Prologue
Jareth
In nearly five and a half centuries, only two things ever made me lament being a daywalker vampire. Shopping—okay, I complained about being alive at all when I was forced to shop—because it could be such a hassle to try to go to stores that weren’t open late or twenty-four hours. There were shops owned by other daywalkers, but they couldn’t account for every single need, so when I wanted something that I could only acquire from a store that was open nine to five, I either had to bribe the shop owner or venture out during the day. The term daywalker was quite literal. We could walk in the sun without bursting into flames—as opposed to nightwalkers, who were the typical vampires that filled books and movies. However, our extra pale skin was incredibly sensitive, and getting sunburned was a bitch, so we much preferred living a nocturnal life.
The other thing was the possibility of spending eternity alone. Daywalkers had only one true mate, a consort that fate paired us with before we were born. Whenever I had to explain this to someone, the first question they usually asked was how do you know who they are and how do we find them?
How indeed.
The unfortunate truth was that there was no guarantee we’d ever find our consort, even if we spent eternity searching the world over. There was no way to know when they were born, if they were human or another daywalker, where they lived, if they were even still alive… If the consort was human, they were always born after their vampire mate. That wasn’t much comfort, though, because they could still have come and gone while we continued to search. Worse, you could have been standing next to them and never know if your skin never made contact. It was the only way for us to recognize each other. Daywalkers and consorts didn’t have the ability to feel desire for anyone except their mate. Yep. I’d spent over half a millennium with a floppy cock.
Sadly, I’d seen the toll it took on vampires as they aged, and I’d seen the result when that devastating loss pushed them over the edge. My brothers and I had been crushed when our great-great-uncle managed to commit suicide because he simply couldn’t live without hope.
It was difficult not to lose faith then, but I’d done my best to keep my hope and my sanity. Perhaps because I’d been too focused on my brother Liam to worry about myself. When the woman he believed to be his consort died, I began to watch him carefully. I was vigilant in making sure we spoke at least once a day. In his depression and despair, he’d tried to push us away, but I wasn’t about to leave him to his pain and wake up one night to find he’d joined Uncle Thaddeus.
I was convinced he’d been wrong about his childhood friend, but there was no convincing him. Until yesterday.
I’d never been happier to be right, and I didn’t give one fuck about being humble either. I said, “I told you so,” more than once and with enthusiasm. Happy couldn’t describe what I felt for my brother. And it also renewed my faith, as well as our two other brothers, in fate.
So, for the first time in my very long life, I didn’t mind shopping on this Christmas night because I was helping my new sister choose presents for my brother.
I’d made some suggestions, and she’d picked what she wanted before sending me out to purchase everything. Luckily, I’d managed to acquire most of it from a couple of shops—one owned by a daywalker and the other by a human whose son was the consort of a daywalker.
However, the last thing I needed was only available at a high-end jewelry shop in town. The owner was a pain in the ass. Usually, I braved the dusk or twilight sun to go there—which was almost never. But circumstances being what they were, I didn’t have time. I was going to have to wake him...on Christmas night. This was going to cost me triple the price of the damn watch.
Then a second Christmas miracle happened, I called the shop owner’s number, and his wife, Patti, also the co-owner, picked up. I explained (in human terms and with a little stretching of the truth) that my brother and his fiancée, who hadn’t expected to spend Christmas together, had a stroke of luck, but now they didn’t have any gifts for each other. And my poor soon-to-be sister-in-law was devastated to spend their first Christmas together—in a long time—and not have something to give him that showed how much he meant to her. I might have sprinkled in a small bullshit story about why this particular watch, from this particular store, was so special to them.