Chronicles of an Extraordinary Ordinary Life

by Aurélie Venem

  “That’s when you became friends.”

  “Yes. He stayed with us for fifty years, but his disagreements with Finn became intolerable for both of them. Finn reproached him for not taking his training seriously. Karl finally left and found another vampire to guide him. I never learned who it was. When I saw Karl again much later, he was much calmer. He told me his master, for whom he professed an eternal admiration, was dead. I was free and we reunited like two brothers. We see each other much less since I became Talanus and Ysis’s angel, but I know I can always count on him.”

  My boss was almost smiling at the memory of his friendship with Karl. Their connection seemed strong despite the usual vampire predilection for emotional independence.

  “What about François?”

  “François Caron was one of Louis XIV’s musketeers. When I met him in Paris in 1665, he was still human. I saw him at a tavern with some of his associates. He was the only one not drinking, the only one refusing the pleasant company of women. I overheard his friends ridiculing him for it. Apparently, they were reproaching him for his sense of virtue. Never drinking excessively, saving himself for the woman who would be his wife. I admit that it made me laugh too. Anyway, some time later, I came across two vampires who were hunting neighborhood thieves. One of them was François. I approached to introduce myself to that ex-musketeer, but he tried to attack me. His master, Jacques Chinon, did not let him, fortunately . . . As the years went by, François calmed down and we became the best of friends. Incredibly, his transformation did not prevent him from keeping his same moral values. He was cultivated and devout. It was still out of the question for him to lose his virtue before marriage, even if he would never find a priest who would marry him. He is an extraordinary person, but he speaks so little that it can be exasperating. He always tells me that words are useless unless absolutely necessary.”

  “You’ve certainly followed that advice to the letter, from what I can see,” I laughed.

  He snorted. “If you find that I do not talk much, wait until you meet François. You will not be disappointed. When he picks up the phone, he does not even acknowledge it. The silence is the only thing that indicates that he is there and listening.”

  “I feel like seeing you two talk together will be a treat for my eyes and my ears,” I said, laughing.

  I really wanted to meet this François. I didn’t know why, but his first friend, Karl, whom Phoenix considered a brother, hadn’t made a good impression on me. As for François, Phoenix recounted several other episodes from their lives, and that reinforced my desire to meet the king’s musketeer. Their adventures were absolutely riveting.

  I wasn’t looking out the window, so I didn’t realize we’d left Kerington until much later.

  “Wait, we’re going back to the manor?”

  “I would prefer to. We will need some preparation so we will not be detected, and you, you will need some rest if you want to come with me. It is late, and you should sleep.”

  “What about you, do you ever feel tired?”

  “Yes, during the day I sleep like a log.”

  The way he’d said that made me burst out laughing. With all the stress of that evening, my laughter became uncontrollable, and tears started streaming down my face. With Phoenix, I’d gotten used to the formal language of a distinguished man, so to hear him use an idiom was utterly funny and unexpected. Soon my boss, whose face moved from alarm to consternation to amusement, wound up laughing with me. When he laughed, he lost that mask of austerity and danger that he normally wore. He seemed . . . innocent, calm. I liked seeing him that way. I didn’t know why.

  “Where . . . where do you sleep?” I asked, slowly becoming serious again.

  “I shall show you later.”

  If I had still doubted the trust that Phoenix was showing me, my doubts would have been swept away that very instant. Indeed, for a vampire, nothing was more important than security while asleep. Showing it to me was a sign of extraordinary trust. I was extremely touched.

  “Have I said something wrong?” he said, worried, seeing me stare out the car window.

  Why had he needed to say that to me while in a car, where I couldn’t hide?

  “Uh, no . . . I have something in my eye,” I answered, frantically rubbing at the traitorous organ that had dared let a tear slip out.

  Ouch. I’d rubbed a little too hard.

  My boss didn’t press me for more, and so we finished the trip in silence. He woke me up once we were in the garage. I yawned powerfully before getting out.

  “I’m so tired I could fall asleep standing up.”

  “Go to bed. I have no more need of you tonight.”

  “No, before that, I want to see where you sleep. In case of emergency, I need to be able to find you anywhere.”

  The curiosity overrode my exhaustion, and I couldn’t wait to discover my boss’s lair.

  He led me to his office on the first floor and headed to the philosophical section of his bookshelves.

  “Who is your favorite philosopher, Samantha?”

  “Voltaire! Who else is there?” I gushed.

  I loved that man and his sense of irony. Phoenix smiled.

  “I knew it.”

  On that enigmatic note, he pulled on the spine of one of the books. The entire bookcase moved forward silently before sliding open to give way to a hidden room. It made me think of the day when his sudden arrival had almost made me choke to death (murder by lollipop). As concentrated as I was on my work, I hadn’t seen him come out of his hiding place.

  “You really like sliding mechanisms, don’t you? So which is it, the book key?”

  “Candide. What else is there?”

  He passed ahead of me, sporting his usual smile in the corner of his mouth.

  It was clear that thanks to my boss, I’d discovered the world at a different angle. “Cultivate our garden,” as Voltaire said. I’d unearthed the living dead, and I’d bound myself through friendship to someone who made me work for him. Voltaire would have laughed . . .

  The light came on, and I had a moment of hesitation.

  “What? Do not tell me you were expecting a coffin,” sighed Phoenix, rolling his eyes.

  I didn’t know exactly what I was expecting, though the notion of a coffin had certainly crossed my mind. But this . . .

  The room was spacious, with enough area to move between the bed, desk, closet, and armchair. The walls were a pale gray, and landscape paintings cheered them. A copy of The Lord of the Rings was on the night table. I noticed these details, but something else had caught my attention.

  The bed . . . was . . . enormous. The ebony frame of this four-poster bed was finely sculpted; the white of the sheets stood out against the dark wood.

  “Wow! You must move around a lot when you sleep!” I exclaimed.

  What was I sticking my nose into? I could say the stupidest things. Best to find another topic of conversation, and quickly. I took up my inspection again. No alarm clock.

  “Do you always know when the sun sets?”

  “Yes. Another advantage of being what we are.”

  I turned around, but I hadn’t noticed that he was right behind me. Being somewhat clumsy, I ran straight into him.

  It felt like banging against a mountain of marble before I lost my balance and found myself seated and stupefied on his bed.

  “Are you all right?” Phoenix asked, approaching to check.

  “Ugh, you don’t have skin on your bones, you’re made of granite,” I grumbled while holding my head in my hands.

  He pulled my hands away to see if I was laying it on thick. His face was close to mine, and while he scrutinized me, looking for a wound he could heal, I stiffened. The situation reminded me of the episode with Matthew, and I was afraid of my reaction.

  I stood up abruptly, almost knocking him on the head with my own in the process; it would have resulted in me cracking my skull wide open.

  “I’m OK. I’ve seen worse, remember.”

/>   He didn’t say anything, which added to my unease.

  “Your room is very beautiful, in any case.”

  As a diversion, I could’ve done better.

  “Thank you,” he responded.

  “Good, um, well . . . OK. I think I’ll go to bed now. If I need you, I have your number and . . . I know where to find you. Uh . . . good night.”

  I skedaddled without further ado, troubled by the sensation that I’d felt when my boss had grabbed my hands and looked at me that way. He must have thought I was crazy.

  It’d made me remember the moment when Matthew had been dangerously close to me. If I’d let him, he might have kissed me. That would have been my first kiss . . . and I’d pushed him away. Every time that memory came back to me, I felt embarrassed. Phoenix would have immediately noticed a change in the rhythm of my heartbeat, and if that was the case, he might get ideas about my feelings for him . . . Heaven help me if he thought that I was in love with him when that wasn’t the case, and I’d already had so much trouble getting him to think of me as a friend!

  On the other hand, fleeing like that hadn’t been any smarter. Fine, whatever. I was too tired to rack my brains about my natural tactlessness. I ran to my room, flung off my clothes, and jumped into bed, grateful that it was so soft. Then, to use my boss’s expression, I slept like a log.

  I spent the next day doing nothing, which did me good because I needed to recuperate. My interview with Talanus and Ysis hadn’t been the most relaxing; thinking about Kaiko’s crazy eyes chilled me to the bone. I also wondered what Phoenix’s employer could have meant by “the Night chose her” and “you are connected by the Night.” Ysis had used the word Night with such reverence it must have some importance for her.

  It hadn’t worried my boss much. According to him, acting like an incomprehensible oracle happened to Ysis every now and then. In my opinion, she was more than bizarre, traveling between her planet and ours.

  I followed my boss’s advice and brushed that mystery out of my mind. If it had any meaning, we would understand it in due time.

  I took advantage of the rest of the day to tackle my new favorite pastime: cooking. In my old house, I would prepare good meals, but the kitchen wasn’t as big as the one in the manor, so it limited my possibilities. Here, though, everything was available and I had plenty of room, so I threw myself into it wholeheartedly. Sometimes, when I made too many muffins, I took some to Danny, who was crazy about them and despaired that he could never achieve the same result, even though I’d given him my recipe.

  Once, even, Phoenix had tried the roast beef I’d taken out of the oven, all hot and bloody, with potatoes. He’d been enticed by the smell and couldn’t resist trying human food. I thought I was going to die of laughter seeing him grimace and almost choke on the bite he’d forgotten to chew (because he was used to a liquid diet). He couldn’t die because he was already dead, but seeing him fight with that little piece of meat caught in the back of his throat caused one of the biggest fits of laughter of my entire life. It must have been more than five hundred years since anyone had made fun of Phoenix, so I’ll let you imagine how vexed he was at this. Of course, he was angrier with himself because he’d caused his own ridicule.

  By the time Phoenix appeared, I’d already eaten dinner.

  “I am going to Drake Hill to see Kiro. I have to ask him to use his connections to help us find our vampires.”

  “You can’t just give him a call?”

  “No, I prefer talking to him in person. Kiro cannot hear anything on the phone. It is a miracle that he understood we were coming the last time.”

  “But . . . he heard us pretty well.”

  “He wears a hearing aid. The phone sets off a ringing sound in his hearing aid, so he has to remove it, and then it is like talking to a wall,” he informed me, rolling his eyes to the sky with a clear message: Ah, old age!

  “I didn’t notice. OK, I’ll get my bag and I’ll come.”

  “No, it will be faster if I fly. Besides, I will not be long.”

  The means of travel settled the matter. I didn’t insist. It was out of the question to fly again, especially since I’d just eaten. He left, and I was alone in the big manor.

  During his absence, I installed myself in the office and surfed the Internet, looking for new information about the disappearances. There had been three new kidnappings, in Drake Hill, Williamsburg, and Kerington. All three victims were pretty blond women around twenty-five; the police were frustrated by the insignificance of the evidence they collected. Thanks to my proficiency with computers, I was able to hack into the police database, so I knew exactly where the investigation was . . . Phoenix couldn’t get over it the first time I’d shown him.

  My eyes were starting to prickle from staring at the computer screen, so I decided to take a break in the parlor. I sat down on the sofa and closed my eyes, trying to figure out a geographical connection between all the disappearances that would help find the murderers’ headquarters.

  Suddenly, I felt something like a gust of wind behind me, and I turned around quickly.

  “Phoenix?”

  No one.

  I must have been dreaming. When I resumed my research, I had the alarming feeling that someone had touched my neck.

  All the windows were closed, so no breeze could have reached me, and last I checked, breezes didn’t have fingers. Though I was tense, I forced myself to slow my heart rate and act normally, in the hope that the invisible presence would show itself. Still seated to fool the intruder into thinking I didn’t know he was there, I closed my eyes again, but not entirely this time, and I slid my hand between the sofa cushions, where there was always a gun hidden, loaded with silver bullets.

  This time, I was ready. When all the hairs on the back of my neck bristled to signal that someone was truly behind me that very moment, I stood up and turned around in one fluid movement, shooting without hesitation.

  I’d put a hole in the wall, but I swore I’d only missed my target by a hair.

  “Luckily I heard you click off the safety, or else I would already be a pile of dust on the proprietor’s pretty carpet,” said someone behind me.

  I reacted instantly and faced the intruder, aiming at him again. He raised his hands so I wouldn’t shoot.

  “Calm down, gorgeous. I mean you no harm,” he said, serious this time, his fangs visible.

  “Lesson number one, never trust a vampire. Especially when you don’t know him. You’re going to tell me who you are and what you’re doing here, or I swear the next time I shoot I will not miss,” I answered, ready to shoot directly into his heart.

  The smile that spread over his face that moment irritated me tremendously, just like his nonchalant attitude and the way he looked at me, like a gourmand letting himself be tempted by a small treat. He looked like he might lick his lips in anticipation. Gross.

  “I see Phoenix has trained you well. He has very good taste in his choice of assistant. You are very sexy. I see myself taking your clothes off, piece by piece, and then we will have something to do to pass the time while we wait for him to come back. You will only have one desire . . . that he is delayed . . . and delayed . . .”

  He looked as if he was about to step forward, but I kept him in line by gripping my gun more tightly.

  “You’re crazy! If you persist in not telling me who you are, you’re dead! Is that clear?”

  “I could disarm you in a second if I wanted,” he growled, threatening.

  “You could try! But my silver bullet will have time to do some damage!” I hissed, lifting my head to really show him he didn’t intimidate me.

  He suddenly abandoned his aggressive posture and scratched his chin.

  “I see we’re at an impasse, my goddess. What shall we do now?”

  His coolness irritated me more than if he’d insulted me.

  “Tell me who you are!” I ordered again.

  If he didn’t cooperate that time, I was really going to shoot him, and t
oo bad about the carpet stains.

  “Karl! When are you going to stop behaving like a fifty-year-old vampire?”

  That velvet voice, recognizable out of a thousand, was coming from the parlor door. My boss had just returned, and he hadn’t immediately killed the man that I was aiming at. Moreover, he’d called him Karl, the name of the man he considered almost a brother.

  “Lower your weapon, Samantha. He will not do anything to you,” Phoenix said, passing by me to welcome his friend. “Karl! How long has it been since you last stopped by here?” he asked warmly.

  “Too long, my friend, far too long . . .”

  I realized that I was still aiming my gun at the stranger, who was amiably shaking hands with my boss. It was an authentic gesture of affection given that vampire salutations were usually just simple nods at each other. I lowered my arm and stared at them.

  Karl easily could be confused for a model, his face and his body were that perfect. His blond hair was short and silky, his nose aquiline, his eyes blue, and the rest . . . Despite his clothes (a black shirt and a pair of jeans), I could detect a torso with sublime abdominal muscles. A real Adonis.

  However, I felt an immediate and genuine aversion to him. Karl’s eyes sparkled, but they seemed to do so with malice and so came across as rather cold and calculating. His toothy grin, which must have thrilled his lady admirers, had something downright frightening about it. I recalled his voracious look when he was examining me like a piece of meat just a moment earlier. Despite the affection Phoenix was showing him, I knew then that I would only ever hate my boss’s best friend.

  Remembering that I was there, the two friends stopped reminiscing and turned toward me.

  “Oh, Karl, I am neglecting my duties. I present Samantha—” Phoenix began.

  “Jones. Samantha Jones,” I interrupted, curtly nodding my head at our guest.

  It was completely out of the question that my boss reveal my real name to this guy, and I knew he almost did—and this was the man who was always preaching prudence to me!