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CHAPTER 1

“Look at him,he’s in fuckin’ vampire utopia.”

Victor rode the huge lobby escalator two steps above me and Zee. His black pants and black turtleneck sweater gave him a handsome, young-college-professor appearance. But from his unreadable face, it was hard to tell whether this was the best day out he’d had since he’d corrupted a virginal cult, or his worst nightmare because of that piece of furniture we’d bought that he’d put together for the hotel bar, and that he still couldn’t pass by without whipping out his ruler to make sure its angles hadn’t shifted.

He clutched the tiny wooden pencil now like a warrior clutches a sword, and scribbled on the little slip of paper we’d picked up on the way in.

“He has a list! A fuckin’ list . . . with bullet points and footnotes.” Zee snorted.

“How else will we know what the hotel requires?” Victor said, without looking back. Acute vampire hearing meant he heard everything, even our heartbeats, and Zee’s not-so-quiet whispers.

“You’ve got a photographic memory,” Zee continued, deciding this was the hill he wanted to die on.

The line of Victor’s shoulders tensed. His long dark hair had been braided so tight it swished against his back like Zee’s tail. “I do. However, I enjoy the physicality of holding a pencil.”

Zee blinked, and it seemed likely that behind those long pretty lashes that framed deep, emotive purple eyes, his thoughts plunged toward the spicier content where he was imagining all the other things Victor liked to hold. A grin curved his lips, and his gaze slid sideways, checking in to see if I was on the same mental journey. Pencil did sound a lot like penis, which happened to be one of Victor’s favorite words. And Zee’s.

“I know what you’re thinking, demon,” Victor said.

“Are we sure he doesn’t read minds?” Zee whispered.

“We’re sure,” both Victor and I answered together.

We stepped off the escalator onto a polished, open-plan landing, with a cute pink and white bedroom display to our right, and a stack of big blue wheelie-baskets to our left. The main exhibit however, was the enormous sparkly Christmas tree. We’d arrived at a blue and yellow cathedral-like wonderland, bejeweled with holiday cheer.

Zee’s dark pupils grew, drinking in the tree’s shiny baubles and twinkling lights. “Fuck, that’s the biggest shiny thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Didn’t you have a holiday tree at Razorsedge?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah.” He shrugged.

“I’m sure it resembled every other normal, decorated tree found in living rooms up and down the country,” Victor said, collecting a basket with an efficient flick of his wrist.

Zee screwed up his nose. “We decorated it with whatever we had laying around . . . condoms, cuffs. Butt plugs make great baubles, but baubles do not make great butt plugs—ask me how I know.”

I winced. “Nope, not asking that.”

“It was a hit with the regulars.”

The bauble butt plugs or the tree? I didn’t dare ask.

“The condoms weren’t used,” Zee added, following along behind Victor. “Demons don’t really do Christmas or holidays. A squishy human was born . . . It’s fuckin’ massacre time if you happen to be a turkey . . . Mariah Carey sings, a lot . . . and I get a whole lot more likes on my socials for wearing a fluffy red hat.”

And I suspected that was all he was wearing. “Jesus,” I said as we ambled forward, following Victor’s marching pace into the temple of green and yellow devoted to all things Scandinavian furniture.

“Alright, Kitten. No need to get spicy about it.”

“No, I mean . . . the squishy human? Jesus was born, right? On Christmas day.” I was very human, so I knew these things.

“Him again.” Zee rolled his eyes. “Such an attention seeker. Also, why’d he change his name to Gareth?”

“Uh . . . He did?”

“Baby Gareth. King of Christmas? That Gareth?”

Were we talking about the same person? “I guess.” Admittedly, I didn’t know much about human religions and rituals. Humans didn’t have a Wilson’s Guide, like the Lost Ones did. If you were human, you were just expected to know human things. I’d read a lot of human books, though. Some books. Mostly those left in the hotel.

“It must have fuckin’ sucked having his birthday on Christmas Day. Imagine only getting presents once a year.” Zee heaved a sigh, then smiled. “Birthdays are the best.”