TWENTY
Letter from Mr. Frederick J. Fitzwilliam to Cassie Greenberg, dated November 18, confiscated and unsent
My dearest Cassie,
It has been more than twenty-four hours since my capture, but I believe I have made progress towards securing my release.
I have spoken with Miss Jameson. While I am as convinced as ever that a union between us would be disastrous, I am gratified for confirmation that she is not as stuck in the old ways as her parents. While my rejection has stung and offended her, she has enough self-possession and self-worth to not want any man who does not want her. I believe she will eventually become an unlikely ally in my attempts to earn back my freedom.
I hope you are faring well—and that you do not interpret my silence as anything other than what it is. Specifically: me, trapped in a terrifying dungeon in the suburbs with no way to escape.
All my love,
Frederick
From: Nanmo Merriweather [[email protected]]
To: Cassie Greenberg [[email protected]]
Subject: Your terms
Dear Miss Greenberg,
I, Mrs. Edwina D. Fitzwilliam’s assistant, write you on her behalf to inform you that you have left her with no choice but to agree to your demands.
Please come to the castle located at 2314 S. Hedgeworth Way in Naperville, Illinois, at eight o’clock tomorrow evening. She will release her son to your custody if, and only if, you destroy all existing copies of your vampire exposé in her presence. The motion picture you have created has the power to destroy everything we have worked so hard to establish since leaving England—and while choosing her son’s betrothed is important to my mistress, nothing is more important to our kind than to live in secret.
We will see you tomorrow evening. (Also, please do not reply to this email. Mrs. Fitzwilliam does not know how to check her email. All of her emails therefore bounce directly to me and, frankly, I have enough work to do already without also keeping up with her pettier correspondence.)
With kind regards,
N. Merriweather
“I can’t believe she’s still got Nanmo doing her bidding like this,” Reginald tsked, shaking his head. “The man is four hundred and seventy-five years old, for crying out loud. It’s embarrassing.”
“Yeah,” I said, not knowing how else to respond to that. I was so far out of my element I couldn’t even see my element anymore.
“Well, I guess the important thing is they bought it,” Reginald said. “I’m at once surprised, because this really is silly, and not at all surprised. I’ll fly you there tomorrow at eight.”
“No,” I said very quickly, holding up my hands. “I’ll just take an Uber.”
Reginald stared at me from his vantage point on Frederick’s black leather sofa. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not safe for you to go to this by yourself.”
I paled at the thought of showing up to this rendezvous without vampire backup. “Oh, I know that. It would be suicide to show up at that house alone.”
“It would,” Reginald agreed.
“I just meant if I fly there with you, I’ll be too distracted by my first-ever flight without an airplane to be able to keep my head on straight for what I might have to do once we get there.”
Reginald leaned against the sofa cushions as he considered that. “Fine,” he said. “It’s true that flying for the first time can be a lot. So sure. Take an Uber. But don’t get out of the car until you see me hovering in the sky just on the other side of the basketball hoop.”
I frowned at him. “Basketball hoop?”
“You’ll know it when you see it,” he said, before muttering something about suburban hellscape under his breath that I didn’t quite catch. He stood up and made his way to the front door.
“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” I said, trying to convey a confidence I absolutely did not feel.
Reginald paused, then turned to face me, his expression unreadable.
“Please be careful,” he said, his voice softer than I’d ever heard it.
My eyes felt suddenly damp. “I will.”
“Good,” he said. And then, in the mocking tone I was much more used to hearing from him, he added, “Because if something happens to you tomorrow night Frederick will kill me a second time.”
2314 S. Hedgeworth Way was located at the end of a small cul-de-sac, a beige-and-white two-story house that was nearly identical to all the other beige-and-white two-story houses on the street. It had an American flag flying from a flagpole and—yes, there it was—a basketball hoop mounted on a slightly darker beige-and-white shed off to the side.
Only the two-foot-tall stone gargoyles mounted on either side of the garage—and the six-foot-tall vampire suspended in midair about ten feet above the basketball hoop—distinguished this house in any way from its neighbors.
My eyes flicked to the airborne vampire.
Reginald had arrived before me.
That was good.
It was also my cue to get out of the car and approach the house.
“Thanks,” I said to my Uber driver. My hands shook so badly I struggled to get the car door open. The night had gotten colder in the forty-five minutes since I’d left Frederick’s apartment. Or perhaps it was always a few degrees colder this far west of the lake. I pulled my winter coat around myself a little more tightly as I approached the house to warm myself—and to try and settle my roiling nerves.
Reginald and I had agreed I would handle the talking at first. The video we made plainly showed that one of their own had been a part of this plot. If the vampires inside this house knew that said vampire had come with me tonight, it could complicate things in a way that could jeopardize both Frederick’s safety as well as Reginald’s. The idea was that he would stay safely out of sight and up in the air unless and until things went sideways—and I needed vampiric intervention.
I glanced up at him again as I approached the house. He nodded reassuringly. My stomach was in knots. A voice in the back of my head yelled at me to run, run, get away from here more loudly with every step I took.
But Frederick needed me.
So I kept moving forward, putting one foot in front of the other until, at last, I was at the front door.
Just as I was about to knock, my heart thundering in my chest, I heard someone clear their throat very deliberately, and very loudly, from about five feet away.
“Excuse me,” the throat clearer said. “But do you know these people?” The speaker looked about fifty years old, his mouth turned down at the corners in a disapproving frown. He wore a winter coat and dark fleece pajama pants, and a red wool hat with mittens that matched.
Of all the scenarios Reginald and I had run through over the past twenty-four hours, none had included what to do in case of nosy neighbor interference. But it looked like we’d run through one scenario too few.
“I . . . I don’t know them,” I stammered. “Or, rather—I know who they are. But I don’t know them know them, if you know what I mean.”
“Hm.” The man’s disapproving frown turned into an outright scowl. “You’re here to buy drugs, I assume.”
My eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”
The man pointed to the windows on the front of the house. For the first time I realized they were all covered up with dark sheets of plastic. “They’ve blacked out all the windows, they never come out during the day, and all manner of weirdos go in and out of this house all night long.” He counted out each of his neighbors’ perceived crimes against society on long, outstretched fingers. “I don’t know where you come from, but around here that points to just one thing.”
I paused, waiting for him to tell me what that one thing was. When all he did was look at me with a self-satisfied smirk, I guessed, “Does it mean . . . drugs?”
“It means drugs,” he confirmed.
“I don’t know anything about that,” I said very quickly, grappling for a plausible reason for my being there that would make this guy go away. “I just . . . I’m just here because . . .” I licked my lips—and said the first thing that popped into my head. “Because of their internet bill.”
I didn’t have to look up to know that Reginald was rolling his eyes at me so hard they were in danger of falling out of his head.
Incredibly, the man seemed to accept my explanation. “It doesn’t surprise me that people like these would fall behind on their bills,” he muttered.
“Exactly,” I said, trying hard to muster a laugh. It came out as more of a laugh-sob.
He clapped me on the shoulder, winked at me in a way that would in any other circumstances be the creepiest thing to have happened to me that day, and said, “Keep up the good work, hon.”
As he wandered off back to his own beige-and-white two-story house, I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths. I had to calm down. I hadn’t even done anything yet and I felt seconds away from bursting out of my own skin.
I chanced one more glance up at Reginald. He nodded and flashed me a double thumbs-up.
It was time.
“Here goes nothing,” I murmured under my breath, and knocked on the door.
Part of me had hoped Frederick would be the one to answer my knock. But when the door opened, I wasn’t surprised to see Mrs. Fitzwilliam—pale-faced, with no garish makeup this time—standing on the other side.
She didn’t invite me in. She also didn’t mince words.
“Did you bring it with you?” She glared at me, one hand on her hip, the other fanning her face as if the cold night air that was cutting right through my winter coat was too warm for her.
Now that I was there, I couldn’t help but wonder whether Edwina Fitzwilliam might have been a different kind of person before she’d turned. Had she been a good, kind parent to Frederick when he was small? I hoped so. I hated the idea of little Frederick growing up in a home with someone like this as his mother.
I patted the front pocket of my jeans, where I’d stashed my cell phone before getting in the Uber. “Yes.”
“Let’s see it.”
I fished out my phone and pulled up the photos app. “It’s right here,” I said, before hitting the play button.
My voice rose tinnily from my phone, and it took everything I had not to cringe right out of my skeleton at the sight of me gesticulating wildly in Frederick’s living room with a bag of donated blood in each hand. Somehow the clip looked even more ridiculous here, on my phone, in front of the very person I’d hoped to threaten with it.
But it seemed to have a profound effect on Frederick’s mother all the same. She recoiled, horror-struck. Her shaking palms went to her cheeks as she watched the video of me warning everyone of the looming North American vampire threat.
I pocketed my phone when the short clip ended. Frederick’s mother shrank away from me, inching her way back inside the house.
“If we agree to break the engagement and let him go,” she began in a whispery voice, her hand fluttering at her throat, “will you destroy that?”
She looked terrified. Fortunately for me, though, this was the easiest bargain I’d ever made. “Yes.”
“Tonight?”
“Right here,” I offered. “Right in front of your eyes.”
She nodded, but only appeared partly mollified. “Nanmo tells me it is possible to make copies of things like this. Do you promise to destroy all other copies if we release my son? And to not put it on the TikToks?”
“This is the only copy,” I assured her. “When I delete it from my phone no one else will ever be able to see it.” I paused and tried to keep a straight face when I added, “I promise you I will never put it on the TikToks.”
She hesitated, as if unsure whether to believe me. And then, after what felt like entire minutes, she drew a deep breath.
“If you are lying to me,” she began, “we will hunt you down like the dog you are.”
The door slammed in my face.
I looked up at Reginald, who wore a wary expression.
“I’m coming down,” he said, floating to the ground as though being lowered by an invisible rope. “I think she bought it, but—”
Before he could finish his thought, the door opened again.
There was Frederick, dressed in the same clothes he’d left the apartment in a few nights ago when he went to the rendezvous at the Ritz-Carlton. My eyes roved over him, taking in every inch of him—from the disheveled way his hair fell across his forehead, to the white long-sleeved T-shirt that clung to his broad shoulders like he was born to wear nothing else.
His gaze bored into mine, as though he were as unable to stop looking at me as I was to stop looking at him. He looked even paler than usual, with dark circles ringing his eyes I’d never seen there before. But he was here, and he was whole, and he was beaming at me with a look of such tenderness and wonder I felt foolish for ever having doubted his feelings.
“You came,” he said, hoarsely. His eyes were wide, incredulous. “You brilliant woman.”
Relief flooded me at the sound of his voice. I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“Aren’t you gonna call me brilliant?” Reginald pouted from somewhere behind me. “I helped too.”
“And you even had to put up with Reginald while you did it,” Frederick said, ignoring him. He moved towards me from where he stood in the entryway, reaching for me. After going days without his touch, Frederick’s embrace was like coming home. I felt both rooted to the spot and seconds away from falling to the ground as he held me, his broad chest steady beneath my cheek, his hands a chilly counterpoint to the warmth of my winter jacket.
His touch warmed me from within all the same.
“We should go,” Reginald cut in, brusquely.
Frederick lifted his cheek from where it had come to rest on top of my head. “You’re right,” he agreed. He pulled back a little more so that he could look into my eyes. “They’ve let me go, Cassie. But it’s not safe for us to stay here a moment longer.”
“I’d offer to fly you back to your apartment, but I can’t carry you both,” Reginald said. He added, smirking, “I’d also rather not be around the two of you lovebirds right now anyway.”
Frederick glared at him and was about to say something in response when I put a hand on his arm.
“It’s fine,” I said, very quickly. “I’ll call us an Uber. It shouldn’t take long for one to get here at this hour.”
I programmed the pickup spot for a few blocks away from the vampire house, just in case. No need to tempt fate so soon after getting him back.
“Thank you for saving me, Cassie,” Frederick murmured, his voice low and awed. “How did I ever get so lucky?”
I kissed him, unable to help myself.
“We can talk about that later,” I whispered against his lips. “For now, let’s get you home.”
We mostly kept our hands to ourselves during the forty-five-minute Uber ride back to the apartment. Frederick’s eyes kept closing, and the fact that I could easily see his fangs whenever he was fully awake told me he was too exhausted to glamour us invisible to the driver. I brushed his hair back and away from his forehead as he dozed, trying hard not to imagine what he must have gone through over the past few days to make him this tired after sundown.
By the time we made it back inside the apartment, though, he seemed to have mostly come back to himself. He maneuvered me through the open doorway and into the living room, as though now that we were here he didn’t want to waste any more time.
“Wait,” I said, when he moved to enfold me in his arms. I wanted to move closer to him, to let him kiss and touch me. To kiss and touch him back. But I had questions first. “You’ve just been held somewhere against your will for three days, and before we do . . . anything else, I have to know. Are you truly all right?”
He nodded and closed the distance between us again. “I am now.” His voice was full of so much heat and promise my knees nearly buckled. When his arms came around me and pulled me to him again, it was easy enough to tell myself this conversation could still happen while we were touching.
I rested my head against his chest again, in an approximation of how we stood when we reunited in front of the Naperville house. He started rocking me gently, back and forth. I had never been full of such utter relief, and such thorough contentment.
“Reginald filled me in on parts of what happened,” I murmured, my voice muffled by the fabric of his shirt. “But I need to hear it from you. It’s the only way I’ll believe you’re actually okay.”
Frederick’s arms tightened around me. He sighed, letting his head droop forward until it rested on my shoulder.
“It’s just as Reggie said,” he murmured. “Esmeralda’s family didn’t take my ending the engagement well.” He stepped back and held up his wrists, which bore angry red marks I hadn’t noticed earlier. “In my absence I became very well acquainted with their dungeon.”
My breath caught. “They hurt you.”
“A little,” he admitted. “Not much. We’re immortal, but because our hearts don’t beat, our blood doesn’t flow the way yours does. Which, in turn, means it takes an irritatingly long time for wounds to heal.” He gifted me with a wry half smile. God, how I missed his smiles. “My wrists were only tightly bound for part of one day. I promise this injury looks a lot worse than it is.”
He moved forward and wrapped me in his arms again. I closed my eyes, burying my face in his shoulder, breathing him in.
Somehow, I found the courage to ask the question I most badly needed answered. “So the engagement is definitely over now?”
“Yes.” His deep voice was as forceful as I’d ever heard it. “I ended the engagement definitively. Ironically enough, Esmeralda helped with that. She wasn’t very keen on marrying someone who would rather rot in a suburban dungeon than be her husband. She intervened on my behalf with her parents at the same time you concocted your brilliant TikTok strategy.” He drew back and tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “She’s a reasonable woman, at least insofar as any of the Jamesons are reasonable people. She’s just not the right woman for me.”
The heat in his gaze was unmistakable. I blushed at the obvious implication of what he was saying and looked at the floor.
“I missed you,” I admitted. It felt foolish to miss someone I’d only known for a few weeks as much as this. But it was the truth.
“I missed you, too.” He paused, then added, “I wrote you.” His words were a deep rumble beneath my ear. He actually wrote me while he was kept prisoner? I burrowed more closely into him, my heart so full it felt fit to burst. “I gave the letters to my guards and asked them to send them to you. Who knows what the Jamesons did with them, though. Did you receive any of my letters?”
My chest went tight at the hopefulness I heard in his voice.
“No,” I admitted. “I didn’t get anything from you.” I briefly considered letting him know how I’d interpreted his radio silence at first—the irrational worries I’d harbored. But then he sighed, resting his chin on top of my head, and my concerns felt too silly and faraway to justify with words.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
“What did the letters say?”
He pulled away slightly, his eyes dark and inviting, his lashes wet with something that, if I hadn’t known better, I would have assumed were the beginnings of tears. He gazed into my own eyes like he was as transfixed by what he saw in mine as I was by what I saw in his.
Then he nodded, as if coming to a decision.
“They said this,” he murmured, a moment before pressing a gentle kiss to my lips.
The rational part of my mind was telling me that we shouldn’t do this now. The circles he still had under his eyes belied his claim that he was fine, and I wasn’t certain he was telling me the truth about those angry red marks on his wrists.
We also needed to talk about what we would be to each other now that there was no fiancée anymore, and nothing standing between us but my own mortality.
But Frederick was kissing me with so much urgency—his hands cradling my face, tangling in my hair; the evidence of how badly he wanted me already pressing hot and urgent against my hip—that I decided these conversations could wait for later.
“I thought about you endlessly while I was away,” he murmured, kissing the words into my cheeks. “Your passion for what you do, your gentle spirit. Your beauty. Your kindness.” His hands were growing restless, roving up and down my back as his lips found the underside of my jaw, when they latched onto the sweet, sensitive spot where neck met shoulder. I threw my own arms around him, pulling him closer, not even realizing he was backing me up against the wall until I felt it, firm and solid, behind me.
“I thought about you, too,” I confessed, relishing in the way he was lavishing my body with attention. We were still fully clothed, but the touch of his hands at either side of my waist seared through my shirt as though I were wearing nothing at all. “I thought about you the whole time.”
“Please tell me that you will stay with me.” His words were barely above a whisper, breathed into my shoulder as he kissed me there. “With your convictions and your talents, it is only a matter of time before your financial situation improves and you no longer need to partake of our original arrangement. But—”
His mentioning what led me to move in with him in the first place broke me out of the moment, reminding me I hadn’t told him about my interview with Harmony yet. Suddenly, it was important to me that he know.
“You may be right about my financial situation improving.”
Frederick paused, right in the middle of doing something absolutely delicious with my earlobe.
“Hm?”
“While you were gone, I interviewed with that school.” I couldn’t keep the smile out of my voice. “I think it went well. Nothing’s settled yet, of course. But I’m hopeful.”
He buried his face in the crook of my neck and pulled me closer. “Of course it went well. Darling Cassie—I never doubted that you would charm them utterly. The way you charm everyone.” He paused. “The way you’ve charmed me.”
I lost track of how long we stood there in the living room, holding each other. My mind spun. Maybe he’d been right about me all this time. Perhaps if I believed in myself even half as much as he believed in me, I wouldn’t need a living situation with strings attached for much longer.
But that wouldn’t change how I felt.
Or the fact that I would want to stay with him even if paychecks eventually became a more regular part of my life.
“I don’t dare hope that someone like you would choose to stay with someone like me,” he eventually continued. “But that doesn’t change how badly I want you to stay with me here, all the same.”
I swallowed. “Are you sure about that? I’m going to get old one day. I won’t look like this forever.”
“I don’t care,” he said, flatly. And then, with a twinkle in his eye, he added, “Besides—I will always be older than you.”
I laughed in spite of myself, then put my fingers beneath his chin so he’d have to look me in the eyes. His expression was full of such painful vulnerability it stole the breath from my lungs.
I nodded. “I want to stay.”
When he kissed me again, I decided that knowing exactly what came next could wait.