The door to the outside world fought them all the way.
It was an old service exit at the back of the house, half-swallowed by ivy, its lower edge warped from years of damp. Mira leaned into it with her shoulder, feeling the stubborn give of wood that didn’t remember the last time it had been asked to move.
“Push,” she muttered between her teeth.
Behind her, Aleksandr placed both hands above her shoulder, fingers spread against the cool, flaking paint. He didn’t lean his full weight—she could feel that much—but even the measured pressure of him made the door complain in a lower register.
For a moment, they were pressed together: her back fitting to his chest, his coat brushing her hips, the bulk of him a solid line along her spine. She felt the phantom of a breath against the back of her neck, even though she knew he didn’t really need to breathe.
“On three,” she said, partly to focus on something that wasn’t her body’s reaction. “One—two—”
On two, he pushed.
The swollen wood gave with a tearing sound and the door lurched outward into the night, almost throwing her off balance. Aleksandr steadied her automatically, his hands catching her shoulders and holding her for a moment that stretched longer than it should have.
Cold air rushed in, slicing through the stale chill of the house. It smelled of wet leaves, exhaust from the road below, and the faint, distant sweetness of roasted chestnuts from some vendor Mira couldn’t see.
“Sorry,” he murmured, fingers flexing once on her shoulders before he let go. “I forgot… your numbers.”
“You skipped three,” she said a little breathlessly.
He arched an eyebrow. “Impatience is… a flaw.”
“At least you’re aware,” she said, and stepped out.
The yard behind the house sloped down toward the back wall of the estate. In the half-dark, the overgrown garden was a tangle of ghosts: bare-branched trees clawing at the sky, dead rosebushes clutching the air with thorned hands, weeds carpeting what had once been careful gravel paths.
Beyond the wall, the city glowed.
Streetlamps cast yellow pools on slick asphalt. Tail-lights dragged red streaks along the roads. Farther off, a cluster of high-rises blinked with rows of windows, a mechanical constellation.
Aleksandr came up beside her, stopping just under the eaves. His pupils blew wide, devouring the bits of light, irises thinned to a pale ring.
She watched his face as he looked.
He took it in quietly: the line of the river lights in the distance, the way sound carried differently now—a constant background hum of engines and generators instead of the uneven clatter of horses and carts. Somewhere a tram screeched on its rails; somewhere else, a burst of bass from a car stereo thudded like a distant heartbeat.
His jaw tightened.
“It is…” He searched for a word.
“Ugly?” she supplied.
“Loud,” he said. “Bright in the wrong places. Dark in others.” His gaze went to the cluster of new glass towers. “We thought… they would build up. We didn’t imagine… this.”
“Welcome to late capitalism,” she said.
“Your words get stranger,” he murmured.
She stepped off the small mossy stoop, boots sinking slightly into the damp ground. “Come on. We don’t have much time before my window closes.”
He hesitated at the threshold, glancing up reflexively as if expecting some invisible barrier.
“Can you… leave?” she asked, pausing.
His mouth twisted. “We are not… dogs in stories. No invisible fence. Only… practical considerations.” He gestured toward the sky, where the last wash of indigo clung at the horizon. “It is late enough. The light is… weak.”
“Then move, Morozov,” she said, more sharply than she meant to.
He stepped out.
Nothing exploded. No divine lightning struck. The only reaction was the way his shoulders rolled back as the open air hit him—a subtle shift, like someone stretching after too long in a cramped seat.
For a second, he closed his eyes and tilted his face up, as if to where stars should have been before the city’s light drowned them.
“All this time,” he said softly, “and the sky is the only thing that still feels like itself.”
Mira followed his gaze.
“There are satellites now,” she said. “Metal things. Moving. Carrying… signals. Cameras. Weapons.”
He huffed. “You can ruin anything.”
“Faster than you think,” she said. “Come on.”
They made their way along what had once been the edge of the formal garden, now just a suggestion in the uneven ground. Mira’s flashlight was off; she trusted her memory, and the faint spill of light from neighboring buildings, more than she trusted a bright beam cutting across the dark like a flare.
“Step there,” she warned, pointing at a stone half-buried in weeds. “Not there. The ground’s soft. There might be an old fountain pit.”
He followed her steps exactly, boots landing where hers had. His movements were almost soundless despite the debris, an unconscious stealth that she found both practical and unsettling.
At the rear wall, they stopped.
Up close, it was higher than it had looked from the house, at least three meters of old stone, rough with age and moss in the cracks. In one place, a section had crumbled, creating a jagged climb of broken blocks that might have once tempted teenagers looking for shortcuts.
“We’re not going that way,” Mira said. “Too exposed. The developers—or whoever is paying Lebedev—have eyes on the obvious routes.”
Aleksandr glanced sideways at her. “You are certain of this?”
“Pretty sure,” she said. “Dima’s cousin mentioned increased patrols. And… people talk. Kids who party here say they’ve seen guys on roofs nearby. Not cops. Not locals.”
“Watching my house,” he said quietly.
“Waiting,” she said. “For you. Or for someone who knows where your family’s… resources went.”
His expression closed a degree at the mention of money. “We thought we hid it well.”
“Maybe you did,” she said. “But secrets leak. Especially over a hundred years.”
He smoothed a hand along the wall, fingers finding purchase on old chisel marks. “How, then?” he asked. “You have a… hidden door?”
“Better,” she said. “We have bureaucracy.”
He made a face.
She pointed to a section of the wall where an old iron gate sat half-buried in ivy, smaller and less ornate than the front entrance. A secondary service gate, once used for deliveries or gardeners, now mostly forgotten.
“The city owns that alley,” she said. “Technically. They were supposed to keep this gate clear for emergency access.” She snorted. “They didn’t. But they *did* leave a nice little gap when they paved, to clear the boundary. We just need to… squeeze.”
She pushed aside the vines.
The gate was padlocked, but the chain was thin, more symbolic than secure. She pulled the bolt cutters from her backpack—he made a small, amused sound at the sight—and snapped it in two.
“Violent little thing,” he murmured.
“Adaptation,” she said. “You’d be amazed how many doors these open.”
She eased the gate open, wincing at the squeal of neglected hinges. Beyond it, a narrow strip of weed-choked ground sloped down to the alley. The drop was only a meter, but the footing was uncertain.
“I’ll go first,” she said. “Then you follow.”
He gave a small, ironic half-bow. “Age before beauty.”
She snorted, swung her legs over, and dropped.
Her boots landed in damp dirt. She steadied herself with one hand on the wall, then looked up.
Aleksandr was framed by the gap in the ivy, his coat dark against the paler stone. For a second, the image hit her in a way she couldn’t name: like a painting, or an illustration.
“You’re thinking dangerous thoughts,” he said quietly.
She swallowed. “Get down here before I change my mind.”
He gripped the top of the gate, then simply jumped.
He landed lightly beside her, bending his knees to absorb the impact. Not even a grunt of effort. The movement was unnervingly fluid.
“Show-off,” she muttered.
“If we are listing each other’s sins,” he said, “we will be here all night.”
The alley stretched left and right behind the neighboring properties: a ribbon of cracked asphalt, puddles gleaming in the streetlight’s spill. Rubbish bins hunched against the walls like sullen trolls. Somewhere a radio played a tinny pop song through an open window, lyrics in a language that was mostly English, mostly not.
“Left,” she said, starting off. “Dima’s cousin said there’s a blind spot in the cameras on that side. We cut through the next courtyard, then out to the main road where he can pick us up without attracting attention.”
“You trust this cousin?” Aleksandr asked.
“I trust Dima to have yelled at him enough,” she said. “And I trust money to motivate him the rest of the way.”
“You pay him,” Aleksandr said, mildly surprised. “You do not just… call and demand favors in the name of the people?”
She laughed once. “That’s… not how it works anymore.”
“It was never supposed to work that way,” he said. “But it did. For some.”
“Yourself included,” she pointed out.
“Yes,” he acknowledged without flinching. “Myself included.”
They turned the corner.
Here, the alley narrowed, hemmed in by high fences and the back walls of buildings. Faint light leaked from a few small basement windows. Mira moved more quickly now, senses straining. Her heart drummed a little faster—part nerves, part anticipation.
Aleksandr, she noticed, had gone very still in a different way.
His gait didn’t change, but his head tilted a fraction, nostrils flaring. His hand twitched once at his side, fingers curling.
“What?” she whispered.
“Voices,” he said, equally low. “Ahead.”
A second later, she heard it too: the thunk of a bottle against brick, the scratch of a lighter, laughter that tried too hard. Male, young.
She swore under her breath. “Teenagers. Or worse.”
Aleksandr’s eyes narrowed. “Do they belong here?”
“No one belongs here,” she said. “Which is why they’re here.”
As they drew nearer the next bend, the voices clarified.
“…I’m telling you, he’s real,” one boy insisted. “My cousin’s friend saw something. The security guys? They’ve been around more. They’re waiting for something.”
Another, higher, scoffed. “They’re waiting for the bulldozers. For the money. Vampires aren’t real, Kostya.”
“Then why did your sister come back white as paper when she did the dare at the cemetery?” the first shot back. “She used to be brave. Now she won’t even walk past the gate.”
“She’s dramatic,” a third voice interjected. “Like you.”
They were clustered just where the alley opened onto a small dead-end courtyard, sharing a cigarette between them, hoods up.
Mira halted just before the corner, flattening herself against the wall. Aleksandr did the same on the other side of the narrow space.
“We could go back,” he murmured.
“And walk past the camera positions twice? No.” She chewed her lip, thinking. “We wait. Let them finish their smoke and go home to their grandmothers.”
He inclined his head. “As you command.”
They stood there in the thin slice of shadow, close enough that she could feel the chill radiating from him. Her breath puffed white in the air between them, mingling.
One of the boys laughed louder at something. The sound bounced off the brick, too bright.
Mira tensed as footsteps scuffed, coming closer.
“Did you hear that?” one of them said, suddenly wary.
“Cats,” another dismissed. “Or that weird lady who feeds them.”
“Cats do not swear that creatively,” Aleksandr murmured near her ear.
She bit back an inappropriate laugh and exhaled through her nose, trying to make no sound.
The footsteps stopped just around the corner.
A pause.
Then the scrape of a zipper, the trickle of liquid, and the unmistakeable sound of someone pissing against the wall.
Mira grimaced. Aleksandr’s lip curled in genuine distaste.
“Your city is… still refined,” he whispered.
She flashed him a look. “You don’t remember what your friends did after too much vodka?”
“They aimed for the bushes,” he said, offended. “Not the neighbor’s foundation.”
The boy laughed again, giving a little shake, and stepped back.
“You’re imagining things, Kostya,” he said, voice receding as he moved toward his friends. “Come on. If your mama finds out you’re here again, she’ll ground you until the next war.”
“How many more can there be?” another asked. “We’ve been already. Nothing ever happens.”
“That’s the point,” Kostya muttered. “You think they wouldn’t have torn it down if there wasn’t something?”
Their voices faded slowly as they ambled the other way, out of the courtyard and deeper into the maze of back alleys.
Mira waited another minute, counting her pulse—one, two, three—before easing around the corner and peering out.
Empty.
She let out the breath she’d been holding. “Come on. Before the universe decides to test us again.”
They crossed the small courtyard quickly. It had once been shared space for the surrounding buildings; now it held two rusted swings, a sandpit full of cigarette butts, and a broken bench with an empty vodka bottle on it.
On the far side, a low, chain-link fence separated the courtyard from a side street. Someone had already cut a rough hole in it, the edges bent back. She slipped through, Aleksandr following, and suddenly they were on a proper road, cars hissing past a block away.
The city closed around them.
Neon splashed against old brick. A bus groaned by, flashing its route number in LED. A couple walked past with takeaway coffee, their voices a soft murmur. No one looked at Mira and Aleksandr twice.
The anonymity of it—that they could emerge from a condemned estate’s back gate and blend into the flow—still sometimes startled her. The city swallowed everything.
“There,” she said, nodding toward a dark sedan idling by the curb a little up the street, hazard lights blinking lazily. Dima stood beside it, collar up against the chill, hands jammed into his pockets.
As they approached, his gaze flicked over them, assessing.
He stopped dead when he really *saw* Aleksandr.
Mira watched the moment hit: the way Dima’s eyes widened a fraction, the subtle paling around his mouth, the quick, involuntary sign of the cross he made half-hidden against his thigh.
Aleksandr saw it too. His expression didn’t change, but something behind his eyes went very still.
“Mira,” Dima said, in a tone that suggested he was weighing the odds of shaking her and running. “You didn’t mention he was… *that*.”
“‘That’ what?” Aleksandr asked mildly. His Russian carried an old music now that they were under open sky—vowels elongated in ways that drew curious glances if he lingered on them.
“Tall,” Dima said brusquely, recovering. “You didn’t mention he was tall.”
Mira almost choked. “You’re worried about his *height*?”
“I worry about everything,” Dima snapped. He stuck out a hand, more on reflex than intent. “Dmitri Antonovich. Lawyer. Idiot enabler.”
Aleksandr took his hand, shook it once.
“Your pulse is very fast, Dmitri Antonovich,” he said conversationally.
Dima yanked his hand back as if it had been burned. “You know what? Get in the car.”
Mira smothered a smile and slipped into the front passenger seat. Aleksandr hesitated only a fraction of a second before opening the back door and folding himself into the space with improbable grace.
“Seatbelt,” she said over her shoulder as Dima slid behind the wheel.
“Seat… belt?” Aleksandr repeated, baffled.
“This,” she said, reaching back and pulling the strap across her chest to demonstrate. “It… keeps you in place if he drives like an asshole.”
“I passed my test,” Dima grumbled, starting the engine. “Barely.”
Aleksandr watched her, then mimicked the motion, clicking the buckle after a few seconds’ fumbling.
“Your… death traps,” he murmured, eyeing the passing cars, “have improved in comfort if not in sanity.”
“Wait until you see the metro,” Mira said.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Dima interjected. He pulled away from the curb, merging into traffic with more aggression than necessary.
For a few minutes, they drove in tense silence.
Mira watched the city slide past: the old brick warehouses converted into lofts, the Soviet-era apartment blocks with their patched balconies, the glass-and-steel towers despising them all.
In the rearview mirror, she could see Aleksandr’s reflection—or rather, the space where it should have been.
There was nothing.
Her breath caught.
She turned in her seat, heart thudding.
He caught her looking, followed her gaze to the mirror, and smiled—a small, wry thing.
“Ah,” he said. “That part of the stories is true.”
“You don’t… reflect,” she said, stupidly.
“Not in glass,” he said. “Not in silver. Sometimes in eyes, if they are… clear.”
Dima swore softly under his breath. “Jesus. You might have warned me, Mira. I almost thought I was going mad.”
“I didn’t exactly have time to write a full briefing,” she shot back.
“Where are we going?” Aleksandr asked, his tone cutting neatly through their bickering.
Mira faced forward again. “My place. For tonight.”
Dima made a strangled noise. “Your— You are bringing the undead aristocracy to your *apartment*?”
“Do you have a better idea?” she demanded.
“Yes,” he said. “Several. None of them legal, ethical, or conducive to me keeping my license.” He exhaled hard. “Your building has cameras. Neighbors. Nosy babushkas. Landlords who might object to you harboring… this.”
“I can be… discreet,” Aleksandr said quietly.
“I don’t doubt it,” Dima said dryly. “It’s everyone *else* I’m worried about.”
Mira gripped the edge of the seat. “We don’t have time to secure a safehouse, Dima. He needs somewhere… dark. Private. At least until we figure out who’s watching the estate and what they want.”
“And in the meantime,” Dima said, “you sleep in the same building as a creature whose main fuel source you carry around in your veins.”
“He’s not going to eat me,” she snapped.
“You seem very confident about that,” Dima said. “You’ve known him for… what, six hours?”
“Less,” Aleksandr corrected.
“Oh, that makes me feel so much better,” Dima muttered.
“He hasn’t eaten *anyone* in a century,” Mira said. “That has to earn him some credit.”
“Credit has interest,” Aleksandr said dryly. “It comes due.”
She turned again, eyes meeting his in the gloom of the back seat. “We’ll find another way.”
“For me to… feed,” he said, not flinching from the word.
“Yes.” Her jaw set. “On someone who isn’t me. Or any unsuspecting bystander.”
His gaze held hers for a beat. Something unreadable moved there—amusement, perhaps, and a reluctant respect.
“You think you can… regulate this,” he said. “Like zoning laws.”
“I regulate a lot of things men like you think are impossible,” she said. “It’s kind of my job.”
He inclined his head. “Then I am… in your hands.”
Dima made another distressed sound. “Please do not say things like that in my car.”
Mira couldn’t help it. She laughed. The near-hysterical edge in it took a moment to subside.
“Seatbelts,” she said, wiping at one eye. “Metro. Smartphones. He handles those. But innuendo is where you draw the line?”
“I have some standards,” Dima said. “They’re not high, but they’re there.”
They drove on.
As they crossed the river, Aleksandr leaned forward slightly, looking out. The water below was dark, streetlights painting long, broken streaks across its surface.
“The bridges,” he murmured. “They… still stand.”
“Most of them,” Mira said. “Some new. Some rebuilt. Some as they were. More or less.”
He pressed his palm briefly against the window as if he could feel the old stone through the glass. “I used to stand… there,” he said, nodding toward a particular span. “When I was human. Smoking. Thinking I was… important.”
“You were,” Mira said quietly.
“In the way a pebble is important to a landslide,” he said. “It rolls with the others. It cannot choose to roll alone.”
She wanted to argue. Instead, she watched his reflection—that absence—in the dark window, and wondered what kind of pebble he would be now.
***
Mira’s apartment building was one of those 1960s concrete blocks that looked like it had been dropped from a height and left where it landed. The stairwell smelled faintly of boiled cabbage and cleaning solvent. Someone had taped a handwritten sign to the elevator: OUT OF ORDER. AGAIN.
“Sixth floor,” she said, steeling herself.
Aleksandr eyed the stairwell. “We had… servants for this,” he muttered.
“Welcome to the proletariat,” she said.
They climbed.
By the second flight, she could hear the soft strain in his breath. Not because he needed air, she realized, but because his muscles, new to this century’s gravity, were still recalibrating.
“Do you want—” she began.
“If you offer to carry me,” he said, “I will revisit my stance on biting.”
She snorted. “As if I could.”
On the fourth landing, a door opened and an old woman in a floral housecoat peered out, holding a plastic bag of garbage. Her sharp gaze swept over Mira, then snagged on Aleksandr.
He did not reflect in the cheap, cloudy glass of the stairwell window, but to human eyes he was very much there: tall, pale, dressed like some melancholy nobleman from an old film.
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You bringing home another foreigner, Mirochka?”
Mira pasted on her best good-tenant smile. “Evening, Lyudmila Petrovna. This is my… cousin. Alex. From… out of town.”
Lyudmila sniffed. “Out of *country*, more like. They don’t make cheekbones like that here anymore.”
Aleksandr, to his credit, didn’t blink. He inclined his head in a perfect, old-school gesture of respect.
“Dobry vecher,” he said. “Forgive the disturbance.”
Lyudmila’s eyes flicked between them, weighing the politeness in his tone, the cut of his coat, the apparent lack of threat.
“You’re too thin,” she pronounced finally. “Mira never feeds her guests properly. Come by my place later, I have soup.”
Before Mira could protest, Aleksandr said, gravely, “You are very kind, but I assure you, I have… particular tastes.”
Lyudmila cackled. “Don’t we all, son. Don’t we all.”
She shuffled past them, garbage bag swinging, and clomped down the stairs, the faint scent of mothballs lingering in her wake.
Mira waited until she’d disappeared before hissing, “*Particular tastes*?”
“What?” Aleksandr said, all injured innocence. “I did not specify.”
“She likes you,” Mira muttered. “God help us.”
“Ah,” he said. “An ally.”
“Don’t you dare,” she said.
At her floor, she dug out her keys, hands suddenly unsteady. This—bringing him here, into her space—felt like a bigger step than dragging him out of his crypt.
She opened the door and flicked on the light.
Her apartment was small but hers: mismatched furniture, walls half-covered in bookshelves and half in photographs and maps. A plant drooped in one corner, bravely refusing to die. The kitchen area was separated from the living room only by a slight change in linoleum color. The sofa was second-hand, its cushions permanently indented in the shape of late nights and too much reading.
Aleksandr stood on the threshold, taking it in.
“This is… yours,” he said.
“Yes,” she said defensively. “It’s not a ballroom, but it doesn’t leak.”
“It is…” He stepped inside, closing the door softly behind him. “…full.”
“Of…?”
“Life,” he said. “Paper. Ink. Photographs. Things that have been… touched.”
She relaxed a fraction.
“Shoes off,” she said, toeing hers off by the door.
He glanced down, then bent and untied his boots, leaving them neatly beside hers. His socks were thin but clean, a faint darn at one heel.
“Hungry?” she asked. “For… soup?”
His eyes flicked to her neck, just once, before skittering away. “For many things,” he said. “But soup will do.”
She busied herself at the tiny stove, reheating the rest of the lentil mess and cutting the bread and cheese. The domesticity of it soothed her in an odd way. It also made her acutely aware that an immortal predator was currently studying her magnet collection on the fridge.
“You have been… many places,” he observed, touching one that showed a bright blue sea and an old stone fortress: Ghana.
“Some,” she said. “Not enough.”
He picked up a magnet shaped like a cathedral dome: St. Petersburg. “You have seen… my cousins’ city.”
“Briefly,” she said. “Cold. Beautiful. Full of people trying to pretend they weren’t standing on centuries of bones.”
He smiled faintly. “That sounds… right.”
She handed him a bowl of soup and gestured to the table—a flimsy thing that wobbled if you breathed on it wrong. He sat carefully, as if afraid to break it by existing.
They ate in relative silence for a few minutes. He handled the spoon with ease, his table manners as precise as if he were in a dining room with ten courses and three forks.
“How does it feel?” she asked eventually. “Being… out. In… this.”
He set the spoon down, thinking.
“Like… wearing someone else’s coat,” he said. “Everything almost fits, but not quite. The seams pull. The sleeves are a little short. The fabric smells… wrong. But it is still a coat. It still… keeps you from freezing.”
She nodded slowly. “That’s… very specific.”
“You asked,” he said.
“Do you regret it?” she asked quietly. “Waking.”
He looked at her.
“Yes,” he said. “And no. It is… too soon to tell.”
She swallowed. “Fair.”
He studied her face in the warm light.
“And you?” he asked. “Do you regret… opening the stone?”
She stared at her bowl.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “It feels… like cracking open a locked archive. You know there are things inside that will change the story. You just don’t know… how.”
“Change is not always… welcome,” he said.
“Neither is stagnation,” she replied. “I was… stuck. Before this.”
“In… what?” he asked.
“Fighting the same battles,” she said. “Writing the same grant applications. Arguing with the same bureaucrats about why this or that building matters when there’s money to be made tearing it down. This…” She gestured around, vaguely. “You. The estate. Lebedev. It’s… dangerous. But it’s also… new.”
His mouth crooked. “Ah. You are bored.”
“I was,” she admitted.
“And I am… entertainment,” he said.
“Don’t let it go to your head,” she said. “You’re also a headache.”
“I have been called worse,” he said.
They finished the soup.
After, she showed him the bathroom—small, tiled, perpetually damp—and the shower. When she turned on the water to demonstrate, the pipes rattled, coughing out a sullen stream.
He flinched at the temperature. “Cold,” he said.
“It warms up,” she said. “Eventually. Like everything.”
“I do not… need this,” he said cautiously.
“No,” she said. “But you’ve been lying in stone dust for a century. Trust me, you *need* it.”
He made a face, but there was a flicker of curiosity too. “Alone,” he said. “You do not… watch.”
Heat rushed to her face. “God, no. I’m not— I’ll find you a towel.”
She fled, rifling through the linen cupboard. By the time she returned, he’d shed his coat, waistcoat, and shirt, folding them in a neat stack.
He stood bare-chested in the cramped bathroom, pale skin stark against the cheap beige tiles. Old scars latticed his torso—thin lines, puckers, the round puckered memory of a bullet wound high on his left shoulder.
Mira froze.
He glanced up, catching her looking.
“Do you…” His mouth quirked. “Need help with the towel?”
“I— No. Here.” She thrust it at him, almost dropping it.
His fingers brushed hers as he took it. Cool. Steady.
“Thank you,” he said. “I will… be quick.”
She backed out, shut the door perhaps a little too firmly, and leaned her forehead against it, closing her eyes.
“Slow burn,” she whispered to herself. “You promised yourself slow burn.”
The pipes rattled again as he turned the water on.
She busied herself making up the sofa with clean sheets and the least-frayed blanket she owned. The domestic motions calmed her: tuck corners, fluff pillow, shake out duvet.
In the bathroom, the water cut off. She heard the muted swish of the towel, the soft thump of bare feet.
“May I… come out?” he asked, voice muffled by the door.
“It’s your incarceration,” she said. “You can roam between the living room and the kitchen all you want.”
He emerged a moment later, hair damp, a few drops clinging to his throat. He’d put his trousers back on but not his shirt, the towel slung rakishly around his neck like some ancient athlete.
She tried very hard not to look. Failed.
“You’ll catch a chill,” she muttered.
“I do not… catch anything,” he said. “Except… the occasional bullet.”
She rolled her eyes. “Show-off.”
He looked at the sofa. “You intend me to… sleep here.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s the only thing that folds flat. My bed is… mine.”
“Jealously guarded,” he said, amused.
“Yes,” she said again.
He walked closer, then hesitated at what she suddenly understood was the invisible line between her and him. Between guest and intruder.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “For… this.”
“You say that a lot,” she said.
“I do not intend to owe you,” he replied. “So I… keep counts precise.”
“You don’t owe me,” she said. “We’re… even. For waking you.”
He shook his head. “That is not… how I tally it. But we can—” He searched for the phrase. “—agree to disagree.”
He sat, gingerly, on the edge of the sofa, as if expecting it to eject him.
She turned off the main light, leaving only the small lamp by the armchair glowing. The shadows deepened, softening the edges of the room.
For a moment, she stood in the half-light, feeling the weight of his presence settle into the space.
“Do you sleep?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” he said. “It is… different. Lighter. We can rise quickly, if… needed.”
She nodded, jaw flexing. “I’ll set an alarm,” she said. “Just in case we oversleep and wake up to a police raid.”
He smiled faintly. “Pleasant dreams.”
“You too,” she said.
In her bedroom, she closed the door and leaned back against it, exhaling.
She could hear him moving—a faint creak as he stretched out, the soft exhale as he adjusted. Then… nothing. No human sounds. No steady breathing, no habitual sighs.
Mira lay down on her own bed, fully clothed, and stared at the ceiling.
The night pressed close around the building: sirens, distant arguments, the clatter of someone dropping a pot upstairs. In the living room, a century-old vampire lay on her secondhand sofa, hunger an invisible weight.
She set her phone on the pillow beside her, alarm set for dawn, and closed her eyes.
Sleep did not come quickly.
When it did, it brought dreams of stone ceilings and hands reaching up from beneath.
***
At some point in the deep of night, Aleksandr opened his eyes.
The apartment was dark but not silent. He could hear the old building breathing: the hum of pipes, the distant thump of a neighbor’s late television, the high, squeaky song of a mouse behind the kitchen cabinets.
Closer, he could hear Mira’s heart.
It beat steadily in the next room, a soft, insistent drum. Slower now than it had been earlier, calmed by sleep but still so loud to him it felt like someone tapping on his skull.
He lay very still, staring at the vague shape of the ceiling.
The hunger had not lessened.
If anything, being surrounded by so many human scents—neighbors above, below, either side—had aggravated it. A hundred pulses, a hundred warm bodies, all separated from him by a few centimeters of plaster and wood.
His throat ached.
He turned his head toward Mira’s door.
He imagined, with a clarity that disturbed him, the sequence: stand, cross the room, open the door silently, stand at the foot of her bed and watch her sleep for a moment, all soft hair and soft breath. Sit down beside her. Lean. Press his mouth to her throat. Teeth sinking in. The rush of hot copper, the way her body would jerk once in surprise, then go heavy as he took—
He stopped the thought there.
Shame flared, sour in his gut.
He had not fought so hard, learned so much restraint, just to become the thing hunters wrote about in pamphlets.
“Not her,” he whispered to the dark. “Not like this.”
Not without consent. Not in her own home. Not while she slept with her trust lying open like her pulse.
He closed his eyes again. Gravel-slow, he forced his mind away from the present and back to memory.
Elizaveta’s laughter in Vienna. The way Lev had played the piano with fingers still calloused from shovels. Their maker’s voice, telling him about Rome while they lounged in a St. Petersburg townhouse and snow fell outside.
“I am not alone,” he said, very quietly, as if saying it made it true. “I am… between.”
Between centuries. Between families. Between hungers.
In the bedroom, Mira sighed in her sleep, turning over. The sound anchored him.
He stayed on the sofa, eyes open, and watched the last hours of the night crawl past.
Somewhere, a few blocks away, in a dark sedan parked under a streetlight, Lebedev watched the apartment windows.
He had traced Mira’s address easily enough; she appeared often enough in local news when she chained herself metaphorically to historic facades. A woman like that did not hide.
He did not know which window was hers. Not yet. But he had time.
He lit a cigarette, the ember a brief, artificial star, and smiled to himself.
“Sleep well, devushka,” he murmured. “You’ve just made yourself very… valuable.”
The ember flared, then died, as the city turned toward dawn.
***