Emily lay splayed out on her stomach on the window seat, staring forlornly at the street below. She was moping. On the bookshelf above her, the spider plant that Clara had enchanted with an empath spell slowly wilted in emulation of her emotional upset. Sergio eyed it with distrust from the floor below...there was just something about the plant that the cat didn't like.

"Why hasn't she called me?" Emily bemoaned. "It's been a week..."

Clara had just woken up after being awake all night at a coven meeting, so she was really not in the mood to deal with Emily's mooning. "Good morning to you too," she griped as she shuffled into the kitchen in search of coffee.

Emily either didn't hear her or was ignoring her because she continued on her lament like she hadn't spoken. "Do you think she's ghosting me? She doesn't seem like the type, but why else would she not call when she said she would?"

"God, Em," Clara snapped, "You're a fucking broken record. Shut up." She proceeded to down an entire pot of coffee straight from the carafe. Normally she would have entertained Emily's moodiness, at least briefly, but a Clara without caffeine was not a Clara that had any kind of sympathy.

Emily sighed dramatically, but chose not to respond to her bitching. "Should I call her again? Maybe she lost my number."

Clara ducked her head into the fridge in search of something to eat, emerging with cold pizza that was probably a few days past its prime. Mouth full, she said, "I think you should stop whining or do something about it."

"Such as?"

Clara pursed her lips in thought while she chewed. "Well, you know where she works, right? She's some kind of professor? Just go sit in on one of her lectures."


As the lecture hall emptied, Emily met Alex's gaze across the room and smiled. She opened her mouth to say something, but didn't want the first words out of her mouth to be begging for an explanation as to the lack of calls or texts. Unfortunately for her, her mouth was already moving. "You, umm, you didn't call..."

Alex winced, having hoped to avoid this conversation and skip directly to whatever came after. "I'm sorry – I meant to, but there was a personal emergency that came up, requiring me to leave the city for a few days."

Emily softened, concern filling her gaze. "Is everything alright?"

She nodded. "Nothing to worry about." She smiled reassuringly to bolster her words. "But now that you're here...maybe we could go for a coffee? I've got some time between lectures and there's no shortage of coffee shops on campus."

Visibly brightening, Emily agreed, "Actually, that would be..."

But before she could finish the sentence, there was a small noise from behind them as someone cleared their throat. "Dr. Miller?" a young girl said. She looked barely eighteen, though she was small enough to be twelve (or possibly a pixie...her features suggesting the latter, even if she wasn't green). "I had some questions – I was hoping maybe you had a minute to answer them?"

Alex glanced at Emily who nodded faintly to show it it was okay.

When she turned to leave, Alex called after her, "Wait! Umm...if you wanted... I mean, if you weren't doing anything later... You could meet me at the campus pub?"

"I'll be there."


Alex locked herself in her office, falling back against the door taking heaving breaths. Her entire body was shaking. She'd barely made it to her office without feasting on a passing student – each throbbing heart beat, each blue-purple vein a temptation she'd struggled to resist.

She knew better than to skip meals, but she'd been distracted by Emily, then the pixie with all the questions, that she'd missed dinner. And now, she was paying the price.

On shaky legs, she stumbled across the room to punch the passcode into the bottom drawer of her desk. When it flung open, she grabbed for a blood pack inside, tore off the seal, then guzzled the contents. She'd known it would be bad...but she hadn't been prepared for just how bad. The taste made her gag and for a brief moment, she'd thought it might come right back up.

She hadn't had to break into her emergency rations in the three years since she'd been turned. It was kind of like the vamp version of sweetened condensed milk: technically, it was blood, but it was so full of preservatives and sugar that it was barely recognizable. It did the job, though, and almost immediately she felt the surge of energy flooding through her.

She settled into her chair, waiting for her trembling to subside. The blood was the worst part of being a vampire, in her opinion...even after three years, she still hadn't gotten used to the taste and she didn't think she ever would. More than the taste, though, it was the knowledge of where it came from that sat like a rock in the pit of her stomach. No matter how willing the victim, that blood had still come from a living being. (Usually it was goats or cows these days – almost no one drank human blood anymore – but it was still an unpalatable prospect.)

Through the fog of her blood-addled brain, she heard her phone ping with an incoming text. Thinking it was Emily, she reached for it, only to find James' name flash across the screen. Reluctantly, she opened the message.

Ever since their divorce, he'd been messaging her relentlessly. He had been furious when she'd had him served...he'd thought that when he'd turned her, they'd be together forever, the way he'd always wanted.

She'd never been able to forgive him, though, for going against her wishes.

Sometimes, he tried to sweet loving husband act, telling her how much he missed her, that he just wanted to talk. Today, though, he went with another tactic...

"I turned you, Alex. You belong to me."

She ignored the message.

"You can't ignore me forever. I will have you back."

A flare of anger burst in her chest. How dare he? He'd had no right to turn her in the first place and now he insisted on making her (after)life miserable...

She balled her hand into a fist...with a distinctive crunching of metal and glass. Looking down, she realized she'd crushed her phone beyond recognition as easily as if it were a soda can. That was the problem with super strength...