by Chloe Garner
Putting the knife away again and going to the dress as the elevator departed, she pulled the pin out of the note and held it up to read it.
“If you think I’m changing my clothes right here and now, you’re nuts,” she muttered.
Go with me on this.
She pursed her lips, looking around.
The dress, as she took it down, was largely backless, but it was a heavy, rich fabric and a high front that Tina would have been willing to wear even as a human, had she ever had cause to.
It would not take a bra.
She sucked on her lower lip for a moment, then shrugged, grinning and stripping down to put it on.
It felt like butter against her skin, and suddenly she moved like a cat, aware of everything about her posture and the way her head turned. She touched the sapphire where it sat against her skin, and then she started up the stairs, the train of the gown trailing two stairs behind her as she ascended. The candles flickered, casting warm shadows everywhere, and she kept her head up, looking for Hunter.
The candles, in two rows to either side of her path, turned to go along the mezzanine and down the hallway where the three bedrooms were.
Tina stopped when she realized that they did not turn.
Hunter expected her to go straight on through to Tell’s room.
The dress was one thing.
It was a fabulous dress.
But Tell’s room?
No.
Just no.
There was a note taped on the door, and she went to pull it down.
You are welcome in here. Tell said so.
Go with me on this.
She frowned at it, then taped it back on the door, pausing.
She’d never so much as seen Tell’s room before, it had such forbidding to it. This was where vampirey things happened.
But.
She was a vampire, now.
And there were candles.
And a dress.
And Hunter was still technically missing.
He had amazing script, she realized, looking at it again.
Classic.
“I have work to do,” she called, opening the doors.
She put her fist on her hip, appreciating the shape her arm took, then stepped through.
Everything in here was lit with candles, a large tub, a full wall of bookcases, and a huge four-poster bed with black curtains on it. The floor was a heavy carpet that was absolutely silent underfoot, even to Tina’s ears, and the walls appeared to be treated with actual fabric.
The path of candles, though, went on.
Tina followed it, trying not to pry into Tell’s personal space but eating it up as she went, all the same. The pathway went to a wall and stopped, and once more Tina found herself looking at a piece of paper with Hunter’s elegant script on it.
She pulled it down.
There’s a trick to it.
She licked her lips.
“That’s helpful,” she said.
Secret door?
Was that what he was cluing her in on?
She put her hands onto the wall, feeling for anything that might be a seam or a hinge, and she came to a small lever. She pulled it, and the wall swung out away from her, letting in moonlight.
She stepped through and found herself in a small sunroom of sorts. The door swung closed behind her of its own volition, and Tina moved to stop it, afraid that it would trap her out here to bake.
“You’re safe,” Hunter said quietly. “Let it be.”
She let her arm drop and she looked over at him.
Hunter was sitting at a glass table with his feet up on a second chair, a drink in his hand and his head tipped back, looking at the sky.
No.
His eyes were closed.
He was just… sitting.
It was a little intoxicating to watch.
He opened his eyes and stood, turning to face her. A smile crept up the corner of his mouth, and then he grinned.
“I knew you’d look stunning, but even that doesn’t do you justice,” he said, putting out a hand.
“What did I tell you about expensive presents?” Tina asked, reaching forward to put her hand in his. He twined his arm through hers and came to stand next to her, looking out at the sky again.
“Who said it’s a present or yours?” he asked. “I’m quite certain I’m going to enjoy it much more than you will.”
“No,” Tina said. “You haven’t got the hips to pull this off.”
He laughed.
“What is this place?” Tina asked. “I didn’t even know it was here.”
“One of Tell’s thinking spots,” Hunter told her. “There are a few around the apartment, never where you’d expect to find them, where he goes when the parties get to be too loud and too on-the-nose for him. He likes subtlety and class, if you hadn’t noticed, and sometimes people just like to get drunk and screw.”
“Your half of the guest list, I assume,” Tina said, and he grinned.
“You say it like we’re married and still split everything fifty-fifty,” he said.
“Don’t you?” Tina asked.
“I don’t get anywhere near half,” Hunter sulked playfully, and Tina grinned.
“We can go out, if you want,” Hunter said, indicating a pair of doors the lead to an open-air terrace. “It will probably blow all of the candles out.”
Tina snorted.
“No, it’s cold out there.”
“Just as cold in here, babe,” Hunter said. “You just don’t notice it anymore.”
She looked back at the doorway into the penthouse - which she couldn’t see anymore - and frowned.
“It isn’t heated out here, is it?”
“Nope,” Hunter said. “I brought wine. It’s a black menu wine I had delivered.”
She nodded, letting him pull out a chair for her and sitting down at the intricately-worked glass table. She traced her finger over the etchings, marveling at how delicate they were, then she took the glass that Hunter offered her.
“You went to a lot of effort,” she said. “I feel bad. I hadn’t wanted to come back here tonight.”
“Didn’t have much else to entertain me,” he answered. “And I know that you don’t ever get anything done while I’m around. I’ve thought of myself as good at being solitary for… a hundred years, now, I guess. And yet, you come through that elevator and I want to come jump on you like a puppy.”
She looked over at him and smiled, letting her arm curl to a coil around the wine glass as she sipped it.
“Yeah,” he said, standing. He tipped back his wine, drinking it in a single open-throated swallow, then he put both of his hands out to her. “That right there. Have you ever danced to starlight?”
She raised an eyebrow, taking one more sip of the wine and then setting it down.
It was really good wine. If she guessed right, they’d had a human drink a really expensive bottle of wine, and then drained their blood and mixed it in some ratio with another bottle of wine. The flavors to it were complex and unprecedented, for Tina.
“I like that,” she said, indicating the glass.
“Raymond’s knows what they’re doing,” Hunter answered, taking her fingers in his palms and lifting her from the chair.
“I don’t hear the stars singing,” she warned, and he shook his head.
“Old vampire tradition,” he said. “When you can hear everything, sometimes it’s most profound to dance in silence.”
“All right,” Tina said slowly as he put one arm around her waist and held the other out to the side. “I’m game to try it.”
He swayed, slow, his hand finding the skin of her back and resting there with a pressure that drew her attention, but he tipped his head back to look at the stars again.
“Open sky,” he said. “You can see forever, out there. Older than us, older than life on the planet. Darkness everywhere, with just these tiny little islands of light…”
“Are you implying that the universe
is a vampire, somehow?” Tina asked.
He snorted.
“You do know how to put a kink in an attempt to be poetic, don’t you?” he answered.
“Just saying,” she said.
“No, the universe is not a vampire,” he said derisively, winking. “But it’s set up a lot more for us than for any of them.”
He looked down over the edge of the building, much of the city visible below their feet.
Even at this hour, the streets were alive with headlights, and the stoplights flickered from green to red to green.
“All of this is so new,” he murmured, putting his face against her hair. “I imagine time going back to when I was born, and we’re standing on air, hundreds of feet over nothing but prairie grass and forest.”
Tina smiled.
“Feels like not much has changed around here since I was a kid,” she said, then frowned. “Should that bother me? That you’re so much older than me? Tell told me why I shouldn’t, once, but I don’t remember being all that convinced. Was it that you stop growing up when you get turned?”
“We normally pay a lot more attention to your age when you turned than what year you were born,” he agreed, still swaying. It did have an elegance to it, the silence up that high, their bodies just there, his palm against the small of her back, not even breathing, now, as they watched the city below them.
Tina closed her eyes, turning her face so that her cheek rested against Hunter’s jaw, and he let her arm drop as he put his other arm around her to rest his fingers down her neck.
Quiet, sincere, close.
She liked it here.
There was a whistling noise as the wind picked up outside, and Tina worked her fingers open and closed behind Hunter’s head.
“It is cold out here, isn’t it?” she asked, and he nodded.
“Do you want to go in?” she asked. “You’ve been out here longer than I have.”
“Just another few minutes,” he said. “It isn’t going to hurt either of us.”
“True.”
She turned her face down to rest her cheek against his chest, and he pulled her in closer, squeezing his elbows against her sides.
“Do you want to feed tonight?” he asked.
“I think I want to try a day without,” she said. “Just to see what the difference is.”
“I think that’s not a bad plan,” he said. “Should finish the wine, though.”
“It’s good,” she said. “Is it going to make me drunk?”
“Would a full bottle of wine have made you drunk, before?” he asked.
“Without a doubt,” Tina said, and she heard him smile.
“Then there’s a very good chance. There’s a lot of drunk blood in there.”
“I thought so,” she said. The thought of drinking drunk blood brought a new thought to her, and she stepped away. “Should we even be out here?” she asked. “You’re exposed.”
“Long-range sniper rifle could hit us,” he agreed. “But it wouldn’t kill me unless it hit me in the head, and even then, it depends on how things worked out. Scramble a helicopter and land some guys on the roof over there, you’d have to get inside and close the door before they got to us, and then all they’d have access to is that gorgeous table of Tell’s. He’d be annoyed if they broke it. All in, I doubt anyone is going to be able to do anything fast enough to really be a risk. I told Tell I wanted to come out here and he didn’t say anything about it. Presumably he knows his own security tradeoffs better than anyone.”
Tina nodded.
“All right.”
He put his finger under her chin and pressed his lips to hers. The corner of his mouth came up and he took one more step back, taking her in.
“I wish I could take you around to parties and show you off, like that. Vampiredom suits you. You look amazing.”
She turned her head out toward the city, basking a moment, then she shrugged.
“I don’t really like parties, anyway,” she said.
“You would, if you went with me, looking like that,” he said. Paused. “Let me guess, you go to parties and feel ignored and like you’re chasing after attention.”
She turned her eyes toward him, giving him a look of warning.
“Maybe,” she allowed.
He shook his head, reaching forward to pull her wrist out with just two fingers, until her arm was almost flat from her shoulder.
“You go to a party with me, everyone in the room wants to talk to you, and you get to turn them all away one after the next, and not talk to any of them, if you don’t want. You turn them down, not the other way around.”
She smiled slightly, not liking how much the idea pleased her.
“And what would you do all night?” she asked, rotating her head at an angle to look at him directly. He grinned.
“Depends on your mood,” he said. “Could be I spend the entire night chasing after girls I don’t have any interest in, could be I wouldn’t talk to anyone but you until the sun came up the next morning.”
She took this in, aware of the way the dress made her feel, aware of the way the night made her feel, aware of the way Hunter’s eyes made her feel.
“Maybe someday, then,” Tina said, and he smiled happily.
“Maybe someday, if we can make it through this cage match of a courtship.”
“It is,” she said, and he nodded.
“It is. I’ve been stuck with just a limited handful of people a few times in my life, one time for months, but never like this. I have no idea what’s going to happen, and that’s kind of exciting.”
“I have no idea what’s going to happen, and I really don’t like it,” Tina answered, and he grinned.
“Come on in,” he said. “I made dinner.”
“Did you, now?” Tina asked, and he nodded.
“I’ve got four guys waiting to talk to me on conference, but they’re going to wait until tomorrow, because turning people away makes you more desirable, up until a point, and if I’m going to be stuck here without any other access, I need to figure out how to make that work to my advantage.”
He motioned with his arm and she walked toward the door, letting him rest his hand at the small of her back as he worked the complex mechanism to open the door again. Once he was inside, he waited for the door to settle all the way closed with a tone of mechanical certainty, and then he twisted the lever that Tina had used to open the door, pointing it downward instead of up.
“Is that it?” Tina asked.
“Can’t open the door from the outside, now, unless you’re Tell,” Hunter agreed.
“So you could use that box to bake someone,” Tina said, and Hunter glanced at her with bemusement.
“Someone sticks you out there and locks the door behind you with just a few minutes to sunrise, what are you going to do?” he asked.
“Call Tell,” she said, and he shook his head.
“No, think better. What are you going to do?”
“Oh,” she said. “Climb down.”
“You’ve got all the skills, now,” he said. “If it’s between you and survival, you climb down and worry about who sees you later.”
“Yeah,” Tina said.
“Right,” Hunter answered. “Have you been in here before?”
He motioned to Tell’s room, and Tina shook her head as she breezed through toward the double doors that led to the hallway.
“But the amenities,” Hunter called after her with amusement. “You don’t know what you’re missing out on.”
She was back in the main hallway, where the candles were still burning, and Hunter came out of Tell’s room, closing the doors behind him. He offered her his elbow, and Tina wrapped her arm through it, walking along the lit corridor beside him.
“So your mind is still grinding away at whatever it was you were planning to do tonight,” Hunter said. “You may as well tell me about it.”
She shrugged.
“You won’t like it,” she said. “I’m planning on
ordering a bunch of medical equipment so that I can start doing some tests on Tell as a human in the near future.”
Hunter pursed his lips.
“You’re doing so well at this,” he said. “Like the second time through is much easier. Do you really want to find a way back to human?”
“Yes,” Tina said simply. “The number of people who are available to feed on is vanishingly small compared to the ease of procuring food to survive as a human. There aren’t these decades-long considerations for how things should work. I stay warm all on my own. I want to be able to choose that, if I want to.”
Hunter led her down the stairs and through to the kitchen, where he lit a candle that touched off a reaction through much of the rest of the kitchen, flying multi-color flames burning down wicks and lighting other candles. Eventually, they converged on one of the cafe tables, where Tina saw that the meal was already set. It was just waiting for the food.
She went over and looked at the delicacy of the various implements, there, much like the glass table upstairs.
“These are the good silver, aren’t they?” Tina asked.
“It’s mine,” Hunter answered. “I have lots of things in storage all over the city… all over the world, actually. You accumulate things you could never replace and you aren’t going to use all of them, so you just leave this trail of stuff… Like those.”
Tina sat down at the table, arranging her dress carefully and lifting one of the spoons. The worked silver had gaps and holes throughout out it - it wasn’t just an etching or a design on a flat surface. The handle was actually a tiny sculpture.
“Would it impress you if I told you that these once belonged to Madame Pompadour?” Hunter asked, bringing over a small skillet and a bowl.
“No,” Tina said.
“Then don’t worry about it,” Hunter said, lifting the lid off of the skillet and pouring the contents of the bowl over it with a hiss.
The smell of blood made Tina’s fangs threaten to drop.
Hunter put his face over the skillet, then stepped up into his chair, putting the bowl back down.
“With my compliments, lady,” he said, motioning. Tina picked up a knife and a fork and took a portion of the meat that Hunter had cooked. He waited without impatience as she took her first bite.
