V.M. Nunez

In Caelum, color is a punishment and wanting is a disorder. Worker 2206 has a number, a gray coat, and a sketchbook she was never supposed to keep.

Then the well in the dead land starts to glow, and only Lila can see it.

She falls through into a world that has waited two hundred years for her face. Not hers. Vaeri's: the phoenix who kept a village standing, who put her wolf-mate to sleep with the last of her fire, who died so the war fought over her soul would end.

Now the fire has chosen Lila. The wolf is awake and has sworn never to fail again. And the ancient dark that killed Vaeri so she would come back has decided that two hundred years of waiting is enough.

The two things this world fears most want the same woman. Lila has never been anyone's first choice.

She is about to be the only one.

Carmillia left Arizona to study in Edinburgh. That's the story, and it's a good one. A transfer student. A part-time job. A girl nobody looks at twice.

It's the cover Seven gave her. Seven hunts the things that hunt people, and Carmillia's mask is the job: the vampires she tracks never see it coming, because the harmless girl is the one holding the blade.

She took the Edinburgh posting for one reason. A professor who, if the files are right, is the oldest vampire in the world.

Her assignment is to study him. The problem is that he's studying her back.

Somewhere between his lectures and her lies, something starts that neither of them reports. Two worlds that were never supposed to touch. And the question stops being whether they can trust each other, and becomes whether either of them can trust the people they answer to.

I left Vegas so I'd never have to learn what my family's business, Familia Alcazar, truly is.

My father tried to marry me off for power, and when I fought him, he let me go, so I could find out for myself that soft doesn't survive out there.

Then one night back in town. One man with split knuckles changed my life.

I let his name go right past me. He didn't miss mine. For two years, he waited for my return.

Now I'm the only heir of a man with no sons, locked in a room with the son of his enemy, and I'm not scared of him. That's the problem.

He says he wants me. I say he wants what I'm worth to my father.

We're both right.

In Vegas, everyone is a message. I just don't know who I'm addressed to.