She smiled faintly at his easygoing kindness. “No, I want to know more about the mirrors. I don’t remember—when we travel through, is there a mirror on the other side, then?”
“No. Lord Jherin won’t allow that, not even in the homes of our own people who have taken up permanent residence in Earth. It would be so easy to set them up that way, but the risk for accidental discovery is too high. Nosy servants, you know. Instead they travel with an anchor stone. They work just like teleportation stones but they open up a temporary portal.” He pointed at the table again, and she noticed a bowl of white stones tucked in among the potions.
“So you go through a mirror holding one of these stones and it lets you open up the portal to come home?”
“That’s right.”
“How do humans get through, then?”
He had an odd look for a moment and shrugged. “Well, there have been some mistakes.” He took a flask from his pocket and unscrewed it. “I haven’t seen you in a while. Are you faring all right with your visitor? Vampires are fascinating creatures, aren’t they?”
“Have you met other vampires?” she asked. Uncle Nihem was proving to be an unexpected font of information. He’d known her since she was born, so he was probably more forthcoming than he should be.
“I’ve heard some stories.”
“Really?” She picked up the nutcracker after all, hoping he’d tell her something if she accepted hospitality.
“There’s a whole clan in Baltimore.”
That was an interesting tidbit she hadn’t expected. “A vampire clan? In a city? I’m surprised they can live there when they have so little control and have to keep their magic hidden.”
“I think they’re more talented at being vampires. They don’t get caught.”
“Mr. Faraday is very talented,” Parsons said defensively. But it was intriguing thought. Could you be more talented at being a vampire?
Dennis said the vampires he knew had given into their hunger. He seemed to think it was inevitable unless you turned to the forests, away from humanity. But maybe not.
“You know, nobody really tells me anything. Probably because they know I’ll tell it someone I shouldn’t, like you,” he said, and she knew he was onto her.
“I just wanted to know things. Paris was so beautiful, but I would have loved to see America. Do any of these portals go there?”
“They go where we tune them to go. But yes, we do usually have a few of them set to America, of course. This one goes to Manhattan. This one goes to Chicago. And that one goes outside of Bethlehem, where they make steel for the American navy. Their war certainly has been useful for us.”
“Manhattan, Chicago, and Bethlehem,” she murmured, noting the placement of each mirror, fixing them in their mind. She was reflected in the mirrors, but behind the reflection, the ghost of another world was visible. Most of them showed an alley or some shadowed place on the other side. They didn’t really show anything.
But if she were to walk through…where would she be? Skyscrapers and monuments might be just steps away.
“Oh, Parsons,” he said. “It is a shame. You would love to be a traveller, wouldn’t you?”
I would. I really would…
Papa was waiting at home, the parent left alone in the world to square off against a difficult daughter. Sometimes, in this mood, she still saw him glance sideways like he was looking for Mama’s nod.
“You’re home early,” he said.
“I don’t really want to talk. You don’t really want to talk either. I can tell. Let’s sleep it off first, all right?”
He sighed. “That bad? Parsons—please. Did you even try?”
“I told you already, that man you think is so terrific and hardworking is a skarnwen. He paws me with his eyes at work all the time and today he got to do it with his hands. But you know, that’s nothing new. That’s what Fanarlem girls get. That’s why I have an automobile and yet, I can’t even go to the theater by myself. And you don’t listen to me when I tell you these things. I know you probably feel guilty about it deep down, but you don’t take my side. He tried to kiss me. I’d rather kiss my tarantula.”
“I—I—I didn’t—” He sputtered like an engine trying to start.
Parsons rushed upstairs before he could get it together.
In the hall, she faltered, putting her hand on the wall to steady herself, near the photographs.
Dennis walked into the hall immediately. She turned, slightly startled at the way he looked so intent as he approached her.
“Did he hurt you?” he hissed.
“N-no.” A part of her wanted to reach for him, and the other part of her was annoyed at his intrusion into a private moment. “Were you listening to me talk to Papa?”
“I’m no eavesdropper,” he said. “But your voice was loud and upset, and—hard to ignore.”
“He didn’t hurt me, exactly, but…there were a lot of people around. I felt like he wanted to hurt me, that’s all.”
“I’ve seen the look on his face.” Why would he want to defend me? Is it just…chivalry? Or something more? Is he starting to see me as a real girl?
“Don’t say anything about this at work, though.” She changed the subject. “Dennis, have you heard about a clan of vampires in Baltimore?”
“Baltimore? Who told you this?”
“My uncle Nihem. He works the portals that travel to Earth. When the party got to be too much, I went downstairs and talked to him for a little while.”
“How would vampires stay hidden and not murder everyone in sight?” he asked. “The ones I knew lived far from civilization for a reason. It was easy to pick off a few people out there in West Virginia without anyone suspecting they didn’t just fall into a river or get lost in the woods.”
“I wondered the same thing. I also wondered if—”
Tell him.
Tell him he needs to go home. Tell him you’ll help him sneak into the portal room..
She couldn’t bear the thought of sending him away forever.
And more than anything, you wish you could go with him, to see Baltimore and New York and Paris and…
He leaned against the wall and took out a cigarette, as if he was settling into a conversation. He glanced at the stairs before he lit it. “This is such a big house for the two of you,” he said. “Do you ever feel guilty about the idea of leaving your father alone?”
“All the time.”
“My mother is a widow, too,” he said. “I felt obligated to stay near her. Every time she asked me about Miss Kirby, I know what she’s really asking is when will I move into a proper house around the corner from hers and give her grandchildren? Meanwhile, my oldest brother and his wife went off to live it up in California without a second thought. I was the good one, until Eliza.” He smirked.
“In my case, it doesn’t really matter,” Parsons said. “It isn’t safe for a Fanarlem girl to leave home. Unless I had a husband to protect me. Hence, Mr. Samaron, in Papa’s mind, but to me it’s inviting trouble right through the door.”
“To your father, I’m the trouble that came through the door, I think.” He shrugged one shoulder. “You know, I’ve been lying to everyone this whole time.”
“Lying?”
“I’ve been trying to tell myself I shouldn’t be happy to be a vampire. That the right thing to do would’ve been, in fact, to take my own life back in America. But I only have one action I regret, and you know what it is. In fact, you’re the only person I’ve ever told.”
“I am…glad you did tell me,” she said.
“I never felt so alive when I was a human,” he said. “Even with the torture and the uncertainty and the hiding away in the woods, in the best moments of my life as a vampire I feel like I’ve gotten the thing I was desperately looking for. Something…beyond the curtain. Magic.”
Her throat felt thick with hope and terror.
“But this place—every day is the same. Magic is everywhere, but all the enchantment h
as been sucked right out of it. I’m not naive; I shouldn’t be surprised that even in a fairy tale, most people spend their days working for their bread.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I’ll bet you dream of running away from this city and never looking back.”
“I do,” she said. “All the time. But I can’t. The world isn’t safe for me.”
“It’s never an easy thing to do, at the best of times,” he said. “Running away. And it’s irresponsible to just run away because life is hard. But going out into the world and finding something for yourself…well, that’s what America was founded on.” He shrugged. “Never mind me. I’m just glad he didn’t hurt you, Parsons.” He looked at her again, and she noticed how uneven his hairstyle was today: to the right, it flopped across his brow, and to the left it was smoothed back.
He drew a little closer. He looked like he didn’t know where to put his cigarette. And his hand—
She watched, as if in a dream, as his hand traveled up to meet her cheek, the curve of his palm fitting around her chin like it belonged there.
“I don’t like thinking about it,” he said. “You dancing with a man who scares you.”
“I—”
“Do I scare you?”
“No,” she said, very earnestly.
“I should scare you.”
“Well, you don’t.”
He leaned in close to her. Time seemed to move in slow motion, and she was unable to move at all. His lips came for hers and he kissed her.
He kissed her.
She could hardly process what was happening at first, that his mouth was on her mouth. At first, he was a little tentative like he didn’t know what she would feel like, but she heard him breathing quickly like he was excited by her, and she realized this really was happening, and opened her mouth to meet him.
His hands slid to her waist. His breath slowed down a little, like he was savoring the feel of her. She wasn’t sure if he needed to breathe, or if he was like her, breathing only when he had some emotion to work through.
She felt weak and shaky all over as she reached for him in return. This is real. She had to keep telling herself. This is real, right now.
His tongue parted her lips wider, pushing into her small mouth like a man striding into a room, but not without tenderness. Suddenly she felt like he was the arrow and she was the target, and he was going to move with all speed.
She had wanted him to hold her for so long. The feel of his hands, his barely restrained strength against her slender bones; the taste of him, rich and sweet, wetting her mouth. She felt much older than she had felt before, like a woman and not a girl, and it was right. It was time to stop living under the shadow of her father and Calban, time to take the things she wanted.
Calban, she thought. This is what he wants us to do.
Was Dennis only doing this because his hunger had driven him to her?
No. She didn’t believe it. There had been something real between them from the beginning, but it had genuinely deepened over the course of many weeks.
She gripped him closer, drawing him against the wall, as his kisses grew a little softer again. He kissed her like he’d been dreaming of it too.
Feeling bold now—stupidly bold, maybe—she put a hand on his chest. She had dreamed of touching him like this. Unbuttoning his shirt… “Dennis,” she said.
The easiest way—maybe the only way—to earn his trust would be to tell him about the portal.
And then, if he wanted to go?
She would have to let him go.
Her mouth tensed shut, trapping in the words.
“You are still so strange to me,” he said. “But somehow…well, obviously…something in me changed and I still don’t really understand it. To be perfectly honest…”
“We don’t have to be perfectly honest,” she said quickly, because suddenly she sensed he was going to ruin it. He was going to remind her that she was, in fact, an uncanny creature and not an attractive young woman, the way everyone else got to be.
“I feel like I’m in love with you,” he said. “It hit me today when I thought of you at a dance with someone else. It hit me all at once, but it’s been building every day.”
“I—yes.” She was somewhat incoherent. “I’m so happy to hear that, because—”
“Are you?”
“Yes. I think Els was starting to wonder if I was capable of having feelings for anyone, and I wasn’t sure either, and then you came along, and—I do. I do have feelings.” Suddenly she was very wound up.
He laughed gently. “Good. It wasn’t my imagination.”
But then he didn’t say anything else. She realized she was beaming at him, in a way that was quite uncharacteristic of her, and she drew back.
“I could hurt you,” he said. “You know what I’m like. Well—you really don’t. You have an inkling.”
“You can’t hurt me. You know that.”
“We haven’t really talked about all the ways I could hurt you.” He put a hand on his hip, half-turning away. “I shouldn’t have gone that far.”
“Dennis…”
A door shut somewhere and she jumped back before she realized it was her father going into the basement. No one had seen them.
He rubbed one of the silver bracelets.
“I could hurt you,” she said.
She edged back a step, toward her bedroom, shyness hitting her hard. “Maybe…we should just…say goodnight for now.”
“Yes.”
He was slow to turn away, and when he finally did, she lingered in the doorway of her room to watch his strong shoulders, the pale perfect shape of his arms beneath rolled-up sleeves.
She was never going to tell him about that portal.
The next morning, they mostly acted as if nothing had changed last night.
But it had changed. He brushed something out of her hair when they walked out the door. While driving, when she was making the sharp turn out of the neighborhood where she always struggled with the wheel, he put his hand on it and lent his strength to the endeavor.
Meanwhile, some flirtatious side of her personality seemed to be emerging like a cicada waking from a multi-year hibernation. She gave him little smiles and touches to the arm that she couldn’t seem to stop, and where he had once avoided looking at her, now he was looking at her all the time. How she hated it when other men in the office stared at her! But Dennis was different. She wouldn’t call it lust. It was more like wonder. Like he had never really seen her until today.
At one point, she handed him a paper and he gently caught her wrist and looked at her hand, her little carved fingernails and the same ink stains Mr. Samaron had pointed out. Then he looked at her face again, as he let her hand go. And the look he gave her was marvelous. His green eyes were so beautiful, intense and yet respectful—careful. There was something gallant about humans, she thought, even in novels.
Mr. Samaron seemed to see her body and merely tolerate her mind as part of the package. With Dennis, she felt like he had fallen in love with her heart-first, and was just now waking up to the rest of her.
It was the first time she had ever felt self-conscious in a good way.
Mr. Samaron didn’t appear at the office until the next day, but when he did, Dennis kept looking at him in subtle warning. And Mr. Samaron certainly noticed him, too. He didn’t look at Parsons once.
The notes and Parsons Prickles dolls had stopped as soon as Dennis confronted Mr. Anison, but this was the first time she felt truly safe at work. Before, she felt like he had protected her out of some general sense of justice, but now she felt like someone actually well and truly cared for her feelings.
But clouds hung over her happiness.
The couriers brought Dennis' blood to the office every day now, forcing him to wait until lunch. She suspected this was part of Calban’s plan to force him toward her. How much of that kiss had been driven by desperation and hunger?
Every day felt like it could be the last. She dreaded the inevitable
appearance of Calban. At some point, she knew he would offer her an ultimatum: agree to a loyalty band, or Dennis would be taken away.
Several days later, Calban sent an invitation to Dennis at work, which he let her read over his shoulder:
In the 394th year of the Wodrenarunes, on the sixth day of the moon…
Otherwise known as June 12th, 1917
Mr. Dennis Faraday and Miss Parsons Belvray are invited to the Theater of Majestic Delights for the premiere of the first full-length motion picture in Nalim Ima
“A POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL”
Starring the beautiful Mary Pickford
Imported directly from the United States of America
The feature will be preceded by the first short film produced by Nalim Ima National Pictures, “A Blessing from the Wodrenarune”
We shall also introduce to you, directly from the Fallen Lands, five human visitors:
Miss Isabel Clarke-Morsan
Miss Elizabeth Clarke
Mr. Dennis Faraday
Mr. Werner Richter
Mr. Robin Jackson
“What the devil is this?” Dennis asked her, his voice soft among the bustle of the office. “This is how he tells me I’m going to be the opening act?”
“How like him,” Parsons said, her stuffing sinking with fear. This is it. This night is part of Calban’s plan. He invited the two of us, but did he invite my father? “I didn’t know there were other human visitors.”
“I suspected, but I’ve never met them.”
He didn’t bring it up again until he was driving them home, but he seemed angry all day. Parsons wished, in this case, that she hadn’t agreed to let him drive home every day. She liked being in control when she was nervous.
“I know Calban wants my blood,” Dennis said. “But I don’t understand why he wants to force me in front of an audience. No, I do understand, actually. He wants me to know I’m not in charge of any aspect of my own life. I don’t get to choose where to live or where to work, when I get to eat, or even how much privacy I have.” He looked at her. “I’m not doing it. I have to leave this place. I need to go back to the forest where I can hunt and be in control of my own life.”
The Vampire's Doll (The Heiress and the Vampire Book 1) Page 18