Jerry flicked a wrist at the floor, shuddering. “Honey, what isgoing onwith that rug? It hurts my eyes to even look at it.”
Relieved, everyone laughed a little too loudly.
I turned to Robert, smirking. “Told you. That rug is butt-ugly.” Mischievously, I added, “Joseph thinks it’s ugly, too.”
Joseph gasped, as if he had no idea what I was talking about.
Liz snorted as she jerked a thumb at her boyfriend. “Like he should talk. You should see the coffee table I’d stopped him from buying. It was black lacquer with a glass top?—”
“Which isn’t so bad, is it?” Joseph interrupted.
Liz rolled her eyes. “I’m not finished. Black lacquer with a glass top, and in the shape of a panther.”
We all cracked up.
Being a good sport, Joseph folded his arms across his chest and added haughtily, “You’re forgetting the white marble teeth.”
Liz shook her head. “I rest my case.” Joseph burst out laughing, and she added, “I don’t know why you’re laughing. You’re the one who almost bought the hideous thing.”
“It was a temporary lapse of judgment, my sweet. Thankfully, I had you there to stop me,” Joseph cooed, taking Liz’s hand and kissing it.
They were so sweet together—about a million times better than Liz and David had been as a couple, and they had been sweet, too. Before he’d started acting like an asshat over her being a vampire, obviously, and their divorce.
“I blame my maker for my bad taste,” Joseph said. “If you think I’m bad, you should see Luther’s place. He has a lamp made of swords . . . What? What did I say?”
Sebastian and I gaped at each other, our mouths ajar.
“Your maker’s name is Luther?” Sebastian asked slowly.
“Is he ancient and European—though I guess he’d have to be ancient if he was your maker.” I shook my head to clear my thoughts. “Did he become a vampire around thirty?”
“Yesssss,” Joseph drawled.
“Did he spend time in an Italian village with a woman named Violetta?” Robert chimed in, knowing the story of Sebastian’s origins because I’d told him.
Frowning, Joseph’s gaze bounced between the three of us. “How do you know all this?”
A few things I’d thought were coincidences no longer seemed random, and Luther was at the center of it all. Sebastian’s genetic makeup had been altered by Luther, and Sebastian’s genetic alteration had been passed down to me. Luther had made Joseph, who, like other vampires over a thousand, was immune to the effects of my blood. However, unlike vampires over a thousand, Joseph was immune to the epidemic. Maybe I was reaching, but was there a chance Luther held the key to stopping the epidemic? Did his blood hold a unique type of immunity that could be synthesized?
“Where’s Luther now?” I asked.
“Austria.” Joseph shook his head. “Why are you looking so spooked?”
“I’m not spooked. I’m hopeful.”
“Of what?”
“How about you call Luther, and I’ll tell you all about it?” I said, crossing my fingers that what I had in mind would work.
33
Deep, sensitive, and handsome, Luther was exactly how I’d expected him to be. He had long golden-brown hair and unearthly hazel eyes that gave him the look of a vampire who also might be part lion. His accent was difficult to pinpoint, as it sounded like a mixture of several brogues thrown together. Given his age, he probablyhadresided all over the world.
According to Joseph, Luther was a recluse. He lived deep within the Vienna Woods in a private chateau, and rarely did he entertain visitors. Though they occasionally had video chats, Joseph hadn’t seen his maker in the flesh for decades.
Luther, it seemed, was also an insomniac. It was morning in Austria, but he was wide awake. He dismissed our apologies for waking him, stating he sometimes didn’t sleep for days. I suspected that might be related to his age, but I was smart enough not to press for details. Vampires, as I knew, could be touchy on the subject.
Luther had been confused as to why his vampire son and some humans in America wanted to speak to him during our Thanksgiving celebration, yet he’d been game for a video chat.To make things less weird, and because they weren’t essential to the conversation, Jerry, Tim, Robert, and Liz offered to wait in the living room while Joseph, Sebastian, and I used Robert’s office to speak with Luther. To make it easier for the three of us to see the vamp on the other side of the screen, we crowded around Robert’s desktop computer.
