The Debt

He's standing in my living room.

That's not possible. I didn't buzz anyone up. The door was locked, I checked it twice before I sat down with my contracts textbook. Nobody should be able to...

"Miss Chen." His voice is smooth. Old. Like something preserved in amber. "I apologize for the intrusion."

I don't scream. Screaming won't help. Instead, I calculate distances. The kitchen is twelve feet away. The knife block is on the counter. My phone is on the coffee table, closer to him than to me.

"How did you get in?"

He tilts his head. Dark hair, longer than fashion allows. Gray eyes that absorbed the lamplight rather than returning it. He's dressed like he stepped out of a period film, waistcoat, silk tie, clothes that belonged in a museum's textile collection.

"Your grandmother invited me." He says it like it explains everything. "The invitation transferred with the debt."

"That's not how invitations work."

"That's not how human invitations work." A slight smile. He's amused. I'm standing in my own apartment with an intruder who finds me amusing.

"I'm calling the police."

"They won't find anything wrong." He takes a step toward me, no, he doesn't step. He's simply closer. I never saw him move. "Miss Chen. Harlow. I'm not here to harm you. I'm here to collect what's owed."

The word owed roots me where I stand.

Grandma Rose died six months ago. Dementia, the doctors said. Confusion at the end. She kept babbling about debts and deals and promises that had to be kept. I held her hand and nodded and didn't believe a word.

"I don't owe you anything."

"No. Your grandmother did." He produces a document from inside his coat. Old paper, yellowed at the edges, but preserved perfectly. "One hundred years of service from her bloodline, in exchange for what I provided. Signed in 1925. Your grandmother fulfilled ninety-nine of those years. One remains. The debt transfers to the next female heir upon the previous holder's death."

I don't take the paper. "That's insane."

"That's the law." He sets it on my coffee table. "Not human law, admittedly. But binding nonetheless."

I'm a law student. Third year, top of my class, scholarship kid who had to claw for every grade. I know contracts. I know what makes them enforceable and what makes them worthless.

I also know that my grandmother was the most practical woman I've ever known. She didn't believe in magic. She believed in hard work and sensible shoes and never taking candy from strangers.

She wouldn't have signed something like this.

"Read it." He hasn't moved again. Just stands there, impossibly still. "Verify the signature. Consult whatever experts you need. The contract is valid."

"And if I don't? If I throw this in the trash and call the cops and pretend this never happened?"

"The terms include protections." His voice is patient. Practiced. He's had this conversation before. "Your grandmother agreed to them in exchange for my assistance. If the debt is not honored, those protections are revoked."

"Protections against what?"

"Everything I kept from reaching her family." He meets my eyes, and something in my chest goes cold. "The property. The investments. The scholarships that appeared when they were needed. The accidents that didn't happen. The illnesses that resolved. Everything, Miss Chen. Everything your grandmother bought with her service."

I want to argue. I want to tell him he's lying, that my family made their own luck, that Grandma's hard work built everything we have.

But I remember things. Strange things. The car accident when I was seven, how did we walk away without a scratch? The house fire that didn't spread past the kitchen, though the firefighters said it should have burned to the foundation. My scholarship appearing the week Grandma got sick, like someone wanted to make sure I'd be taken care of.

"You're saying you arranged all that."

"I'm saying I protected what was mine to protect." He gestures at the contract. "Read it. Take your time. I'll return tomorrow evening to discuss the terms."

"What if I'm not here?"

"You will be." He moves toward the door, toward the door, and again I catch no movement. One position, then another. "The contract ensures it."

"That's imprisonment."

"That's obligation." He pauses at the threshold. "I'll see you tomorrow, Miss Chen. Wear comfortable shoes. The manor has many stairs."

He's gone.

Just gone. The door didn't open. I didn't hear footsteps. He was there and then he wasn't, and I'm standing in my apartment holding a hundred-year-old contract that has my grandmother's signature on the bottom.

I drop onto the couch.

Then I pick up the document and start reading.

The language is archaic but precise. Terms laid out in perfect legal structure. One hundred years of service from the bloodline of Rose Chen, née Sullivan. Blood service, household service, personal service... the categories were broad, the definitions ruthlessly specific.

And at the bottom, in brown ink that looks almost rust-colored, is my grandmother's name.

Rose Margaret Sullivan.

Her maiden name. Her handwriting. I'd know it anywhere, I have a lifetime of birthday cards to compare it to.

I read it again. Then again. I look for loopholes, for ambiguities, for anything that might void the contract.

It's airtight.

Whoever wrote this, whoever that man is, knew exactly what he was doing. Every clause reinforces the others. Every term is defined. Every obligation is spelled out in language that would hold up in any court, if any court would hear a case about blood service and vampire debts and...

Vampire.

The word surfaces from somewhere deep. The way he moved without moving. The stillness. The pale skin and the too-old eyes and the fact that he's been holding this contract since 1925.

No.

I don't believe in vampires. I believe in contracts and precedents and the reasonable person standard. I believe in evidence and arguments and the justice system.

But my grandmother believed in something. Believed enough to sign her name and her family's future over to a stranger with gray eyes and a patient voice.

I spend the night at my kitchen table, reading the contract over and over, looking for a way out.

I don't find one.

When the sun comes up, I'm still reading.

And somewhere across the city, in a manor I've never seen, Lord Lysander Varek is waiting.

He knows I'll be there tomorrow.

So do I. That's the part that makes my hands unsteady.