Forget Me Not

ALICE -

“Alice? Honey...”

The sound of my mother’s voice rings through my thoughts, but I don’t seem to register it fully as I keep thinking of what’s coming.

I’ve known for years that the Esmerays would come for me the day I turned twenty-one. Three days ago that knowledge stopped being abstract and became a date on a calendar, and it turns out waiting is worse than being taken.

Because this was always about a debt. That’s what my parents told me, anyway. Money. Investments that went bad. Contracts signed too quickly and read too late. The kind of mistake people like my father were supposed to be too careful to make.

The Esmerays were generous about it. That’s what my mother says. They gave us time. Extensions.

But generosity, in this case, came with terms. If the balance wasn’t cleared by the time I turned twenty-one, they wouldn’t take the house. They wouldn’t take what was left of his business. They would take me.

“Temporarily,” my mother said the first time I was old enough to understand. “As collateral. Until the debt is paid.”

Like I’m something that can be held in escrow. Like I come with terms and conditions.

I used to ask what that actually meant, what happens when they take someone, but I stopped when I realized neither of them would answer the same way twice. Now they don’t answer at all. Which makes it hard not to notice the things they won’t explain. Like why no one can name a single person who’s ever come back from an Esmeray contract. Or why every story about them ends the same way, abruptly, like something cut it off before it could finish. Or why, when people say the word vampire, they say it like a joke first. And then not at all.

The sound of tires on gravel outside cuts through the thought before it can finish. My mother goes still in the kitchen doorway, the color draining from her face like someone dimming a light. My father doesn’t look at me when he walks past; he just adjusts his cuffs as if this is a business meeting he can still salvage.

When the doorbell rings, I rise slowly and follow them to the front hall even though my father tells me to stay in the kitchen, because if I’m the collateral then I deserve to see the person who came to collect.

The woman - Scarlet Esmeray - on the threshold is not what I expected.

She’s taller, for one. Taller than my father by enough that he has to lift his chin to meet her eyes. Dark hair is pinned carelessly at the back of her head in a bun, though not carelessly enough to be accidental; several loose waves have escaped and curled against the collar of her coat. Her coat is tailored and immaculate, falling in sharp lines over long legs, and her gloves hang loosely from one hand. Red lips. Grey eyes. Beautiful in a way that’s difficult to look away from.

I’ve never seen a woman like her before. Not just beautiful. Captivating. The kind of presence that makes a room rearrange itself around her.

Her eyes move over my parents first, calm and assessing, and then they settle on me. They don’t move away. For a moment it feels like she’s trying to remember something, and I have the strangest sensation that I’m the one being recognized, not evaluated. It makes my chest tighten in a way that has nothing to do with fear.

“Mr. Whitmore,” she says evenly. “The deadline has passed.”

My father’s composure cracks. “There must be another arrangement. Another extension, another way to settle this.”

Scarlet watches him the way someone might watch a storm moving across the horizon: aware of it, but unaffected. “A deal is a deal, Mr. Whitmore. You understood the terms when you signed the contract.”

My father’s jaw tightens. “You can’t seriously think her pow-”

Scarlet looks at him. Just looks. I don’t see what she does, only the effect of it. He stops mid-sentence like someone hit pause. The color drains from his face differently than it did from my mother’s earlier, slower, like he’s remembering something he’s spent twenty years trying to forget.

“I’m collecting what was agreed,” Scarlet says. Nothing in her voice has changed. It’s still calm, still patient.

My mother makes a quiet sound beside me, but Scarlet doesn’t look at her. My father takes a step forward anyway, though whatever was in him a moment ago is gone now. He looks smaller now. Defeated.

“There must be another way,” he says, but it comes out wrong, like he’s reading lines he doesn’t believe anymore.

Scarlet’s gaze shifts to him fully now, dark and steady. “You’re a businessman, Mr. Whitmore. You understand better than most that contracts only function if both sides honor them.” A pause. “There is no other way.”

“Don’t I have a say in this?” I ask before I can stop myself.

My mother grips my wrist as if she can physically pull the words back into my mouth, but Scarlet’s gaze sharpens with something that almost resembles approval.

“No,” she says, still looking at me. “Unfortunately, you don’t.”

It should feel humiliating, being discussed like an asset, but it doesn’t. It feels inevitable. I’ve spent the last three days imagining this moment, and none of my imagined versions included her looking at me the way she is now, like she’s searching for something she didn’t expect to find.

My father begins to protest, and Scarlet lifts her hand slightly, not aggressively, just enough to interrupt the rhythm of his panic. He falters mid-sentence, confusion flickering across his face like he momentarily forgot what he was about to argue. I notice it but I don’t say anything.

Scarlet doesn’t look at him again.

“Pack what you need,” she tells me. “You’ll remain under my protection until the balance is settled.”

Protection. That’s not the word people use when they whisper about the Esmerays. But the way she says it makes it sound like something solid, something real. Like a door closing between me and whatever my father just remembered.

I should be terrified.

Instead, I feel like something that’s been waiting in the dark for years just finally stepped into the light.