Chapter 1: The Shattered Screen & the First Spark
The iron gates of Saint Jude’s Academy clicked shut behind him with a sound of finality. Victor Frankenstein—though he hadn’t used that first name in centuries—usually found the walk from his office to his waiting car to be a brief, administrative pause between roles. Director by day, something else entirely by night. Today, however, the weight of the endless, quiet years felt particularly heavy in his chest. The rain had stopped, leaving the world glazed and reflective. On a whim, he texted his driver: Taking the long way. Meet at the bistro.
He needed to move among them, not just above them.
The evening air was cool and damp, smelling of wet concrete and the distant, oily scent of traffic. Neon signs from storefronts and bars smeared their colors across the slick sidewalks. He walked, his hands buried in the pockets of his impeccably tailored wool coat, a timeless figure adrift in the modern pulse of the city. His long, platinum hair was tied back, drawing occasional glances—less from recognition and more from the simple, unnerving fact of his beauty. He was used to it. He noticed everything: the couple arguing softly by a bus stop, the flicker of a faulty streetlamp, the rhythmic click of hurried heels ahead of him. His mind, as always, was half elsewhere, tracing the edges of the power he held, the dark spear of it resting dormant in his soul.
He wasn’t paying attention.
The collision was sudden and solid. A small, formidable force against his immovable frame. There was a sharp gasp, a tumbling skitter of plastic and glass on pavement, and then a storm of bright green eyes flashing up at him.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” the woman breathed, looking down at the wreckage of a smartphone splayed across the wet sidewalk, its screen a spiderweb of fractures.
“I am… deeply sorry,” Frankenstein said, the words feeling archaic even as he spoke them. He bent to retrieve the device at the same moment she did. Their fingers brushed.
A current, sharp and alive, jolted up his arm. It was not the cool, controlled energy he knew. This was raw, human, and startlingly warm. It made the static of the city fall silent. He straightened, the broken phone in his hand, and truly saw her.
She was tiny, a full foot shorter than him, but held herself with a taut, athletic readiness. Her hair was a shock of platinum cropped close to her skull, a mirror of his own in color but utterly defiant in style. Her skin was tan, her eyes the vivid, unsettling green of summer leaves against a storm sky. She wore a look of sheer exasperation, but it was already softening, shifting into something more analytical as she took him in.
“It’s fine,” she said, plucking the phone from his grasp. Her voice was lower than he expected, laced with a warm rasp. “Totally my fault. I was in my own world, racing the clock.” She tapped the destroyed screen with a grimace. “And now the clock wins.”
“Please, allow me to replace it.” The offer was automatic, born of a centuries-old understanding of courtesy and, frankly, wealth.
She waved a hand, already looking past him, scanning the street. “Don’t worry about it. It’s just a thing. A very expensive, my-whole-life-is-in-it thing, but still.” A cab, its yellow light a beacon in the deepening dusk, was approaching. She stepped off the curb, arm raised. “I really have to go.”
“At least let me—” he began, but she was already moving, a blur of efficient motion.
She yanked the cab door open and paused, glancing back at him. That quick-witted smile returned, genuine and surprisingly dazzling. “Consider us even. You got a great story about the woman who literally bounced off you. I get a great story about the immovable object. Fair trade.”
Then she was inside, the door thudded shut, and the cab pulled into the stream of traffic. Gone.
He stood rooted to the spot, the place on his hand where their skin had met humming with a phantom energy. The casual kindness, the immediate deflection of his guilt, the sheer, bright force of her presence—it had sliced through the fog of his solitude with surgical precision. He felt… awoken. And unsettled.
For the first time in a very, very long time, Victor Frankenstein was left with nothing to do but stare at the empty space where someone had been.
Kali Tice slumped back in the cab seat, finally letting out a long breath. “Of course today would end with a face-plant into a walking marble statue,” she muttered to herself. Her knee throbbed a little from the impact, and her phone was, very definitively, dead. She felt unmoored. But also, weirdly, energized.
The man had been… unreal. Statuesque. And his eyes. Old. Not old in years, but in depth. Like looking into a deep well. And that voice. It had vibrated right through her. She shook her head, physically dispelling the thought. Client dinner. Focus. She was already late, and now she’d be arriving phoneless, looking like a drowned rat who’d fought a sidewalk. Fantastic.
The bistro was all warm wood and soft lighting, a haven from the grim evening. She spotted her contact, Michael, at a corner booth. “Michael, I am so sorry,” she said, sliding in and shedding her damp coat. “My phone committed suicide on the way here, and I got turned around.”
“No worries, Kali. Your prospective client is running a few minutes behind too. More time for us to catch up.” Michael smiled, sipping his wine.
Kali ordered a whiskey, neat, and tried to will her pulse to settle. The encounter on the street had left her strangely jittery. She replayed it in her mind—the shock of the impact, the startling clarity of his eyes, the odd formality of his apology. A story to tell, for sure.
The door to the bistro opened, letting in a gust of cool air. Kali glanced up.
And froze.
There, being guided by the hostess, was the man from the sidewalk. His long platinum hair was down now, cascading over the shoulders of a different, but equally impeccable, dark coat. He moved through the room with an unconscious grace that made people glance, then quickly look away, as if direct sight was too much.
Michael stood up, beaming. “Ah, here he is! Kali, this is Victor Frankenstein, the director and principal benefactor of Saint Jude’s Academy. Their arts outreach program is potentially a perfect partner for your creative consultancy. Victor, this is Kali Tice, the visionary I was telling you about.”
Victor—Frankenstein—stopped beside the table. His gaze, those ancient, intense eyes, locked onto hers. A slow, unreadable smile touched his lips. It wasn’t warm. It was captivated, intrigued, and utterly dangerous.
“A pleasure,” he said, his voice the same low, resonant tone that had apologized for her broken phone. “We meet again. Under far more fortuitous circumstances.”
Kali’s mind went blank, then raced. The school director. The philanthropist. The marble statue. Her client. The whiskey glass felt slippery in her hand.
She found her voice, her own quick wit rising to the surface like a life preserver. “Fortuitous? I don’t know,” she said, meeting his gaze directly, a spark of challenge in her green eyes. “My phone’s still in pieces. I’d call that a pretty consistent theme.”
He took the seat opposite her, never looking away. “Then let us hope,” he said, leaning forward slightly, the ambient light catching the sharp planes of his face, “that this meeting is more constructive than our first.”