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The first time Andrea Sachs realized something was truly wrong with Miranda Priestly, it wasn’t the blood.
It was the sunlight.
It happened on a Thursday in early March, when the wind knifed down Madison Avenue and the glass façade of Elias-Clark gleamed like a blade. Andrea had rushed in late—three minutes, which in Miranda Time was a moral failing—and skidded to a stop at the threshold of the office.
Miranda stood by the windows.
The blinds were half-open. Sunlight spilled across the carpet in a pale, unforgiving wash.
Emily was reciting the day’s schedule at machine-gun speed. “Nine-thirty: call with Paris. Ten: preview at Calvin. Eleven-fifteen—”
Miranda did not move into the light.
She stood precisely at its edge.
Andrea watched, breath snagging. The sun carved a bright line across the floor, kissing the toes of Miranda’s immaculate heels—but not her skin. The light seemed to hesitate, as if repelled.
“Miranda?” Andrea ventured.
Miranda’s head turned, slow and deliberate. Those ice-blue eyes fixed on her.
“Why,” Miranda said softly, “are you staring as though I’ve arrived in last season’s hemline?”
Andrea blinked. “You’re… avoiding the sun.”
Emily scoffed. “Obviously. It’s terrible for the skin.”
Miranda’s gaze did not leave Andrea’s. Something ancient flickered there. “Close the blinds, Andrea.”
Her voice was velvet command.
Andrea crossed the room, pulse climbing. As she reached for the cord, her hand trembled—not from fear of reprimand, but from something colder. Something instinctive.
She pulled.
The sunlight vanished.
Miranda exhaled—barely.
Andrea felt it like a confession.
Weeks passed before Andrea dared to confront her. In that time, she noticed everything.
Miranda never ate at staff lunches. She held wine at events but never drank it. She was tireless—inhumanly so—outlasting designers half her apparent age. At night shows, beneath chandeliers, her skin gleamed marble-pale, untouched by heat or fatigue.
And there were other things.
Miranda did not cast a reflection in mirrored elevators.
She was never photographed in direct flash without the image coming back… wrong.
And once—only once—Andrea had walked into Miranda’s private office after hours to drop off proofs and found her holding a crystal tumbler filled with something far darker than Bordeaux.
Now they stood in Miranda’s townhouse overlooking New York City, the skyline stretched like a jeweled throat beneath the winter moon.
“You’ve known,” Miranda said without turning.
It wasn’t a question.
Andrea swallowed. “For a while.”
Miranda’s silhouette was elegant against the glass. “And you didn’t run.”
“No.”
A pause.
“Why?”
Andrea could have said ambition. Curiosity. Morbid fascination.
Instead, she said, “Because I didn’t want to.”
Silence.
Then Miranda turned.
Her eyes were darker tonight. Not icy. Depthless.
“Very well,” she said. “Ask.”
“You’re a vampire.”
“Yes.”
“How old are you?”
Miranda crossed the room with impossible grace. “Older than this country. Younger than some of its mistakes.”
Andrea huffed a nervous laugh. “That’s not a number.”
“I stopped counting after the French Revolution,” Miranda replied coolly. “It became tedious.”
Andrea stared. “You’re serious.”
Miranda arched a brow.
“Right. Of course you are.”
The air between them felt charged, alive. Andrea was acutely aware of the beating of her own heart. She wondered if Miranda could hear it.
Miranda’s nostrils flared slightly.
Yes. She could.
“You’re not afraid,” Miranda observed.
“I am,” Andrea admitted. “But not of you.”
Something shifted in Miranda’s expression.
“Fear would be sensible.”
“Maybe I’m not very sensible.”
Miranda stepped closer. The temperature seemed to drop with her.
“You are painfully mortal, Andrea,” she murmured. “Your pulse is a metronome. Your skin bruises. You will age.”
The word felt heavier than it should.
“And you won’t,” Andrea said.
“No.”
Miranda reached out, fingers brushing the hollow of Andrea’s throat. Cool. Precise. Intimate.
“I have watched centuries pass,” Miranda continued. “Cities burn. Lovers fade. I do not indulge in permanence.”
“And yet you keep me around,” Andrea said softly.
Miranda’s eyes flashed.
“You are… inconvenient.”
“An anomaly?” Andrea offered.
Miranda’s lips curved faintly. “Yes.”
Andrea searched her face—the flawless composure, the immaculate control. And beneath it, something else.
Loneliness.
“How many have you loved?” Andrea asked quietly.
Miranda went still.
“That is not your concern.”
“It is if I’m one of them.”
Miranda’s gaze snapped to hers.
The silence was electric.
“You presume much,” Miranda said.
Andrea’s heart hammered, but she did not look away. “Then tell me I’m wrong.”
Miranda’s fingers tightened slightly at her throat—not enough to hurt. Enough to warn.
“You do not understand what you’re asking for,” Miranda said, voice low and dangerous. “To bind yourself to me is to abandon sunlight. Warmth. Children. The slow, precious arc of a human life.”
Andrea’s breath caught.
“And in exchange?” she whispered.
Miranda leaned closer.
“In exchange,” she said, “you would have eternity. Power. Hunger. Me.”
The word vibrated between them.
Andrea had spent months orbiting Miranda—craving her approval like oxygen. But this was different. This was not professional ambition.
This was want.
“If I stay human,” Andrea said carefully, “what happens?”
Miranda withdrew her hand.
“You will grow older,” she replied evenly. “You will leave Runway eventually. You will find someone mortal. You will forget how it felt to stand in rooms that bent to your will.”
“And you?” Andrea asked.
Miranda’s expression shuttered. “I will continue.”
The simplicity of it broke something in Andrea’s chest.
“And you’d watch me die?”
Miranda did not answer.
Which was answer enough.
Andrea stepped forward instead of back.
“What if I don’t want to continue without you?” she asked.
Miranda’s composure fractured—just slightly. A crack in marble.
“Do not romanticize this,” Miranda warned. “Immortality is not poetry. It is repetition. It is watching everyone you meet crumble into dust.”
“Then we won’t meet everyone,” Andrea said softly. “We’ll have each other.”
Miranda inhaled sharply.
“You think love is sufficient against time?”
“I think,” Andrea replied, “that you’ve been alone too long.”
For a heartbeat—an ancient, fragile heartbeat—Miranda looked almost human.
Then she cupped Andrea’s face.
“If I do this,” Miranda said, “there is no reversal. You will belong to the night. To hunger. To me.”
Andrea’s knees weakened—but not from fear.
“Then don’t let me go,” she whispered.
Miranda’s mouth brushed Andrea’s jaw, her ear, her throat.
“This will hurt.”
“I trust you.”
That—more than the invitation—was what undid Miranda.
The bite was fire.
Sharp, searing, incandescent.
Andrea gasped, fingers clutching at silk and bone as the world dissolved. She felt the pull of something ancient entering her veins—cold and brilliant and endless. Pain flared, then transformed into something ecstatic, overwhelming.
Miranda held her as she trembled.
“Stay with me,” Miranda murmured—not a command, but a plea.
Andrea felt herself falling—through centuries, through shadow, through hunger.
Then—
Stillness.
When she opened her eyes, the room was different.
Brighter.
Sharper.
She could hear the hum of electricity in the walls. The distant rush of traffic along Park Avenue. The faint heartbeat of a pedestrian three stories below.
Miranda stood before her, watching.
Hope and terror warred in those ancient eyes.
Andrea swallowed experimentally.
Her fangs descended.
Miranda’s breath hitched.
Andrea laughed softly, the sound lower now, silkier. “That’s new.”
Miranda’s lips curved with unmistakable pride.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
Andrea considered. The thirst was there—a subtle ache beneath her ribs.
“Hungry,” she admitted.
Miranda stepped closer.
“Good,” she murmured.
Andrea hesitated. “Am I going to… lose myself?”
Miranda’s expression softened.
“No,” she said. “You will become more yourself. Just without the limits.”
Andrea studied her. “And you won’t leave?”
Miranda’s hand slid into hers—cool fingers threading through newly immortal ones.
“I have endured wars, revolutions, and polyester,” Miranda said quietly. “I can endure love.”
Andrea smiled—slow and predatory and incandescent.
Outside, New York City glittered, oblivious.
“Then what now?” Andrea asked.
Miranda’s eyes gleamed with something wicked and delighted.
“Now,” she said, “we teach you how to hunt.”
She leaned in, pressing a kiss—cool and claiming—to Andrea’s lips.
“And then,” Miranda added softly, “we go to Paris.”
Because eternity, Miranda Priestly believed, should always begin with couture.