The letter had shattered something inside him.
Matt stood motionless in the center of his room, the crumpled brown paper trembling slightly in his hands. His eyes had glazed over, unseeing, as the words rearranged themselves in his mind for the tenth time, each reading offering no more clarity than the last.
YOUR LIFE IS IN DANGER IN THAT CASTLE. LEAVE NOW AND FIND ME. FATHER.
Stanley had never written him before. In five years of silence, not a single word had passed between them. And now this? A cryptic warning delivered like a summons? The handwriting were just scrabblings on paper. It was definitely written out of desperation.
A loud bang on the door shattered his trance. He blinked, realizing with a start that someone had been knocking for some time.
"Who is it?" His voice came out hoarse, unfamiliar to his own ears.
"Who is it? I've been knocking for over thirty minutes!" Yvonne's voice cut through the heavy oak, sharp with impatience. "I need to go out, and your slow human reflexes are what's holding me up."
Matt could hear the familiar bite in her words—the constant, low-grade hostility that had become their strange language. But beneath it, something had shifted in recent days. She had stopped fighting her fate of having him around. Acceptance, perhaps. Or resignation.
"I'll be out in a minute," he called back.
"A minute. Not a second more." Her retreating footsteps echoed down the corridor.
Matt looked down at the brown paper one last time, his jaw tightening. He folded it with careful precision, four neat creases, and slipped it into his inner pocket, close to his chest. His leather jacket hung on the chair, but the afternoon heat radiating through the window made him reconsider. He left it behind, settling for the dark shirt that stretched across his shoulders.
---
He found her seated by the garden, beside the black dahlias, her pale skin protected by a sunscreen glowed in the late afternoon sun. She wore a crimson gown that reached just above her knee. Her skin glittered from the excessive applied sunscreen.
Matt stopped at the edge of the garden, watching her delicate face glow under the sun, something catching in his chest. Abomination was the word that surfaced in his mind. She was beautiful—delicate, even—in a way that made no sense for a creature capable of tearing a man apart with her bare hands, yet she was beautiful, a beautiful little devil, he thought, and immediately buried the thought beneath layers of professional detachment.
"What took you so long?" she asked without looking at him, her voice carrying that familiar edge. "We need to get back before dark."
He shot her a questioning look—since when do you care about curfews?—but said nothing. She rose from the stone bench with fluid grace, heading toward the garage without waiting to see if he followed.
The Chevrolet jeep waited in the afternoon shadows, its black surface gleaming. The driver, a bald-headed Colunar vampire with the weathered look of a soldier, sat motionless behind the wheel. Matt took him in with one sweeping, clinical assessment, from the black cufflinks at his wrists to the barely visible scar that traced his jawline. A professional. Dangerous enough to be useful, not dangerous enough to be a threat.
Yvonne walked straight to the back seat, waiting. Matt opened the door for her—a ritual now, one she had stopped protesting. She slid inside without acknowledgment, and Matt caught the ghost of something in her expression as he closed the door. Not contempt. Something quieter. Acceptance, perhaps, of a fate she had once fought with every weapon at her disposal.
He took the passenger seat, catching his reflection in the rearview mirror as the jeep pulled away from the castle. The sight stopped him cold.
Dark circles had begun to settle beneath his eyes, turning the warm brown to something hollow and bruised. His jawline, always sharp, had developed edges he didn't remember, the sharpness of too many sleepless nights, of meals missed, of a body running on borrowed energy. The human cooks Arne had hired prepared meals specifically for his needs, but the food had lost all taste in recent weeks. He was becoming a ghost in a castle of ghosts.
The letter burned against his chest again, a live wire pressed to his heart.
"Hey, driver," Yvonne's voice cut through the silence. "Play me something cool." Then, to Matt: "Try not to be a jerk at Sara's."
"You're one to talk," he almost said, but swallowed the words. The old instinct to push back, to meet her barb with his own, had dulled into something he didn't quite recognize. He said nothing, letting the first notes of country music fill the space between them.
---
Darkness had began to claim the city by the time they reached Neilville Boulevard. The sun had almost retreated entirely, chased to the east coast where it bled orange and crimson into the sea. Tall buildings cast long shadows that swallowed the remaining light, turning the streets into canyons of artificial glow.
Sara's apartment occupied the top floors of an old brick building that had been in her family for three generations. She greeted them at the door with a theatrical embrace for Yvonne and a lingering hand on Matt's arm that lasted a beat too long.
"Matthew," she breathed, pronouncing each syllable with exaggerated care, her eyes never leaving his face. She was dressed in something that shimmered green, her round face flushed with good humor and expensive wine.
"Hi, Sara." Matt offered a diplomatic smile, warm enough to be polite, distant enough to discourage. "It's good to see you again. You look well."
Sara beamed, her grip tightening on his arm. "And you look better than well. Has anyone told you that you have the most extraordinary—"
"Sara." Yvonne's voice was ice wrapped in silk. "Inside. Now."
Sara shot her a look
"This is my house, remember that, I could do whatever I please, I can stay wherever I want. You won't order me around in my own house" Sara said with a feigned rage, then her face cranked to a slow smile as she followed behind Yvonne.
Matt followed them into the apartment, positioning himself by the window where he could watch the street below while remaining just out of earshot. The habit was ingrained now—the constant vigilance, the cataloging of exits and threats. But even as he scanned the darkening boulevard, his mind kept returning to the letter, the words replaying in an endless loop.
Across the room, Yvonne had cornered Sara by the bar, her voice a low hiss. "You're a horny bitch. You know that, right?"
Sara's laugh was a silvery thing, unrepentant. "Come on. He's hot. You just can't see it."
"Enough about Matt." Yvonne's glare could have curdled blood. "Do you have any actual plans for today, or are you just planning to throw yourself at my bodyguard for the entire evening?"
"What I have is for you both." Sara's smile was knowingly infuriating. "You and Matt. Just want to see what that hot body can do."
Yvonne opened her mouth to deliver what would surely have been a devastating retort, but Matt chose that moment to drift back into the living room, his phone glowing in his hand.
"Your father just texted," he said, his eyes on Yvonne alone. "He needs you back home. Now."
The words landed like a stone in still water. Yvonne's expression flickered—something between disappointment and relief—before settling into practiced neutrality.
"We have to cancel. Daddy needs me," she said, and there was something in her voice that Matt couldn't quite name.
Sara walked them to the garage, and Matt caught the flash of irritation that crossed Yvonne's face as Sara leaned in a little too close, her parting words meant for him alone.
"Get a grip of yourself," Yvonne muttered, catching Sara's arm and steering her firmly back toward the door.
---
The jeep pulled onto Neilville Boulevard, the city lights smearing across the windows. Matt's breath caught as he recognized the intersection ahead. Pintsville Street. His father's office. Just a right turn away.
The letter pressed against his ribs like a second heartbeat. He could ask. Just a detour. Ten minutes. He could show Yvonne the letter, explain—
But what would he explain? He didn't understand it himself.
The moment passed. The jeep turned left, leaving Pintsville behind.
As they entered the road that cut through the graveyard, the ancient headstones standing like crooked teeth against the moonless sky. Matt's skin prickled. Something was wrong.
He sat forward, scanning the darkness. And there—half-concealed in the shadow of an old mausoleum—a black van. Parked at an angle that suggested a quick escape. No lights. No movement. Waiting.
Matt's hand moved instinctively to the door handle. He wanted to investigate. Every instinct screamed at him to approach, to see, to know.
But the castle gates were already opening ahead. They were rolling through. The van shrank in the rearview mirror, becoming a dark speck swallowed by the night.
Yvonne was already rising from her seat, her earlier weariness replaced by the sharp energy of returning to her father's domain. She didn't see Matt's face, the way his eyes stayed fixed on the darkness behind them long after the van had disappeared.
He followed her into the castle, the letter burning against his chest, the image of that waiting van seared into his memory.
Someone had been watching. Someone had been waiting.
And Stanley's warning or whomever it was echoed in every step he took YOUR LIFE IS IN DANGER IN THAT CASTLE.
The question was no longer whether to trust it.
The question was how long he had before the danger found him.