frame that she’d painted pink. What that mirror reflected at her was smooth, unblemished skin. She ran her fingers over the centerline of her chest. Her flesh ached, but there was no visible bruise. Just an internal one.
When her hand brushed the slight curve of her breast, she paused, looked at herself again, this time as a woman. Her body was slender but had gained a lithe layer of muscle in the years since the attack. Her breasts, however, were exactly the same size as back then—she’d always hoped they’d get bigger if she had children, but she was part vampire now. No matter what, her body would spring back to this same state relatively quickly.
Slitted green eyes glinting at her, a man who saw nothing amiss in the small and taut mounds.
Color flooded her cheeks, her behavior of the night before a little embarrassing in the bright light of day. What had she been thinking?
Exhilaration. Heat. A dangerous, beautiful man who wasn’t afraid of her.
Her core tightening, she turned away to pick up a dark pink tank top and pulled it on. Over it, she pulled on another tank in blood orange, layering the two so that you could see both colors. It covered everything very neatly. Had her sister worn this, their mother would’ve called her an “advertisement”—Daphne Chang wasn’t the most emancipated of women when it came to her ideas about appropriate clothing.
Mia’s more generous assets tended to overflow tank tops. She always made faces when Holly dressed in tanks, jealous that she couldn’t wear them without being at risk of a wardrobe malfunction. Holly, in turn, had lusted after the lusciously gorgeous bras in her sister’s lingerie stash. One memorable night while Holly was in high school, Mia had helped her stuff a bra full of tissues so she could see what it’d be like once her boobs grew.
Grinning despite the knot in her gut, she picked up her phone and snapped a picture of herself after pulling on a long silver chain with a small bottle at the end. That bottle had sparkling “pixie dust” in it. Also on the chain was a tiny black high-heeled shoe, and an equally tiny pair of scissors forged in silver. Mia had given Holly the long necklace on Holly’s eighteenth birthday.
She added a message to the picture, the kind of message you could only send to a sister you’d played with, fought with, and grown up with: Thinking of you, Boobs.
Mia must’ve been awake despite having worked the night shift, because her reply came at once. Stupid boobs hurt because I decided to go for a run and didn’t wear the right support. Pull your hair back in a tail. Did you hear Wesley is trying out for the youth philharmonic?
Alvin mentioned Wes was considering it when I went over to watch his baseball game last week. A talented violinist himself, fifteen-year-old Alvin was more interested in being in a heavy metal band and was currently rocking a sneakily pierced ear under his shaggy haircut—he was working on the theory of ask parental forgiveness, not permission.
Holly had bought him a small stud for his birthday. When are the tryouts?
A month I think.
Holly made a mental note so she could give her brother a good-luck call, then re-sent her picture after pulling her hair back in a tail as Mia had advised: My sparkly painted boots or the ones with the sunflowers? Holly had bought both pairs at a charity shop for twenty dollars, then gone to town decorating them.
Sparkles. The word was followed by a smiley face. I’m glad you’re back, mei mei.
Me, too, jie jie.
Sliding away her phone after that affectionate exchange, big sister to little sister, she decided to message her two brothers, then call her parents, too—and that was when she realized what she was doing: saying her good-byes. Because Holly would fight to the death to live . . . but not if it meant freeing the monstrous and bloodthirsty thing inside her.
“I hear you’re hissing at handsome young men,” was her mother’s opening statement. “I was going to call you but since you were out so late with that handsome young man, I thought I’d wait. Well?”
“He’s not a young man. He’s one of the most powerful vampires in the city.”
“You should bring him to dinner.”
Holly was momentarily diverted by the idea of Venom at her mother’s dinner table; his wicked smile would surely charm Daphne. Shaking off the strangely compelling image, she