I remembered staring at her neck, which was encircled by a black choker with silver studs, much like the girls at the fetish clubs I was visiting. What caught my attention was a glass vial hanging on a longer silver chain. It was filled with something red. Mirelle had noticed my gaze.

I’m secretly a vampire, she’d said with a coy smile.

I could feel my heart pounding just from staring at the building, remembering it all. I had met her in October, near the start of my second year at the university. By the end of January, Mirelle was dead. I’d spent years pushing every memory of her away. But it occurred to me for the first time how odd it was that this beautiful woman had simply landed on my doorstep one day. There was another detail that I recalled as I stared at my former home. I had told Dr. Haven that I’d come to inside my apartment, but that wasn’t true. I lived on the fourth floor, and I never closed the blinds at night, because I loved catching glimpses of the stars. But Mirelle’s apartment was on the first floor, and she kept the blinds closed for privacy. When I’d opened my eyes, the lights were on. I’d seen the blinds first, before my head turned and Mirelle came into focus.

I wanted to step inside the building, but no one answered when I rang the office bell; the building never had a live-in superintendent when I lived there, so that wasn’t a surprise. I peered into the window of the room that had been Mirelle’s, afraid the police would come by at any moment and arrest me as a Peeping Tom. The lights were off, but I could see the floor was blond wood, not the dark that I remembered. Of course they’d replaced it.

I remembered shouting Mirelle’s name. I’d reached for her, and realized the knife was in my hand. When I tried to move, it felt like I was weighted down. That could have been the drugs. But for the first time, I was sure that someone else had been in the room with us.

CHAPTER 23 DEIRDRE

CHAPTER 23

DEIRDRE

I had mixed emotions leaving the Thraxton International offices. Caro’s father-in-law hadn’t been anything other than kind to me, and I appreciated him telling me about Theo. But his casual dismissal of the woman Theo had killed—accidentally or not—left me unsettled. He regarded her like a piece of furniture. I knew he didn’t think of Caro that way, but he would only be an ally to a point. No matter what he claimed, he’d help his son out of a jam.