“Bye Hugo, momma loves you!” she called then swept out her apartment locking it behind her.

God, this could really be it. She hated her seventy-dollar couch she bought at a thrift store. She hated her scratched up ugly kitchen table. She hated that the only clocks she had in the whole apartment was the stove and her alarm clock. She hated her cheap glasses bought off the clearance rack in a Wal-Mart. She was so sick of not having nice things, of not wanting her friends to come over and see just how poor she really was. It might be petty, but her surroundings embarrassed her. She wanted to do better for herself. And damn it she worked hard and was damn good at her job. If she could get a job...

Felicity got in her car—another despicable thing. Sure it’d once been shiny and working nicely, but that’d been before Bud. Bud was a human who liked to drink and drive. Being a vampire and all Felicity kind of preferred night life. So  she was surprised when one night she took a  green light towards downtown St. Louis, Missouri and heard the sound of screeching tires. No amount of vampire speed could make her car go any faster. The drunken bastard slammed his black Ford F150 into her car so hard it flipped three times before landing upside down in oncoming traffic.

He, and all the others at the light who helped her out of the car, all seemed a bit surprised that she was alive with no broken bones or even a nosebleed. Well, actually, Bud wasn’t that concerned seeing as he was hurling his guts up outside his truck.

It was thanks to that drunken asshole’s lack of insurance that her car looked as it did. It cost too much to repair so she never got her car fixed. She’d lucked out that aside from a new oil filter and some other sensor thing being put on, her car ‘ran.’ If one called the chugging sound it made and the black puffs of smoking coming out the tail end ‘running’.

Of course, the right side where she got t-boned was completely busted in as if a car slammed into it. If she and Beth ever took her car, which they didn’t, then Beth would have to crawl in through the driver’s side door.

Who the heck had that kind of money to get it fixed? Well, not her.

She had no one to turn to for help, as if she would anyway. So she had a super busted car littered with dents on the left and right side, plus a roof that sported a divot the size of a kiddie pool. The roof dipped down so low that if she was taller she might have a hard time sitting up straight in the seat. Luckily for her she was short, just like her mother. A snarl escaped her.

“Don’t even think about her. Stay positive!” she told herself.

With a turn of the key, she started her hunk of metal and tore off to the Blackmoore estate. She knew where it was. Anyone who was anyone knew where the Blackmoores lived. They were only the oldest living vampire family in the world. Originally from the Middle East, somewhere near present day Turkey, they’d traveled all over the world as the years past and humans evolved.

Felicity didn’t need to be their accountant to know that the Blackmoores were from big money as in b-i-g money. The kind that worked in politics and threw rich dinners for big government and investor types for ten thousand dollar plate dinners.

“Damn!”

Felicity slammed her hand against her steering wheel wishing she still had her cell phone. She hadn’t been able to keep it. Sixty bucks a month for a single phone wasn’t cutting it on her budget. She really wanted to call Beth right now. Her best friend would give her all the positive ear candy she could want.

Felicity pulled onto the highway and checked the clock. “We’re good, Felicity. Still got a good twenty minutes to get there.” The Blackmoores lived in a ritzy neighborhood tucked back in a deceivingly middle-income looking area where coffee shops littered every corner and the homeowners refused to allow Wal-Mart to build so they wouldn’t put out the mom and pop shops that still hung around. It was an area where bicycle lines marked the road and where people took their small dogs into gas stations and grocery stores.

It was weird.

 The house was in the back of the area where ominous black gates stood towering like menacing wraiths above the street. The Blackmoore house rested up on the hill behind the gates. Many tall, old trees blocked the view so you’d be hard pressed to see the house unless you walked by the gate and found just enough of a crack between limbs and trunks. Felicity had seen it though, just part of it when she’d driven by before.

When Felicity had applied for the job she had done it quickly and without much thought. That was because she knew she’d never land a job with the Blackmoores. They hired world-renowned artists for even the simplest of things. They would not hire some nobody vampire girl from the city. Still, she’d been desperate and a little hopeful that just maybe she’d get the job.

Usually when she went to a job interview she was as prepared as possible, sometimes she even spent days learning about a specific client and then scouted locations, created designs, and came up with ideas to dazzle them. True, many of those times she’d forgotten her briefcase or portfolio when she’d gone to the interview, but she’d learned her lesson.

Whether it was the economy or the fact that times had changed from the early days where throwing a gala and impressing everyone with your wealth and status was all the rage, but now people didn’t do that. Too bad, she missed those times, the elegance, the jewelry, lavish gowns.

A soft sigh escaped her.

Sometimes she’d read in V-Society about the Blackmoore’s throwing such parties. Felicity bit her lip as she bounced in her seat with excitement. If she could land this job and they liked her, she could have a permanent new income. They would return to her because they’d be so in love with her design choices. She could almost see it now.

That was it, she decided then. She would just have to become their permanent event planner no matter what it took. This was just the kind of job she’d been searching for and it’d just fallen in her lap—nearly.

A thought struck her. The head of the Blackmoore family and president of the vampire and were council had recently died from a rare blood disease, Arromunia. That’s why they needed her. Talks of his death still hadn’t stopped among vamp society. The disease didn’t occur often. The last time a vampire died of it was more than fifty years ago and the time before that spanned another seventy-five years. Very rare indeed.

The disease was the only sickness her kind was susceptible to aside from pure silver, the hot rays of sunlight, and decapitation. No one knew how to get the strange sickness, and it was so rare scientists had not been able to study it in the past. It simply came, chose a victim, and then slowly sucked the life from them like a poison. No amount of blood transfusions could help. The immortal body, after a slow and debilitating trial, would die withering like a body with too much skin clinging to it, eyes sunken, and cheeks gaunt.

That meant Mr. Blackmoore’s eldest son would be in charge—Dominic the one who’d interview her.

A chill raced over her body. Felicity shook it off and took the road that would hopefully change her life forever. If she could only get a gig like this, her name would be famous among society. Everyone would know the name Felicity Shaw.

She could finally donate her crappy thrift store furniture and buy something real that was just hers. Something she actually liked because it was beautiful and comfortable not because it was cheap.

The Blackmoore’s estate was the only house street on the block. It wasn’t like they owned the street, more like the many acres of land surrounding the house, all of which was gated in by the towering black gate over six feet tall. The black, spiked tops didn’t look sharp but they served as a warning—do not enter.