As Ellise looked up at the huge, overtly creepy mansion, she couldn’t help but question her life decisions.  

She needed to develop some skills that would enable her to support herself but as an orphaned gutter rat, she had no notable qualities except her ability to manipulate mana. Of course, the only thing she could do with that talent was to become a mage. Which is all fine and dandy except to be accepted to one of the magic schools you have to complete an apprenticeship with a full-fledged mage. She had been searching around for weeks asking every mage she could find if they would take her on as an apprentice. Every single one had told her the same thing. 

No way will I have a plebian commoner become an apprentice of mine. 

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Ok... so maybe they hadn’t worded it quite like that but that was what their flowery words had boiled down to. Mages tended to be of noble birth and they had no interest in teaching someone they deemed beneath them. They would much rather teach some noble brat whose parents would pay a pretty penny for their beloved son to learn a bit of magic before he had to take over the family business. A few of them had been more sympathetic to her position but since mages willing to teach commoners were so rare, they already had a waiting list a mile long. 

Which is how she ended up here. One of the more pretentious mages had mockingly suggested she go ask the vampire mage, as "she had more chance with him than any of the other mages in the city". She had originally laughed it off as an impossibility but as more mages denied her, she became more desperate. Besides she had nothing to lose by asking. There was a small possibility of him eating her alive, but that hadn’t happened in years. The rumor was that vampires had converted to consuming the mana stones mages produced.

She had no other options left; he was the only mage in the city she had not asked and she was determined to ask even if he also denied her. So, she took a deep breath and approached the ominous building.