The Joke of the Season

The Duchess of Sutherland’s ball was, quite frankly, a tomb. And Lady Aurelia Thorne knew a thing or two about tombs; she had spent the better part of the 1790s napping in one.

Aurelia stood near the edge of the ballroom, a fluted glass of champagne in her gloved hand. She didn’t drink it, of course. Champagne did terrible things to the digestion when one’s primary diet consisted of hemoglobin, but it was a necessary prop. She swirled the liquid, watching the bubbles rise and pop, wishing she could do the same to the tedious man currently droning on about the corn laws.

“And thus,” Lord Pennyworth stammered, his mustache quivering like a distressed caterpillar, “the agrarian implications are severe.”

“Devastating,” Aurelia agreed, her voice light and airy. She flashed a smile that showed just a hint too much tooth. “I imagine the wheat is simply dying to be harvested.”

Pennyworth blinked, missing the predatory glint in her eyes. “Quite.”

Aurelia suppressed a sigh that might have dusted the powder off her décolletage. This was her existence. Endless nights of waltzes, bad poetry, and the suffocating scent of human sweat masked by lavender water. She was two hundred years old, and she was bored out of her undead mind.

She scanned the room, looking for anything to break the monotony. A scandal? A swooning debutante? A rat scurrying across the parquet?

Her gaze landed on a figure standing by the heavy velvet curtains near the balcony doors.

He was massive. Not merely tall, but broad in a way that suggested his tuxedo was fighting a losing battle against the laws of physics. He stood with the stillness of a statue, holding a crystal tumbler of scotch with a grip that threatened to turn it back into sand. His hair was dark, swept back severely, and his eyes—even from this distance—burned with a golden, irritable intensity.

But it was the smell that caught her attention.

Amidst the perfumes and the roasting meats of the buffet, he smelled of ozone. Of ash. Of deep, subterranean earth and the sharp tang of sulfur.

He smelled like a volcano trying to pass as a gentleman.

Intrigued, Aurelia excused herself from Pennyworth and glided across the floor. She moved with a liquid grace that made the other guests seem clumsy and disjointed. As she neared the stranger, the heat radiating from him hit her like a physical wave. It was delicious.

“You look,” Aurelia said, stopping just inside his personal space, “like you are contemplating setting the curtains on fire.”

The man looked down. His eyes narrowed, the pupils contracting into vertical slits for a fraction of a second before rounding out.

“The curtains are velvet,” he rumbled. His voice was a tectonic plate shifting. “They would smolder, not burn. It would be inefficient.”

Aurelia blinked. Then, a bubble of genuine mirth expanded in her chest. It rose up her throat and escaped before she could stop it.

She laughed.

It wasn’t the polite titter of society. It was a bright, bell-like sound, sharp and clear, cutting through the murmuring drone of the ballroom. It was a laugh that shattered glass. Heads turned. The orchestra faltered for a beat.

The man stared at her, horrified. “Madam, are you unwell?”

“Inefficient!” Aurelia gasped, clutching her fan. “Oh, that is rich. You are standing there, radiating enough heat to boil a kettle, and you are worried about the *efficiency* of the arson?”

He took a step back, shielding his drink as if she might attack it. “I beg your pardon? Who are you?”

“Lady Aurelia Thorne,” she said, recovering her composure but keeping the smile. She leaned in, dropping her voice to a whisper. “And you, sir, are not human.”

The man froze. The air around them grew heavy, the pressure dropping instantly. A faint wisp of gray smoke curled up from his collar.

“Careful,” he growled, the sound vibrating in her very bones. “Curiosity kills the cat, Lady Thorne.”

“Good thing I’m already dead,” she whispered back, her eyes dancing. “And you’re no cat. You’re a lizard. A very large, very grumpy lizard who is hoarding all the scotch.”

He stared at her. For a long moment, the violence in his eyes was palpable. He was assessing the threat level. He was calculating the distance to the throat.

Then, he sighed. It sounded like a steam engine venting. “Lord Ignatius Blackwood. And if you do not lower your voice, I will be forced to buy this building just to evict you.”

Aurelia clapped her hands together. “Oh, wonderful. A tyrant. I haven’t dated a tyrant since Napoleon. This is going to be such fun.”