The number rang and rang with no answer.
Come on, Pierre! she whispered. Answer your damn phone!
Angélique tossed the phone on her bed, which was Louis XV inlaid mahogany with a red toile coverlet. She sat down on the window seat, and looked out again at the rooftop, while twisting her thick brown hair into a bun and securing it with some pins from her vanity table.
Damn it! she said out loud. The whole thing is going to come crashing down if Pierre cannot keep his miserable hands to himself!
She picked up her cell again and this time tapped Jo’s number.
“Salut!” she said cheerily. “I don’t mean to bother you, but first of all I wanted to make sure you have my number. The Château is so big we very often call each other instead of trying to search and find someone. And the other thing is that I wanted to check on how you are doing after that funny moment in the parking lot. I know the man ran off, no harm done, but nevertheless, a thing like that can be unsettling, especially when you’ve just arrived someplace totally new.”
“Thanks, Angélique,” said Jo. “Really, I’m OK. Fine.”
“Yes. Well,” said Angélique, her voice softer than usual, “let me suggest a long bath before dinner. I will call Albert and ask him to bring these English bath salts that are wonderfully soothing. And please, let me know if you need anything at all, or just want to talk.”
After ending the call with Jo, Angélique tapped Pierre’s number once again. Still no answer. He’s probably out biting some other girl, thought Angélique, and a shiver went through her, and for an instant, she allowed the memory of her own encounter with Pierre to come into her mind.
Then she shook her head no. I am not going to allow those thoughts, she said to herself, and because Angélique was a strong woman, not only physically but emotionally as well, she succeeded.
Jo put her phone down, silently thanking Marianne for making sure it would work once she got to France. Technology was decidedly not Jo’s thing. She wandered over to the window and looked out, seeing much the same view as Angélique in the opposite tower.
The combination of jet-lag and Château Gagnon itself–and can’t forget David, oh my God–it’s all a little too much right now, thought Jo.
She crossed the large bedroom and went into the bathroom, which was bigger than her apartment back home. It had an old sink with sides wide enough to sit on, and a massive tub, longer than she was. Suddenly Angélique’s suggestion of a bath seemed like exactly the right thing. She ran the water as hot as she could stand it and leapt in, at first gasping at the heat and then sighing gratefully as the heat relaxed her muscles in spite of themselves.
The water pressure was magnificent. She picked up a wand shaped nozzle connected to the water supply by a silver hose, and flicked the knob so that a fine spray, steaming hot, played over her breasts and shoulders.
When her skin became bright red, she turned the heat down a little and unwrapped a bar of lavender soap. She was so involved in soaping herself all over, and so relaxed for the first time since arriving in France, that she did not hear anyone knock and enter her bedroom.
“Mademoiselle?” a man’s voice called, gently, with a knock on the bathroom door.
Jo slid under the water up to her neck, even though the water was totally clear and her curvy but athletic body was perfectly visible. “Yes?” she said. “I’m in the bath.”
“Yes, Mademoiselle. I am leaving a tray for you, a little something to eat for when you get out,” the man said.
“Thank you,” said Jo. She was not used to being waited on and found she didn’t mind it one bit.
She began soaping herself again, under the water, still luxuriating in the immense tub that was practically big enough to swim in, flipping over onto her belly and back again, feeling like a seal, swirling the soap all over herself, in between her legs and all over her ass, with her eyes closed.
She did not hear the man leave. In fact Jo had the distinct feeling that he was still standing right there, in her bedroom.
Jo turned the nozzle back on and let the spray go over her arms, her neck, and again her breasts. David had had such an effect on her that everything she did felt sexy. She imagined that the butler, or whatever you called whoever that was who was not leaving–she imagined that he was peeking at her, through the crack of the door.
Jo sat up so that the water was only up to her waist, put the nozzle down, and soaped her breasts with such detail and thoroughness that she almost started laughing at herself. Her breasts were round and pert, more than a handful, heavy enough to swing when she walked if she wore no bra. Her pink nipples were hard, just thinking of the man on the other side of the door, staring, perhaps even touching himself, because he wanted her so much.
What has gotten into me? she thought, dropping the lavender soap with a splash. I am not acting like myself at all.
In that instant, the erotic spell was broken and she finished up her bath quickly so as to get to the snack waiting in the bedroom. She heard no sound at all from her bedroom and it was empty when she walked in wearing a terry bathrobe. Somehow she must have missed hearing the servant leave.
Not sure how that happened, she thought. He must have special butler powers that allow him to move silently. Next thing you know I’ll be seeing ghosts, and elves scampering about the shrubbery.
Now let me at that food! she thought. I am absolutely starving.
5
The problem with running a chambre d’hôte, thought Henri, as he left the main building of the Château and struck out across the grounds, is that there are just too many people coming and going. It’s impossible to have five minutes to concentrate on anything. He hoped no one had seen which direction he had gone, although everyone at the Château knew exactly which building he was likely to be in. But Henri liked to pretend to himself that he was invisible and working behind the scenes. And he hated being disturbed at his work. David thought Henri was jealous that David was so often the center of attention, and Henri was happy to let him continue to believe it, but it was not even a little bit true.
Henri had serious work to do. He did not have time, nor the temperament, for endless socializing. He left the conversing and arranging and flattering and flirting and all the rest up to David.
Top of the list: improvements and testing of the latest version of synthetic blood, which had been given what he considered the silly name of Hemo-Yum by the marketing people up in Paris. Henri had displeased his parents mightily when he insisted on going off to university and studying chemistry. And it had not been easy to pull off getting to classes without undue sun exposure.
But Henri had managed it. He had managed it brilliantly.
And now, many years later, he was right at the peak of his greatest success by far. Blood substitutes of various kinds had been on the market for years. But they were all made by humans, not vampires, and so their properties were not at all what vampires required. The human’s synthetic blood was designed to carry oxygen, of all the crazy things, and while it could keep a vampire alive for a while, it could not be the basis for a good life or anything close to it. A vampire on a complete diet of human synthetic blood would waste away, becoming more and more degenerated. Henri had heard of suicides. Vampire suicides! It boggled the mind.
Hemo-Yum, on the other hand, was designed by Henri to feed a vampire, body and soul. It contained all the minerals, the vitamins, the x factors, the y factors, and the jillup that real human blood contained. And–no small thing, not in France, where gourmet cooking was the national pastime–it tasted heavenly. Not exactly the same as human blood, but just as good. For a vampire, it was like getting a bottle full of his very favorite flavor, whether that was Scandinavian blondes or dark-haired Italians, stunning Thais or Californian bikini-clad teenagers, all with a slight Hemo-Yum twist. Hemo-Yum came in twenty-two flavors and Henri planned to keep expanding that number until he had covered every single physical type of woman a vampire could possibly desire.
The reason Henri liked chemistry so much was that it was close to the magic he believed his ancestors used to know, but that had been forgotten over the ages. Hemo-Yum was a kind of magic. It would allow vampires to live among humans without having to risk being discovered, and then killed, because their need to bite became so strong they lost control. That had been happening since the beginning of the vampire times, and Henri was going to put an end to it.
And sales of Hemo-Yum were without question the best chance he and David had to fill the coffers of the Château and no longer have to submit to this endless parade of paying guests.
At least, that was how Henri looked at it. He feared that David had begun to like having new people to bite every couple of days. He feared it was way more than a matter of like and had gotten to the point of need. He and David had been fighting since they were children, and it would not surprise Henri if this business of the paying guests turned into a battle that was harsher than any so far in the last two hundred years.
When he got to the stone building surrounded by ancient trees, he pushed a button on the doorframe which activated an iris recognition camera. Henri opened his eyes wide and stared into the lens, and the door slid open.
Every time he came to his lab it gave him a thrill of satisfaction to unlock the door. Creating that iris recognition software and the device that used it had been one of the most intellectually satisfying projects he had undertaken. Of course, the humans had something similar, but their irises did not work the same way; in fact, their entire eye structure was different, and Henri realized that if he wanted such a system to protect his lab, he would have to design and build it himself, so that is just what he did.
The minute he got inside, he could smell something was wrong. He lifted his face and drew in a few long breaths through his nose. Yes, someone had been here, been inside his lab, where no one was allowed. How?
He strode over to a long table strewn with papers. He had planned to get right to work on Hemo-Yum, but there was something else he wanted to check. The file on the new bandage–he had left it right on the left-hand corner, he was sure of it. Quickly he rummaged about, thinking it must have gotten hidden under something else. Not there. Henri couldn’t believe it. No one could enter the lab except himself.
But the file was gone.
And that smell…
Finally, Angélique reached Pierre Aucoin.
“You idiot,” she hissed into her cell. “What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t doing anything,” said Pierre defensively. “I had just gotten up and was heading down to the bar to meet some buddies.”
“You don’t have any buddies,” Angélique said harshly.
“Aw, now you’re going to make me cry,” said Pierre.
“I’m telling you, Pierre, you don’t have any more chances. David has helped you out for the last time. If Durant catches you again, you are on your own. So I suggest you do whatever you have to do to get yourself under control.”
“What would really help,” he said, “is if you came over. Right now would be good. You have an ass without equal, Angélique. So what I’m thinking–”
Angélique tapped END CONVERSATION and threw her phone on the bed. That scum, she thought. Honestly, sometimes I’d like to stake him myself.
David meanwhile stepped through the main doorway of the Château, out onto the terraced stone steps, and looked up at the night sky. The moon was not much more than a fingernail, so the stars were visible, billions of them, with the whitish drift of the Milky Way winding through them. The air was crisp.
He was hungry.
He had just finished a lovely dinner made by their exceptional cook, duck in some kind of sauce, he hadn’t paid much attention. It’s not that he didn’t enjoy filling his stomach–he was French, being indifferent to food was an impossibility– but other hungers, to David, meant so much more. Way in the back of his mind, he was becoming a little bit concerned. Not that long ago, his need to drink blood was occasional. He loved it, he looked forward to it, but it was not ruling his life the way it was now.
It had felt to him lately as though he was terrifically bored, tired of listening to Angélique drone on about accounts and profit margins, sick of Henri talking about his synthetic blood and stupid bandages and saving all of vampire-kind, had it with the inescapable pattern of getting up every night and going through the motions of eating meals and being charming and taking care to look good.
The truth was, David was a little depressed. And the only thing that gave him anything to look forward to was his nightly snack. It was the one time when his body was alive, throbbing, humming, looking for release. When nothing else mattered.
And the only way to get that release was to sink his fangs into a woman’s flesh, and drink, and drink, and drink.
If David had been a different sort of person, or even a different sort of vampire, he might have tried to figure out what was going on. But he was not, and he did not.
He knew that he could stroll down to Henri’s lab and Henri would be more than happy to give him some of that synthetic dreck he was making down there. But David had three problems with Hemo-Yum. First, the taste was sort of off. It was like a wine that was not quite ready to drink. Sure, you could get it down, it didn’t make you gag or anything, but was it delicious? No.
Second, David did not want to give Henri the satisfaction. It made him feel…dependent. Which made him shudder.
Third, and most important, the delivery system for the blood was almost as crucial to his pleasure as the blood itself. Just as a heroin addict comes to love needles, to worship the tubing he ties his arm off with and the spoon he cooks his gunk in, so David adored female flesh. He loved the flash of power he felt when his fangs shot out. He loved brushing back a woman’s hair from her neck, and the sight and smell and touch of her pulsing artery.
And the feeling of plunging his fangs into that neck and drinking from that artery? It launched him into space, into the infinite, his entire body pulsing along with the woman’s heart, pulsing with a kind of bliss that he could find no other way.
Yes, sometimes he fucked her beforehand. And during. And after. And oh yes, the fucking was not to be dismissed, not at all. But to consider fucking without the biting? Meh.
One thing that separated David from a lot of other vampires–he didn’t just want to possess the woman, sexually and arterially. He wanted her to want him to do it. He wanted her to cry out with pleasure when he bit her, to moan, to beg. He wanted, as he satisfied himself, to be the object of surpassing desire.
Not like that village idiot Pierre, who just wanted to get his wick wet and snack on whomever he could scare into a lonely alleyway.
So, here he was, on a calm October night, his desire growing by the minute as he stood on his front steps looking at the stars.
That American woman, he thought. It’s her fault I’m so hungry tonight. Just having a woman–any woman–living nearby, whom he would be seeing every day, triggered his need for attention. He wanted her desperately, but not because Jo was Jo, but because she…existed. He wanted her to look for him, to wait for him, to get hot whenever he was in the same room with her. He wanted to smell her excitement, to see her breathless expression when finally, he came to pay her a visit.
This was how David felt whenever a human woman was near. The women believed that his attention meant he really cared for them, and they reveled in being the object of his intense desire–they had no idea just how long the line was that they had just joined. A line that stretched back for centuries, and was almost always at least two or three deep at any given moment.
He allowed himself to fantasize for just an instant about biting Jo and sucking on her neck. There was something about her energy, her excitement, that had gotten to him. He wondered whether she liked sex and was any good at it. Henri would kill me,
thought David with a sigh. And I need her to ride my horses.
What about that single woman staying in the cottage? he wondered. She’s a little old for my taste, but God, I have to drink. Now.
And with that thought, he trotted off towards the row of stone cottages some distance from the Château, each filled with paying guests, or, depending on your point of view, filled with appetizers, main course, and dessert.
6
When Jo woke up, it took several moments for her to piece together where she was and what that meant. She saw the bright sunshine streaming in the long windows and falling across the bed and the puffy down comforter. She stretched and smiled at the feeling on her legs of crisp, expensive sheets. Jo had not grown up with luxury, to put it mildly, and even though she had worked for a lot of rich people, she had not lived with them, and this was the first time she had ever woken up in a bed dressed as this one was: a fringed brocade canopy overhead; pillows in several shapes and sizes, some embroidered, some with lace around the edges; a comforter that billowed and felt like air on her body; and God in heaven above, the sheets.
These sheets, she thought–a person could understandably commit crimes to have these sheets. She grinned and flopped over and tried to drift back to sleep, but it was too sunny and she was too curious about what the day would hold.
She quickly dressed in riding clothes, slid on her boots, and made her way downstairs, looking for Angélique or someone who could give her a cup of coffee.
As she descended the final set of stairs, she saw a man dressed in livery–was that Albert?
“Bonjour?” she said, tentatively.
The man turned to her and said, "Good morning, Mademoiselle. Did you have a good sleep? Jet lag not too much of a bother?
“Not at all,” said Jo, not for the first time sending a thought of gratitude to her harshest, most demanding French teacher, and feeling so pleased that she could understand and speak well enough to manage. But she was also wondering…had he been watching her in the bath last night? Or had she just imagined it?
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