by Joey W. Hill
“What? It’s not like you won’t be seeing me bare-arsed eventually, especially when his friends come over to play.” She was proud that her voice didn’t break on the words, but that was just because she didn’t think about them too hard.
“Lord Alistair has two staff members who are unaware of his nature,” Nero said. “And his relationship with you. Discretion needs to be observed.”
That brought her up short. Why would Alistair not have a fully indoctrinated household, with vampire-faithful humans and second marks? She’d been told that was the norm for most Region Masters. Christ, she’d just stripped in the driveway like…well, like she shouldn’t have. Bugger it.
“Fine, then. Let’s get this done. Where is Lord Alistair?”
“He is in Brisbane, miss. He should return later in the evening, unless affairs keep him later than expected. Once you attend to your InhServ requirements, I can introduce you to the rest of the regular staff. There are five of us. A housekeeper, maid, cook, groundskeeper and myself. Help is often brought in for official gatherings at his home, but they are temporary. The maid and the cook are the two uninitiated. They are relatively new hires.”
After worrying so much about it, finding Alistair wasn’t even here left her bogged down in a confusing mess of reaction. Irritation that she couldn’t go ahead and grab the bull by the horns topped the list, but she supposed it might be good to have some time to get the drink out of her system. In the face of Nero’s unflappable and shrewd personality, she was managing her heaving cauldron of emotions better. She reminded herself Alistair wasn’t likely to help her if she acted like a madwoman.
“That sounds fine, Nero,” she said, straightening and smoothing her hands over her hair, her clothes. “Take me to everyone so I can introduce myself. I expect you keep everyone in line here.”
“I am the butler, miss,” he confirmed. “Though you would now provide my supervision.”
He delivered that in a flat voice, no indication of how that made him feel, but she could put it together well enough. “I expect you require precious little of it,” she said. “Here’s the truth of it, Nero. Over the past few weeks, my life has been turned upside down. I don’t want to take it out on any of you, but I’m going to have my rough moments. I’m not what anyone expected to be coming here. However, I’ve helped run a hospital, and what I know from that is that if everyone does their job, then we work together to make everything run properly, nobody wasting time on rank. I’m not a fool or a doormat, but if you keep him happy as you always have, then you and your lot will have little interference from me. Plus, help when you need it and I can provide it. Okay?”
Nero listened without a change in expression. She wondered if he and Steele had gone to the same blacksmith to get that cast-in-iron poker face. However, Coleman grunted, a sound that might have reflected a mild surprise at the bluntness. Nero’s gaze flickered to him, then he inclined his head to Nina.
“Very well, miss. I will show you to the front hallway and leave you there until the Master arrives, as is appropriate.”
She blinked at him, puzzled, and then his other words sank in. “Your InhServ requirements.”
Hell, The Mistress had apprised the butler of what would be required of her. Naked, kneeling at the doorway until Alistair returned and she could say her little speech.
“If he’s not returning for a while, I’ll meet the staff and get myself acclimated first.”
“The school director said—”
“I know what she said,” she snapped. “And I’m bloody well not squatting in his foyer in my altogether for hours. I’ll do it when he’s coming up the drive. Not before.”
Reaching back into the limo, she retrieved her letter and tore it into pieces. She tossed it into the air between them, the wind spinning the fragments in all directions. “They’re just words. Words mean nothing. I can promise you that.”
Efficiency. Authority. Calm. What had the Matrons taught them? Those three things help reassure the boys and yourself. No matter how chaotic things get, if you can project that, it helps keep your head on straight. The men and the doctors listen to you better.
Taking a breath, she grabbed the thought with both hands, and spoke calmly, meeting Nero’s gaze with a steely one of her own. “What I am or am not to the Master, how I fail or please him, is between him and me. None of you. Please take me to meet the staff.”
Nero exchanged a glance with Coleman. The driver shrugged, apparently his most common form of communication. It eased the sudden worry that he or Nero might be authorized to force the issue, physically if needed.
Maybe I have more choices than you know, Mistress Killara. I certainly have more than Helen, don’t I?
Bolstering herself with that thought, she followed Nero up the stairs to the house.
During the next two hours, Nina discovered she had two rooms. One was in the upper levels of the house, and was a typical bedroom, with feminine appointments and a lovely view of the ocean. She’d looked away from that quickly, knowing she’d draw the curtains as soon as she was alone. She wouldn’t be leaving the window open as Nero suggested, to let the night air sound of the surf lull her to sleep.
The housekeeping staff had been polite, reserved, watchful. Except for Winifred, one of the two staff members who didn’t know their employer was a vampire. The night maid’s barely veiled scorn when Nina was introduced, her mean eyes, said without words what she thought Nina’s role was here.
In Nina’s normal element, the woman’s behavior wouldn’t have flustered her in the least. Here, it had the power to make Nina feel smaller, less certain. Reminding her that none of this was her. None of it felt natural.
With effort, she imagined herself as a nurse supervisor and conducted herself as such, asking reasonably intelligent questions about their duties, their backgrounds. She told them she would integrate herself into the daily routine as the Master required and looked forward to working with each of them to care for him.
When the proper words spilled from her lips, Nina was surprised to find them there, ready to be called. The Mistress’s intense lessons, the endless repetition, had apparently stuck in some ways. The problem was she didn’t feel any of it.
She remembered when she’d learned her multiplication tables. Seven times seven equals forty-nine. But the teacher had never explained what it meant. Sher didn’t care, simply learning what she was taught, and passed the test.
Nina’s mother had unfastened a bag of dry beans and counted out forty-nine on the kitchen table. She’d directed Nina to separate them into seven piles of seven so she could understand what multiplication meant.
“Always needing to understand why and how,” her mother had said fondly. “Never just accepting something at face value.”
Her mother had been amused by it, then. Almost proud. She hadn’t been surprised Nina wanted to be a nurse, learning about medical procedures and anatomy.
Her other room was on a level below ground, an engineering feat this close to the shore. It was a basement like no basement she knew, since every effort had been made to make it feel like the aboveground parts of the house.
Though it had no windows, the five bedrooms, three baths, study and sitting room below had plenty of pictures, hung curtains and tapestries, and airy beach-style furniture. Her room there was much smaller, an antechamber to the Master’s room. She would use it when he wished her to attend him during his daylight sleep, Nero explained.
“If that is all for now, Miss Nina, I’ll return to my duties.” Evidently feeling he’d spent enough time with her, Nero politely—if somewhat abruptly—indicated that was the end of the guided tour.
“Thank you. Just let me know when you think he’s on his way.”
“Yes, miss.” He headed back up the stairs, his shoes making no sound on the carpet runner. Nina watched him go, fighting the return of the panic. She wanted him to stay, to keep talking, to give her something to focus upon.
But that would help not
hing. She turned to face the lower level accommodations again. Her bed in the antechamber had a pretty sea-colored coverlet with wheat-colored embroidery that looked like scatterings of beach grass. The picture over the bed was of a tide line, sunlight reflected off sand and shells. A shadow of a person was in the picture, posed as if gazing down at the life beneath their wet feet.
Her gaze strayed to the side table, to a glass sphere sitting upon it. A decorative paperweight, she thought, until she came closer, and saw it was a snow globe. She picked up the lead glass and, another surprise, discovered it was a music box. After she wound it up, she turned it over, watching the pieces of sparkling glitter slowly start to swirl and float. It was a beach scene, the ceramic ocean painted in various blues, washing up on a sandy textured shore. There was a tree line.
Suspended inside the globe and slowly circling was a plane, the propellers oscillating with the movement of the liquid. As she watched it, the music began to play “You Are My Sunshine.” A funny choice for a vampire.
Alistair’s house could have been featured in one of the fancy decorating magazines. The back terrace on the upper level of the home had that breathtaking view of the shore, and more beautifully landscaped plants and trees. Anyone could imagine themselves enjoying a sit-down in one of the rockers, watching the waves roll in and out. Well, anyone who felt a meditative peacefulness at the rushing sound of the surf, rather than an inexplicable terror from it.
She pushed that away to stick to her point. Everything in the house looked chosen by an efficient decorator, employed because the owner was too busy or apathetic to select the contents, as long as they reflected what was necessary about him or his station. But this…
Her fingers curved around the globe and she sank down on the mattress, watching the pieces slowly, slowly settle, and hearing the music wind down. This piece was personal. A welcome message of sorts, for her?
Thinking, she rose. There was one room that she hadn’t seen yet. Alistair’s. Nero had merely gestured at it, not entering it himself. As she opened the connecting door between her room and that of the master of the house, she stood in the frame, looking at the interior.
Him. It smelled like him. She closed her eyes and took a few more steps, slowly pivoting on her toe as she inhaled that scent of ocean-touched male. She had her arms wrapped hard around her middle as she remembered his quick, weary smile before he left the hospital, the feel of his hands pulling her from the water. The heat of his mouth.
When she opened her eyes, she was gazing at his bed, standing at the foot of it. It was one of the largest she’d ever seen, enough for five or six people it seemed, with a frame that looked like an elaborate box. The cherry-colored wood posts were carved with leaves and roses as big as her hand. The blanket was a pale yellow comforter that lightened up the room.
There was a cushioned bench at the foot to allow for sitting and putting on shoes. He had a desk in one corner, a reading chair. Seascapes hung upon the walls.
She moved to his walk-in wardrobe. She told herself it was appropriate, that she didn’t have to be shy. A third marked servant was in charge of all domestic requirements her vampire had, like ensuring his clothes were cleaned and pressed properly, or doing it herself if there was no house staff. No worries for her there. She expected the housekeeper, Mrs. W as they called her, would be horrified if Nina asked to do the ironing. Which she should be, because Nina doubted she knew how to appropriately operate the contraption for something as complicated as men’s shirts.
Opening the door, she was surprised that he didn’t have as many as she’d expect for such a well-heeled male. Maybe a couple dozen. A decent selection of suits and casual clothes.
She frowned and gazed back out at the room again. The desk had an assortment of pens, a blotter. A bookshelf had a few carefully chosen volumes. Classics, travel memoirs. The classics were in handsome bindings.
Not much in the way of personal items, especially for a male who’d lived as long as he had. But it matched the upstairs. If one had never met him, they would assume the fellow who lived here was seaside gentry, but little else could be concluded about him, though many stereotypical assumptions might be made. Things that would keep the reality of the man well-masked.
She moved deeper into the dressing room. At the very back, on the floor, in the shadows behind the suits, she found a chest. Tugging it out far enough to lift the lid unencumbered, she found what she sought.
Something that reminded her of the man she remembered.
Folded footy gear. Pressed and put away. Based on the location, it didn’t appear to have been disturbed in some time. A football was tucked in another corner of the chest. She drew it out, turning it in her hands. It had been quite scuffed, well-used at one time.
She also found vintage firearms which she expected hadn’t been vintage when he used them. Old, washed-out pictures of young men that appeared to date back to before the turn of the century were carefully arranged in a pocket of the chest. Then she found a more current one. She clasped it for a long minute, recognizing the men in the picture. The ones that Alistair had made sure reached the hospital that night.
The one on the right, closest to Alistair on that side, was the first one who’d died. Jonathan. He had a careless grin, his elbow propped on Rigby’s shoulder while Charlie, far less haunted-looking in this picture, was in the middle of saying something to the other two men, Horace and Mort, who were kneeling before them, like an informal team snapshot. Another man draped his folded arm on Alistair’s left shoulder, his chin propped on it as Alistair gave him a fond look. She guessed that was Pete, the one whose body Alistair had gone back to collect, make sure it got home.
They still mattered to him. She found herself clutching the picture too tightly, and pressed it against her breast instead, bowing her head over it. She sank down on the floor by the chest, holding the picture, her other hand resting on the footy shirt.
She wasn’t given to acts of foolish sentiment, but she still brought the shirt to her face. Clean laundry smell, not much of him, but a trace of it there. She held it to her cheek, the picture to her heart.
Maybe she was grasping at loose straws, but the biggest enemy she had in all of this was the utter loneliness. Ever since Bangka, she’d struggled with it, always feeling out of step with a world that didn’t seem to realize darkness was breathing down their necks. That they were all barely a moment away from it opening its maw and swallowing them all whole.
Then Sher had died, and that surety had increased to a nigh-unbearable level. Ironically, The Mistress had employed Nina’s mind and body with so many shocking things, it had backed off some of the despair. During the car ride here and the driver’s unhelpfully laconic conversation, it had started to rise again. She’d dulled it with alcohol, a temporary and destructive route, she knew, but it had been the tool at hand.
Left down here to her own devices, it could strangle her anew, but a sliver of hope kept some slack in the rope. Whenever she’d needed not to feel so alone, her thoughts had turned to Alistair. She was holding proof of why. Someone in this house had been where she’d been. Which meant she maybe wasn’t as desolately alone as she felt.
Sher’s death, the training center, The Mistress, her parents…they’d all made her forget who Alistair had been on the beach. The picture reminded her.
They could sort this mess out together, and he would help her get back to the life she wanted to live.
“I’m not alone.” She said it aloud. But when she looked up at all the other things in here, their lack of personality, the words were tagged with uneasy feeling.
“Miss?” Nero startled her out of her contemplation. She managed, barely, not to jump guiltily when he put his head in the room. Nero’s gaze swept her, kneeling on the floor with her hand in the chest and the photograph against her bosom, but his voice remained the same as he spoke.
“The Master is due back in a few moments. He rang to let me know he was on his way and that he has one of h
is territory members with him, such that I should have additional tea prepared. I expect he anticipates your presentation.” A subtle warning, though Nero added, “Winifred and Mrs. Clyde have been sent out on errands with Mr. Coleman. They shouldn’t return for another half hour.”
So the ones currently unaware that Alistair was a vampire wouldn’t witness how she was supposed to present herself to him. She met Nero’s gaze.
Look at each person for who they are. Not who they are to you, and then you will see them. See how to connect to them. Sister Helen had told her that. Nina wondered how long it would be before the first image that sprang to mind when she thought of her friend would be something like her reserved smile when she imparted that kind of wisdom, or her exaggerated trot to keep pace with Nina’s longer legs. Rather than her dead body floating in the water.
“Miss.”
She cut off a short yelp as a hand touched her shoulder. She grabbed at it. He would pull her out of the water, he was here, he was…
Nero had frozen. She had a death grip on his wrist, her nails digging in. His gaze was on it, then it moved to her face. Nina stared at him, her eyes feeling too big, the emotions in her chest churning. He was only inches from her face, because he’d bent forward.
“I’m so sorry,” She forced her voice not to shake. “I’ll be up in a few moments.”
“Very well,” he said after a significant pause. He didn’t move, though, until she recalled she was still holding his arm. She made herself let it go. When she did, he straightened and began to back out of the dressing room, but he wasn’t quick about it, and she could feel his intent gaze on her face, studying her. She didn’t know his thoughts, but they were loud in that small space.