The blood test came back wrong again.

I stared at the lab slip pinned to the clipboard outside Dr. Yuen's office. ANOMALOUS. Third time this year. The phlebotomist had apologized, like it was her fault my blood didn't behave.

"Irina." Greta's voice cut through the hallway at Maison Veil. "Client in fifteen. Suite three."

I folded the lab slip into my pocket and washed my hands. Suite three meant high-profile. Suite three meant vampire.

The styling house ran on discretion. We dressed the undead for galas, press tours, council appearances. My job was fabric, fit, the architecture of a silhouette that would photograph well under stage lighting and survive a room full of people who could smell your lunch on your breath.

I liked the work. I was good at it. And it kept me close enough to see the machinery.

The client was already in the suite when I entered. Not the one I expected.

He stood at the window with his back to me, and the first thing I registered was the stillness. Not the posed stillness of someone waiting to be seen. The absolute stillness of something that doesn't need to breathe.

"Mr. Marek," Greta said from behind me. "This is Irina Volke. She'll be handling your fitting today."

He turned.

I'd seen his face on screens, in magazines, on the side of a building once, promoting some foundation for "interspecies cultural exchange." Severin Marek. Four centuries old. Media empire. Council seat. The most photographed vampire in the world.

In person, he was colder than the photographs suggested. Tall, lean, black hair cut so precisely it looked architectural. Eyes the color of wet slate. A face minted for a currency no one remembered.

I picked up the garment bag from the rack. "Shall we start with the jacket?"

He watched me. Not the way clients usually watched, assessing whether I was someone worth charming. He watched the way you'd watch a bird land on a wire fence in winter. Curious. Faintly puzzled.

"You're not nervous," he said. Most people flinched in the first ten seconds.

"Should I be?"

"Most people are."

I unzipped the bag. I was counting boats through the window — seven at the harbor, three of them listing — because counting kept my hands steady around clients who could hear a pulse spike from across a room. The jacket was Loro Piana cashmere, midnight navy, hand-stitched. It would look like a second skin on him. "I'm here to make sure the shoulders sit right. That's the extent of my concern."

A pause. Then something that wasn't quite a smile. "As you like."

I worked in silence. His skin was cool through the fabric when I adjusted the collar. My fingers brushed his neck and a current ran down my arm, hot and involuntary. I pulled back.

He noticed. Of course he noticed.

"The collar's fine," I said. "Turn, please."

He turned. I pinned the back seam and pretended the tremor in my hands was from the pins.

Greta appeared in the doorway when we finished. She had the expression she wore when delivering news that would change the shape of someone's week. "Irina. A word."

In the hallway, she lowered her voice. Her hands were fidgeting with her tablet. "You've been requested. As a Chosen candidate."

The word landed like a brick in still water. Chosen. The golden ticket. The dream that launched reality shows and magazine empires and turned ordinary humans into celebrities overnight.

I knew better.

"By whom?"

Greta's mouth thinned. She glanced back at suite three. "Severin Marek."

The name settled into my chest like a cold stone.

I went back to the suite. He was still at the window. The city behind him, gray and vast.

"You should know I'm going to say no," I said.

He turned. Something moved in his expression — not surprise. Recognition. Like I'd confirmed something he already suspected.

"You haven't heard the terms."

"I don't need to."

"Then hear this." He crossed the room. Stopped three feet away. The cold rolled off him in waves. "Your blood is unusual, Miss Volke. Unusual enough that other parties have noticed. Their interest is not as polite as mine."

My fingers found the lab slip in my pocket. ANOMALOUS.

"What other parties?"

He didn't answer. Just held my gaze with the patience of something that had outlived every inconvenience it had ever faced.

"Think about it," he said. "I'll send a car tomorrow evening."

He left. The suite warmed two degrees in his absence.

I waited until the door closed behind him.

Then I took the lab slip out of my pocket.

ANOMALOUS.

Third time this year.

If anyone connected the results to me, it would be a problem. If anyone connected them to Red Ink — three years of anonymous posts exposing a system that traded human bodies like currency, every piece a brick removed from the wall that kept the Chosen program respectable — it would be worse.

And Severin Marek already knew too much.