by Joey W. Hill
Bollocks. Absolute bollocks. She didn’t care what they said about vampires not loving their servants. Something was going on here that wasn’t a good thing. And not just because it made her an emotional mess. Alistair’s detachment wasn’t good for him, either. She was sure of it.
Nero was the most circumspect of employees, but at times she’d caught both him and Mr. Coleman watching Alistair with a look that said they were concerned about him, about whatever was happening on his overnight trips or even in the hours he spent working in his study. She wouldn’t put them in the position of having to talk about their boss, but one morning, she decided she wasn’t going to let things go on like this.
As a nurse, she looked for clues when a patient in need couldn’t tell her what the problem was. And she didn’t wait until he was on death’s door to do it, either. She would approach this problem the same way.
Following her instincts, she went down to the small bedroom next to Alistair’s. As always, the door between their rooms was closed, but she didn’t let herself focus on that. She noticed things. Like how there were always fresh flowers in her room here, every morning. Flowers she liked.
She sat down on the bed, picked up the snow globe and weighed it in her hand. On her first day here, she’d thought of it as the room’s one personal touch, something that had seemed like a welcome message to her. Reaching out to brush her fingers over the flowers, she wondered if they were another.
Her gaze slid to the small shelf of books in the room. Last night, she’d finished an Australian mystery novel she’d enjoyed. While there were an assortment of books on the shelf, she noticed now that there were a couple there that hadn’t been there before. Another mystery, and a memoir written by a nurse who’d spent a decade in the Congo.
She retrieved that book and sat back on the bed, paging through it, then looked at the wall between their two rooms. Thinking, she stretched out on her hip, and put her hand against the wall. His bed was against it on the other side. If he put his hand up, the wall would be the only thing separating their palms.
She laid her head on the pillow and let her mind drift, her fingertips gliding along that connecting wall. He was here, so he’d be sleeping now. Sleep well, my lord.
No response, but that could be because he was sleeping. Of course. She chided herself. What was she doing? She could say she was looking for clues, but what if the only thing she was going to accomplish was making herself ache all the harder for something she couldn’t have? That everyone from her parents to Sher to The Mistress to Alistair himself had told her wasn’t possible?
She squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t care. She wished he’d leave his door open, so she could look in on him. She didn’t really know if he went to sleep right at dawn, dropping like a stone when the sun rose, or if he pottered about his room like a normal kind of person at bedtime. Did he listen to some radio, read a book?
Back to clues. She needed more clues. He slept alone downstairs. Maintained his curious detachment after their otherwise passionate midnight encounters. But was he detached at all?
When he touched her at midnight, it was as if he never wanted to let her go. She thought of the day of their terrible fight in the driveway. He’d let her rant, scream at him, but he’d held on, hadn’t been willing to let her go then, even as he had said very little until she calmed down.
She thought about his attitude toward her earning money. About his possessiveness when she’d teased him with a movie star character’s name.
He hungered for her, reached out for her… Now her mind went back to his cryptic comment about taking her back to The Mistress.
I’m not sure either role is something to which you can only give half of yourself. Sometimes it’s worse to have a taste of what you can never have your fill of, than to not have the temptation at all… Which is why there’ve been times I’ve thought about taking you back to The Mistress before those thirty days are up.
Slowly, she sat up in the bed, her heart thudding up into her throat. Just like with a patient, she knew when she was on the right track to figuring out the problem.
You make me feel.
The way he’d said that in her mind, a voice in the darkness, stuck in her head. Since she’d been here, she’d communicated in so many ways that this wasn’t what she wanted. That she was simply accepting a path she couldn’t escape. A male she hadn’t chosen. That was the crux of it, wasn’t it?
She couldn’t prove to herself or him that she would have chosen him until she did, actually, choose him. He wouldn’t let her go, but knowing she hadn’t chosen him, thinking she wouldn’t choose him if given that choice, wasn’t likely to make a man fortressed to the gills come out of his shell. Not one who’d lost many of those he’d loved.
Hal had been with him eighty-six years. Nick, thirty-nine. Then there’d been the men he’d lost in this latest conflict, his mates. He had Stanley, but he’d mentioned no other friends…
God, could it be that simple? He was a vampire, but he was also a man. One who could love, lose, grieve. She thought of how she’d closed herself off from her own twin, not even willing to spend what likely would have been their last birthday together. The crushing guilt of knowing Sher had been coming to see her had become part of all the rest. The fear of feeling again was equally balanced with the fear of feeling too much.
She rose, setting the book aside, and decided to go to the second-best place in the house to build onto what she was thinking. The rest of the staff handled most of his needs, but what went on in his office was an exception.
Hurrying up the stairs, she took the quickest way there that wouldn’t have her encountering any of the staff. She was on a mission now, and didn’t want to be distracted with idle conversation.
His office, unlike his bedroom, was usually open. As she crossed the threshold, she drew in a breath. His scent lingered here. God, she really was a besotted ninny, but there it was. She took a second inhale and noticed he’d left a jacket carelessly tossed over a chair back. Moving to it, she slipped it on, rationalizing the morning air could be chilly in the house, and sank down in the desk chair. A ruled pad with a couple dozen to-do reminders on it was on the desk blotter. He had bold, clear handwriting. Picking it up, she started reading through it.
Within a very few minutes, she knew she needed help. Well, she wasn’t going to be dissuaded now, and for once, found herself grateful it was close to the height of the day, when Alistair was most likely in his deepest sleep.
She took it as a good sign that Nero was here, having had to switch to a day shift today due to his daughter’s nurse needing the night off. Winifred had been moved to the day shift some time ago, a boon since that was when Nina was most often off at the hospital, but in this instance she found them together, in the dining room.
Nero was admonishing the maid to do a better job on the silver, pointing out the blemishes on that, and the chandelier over the table. Winifred nodded stiffly and retreated, with a barely contained flounce. She gave Nina a cold stare but said nothing as she passed by.
“Finish it before you go home,” Nero called after her sharply. “And I’ll want to see it before you do.”
As he turned to Nina, she could tell the adjustment back to his normal impassivity took monumental effort. “Would taking a strap to her help?” she queried.
His lips twitched. “There is no strap big enough to make that one into a decent servant. She has big dreams, but no patience for the work of achieving them.”
“She’s young,” Nina said diplomatically.
“She is, I believe, two years older than yourself.”
“Oh. Well.” It wasn’t the first time that had happened. Since the war, she’d felt more at home in the company of those like her, who had served, or people old enough to be her parents’ age. She wondered if that was why she and Alistair had hit it off so well. Though if he was three hundred, that either meant the war had aged her far more than she knew, or he hadn’t matured in accordance with hi
s years.
He was male. That answered the maturity question.
At Nero’s patient though pointed look, she returned to the matter at hand. “I need some insight into what Lord Alistair does as Region Master, to be a better help to him. Can you come to his office and walk me through some of this? I know you don’t do that work for him, but I get the feeling you have the gist of it better than most.”
Nero blinked at her. “I have helped him in the past. He’s shouldered more of it since we moved here, because the household demands, and the comings and goings of his territory vampires, require more of my butler skills.”
“Then my help might be useful, mightn’t it? Will you help me?”
Nero studied her a moment. He was a shrewd man and surely knew she was up to more than that. As a result, she felt greatly encouraged when his face at last creased into a somber yet approving smile. “It would be my genuine pleasure. Lead the way.”
An hour and a half later, she accepted the tea Nero poured for them both, feeling the need for it. “So…he has roughly a hundred vampires in his Region, and a good third of them are…like Stanley.”
“Yes, miss. Pretty much good for nothing except needing his protection. Don’t get me wrong.” Nero shook his head. “Mr. Stanley’s making a good go of his tailor shop, but that’s been the story for a lot of them. They come here, broken strays from other places, ones that their territories are happy to be rid of, though they accept the payoff Lord Alistair gives them to compensate them for the misfits running off. Then Lord Alistair helps get them back on their feet.”
Nero took a sip of his tea and crossed his legs in the chair across from the desk. “In the meantime, he’s got Lord Ruskin in the Northwest Region to contend with. Lord Ruskin is a made vampire, but he lords it about like he was born. Lady Bertrice, one of Alistair’s overlords, houses the former Region Master, Luigi, and both of them are fond of Alistair. But neither of them provides him much help or support, and likely would not be displeased if he ultimately failed and a born vampire takes his place. Like Donovan Schultz.”
Nero tapped the pad where they’d listed out all Alistair’s territory vampires under the names of the overlords beneath him.
“Donovan. Sharon Martin, Jerry Tims. Susan Tiers. Susan and Jerry, they’re not bad sorts for their kind. But Lord Donovan clearly has his eye on Alistair’s chair. Brutal ambition is a celebrated trait among vampires, and he takes it to the extreme. He keeps Alistair on his toes. He’s a born vampire, like Lady Bertrice, so it sticks in his craw, Alistair getting the post instead of him. The vampires in Donovan’s territory are pretty loyal to him, so they also cause Alistair headaches, passive things that disrespect him without being overt snubs.”
“Hmm. Looks like Alistair has on his to-do list to call him about a one-on-one meeting about finances.”
Nero made a noncommittal noise and she narrowed her gaze at him. “You keep doing that whenever I talk about Alistair doing something. You’re evading.”
“I am not evading,” Nero said with stern dignity. “I am following my employer’s orders, not to burden you with any additional tasks.”
She sat back, studied him. “So whenever you’ve made that odd grunt, it’s because whatever I just outlined Alistair doing is something his InhServ is supposed to do.”
He took another sip of his tea. “Fine then,” she said, as if he’d said the answer plain as day, which she expected he had. “So, I’m supposed to call Donovan’s servant and set this up.”
“Yes. The two of you compare the calendars and set up the meet. Alistair is good about keeping his up-to-date, so you needn’t worry there’s something not on it.”
“Right then. Okay, let’s backtrack to all the grunt moments…”
Another hour and she’d made a separate list of things she could do to reduce the pile, making phone calls and the like. The Mistress had given her a good sense of an InhServ’s duties, and she’d put herself through nursing school by working in a secretarial pool, not wishing her parents to shoulder all the costs of it. But with this part of things well under way, she wondered if Nero was willing to answer something else for her. He was collecting the tea tray to depart and resume his duties, but at her regard, he lifted his head and raised a brow.
“Is there something else?”
He wasn’t impatient with her, but he was a man who took his role very seriously when it came to discretion. So she wondered if he would understand why she was asking and make an exception, just once.
“Nero, why did he stop playing footy? He loved playing, didn’t he?”
Nero set the tray back down and considered her. Nina waited him out, trying to keep her expression composed, calm, as if it was the most normal thing to ask. Even sensing just how personal it was. The longer the silence drew out, the more she was sure of it. And that Nero had the answers she sought.
With a sigh, the butler took a seat back in the chair across from her. “He said it was because he wanted to focus on his Region Master responsibilities. Before the war, he loved his footy matches. Was out at the fields a couple nights a week with his mates, or brought them back to the house to listen to the games on the radio. Or took them to professional matches. Always had the money for tickets. Think he would have sold some furniture if needed for those.”
She would have smiled, but there was too much behind Nero’s answer, too much pain she sensed. Nero met her gaze. “You know as well as any, as do I. Guess I wouldn’t have thought about it affecting one of his kind the way it did my daughter, but there are times…he’s far more removed from us now than he once was. He took it inside him, and I don’t think he knows how to let it go.” Nero paused. “He lost over half of them in the war, Miss Nina. His mates on the field.”
“And his last two servants,” she said quietly.
“It catches up to us all, even one who lives as long as him,” Nero confirmed. “And the worse it affects us, the more we take it inside, and the less we talk about it.”
She thought about that. Thought about nurses who’d only been on the periphery of what she’d seen and done. Who would make much of some near-brush they’d had with the violence, bursting to tell a story about it. Whereas those like her…they didn’t want to talk about it at all.
“Did he love Hal, Nero?”
“Yes, he did,” Nero said simply. “Not the same as he feels for you, but it was the bond of brothers-in-arms, a strong thing.”
That took her by surprise, but she decided to leave it alone. She was all too aware that everything she could be thinking about why Alistair was holding her at arm’s length could be true…and it still wouldn’t change his position on it. Because at the end of the day, he was still a vampire, a Region Master, and the structure of the vampire-servant relationship could be dictated by that, more than any other factor.
And if that was the case, things were a little too raw in that part of her heart to handle a close examination of what might or might not be true in Nero’s remarkable statement. “Thank you, Nero. For all your help. I…ah… I’m going to work in here most of today, I think.”
Nero nodded, studied her. But when he rose, rather than picking up the tray, he gestured to her arm. “Have you ever thought about what that means?”
She glanced down at the InhServ mark. “I know what it means. The fleur-de-lis. It says I belong to another. It’s a—”
“Not that. Your third mark. The one that appeared when Lord Alistair gave it to you.”
She looked back down at her wrist, at the Y-shaped mark that flanked the InhServ mark, something she’d thought of as a flourish, merely emphasizing it. “What about it?”
“It’s a forked road, Miss Nina. The universal symbol of a choice to be made. Also looking like the letter ‘Y’, which makes us think of the word ‘why.’ A one-word question we ask ourselves quite often during our lives.”
She frowned down at it, her hand covering the symbol. She thought of how Alistair had described it. It usually means something
, but it’s nothing that we control. It’s some other magic that makes that decision.
“That’s a fanciful take on it, Nero,” she said, though her mind was turning it over. “You aren’t usually the fanciful sort.”
“No. I am certainly not that. But you remember what I told you, that night on the stairs, about how Lord Alistair insisted upon you? A servant is the closest thing a vampire can have to a family, Miss Nina. The closest relationship to anyone he has. I think you’ve started to realize that, haven’t you?”
She couldn’t deny she’d thought of it, so she gave him a short nod, even as she continued to clasp the symbol, feel the imprint of it in her palm. Nero locked gazes with her, though.
“From what I’ve seen, Miss Nina, when a vampire gets lost? If he can’t find his way home, his servant is the only one who can. Perhaps you’re not the only one who feels lost and alone. Who needs help finding that path.”
“You’re his third mark,” she pointed out.
“Yes and no.” His lips tugged in a serious smile. “All the other servants he’s had, they had something pop up like that, when he gave them the third mark. Me, not a blemish. Not even a new freckle. Because I’m not that for him. He gave me the third mark for me and my daughter, not for himself.”
He picked up the tray, nodded one more time to her. “Let me know if you have any further questions. I’ll help however I can.”
She had a lot to think about. Worry about. Speculate about. So she avoided driving herself too mad by spending the rest of the day in Alistair’s office, labeling things that needed his personal attention, making a stack of things she could do but which required some answers from him before she handled them. But there was one stack, that of things she was able to complete, that grew to a satisfying size as the day went on. When she’d put it off as long as she could, though she wasn’t sure why she was delaying, she placed a call to the home of the passive aggressive overlord, Donovan Schultz.