I want your things in my room, I miss you all of the time. I stalk myself on the internet just to see what you'll find.

Paris, 1940s

Claudia saw you only once before the months swallowed you.

She had been wandering the Montmartre streets, her footsteps soundless against the stone. A night thick with fog, gaslamps casting halos over rain-slicked cobblestones. She wasn't hunting — not really. Just pacing, as predators sometimes do when hunger turns to ache, not just for blood but for meaning.

Your shop was unremarkable from the outside. Weather-worn shutters. A chipped bell over the door that hadn't rung in weeks.

But there you were. In the window.

Back bent slightly over a dressform, pinning black lace to the neckline of a half-formed gown. A candle burned nearby, the flame dancing shadows across your cheekbones. The thread between your fingers shimmered silver.

You hadn't noticed her watching.

Claudia watched until the candle died.

And then she kept coming back.

For months, the shop remained dark. No sign of life. Claudia lingered anyway. Pressing her hand to the doorframe in passing. Imagining the curve of your fingers. The hum of your voice. The shape your sorrow might take.

Was she imagining you? A ghost conjured by her loneliness?

But then—

One night, in early winter, the window was lit again.

You were there.

Alive.

Sewing.

Claudia's hunger struck hard, sudden and sharp — but it wasn't the thirst that frightened her. It was the way her breath hitched. The way her hands trembled not with the need to feed, but the need to touch.

She stood across the street in the shadows for hours.

And then she moved.

The bell above your door hadn't rung in half a year. It was a rusted sound — like something ancient waking.

You looked up from your sewing stool, startled. The candle flickered violently.

She stepped inside. Long coat wet at the hem. Black gloves. Black eyes.

“I'm sorry,” she said, voice velvet and blade. “I know it's late.”

You nodded slowly. Her presence made the air feel different. Denser.

“I... don't usually get customers after dark.”

“I'm not a customer.”

Her honesty landed like a nail through silk.

You studied her — the curve of her lip, the strange, ageless chill in her stillness.

She studied you back.

“You've been gone,” she said.

“I was ill.”

Claudia's eyes flashed, like that single word — ill — pierced something fragile inside her.

“And now you're better,” she said softly. “That's good.”

Silence fell again. But not empty silence — something pulsing beneath it. A string pulled too tight between two lives.

“I've seen your work in the window,” Claudia added, glancing at the bodice half-finished on the mannequin. “You sew grief into your stitches.”

You blinked. “I sew what I know.”

Claudia stepped forward. Close enough now that she could smell the warm thread-oil on your skin. See the tremble in your pulse. Hear the blood humming — loud and alive — beneath the softness of your throat.

She could take you now.

Open that porcelain neck, taste every hour you'd suffered, drain the sorrow and wear it like a gown.

But instead—

She reached out, brushing a single thread from your collarbone.

You didn't flinch.

She didn't feed.

Not tonight.

Instead, she smiled — with pain behind it.

“May I come again?”

You paused.

Then nodded.

Claudia walked back into the night, teeth clenched, breath ragged, fists curled so tight her gloves split at the seams.

She would not feed from you.

Not yet.

She would love you first.

Or whatever twisted thing her kind was allowed to feel.