than downstairs. The whole place was smaller than my old suite in the French Quarter. Then there was the ceiling. It slanted downward at the back and forced me to duck to peer out the drab, dingy window.
On the floor, right in front of the window, sat a sunken, narrow mattress—sans bedframe. I’d never personally slept on anything twin-sized before, but it looked like that was about to change.
Next to all that sat an old vanity with a mirror so thickly covered in grease and grime, it couldn’t reflect an image. Thankfully, that didn’t matter since I was a vampire and had no reflection to speak of.
All in all, the room had potential. Maybe. Hopefully. If you squinted. Or had a head injury.
At the end of the day, all that really mattered was this place was mine, and no one could ever take it away from me.
First thing tomorrow, I’d replace the mattress?—
I stopped, then sighed. I couldn’t replace the mattress. Because I had no money. I’d sunk every last cent I had into this purchase. Because while I was technically a vampire heiress, I now had to add the word former onto that title.
Hell, I didn’t even have enough funds to replace the wardrobe I’d lost or buy myself blood. Things were looking…bleak. I’d used the last of my credit to secure this building—through a disreputable bank with chokingly high interest rates, no less. The indignity. I hadn’t so much as glanced at an interest rate in my entire life until this month, and now I’d shackled myself to one like a debtor in a cautionary tale.
Thanks to Trystan.
The vampire I’d trusted with my heart, my future, and, apparently, the key to my family’s financial ruin.
He wasn’t just unfaithful. He was a liar with a gift for numbers and an appetite for fraud.
He’d used my family’s name—our legacy—to court high-profile investors and pad his books. Opened half a dozen shell companies, rerouted funds through shady holding accounts, and spun it all into a gleaming blood-distribution empire that never actually existed beyond the glossy pitch deck.
My parents hadn’t invested everything, but they’d put in enough—along with public endorsements, connections, and reputational capital—to go down with the ship when the truth came out.
Then, to make matters worse, Trystan vanished two days after the investigation began.
The rest was a blur of lawsuits, frozen assets, auctioned estates, and social invitations that stopped arriving overnight.
