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CHAPTER 1

I want you. ” Reyn’s voice, low and insistent, seemed to come at me from all angles. And no wonder, because he was looming over me obnoxiously as I filled a big glass jar with basmati rice from the twenty-five-pound sack we keep in the pantry.

Look at me: “we. ” I’m all about the “we-ness,” as if I belonged here at River’s Edge, rehab central for wayward immortals. Sort of a twelve-step program. Which in my case had more like a hundred and eleventy steps. I’d been a Riverite only two months and had no idea how long it would take to undo 450-plus years of bad behavior. At least several more weeks, for sure. Probably more like seven or eight years. Or longer. Ugh.

I shifted closer to the big wooden kitchen worktable and hoped I wouldn’t spill rice everywhere, because God knows that would be a pain in the ass to clean up.

“You want me, too. ” I could practically hear his fists clenching and unclenching.

“No, I don’t. Go away. ” Welcome to the freak-show circus of Nastasya’s romantic exploits. It isn’t for the faint of heart. Or the faint of stomach. Is that a phrase?

Nastasya: C’est moi.

There were other immortals here: four teachers and currently eight students. Such as me. And Reyn, Viking wonderboy. For example.

Reyn: the thorn in my side, nightmare of my past, destroyer of my family, constant irritant of my now, and oh yeah, the hottest, hottest, most beautiful, stunning guy I had seen in 450 years. The one whose image haunted my brain as I shivered in my cold, narrow bed. The one whose fevered kisses I had relived over and over as I lay exhausted and unable to sleep.

What fevered kisses, you ask? Well, about ten days ago we’d had a mutual sudden brain attack and given in to the inexplicable, overwhelming chemistry that had been building between us since my arrival. This had been closely followed by the soul-destroying realizations that his family had killed everyone in my family, and my family had basically killed a lot of his family. That was our shared heritage. And we were on fire for each other. Fun, eh? I mean, when I hear about couples struggling because they’re different religions or one’s a vegan or something, I think they just need to get some perspective.

Anyway, since our make-out session/horrible realizations, Reyn had continued to pursue me with winter raider persistence and ruthlessness. And yet night after night, he—who has kicked down hundreds of doors, battered his way through hundreds of doors, set fire to hundreds of doors—had not brought himself to knock on mine.