Three more minutes and she would have been.

The tone in the restaurant went from high piano notes and polite laughter to throaty “did you see those two go at it?” whispers and averted eyes.

Pike handed me a glass of soda water and a thick cloth napkin. I dabbed at my dress delicately, each wine-soaked dab stabbing at my patience a little more. I cut my eyes out toward the patio where someone was trying to engage Emerson in conversation, but she looked up, locked my gaze, and offered a slick, ugly smile.

“Game on, bitch,” I muttered under my breath.

“What was that?” Pike asked.

“Nothing.”

“So, why did you think Emerson was my girlfriend?”

I tossed down my now wine-soaked napkin, something like ruined-man resignation floating over me. “Because that’s what she told me.”

Pike kind of grinned and crossed his arms in front of his chest, the motion pushing aside the collar of his shirt just enough for me to see a smooth, tanned length of neck and collarbone. I could see the beginnings of a thick black tattoo and I had to clench my jaws—and my knees—to keep from examining it closer. “And did that make you mad?”

His eyes sparkled with the kind of mischief that shot adrenaline and hormones throughout my body—dead or not. I licked my lips and tossed a length of slick black hair over my shoulder. “Do you want it to make me mad?”

Pike shrugged, took a long pull on the beer I didn’t know he was holding. “Nah, I just didn’t want you to feel bad.”

I blinked my confusion. Was he just a terrible flirt . . . or really that dense?

His eyes dropped to my dress. “You should probably get out of that dress.”

Another zing pinballed throughout my body. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad flirt after all.

“There’s a dry cleaner about a block down. Ask for Mrs. Cho; she can get out anything.” Pike turned on his heel and left me standing, wet, confused, and annoyed in the center of the party.

I left shortly after, grumbling the whole cab ride home and doing that odd, legs apart, my-dress-is-soaked-and-chafing kind of walk. All I wanted was to pull on my cozy cashmere sweat suit (terry cloth is so passé) and sink my teeth into a still-warm blood bag. And that’s what I would have done, if that stupid blackbird—he was taunting me, I was sure of it—hadn’t been pacing on the front stoop.

I paused and glared down at the thing, waving my hands but keeping my distance. “Shooo! Shooo! You shouldn’t be walking anyway. Fly you little bastard!”

The thing paused, cocked its disease-infested head and spread its wings wide as if it understood me.

Nina LaShay: bird whisperer.

Then it snapped those wings against its little bird body and glared.

I chanced a swift kick and a sprint when a damp bugle bead started to dig into my flesh. I felt the flap of the blackbird’s wings and snapped the door shut on its protesting scowl.

“I warned you!” I screamed, pressing my face up against the glass in the door. The bird fluttered down to the stoop again, unharmed but, I thought, with a murderous look in its eye.

I was going to have to hire an exterminator.

The following morning I was hell-bent on restoring my reputation or, failing that, blowing everyone on the judging panel away with my incredible designs. Which was why I was at the Fashion Institute when most breathers were pulling their pillows over their heads or indulging in their last half hour of REM sleep. Though New York was truly a city that never slept, it did seem to take the occasional doze—apparently between four-thirty and five A.M.—because it was decidedly, delectably calm right up until I keyed the passcode at the Institute. I was halfway through the four-digit super-secret code when the front door slammed open and I went chest to chest—then butt to cement with—

“Pike?”

He was still dressed in his cocktail-hour deconstructed tuxedo but this morning’s look was for more deconstructed than it was tuxedo. His carefully disheveled hair was actually disheveled and he sported a spray of dark stubble over his upper lip and chin. He brushed a hand over the would-be beard when he glanced down at me, his eyes wild and disturbingly alive.

“Oh, Nina, my God, I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.” It came out as one long string and I avoided the hand he offered, suddenly strangely suspicious. He may have once (yesterday) been my gorgeous future soul mate, but he was tainted by fashion thief Emerson, and was now running out of a building where my designs were supposed to be safe.

I pushed myself to standing, feeling my eyes narrow as I scrutinized him, and saw the barely imperceptible way his head reared back from my examination. There were no telltale bulges where he might have hidden my patterns or design notes—and I looked carefully, examining every bulge.

We vampires like to be incredibly thorough. I like to be incredibly thorough.

I smelled beer on Pike’s morning-after breath and his whole countenance was agitated, guarded.

“Are you high?” I asked, my arms crossing in front of my chest.

Pike actually stopped and seemed to settle, his pale lips quirking upward. “High? May have had a few beers to wash down my Wheaties but nothing more. What are you doing here?”

“I have a show to prepare for. And a passcode. How did you get in here? Why did you get in here?”

Pike’s sudden coolness ticked all the way through him and he patted the black camera bag that crossed his chest. “Working. I was here working.”

My eyes raked over his attire and I cocked out a hip. “You were up all night shooting designs for designers who were fast asleep in their own homes? Or, you know,” I said and licked my lips, trying to conjure up the best word. “Dead?”

Pike was unfazed. He actually looked cooler than before as he eyed me. “And I’m supposed to believe you were one of those fast asleep at home?”

Truth was, I’d spent my evening starring as Roxie Hart in an off-Broadway production of Chicago. Well, not so much an off-Broadway production as a karaoke bar with beer-stained carpet, but this grungy photog didn’t need to know that.

I just raised my eyebrows until Pike rolled his eyes. “I don’t only work for the Institute, you know.”

He brushed past me as though that were all the explanation I needed and even though his pain-in-the-ass quotient went up to about a thousand, I couldn’t help but sneak a peek and notice that his regular ass quotient still hovered somewhere between perfection and breathtaking. I watched him hail a cab with lightning speed, the yellow thing disappearing down the street.

I rode the crotchety old elevator (what is it with breathers and their need for all things retro?) up to the design studio and felt little butterfly flaps of anxiety in my belly. I have dreamed of having my own little studio since the early 1900s—you should have seen Coco’s little place in Paris!—and now, because of this design opportunity, I had it.

Well, almost.

One of the enormous benefits of this competition was that both Emerson and I were awarded top-notch design studios— outfitted with the latest and greatest of everything—in which to baste, steam, slice, and create the designs for each of our competing lines.

The enormous matching drawback was that each of these incredible studios shared floor space with each other. I had a bank of floor-to-ceiling cabinets and hanging closets at the front end of the room; Emerson had an identical setup on her side. We each had huge drafting and cutting tables, dual sewing machines, maiden forms, and steamers. As designers, all we needed to bring were our designs, our fabric bolts, and our personal tools. Where I traveled with a lucky pair of scissors, a seam ripper called Marie Antoinette, and a pincushion in the shape of a mushroom, I was fairly sure that Emerson only packed a tape recorder and a notebook titled “Designs I Stole.”

But it was nice this morning as the sun started to break through the heavy gray fog and the entire studio was peaceful, quiet, and Emerson-free.

I went to work outlining a new design and when the spark of inspiration slipped from the page and pointed at my rack of newly designed dresses, I couldn’t help but snatch one from the rack and grab my lucky scissors.

Only, they weren’t there.

I tore apart my pink-rhinestoned tool kit and then went to work opening every drawer and yanking open every closet. Finally, I dropped to my knees in a desperate hope that my lucky pair had slipped from their holster. I patted and searched until my knees felt knobby and raw—and I was facing Emerson’s side of the room.

I felt my hackles go up, a hot stripe of rage going from the base of my head to the end of my spine.

She did it.

Emerson Hawk stole my lucky shears.

I heard the electric lock tumbling downstairs, the ping! and rush of elevators coming to life as the people started to make their way into the building.

There wasn’t much time.

I sprinted the fifty feet across the room and grabbed at Emerson’s drawers, tearing through them like a burglar with a serious mission. In the back of my head I heard the footsteps and early-morning chatter as students and designers closed in on our room and when I grabbed the handle of Emerson’s closet door—the one marked “personal”—I was in such a fury that I didn’t care as the voices closed in.