Blood Owed (Blood Mafia #1) 1st

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 COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2020 by Rory Miles

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any

electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and
retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except
for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

All characters and places are fictional.

Cover by Covers by Aura

 CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Author’s Note
About the Author
Also by Rory Miles
 AUTHOR’S NOTE

Hello and welcome to the first book in the Blood Mafia series. This
one is a doozy. There are dark themes which may upset some
readers.

I hope you enjoy our stabby main character. Demi’s got a knife with
your name on it ;).
To all of the people who wish they could stab someone for being
stupid (or an asshole), but don’t because they’d rather not do jail
time. This one’s for you, you violently beautiful human.
 CHAPTER ONE

D emi
“Hello?” I set the food on the island and glance into the living
room. It’s empty, but I can hear Kevin’s music playing from the
bedroom. The corners of my mouth tug down when I hear the music
we use to set the mood.
Someone’s spanking the monkey.
Running a finger along the cream-colored wall, I make my way to
the bedroom. The door’s shut. Not entirely odd, but I begin to get
that horrible sinking feeling in my gut.
The kind you get when you know something awful is about to
happen. Like in fifth grade when I decided to wear white pants after
Labor Day. I had this awful feeling when I finished buttoning them,
but I ignored it. Later that morning, I’d gotten my period and hadn’t
realized it until a giant red stain covered my ass.
What settles in the pit of my stomach now feels similar only a
thousand times worse because I can hear the stupid wooden
headboard banging against the wall.
There’s no way spanking the monkey can make so much noise.
I jerk the door open hard enough that it slams into the wall.
Between the music and the bed, Kevin hasn’t noticed me. But she
does, and the stupid fucking pixie stares straight at me with a smug
smile. Her pink and purple hair—which looks fabulous on her by the
way—is plastered to her forehead and messed up in the back.
My black sheets, my sheets, are crinkled and pulled up on one
side to reveal the mattress underneath. They’ve been going at it
hard. Her skin holds a hint of pink, and had she not been screwing
my boyfriend, I would probably fall in love with her.
I’m a sucker like that. Pixies are in my top three favorite fae
beings. They’re notoriously ornery, short, petite and every type of
male loves them. Apparently, Kevin has no immunity to her charm
because here he is, boinking her brains out.
I still haven’t said anything. I mean, he has never been like that
with me. He’s slamming into her, hard and rough. The bed groans
and creaks, threatening to break. He doesn’t hold back his shifter
strength with her.
Whatever he’s doing seems to be working for her because her
eyes roll back into her head. She lets out a throaty moan, and he
comes along with her. I know because he does the weird bucking
thing he always does, though it takes him with more force than I’ve
grown accustomed to.
“Well, excuse the fuck out of me, but what the hell are you
doing?” I say, finally finding my voice.
At least I let him finish. I kick his boxers out of the way and
stand by the bed, glaring down at the fae and wolf. Probably not the
smartest thing for a human to do.
“Shit, Demi.” Kevin squeaks. Yes, he actually squeaks as he pulls
out of his conquest and scrambles off the bed. I pick up one of his
random band tees, which he never puts in the hamper, and throw it
at his head.
“Put some fucking clothes on,” I scream at him.
 The pixie laughs and sits up, leaving her perfect body on display.
Her tits are perfect and perky. Fae bitch.
“This is your girlfriend?” She sounds so disappointed.
I sneer at her. “Don’t fucking push me, short stop.”
“Calm down, Demi.”
The pixie snickers at Kevin’s reprimand.
Red clouds my vision.
I shove the pixie down and catapult over the bed in a way that
surprises even myself. I cock my fist back and clock my ex-boyfriend
right in the kisser. His head snaps sideways, much to my enjoyment.
Years of mixed martial arts training have built up enough strength
that I know he feels it. He may not be writhing in pain, but he feels
it.
When his gaze meets mine, they’re glowing amber; his wolf is
close to the surface.
“Oh, put it away, Kevin. Get your shit and get the hell out of my
apartment.”
“Demi, come on,” he says, as if him screwing someone else—a
fae at that—isn’t automatic grounds for dismissal.
“Get. Your. Shit.” I grind the words out. My fists are clenched,
and I fight the urge to punch him again. I may have gotten away
with it once, but his wolf will definitely make an appearance if I hit
him again.
The whole power dynamic between supernaturals and humans
isn’t fair. Regardless of how smart we are or how much technology
we develop, they’ll always be stronger.
Stupid genetic mutation.
“Humans are so emotional,” the pixie says.
I glare at her over my shoulder. Of course she’s pulling on a
magenta dress and it looks amazing on her. Fae and supes are
different. Supes are superior humans, whereas fae come from an
entirely different world. Hence the vibrant hair and pink skin.
Why couldn’t he have chosen someone uglier?
Someone non-fae?
Kevin grunts in agreement.
Mother freaking wolves.
Picking up the book I’ve been reading from the nightstand, I
smack him in the face with it.
“I’ll show you emotional, you fucking animal.”
Before I can get in another swing, he’s partially shifted and
pinning me to the floor. His chest heaves, and his eyes glow brighter.
My backbone flees, and I drop my gaze, submitting to him before
his wolf decides to bite my head off.
“Unbelievable.” His scoff ruffles my hair. He shoves off the floor,
standing in one swift movement.
“Get out.” I close my eyes, waiting for them to leave.
When the front door closes, I let out a groan of annoyance. I
should’ve castrated him.
Rolling to my side, I shove myself off the red throw-rug and
straighten my hair because it’s now a long, tangled mess. I go into
the kitchen to grab my phone, wondering all the while if I’d go to jail
for lighting my bed on fire. The mobile device sits alone on the
island. The sack I’d come home with is gone.
The bastard took the food.
A tear rolls down my cheek.
I really wanted that orange chicken.
A trilling ring fills the line for a few seconds before a familiar
voice greets me.
“Lexi.”
My best friend sucks in a hissing breath when she hears my
despondent voice. “What did that shifter son of a bitch do?”
“A gorgeous pixie.” I stare at the wall as I speak, feeling
detached from everything.
Fuck him.
Kevin and I dated for the past two years. I loved him. I trusted
him. It’s hard to come to terms with the complete and utter betrayal
I feel. How long has he been screwing her?
A week?
A month?
Longer?
“I’m coming over. Take a shower and get dressed.”
“No, Lex.” I say, whining into the phone. Can’t she let me wallow
in my misery?
“Seriously, woman. Don’t make me slap you. I can hear you
retreating into your shell. Get up, take a shower, put on something
sexy.”
I sigh. “Please tell me there will be tequila.” Drinking might not
wash the pain away permanently, but it’ll be a nice Band-Aid for the
night at least.
“Only the best for you, boo.”
I chuckle. “Okay.”
After the hottest shower my hot water heater can give me, I
wrap the towel around my hair. I stand naked in front of the closet,
shifting through the clothes. Which club we go to depends on Lexi’s
mood. Most of my going out clothes are on the modest side of
things. Compared to what supes wear, my clothes are downright
conservative.
The front door clicks open as I continue searching for something
Lexi will approve of. Lexi and sexy go hand in hand. Not because the
words rhyme. Lexi has long, honey-colored hair. Her skin is bronzed
to perfection, and the woman has eyebrows to die for. On top of all
that, her lips are soft, full, and the perfect color of light pink.
My friend’s been weakening the knees of men since she came of
age.
“Please tell me you aren’t seriously considering the green one.”
I turn, smirking at the disgust on her face.
“I see you let yourself in.”
She waves her hand around, the key I gave her glinting in the air.
“Wasn’t that the point of this?”
I snort. “Not really.” The key is for emergencies or when I go out
of town with Kevin. Instead, Lexi uses it as an open invitation to
come over whenever she damn well pleases. I don’t really mind;
Lexi’s family. I face the closet again, not caring that she stands there
watching my bare ass as I choose an outfit.
She’s seen worse.
My fingers brush against black fabric. I pull it from the hanger
and shimmy into the leather dress. It’s the most risqué piece I own.
One side has a spaghetti-strap while the top part of the dress pulls
up and over the other arm in a thicker piece. A few bands of black
studs crisscross over my stomach and parts of the skirt are cut out,
revealing pieces of my hips and thighs.
I twirl, palms facing up. “Well, good enough for you?”
Her lips pucker as she whistles. “Damn, girl. Where have you
been hiding that number?”
 “I was saving it for our trip to Las Vegas.” I frown, thinking of all
the money I wasted planning the trip for our anniversary.
She narrows her eyes. “No more, you’ll get premature wrinkles at
twenty-four if you keep making that face. Let me help you with your
makeup.”

“T wo shots of tequila and two margaritas ,” L exi shouts over the

music at the bartender.
Vu Ja De, the nightclub Lexi brought me to, is popping. Strobe
lights flash over the crowded dance floor, making people scream and
holler as they grind and press against each other. This club is
notorious, known for getting people drunk as hell and having the
best DJs. There are so many people, and I don’t recognize a single
face in the crowd.
Honestly, my best friend couldn’t have chosen a better place to
bring me.
He looks between the two of us with a knowing smile. “Going
hard tonight, ladies?”
“It’s going to be so hard,” Lexi says, winking at him.
The bartender blushes at her innuendo and turns around to grab
our drinks.
She makes a sound of appreciation. “Will you look at that?”
I laugh.
My friend twirls a piece of my hair, leaning her scantily clad body
against mine. “I bet he could crack nuts with that ass.”
Slapping my hand over my mouth, I stifle a chortle. “You’re
ridiculous.” I sneak a quick peek at his butt. Yeah, she’s not wrong.
Those are some perky cheeks.
 “You’re blushing,” she whispers into my ear.
I screech and shove her away. “Stop it.”
“Best way to get over someone is to get under someone new.”
Lexi shrugs.
A guy next to her shoots me an inquisitive look. I bite my lip and
let my gaze roam over his body. He’s wearing a casual navy button
up T-shirt and dark-washed jeans. His biceps bulge when he picks up
his drink and salutes me.
Lexi nudges me with her elbow. “Damn, you work fast, woman.
Let’s at least take the shots first.”
The bartender drops the shot glasses in front of us, and another
one slides our margaritas across the bar top.
Pulling my gaze from the handsome stranger with the chiseled
jawline, I grab the shot glass.
“Fuck cheating boyfriends.” Lexi clinks her little glass with mine,
sloshing a bit of tequila on my finger.
“No salt, no lime,” I sing-song to her.
She giggles. “We’ll be drinking from the bottle tonight.”
“Ready?”
“One, two, three, go!” she says all in one breath.
Oh fuck. I should have known she’d force it on me. I press the
glass to my lips and let the tequila burn down my throat; the heat of
it soothes the ache in my chest.
Or maybe that’s me deciding not to give a damn about Kevin and
the pixie, at least not tonight. I’ll worry about them tomorrow.
Right now, I have one goal: get completely and totally smashed.
 CHAPTER TWO

D emi
Wearing a leather dress to a nightclub is a horrible idea. After
grinding against Mr. Handsome Stranger for a few songs and
dancing with a few other guys, the material is sticky.
I probably look like a drowned puppy.
“Lexi.” My words are slightly slurred, and I laugh. “Lexiiii, I’m
going to the bathroom.”
She’s pressed up against some guy, rolling her hips into his.
“I’ll be back.” I’m not sure why I tell her, considering she isn’t
paying attention, but I do. I’m not worried about going alone, I have
a silver knife strapped to my thigh, a simple preparation in case
Kevin decides to show up and cause problems.
I missed my castration opportunity earlier, but I’m prepared now.
Shoving through the masses, I make my way over to the small
hallway marked Staff. I really have to pee, and I haven’t the faintest
clue where the main bathrooms are, so I cross my fingers and hope
the staff ones are unlocked. There are three doors, and
unfortunately, none of them are marked. I open the first one. When
I see the mop bucket, I growl and slam the door closed.
 There better be bathrooms over here. Walking with my thighs
clenched together so I don’t pee is ridiculously difficult in these
heels. I wobble to the next door and open it, slamming it shut just
as quickly. Third time’s the charm, right?
I open the last door, sighing in relief when I spot a porcelain
throne.
Jackpot.
I lock myself in and use the bathroom. When I wash my hands, I
finally look in the mirror. For all the sweating and dancing, my dark
hair still holds a slight curl and my makeup is only a little smudged. I
use the towels I wiped my hands on to fix my eyeliner.
Bam.
Something hits and shakes the walls of the bathroom hard.
My hip slams into the counter when I jump. I hiss and rub the
spot, listening to the muffled sounds of shouting. Whatever’s
happening, it’s coming from outside the club.
Curiosity—and tequila—get the better of me. I creep out of the
bathroom, slink toward the door I haven’t opened, and press my ear
against it.
Flesh hitting flesh is not a sound one forgets.
Especially after years of training in martial arts.
Someone’s fighting.
My heart flutters with excitement. I love a good bar fight; they’re
sloppy and filled with passion. Gently twisting the handle, I ease the
door open and slip into the night. The back of the club opens to a
dark and grimy alley.
As I suspected, there’s a fight.
Except it’s not two drunk dudes.
There are at least fifteen guys in the alley. Half of them are
wearing black suits which are way too fancy for this club, and the
other half are dressed in jeans and T-shirts.
They’re all pummeling one another. Blood splatters the ground in
front of me, and I pop open my mouth, staring at it.
A man from Team Casual howls, and I lift my eyes in time to see
a man from Team Suits jamming a knife deep into his stomach. His
face partially shifts, his nose elongating and teeth sharpening.
Oh shit.
The guy just stabbed a wolf-shifter.
What the hell did I stumble out here for?
Another from Team Casual shifts into his wolf form, shredding his
jeans in the process and launching at the guy with the knife,
snapping his jaw around his neck and ripping the sensitive flesh
open.
Blood hits my thigh.
This time I scream because, one, I’m drunk, and two, who knows
what kind of blood borne pathogens are slithering around on my leg.
The fighting stops for a second, and the men whip their heads
around to stare at me. The wolf scents the air, growling as he does.
I take a step back when a suited man steps toward me.
No.
A large hand slams against his chest and shoves him to the
ground. His face contorts in anger. The guy who pushed him jumps
on him and they resume fighting. The shifted wolf starts skirting
around the group, its yellow eyes locked on me. Blood drips from his
mouth.
I lock my knees, fighting against the tremble that’s taken over
my body. I know how to fight, but I’m drunk, and this is a wolf we’re
talking about.
A wolf.
 Kevin’s a wolf, but I’ve rarely seen him shifted, and when I have,
he wasn’t stalking me like this big scary one is.
Grappling against the door, I try to find the handle while keeping
my gaze on the wolf. I’m not an idiot, I don’t look him directly in the
eye. The last thing I need is to trigger his innate desire to assert
dominance over weaker beings. I track his movements, cursing
when the door handle won’t jiggle.
“Crap, crap, crap.” I glance around the alley.
There’s a small opening between the fighting. I might make it out
before the wolf gets to me. Slipping my fingers between my legs, I
pull the knife from its sheath and flick it open. When I edge toward
the gap, the beast growls. Letting out a girly squeak, I make a run
for it. My ankle rolls in my heels, and I go down before I can get
very far.
As I fall, I curse Hollywood for making me think I had a chance
of running in four-inch stiletto heels. There’s no way.
My body hits the ground with a thud, and I start to army crawl.
The wolf’s breath breezes across my ankles.
My chest seizes as I panic and begin to pant. He’s right on top of
me. I roll onto my back, swinging my fist as hard as I can, and hit
the wolf’s snout.
He yelps as his head snaps to the side.
That was luck. The nose is the most sensitive part of his body.
I scramble to my feet, holding on to my knife tightly. I’ll stab him
as a last resort. With a pathetic limp-jog, I scurry through the alley.
None of the other men seem to care the wolf is about to eat me,
and I highly doubt they’ll worry about rescuing me when they’re all
busy beating each other up.
Stumbling into a turf war, real fucking smart, Demi.
 My inner monologue is interrupted when the beast knocks into
my back. I scream and throw my hands up to protect my face. The
knife smashes between my thumb and forefinger, and I grimace at
the sudden bite of pain.
That’s going to leave a mark.
Won’t really matter if you’re dead.
No. I refuse to die in this disgusting alley. Using all the strength I
have left, I shove my elbow into the muzzle of the wolf and wiggle
onto my back again.
Hello, déjà vu.
Saliva drips from the wolf’s mouth, and its eyes are glowing a
vibrant gold. Sharp—very sharp—teeth flash when he opens his
maw.
I scream like a banshee and jab my weapon at him.
The wolf howls in pain when the knife slides into his mouth. I let
out a relieved sob. My knife is silver, poisonous to wolves. Blood
pours over my hand the further I jam it into his throat. I won’t
relent, not until I know he’s dead. They heal too easily, and as I
said, I’m not dying in this alley. The knife needs to go a little deeper
before I’ll feel safe.
I force it further inside the stupid wolf, imagining it’s Kevin
choking and dying around my sharp blade. Those pointed teeth
scrape against my skin. I grimace and grunt around the pain. My
arm is almost fully inside him when he lets out a small, wounded cry.
Finally, I’ve shoved the silver weapon far enough to kill. The spark of
life fades from the supe’s eyes.
I groan and pull my arm out of his throat and mouth. My own
blood mingles with his, but I don’t worry about him turning me. The
moon isn’t full, and he didn’t bite me in the right place. Using my
good arm to help the wounded one, I shove the now dead wolf off
me.
I killed him.
Am I crazy for letting a small smile creep across my face?
He didn’t kill me. I killed him.
A chorus of snarls and growls assaults my ears, and I cringe.
Oh crap.
I’d forgotten about the others.
Once again, the men in fancy suits are staring at me. My eyes
lock on a small, dark red patch embroidered on the pocket of the
suit.
I gulp, hoping with all my heart it isn’t the Blood Mafia symbol.
Before I can get a better look, the other guys have shifted and
they’re fighting to get past Team Casual. I take a step back,
screeching when my heel snaps. When I kick them off and sprint out
of the alley, a wolf howls.
The sound is chilling.
Shivers race down my spine, but I don’t look back. Pumping my
arms as hard as I can, I run past the line of bodies waiting to get
into the club, not caring that I’m leaving Lexi behind. She’ll be fine.
Thank God I live downtown. I sprint through the streets, not
stopping until I reach my apartment building a few blocks away. My
feet hurt but aren’t too banged up. I reach for my clutch, then
remember I didn’t take one and I tossed my stuff in Lexi’s bag.
My keys and phone are with Lexi.
Damn it.
I kick a trash can, taking little satisfaction in the way it rattles on
the sidewalk. Going to the side of my building, I jump and grab hold
of the fire-escape. The metal ladder squeaks before shooting toward
the ground.

M ateo
“You weren’t supposed to kill anyone, Colt.” My growled words
sound louder in the back of the SUV we’re riding in. Our chauffeur
winces as though my anger hurts him, which perhaps it does. He is
human after all; compulsion only does so much to soothe their
inherent fear.
My captain sighs heavily. “The wolves instigated it, and then the
human came out and mucked things up. Had she not killed the
enforcer, things would have gone a little differently.”
Grayson scoffs from the passenger seat. “They were attacking
before she killed him.”
Colt narrows his eyes at him. “We would have found a way to
keep the peace, we know how much the alliance means to you.”
“Alliance,” I spit the word out. “There is no alliance now. Richard
is unstable at best. He’ll tear through San Francisco in an attempt to
make me pay, foolish child.”
Shifting to face us, Grayson scowls. “We should have brought
more men.”
I shake my head, clenching my fist at my side. “If Blaze wants to
meet in private, we’ll meet in private. I don’t need more men. I can
take care of him myself if need be.”
“I know that,” Grayson says. “We need to present a strong front.”
Colt laughs. “The boss showing up with a dozen men isn’t a
strong front. Mateo doesn’t need a show of force, he is scary
enough.”
 Flicking my gaze to his, I dip my head in acknowledgement.
Colt’s quicker to anger than Grayson, but he’s smart and he’s part of
my inner circle for a reason. Grayson is a smooth talker, and while
he’s been by my side for hundreds of years, ever since I sired him,
he prefers theatrics.
The human stops outside of a seedy warehouse. Blaze said he
had something of import to discuss, and while I suspect there will be
a war for the death of the Santa Cruz enforcer, I won’t cower to a
dog. Not even the Heir Alpha of South Western USA.
I roll down my window and glance around. If not for my
supernatural eyesight, I might’ve missed Blaze’s black wolf form
blending into the shadows. “Stay here,” I tell my men.
Blaze shifts from wolf to man, standing naked as I approach him.
He’s taller than I am, and his muscles are bigger, but that doesn’t
mean he’d beat me in a fight. I’m nearly four hundred years old, and
vampires have always been stronger than wolves.
“Mateo,” he says, dipping his head respectfully.
I press my lips into a hard line, waiting for the moment where he
tries to assert his dominance. After a minute of waiting, I let a small
smile lift my lips. “Blaze.”
There are no pleasantries between us. This is a business
meeting, nothing more, nothing less.
“The elders have a proposition.”
Consider me intrigued. I lift one eyebrow. “Oh?”
He sighs, probably hating that I’m making him work for it. He
expected me to be salivating at the news.
“We need to have some trash taken out, discreetly.”
I cross my arms. “Am I to assume you incapable of doing the
job?”
He growls in warning, but reels it in. Smart wolf.
 “The elders would like to hire a contractor.” He lifts his gaze to
meet mine; his eyes are glowing yellow in challenge.
He just couldn’t help himself.
Unleashing the full strength of my vampire gaze, I stare him
down. It takes him a few moments before he looks over my
shoulder. Not exactly submission, but an admission of lesser strength
at the very least.
“I’m listening,” I say.
“We would like Richard taken care of.”
I’m silent for a moment, letting him think he’s stunned me. “You
want me to kill an alpha? At what cost, war?”
The smile he gives me is all sharp teeth and danger. “Two million
dollars and the promise to pull back the Santa Cruz pack.”
The deal is good, but I narrow my eyes, waiting for the catch.
“We want the woman too.”
“What woman?”
He lets out a put-upon sigh. “You know which one. Three weeks.
Do we have a deal?”
I consider his outstretched hand. I have nothing to lose, not
really. Richard is a pain in the ass, and I’m bored of thwarting his
overeager attempts to take my city. The elders and I have a long-
standing agreement on territory, but Richard’s taken it upon himself
to break the accord.
“Three million and Santa Cruz forgets about San Francisco.”
“Deal,” he says too quickly. “The money will be wired tonight.”
I should have asked for more. Oh well. I slap my hand into his,
and we shake.
“Three weeks.”
“Do I look stupid to you, Blaze?”
The alpha shakes his head, still not daring to meet my gaze.
 “You’ll have your dead alpha and human soon enough. I expect
you to leave San Francisco tonight.”
He growls low in his chest.
“This is my city. Don’t forget like Richard. I own these streets.” I
don’t threaten him outright, but I will kill this alpha if he doesn’t
leave. The stronger the wolf presence in San Francisco, the stronger
their attempts grow to take what is mine.
Blaze doesn’t answer me. Instead, he shifts into his wolf form,
growls menacingly at me and takes off in the opposite direction.
I smirk after him. “Run, little wolf, before the big bad one comes
to eat you.”
Time to catch a human and kill an alpha.
All in a day’s work, I guess.
 CHAPTER THREE

D emi
Peeking out of my blinds for the fifth time in the last hour, I
check for cops. Seeing as the men I happened upon last night were
tangled up in some sort of mafia drama, I doubt they called the
cops. That doesn’t mean the club owner didn’t. There’s probably
footage of me jamming the knife inside the wolf. If the authorities
get ahold of that, they can use facial recognition software or some
sort of voodoo magic to find me.
I do not want to go to jail.
Killing the wolf was self-defense; I can’t be charged. Or at least, I
don’t think so. I haven’t worked up the nerve to call Lexi. She’s in
her second year of law school and she’d know the answer.
“Demi.” Lexi knocks on my door before calling my name again.
“Demi, open up.”
I squint toward the door, wondering how she’d known I needed
her help. Her intuition isn’t the greatest.
She’s not going to call the cops on you. She doesn’t even know
you killed a supe.
Shaking off my suspicion, I let her in.
 A wide smile is plastered on her face, and she looks me over, her
lips turning into a frown. She waves her hand in front of my body.
“This is not the face of someone who got laid. If you didn’t leave
with a hottie, where’d you go?”
I catch the phone she tosses at me. “Thanks,” I say for the
phone and pull her inside.
“I was going to come in, sheesh.” She brushes her honey blonde
hair over her shoulder and lifts an eyebrow. “Why’d you leave me?”
Deciding not to tell Lexi about the fight and my subsequent
murdering of a wolf has nothing to do with trust—I trust her
implicitly—it has more to do with me not feeling an ounce of
remorse for killing someone. I know it was self-defense, but normal
people feel more shaken up.
They cry.
I didn’t cry when I climbed up the fire escape and slipped
through my living room window.
Confession time? I laughed.
Last night I fell onto the couch and burst into a fit of giggles until
my stomach hurt and I realized I was caked in blood, then I got up
to take a shower.
I even had the drycleaners come pick up the leather dress (after
I wiped it down) to clean it.
What kind of person does that?
This is why I’m keeping the psycho and possibly sociopathic
episode a secret for now. Maybe the remorse will hit later.
Lexi takes my silence to mean something significant, and I see
her mind working, chasing her own thoughts until she says, “Kevin is
an asshole.”
I nod and go grab a tub of ice cream from the freezer. Lexi picks
up two spoons from my clean dish rack and follows me into the
living room. She doesn’t even question me wanting ice cream at ten
in the morning.
Sitting down on the couch and opening the tub, I press my lips
together and try to muster something for her. She’s waiting for a
breakdown. Breakups call for ice-cream, but with everything last
night, I’m not able to process the pain my heart feels at Kevin’s
betrayal.
All I can think is how I’m a grade A, certifiable sociopath. Or
maybe psycho. I do cry when those sad dog commercials come on,
so I’m not a total freak, right?
Lexi dips her spoon into the Moose Tracks ice cream and sighs.
“You deserve way better than that asshole, you know?”
“Yeah,” I mumble. The ice cream melts against my tongue, but
the taste doesn’t impress me like it normally does. My stomach is in
too many knots about potentially going to jail.
Yeah, I’m a dick. I’m more worried about-facing jail time than I
am for killing a man.
Lexi sticks around a while longer. When she goes to the
bathroom, I hurry and peek through the blinds. I don’t find any
cops, but my eyes land on a sleek murdered out SUV—pitch black
window tinting, onyx rims, and dark tinted lights. I bite down on my
lip.
I’ve never seen this car before. None of my neighbors own
something that nice. I don’t think cops drive hundred-thousand-
dollar rides.
No. This car is for someone important.
More important than me. Which is why there is no way it’s here
for me. Definitely not.
“What are you looking at?” Lexi asks.
 Turning away from the window and slamming against the wall, I
hold my chest. “Jesus, Lex, you scared the shit out of me.”
She snickers and saunters over. I start to tell her not to look, but
realize that’ll sound crazy. Her eyes widen when she sees the car.
“Whoa. Do you know how expensive that SUV is?” Her blue eyes
flick to me, and her mouth hangs open.
I nod. “Really expensive.”
Lexi snorts. “Really, really expensive. Like upward of one-
hundred-and-fifty-thousand, Demi.”
My throat bobs when I gulp. “Holy crap.”
She lets go of the blinds and looks around my apartment. “I have
to go. Exams are next week so I should put in some study time. Are
you going to be okay?”
I smile. “I’ll be okay, Lexi. Thank you for coming over.” I hug her,
and she squeezes me back.
“I’m so happy you’re my friend, Demi.”
Melting into the comfort of her arms, I feel my eyes mist.
Can this be the breakdown I’ve been waiting for?
Lexi steps back and pats my cheek roughly. “Chin up, buttercup.
I’ll call you tomorrow.”

T he tears never fall , and as soon as L exi leaves , I slink back to the
window like some paranoid crack addict. When I check, I see the car
is gone. I sigh and bump my head against the wall.
“You’re a freak, Demi,” I tell myself.
After a few more hours of being cooped up in the apartment, I
call in an order for Chinese, since Kevin took mine yesterday, and
hop in my car to pick it up. It’s four-thirty in the afternoon, but
luckily, I score a parking spot a block away from the little restaurant.
Living in the general downtown area of San Francisco has its
perks. Great food, amazing nightlife, and tons of stores. Right now,
all the concrete and life are stifling. My skin crawls as I glance
around. There are so many people.
Paranoia seeps into my blood, and I have to force myself to stop
waiting for the cops to show up and take me away.
“Everything is fine,” I say before getting out of the car.
A man is barreling straight toward me when I step onto the
sidewalk. He yanks my purse from my arm.
“Hey, give that back.”
The people walking by look, but do nothing to stop the man from
taking my purse.
God dammit.
Why does the universe hate me?
All I want is some orange chicken, is that too much to ask?
I press my eyes closed for a millisecond, then sprint after him.
Pumping my arms and legs harder than I did last night. Being a
track star in high school has certainly paid off this past week. I’m
gaining on the scumbag fast, and when he tosses a casual glance
over his shoulder, his eyes widen in surprise.
“I see you!” I yell and pick up the pace. My side aches, but I grit
my teeth. I don’t run nearly as much as I should as an adult. I’m
making running a number one fitness priority after I get my purse
back.
He grunts and starts going faster, but it’s too late for him. I get
ready to launch myself onto his back, but a man steps in his path
and stops him for me. The thief tries to fight, but the man punches
him straight in the jaw.
 “Whoa,” I say, admiring him for hitting a guy while wearing a
business suit.
San Francisco is usually not insanely hot, but today the forecast
had a high of eighty-five, and I definitely feel the heat after sprinting
so hard. I place my hands on the back of my head and suck in air.
Since my purse is safe, I take a second to catch my breath.
My hero steps over the dude and holds my purse out.
“Thanks.” I smile and take it from him. My eyes flash over his
handsome face, quickly cataloging the sharp lines, piercing green
eyes, and the little scar on one of his eyebrows. When I notice the
small red emblem on his suit jacket, my heart skips a beat.
It’s the same emblem from the night before and I stare at it,
tracing the two letters which are intertwined. BM. Blood Mafia.
He smirks when I gasp, and my gaze finds his. Those pretty eyes
are dancing with mirth. He steps closer. I stumble back, my Chucks
scraping across the sidewalk.
My pulse is jumping against my neck. I turn and bolt, completely
bypassing my car, and sprint through the streets, crossing over and
back until I’m sure I’ve lost him. I don’t even know if he followed
me, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
I’ll go back for my Honda tomorrow.

B y the time I make it back to my apartment , the sun has started to

set and I feel like throwing up. My purse is heavy on my shoulder,
and I’m pissed a man got in the way of me and food once again. I’m
also sweaty and smell disgusting.
Listen, no one has time to look hot when they’re hiding from the
mafia.
 I am, however, impressed that I managed to keep running for a
solid forty-five minutes. They can’t hurt me if they can’t catch me,
right?
I round the corner to head up the stairs but stop short when
Kevin shoves off the wall. He puts his hands in his jeans and glances
around.
Not today, Satan.
With a narrowed gaze, I strut up to him. “What the hell do you
want?” I wish I had my knife.
His shoulders tense, and the muscle in his jaw twitches. After
taking a deep breath, he says, “I came to talk.”
“Where’s the pixie?”
“Come on, Demi, don’t be like that.”
A ripple of anger whooshes down my body. Don’t be like that? Is
he joking?
“Let me make one thing very clear.” My words are fierce, and I
step to him, not caring that he’s a shifter. “If you ever come here
again, I will stab you.”
Kevin chuckles.
My blood boils.
“You wouldn’t hurt me,” he says with arrogant condescension.
“Try me,” I say, placing my hand against his chest to push him
out of my way. He stumbles back a step because he wasn’t
expecting to be shoved.
“You’re a real piece of work, Demi. Magenta was right, humans
are so dramatic.”
Magenta? Seriously? He cheated on me with a bitch named
Magenta?
I never claimed to have any semblance of control when it comes
to my anger. Dropping my purse, I turn around and launch myself at
him, throwing a fist and clocking him on the jaw. He growls, but my
body hits him a second later, and we crash to the ground. The
concrete scrapes my knees, but I ignore the bite of pain. I scratch
and hit Kevin a few more times before he gets over his shock and
bucks me off of him.
I land in a pile on the ground with an umph and shake my hair
out of my face. “Leave.”
“Fucking psycho.” Kevin shoots me a searing look.
My attitude is on fire today, and when I raise my chin to stare
into his glowing eyes, he lets out a low, warning growl.
“Now,” I say.
Screw the wolf.
He doesn’t scare me.
He kicks the same trash can I assaulted last night, but this time it
flies across the street, rattling and rolling to a stop against tires with
black rims. Forgetting all about my ex-boyfriend, I stare at the dark
SUV. The ominous sign of my impending doom.
I shove off the ground with shaking hands. When I glance back
to Kevin, I see him storming away. A man steps to the side when he
passes, a knowing smile playing on his lips when he looks at me.
Why are all the men I’m seeing lately hot? It’s really not fair to
be surrounded by so much sexy right now. I am not in the right
mindset to flirt or make moves when I’m being stalked by the mafia.
As he comes closer, I notice a few tattoos wrapping around his
arm. The stranger is wearing gray sweatpants and a dark green shirt
which does nothing to hide his cut physique.
A car engine starts, reminding me of the SUV. I look between the
threatening vehicle and the man. I can’t see through the windows,
but I feel someone watching me. The weight of their eyes presses
on me and makes my stomach flutter.
 “Everything all right?”
I brush a piece of hair behind my ear and pick up my bag from
the ground. “Yeah, everything’s fine.”
The man’s eyes drop to my knees. “You’re bleeding.” His brow
furrows. “You’re hurt.”
It’s a little odd he seems so bothered by this fact, but maybe he’s
a really nice guy.
“I’ll be fine.”
I try not to flinch when he steps closer, but I can’t help it.
Between Kevin and the fight last night, my nerves are fried. His eyes
narrow, and he runs his palm along his five-o’clock shadow.
It’s so faint I almost miss it, but on the back of his hand is a
tattooed Blood Mafia emblem. I choke on my spit. “Oh shit.”
“We’re doing this the hard way then?” he asks with hints of
humor lightening his words.
This is funny to him? What exactly is he doing here, and why
does he have a determined glint in those shockingly dark blue eyes?
This is no time for questions, Demi. RUN.
I kick my foot. My heel connects with his stomach—which is hard
as a rock and not at all surprising—and he grunts. I throw my palm
toward his nose, but he catches my wrist and tugs me closer.
The SUV engine starts, and a stone drops in the pit of my
stomach.
I’m completely and totally fucked.
His breath fans over my face, and he grins. “I do love them
feisty.”
Why is this fucker so charming?
Using my free arm, I bring my elbow around and hit his face. He
lets go of my wrist and curses. Call me rude, but I don’t wait to see
if he’s okay. I sprint up the three flights of stairs, hating how much
they wobble, and slip my key into the doorknob.
“We don’t have to do it like this,” he calls up the stairs. His steps
are slow and steady as if he isn’t worried about losing me.
The door falls open when I twist the handle and slam my
shoulder into it. I snap it shut, lock both locks, and rush to the
kitchen. I toss my purse and keys on the counter.
Good thing I like to cook. I have a veritable buffet of weapons to
choose from. The chef’s knife is by far the sharpest and most sturdy.
The fact that this is the second time in as many days I have had to
heft a knife while being chased doesn’t escape my notice.
This is not my day, my week, my month, or even my year.
The doorknob rattles when he tries to open it, and I hear him let
out a heavy sigh. “We really don’t have to do this the hard way.
Come on out and we can talk like civilized people.”
Yeah, because the mafia run by vampires is fucking civilized.
“I’m good,” I say as I walk toward the living room. My eyes never
leave the door because my instincts tell me this guy isn’t going
away.
He mutters something about always getting the shitty jobs and
then the door thuds loudly. On the second kick he breaks the door,
and it swings wide. His painfully beautiful gaze flits around the
apartment before resting on the knife in my hand.
“You’re a good fighter, eh?”
No, I do not preen—okay maybe I do but it’s not every day a
woman is complimented on her fighting abilities from a dude in the
mafia, let alone a vampire. Consider my day made.
Well, maybe the minute is made. This day is going to suck.
“You’d really stab me?” His smile is disarming.
He’s really attractive.
 I’ll make sure not to stab that pretty face.
“You think I’m pretty?”
Oh shit. “I said that out loud?”
Mafia man takes a step forward. His eyes track my every
movement. When I grip the knife tighter, he says, “You’re not so bad
yourself.”
I scoff. “I’m covered in sweat and I reek.”
“You smell delicious.” His voice is husky and a shiver races down
my spine.
What the hell am I doing having a flirty conversation with the
man sent to kill me? Why else would he be here? The mafia doesn’t
like loose strings and that’s exactly what I am: an errant strand in
need of disposing.
The whole I might be a psycho theory is proving to be one
hundred percent correct.
He takes another step closer during my momentary distraction.
His hand is outstretched, and he has a strange little smile on his
face.
“Are you a mind reader?”
“No,” he says, taking another small step.
I take one back. The curtain brushes against my shoulder. Damn
it. He cornered me. “Why are you smiling then?”
The infuriating man quirks his brow. “Why are you?”
“I’m not.” I am, I totally am. Furrowing my eyebrows together, I
wipe my psychotic smile from my face and scowl at him.
“You’re cute when you’re mad.”
For freak’s sake, he needs to stop being so goddamned
charming. This isn’t normal. None of this is normal. Not me feeling
somewhat excited. Not the adrenaline bursting through my veins,
urging me to stab him. Not the heated way his gaze swoops over
me.
Is he checking me out?
“Come here, tiger.”
My first reaction is to growl but that’d give him too much
satisfaction. Realizing I can’t escape him by staying cornered, I do
the exact opposite of what I’ve been doing—running—and step
toward him.
His eyes widen slightly and delight flashes across his face. “Here,
kitty, kitty, kitty.”
“I’m going to stab you.”
He licks his lips. “I can’t wait.”
Finally giving into the demented side, I tilt my head and smirk at
him. “You’re crazy.” The knife is still firmly gripped in my hand. He
won’t take me without a very bloody fight.
Those ocean blue eyes meet mine. “So are you.”
Then he moves fast as lightning. Before I can stab him, his
fingers are wrapped around my wrist and his other hand strikes my
arm hard, making my fist open of its own accord. He uses the grip
on my arm to spin me to the side and away from the falling knife
which sticks into the wooden floor with a thunk.
His eyes flash with something I don’t understand, and he grabs
my leg, pulling it up as my body slams into his. It’s almost like we’re
dancing, except he’s here to kill me, and I’m turned on despite this
fact.
When he stares down at my knee, which is still covered in blood,
my heart thumps against my chest. Blood Mafia members are
notorious for being the most dangerous and deadly supes. The ones
you don’t want to run into in an alley late at night.
 Wolves are deadly and dangerous, but they’re flies compared to
vampires. Vampires like blood. My knee is covered in blood. My killer
is still staring at my red skin. He swipes his finger over a bead of
blood and places it in his mouth, closing his eyes as he savors the
flavor.
Gross.
Fighting isn’t going to save me, but I can’t stop trying to escape.
He’s distracted so I lean in and bite the stupid vampire’s neck as
hard as my pathetic blunt human teeth let me. He stiffens and
groans. Those strong hands squeeze me closer to him, and I feel his
cock grow hard in those ridiculously hot sweatpants.
This is not the reaction I expect, so I jerk my mouth. When he
grunts, I tug on his skin harder and use my nails to gouge his arms.
He still doesn’t release me. A deep rumbling in his chest, a sound
more terrifying than a growl of a wolf, has me freezing in terror.
Now I’ve pissed him off.
“Stop fighting.”
I should feel every ounce of resistance in my body disappearing.
Vampire compulsion is strong enough to make a person forget their
own name. Funny thing is, I don’t feel anything. Not only do I not
melt into a puddle at his feet, I get even angrier at him for trying to
use compulsion on me.
The rational side of my brain is screaming at me to do
something, anything, to make him think he’s got the upper hand.
With no other ideas, I decide wrapping my legs around his waist and
burying my face against his neck is enough to make me seem
complicit.
While I’m breathing in his masculine and musky scent, I
frantically try to remember what I learned in school about the
different supernatural beings. I shouldn’t have screwed around so
much during class, but when my teacher taught us about all the
crazy things supes can do and how easy it would be for them to
slaughter us all, focusing became hard.
Vampires. Sunlight does affect them, though they won’t shrivel
up and turn to ash. An extreme sunburn and weakened powers are
about as drastic as it gets for them. Most stay indoors for those
reasons. Buffy’s stake, garlic and silver won’t deter them for long.
You can stab a vampire in the heart, but the body will heal itself in
about fifteen minutes. To truly kill a vampire, you’d have to sever the
head from the body and burn both in different locations. For a
human to be able to have a chance of doing that before the
supernatural healing kicked in, well, it would take a miracle.
Their brains are superior due to an extended life cycle and
supernatural mutations. Hence the compulsion. Right, compulsion.
When a vampire compels a human, they become a puppet. Doing
whatever is asked of them. I shiver when I think of all the nefarious
things this stranger might ask me to do. Of course, I won’t do those
things since I’m not under his spell, but I’ll have to put on a show
until I have a chance to escape.
His palm burns against my skin when he slips his hand under my
shirt. When he rubs up my spine, I bite my lip and bury my head
deeper against his neck. This is ridiculously embarrassing. He’s
trying to compel me, scratch that, kill me, and I’m two seconds away
from grinding my hips into his.
“Much better, little tiger. The easy way is always less fun, but I
don’t want to hurt you.”
That’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard.
I keep my mouth pressed into a firm line, holding back every
stupid thing I want to say. Letting my tongue loose will only result in
a quick death. I’m not ready to die.
 His fingers float over my skin. This time the shiver makes me
squirm, and I hear him chuckle.
“I smell your arousal.”
I smack his chest, forgetting all about being compliant, and say,
“Fuck you.”
When I lift my head from his neck, those stormy blue eyes are
thoughtful. His lips twitch. “Your place or mine?”
“Bastard.”
He sighs, and his forehead wrinkles either in annoyance or
disappointment. “I didn’t want to hurt you, remember that.”
“I’ll tell you what you can—”
Something smashes into the back of my head and my vision
dims. I must have a concussion because as I start to fade, I swear I
see regret flash across his face.
 CHAPTER FOUR

G rayson
Fuck.
I tried to follow Mateo’s wishes but this woman wasn’t coming
with me without a fight, and she’d already attacked me a few times.
The little bite she gave me was cute until it started to turn me on.
She’s obviously never been around vampires much if she thought a
bite would make me stop.
Demi’s lucky I didn’t strip her right then and there and take her
against the wall. Judging by the way she smells, she would have
enjoyed it as much as she would have hated it.
She’s a confused little bird trapped in a cage. Demi knows well
enough who the cat is lying in wait. I didn’t expect her to fight me
so savagely and now I can’t stop staring at the woman who was
crazy enough to bite a vampire.
The apartment she lives in is organized and covered in art. Some
of it looks hand painted while others are clearly mass-produced
printings. Demi’s light in my arms, like a tiny doll I might break if I
squeeze too hard. She hides a lot of strength in her petite form,
though. Mateo will be pleased to learn she’s not a screamer.
 Well, at least not in this particular situation. I can think of plenty
of ways—no, this is not the time to think about all the things I could
do to make her scream. She’s passed out for fuck’s sake. I’m a
vampire, but I’m not a creep.
Not entirely anyway.
I shift her a little higher in my arms, and her head lulls to rest
against my chest. Her pounding heart is a siren’s call. Her blood
smells delicious. So much so that I wonder if the little human is
hiding some supernatural heritage. Human blood is sweet, but
Demi’s has hints of spice.
Realizing I’ve been staring at her for far too long, I spin on my
heel and carry her down to where Colt is waiting with the SUV.
“What took you so long?” Colt asks, scowling at the woman in my
arms.
“You were right, she’s a fighter.”
“Why didn’t you just knock her out?”
I sigh and gently lay Demi across the backseat, buckling her in
with the middle seatbelt. The safety contraption won’t do much for
her in this position, but my hands have already pulled the belt and
clicked it into place before I can think better of it.
“Mateo said to bring her in unharmed.”
“A concussion is hardly harmed.”
Colt’s a bit of a dick. He’s a good enforcer, one of the best
actually. He’s Mateo’s number one man. I’m number two. I’m used to
his harsh attitude, so I don’t bother arguing.
“She’s in the car, is she not? It’s more than you managed earlier.”
He grunts. “She caught me by surprise.” Colt slams the back
door. “Let’s go.”
I chuckle at his anger and climb into the driver’s seat. When Colt
is in the passenger seat, I quirk my brow at him.
 “She’s under your skin.”
His gaze focuses on something outside, and he ignores me.
“Can’t say I blame you. She’s feisty and gorgeous. I wonder if
Mateo would let me have her—”
“Stop talking.” Colt’s voice is pitched low, and his eyes are filled
with barely contained rage when he glances at me.
Colt wears his emotions on his sleeves, and he’s no stranger to
anger. Anger is a weakness I can’t afford, but Colt wields it like the
sharpest of knives.
I’m not ready to be stabbed by him. Demi, maybe. Colt? The idea
isn’t nearly as appealing with him in the picture.
My lips twitch. “Very well.” I turn up the volume and let music fill
the space between us. A few minutes pass before Colt relaxes and
settles into his seat, resting his head against the headrest. Every
once in a while, I notice his gaze float to the woman in the backseat.
Yeah, she’s under his skin, which sucks for me because I can’t
deny she’s intrigued me as well.
The situation can only get more complicated from here, seeing as
Mateo needs her for a job. Colt and I won’t get a chance to have fun
with her. Such a shame too; something tells me she’d be a wildcat in
bed.
 CHAPTER FIVE

D emi
Waking with a head injury sucks. The dim light overhead pierces
through my vision and the lump on the back of my head throbs. The
ridiculously handsome stranger who is also part of the Blood Mafia
knocked me out, dragged me to wherever this tiny, dingy room is,
and chained me to a metal folding chair.
Mother fucker couldn’t have put me in a cushioned chair?
My ass aches, and I shift slightly as I straighten my back,
groaning when pain lances down my neck.
The room is almost empty. Aside from my pathetic excuse of a
body and the chair, the only other thing in the room is a large mirror
anchored into the wall in front of me. Sprinting through downtown
and having something smashed against my head has done wonders
for my appearance. My hair is falling out of the sloppy ponytail I
have it in, random pieces sticking up higher than the others, and my
T-shirt is rumpled. I still smell disgusting, and to top it all off, I have
to pee.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
I realize I’m being cliché, but what else are you supposed to do
when you’re chained to a chair in a creepy room?
 “I have to pee. Hello?” My voice bounces off the walls, and the
reverberation of it makes my head feel worse.
The metal restraints are tight, and when I push and pull against
them, the links press into my skin hard enough to leave bruises. This
week really can’t get any worse.
My ankles are also chained up and no amount of thrashing
loosens them.
“I have to pee,” I say again, this time in a pathetic whimper.
Having to piss all over myself is another level of degrading, and I
stubbornly clench my thighs together, grimacing against the
pressure.
A static sounds before a deep voice fills the room. “Do you know
where you are?”
I glance around, looking for the intercom. When I see a small
white box under the mirror, I realize it’s not a regular mirror.
Someone’s been watching me.
“Disney World? Is this one of those all-inclusive vacations where
they torture you first then let you go see the princesses?” The sneer
I’m wearing isn’t pretty.
The static noise sounds again before clicking off.
I scoff. “Cat got your tongue?”
“Do you understand you’re a prisoner?”
Jerking against the chains, I say, “Kind of hard to miss the
restraints.”
“You’re not very smart, are you?”
Who the hell is this guy?
Since I literally have nothing better to do than taunt the
mysterious man behind the mirror, I lean back in the chair like we’re
having a normal conversation. “I’m actually very smart. I’m on track
to get my graduate degree with a GPA above 4.0.”
 The intercom clicks and static fills the line for a second. He’s a
thinker.
Before he can say something else, I clear my throat. “As a matter
of fact, I also graduated valedictorian from my high school and one
of my essays on the impacts of childhood poverty on adults was
published in Newsweek.”
I’m not lying. I framed the magazine and hung it in my bedroom.
“Perhaps I misspoke,” the voice drawls. His tone is so deep it
burrows into the base of my spine and rests heavily against my
nerves, pricking and prodding at me. “You might be smart, but
you’re not very wise.”
“Semantics.” I shrug. “Why am I chained up? I’m just a human.”
“You like to fight.”
Oh, so his friend told him about that?
“Scared?”
My taunt is met with silence and the little bit of triumph I had
begun to feel fades. After a few more minutes of nothing, the
distinct sounds of a door being unlocked fills the tiny space.
I expect to see the blue-eyed asshole who knocked me out, not
the green-eyed one who stopped my mugger. I eye him suspiciously,
narrowing my gaze and pressing my lips together.
He’s still wearing the ridiculous suit with the Blood Mafia emblem.
He’s also still incredibly striking in a rough and tumble sort of way. In
the dim light, I can see the small scar in the middle of his right
eyebrow and a jagged looking scar across his neck. If anything, they
give him a dangerous sort of sex appeal.
It doesn’t affect me at all.
Maybe being good looking is a prerequisite for joining? Who am I
kidding? I know the prerequisite and it has nothing to do with looks
and everything to do with blood.
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probably few writers, if any, have ever satisfied themselves in
painting the pictures they have mentally created. To take the highest
example, we cannot know how far keener the power of Vision was in
the pictures seen by Shakespeare than in those which he has
revealed to the world. It is this want of proportion between the power
to see and the power to execute that has made the despair of artists
of all time, whether painters or poets, sculptors or prose-writers, so
dissatisfied must they ever be with their own productions compared
with the creations they see so vividly.

I T may be said that all this art-study is

unnecessary, that it is sufficient carefully to Observation not
sufficient
observe life and scenery, and then to write down all
that the eye has noted, woven into the form of a story. This is not
easy work, our very faculty of observation is qualified by our power
of true mental vision; without mental vision, and the selecting power
that belongs to it, the objects noted down, instead of forming a
coherent and lifelike picture in the mind of a reader or listener, will
produce a dry catalogue of persons and things, there will be a want
of proportion and perspective, of efficient light and shade. “No one
knows what he can do till he tries” is a very true saying which fits our
case. Let persons without the literary faculty try to write off a
description of the office or counting-house in which they work, of the
room, whether it be study or drawing-room, in which they dwell, of
the persons among whom they live, and they will see what the
results of such attempts are from a literary standpoint.

Silas Marner M ANY passages might be quoted to illustrate

the vigour and distinctness with which this
power of Vision manifests itself, and in a few words creates a picture
which remains impressed on the mind of the reader, but I have not
space for them. Here is one, however, which stands out by itself in
intensity of distinctness and direct presentation.
Silas Marner, standing at his cottage door, has had a fit of
unconsciousness, during which the child, little Eppie, has found her
way into his hut.
“Turning towards the hearth, where the two logs had fallen apart,
and sent forth only a red, uncertain glimmer, he seated himself in his
fireside chair, and was stooping to push his logs together, when, to
his blurred vision, it seemed as if there were gold on the floor in front
of the hearth. Gold!—his own gold brought back to him as
mysteriously as it had been taken away! He felt his heart begin to
beat violently, and for a few moments he was unable to stretch out
his hand and grasp the restored treasure. The heap of gold seemed
to glow and get larger beneath his agitated gaze. He leaned forward
at last, and stretched forth his hand; but instead of the hard coin with
the familiar resisting outline, his fingers encountered soft, warm
curls. In utter amazement, Silas fell on his knees, and bent his head
low to examine the marvel: it was a sleeping child—a round, fair
thing, with soft yellow rings all over its head.”
Let the reader try to picture this scene to himself, and then
consider the marvellous power with which it is here brought before
him, the intense power of Vision, and of Selection evinced not only
by the points chosen for representation, but in the omitted details
which an ungifted writer would have dragged into the foreground.
The strange agitation of the lonely man is seen as vividly as the
head of the little golden-haired intruder lying before the red,
uncertain glimmer of the burning logs; this picture is more than an
incident in the story, it is the key which lets us in and acquaints us
with the unhappy weaver who till then had seemed outside our
sympathies.

George Eliot AS we read her work, we know that unless this

writer’s power of Vision had been of a high
order, she could not have placed so many living pictures in our
memories, pictures not of mere scenes, but bits of actual life, in
which the rude passions, and also the gentler qualities of men and
women, are set before us.
I will mention yet another illustration of truth of
Mrs. Gaskell Vision, rendered, because seen in a sudden flash,
 with so much vigour that it is difficult to believe it is
not a record of human experience. The incident is too long to
transcribe, but it occurs in the fourth chapter of the third volume of
Sylvia’s Lovers, the scene in which Charlie Kinraid, Sylvia’s old lover,
returns, and tells her that her husband has deceived her. There is a
desperate simplicity in the pathos of the poor girl’s words, “I thought
yo’ were dead”; and the vivid image of the shuddering, conscience-
stricken husband is more moving than any elaborate description
could have made it. It is truth; one seems to know that it was all seen
and heard distinctly by the writer before a word of it was set down.

I N Kidnapped, the defence of the cabin on board

the privateer strongly evidences the power of Some masters
of fiction
Vision; still earlier in the book is a more sudden
effect in the ghastly discovery the hero makes at the top of the steps
up which his treacherous uncle had sent him. In The Black Arrow, by
the same master-hand, the scene of the apparition of the supposed
leper is a marvellous instance of this faculty.
I might quote many remarkable examples from Oliver Twist, from
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, from The Cloister and the Hearth,
and other masterpieces, in illustration of my meaning. There is more
than one wonderful instance in John Inglesant, notably the passage
in which the reader is made to see Strafford almost without a
description of his apparition.
These illustrations are more or less evidences of direct Vision, the
pictures presented seem to have been at once photographed on the
mental sight; but many remarkable instances could be cited in which
the effects are produced by a series of touches so exquisitely
blended together, that the impression produced is that of a solid
whole. In The Woodlanders there are examples of almost unrivalled
truth of Vision, presented by a series of richly coloured touches. In
the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice we have another feature of
the power of Vision, the incisive presentation of character in the
dialogue between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet; this so completely impresses
both characters on the reader’s mind, that the concluding words of
the chapter seem superfluous.
In A Foregone Conclusion, by Mr. Howells, we recognise an
extremely subtle power of Vision; we can scarcely say how the
persons have become familiar to us, yet we seem to know that they
are alive, and that they were distinctly seen by the writer; there is the
same power in Silas Lapham. It may be said that I have only given
examples from the Masters of Fiction. I could have given many
others from the books of far less popular writers, but I believe in a
high ideal, for one can never reach one’s aim, and it is well always to
be striving upwards.

Essential
qualities for
T HE outcome of the question, then, seems to be
that beginners in the art of novel-writing are
writing fiction able to test themselves as to their power of Vision
with regard to Fiction; they will soon discover
whether they can master the difficulty of creating a forcible and
distinct picture in their minds of the subject they propose to treat;
they must see it distinctly, and it must be lasting; they must see not
only the outer forms of characters, but their inner feelings; they must
think their thoughts, they must try to hear their words.
It is possible that the picture may not all be seen at once; the
earnest student may have to wait days before he sees anything,
weeks before he vividly and truthfully sees the whole. I can only say,
let him wait with patience and hope, and above all let him firmly
believe that novel-writing is not easy; possibly, in spite of
earnestness and diligence, the beginner has made a mistake, and
has not the necessary gifts for success in Fiction. Well then, if after
many trials he cannot call up a picture which is at the same time
distinct and true to Nature, he had better bring himself to believe that
his attempt is not a creation of the imagination, it is at best but a
passing fancy, not worth the trouble of writing down. One more
counsel. There are three qualities as essential to success in novel-
writing as the power of Vision: they are Patience, Perseverance, and
an untiring habit of taking pains.
 ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER IN
FICTION
Maxwell Gray

The climax of
art
T HIS is the climax, the finest flowering of the
fictive art. It is the crux, whereby may be
determined the vital reality of the beings presented
to the reader by the novelist. Growth is the first
condition of life; only the character that develops with the course of
the story is really alive; if it be stationary, then it is dead. Many an
interesting and amusing writer is without this power of creating and
developing character, the rarest and the highest given to mortal man.
It is the lack of this singular gift that fills the every-day story-teller’s
pages with puppets and labelled bundles of qualities in place of
human beings. It is possible to tell a very good story without creating
or developing character, but it is scarcely possible to create and
develop character without telling a good story. For it is story—that is,
linked incident, changing circumstance—that moulds the plastic yet
unchangeable character of man.

“Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,

Ein Karacter sich in dem Sturm der Welt.”

There is nothing so constant, and in one sense so unchanging, as

human character: every baby born into the world receives certain
characteristics, due in part to heredity, in part to climate and physical
conditions, in part, possibly, to pre-natal mental surroundings, which
characteristics remain with him to the day of his death. A rose-tree
may be trained and developed in different ways, it may become a
bush, a tree or a creeper, but it can never become a peach—St.
Peter is always Peter, and St. Paul, Saul, though the fisher has
become a saint and martyr, and the strict and fierce Pharisee the
Apostle of the Gentiles.
T HOUGH in fiction, as in life, character creates
incident, still it is incident, which is dramatic Incident affects
character
circumstance, or circumstance, which may be
called stationary incident, that chiefly carves and shapes character,
calls out latent and often unsuspected vice, and evokes equally
unlooked-for virtue. Incident, or dramatic situation, may be called the
touchstone of character. Many an excellently written and clever novel
fails to enchain because the people in it do exactly what they could
not possibly do in real life. They develop wrongly because they are
not alive, not living organisms, and some secret instinct in the reader
is revolted by a feeling of unreality, he has a secret anger at being
cheated into temporary belief in a made-up figure, in whose nostrils
the breath of life is not.
Many critics, but I fancy chiefly males, and
therefore incapable of weighing female character, Maggie Tulliver
think this the weak point in The Mill on the Floss.
Maggie Tulliver, they say, high-minded Maggie, would never have
wasted her treasure of noble passion on such a barber’s block as
Stephen Guest. Yet that to my mind is one of the finest points in that
very fine novel. It is artistically as well as naturally inevitable that the
impulsive, imaginative, warm-hearted Maggie, who ran away to live
with the gipsies, so greatly admired little Lucy’s doll-face and trim
curls, who idealised everything she saw and lived in a constant
transition from heaven to hell, never abiding in one stay on the firm
level earth in her stormy childhood, should see an Apollo in the first
comely and well-conducted youth she met, and that her imagination
should invest him with a blinding glamour, which in turn kindled so
strong a passion as swept her off her feet. Her passionate and
exaggerated repentance, too, though as exasperating to the reader
as it would be in real life, is equally true, the natural sequence of all
that went before. Still, Maggie ought not to have been drowned, she
was but beginning to develop; Stephen Guest should have been but
an incident in the Sturm-und-Drang-Periode inevitable to a nature so
turbulent and so complex as hers. Maggie’s death, which is an
accident and a climax to nothing, must be regarded as an artistic
murder, for the wanton slaying of a personage whose death is not
artistically necessary in a fiction, is more than a blunder, it is a capital
crime. But the charm and interest of The Mill on the Floss are not in
the development of Maggie so much as in that of her father and
mother and those matchless aunts and uncles of hers.

Power to create I F the power to create and develop character is

great, it is also rare, and discoverable only in
character fiction of the highest order. It is this that makes
Hawthorne so incomparably grand; this that gives
his chief, though not his whole, magic to that master of English
fiction, Thackeray, and his peer, George Eliot; that impresses in
Manzoni’s splendid romance, I Promessi Sposi; that enchains in
Jane Austen, though she does but brush the surface of character,
leaving the depths unplumbed; that fascinates in Charlotte Brontë
and in Mrs. Gaskell, that powerful, wholesome, and but half-
appreciated writer; and the lack of which sends so marvellous a
genius as Dickens, in spite of all his witchery of fancy and fun and
youthful mastery of language, lost later in affectation, to the second
rank. It was Dickens’ inability to recognise his own limitation in this
respect which chiefly contributed, with his outrageous vanity, to
wreck his later works; for he always aimed at developing character,
probably because it was the only thing he could not do. Because the
gods, as a sort of make-weight, with their gifts of genius and talent,
always throw in a perverse blindness to the nature and limits of
those endowments.

M ICHAEL Angelo, at first sight of it, said to

Donatello’s statue of St. George, “March!” Characters
and the young figure always seems, in its should develop
breathing vitality, to be on the point of obeying the
order. So it is with the finest creations in fiction: they march, they
develop, they achieve an immortal existence, like the lovers in Keats’
Grecian Urn—
 “For ever shalt thou love, and she be fair.”

We expect them to go on living; we look out for Colonel Newcome’s

noble and pathetic face among the pensioners in the chapel, and
expect to see that delightful old sinner, Major Pendennis, ogle us
from his club-window as we pass. How sadly do the characters of
Amelia Sedley’s kind and easy-going parents develop under the
stress of ill-fortune, and yet how truly! The indulgent and affectionate
merchant, and his comfortable, commonplace spouse, who caress
and fondle Amelia’s girlhood, pass with saddest ease into the selfish
and querulous tyrants of her widowed maturity; the harshness of
their soured and unlovely old age is but the other side of natures to
which ease and material comfort are the first conditions of existence.
And poor dear Amelia, how naturally she glides through the bitter
trials and keen sorrows of her womanhood, losing the self-
complacency and regardlessness of others, fostered by her
caressed and guarded girlhood, and emerging mellowed and
sweetened from the flame! People run Amelia down. I love her; I
should like to have known her. Don’t we all know and love, and feel
the better for knowing and loving, some Amelia? My heart aches
now as if from a fresh stab whenever I read the immortal sentence
which describes the falling of night on battle-field and city, on the
town without, and Emmy’s desolate chamber within, where she “was
praying for George, who was lying on his face dead, with a bullet
through his heart.” Of course we all adore that good-for-nothing
Becky Sharpe, whose complex and subtle nature is so terribly
warped and contorted by the wrongs of her youth. How delightful is
the unexpected tenderness developed in that great, clumsy, big-
hearted blackguard, Rawdon Crawley, by his dainty, clever little witch
of a wife and his neglected child. This Rawdon is essentially virile all
the way through. It was not only a fine brain, but a great and
generous and very tender heart that conceived and developed all
these intensely human creatures in Thackeray’s great romance.

W HAT fine development there is in Lucia and

Renzo, those very commonplace and
Living examples
in fiction
unromantic young country-folk in the first chapters
of I Promessi Sposi. Yet Lucia does not surprise us when, under
stress of the terrible events which tear their tranquil lives apart, she
comports herself with such signal heroism, and overawes and
disarms the lawless brigands who have carried her off, by the dignity
of her gentle yet strong rectitude. Nor are we astonished when the
honest and simple-minded Renzo, by his single-hearted loyalty and
devotion to plain duty, becomes a hero in his turn. It is a matchless
stroke of Manzoni’s genius thus from such every-day and unromantic
material to evolve stuff so heroic and full of romantic interest as in
the characters of these Promessi Sposi, who were not even
romantically in love, but were merely going to marry because they
were at marrying age and thought each other suitable.
This subtle and inevitable development which follows from the
creation of a living character in fiction, as from the birth of a living
organism in nature, gives a distinct charm to Malory’s version of
Arthurian legend, the one centre of interest around which the whole
body of the romance Morte d’Arthur plays, being the development of
Sir Lancelot, that very live and captivating man, whom once to know
is always to love. Chaucer, fettered and cramped though he was, yet
in the narrow limits his art imposed gives subtle suggestions of
spiritual growth, while the immortal people painted in the Prologue,
though of necessity debarred from movement, are like Donatello’s
St. George, we involuntarily tell them to march, they are so alert and
so much alive. And even in the Nibelungen Lied, which would at first
seem but a poetic welding together of myth, tradition and romance,
the main point of the story and the hinge upon which the whole
tragedy plays, is the terrible direction taken by Chriemhild’s naturally
sweet and noble nature under the warping influence of deadly
wrong.
Macbeth, aweary of the sun, is another man
than the gallant Scottish chief who consults the A bad tendency
witches; and what a change passes over the
warm-hearted and devoted wife, who is so eager for her husband’s
advancement. Hamlet and Faust (especially Hamlet), being not so
much a Danish prince and a German philosopher as representatives
of the human race, are the first and finest instances of character-
development in fiction. Yet the same Goethe, who, by the
spontaneous play of his great genius, created the living Faust, also
composed that nauseous study of morbid anatomy,
Wahlverwandtschaften, in which there is no true development
upwards or downwards, but a sort of stagnant and hopeless decay,
and by the composition of which he became the father of a great and
gruesome school of fiction, the noxious influence of which is
spreading everywhere like a leprous growth over the fair face of
fictive art, especially in France, where the novel has been reduced to
a study of the gutter and the city sewer, and poetry to the open
worship of decay, and where a great artist like Zola devotes
marvellous powers of observation and description and analysis of
character through the whole of the celebrated Assommoir to
impressing upon the reader that dirty linen is dirty, which Falstaff
knew by sad experience, but did not dwell upon, long ago. There is
much morbid anatomy of stagnant character in L’Assommoir but no
development; the characters do not even degenerate, they simply rot
as if from some mysterious, irresistible corruption.
A great, perhaps the greatest, living English
Tess novelist is, like his lesser brothers, touched by this
mysterious blight. Hence Tess has an artistically
impossible climax. Mr. Hardy’s fine genius created a noble character
in Tess, but his Paganism (for the blight has its origin in Paganism)
blinded him to the full grandeur of his own creation. He sees clearly
how the tragedy of Tess’s girlhood, the horrible cruelty of which she
is the innocent victim, moulds her nature, first stunning her to a
degradation from which she quickly revolts, and ultimately leading
her through suffering and knowledge of good and evil to a higher
purity than that of ignorant innocence, but he cannot see, perhaps
because he does not believe in, the impossibility of the final actions
he imputes to her, in a nature that had grown to such a height. Vainly
is the ivory parasol flourished in the face of the reader, who rejects it
as an unreality. But I speak under correction.
Whatever Paganism may be to art—and the late
Paganism Mr. J. A. Symonds thinks it is very good for it—
there is no doubt that it is absolutely fatal to creative literature. The
pure Pagan, the denying spirit, can have no ideal; it is not that he
asserts there is no God, but that he says there is no good; he knows
no inward vivifying spirit to produce moral progress; therefore for him
character cannot grow, it can only decay, like geraniums touched by
frost. This denying spirit, this Paganism, which acknowledges matter
because itself is material, and which denies soul and the
supernatural, sees in man a mere organism, bound in an eternal ring
of sense, a being whose deepest emotions are but animal instincts,
variously developed, and whose subtlest thoughts are but
emanations from an organ resembling curds; therefore it has only
the human animal for its subject in art and literature, and can depict
nothing in moral life but its decay. It has no clue to the growth of the
living organism, acknowledging not life but only death. Human
character is to this Paganism as the rapidly decomposing corpse
under the knife and microscope. It is this which in politics produces
Nihilism, Socialism, Anarchy, in literature what is known as Zolaism,
though Zola is but one of its products, and in France the poetry of
the decadence, the acknowledged idolatry of corruption; and it is this
which fills European fiction with unsavoury studies in morbid
anatomy in place of wholesome, vivifying pictures of living and
growing character. One can trace this sterilising influence in
Goethe’s life as well as in his works; one sees it beginning in George
Eliot, and continuing in the most ambitious English writers of the day;
but not in Mr. Hall Caine, whose work, with all its shortcomings, is a
protest against it, and who resolutely proclaims the soul of man and
his power to rise above his passions and make a stepping-stone of
his dead self to something nobler.

The art of
developing
B UT how acquire the art of developing
character in fiction? We may as well try to
character acquire blue eyes and straight noses, nature
having endowed us with aquiline features and
black orbs. It is, like the gifts of poetry and cookery, born with us or
unattainable, though, like those sources of so much solace to
mankind, it may and must be cultivated when present. The means
whereto are study and observation of life, and of great literary
masterpieces.
That pleasant and light-hearted writer, Mr. James Payn, probably
beguiled by the whisper of some tricksy demon, once, to his
subsequent acknowledged sorrow, sat down and airily indited an
essay in a leading periodical on fiction as a profession, in which he
asserted in that gentle and joyous fashion of his that, like any other
craft, that of novel-writing can be acquired by study and practice.
With a thoughtlessness that Christian charity would fain assume to
be devoid of guile, he even expressed an innocent wonder that a
profession so easy and inexpensive to acquire, and so delightful as
well as lucrative to exercise, was not more sought after by the
parents of British youth, who, worthy folk, to do them strict justice,
have never been backward in repressing the vice of scribbling in
their offspring. It would be unkind to dwell upon the error of Mr.
Payn’s ways. Nemesis, in the shape of letters during the next few
days from half the parents in the three kingdoms, demanding instant
instruction for sons (especially those who had failed in most other
things) in the elements of novel-writing, overtook that poor man, and
he did fit penance in a subsequent number of the periodical,
appearing there in all the humiliation of white sheet, ashes, and
taper, and duly confessing, if not his sins, at least his sorrow for their
results.

Those who T HE art of novel-writing is not to be picked up

along the primrose path, even when the gift is
should write present; nor is literature, especially in its higher
walks, a lucrative profession; it is, as of old, a
crutch, but not a staff. It is doubtless comparatively easy, a certain
knack being inborn and skill having been acquired, to reel off story
after story at the same dead level of mediocrity, but no writer has
produced many good novels, or ever will. The world is flooded with
fiction, chiefly worthless, but able by sheer volume to swamp the few
good novels that appear from time to time. People should never write
a novel or indite a poem of malice prepense. The only justification for
doing either is being unable to help it. Those novel-writers who can
create characters will develop them and thank heaven; those who
cannot will not, and let us hope they will thank heaven too.
 THE SHORT STORY

Lanoe Falconer

T HE art of writing a short story is like the art of

managing a small allowance. It requires the The art of
same care, self-restraint, and ingenuity, and, like writing a short
the small allowance, it affords excellent practice for story
the beginner, as by the very limitations it imposes
on her ambition, it preserves her from errors of judgment and tastes
into which she might be hurried by fancy or fashion.

T HERE are many things lawful, if not expedient,

in the three-volume novel that in the short story What to avoid
are forbidden—moralising, for instance, or comments of any kind,
personal confidences or confessions. These can indeed be made so
entrancing that the narrative itself may be willingly foregone. The wit
of a Thackeray, the wisdom of a George Eliot, has done as much:
but these gifts are rare, so rare that the beginner will do well to
assume that she has them not, and to stick fast to her story,
especially if it be a short one; since on that tiny stage where there is
hardly room for the puppets and their manœuvres, there is plainly no
space for the wire-puller.
Even more cheerfully may be renounced those
Explanations dreary addenda called explanations. Nowhere in a
story can they possibly be welcome. At the end
they would be preposterous; at the beginning they scare away the
reader; in the middle they exasperate him. Who does not know the
chill of disappointment with which, having finished one lively and
promising chapter, one reads at the beginning of the next, “And now
we must retrace our steps a little to explain,” or words to the same
depressing effect? Explain what?—the situation? That should have
explained itself. Or the relation of the actors? A word or two in the
dialogue might do as much. More I, as the reader, do not wish to
learn. I am fully interested, I am caught in the current of the tale, I am
burning to know if the hero recovered, if the heroine forgave, if the
parents at last consented: I am in no mood to listen to a précis—for it
is never more—of the past events that prepared this dilemma, or of
the legal, financial, or genealogical complications by which it is
prolonged. With these dry details the author may do well to be
acquainted, for the due direction and confirmation of his plot; but the
reader has nothing to do with them, and in a work of art they are as
needless and as unsightly as the scaffolding round a completed
building, or the tacking threads in a piece of finished needlework.
Equally incompatible with the short story is that
fertile source of tedium, redundancy. “The secret of Redundancy
being wearisome,” says the French proverb, “is to
tell everything.” What then is the end of those who tell not merely
everything, but—if an Irish turn of expression may be permitted—a
great deal more? It is to encourage the practice of skipping in the
general reader, and—much to the detriment of more parsimonious
writers—in the reviewers as well. A large number of novels
picturesquely described as weak and washy, might be converted into
very readable stories by the simple process of leaving out about two
volumes and a half of entirely superfluous and unentertaining matter.
On the staff of an amateur magazine to which in
early youth the writer contributed, there was one “Phillup Bosch.”
most obliging and useful member whose business
it was to provide “copy” for the odd corners and inevitable spaces
between the more important papers. He wrote, you will observe, not
because he had anything in the world to say or tell, but because a
certain amount of space must at all costs be covered; and the
effusions thus inspired he signed with the modest and appropriate
pseudonym of “Phillup Bosch.” How often in fiction of a certain class
may even now be recognised the handiwork of this industrious writer,
always unsigned, indeed, at least by the old familiar name. The
sparkle of his early touch is gone, but his unmistakable purpose is
the same. The glamour of “auld lang syne” may to his old friends
endear these interpolations, but from a literary point of view it is
much to be desired that he would lay aside his pen for ever. And yet
it must be acknowledged that without his aid there are three-volume
novels that could never have been written. Fortunately, the short
story is independent of him.

Disadvantages T HE disadvantages of the short story become

more distinct when we consider its possible
theme. The crowded stage and wide perspective of the novel proper;
all transformations of character and circumstance in which length of
time is an essential element; even the intricately tangled plot,
deliberately and knot by knot unfolded—these are beyond its reach.
The design of the short story must itself be short—and simple. A
single, not too complicated, incident is best; in short, the one entire
and perfect action, that Aristotle—I quote from Buckley’s translation
—considered the best subject of fable or poem. To the writer might
well be repeated the stage-manager’s advice to aspiring dramatists,
quoted by Coppée in his Contes en Prose:
“If they come to me with their plays when I am at breakfast, I say
—‘Look here, can you tell me the plot in the time it takes me to eat
this boiled egg? If not—away with it—it is useless.’” The author of a
short story submitted to the same kind of test would have to be even
more expeditious.

I T may be observed that all these suggestions

are of a negative order, and concerned with “the
The art of
omission
tact of omission.” It is indeed of the first importance
in the composition of the short story. As a famous etcher once said
to the writer while she stood entranced before a study of river, trees,
and cattle, that his magic touch had converted into a very poem, an
exquisite picture of pastoral repose—“The great thing is to know
what to leave out.” It is part of that economy already insisted upon,
“to express only the characteristic traits of succeeding actions,” and,
as Mr. Besant exhorts us, to suppress “all descriptions which hinder
instead of helping the action, all episodes of whatever kind, all
conversation which does not either advance the story or illustrate the
characters.”
 How this “essential and characteristic” is to be
Grasp of point distinguished from all around it is another matter. It
is a work that a great French master of the art
described as a travail acharné. But it is also very
Dramatic
instinct often made easy by native instinct, like that which
directs these born story-tellers—their name is
legion—of both sexes and all conditions, who never put pen to
paper, but who in hall or cottage, drawing-room or kitchen, nursery or
smoking-room, whenever they unfold a tale, hold all their audience
attentive and engrossed. Their method when analysed appears to
chiefly depend, first on their firm grasp of the main point and purport
of their story, next on their liberal use of dialogue in the telling of it. At
least thus do the listeners to one enchanting story-teller endeavour
to explain the dramatic flavour she imparted to the commonest
incidents of domestic life. For instance, this is what she would have
made of a theme so ungrateful as the fact that, the butcher having
sent too large a joint, she had returned it to him. For the benefit of
inexperienced housekeepers, it is perhaps as well to explain that a
fair average weight for a leg of mutton is declared by experts to be
nine pounds.
“Directly I went into the larder, I said, ‘Jane, what on earth is that?’
“‘Why, ma’am,’ she said, ‘it is the leg of mutton you ordered.’
“‘What!’ I said, ‘the small leg of mutton? Where is the ticket?’
“‘Please, ma’am, the butcher’s boy has not brought it.’
“I said, ‘Tell him to come into the kitchen.’
“When he came I made her weigh that leg of mutton before him. It
weighed eleven pounds four ounces!
“I said, ‘Take that back to your master, and ask him from me if he
calls that a small leg of mutton?’”
The expression, the intonation, and the, at times, almost tragic
emphasis, it is, unfortunately, impossible to reproduce; but even in
this colourless record we may admire the terseness and vigour, the
masterly beginning that at once arouses curiosity, and the truly
artistic reserve that does not by outcry or comment detract from the
force of the climax! Consider, too, how in some hands this simple
tale might have been embroidered and interrupted: by description of
the scenery outside the kitchen-window; by a minute account of the
lady’s family and connections, or of the previous history of the cook;
by a dissertation on joints in general and the story-teller’s favourite
dishes in particular, with other digressions too numerous to mention;
and by comparison you may divine what constitutes “the
characteristic” of a story.

Points to aim at I F now, seriously speaking, you review the tablets

of your memory and mark the scenes imprinted
there, you will see that whereas some figures, incidents, speeches,
and even details of the background are vivid as ever, others have
vanished away. Again, you will find that a conversation may be often
best reported, in fidelity to the spirit rather than the word, by
suppressing all the repetitions and superfluous phrases that
encumbered the actual dialogue. Lastly, if you attentively consider
the character of some one you know and understand, you may
discover that it is revealed and epitomised in certain particular words
and actions, and that by repeating these you might present a much
more striking portrait of the original than by a lengthy memoir of all
that he, or she, did and said in common with other people. Thus from
your own experience you may gather useful hints as to the kind of
condensation desirable for the short story. Others may, and ought to,
be acquired by the study of the best literature; but in this, as in every
form of creative work, the artist, in the beginning as at the end, must
draw his chief inspiration from life itself.

T HERE is one thing that the shortest story does

not exclude, and that is the highest artistic Literary
capabilities
ambition. That the length of any work can be no
measure of its importance or effect is best illustrated by such
masterpieces as the minor poems of Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, or
Tennyson. The literary capabilities of the short story, still in its
infancy, have yet to be discovered, probably by the very generation
of those to whom this paper is especially addressed. Therefore one
must the more earnestly entreat them to cherish the highest aims in
their writing, to lavish on it the greatest care. Nowhere can “signs of
weariness, of haste, in fact of scamping,” be so inexcusable as on
the miniature canvas, or ivory, of the short story. Rather it deserves
the finish of the finest cameo, of the most highly polished gem.
Finally, with that uncomfortable feeling that is apt to overtake one
after preaching, the writer is obliged to confess that all this advice is
easier to give than to follow, and concludes with the wish that her
young readers may

“Better reck the rede

Than ever did the adviser.”
 ON THE ART OF WRITING FICTION FOR
CHILDREN
Mrs. Molesworth

No royal road T HERE is, we are told, no royal road to learning.

Is there a royal road to any good thing? Are
not hard work, more or less drudgery,
perseverance, self-control, and self-restraint the unavoidable
travelling companions, the only trustworthy couriers through the
journey to the country of success? I think so.
But the way is not always the same. None of the paths are “royal,”
in the sense of being smooth and flower-bestrewn; but beyond this,
similarity no longer necessarily holds good. To literary success, even
in its humbler departments, there are many and varying roads. Were
it not so indeed, the thing itself would be infinitely less worthy of
achievement. For if literary work is to be in any sense admirable, it
must be individual and characteristic; it is not of the nature of
manufactured goods; its essence must be of the author’s personality.

I WISH thus to preface the little I have to say of

possible service to others on that branch of Writing young
for the
writing as to which I am credited with some
experience—fiction for the young, more especially for children—
because, underlying any information or advice I can give, is the very
strongest belief in every writer taking his or her own path, trusting to
his or her own intuitions. Yet these intuitions, if I may be forgiven an
apparent paradox, must be those of a cultivated taste, a thoughtful
intellect, an imagination all the more luxuriant from having been well
pruned. Therefore before beginning to write, even for childish minds,
I would urge upon young authors to see well to their own mental
possessions. You cannot “give” out of nothing, and if you would give
of the best, with the best must you be furnished. Read the best