How did I not know?
With trembling fingers, I pick up my phone and dial my closest friend. He picks up on the twenty-seventh ring.
“This better be important,” Alaric snarls into the phone. “I’m in the middle of finishing this pox-ridden sculpture.”
Alaric is a much older, grumpier, and more terrifying vampire than me. He was once a fierce warrior – well, he’s still a fierce warrior, which is why I try not to piss him off – but he’s spent the past five hundred years mastering every artistic pursuit that humans have invented. Recently, he’s taken up sculpting, which means his fiancée, Winnie, is constantly yelling at him to stop dragging giant hunks of marble over the newly waxed floors. Inspired by my old friend Auguste Rodin, I’ve commissioned Alaric to create a series of sculptures for the small community garden I’m creating within Sanctus Estate. But of course, none of them are finished yet because Alaric is an annoying perfectionist.
Being around him frequently makes me feel like a naughty younger brother, which only makes me missmyyounger brother. It also makes me remember my Parisian artist friends, and it makes me rememberher.
“Arabella Lestrange,” I grind out into the phone.
“What of her?” Alaric sounds impatient. “She’s one of Winnie’s friends from that infernal book club.”
“How come I’ve never seen her before?” I growl. “I didn’t know there were any vampires in the Nevermore Coven. You’d think Winnie might have mentioned that.”
“Winnie only found out recently,” Alaric explains. “Humans cannot spot our kin as we can.”
They certainly cannot.
“Why do you care about Arabella Lestrange?” Alaric’s voice darkens.
I do not want to give him the full sordid story right now. “I’ll tell you once you finish your sculptures. But you’d better explain to Winnie that if any more of her friends turn out to be ghosts from my past, it’s going to cause problems.”
Alaric sighs as if my distress is the greatest inconvenience. “What did you do to Arabella?”
“Why do you assume it’s somethingIdid?She’sthe one who tried to have me killed.”
“Did you deserve it?”
She certainly thinks so.“We could have solved our problem with a heartfelt talk over a bottle of vintage blood. Instead, she went straight for the vampicide. Yes, I deserved it, but now she’s here in Argleton, and she hates me, and with the Conclave on my beautiful arse, I can ill afford to entertain her revenge. This is a disaster.”
“And what do you expect me to do about this?” Alaric sounds tired.
“Just… if Arabella comes knocking, asking to borrow your testicle-severing sword, could you tell her that you lent it out to someone else?”
“I have many fine testicle-severing swords,” Alaric says with utmost seriousness. “She may take her pick.”
“Some friend you are.” My phone beeps. Sinead again. It must be urgent. “I have to go. Sanctus business.”
“Yes. I hear the doorbell,” Alaric says. “Perhaps it’s Arabella, come to discuss torture methods with Winnie. I have many woodcuts that will assist them.”
“Die on a stake, Allie.”
“Don’t call me Allie—”
I hang up before he can think of a devilishly sadistic means of punishing me, and find my way back to the car – a Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato in a stunning shade of crimson, since you asked. The Huracán may look a little conspicuous zipping around the countryside, but I like being conspicuous. If you’re going to live forever, you might as well have no shame. I don’t have anything to hide. (Well, only the precarious state of the Sanctus finances, but I’ll find a way to fix that. I always do.)
As I sink into the luxurious leather, my head spinning, my phone rings. Sighing, I answer.
“Did you get the beer and snacks?”
“Huh?” I’m a million miles away, happily ensconced between a pair of exquisite thighs laid out on French silk bedsheets.
“The booze and snacks? The whole reason I sent you to the market.” Sinead sighs. “You promised the human workers a party because they got that little sewage issue sorted out. If all I have to serve them are bloody biscuits, they’re going to get pissed. And suspicious.”
I groan. All I have to show for my trip is a soaring heart rate and a lifetime ban from the Argleton village market. “I got distracted.”
Sinead sighs. “I’ll send someone else out for them. Honestly, Sir. This is the only labouring crew in the village willing to work for Sanctus, and we can’t risk losing them, unless you’re willing to get out there with a plunger and clean up vampire shit. What is the matter with you?”
