“What, no shopping?”
“No shopping. Worried you haven’t brought enough to wear?” This was safer ground – he was accustomed to teasing his sisters about such things.
“You won’t deny me shopping when the mood strikes. Not even you could be so very hard-hearted.”
“Are you sure they have shops in Nottingham?”
“Fair point.” She twinkled at him, clearly enjoying their banter.
Cris was seized by the horrible realization that he was having a marvelous time and enjoying her company immensely. And he tried so hard never to do that around Sparkles. Because everyone was susceptible to her wiles, even he, and he didn’t want to be one of the enamoured crowd. He wanted to be special. He wanted to be more difficult for her. He wanted to mean something.
Pathetic, really.
Cris drew away, pressed his head back against the seat rest, stopped his natural inclination to smile back, and forced himself into calm, dour seriousness.
Dimity sighed at him. “You could relax around me a little, you know? Occasionally? I don’t currently intend to slit your throat or do anything sinister.”
“It’s not my throat I’m worried about.”
“It’s not?”
“No, lower down.” She blushed furiously at that and he realized that might be taken as rude, when in fact he’d meant his heart, not his prick. He struggled, wondering if he should explain. Then finally allowed her to believe he was crass. Because the other organ that might be involved was more fragile, and he didn’t want to give her the slightest inkling she had any control over that part of his anatomy. Because she’d crush him, and wouldn’t even realize she was doing it. Because along would come the next mission, and off his Sparkles would flit, to winkle his secrets out of the next susceptible male.
He’d be left behind knowing that she’d already extracted from him the fact that he was passing good at ballet. And then where would he be?
They arrived several hours after sunset, the night a gloomy one, thick with fog. Dimity was pleased it wasn’t raining, as it was difficult enough to manage baggage without holding an umbrella. But it was colder than London, the night heavy and damp, like a cold stew. Smelled a little like wet donkey too. They were met at the Nottingham dirigible embarkation green by Lord Finbar himself, Praetoriani to Baroness Octavine Ermondy, queen of the Nottingham vampire hive. He was waiting for them outside the customs offices, sitting inside a carriage, window sash down, arms along the frame, and chin resting upon them, like some winsome schoolgirl.
In a world where it was fashionable to be very pale, because fashions were set by vampires, it was often difficult to tell a vampire from a young man of breeding. So Dimity initially thought this was someone’s wastrel son, waiting on sufferance for a visiting aunt. Except that when the other passengers had been taken away by friends, family, or hired conveyance, only he was left, and he was staring at them. And he was very pale indeed. Then, deeming it safe now that the plebeians had gone, he flashed his fangs at them.
It was a bad sign that the hive had to send an actual hive-bound vampire to retrieve them. One simply didn’t do such a thing. One sent servants. Therefore, the presence of Lord Finbar at the station along with a very old and run-down carriage meant there were no servants left. A vampire hive without servants was like a cake without icing sugar – functional, but not particularly nice.
The carriage was absurd, all ornate curls and finials and excessive turrets, like something out of a fairy tale. It had been retrofitted for steam and weight assist, so it had no wheels, but instead a rusty propeller attachment at the rear. It was suspended from a large black balloon. Mounted at the front, as though it were the figurehead of a ship, was a taxidermy squirrel. The creature was pierced through the heart by a golden arrow and arranged as if in mid-leap.
“Are those cobwebs?” Dimity hissed at Cris, as they approached. “I do believe those might be cobwebs.” She didn’t mind if the vampire heard her – it was too shocking for words!
The carriage had once been gilt and possibly red, but someone had thought it a grand idea to paint it over black, except now the gold was peeking through at the tips and edges of all the curlicues, and the red was peeking through everywhere else. It looked like a child’s toy that had been played with too often.
Lord Finbar exited the conveyance to assist Dimity inside. Or he started to, but he moved so slowly that Dimity was already in and settled by the time he recollected his civil duties. He ignored Sir Crispin entirely and did not help load the baggage (which Cris did without complaint), merely settling back into his seat and staring in gormless distraction at Dimity. Or possibly, at Dimity’s neck.
Lord Finbar had a long face with sunken eyes and a mouth that could have been nicely shaped had it not been so utterly downturned. He had oily black hair combed back to show off a pronounced widow’s peak.
“How do you do, Lord Finbar?” Dimity smiled as big and bright as she could.
The vampire recoiled from her. “Mrs Carefull? You’re not at all what I expected from your letters.”
Dimity looked down at her respectable carriage dress in alarm. She’d made sure to pick one that was older and a little worn, but she’d added a few bows and trailing ribbons in an asymmetrical manner for dramatic flair. “Am I not artistic enough?”
“That’s not it at all. I thought someone less cheerful.”
“One can hardly change one’s disposition to meet expectations, Lord Finbar. Nevertheless, I apologize. I shall try to diminish my natural inclination to good humor. Are you well?” She continued to smile, since it seemed to unsettle him, and how much fun was that, with a vampire? Besides which, she was an artist, wasn’t she – dramatic disposition, excited to be visiting a different city, pleased to meet a vampire and prospective employer.
Lord Finbar resisted her smiles. “Not at all well, not at all. The hive is suffering. Suffering most painfully. You’ve come to us at a grave time, very grave. Possibly literally grave, although who can know for certain? Doomed, one is tempted to think. Yes, doomed.”
Dimity was taken aback. He was hardly putting any effort into recruiting her for drone status. In fact, quite the opposite. While she supposed there were some young ladies who were attracted to a certain level of Byronic melancholy, this was laying it on rather thick.
“Oh, well, it can’t possibly be all that bad, can it?”
Outside, she heard Sir Crispin’s warm, rumbling voice telling the porter who’d finally appeared that he would take care of her baggage. The carriage began to shake and creak as it undertook the burden of her excessive packing choices.
Apparently, Lord Finbar was only getting started. “All is crumbling into ruins. My queen is turning her back on the world of the living and the living dead. We do not sleep, we do not eat. The necks are scrawny, the pipes are dry, words wither on my tongue. All is lost and fallen into tragedy. It’s like the great poets said—”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure they did say. Pipes, you mentioned? Do you mean... plumbing?” Dimity was worried. Were all her fears to be realized?
“We’re flattered to have you, of course, and for your interest in our little painting,” he said, finally seeming to realize she was right there, a living, breathing human artist, sitting across from him on the extraordinarily threadbare red and black brocade cushions of his carriage. “Both of you.” He added, reluctantly, as Sir Crispin let himself inside and sat down next to Dimity.
As Cris closed the carriage door behind him, the entire door lost its casing and came off in his hand.
“Erp!” said Sir Crispin, straining under the weight of the thing, which might be wrought iron for all she knew.
Dimity hid a snigger with a simulated gasp of horror.
Lord Finbar merely lifted the door from Sir Crispin with barely three fingers and a weary sigh, and set it next to him on the bench as though it were a fourth passenger. He didn’t even shift out of his slump.
&
nbsp; He intoned a formal welcome with both of them sitting before him. Although his voice was so sepulchral, it was as if he were leading a eulogy. “Mr and Mrs Carefull, it is such a great honor. We have not been visited these many nights by any so vibrant and talented as yourselves. But surely you might consider turning away from us now. Will any float to your rescue, if you enter our doomed hive alone?”
Well, yes, thought Dimity. Quite a few, I should imagine. Cris had even mentioned that BUR would be in after them, if they hadn’t managed anything substantial in a fortnight. Dimity snorted at the very idea of BUR needing to come to her aid. She could fix a hive in a fortnight, surely she could. Not that she thought they’d need rescuing even if she couldn’t. Currently the greatest threat seemed to be excessive sentimental melodrama.
Admittedly, things could get dire if he would keep going on so. Dimity had experienced a romantic poet phase herself, of course. What young lady didn’t? But honestly, she’d left it when she was sixteen. How old was Lord Finbar, four hundred? There was no excuse for purple elocution and aggressive morbidity at his age.
Sir Crispin shared a sympathetic look with Dimity.
He had rather lovely dark eyes, Sir Crispin did, and they were currently wide in what Dimity assumed was an effort not to burst into laughter.
Dimity privately agreed. She had met many a poet in her day. Real live ones. And opera singers. Tenors, from Italy. And not a one had laid it on as thick as this vampire.
She reached across and patted Lord Finbar gently on one bony knee. “Well, yes dear, but that seems to be putting things rather strongly, don’t you think? Can’t be all that bad, can it?”
His coat – should one dignify it with that word? – was moth-eaten and, without question, made of black velvet.
Black velvet.
Dimity recoiled in horror.
He was wearing a lace cravat as well, gone cream with age, not intent. The cravat was ill tied and droopy. In fact, everything about the vampire drooped. The jacket sagged off his shoulders, the hair straggling from his head wisped against his neck, the lines from the corners of his mouth and eyes stretched downwards. Even his long face seemed to droop.
“You are, perhaps, fond of poetry, Lord Finbar?”
“I am a poet, Mrs Carefull.”
“Oh, you are? I was under the mistaken impression that when one became a vampire one never versified again. Sacrifice of talent for immortality and so forth.”
“I shall never give it up. Never! Even as the very act of creation is a torment. One bleeds through the pen, Mrs Carefull. Bleeds! One finds this is eternally the case, suffering for art, doesn’t one, Mrs Carefull?”
Which meant he was a poet without talent. Which meant Dimity, at least, could hardly tell the difference. Still, it explained his terrible melancholy.
“Oh dear me, no, of course you shouldn’t surrender your passion. I myself have a terrible weakness for a good meringue. Crispy and fluffy and chewy all at once, you see?”
He regarded her as if he thought she might be crispy and fluffy and chewy all at once. Which she supposed she probably was, to a vampire.
“Are you scribing anything profound at the moment, Lord Finbar?” she tempted him further.
“A sonnet.”
“Oh yes?”
“An ode to my lost youth, my forgotten life, the crumbling of the past, the impossibility of the future, and the ruination of my dreams. It is a lyrical treatise on the passing of time, like moths through an hourglass.”
“Moths is it, in your hourglass? How tiresome. I should get it cleaned, if I were you.”
And so went the conversation. Fortunately, it was a blessedly quick trip from the green to the hive house. Not because the carriage was fast, but because the distance was short.
The hive house, Budgy Hall, was located in the heart of Nottingham on one of the oldest streets, next to an extremely decrepit church, overlooking said church’s graveyard. Because... of course it was. Why be gloomy when one could go all the way into morbid? Still, it was a good address for pretend aristocrats. Well, not pretend exactly, since all hive queens were given aristocratic titles, but Budgy Hall pretended to be for eccentric human aristocrats.
Dimity tried not to be impressed by the consciously gothic nature of the hive’s arrangements. There were even some very old oak trees looming overhead, crooked branches and prickling leaves and ominous creaking. It was all a bit much, and certainly not stylish, but they had chosen their motif and stuck with it. One had to respect that. At least a little.
Lord Finbar did not help Sir Crispin with the baggage. He only looked over the mountain stacked atop his carriage and groaned. He had supernatural strength and no reason to complain and every reason to be a gentleman and help. But he did not.
Dimity rescued her jewelry cases, and stopped a hat box from rolling into the street, and then tried to help Sir Crispin put the bags on the stoop. He frowned at her fiercely, managing even her biggest trunk with aplomb. It was very gallant and sporting of him. Dimity was delighted, of course. His arm muscles even bulged a bit under his greatcoat. Dimity had read about this phenomenon but never seen it, not in real life.
Lord Finbar and the carriage disappeared around the corner. Dimity and Cris were left standing on the stoop, in a heavy mist that was trying to become rain, smelling a musty odor of decaying mortar and moldy fabric.
“This is ridiculous,” said Sir Crispin. “That man can’t possibly be real.”
“He’s been reading far too much Byron.”
They looked at each other. They looked at the baggage. They looked at the door.
“Do we knock?” wondered Dimity. There was a bell pull, but the cord was so frayed that with one tug it’d fall to pieces.
Sir Crispin, a man of action, knocked loudly.
They waited.
Dimity shivered.
Sir Crispin knocked again.
The door creaked open and there stood not a butler but a chunky gentleman with long silver hair that he wore pinned half back, with ropey strands loose down each side of his round face. Dimity assumed that, given the expression of hauteur on his face, this was another of the hive’s vampires. On him the pallor of an undead constitution looked sickly. He wore what amounted to medieval robes, a tailboard or whatever it was called. He even had long trailing sleeves. It was black and made of velvet, of course. It was as if he had delusions of portraying King Lear. Dimity was not best pleased by any of it.
“Oh. Yes? Who are you?” said the vampire, quite rudely.
Dimity and Sir Crispin exchanged glances.
Sir Crispin stepped forward, gave a small bow. “Mr and Mrs Carefull.”
“Do you have an appointment?” He seemed somewhat angered by their presence.
Dimity tried one of her best smiles, gesturing behind them to the mound of luggage. “Oh, but we aren’t paying a call. We’ve come to stay, from London?”
The portly vampire only sniffed at them fiercely.
Sir Crispin tried this time. “We are artists invited to visit by Lord Finbar. My wife’s a painter and has come to assess one of the watercolors in your collection. I dance and we were to consider…” He paused and delicately touched his own neck with two fingers, glancing furtively around as they were still on the stoop, in public, although the street seemed mostly deserted apart from her luggage. “You know.”
“Oh.” The vampire nodded gravely without looking any less angry. “Artists. Come in, if you must.”
“Were you not told of our arrival?” Sir Crispin grabbed up one of Dimity’s trunks and muscled it inside.
Dimity stared. More bulging.
This vampire seemed utterly disinclined to help with the luggage either, although as he was no doubt supernaturally strong, it would have been the work of moment. Dimity resented this, since it had started to rain in earnest. She very much appreciated Sir Crispin’s efforts on her behalf, and what said effort combined with said rain did for
his physique.
Dimity helped, despite his stern expression, and between them they got everything inside. Then they stumbled over and around the pile, as the long-haired vampire began to walk slowly away, as if he were in a wedding ceremony, presumably leading them to their room. Without checking to see if they followed. He still hadn’t introduced himself, either.
They left the baggage in the entranceway and trotted after.
The house was exactly as advertised on the outside – old, worn, and decrepit. The wallpaper was stripped, the carpets threadbare, and the curtains hadn’t been washed in a millennium. Out of the rain the mustiness persisted, and Dimity contemplated the saturation of the stench, wondering if it had ever been aired in its lifetime.
Dimity was terrified of touching anything, lest it break off or leave her smudged. She tried holding her skirts against herself, but the fashion was for wide crinolines, to allude to the grace of dirigibles floating about the feminine figure, so skirts were bound to touch things.
Fortunately, the grand staircase, once they attained it, was wide enough to accommodate her skirts. She had on a dove gray carriage dress with bright purple trim to protect against the dust of travel, but little could help her now because the stairs themselves did not appear to have been cleaned in the last decade.
At the top of the staircase an extremely handsome man lounged in staged dramatic aspect. He leaned against the top railing – a brave fellow. Dimity wouldn’t have trusted it to hold her weight, let alone his, as he was built with operatic proportions. He had curling light brown locks, perfectly coiffed, a prominent chin, nose, and brow. His eyes were large and dark and speaking, in a way that suggested extensive theatrical training. He was also flushed and ruddy in a way that screamed humanity.
The portly vampire wafted past him with only a glance. “There’s baggage wants seeing to, Mr Theris.”
So this must be the hive’s one remaining drone.
“Artists up from London, are they?” Mr Theris looked them over with a glance that was part envy, part lust, part disgust. “Don’t look very artistic to me.”
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