Dreadful Company

by Vivian Shaw

  “You’re not normally this bad at doing makeup,” she said, leaning back to get a better look at Sofiria’s face. “I’d have noticed. I mean, you’re not good, you’re never good, but you’re usually not terrible.”

  “I know,” said Sofiria miserably. She looked at Lilith with wide silver eyes, and Lilith noticed how dark the circles underneath them were, and that the hands gripping each other tightly in her lap were shaking. “I just…”

  “This is your first big dinner party, isn’t it,” Lilith said in a slightly different tone. “You weren’t here yet the last time he had one.”

  Sofiria nodded, looking down. The dye job wasn’t all that great, either, Lilith noticed: whoever had done the girl’s hair for her hadn’t gotten all the roots evenly, and a little patch of brown was visible underneath the red.

  I could be in my circle right now, instead of doing this, she thought, and took a deep breath. “It’s not that bad. You’ll probably have a good time, even. You just have to – not let him know that you’re nervous, okay? That, like, annoys him instantly. Close your eyes again and don’t move.”

  The immediate obedience was pleasing. Lilith sorted through her makeup box and found the palettes she wanted, shades of rose and gold that would go better with the girl’s skin tone and hair, and tilted her chin with a long-nailed fingertip to get a clearer angle. “I can teach you how to do this right,” she said. “When I have time.” When I’m not busy with my babies.

  “Thank you,” said Sofiria, biting her lip. “It’s – it’s really nice of you, Lilith.”

  “No it’s not,” she said. “I told you, I can’t stand pathetic baby vampires, and I really can’t stand pathetic baby vampires with awful makeup, and if Yves can’t tell you how to get your fucking eyeliner on straight, somebody’s going to have to.”

  Thank you wasn’t something Lilith heard all that often. It seemed to echo in her head while she painted the girl’s face and rearranged her hair to hide the little brown patch underneath a jeweled comb; it went on echoing after she had dismissed Sofiria and gone to join Corvin in his own chambers; it went on, in fact, until she swept into the richly decorated cavern that served as their dining room and saw the seating arrangements Corvin had ordered to be made, and then it – and everything else – was drowned out in a surge of simple outrage.

  This time the vampire with the silvery dreadlocks led Greta not to the pleasantly appointed bathroom but the other way, down the corridor, and she could tell at once they were in the more domestic and central section of Corvin’s lair. Not for the first time she very deliberately tried to set her mind to record the details, fixing each opening they passed, each new tunnel leading off somewhere into the dark, trying to memorize the layout of the space. The intense level of observation was a slightly rusty skill, a holdover from her childhood, when her father had made a game out of very deliberately teaching her to observe scenes for short periods of time and remember as much as possible of what she had seen. Until she got to medical school and found herself having to memorize enormous amounts of information very quickly, Greta hadn’t quite understood the value of the game, and now she thanked Wilfert Helsing all over again for those long-ago lessons.

  The thought occurred, unbidden, of a video she’d seen online of people pouring molten metal into ant nests or termite mounds and then excavating the incredibly complex solid cast of the insects’ tunnels and chambers once the metal had cooled. Some of the casts had been beautiful, branching, treelike; all had looked intensely alien, and Greta thought now of the network of tunnels that must underlie most of the city: what would this tangle of passageways look like rendered solid and three-dimensional? What kinds of patterns did humans, or human-shaped creatures, instinctively make?

  They passed a couple of vampires in black lace and velvet, chatting to one another in French; Greta got a curious look from one of them, but the other averted his eyes from Corvin’s prisoner as if he couldn’t bear the sight of her. The hand on her arm tightened ever so slightly at that, but her escort made no sound; and a moment later they came out into a wider chamber, hollowed-out from the rock, in which long carpets had been laid. Someone had gone to some considerable effort and expense to fit this place out for its inhabitants: there were actual doors in door frames set into the walls, and she could see the paler marks where the rock had been chiseled into shape to receive them. It was to one of these doors that the vampire led her; and when he opened it and ushered her through, the light was so dim compared to the brighter chamber outside that she could see nothing at all for several moments.

  He’s going to kill me after all, she thought. This is how everything ends, he won’t wait for Corvin to bite my neck, he’s going to kill me himself – and then her eyes finished adjusting, and she looked around to find herself in a space quite unlike the rooms of the lair she’d seen so far.

  There was nothing of the layered, over-the-top drapery or carpeting she remembered from Corvin’s throne room; this chamber contained a bed, a desk with books on it that looked as if they had been chosen for content rather than color-matching spines, a wardrobe, and a dresser with a beveled-glass mirror atop it. As she got used to the dimness – the lamps had dark green shades that made her think of banker’s desk lights – it was also a bit of a relief after the sudden brightness of the corridors.

  The door closed with a click, and she turned to find the vampire looking thoughtfully at her. His eyeshine was visible, as it had been at the Opera. She’d never quite gotten used to that particular manifestation of vampire physiology: it seemed that some deep hindbrain sense would never quite manage to feel comfortable watching people’s pupils glowing red.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I don’t intend either to ravish you or to suck out all your blood. I thought you were probably around a size 34, right?”

  Greta blinked at him, and he gave the little self-mocking eyeroll of someone who’s forgotten something obvious. “Eight, in the UK. Wasn’t sure, because that truly dreadful outfit you have on could hide a multitude of sins, but you look like a 34 to me.”

  She hadn’t answered his previous inquiry as to her dress size; clearly he hadn’t needed her to tell him in the first place. He nodded at the bed, where she now noticed a dress in some dark material had been laid out. “Try it on. I’ll even turn my back like a proper little gentleman, I promise.”

  Still feeling as if she’d somehow slid into a completely different situation by accident – from prisoner of vampires to contestant on twisted sartorial reality show – Greta moved to the bed and picked up the gown lying across the covers. All she’d been able to make out was that it was black, but the moment her fingers touched the fabric, she pushed it away with a stifled curse.

  “What’s the matter? I thought you looked quite good in black velvet the other night.”

  Black velvet, and Ruthven there with her, Ruthven with his well-beloved big silver eyes and offensively perfect shirtfront, Ruthven who had underwritten the refit of her clinic, Ruthven who was safe and ordinary and not horrible – in a world that still made sense, where she was free to walk under the sky —

  “I’d rather not,” she said, and her voice sounded priggish even to herself, clipped little tones. “If you don’t mind.”

  “Suit yourself,” said the vampire, eyebrow raised. He picked up the black velvet gown. “I’ll see what else the wardrobe department has that might better please madame’s sophisticated taste.”

  He locked her in; when he came back a few minutes later with a quite different dress over his arm, Greta had not moved at all. She was standing in the middle of the dimly lit room with her arms wrapped tight around herself.

  I will not cry, she was thinking in a monotonous loop, I will not let him see me cry, I will not, I will not, I will not.

  Afterward Greta would remember that dinner at Corvin’s table as a kind of endless, hazy dream – the unpleasant, self-referential, looping kind where everything was not quite in the real world, the kind that acco
mpanied the stuporous heat of fever. Even so, it had been better than looking at herself in the mirror and seeing a vampire who wasn’t Edmund Ruthven putting up her hair.

  The gown he’d brought back with him had been dark red taffeta, unflattering in the extreme, and Greta had put it on and let him zip it up the back, had gritted her teeth and made it through the part where he had his fingers in her hair, thinking all over again, I will not cry.

  She’d been imagining the fleeting concern in those red eyes, meeting hers in the mirror; she had to have been imagining it. He had almost offered her his arm, and presumably she had looked even more stricken at the prospect, because he had simply dropped it again and gestured for her to precede him – and then there had been the candlelit chamber, reeking of perfume and incense: a long table brilliant with crystal and silver, people seated along each side, their skin sparkling, wearing velvet and lace and leather in all the shades of black there might have been in all the world, iridescent like a raven’s wing – Emily, porcelain-pale apart from her lipstick and the rose-gold shimmer on her eyelids, and a few places farther down the table Yves in ruffles, holding himself ever so slightly unnaturally —

  And Corvin, resplendent in royal scarlet, at the end of it, waiting for her – with the seat at his right hand empty, where Lilith should have been. And Lilith herself, down the other end of the table, staring poisoned daggers at her.

  The vampire’s gaze felt like a physical attack, drilling into Greta’s mind so hard that she half fell into the seat with her vision gone to sparkles for a good thirty seconds before it cleared, thinking, He’s done this on purpose, he’s – put me in her seat, he’s playing games for some reason of his own —

  Corvin was talking. Something about celebration and honor and manners. She couldn’t quite follow it, because she was too busy trying to figure out what the hell he was up to. She was also surprised to find that she was not, in fact, the only human present. Two men and one woman, all startlingly beautiful, and all listing subtly to one side in their seats with the glazed expression of the profoundly high.

  Greta found it in herself to wonder what with, and then there was a hand like cold marble on her wrist and she looked down to see Corvin’s fingers. The candlelight caught and glowed in the ruby of his ring.

  “Won’t you smile for us,” he said, “you are so much more beautiful when you smile,” and the fingers around her wrist tightened slightly. This close, she could see the slight change in color at the very edge of his hairline, where the new growth had begun to show; he’d need his roots touched up in another few days. His breath smelled powerfully of blood and wine.

  Oh, Ruthven, she thought again, Ruthven, you were right about forebodings, and she smiled, as brightly and believably as she could manage; smiled until her face ached, until he was apparently satisfied and the hand around her wrist let go. “A toast!” Corvin called. “To my most honored guest, and to the final satisfaction that lies now within my grasp.”

  Around the table, glasses were raised, and after a moment Greta raised hers, too: it was full of some dark red liquid, beaded with pink bubbles at the brim. She avoided looking down the table at Lilith, watching the other humans take a sip from their own glasses before she tried the stuff and found it to be a perfectly serviceable merlot – and took another, larger swallow. If it was drugged, well. She might mind whatever was going to happen to her less.

  That was when things began to grow hazy, dreamlike. She wasn’t sure if it was just wine, or something in the wine, that was to blame – and the heavy sweet stink of burning incense seemed to fill the whole world, perfumed smoke sending her a little farther away from herself with every breath. There was solid food, for the humans – delicate platters of fruit, little cakes – and she was the only one who ate much of it, while the wineglasses were filled again and again by Corvin’s people.

  She’d glanced across at Emily; despite the perfect makeup, her bearing spoke of just how nervous she felt. It was evident that nobody had bothered to teach her how to conceal emotions, among all the other things she hadn’t been properly taught. Greta noticed that she kept glancing over at Corvin, as if expecting him to suddenly turn and snap at her, wondering if he had found out about the business with Yves – who looked somewhat faraway.

  He’d turned a child, and Greta had fixed him nonetheless. She thought again of Ruthven in his kitchen, talking about people turned without consent, about people who needed help to learn how to be what they had been made to be; thought about the girl asking her questions, what’s wrong with me, bringing her obnoxious creator to Greta for help, at personal risk; and somewhere inside all the haze, she thought again, I have to try.

  At one point Greta noticed that Corvin was, in fact, drinking out of what appeared to be a goblet made from the calvaria of somebody’s skull, and wondered who had had the presence of mind to leak-proof the cranial sutures for him, because she was damn sure he wouldn’t have thought of it himself. The conversation came and went around her in waves of sound she did not have to pay attention to, and so she didn’t try, and had no real idea how much time had passed when something warm and soft and silky underneath the table rested its chin upon her knee.

  It was due to the wine that she didn’t yelp, or recoil from the touch; she merely blinked hard, and slipped a hand under the table to feel whatever it was, and got her fingers unexpectedly licked.

  Tricherpeton, she thought. The vampire with dreadlocks – she’d been told his name but she couldn’t remember it, something with a G – had told her they had hairmonsters down here, but she hadn’t encountered one until now.

  There was a faintly doggy sigh from underneath the table, and the weight on her knee was joined by a weight on her foot. More than one, then, and pretty big. Had the one in her hotel room been an escapee from Corvin’s lair, and if so, could she somehow use them to get a message to the surface —

  Greta put down the wineglass. The movement shifted the underpinnings of her bodice, and she felt the hard and unyielding whistle press against her ribs. That was more useful than a tricherpeton, if she was clever with it. She’d taken it out of her pocket and tucked it into her dress when he’d turned his back to let her change clothes, and she was pretty sure the vampires didn’t know of its existence.

  She was still absently stroking the creature leaning against her knee, thinking as hard as she could through the haze of incense and alcohol, when Corvin beside her tapped a glass for silence. Belatedly Greta realized that the other three humans at the table were slumped over in their chairs, either unconscious or close to it, and she wondered again what they had been given, and why she hadn’t had it, too.

  “I believe it is time for the evening’s proper entertainment to commence,” Corvin said. Greta hadn’t noticed until now that not only was one of his fangs made of metal, it had a jewel inlaid in it. In the heavy, thick air of the chamber, it caught the light in slow glinting flakes. “My dear,” he went on, turning to look at her with a wave of unsubtle thrall – good God, that felt like being struck, a heavy thud of a blow – and reached out to tip up her chin with one long-nailed finger. “I regret to inform you that tonight’s festivities will not be to your taste. It’s time for you to go back to your luxury suite. Grisaille, take her away.”

  A slim dark hand inserted itself into her somewhat blurry field of view, and she took it, and let herself be pulled to her feet. They had to pass by Lilith on the way, and despite her hazy vision, Greta had no difficulty whatsoever recognizing the visceral hatred in the other woman’s face. The room rocked and swirled around her; she was glad of the iron grip on her arm as Grisaille walked her out.

  Grisaille, she thought, with effort, through the dizziness. Shades of grey.

  Grisaille had been watching the doctor throughout the evening’s ostentatious little pantomime. The fact that it was evening didn’t help his mood; otherwise nocturnal, Corvin occasionally decided to hold his gatherings at perverse hours, midday or evening, for no reason that Grisaille
could see other than to fuck with his people and remind them who was boss.

  He did this sort of dinner party thing every few months, often enough that Grisaille was used to it: Corvin liked play-acting as a gracious host, only this time, for whatever reason, Lilith hadn’t been cast as hostess. Judging by the poisonous looks she’d been sending down the table, there would almost certainly be repercussions.

  She wasn’t bright but she was cunning, and Grisaille knew she was capable of holding on to grudges. In this case, it hadn’t been Helsing’s fault that Corvin had given her Lilith’s place, but Lilith was undoubtedly going to do something creatively nasty to her the moment she got a chance. He thought to himself that the doctor probably knew that, too.

  She was odd. He couldn’t work out what it had been that had made her react like that to the black velvet dress, which frankly would have suited her much better than what she had on; neither could he identify what about having somebody pin up her hair should have resulted in that grey-pale, stricken look. She’d covered it quickly, but Grisaille had seen enough to know that her distress was genuine.