Despite promising Luie that she wouldn't look, Soph couldn't help but keep an eye out for her vampire saviour.

Each day as she went to and from work, she scanned the faces of the pedestrians who flowed past her on the street, looking for that one face that was etched in her mind.

As a witch, she knew a few protective chants to ward off vampires, but she'd never actually met one. They generally kept to their neighbourhoods in the city's west, and Soph only ever heard about them when she read about rogue killings in the paper. Of course, she'd never known that some could walk in daylight, and that they looked as human as everyone else. There could be hundreds of them in the Central Business District, and she'd be none the wiser.

Two weeks after her near miss with the truck - and not a single sighting of her rescuer - Soph hurried into her office, late as usual. Sliding into her cubicle, she kicked her handbag under her desk and booted up her laptop just as her boss strode past.

"Morning, Bradley," she greeted, pulling her emails up on her screen as if she'd been working on them for hours. He barely glanced at her as he nodded and continued on his way.

"You're late," Rhonda hissed from the next cubicle.

"No shit," Soph replied under her breath. She turned to block out her colleague and start on her work.

She was often late to work, and because of that, she was usually late leaving too. That afternoon she walked out the door of the Paxus building close to dark and saw her vampire across the street.

He was also leaving an office building, wearing a navy suit with a leather satchel slung over one arm. He typed on his phone as he walked.

Soph gawked. Beyond the fact that the image of his face had been branded in her mind, she would never have pinned him for a supernatural. He looked so normal. Bottom lip caught between her teeth, she watched him stroll along the street. Maybe she'd imagined his speed the day he'd saved her; a trick of her mind in a frightening situation.

Still, vampire or not, he had saved her. She should thank him for that, at least. Glancing both ways, she ducked across the street. While she'd been staring, he'd gotten ahead, and she hurried to catch up with him, bumping into shoulders as she went.

"Sorry! Sorry!" she muttered to them as they grumbled at her. Up ahead, her mystery saviour turned at the edge of his building towards the underground car park. She darted around the corner and was stopped by a security guard.

"Where's your pass?" he asked.

"Oh, I work across the street. I'm just trying to catch up to..." she peered past the guard, but could no longer see the man in the navy suit.

"No pass, no entry," the guard told her, shooing her back so he could scan the card of a worker waiting behind her.

She shuffled away and leaned against the wall of the building. She took a few deep breaths, harried by her chase and disappointed that she'd lost her target. A roar sounded on the drive and she looked towards the car park to see a black Audi ascending to the street. Behind the wheel she saw her mystery man - dark hair combed back and aviator sunglasses on - but before she could jump forward and wave him down, he turned onto the street and sped away.

Sighing, she started towards the train station. At least she knew where he worked now. She could try to intercept him tomorrow.

***

The following day she had no luck catching the man, losing him again to the car park. The security guard looked annoyed by her second attempt to enter without a pass and told her to "bugger off."

On the third day, she left work on time and crossed the street to wait outside the man's office for him. While she waited, she studied the other workers leaving the building, most of them wearing SinCorp uniforms of navy and white.

The workers dwindled away, and Soph checked her watch. If she didn't leave soon, she would be late for her weekly dinner with Luie. She peered through the door of SinCorp, but she couldn't see the man coming. With a sigh of defeat, she abandoned her post.

On the fourth day, she once more saw the man leaving his office at the same time she left hers. Resolutely, she hoisted her handbag onto her shoulder and raced across the street, waving wildly at the car who honked at her.

She charged after the man, intending to catch him before he got to the car park, but was instead caught off guard when he walked past it. Slowing a little, she watched to see where he was going. He walked half a block, then turned into a laneway that led between two buildings.

She caught up and peered down the laneway. She couldn't see him, but the lane was a winding one, bordered by leafy ferns that were supposed to make it seem wild in the concrete jungle. She stepped onto the path and hurried around the first bend.

Hands caught her from behind in an impossibly tight grip and they yanked her, hard, against a man's body. She opened her mouth to scream, and he clapped a hand over it.

"Why are you tailing me, Witchling?" he hissed and his lips were close to her ear. "Are you looking for a hit?"

"A hit?" she tried to query, but her voice was muffled against his hand. Still, he seemed to understand her. In a movement too fast for her to follow, he shifted one hand to grip her inner thigh while the other slid up her blouse and beneath the wire of her bra to grasp her breast.

"I've heard this is the currency for a hit of vampire blood these days." his hands tightened and his lips moved to her neck, sending shivers radiating across her skin. "Though I can't imagine why a witch would want such a thing."

"Fuck." the word fell from her lips as a gasp when his fingers pinched her nipple. Fear and adrenaline surged within her. This had been a terrible idea.

"I don't want a hit," she croaked. "I just wanted to thank you for saving me from being hit by a truck a few weeks back."

There was a pause, then his hands vanished from thigh and breast, leaving her skin feeling cold. In a flash he was standing before her.

"You remember that?"

"One doesn't generally forget a near death experience," she grumbled as she straightened her blouse. Her heart hammered behind her ribcage, but oddly, now that he was in front of her, she wasn't as afraid. She wasn't so stupid, however, not to wish that at least one of the crystals in her bag was charged so she could use it in a warding spell. She held out her hand, and he looked at it quizzically.

"So thanks," she said, "for saving me."

He took her hand and shook it. It was the same hand that only moments ago had been on her breast.

"Let me buy you a drink," she found herself offering. "Tomorrow night, we could meet at Benny's after work?"

"Benny's," he echoed faintly. He didn't seem at all like the predator who'd pinned her from behind only moments ago. She could practically see his mind working through her proposal. She waited, barely breathing. "Okay," he agreed finally. "Benny's, tomorrow night."

In a blur, he vanished. One moment he'd been there, and the next Soph was standing alone in the laneway. She smoothed her hands over her blouse and tugged her skirt back into place, feeling oddly as if her encounter with the vampire had been a dream.

"He's a Possessive," Luie's words echoed in Soph's mind, and she wondered if the vampire had used his powers on her to influence her into asking him out for a drink. She certainly hadn't intended to when walking into the situation. Of course, she hadn't banked on being felt up by the vampire either. She turned around and started the seven block walk to her apartment.

***

The walk gave her time to think, and by the time she reached her one-bedroom apartment with a purposeful step in her stride. Ignoring the clutter of her otherwise minimalist-styled home - she'd had good intentions when moving in - she went straight to her bookshelf.

She owned a lot of books, though she wasn't much of a reader - it was one of those things that she always meant to get around to but never did - so it took her a while to find the one she was looking for. The spell book was dusty, and she sneezed as she pulled it from the back of her shelf. She really needed to ask Luie for the cleaning lady's phone number. Again.

Setting the book on the glass coffee table, she perched on the edge of the leather couch to open it. The pages weren't aged - the book was only a generation old, having belonged to her mother first - but they were stained with what Soph thought was likely coffee. She flicked through them, scanning over her mother's spells and notations. As she did, she fingered the amulet at her neck. It was a simple pewter charm, with a pentacle etched on it, but Nona had charmed it for her, so Soph knew it worked.

She hadn't felt it warm her skin when the vampire had been speaking to her. Did that mean he hadn't used his Possessive powers on her? Or perhaps the amulet didn't work against vampires.

She found the page she was looking for and leaned over it, tracing the words with her finger. There was a list of wards against vampires scribed there, ranging from simple to allow the caster to run away, to the more complex, which would bind a vampire.

There were a few other things noted, such as weakening a vampire with silver, or killing it with wood. There were also a list of common traits which included drinking human blood for sustenance, their incredible speed and superhuman strength. There was nothing about Possessive powers.

Soph chewed the inside of her lip as she ran her hand down the page. It read as if her mother had simply transcribed the information from a textbook rather than having any intimate knowledge. Right at the bottom of the page, she found one useful line of information, however.

Vampire blood has healing properties for humans, as well as the ability to enhance the senses. In witches, it can increase natural abilities by tenfold. It has been known for a witch to try to taste a vampire's blood to ensure a fairer fight against him.

Beware, however, for vampire blood can be highly addictive and can cause irrational tendencies, which may jeopardise a witch's life in her unrelenting quest to get another fix.

Soph sat back, amused. She rarely partook in drugs - though she could be partial to a well-rolled spliff every now and then - but there were obviously witches out there who did. Her vampire had assumed she'd wanted a hit of his blood, hadn't he?

Her hand slid to her thigh, remembering how he'd grabbed her there. She hadn't even asked how he'd known she was a witch. Her skin prickled as she recalled his breath against her ear. Witchling. Her own hand tightened over the place he'd grasped her. She hadn't even asked his name.

Tomorrow couldn't come soon enough.