Walk Among Us, page 32
To my editor, David Pomerico, for urging me to dig deeper and “lean into the horror” of the World of Darkness, and for challenging me to tackle the larger themes in Clea’s tale: Your direction and vision have been invaluable in making this story what it is. Thank you so much for everything, and thank you to the whole team at Harper Voyager for their hard work putting this project together.
A big thank-you to the Paradox team for their insight and feedback as I wrote this tale.
To Erika Ishii, for her incredible audiobook performance of this novella.
To my family and friends for their support during this project, even though they had no idea what I was working on.
And to Cassandra Khaw and Caitlin Starling: I’m honored to have gone on this journey with you two.
Cassandra
To Mouse, my most darling of rodents with whom I spent so much time playing in the World of Darkness. To Onyx Path, who were the first to take a chance on me so long ago. To the Paradox team for entrusting me with part of this triptych, and for tolerating every moment I spent squeeing over the project. To David Pomerico, for all his editing help. To Kay, whose faith in me never falters even on days when I can't imagine why anyone would give a damn.
Caitlin
When I was a teenager reading rule books and clan novels and The Book of Nod, I never imagined I would one day be asked to contribute to the World of Darkness. Thank you to Karim Muammar, David Grigorov, and the rest of the Paradox team for the opportunity, and to David Pomerico, the Voyager crew, and my agent, Caitlin McDonald, for bringing it all together.
Thank you, too, to my husband, David Hohl, and to my friends Shy and Kathleen, who put up with my extremely vague brainstorming requests.
And, finally, thank you to the Portland bars I know so well, and TriMet for getting me around town. This story wouldn’t feel as real without either of you. I hope we come back stronger than ever from our pandemic shutdown.
About the Authors
GENEVIEVE GORNICHEC may have tried to major in Vikings when she was in college, but she’s always had a special place in her heart for vampires. She lives near Cleveland, Ohio, with her partner, several reptiles, and a very grumpy cat. Her full-length debut novel, The Witch’s Heart, released in early 2021.
CASSANDRA KHAW is a scriptwriter at Ubisoft Montreal. Her fiction has been nominated for the Locus Award and the British Fantasy Award, and her game writing has won a German Game Award. You can find her short stories in places like F&SF, Lightspeed, and Tor.com. Her novella Nothing but Blackened Teeth is coming out from Nightfire, the new Tor horror imprint, in 2021.
CAITLIN STARLING is a writer and spreadsheet-wrangler who lives near Portland, Oregon. Equipped with an anthropology degree and an unhealthy interest in the dark and macabre, she writes horror-tinged speculative fiction of all flavors. Her first novel, The Luminous Dead, is out now from Harper Voyager. She has written for Nightmare magazine and has two new gothic horror projects: a novella, Yellow Jessamine, from Neon Hemlock, and The Death of Jane Lawrence, a full-length novel with St. Martin’s Press, due out in 2021. Caitlin also works in narrative design for interactive theater and games, and has been paid to design body parts. She’s always on the lookout for new ways to inflict insomnia. Find more of her work at caitlinstarling.com and follow her at @see_starling on Twitter.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
walk among us. Copyright © 2020 by Paradox Interactive AB. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Harper Voyager and design are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers LLC.
first edition
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover photograph © Riccardo Nosvelli/EyeEm/Getty Images
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition MAY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-299406-6
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-299405-9
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Cassandra Khaw, Walk Among Us
