The Extra the Vampire Bought Was Supposed to Die in Chapter Twelve novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Sold
Cassia wakes on an auction block mid-bid, recognizes the scene from the book that killed her, says one sarcastic thing out loud and accepts the vampire CEO's absurd bid as the moon mark lights on her wrist and the Alpha walks in.
The first thing I noticed was the number pinned to my dress.
LOT 14, in gold thread, right over my heart.
The second thing was that I was standing on a velvet block in a ballroom, under a spotlight.
Two hundred people in black were looking at me.
My last memory was a laundromat bench in Dayton and a phone in my hand.
I had been rereading chapter eleven of the worst book I had ever finished.
I took a breath and it smelled like candle wax and expensive perfume.
Then the man at the podium said, "Lot fourteen. Female, human, twenty-six, healthy, unmarked, no bite history."
I knew that line.
I had read that line two days ago.
Then I had read it out loud to my sister over the phone, in a deep announcer voice.
The book was called His Moonmarked Mate.
It had four stars and a cover with a shirtless wolf on it.
In chapter one the author introduced me with a line I had quoted at my sister for a week.
"Lot Fourteen was nobody."
I was the extra.
The extra gets sold in chapter one and drained in chapter twelve, so the villain can look scary.
I looked down at my own hands.
They were a stranger's hands, small and tan, with a chipped red manicure.
"The reserve is the debt," said the auctioneer. "Two hundred twelve thousand dollars, held by Lisle Credit. Do I hear it?"
In the front row a man in a cheap navy suit stared at his shoes.
I did not know him, and I knew exactly who he was.
He was my father, in this body.
He had borrowed money against me and lost it at a card table.
Now he had come to watch the sale so he could be sure of his cut.
"Unmarked," I said out loud. "Is this a lot description or a used car listing?"
The room went quiet.
Somebody in the back laughed once and stopped.
I should have kept my mouth shut.
But I had just died on a laundromat bench, and I was wearing a number.
"And if this is chapter one," I said, "I'd like to speak to the author."
In the third row, a man who had been looking at his phone looked up.
He was pale, with black hair and a black suit, and his grey eyes landed on me and stayed.
He flinched.
It was very small, the kind of flinch you make when somebody reads your diary out loud.
That was Benedict Rhinelander, the book's cold billionaire vampire, and the author had described his eyes as "pools of liquid mercury."
I had to admit she had a point.
"Two hundred twenty," said a gray little man by the aisle.
He was holding the paddle of a woman in pearls, who sat in a private box upstairs with her hands folded.
I knew her too.
Dorothea Lisle was the head of the vampire council.
She had a throwaway line in chapter nine about the cellars under her house, where "none of the donors left."
"Two-fifty," said the grey man. "Two-eighty. Three hundred."
The auctioneer was sweating with joy.
In the book, Benedict won me for two hundred fifteen thousand and a bored shrug.
He did not bid today.
He sat very still and looked at me.
"Three hundred and ten," said the grey man.
"Four million," said Benedict Rhinelander.
The ballroom made a noise like a punctured tire.
"Mr. Rhinelander," said the auctioneer. "That is nearly twenty times the..."
"I know what it is."
Upstairs, the woman in pearls lifted one finger.
The grey man opened his mouth.
I did my math fast.
The auction code was in the book, because the author loved a rule she could break later.
Before the gavel falls, the lot may refuse one buyer.
I had exactly one refusal.
I had a choice between a man who would kill me in twenty-five days and a woman whose cellars had no exit.
"I refuse the gentleman in grey," I said.
The auctioneer stared at me.
"Miss, that isn't..."
"Section nine. Check it."
He checked it.
His face did a complicated thing.
"The lot refuses the bidder for Lisle Credit," he said, in a voice like wet paper.
There was a hiss from the box upstairs.
I looked straight at Benedict Rhinelander.
"The devil I know," I told him, "is tall and fully clothed. So congratulations."
He looked at me.
"Sold," said the auctioneer, and the gavel came down.
The doors at the back banged open.
A wave of cold air came in off the street, with the smell of rain and woodsmoke and wet dog.
Every wolf along the back wall stood up at once.
A man walked in with his shirt open at the collar and his hair soaking wet.
He was enormous.
His eyes were gold.
My left wrist caught fire.
I looked down, and on the inside of it, a silver crescent moon was lighting up my skin.
"Oh, come on," I whispered.
The Alpha stopped dead in the middle of the aisle, and looked at my wrist, and then at my face.
Beside the block, Benedict Rhinelander said very quietly, "Don't look at him."
I looked at him.
"Look at me," Benedict said. "I need you alive for the next eleven weeks."
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