“You didn’t really wanna play with Matilda did you?” I asked, looking up at Jack.

“What do you mean?” Jack tried to pretend like he didn’t understand what I was getting at.

“You just wanted to come out here and take Matilda away from Leif. You’re always marking your territory around him.” I raised an eyebrow at him. “I should probably be happy that you don’t pee on me.” Jack laughed, and it sent warm shivers through me. He had the greatest laugh of all time, and it still got to me.

“Maybe.” Jack’s smile faded a bit, remembering that I was sad. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have worried about that as soon as we got back. I’m kind of a jackass.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m fine, mostly.” I forced a smile to prove it. “Will you spend the day with me anyway?”

“I wanna spend every day with you.” He looked down at me, his blues eyes soft and adoring, and kissed me gently. His lips were cold from the snow, but I loved the way they felt on mine.

When he stopped kissing me, I rested my head against his chest, and he wrapped his arms around me. If anything could make me feel better again, this was it.

5

The icy wind whipped through my hair, and at this altitude, it was much colder than it was on the ground. The windowed walls of the nearby buildings were like mirrors, reflecting the city lights around us. The skyscraper jutted over fifty stories in the air, and we towered over most of the other ones in Minneapolis.

The iron bar running around the edge felt like ice in my hands, and I gripped it tighter and leaned over the edge of the building. Olivia hated it when I did this, because if I landed wrong, I might not survive a fall of this magnitude.

For me, this was just an extension of my training. I wasn’t afraid of heights exactly, but I had to overcome something. My stomach twisted, and I hated how disoriented they made me feel. Headlights dazzled the roads, and people looked like tiny dots walking below us.

“Alice, will you stop that?” Olivia said tiredly.

“In a minute!”

Olivia was a stunningly attractive vampire aged well over six-hundred years, but she didn’t look a day over forty, and a very beautiful forty at that. She owned the vampire club V located below the building we were in, and she lived in the penthouse suite on the top floor.

Before she retired and bought the club, Olivia used to be a fantastic vampire hunter. A handful of vampire hunters work to keep rogue vampires in order. Some vampires can be particularly dangerous, both to humans and other vampires, and a hunter is necessary to contain them.

When I’d been attacked by a lycan vampire pack a few months ago, Olivia had come to my aide because she’d taken to me. I couldn’t be sure how deep that liking really ran, but she knew I was with Jack, so I didn’t worry about it.

That attack had left me reeling with how helpless I had been. Even as a vampire, I had nearly been killed and did little to help in the fight. Milo almost died, and I was powerless to save him. Just turning wouldn’t be enough. I had to be strong enough to protect myself and the people I cared about, so Olivia had agreed to start training me.

“Alice, if you don’t get down from there, I won’t work with you anymore,” Olivia warned me, not for the first time. “Although, I don’t suppose that’s as much of a threat as it used to be.”

We had been going over our usual exercises, which weren’t that different from training for karate or kick boxing. It did involve some minor strength training, but most of it was about learning to use the strength I already had and mastering my own grace and stamina.

Tonight I had gotten her pinned with relative ease, and Olivia started complaining about being out of practice. She hadn’t hunted a vampire in over fifty years.

“I was working off some anger tonight. That’s all,” I said. I didn’t look back at her, but I felt her come up to my side. I had just gone to Jane’s funeral yesterday, and this was my first time with Olivia since before my birthday.

“How are you doing with all of that?” Olivia leaned on the rail next to me.

I stood on the ledge with my entire upper body hanging over the edge, but she didn’t say anything more about me getting down. A gust of wind came up, whipping her long black hair around us. I kept my hair pulled back in a ponytail when I trained, but Olivia insisted that I’d have to learn to work with the length of my hair.

“Where was she?” I asked, and Olivia didn’t immediately answer, so I looked over at her. “Where was Jane when you saw her?”

“On Hennepin.” She nodded down to the street below us. “A block or so that way.”

“Did you see her?” I squinted, staring at the sidewalk. I was too far away to see much, but even if I was right up close, I doubt that there would be much to offer.

“Just enough to notice it was her.” Olivia stepped back from the ledge and walked towards the door. She had found a new tactic to entice me off the ledge - information.

“How did you even know she was there?” I jumped down and hurried after her.

“Someone died a block away from my club,” Olivia looked at me seriously. “It’s my job to know when anybody dies, and take care of it.”

“Did you take care of Jane?” I asked.

“The police were already there when I found out about it. There was nothing for me to see, nothing for me to do.” She opened the door to the stairwell and started down them. “From what I’ve heard, she didn’t have any bite marks on her. So I don’t think it was a vampire.”

“But you don’t know?” I jogged down the steps after her.

“I can’t say anything with certainty, except that the poor girl is dead,” Olivia said bluntly and pushed open the door to her apartment.

The penthouse was a massive, luxurious loft. The building had a weird angle to it, more of a triangle than a square, and all the outer walls were floor-to-ceiling windows. Marble floors ran throughout. The steps opened in the center of her suite, going into her living room.

Plush, overstuffed furniture filled the living room. It all looked pretty too, but Olivia’s main purpose in life was to lounge and be comfortable. She had a small kitchen off to the side, to feed the many humans she kept since she refused to drink bag blood. “If it’s not fresh, it’s not food” was her motto.

In the center, to the back of the stairwell, was a squared off area. It contained the elevator that could only go down to the basement. The only way into her place was through the vampire club.