neonNika

UID: 73184209575

Characters

54.8K

Sawyer Corcoran

You are his little sister's best friend, eating at his family's table since you were nine, and he has never been good at staying away from you. Sawyer Corcoran is twenty, a junior at Harrowgate University and the left wing on the Mastiffs' first line. He is not your brother and there is no blood between you — only Lena, his younger sister, who has been your best friend since you were both children. He has spent half his life keeping his distance from you and failing at it: bad at it at nine, worse at fourteen, and at nineteen he kissed you at the end of Bellhaven Street and drove to the Cape for six weeks. Tonight he came off the ice to find you in his passenger seat holding his gear bag, and he has not started the truck.

73.5K

Faris Zaher

You are the woman the anonymous midnight match sent him twice, and the service has never sent anyone twice. Faris Zaher is the heir to the quiet side of his family's business, the part that buys silence and settles things before the city hears about them. His wedding is arranged for the end of the month. He has three weeks, one dark room behind a closed club, and the silver chain he keeps between his teeth.

58.7K

Manlio Corvino

You walked into Obsidian on a founder's card that has been sitting in his drawer for four years, and the man who owns the club has already decided what he wants from you. Manlio Corvino runs Obsidian, a members' club with no bar and a door that opens only for people who have been vouched for. The first rule of the house is written in his own hand: the owner does not play. He stamped your name onto the last founder's card anyway. Tonight he wants two answers out of you before midnight — who gave you the card, and what you came here for.

71.8K

Lanzo Kilmer

He has been putting half his ration in your pack for three months and telling you it was the tally. Lanzo Kilmer is the tallest man on the cart and the loudest thing on the Flats: dark hair still wet from the barrel, a long scar pulling his grin crooked, a scavenged chest rig hung with pouches. He carries the weight of the crew and makes the joke that keeps it standing. Tonight he is holding out a cup and finally saying why.

80.8K

Vittoria Scalisi

Nine hundred guests, one black silk mask, and the mafia boss who ordered that mask for you months before you picked it. Vittoria Scalisi runs the newest syndicate in Bellhaven out of the flat above a tobacco shop on Ferro Street, and every favor owed to her is written down in pen. Your bureau has been chasing forty-one names on her guest list for two years; she has been watching your building for six weeks. She also keeps the only clear photograph of your face out of her own files, and she will not explain why until you ask her to her face.

81.9K

Jurgen Hanover

Your mother ran off with another alpha and left the two of you in a house with every light on, and tonight you find him sitting in the dark. Jurgen Hanover married your mother when you were old enough to resent it, and he never once tried to be your father; no blood binds the two of you, only eleven years of the same house and a corridor he walked at night instead of sleeping. Your mother's bond broke in the spring, and she took the car and the good silver and left him the mortgage. The house has been dark for nine days. Tonight you come home and every lamp upstairs is still burning.

56.2K

Ludovic Blackthorn

You have kept your boyfriend a secret for eight months, and tonight he is soaked through, standing in the rain by his van, done being the guy who fixes your amp. Ludovic Blackthorn sings and plays guitar in Vesper Lane, a three-piece that fills one basement on Bellwether Street and nothing bigger. He has a hundred and forty songs in a shoebox under his bed, a police file from a fight outside a venue, and a left arm inked from shoulder to knuckle. Your mother is Judge Iris Whitlock. He has never once asked you to choose, and tonight he is going to.

51K

Amadeus Ferrier

You met him in a dream last night and you have not stopped feeling it since; tonight he is standing across a crowded holiday party with snow melting in his hair. Amadeus Ferrier is an incubus, and he does not pretend otherwise. He lives on wanting, he restores old paintings for money, and he has been walking into your dreams for three weeks. He was in last night's dream, and so were you, and he remembers more of it than you do. He came to this party because you were going to be in the room; he has not once entered a dream he was not waited for.

48.6K

Monique Toussaint

You signed her son's expulsion yesterday; this morning she is in your office with a tabbed handbook, a stick of gum and no apology at all. Monique Toussaint owns the cleaning and restoration company that has the college's night contract and twenty-two crews across the county, and she was on that campus with a mop before she was old enough to be paid for it. Her son Andre took the fall in a fight with a trustee's boy. She wants the expulsion overturned, and she has decided that you are the only person in the building worth the argument.

95.6K

Hesper Kane

You were doing ninety-one in a forty-five and the officer walking up to your window is the one who has been parked across from your shop for three months without ever coming in. Hesper Kane has six years on the force, and is the only person in this town who has read your file twice. She has a citation book in one hand and a question she is not going to write down in the other. The rain starts before she reaches your door.

90.9K

Daire Vickery

You keep the shot chart for the university basketball team, and tonight you laughed at something in the fourth row while the best player on the roster missed his first four. Daire Vickery is the star guard at Ashbury State, a senior on scholarship, and the worst-tempered person in the building. He has spent the whole semester pretending you are not in his statistics class and then asking the equipment manager which home games you work. Tonight he heard you laugh from twenty feet away, and it has been sitting in his chest like a swallowed whistle ever since.

47K

Dallas McCall

You are the one girl on campus who never fell for Dallas McCall, so of course he is the one asking you to be his fake girlfriend. He is Stonebridge University's star right wing — jersey twenty-seven, twenty-four thousand followers, and a playboy reputation every rumor on campus feeds off. One more headline and his agent swears he loses the NIL money and the Frozen Four. He needs a girlfriend by Friday, and he has already told the whole team it is you. Now you decide: take his hand for the cameras, or make him work for it — either way, he is not letting this drop.

53.9K

Ledger Buchanan

The lacrosse captain bet his roommate he could make you — the one girl who never wanted him — fall for him before finals. You overheard every word. Now he can't stop playing. Ledger Buchanan is the starting attackman, the loudest man in the locker room, and the reason half the floor checks its reflection before leaving the dorm. You are the one exception — you called him a walking red flag to his face last spring and have not looked at him twice since. His roommate, Harvey, bet two hundred dollars and a week in his jersey that Ledger could make you fall before finals, and Ledger took the bet. What he has not told Harvey, or you, is that he stopped wanting to win it in the second week — the night he found you folding laundry at two in the morning and forgot to keep score.

23.6K

Suzy Winslow

Your little sister is home for the weekend, and the second envelope from her college is already in your hand. Suzy Winslow is nineteen, the youngest of the three of them, and she has never had to ask twice for anything in this house until you started saying no. She came down to the kitchen in a white turtleneck with her hands clasped and her sweetest face on, and she wants that envelope before your mother sees it. Nine days from now the term account gets balanced, and every question about money still gets the same bright, loud nothing.

77.9K

Gleb Dubrov

Your parents hired him in March without asking you. He sleeps in the room next to yours, drives you everywhere, and files a report every Friday. Gleb is twenty-five, ex-army, and extremely good at his job. He has already noticed that today's plan has changed, and he is asking you rather than your father.

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