Poppy Rose Gable. Twenty-eight. Los Angeles. Lifestyle influencer with 847,000 followers.
The photos are all staged. She’s pretty in a modern way—the kind that photographs well and sells skincare items. Blonde hair. Blue eyes that look better in person than on screen, I’d bet. A smile that doesn’t reach those eyes in any of the pictures.
I’ve seen thousands of profiles like this. Curated. Calculated.
Yet, something won’t let me close the file.
Instead, I read her request, and the honesty surprises me. Most requests are coded. Euphemistic. This one reads like a confession.
I smile. Not the fake expression I use in board meetings. An actual one.
Budget: $5,000. I know that’s probably not enough for what I’m asking. I can go up to $7,500 if you’re really good at pretending to be smitten.
She’s offering me seven thousand dollars. I spent more than that on my watch.
I should close the file.
I open her Glowstagram instead.
The feed is what I expected. Aesthetic breakfast shots. Outfit-of-the-day photos. Sponsored posts for skincare, supplements, and sustainable fashion. Each caption is a small essay about wellness and self-love, while living your best life.
The comments are effusive. Adoring. Thousands of people who think they know her.
I scroll back six months. The posts look identical. Same lighting. Same smile. Same captions about gratitude and growth.
But something shifted eight months ago. The smile gets tighter. The captions get longer, more defensive. There’s a three-week gap where she doesn’t post at all—unusual for someone whose income depends on consistent content.
When she returns, she’s different. Still curated, still careful, but brittle underneath. Holding herself together with aesthetics and affirmations.
I found a post from nine months ago. An image of her hand wearing an engagement ring. The caption is simple: “He asked. I said yes. Sometimes the best things happen when you stop looking for them.”
The next post is three weeks later. No explanation. Just a quote about new beginnings and a photo of her apartment with new furniture.
Preston Whitmore. I found him in her tagged photos. Tall. Handsome in that generic way. The kind of face that belongs in advertisements for luxury cars. He’s tagged in forty-seven posts spanning two years, then nothing.
His current girlfriend is Serenity Moon. She teaches yoga and posts about crystal healing. She has half the number of followers as Poppy, but twice the engagement. Her feed is all sunset meditations and green smoothies, and photos of her and Preston looking content.
I close Glowstagram and return to Poppy’s request.
She’s desperate. Desperate enough to hire a stranger. Desperate enough to be honest about it. Desperate enough to offer money she can’t afford to lose.
I should decline. I have rules about this. About staying distant. About not letting humans get close enough to see what I am.
The Prague Rule. No attachments.
I made that rule fifty years ago, in a hotel room in Prague, staring at what Damien had left of Anya. Brilliant, fierce, human Anya—who’d made the mistake of loving me. Damien left her body arranged on the bed like a gift. A note pinned to her dress:Attachment is a liability. I’m helping you remember.
His revenge for what happened in 1878. For Katya.
I can still hear the hunters breaking through the door. Still feel the impossible math of that moment—Katya in one direction, Margaret in another, and only enough time to save one. I chose Margaret. And Katya died while Damien was too far away to reach her.
You chose her over Katya, he said afterward, his voice hollow.Over us.
He vanished after that. My progeny, my closest friend for decades—gone. I thought I’d lost him to grief. I didn’t know he was waiting.
But Anya wasn’t my first loss. There was Margaret—committed to an asylum after I told her what I was, burned alive in 1897. I arrived too late to save her. And Corinne, who saw me feeding in Prague and chose the river over living with the knowledge.
Three women. Three deaths. Each one my fault in a different way. I told myself loving me was the danger. That something in me—something broken, something monstrous—poisoned everyone who got close.
