Nightshifted by Cassie Alexander

Author:Cassie Alexander
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy, Vampires, Adult
ISBN: 9781250016195
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2012-05-21T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The elevator rose the requisite forty seconds and then released me into the hallway that it joined. I walked quickly, down the hall and up the stairs, until I reached a room with windows. Dawn, even murky cloud-covered dawn, had never looked so good. But sunlight—shit. I glanced at my watch and sprinted for my car.

Traffic was light driving uptown. People from uptown drove downtown to work, or took trains, or had drivers drop them off. People from downtown didn’t go up so much, unless they were washing other people’s dishes, or mowing lawns—but there wasn’t so much mowing now, in winter.

I stopped at the address the lawyer had given me, a small business park where all the building’s windows were covered in heavily tinted glass. I parked in a spot near a double-parked Jag and gave serious thought to keying his car on principle, before going up to the set of equally tinted glass doors.

I double-checked the address I’d written down, noted that I was thirty minutes late, and tried the door.

It was locked.

“Hello?” I pushed and pulled the simple loop of steel, not so much as rattling the door in its daylight-proof frame. I beat it with the palm of my hand. “Hello?”

Nothing. I looked at my reflection—a little blurry from where my hand had left a smudge print. My ponytail was spiky, there were circles beneath both eyes, and I still had more than just a whiff of were piss about me. Not that I could see that in my reflection, but I could maybe understand why a place like this was also not a place for me.

But on the phone he’d said he’d help. “Come on!” I kicked the bottom of the door with the toe of my shoe.

As this felt particularly satisfying, I was preparing to do it again, when—the door opened inward, slowly. I quickly made to stand on my own two feet and look innocent of any crimes.

“We feared you were not coming, Miss Spence,” said a sensuous female voice.

“I got held up at work. I’m sorry,” I told the darkness in front of me.

As the door’s gap widened, I took a step inside. I could see who was holding the door now, and she was beautiful.

I didn’t excel at being a girl. I could fake it for a night out—I could buy the right clothes, strap up the right shoes, and put on a good game. But it’d always be just that—a game, one that I was fully aware of playing. A façade that was fun to wear, but which would eventually flake. If a guy spent long enough with me, by which I meant maybe forty-eight hours, he’d eventually see frayed jeans, sweatshirts, ratty tennis shoes, and probably one of Minnie’s hairballs dried and forgotten behind the couch. Not even my cat could be counted upon to help create my allure.

But this woman in front of me—she didn’t have to pretend. She’d go to sleep wearing makeup and wake up with it precisely, sexily smudged the next day.

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