1
Arabella
Sinead:Arabella, welcome to Sanctus Estate – the world’s first premier, non-court-affiliated luxury gated community for vampires! The keys to your new home are available to pick up from the office, and our director is excited to take you on a tour of the facilities. Welcome to the first day of your vampire dreams!
“HOW COME YOU NEVER TOLD ANYONEthat you’re a vampire?” Winnie asks as she shoves a trolley down the junk food aisle of the Argleton market. I study the brightly coloured packages of sweets and chocolates, and a familiar resentment bubbles up inside me.
In the nineteenth century, when I was last able to properly taste food, I took treats for granted. As a courtesan, men considered sweets and pastries a cheap way of pleasing me (because most of them certainly couldn’t do it between the sheets). Now I can afford to buy all the sweets I like. Hell, I can buy the company that makes the sweets and force them to write “Arabella is a majestic goddess” on every tiny, chalky sugar heart. (Not a terrible idea. I’ve made a mental note.) But that wouldn’t change the fact that all I get when I place one on my tongue is a slight hint of sweetness and a mild stomach-ache.
Most of the time, I enjoy the direction my life has taken since I became a vampire. I like seizing the night, witnessing the sweeping changes of history, and never getting wrinkles. I enjoy being rich and wearing beautiful clothes. I (mostly) appreciate the small circle of human women, like my friend Winnie, who I’ve got to know through the Nevermore Murder Club and Smutty Book Coven, which I joined under duress five years ago and enjoy more than I’ll ever admit. Winnie is engaged to a vampire, so she’s been taking the recent news that I’m not human better than the rest of my friends, although they’re more upset that I kept it a secret than that I have fangs.
(The less said about some humans, the better.)
But sometimes, I envy humans like Winnie, who is staring at a package of Wagon Wheels as if it holds all the answers to the universe, which it probably does. Chocolate is powerful like that, and I never even got to taste it.
“Why didn’t I tell my friends I was a vampire? They never asked.” I want to get this shopping trip out of the way. I need to get back to making arrangements for my move to Sanctus Estate. “I wanted to avoid an interrogation from one Isis Meriwether.”
“Fair,” Winnie smiles. Our friend, Isis, is another member of the Nevermore Murder Club and Smutty Book Coven. Isis is the local clairvoyant and purveyor of witchy supplies, and she fancies herself a font of all magical and supernatural knowledge, even though she hasn’t got a magical clue. A week ago, after the Nevermore Coven’s investigation into two vampiric killings led us to Sanctus Estate, I decided to reveal my nocturnal habits to my friends and offer myself up as a mole. I’ve been regretting it ever since, as Isis has been peppering me with annoying questions like, “Do vampires floss their fangs?”, “Have you ever seen your diary or a pair of your old shoes in a museum?”, and “Have you ever worn a crown of femurs made from the bones of your vanquished foes?”
(Fang hygiene is very important. My shoes have never appeared in a museum, although several sketches by Édouard Manet of my rather majestic derrière appeared in an impressionist exhibit at the National Gallery – but Isis doesn’t need to know aboutthatperiod of my life.And a woman should wear whatever makes her feel confident. But you’ll need thin, strong twine to hold the femurs together. You don’t want your crown falling apart at an inopportune moment. Take it from a vampire who knows.)
I hold up two packets of Walkers crisps. “Do humans prefer salt-and-vinegar or bacon-flavoured crisps?”
“If we’re going to be making fools of ourselves swinging around poles, we’d better grab both.” Winnie drops the crisps into our trolley alongside some Jaffa Cakes and several frozen packages of sausage rolls. Modern humans are particularly enamoured with the little tubes of mystery meat wrapped in cheap pastry. My, how civilisation has fallen. “Reginald is bringing along a vat of hot chocolate, and Lilac says she’ll provide a couple of bottles of blood for those who need it. Do you think anyone from Sanctus Estate will come along?”
I make a face. “I sincerely hope not. I don’t want to see my clients writhing around in stripper heels.”
“If you’re writhing alongside them, maybe it will be like a team-building exercise.”
“Please. The only writhing I’ll be doing is—”
The words die in my throat as I catch sight of a figure across the shop.
My hand freezes over a display of strawberries.
It can’t be him. It’s impossible.
I’m dimly aware of Winnie calling my name, but I can’t acknowledge her. My world has shrunk to the man in front of me. The man with the peacock-blue eyes, a halo of golden curls that could never quite behave, and the mischievous grin that promises exactly the kind of trouble I like. The man juggling apples and flirting with a simpering mother while her snotty brat peers out from behind her legs.
The man whoabsolutely shouldn’t exist.
Him.
His fingers graze the woman’s shoulder as he drops apples into her basket. Those same fingers that once lovingly undid my gold corset as he promised such filthy things…
No.I cannot think of that night.
I refuse.
I am Arabella Lestrange. I am the world’s leading vampire investment consultant, and I willnotfall apart in the village market over a man. I will put on my best fuck-off-and-die face, and I will pretend that seeing him hasn’t wrecked me like Stephenie Meyer wrecked the gothic vampire milieu.
AndthenI will go home and rage.
“It can’t be. It can’t be him,” I hear myself muttering.
Or maybe I won’t make it home.
“Who? What’s wrong?” Winnie shakes my arm, dragging me back from the edge of memory.
