Page 3

I shrug, flashing a cold little smile. “Girl’s gotta eat.”

“You like this city?” He nods toward the windows where Midnight City’s panorama glows.

I follow his gaze. “You can say so. It grows on you.”

I catch the tender look on his face as he looks out the window.

“It needs more balance,” he says, voice dropping. “Everyone’s at each other’s throats. It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“I don’t get into the city’s politics. I buy. I sell. I go where I’m supposed to be.”

His eyes pin me down. “ Maybe the day will come when you’ll have to choose a different path.”

“I hope I’m dead by then,” I laugh. I’ve seen more deaths than he has. I know how dark this city can get and how vicious its power games can become. Now I’m just trying to survive. And I don’t need a sermon from a pretty baby vampire who’s been undead for five minutes.

“It’s time for me.” I stand and straighten my dress. “You have my number. I’ll be around.”

He rises and crosses the room to see me out. “As I said. I hope we’ll see each other again.” That warm smile again. Like he means it.

He is a dreamer. I can see it in his eyes. I knew people like that. He is too naive to be a new vampire prince. This city will eat him alive.

I step out of the hotel and slide back into the BMW already waiting at the curb. Sava pulls away from the Crown without a word. I still have a few deliveries left tonight and one final stop outside the city. I turn the invitation over in my fingers. Silver card, heavy and embossed. Witches throwing a party for the heads of their covens. A masquerade in a villa past the city limits.

Very on brand. I am not a fan of these kinds of events. Too theatrical for my taste, but the money here is good, and I can never say no to that. All those unpaid bank notifications burning through my phone keep on reminding me of that.

The trip takes over an hour. As we drive, the image of the red-haired girl on the floor comes back to me. Death is something you get used to in Midnight City. But something there was off. Julian’s warm smile didn’t fit any of it. I know killers, both the deliberate kind and the ones who do it by accident. He didn’t look like either.

We finally arrive at a mansion that rises out of the dark woods like a mausoleum. Red light spills through tall windows. Lined up on the drive are a row of black limousines and SUVs filled with armed security. The kind of people best left unprovoked.

I glance at Sava. He says nothing. I get out.

My name is on the list, but I am not wearing a costume, so one of the staff presses a black mask into my hands, simple and elegant. I slip it on.

Witches and their love of drama.

Inside, it’s Eyes Wide Shut with better taste and even worse intentions. Room after room of masked figures moving through amber light and haze. Velvet curtains hang from ceilings, and gold mirrors reflect bodies moving in sexual acts. Everywhere I look, masked people are kissing, touching, fucking. Animals, angels, demons, all sorts of things. Some even wear crowns made from bones and branches.

The music builds as I go deeper, a low pulse that gets into my chest and stays there. I can feel magic in the air, like too much perfume in an enclosed space, sweet and overwhelming.

I pass through more rooms. Here, the masks stay on but the clothes come off. Velvet couches and wide beds host pairs, threesomes, whole arrangements of bodies. Witches are tactile creatures. Erotic by nature. All that raw energy and nowhere to put it but into each other, into ritual, into the charged space between their bodies. Every coven gathering starts with alcohol, drugs and speeches, but they all end exactly the same way.

I’m cutting through a room thick with moans when a slim, dark-haired man in a crow mask steps directly into my path.

“You’re late,” he says.

CHAPTER 2

MASQUERADE

“A dealer is never late. Nor is she early. She arrives precisely when she means to,” I say.

“Very funny, Lara, but my brain is about to explode, and everyone is running out of dust.”

“Don’t panic. I got you.” I glance sideways as a cat girl gets fucked by two men in cheetah masks against a velvet chaise lounge. “Can we talk somewhere less crowded?”

“Come.”

Ezra. He’s a young witch, from Glass Coven, one of the few people I’d call a friend.