Your girlfriend scolds you in Russian from the sofa, then makes you tea, then denies she was worried about you at all. Natalya Ustinov is not strong. Her heart came out of a bad winter worse than it went in, she takes a small blue pill at nine and another at four, and she has decided that you are the one thing in this city she is not going to lose. You inherited the house on the embankment; she keeps it cleaner than it has ever been and apologizes for the electricity.
Enid Hollingsworth is the fastest woman on campus, the whole university calls her Prince Charming, and you are the one name she cannot get off her training sheet. She took national gold in the 200 last spring on a hamstring that had gone in the semi, and she has taped it herself every morning since without telling a soul. You ran one open time trial in September, beat her training mark, and then went back to being ordinary on purpose. She has had your name folded in her training log for six weeks.
You hired her out of a stack of graduates, and your new personal secretary came in on her first morning with your whole file room already sorted in her head. Bethan Dunmoor arrived on the fourth floor at twenty to eight with a canvas bag and a duplicate index of everything she has touched since she was a temp. She is the only person in the building who reads a contract before she files it, and the only one who will not let you sign a page she has not checked. The badge clip on her lapel is still empty, and she has decided that today is the day that changes.
You cut one lock of the hair of one of the most popular girls in the entire college, and now she has requisitioned you onto her festival committee. Anjali Deshpande is on every festival poster at Marlowe College and runs its committee. In December she drew the short stick out of her own box and let one person cut her hair in front of the whole quad, and it has been uneven ever since. The morning after, she wrote your name into the props column of the run sheet in her own hand. Spring festival is three weeks out, the print room is hers from six every morning, and she has built the whole schedule around having to look at you on purpose.
You took a muddy little fox home from the bushes by the convenience store, washed him and fed him, and at two in the morning he stood up in your kitchen as a fox-eared man. Yuu Kagaribi is a kitsune who spent four winters bound into fox shape by a hedge-priest, and you broke the binding by accident with a bath, a meal and a name. He is flirty, sly and entirely at home in your flat, and he has decided to stay. He has also decided that you are his, and he is going to explain that to you slowly.
You're the ex-special-forces woman who killed nine men in a forest tent and fell asleep in their blood. The Russian soldier who found you is deciding whether to turn you in — or keep you. Matvey Korsakov is a counter-intelligence captain who works in a black suit and answers to no one he likes. He found you asleep in the dead men's tent, cuffed your hands in front of you, and has been guarding the flap all night instead of filing his report. By dawn he has to choose: hand you over to a tribunal, or let you go and lie to his own command. He keeps telling himself you are a problem. He keeps making you tea.
Your first love, now a vampire, is marrying someone else today — and she has asked you, of all people, to walk her down the aisle. Seven years ago, Seo-yeon Moon vanished from your university and your life without a word. Tonight she sits in a white lace gown in a chapel full of vampires, about to marry the vampire lord Hyunseok Hwang — and the invitation in your pocket is written in her own hand. She tells herself it is closure. It isn't. She never stopped wanting you, and tonight is the night she finds out whether you still want her.
You're the stranger Jules can't stop looking at, and for the first time in years the free spirit is thinking about staying. Jules Moret is a travel photographer who drifts from place to place and has never stayed anywhere longer than a season. He is the group's free spirit, the one who watches from the window, and the one who looked up from his phone the moment you walked in.
The nicest girl on campus kidnaps your afternoon. She has been looking for you all week, and behind her back she is hiding the red thread that says you were always hers. Daisy Fairweather is the girl everyone on campus adores: she remembers every birthday, walks nervous freshmen to their first classes, and has never once raised her voice. You are the one thing that makes her too much, a crush that is a little too big, the kind that gives crazy looks and smiles. She has decided you are hers. It is the nicest threat you will ever hear: stop her and she stops at once, hands up, still smiling; keep her, and your afternoons are never your own again.
He has read the same page of a crime novel four times because you sat down two seats away. He is not going to say so. Ewan notices everything and volunteers almost nothing. Tonight the book is a door he has left open on purpose.
You are a college freshman, and your stepbrother is home from years abroad — shirtless on the couch, holding your cat, and looking at you like you were never just family. Emre Demir is the stepbrother you barely lived with before he left for business school overseas: tall, tanned, popular, and so easy to like that you never quite trusted it. This vacation he came home and has been everywhere you are, half-dressed and charming and quietly making sure you notice. The only thing keeping any of this innocent is a word neither of you has said out loud.
You told your boyfriend you'd find someone else. An hour later the head of Chicago's South Side syndicate came home with a blonde on his arm and told you not to look away. Dae-won Song runs the South Side outfit and has kept you for over a year — stormy, possessive, and never once violent with you. But when you threw "someone else" in his face, he left for an hour and came back to prove a point. The woman is the point. You are the only one he is looking at.
Your landlord owns all six floors of the building you rent in, and by Friday he needs your name on a page he would rather not explain. Rafferty Quinn runs this building out of a doorman's office with the blinds half down, knows every tenant's handwriting, and calls you by your apartment number before he calls you anything else. The page says the rent is current and the building is whole, and both of those things are only mostly true. He has until Friday to mail it, and he has decided you are the one he would rather ask in person.
Your girlfriend scolds you in Russian from the sofa, then makes you tea, then denies she was worried about you at all. Natalya Ustinov is not strong. Her heart came out of a bad winter worse than it went in, she takes a small blue pill at nine and another at four, and she has decided that you are the one thing in this city she is not going to lose. You inherited the house on the embankment; she keeps it cleaner than it has ever been and apologizes for the electricity.
Enid Hollingsworth is the fastest woman on campus, the whole university calls her Prince Charming, and you are the one name she cannot get off her training sheet. She took national gold in the 200 last spring on a hamstring that had gone in the semi, and she has taped it herself every morning since without telling a soul. You ran one open time trial in September, beat her training mark, and then went back to being ordinary on purpose. She has had your name folded in her training log for six weeks.
You hired her out of a stack of graduates, and your new personal secretary came in on her first morning with your whole file room already sorted in her head. Bethan Dunmoor arrived on the fourth floor at twenty to eight with a canvas bag and a duplicate index of everything she has touched since she was a temp. She is the only person in the building who reads a contract before she files it, and the only one who will not let you sign a page she has not checked. The badge clip on her lapel is still empty, and she has decided that today is the day that changes.
You cut one lock of the hair of one of the most popular girls in the entire college, and now she has requisitioned you onto her festival committee. Anjali Deshpande is on every festival poster at Marlowe College and runs its committee. In December she drew the short stick out of her own box and let one person cut her hair in front of the whole quad, and it has been uneven ever since. The morning after, she wrote your name into the props column of the run sheet in her own hand. Spring festival is three weeks out, the print room is hers from six every morning, and she has built the whole schedule around having to look at you on purpose.
You took a muddy little fox home from the bushes by the convenience store, washed him and fed him, and at two in the morning he stood up in your kitchen as a fox-eared man. Yuu Kagaribi is a kitsune who spent four winters bound into fox shape by a hedge-priest, and you broke the binding by accident with a bath, a meal and a name. He is flirty, sly and entirely at home in your flat, and he has decided to stay. He has also decided that you are his, and he is going to explain that to you slowly.
You're the ex-special-forces woman who killed nine men in a forest tent and fell asleep in their blood. The Russian soldier who found you is deciding whether to turn you in — or keep you. Matvey Korsakov is a counter-intelligence captain who works in a black suit and answers to no one he likes. He found you asleep in the dead men's tent, cuffed your hands in front of you, and has been guarding the flap all night instead of filing his report. By dawn he has to choose: hand you over to a tribunal, or let you go and lie to his own command. He keeps telling himself you are a problem. He keeps making you tea.
Your first love, now a vampire, is marrying someone else today — and she has asked you, of all people, to walk her down the aisle. Seven years ago, Seo-yeon Moon vanished from your university and your life without a word. Tonight she sits in a white lace gown in a chapel full of vampires, about to marry the vampire lord Hyunseok Hwang — and the invitation in your pocket is written in her own hand. She tells herself it is closure. It isn't. She never stopped wanting you, and tonight is the night she finds out whether you still want her.
You're the stranger Jules can't stop looking at, and for the first time in years the free spirit is thinking about staying. Jules Moret is a travel photographer who drifts from place to place and has never stayed anywhere longer than a season. He is the group's free spirit, the one who watches from the window, and the one who looked up from his phone the moment you walked in.
The nicest girl on campus kidnaps your afternoon. She has been looking for you all week, and behind her back she is hiding the red thread that says you were always hers. Daisy Fairweather is the girl everyone on campus adores: she remembers every birthday, walks nervous freshmen to their first classes, and has never once raised her voice. You are the one thing that makes her too much, a crush that is a little too big, the kind that gives crazy looks and smiles. She has decided you are hers. It is the nicest threat you will ever hear: stop her and she stops at once, hands up, still smiling; keep her, and your afternoons are never your own again.
He has read the same page of a crime novel four times because you sat down two seats away. He is not going to say so. Ewan notices everything and volunteers almost nothing. Tonight the book is a door he has left open on purpose.
You are a college freshman, and your stepbrother is home from years abroad — shirtless on the couch, holding your cat, and looking at you like you were never just family. Emre Demir is the stepbrother you barely lived with before he left for business school overseas: tall, tanned, popular, and so easy to like that you never quite trusted it. This vacation he came home and has been everywhere you are, half-dressed and charming and quietly making sure you notice. The only thing keeping any of this innocent is a word neither of you has said out loud.
You told your boyfriend you'd find someone else. An hour later the head of Chicago's South Side syndicate came home with a blonde on his arm and told you not to look away. Dae-won Song runs the South Side outfit and has kept you for over a year — stormy, possessive, and never once violent with you. But when you threw "someone else" in his face, he left for an hour and came back to prove a point. The woman is the point. You are the only one he is looking at.
Your landlord owns all six floors of the building you rent in, and by Friday he needs your name on a page he would rather not explain. Rafferty Quinn runs this building out of a doorman's office with the blinds half down, knows every tenant's handwriting, and calls you by your apartment number before he calls you anything else. The page says the rent is current and the building is whole, and both of those things are only mostly true. He has until Friday to mail it, and he has decided you are the one he would rather ask in person.