So there it was. The answer I would have expected to get from them. “We don’t even know what female vampires are like. I’ve never seen one. Have you?”
Bethany sighed. “Maybe we should get back to the original topic. But yes, I once saw a female vampire. She was so stunningly beautiful. For just a moment. Then they had her out of here because the rule for this location is there aren’t female vampires around.” Charlotte started to braid my hair again as Bethany spoke again. “It was Ace who rose first. I heard the pounding in his coffin. Then Rowan. Caesar. Tanner. Finally, Griffin. He was a day later. Unless he just lay there in silence and was up for a while first? That could be true for any of them, actually. Maybe Ace just complained about it in a way we could hear. The vampires would know for sure. They’d be able to sense small movements we can’t because they’re closer to perfection than we are.”
Okay. I was done with this. “Thank you.”
“You know what? Out of all of us, you’re the most likely to be made a vampire. And I don’t think you appreciate that.” That nasty gift was thrown at me from my least favorite servant, Tally.
“No one is going to be making me a vampire, I promise you that.” Charlotte was done, so she rose from my bed and went back to her own. This whole being together every night thing could get old. So now I knew the most likely order that they had woken up. Did that mean anything to me at all? No, it absolutely didn’t.
They are awake. I’d seen Caesar and Rowan. I hadn’t seen their fangs, hadn’t watched them drink from anyone. But I’d seen three vampires try and fail to take Caesar down. I’d seen the way they glided, like the vampires, when they moved. It had happened. Intellectually, yes, I’d understood it. Seeing it was a whole different thing altogether.
Bethany’s phone dinged. It usually meant that someone had a job for us. It was late in the evening for that. Usually, the vampires were enough involved in their own things by now they wanted nothing to do with the servants. She looked down at her phone.
“There is a huge mess after a party in the second house. The paramours got out of control. Little drunk. And now they want it cleaned. Probably one of the vampires is fastidious. So we’ve got to do that.”
I raised my hand. “I’ll go.”
I needed air, and I had to get out of the room before I caught whatever it was that made these women want to be vampires. The female was beautiful? She’d probably been that way before she changed. I doubted very much there was a sudden dive into gorgeousness just by becoming a bloodsucker. And even if there were, who cared? Not if you had to live by feeding off someone’s blood. Yuck. Gross. It never stopped being that way to me.
“We’ll go.” Charlotte rose. “If we need more help, I’ll call for it. How much of a mess could they have made?”
Bethany got off her bed. “I’ll come too. If a vampire sees Maci, they’ll want to feed, and then you’ll need help anyway.”
And there it was.
Just another sucky aspect of my life that might never go away. My dead friends were vampires. They weren’t getting me out of this mess. I’d proven I couldn’t leave on my own. I was hitting walls everywhere.
The wind hit when I stepped outside, a storm rolling in. I rubbed my arms. There were eyes on me right then. I knew it. I might never be able to say how I did, but I did. Maybe it came from six months of becoming accustomed to this kind of thing. There were vampires watching, and while it was mostly the big men in charge who bit me, any of them could take a turn.
Bethany put an arm around me. “If they kill you, I’ll miss you.”
That shouldn’t have made me laugh, but it did. “Thanks. I’m not sure I’ll miss you at all.”
“That’s what I’ll miss most—when your mouth shows up, and it’s like you’re not on the brink of death. Then I can see who you were before all of this screwed you up.”
We made it to the mansion—which had been Caesar’s house before he died—currently the home of one of the silent vampires and his paramour, Andrea, who never stopped talking. Or drinking. Or, like tonight, making a huge mess. She was alone in the house, singing when we got inside. I stared at Charlotte, hoping we could share an eye roll, but all I saw was longing in her eyes. This was what she wanted. When it came down to it, she might think about leaving, but she never would.
Not when there was the possibility some vampire would see her and give her this.
Of course, I had no idea how any of this worked for Andrea, when her vampire, whose name I didn’t even know, couldn’t speak. His muteness wasn’t even a problem for the vampires. If anything, they seemed to consider the mute ones even more powerful.
We’d started to clean, picking up the discarded bottles of wine and liquor, when Andrea appeared. “Thank you, ladies.” She always spoke with a singsong quality, like she wasn’t sure if she should be singing or talking and decided on something in the middle to handle both possibilities. “Guess things got a little out of control.”
“Oh, don’t worry, we’ve got this.” Charlotte must have been trying to sound breezy while she walked quickly into the kitchen to start scrubbing in there. Bethany didn’t say a word, heading upstairs to face that mess, and I took it upon myself to keep grabbing bottles. How many had they polished off? They’re really taking day drinking to a new level.
Andrea strolled toward me. “I’ve always wanted to talk to you, Maci. Ever since that display the night The Five were changed. I thought maybe you could use a friend, but then I thought…my man might not like that.”
Every time I talked to the paramours, I disliked them more. It was impressive, really. I lived constantly surrounded by people I hated with varying degrees of disgust. I’d thought living on my own when my mother came and went was hard, but now I’d take my own company any day of the week.
“How do you know what he likes? He doesn’t talk.” We were supposed to be polite to the paramours, and I tried. I really did. I guessed I just failed. Whoops.
She put her hands on her hips. “If no one told you there is a way to understand what a man wants that has nothing to do with the ability to speak, then they have failed you, girl.”
Andrea was beautiful. If they did make her a vampire, she’d certainly fill Bethany’s beauty dream. Blonde hair cut in a bob that wasn’t fashionable, that looked more like it belonged to a flapper girl in the nineteen twenties, I wondered if she’d cultivated the old-fashioned look purposefully. After all, she was dating a vampire. Living with him. He couldn’t talk. Who knew when he’d been human? How long ago was that? To want sex, he was probably a hundred years old at least. So… he was alive before there were airplanes, probably. Or maybe just as they were being invented.
It was so strange to think about it. The vampire versions of my guys were going to live to see so many changes they couldn’t even imagine when they were humans. Life would just keep moving.
And they would stay vampires.
“I understand how that works. What do you do when he’s not feeding on you and fucking you?”
She smiled brightly at me. “Oh, how I wish they’d wake up wanting sex and one of them would make you a paramour. I’d love to have you around. We could go shopping together. Spa days. Parties. You find them attractive, but you already know that. It could be fun.” Her face fell. “But they might not find you that way anymore, even if they could. You look like death. Such a shame what they’ve done to you. I mean, not my guy. He only feeds off me, and only once or twice a week at that. They are going to drain you dry.”