Chapter 7

Vesper

The penthouse was silent except for the hum of the city forty floors below, but that silence did nothing to calm the storm raging inside me.

I'd made it back to my Las Vegas high-rise in one piece—barely—but the night had been a spectacular disaster. No hot werewolf hookup. Instead, I'd nearly gotten my throat slit by said hot werewolf, all because I'd been stupid enough to use some shiny artifact to pay for pad thai.

And now? Now I was stuck doing a job for Dante—stealing some antique casket he'd been obsessing over for years. One successful heist, and we'd call it even. My slate wiped clean.

I should've felt relieved. I didn't.

I dropped onto the leather couch, yanked a cigarette from the pack on the coffee table, and lit it with a snap of my fingers—a tiny flare of fae magic that was one of the few tricks I could actually pull off consistently. The smoke curled toward the ceiling as I took a long drag, then exhaled with enough force to fog the floor-to-ceiling windows.

"Fuck," I muttered to the empty room, my voice echoing off the marble floors and minimalist furniture that screamed I have money but no idea how to make this place feel like home. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

Because here's the thing: I stole for me. The thrill, the challenge, the way my heart raced when I slipped past security systems that cost more than most people's houses—that was mine. That was freedom. Working for someone else? That made me a common thief. A lackey. A goddamn employee in the worst gig economy ever.

I took another drag, letting the nicotine settle my nerves, and glared at my reflection in the darkened window. Half-human, half-fae, and somehow managing to embody the worst qualities of both. Too reckless for the human world, too weak for the fae one. Couldn't even shift properly—my fae blood was strong enough to give me the instincts and the compulsions but not the actual power to back them up.

"I'm fae," I said to my reflection, my voice rising with indignation. "A fucking fae. And some human crime boss thinks he can threaten me?" I stabbed the cigarette toward the window like I was pointing at Marcus's boss himself. "The second I figure out how to unlock all my abilities, I'm not stealing from you anymore, asshole. I'm robbing you. There's a difference."

The cigarette was halfway to my lips again when my phone buzzed on the table, the screen lighting up with an incoming video call. I glanced at the caller ID and immediately wanted to throw the phone out the window.

Grandmother.

The woman who'd never once bothered to visit me in person but had no problem video-calling to remind me what a disappointment I was.

Of course. Because this night needed one more layer of bullshit.

I declined the call and took another drag, hoping she'd get the hint. She didn't. The phone buzzed again, her name flashing insistently across the screen like she had all the time in the world and knew I'd eventually cave.

"Unbelievable," I muttered, but I answered anyway, because ignoring her only made things worse. The screen filled with her face, and I had to suppress the urge to throw something at it.

She looked thirty. Maybe thirty-five if you were being generous. Smooth skin, sharp green eyes that sparkled with amusement, and a smile that suggested she knew exactly how much I hated this. She was pure-blooded fae, which meant she could look however the hell she wanted, and she'd chosen to look like someone who'd never faced a single hardship in her impossibly long life.

"Grandmother," I said flatly, not bothering to hide my irritation. "What do you want?"

"Well, hello to you too, darling," she said, her voice lilting with that infuriatingly cheerful tone she always used when she knew she was getting under my skin. "Can't I call my beloved granddaughter just to chat? See how she's doing?"

I stared at her. "Beloved? Are you sure you're talking to me? Because last I checked, I was the half-fae granddaughter whose impure bloodline you've reminded me about roughly a thousand times."

Her smile widened. "Oh, Vesper. Always so direct. It's one of your more endearing qualities."

"Endearing," I repeated, deadpan. "Right. Because you've been so endeared to me over the years. Let's see—you told me I was half-fae when I was five, informed me my parents abandoned me because they were 'ashamed' of what I was, and then proceeded to never lift a finger to help me survive. Oh, and you encouraged me to go into the underground crime scene to 'build character.' So forgive me if I'm not feeling particularly warm and fuzzy right now."

She waved a hand dismissively, as if my entire childhood trauma was nothing more than a minor inconvenience. "Well, I never said I was interested in coddling you. But I am interested in your progress. Tell me, how's your little thieving career going? Any improvements in those fae abilities of yours?"