Vampire Romance: AMBER - The Grue Series (Vampire Romance, Paranormal, The Grue Series Book 1)

by Adams, Nancy

  One, two, three—Now!

  “Well, that’s an easy one, Amber,” he said right on cue. “Just say you’ll let me take you to dinner tonight.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Horace

  What? You thought I sent a ravishing beauty to deal with a lawyer just because she was smart? First thing you need to know about lawyers is, never ever let them see your real motivations for the things you do. Throw up a smokescreen, hide behind something obvious and attractive—like a sexy little blond, for instance. Gregory Michaels, Attorney-At-Law, was a single man. Amber was exactly the right person to send.

  I knew Amber would have him eating out of her hand within minutes of meeting her, and that was fine by me. I’d known this lad for about three years, though we’d only met once when I’d flown out on the redeye flight to look at some properties he’d found for me. I’d made the bastard meet my flight at two in the morning, and chauffeur me around until nearly six, then went to the Beverly Wilshire to sleep the day off. He knew I was odd, right enough, and that’s exactly what I wanted him to know.

  Amber

  See? I told Horace I could act! Even when I was thrown for a loop, I managed to turn it around and get the attorney to bend over backward to help me out. And all it was going to cost me was to have to sit and eat some regular food, which wasn’t that bad until later, anyway. Besides—well, he was awfully nice-looking…

  We looked at the rest of the files, and I saw that all four of the available houses were just as beautiful as the first one. I couldn’t have chosen one of them from the files to save my life, so I batted my eyes and let Greg decide which one we’d go to first.

  It was in Beverly Hills, and in a very exclusive area where every estate had at least a hundred acres. Greg had called ahead to all of them and let the house managers know we’d be coming by, so the staff wasn’t surprised when we drove up in his big Cadillac. We entered the estate through a big wrought-iron gate that was opened by punching a code into a panel on a post, wound our way along a private, tree-lined road, then parked in the big circular drive in front of the house. A tall, old black man stepped up to open my door for me.

  I’d seen black people before, of course, but back where I was from in Corlin, there still weren’t any living around there. I hate to admit that I was a little skittish of him, but he was such a gentleman that I forgot about it within minutes.

  Greg introduced me to him. “Amber, this is Nathan Granger, the butler and house manager; Nathan, I’d like you to meet Amber Fair.”

  Nathan was an older man, about sixtyish, I guessed. He was tall, and obviously fit, and a gentleman in every way. He took my hand, bent over it and touched it with his lips, and I felt a shiver go all the way up my spine from my tailbone!

  “Miss Amber,” he said, “it is my pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  He held my hand as I stuttered a reply.” I’m happy to meet you, too,” I said.

  He released my hand and stood back a step. “May I give you a tour of the estate, Miss Amber?” he asked.

  “Yes, please,” I managed, and I caught Greg grinning at my discomfiture out of the corner of my eye. I accidentally stepped on his toe as we followed Nathan inside.

  Oh, my goodness—

  Mom and I used to watch some of the movies on TV just to drool over the houses in them. We loved all the big, beautiful mansions in the romance movies, and the ones in the movies about rich people and such.

  This place made all of them seem wimpy. I mean, it was bigger and more gorgeous than any I’d ever seen! Nathan showed me through at least fifty rooms, and we hadn’t even gotten to the other buildings, yet.

  The house was in perfect shape, too, which surprised me. I had thought that, since their employer was never around, the servants might let a few things go, be a little bit lazy—but this place was ready for Horace to walk in at any moment and find it perfect, just as if he’d only left a few minutes before! There was no way they could have gotten it ready for our visit with the short warning they had, so I knew they must take their jobs seriously.

  By the time I’d seen the whole place, I had already made my decision—this was the one. I still let Greg take me to the others, and we even had a light lunch at one of them—but I think he knew exactly what he was doing in taking me to that house first.

  By the time we left the last house, it was nearing four o’clock in the afternoon. I told him I had already decided on the Beverly Hills place, and he told me it was a wise choice. We drove straight back to his office, and I went in with him while he called Nathan to tell him I’d be moving in the next morning.

  I told him I needed to go back to my hotel and change for dinner, and he happily followed my van, but I made him wait downstairs in the lobby while I went up to shower and change into a nice evening dress. Explaining the corpse that was lying on the other bed might have been a bit difficult, but he didn’t object. I didn’t have any of the kind of clothes they wore for evenings there, but if Horace was really going to pay me as much as he implied, that was gonna change soon. I scribbled a note for Horace and the vampires, gave the lifeless Simone a quick kiss on the cheek (I left a lipstick print, so she’d know), and hurried down in the elevator for my first date in Southern California.

  Greg Michaels was the kind of guy my mother would have loved seeing me with, and I have to admit that he caught my attention. He drove to a place in Beverly Hills called Andrew’s, where a man in a fine and fancy uniform opened my door. Another man took the car to park it, and everyone knew my date by his first name. We were ushered to a semi-private dining room—that means it was a small room that opened directly into the main dining room, but only had space for one table and two chairs—and there was a silver bucket there with a bottle of champagne on ice!

  Amber, I thought, hold onto your panties, girl—you’re way out of your league with this guy.

  I needn’t have worried. Greg was a perfect gentleman throughout dinner, and the lesson I’d learned from Jim, about getting a man to talk about himself, came in handy. I learned that he was twenty-eight, had graduated high school at sixteen, finished law school at the top of his class and had been with this firm for almost four years already. He was an Associate, which meant he wasn’t one of the partners, but he’d impressed them. He specialized in Asset Management for the firm’s clientele, like my boss.

  He was originally from a small town in Kentucky, but had won a scholarship to one of those big-name schools, and when he’d graduated he’d found himself being courted by a lot of big law firms. He’d chosen Chalmers, Witt not because of the perks they offered him, but because they had a genuine reputation for taking care of their clients. In the way the world was going, he claimed, it was more important to have a lawyer who would tell you how to do what you wanted to do—and stay out of trouble in the process—than one who would only show up when the trouble had already found you, or just tell you something couldn’t be done. He wanted to work for a firm whose clients could count on it being there when it was needed.

  Being from a small town, he was pretty understanding about my situation. I told him the official story, how I’d been kidnapped and almost murdered, and decided to make my move and give Hollywood a try, and he offered to call some agents he knew. I said I wanted to get settled in, first, though, and he thought that was wise.

  We enjoyed the dinner. I had roast duck with orange sauce; I’d never heard of it, but it was delicious. Greg had a porterhouse steak, and it was so big it was overflowing the plate!

  All in all, I’d have to say I had a good time. Greg asked me if I’d like to take in a movie, but I said I was tired, and needed to get back to my room and rest for the move-in the next day, so he drove me back without any resistance. He told me he’d be at the house the next day, to make sure everything went well, and then asked if he could take me out again, afterward.

  I said it would have to be another time, I was expecting to be busy that night, and he smiled and promised to call.


  Chapter Nineteen

  Amber

  Horace and the vampires were up by the time I got upstairs, and I told them all about my day, and the house. I told them about Nathan and the rest of the staff that I’d met there, and my impression of their trustworthiness, and Horace laughed at how overwhelmed I’d been. And of course, he teased me about my dinner date with Greg.

  “Amber-luv, you’re going to have to become a bit more sophisticated. Did Michaels talk to you about your salary at all?”

  “No, not really. He said he’d have to make some arrangements about the household accounts, and that their accountants would take care of payroll and such. Why? Should he have?”

  He smiled at me, and Rudy laughed. “Let’s just say I told him to pay you enough that you can be quite comfortable living in Beverly Hills, all right? I understand there’s some fabulous shopping there, these days, and I’d be astonished if Mad and Jen wouldn’t enjoy showing you how to spend money.”

  “Hey!” Simone yelled. “And what about me, then?”

  “Simone, you knew how to spend money even before you knew what it was!” He turned to me.

  “If you go shopping with Simone, you’ll find yourself buying things like dolls and dollhouses. Poor girl never had toys as a child, and she’s still craving ‘em even after two hundred years! In our last house, she had a collection worth a hundred thousand dollars! Too bad we had to leave it all behind,” He reached over and tousled her hair. “But she’s our Simone, she is, and we love her! Now, though, we need to talk a bit of business.

  “Amber, tomorrow your new beau will bring you a package; it’s part of the instructions in the letter, don’t worry. You’ll bring it to me tomorrow night. It contains identification for each of us, with photos so we’ll know how we need to change our looks here, and other things we’ll all need, like money and bank accounts. We always keep several set up in different names, and I’ll teach you how to do that, too. It makes it possible to shed one life and start up another fairly easily, something every immortal has to do from time to time.

  “Now, we’ve got some money with us, so tomorrow evening, after the sun drops, we’ll go do some shopping. We all need clothing and other things, and it wouldn’t do for us to arrive with no luggage or trappings. There are plenty of places here to shop all night, so we’ll get what we need and take it to the rail depot downtown. Amber-luv, you come there and pick us up, say around two AM, and drive us to the house, right?”

  “Okay,” I said, and then I hesitated. “Horace—tomorrow night—it’ll be three days, the third night since I ate last. I’m gonna need to feed, I don’t like what getting hungry does to me.”

  He nodded, and grinned. “Yes, and I’m glad to see you’ve accepted the necessity; the world would have been a bit sadder without you in it, luv. And if I might make a suggestion, why don’t you go down to the mission district to do your hunting? Find a derelict for now, someone who’s already dead to the world, but hasn’t been able to lie down yet? Men like that, if you give them a last smile and end their lives, you’re doing them a favor.”

  “That’s true, Amber,” Rudy said, surprising me. He was usually so quiet, I thought he just didn’t like to talk. “Men on skid row are suffering, but they don’t have the courage to just end it all, themselves. Most of them don’t have any family to worry about them, and no one is dependent on them except perhaps some others like themselves. It might be the best way for you to hunt, for now.”

  And then I got an even bigger surprise, because Madeline spoke up. “Amber, another thing; take your prey down to the ocean, down by Santa Monica Beach. When you’re done with them, if you leave them in the water, the fish will chew on them and make it impossible to tell what really happened to their bodies. Just be sure to puncture their lungs and stomachs, so they’ll sink.”

  “Um, okay—thanks,” I said, and she smiled at me. I was so surprised I almost forgot to smile back.

  “All right, then,” said Horace, “you can get that out of the way before you come to fetch us. For tonight, however, we’ll be about finding our own dinner. Everyone be back here before sunrise, of course, and we’ll see Amber tomorrow night!"

  They all filed out my door, and Simone gave me a kiss. “Wanna come with?” she asked, but I said I wanted to stay in and think. I needed to get myself in shape for the hunt the following night, ready to go out and kill again.

  And besides—I wanted to sit and think about Greg. There was something about him, and if I were put to it, I might have had to admit that I was a bit scared of him.

  That was almost funny; here’s me, a monster so old and horrible that the very name for my kind had evolved into a word that simply means terror, and I was afraid of a man who was about as nice as any I’d ever known. Greg Michaels couldn’t hurt me if his life depended on it, and let’s face it—if he tried, it probably would.

  Yet I was frightened of what he might see, that is, if I let him get too close. Greg was a lawyer, and trained to be observant, trained to see what people try to hide. Suppose he took a really good look at me, a small town girl who somehow got mixed up with a strange bunch of people who sleep all day and party all night. What might that suggest to an intelligent person, hmm?

  Okay, maybe I was just being paranoid. I mean, how many people really believed in vampires, anyway? I stopped that train of thought and turned on the television. The room came with HBO, and there were some decent movies playing, so I settled in to watch.

  Simone came in about four-thirty, giggling and flushed from her adventures of the night. She kissed me and went to take a shower—I haven’t mentioned it, but the vampires were very diligent about their cleanliness. Horace said hygiene meant the difference between living and being alive—that a vampire or other revenant who didn’t take time to keep himself clean would soon smell so bad and look so bad that he could never pass for human. He might be alive, in the sense that all undead creatures are, but he would not be capable of living, of enjoying the wonder and beauty and happiness that even they found in living on the earth.

  Yeah, sometimes Horace gets a little poetic, but that’s just his way.

  Simone came out of the shower just as the sun was about to rise, and crawled into her bed. She sat up, looked over at me and smiled.

  “Ducklin, ya gonna be busy today, right? Gettin’ the house all set for us and all? Horace says we’re gonna move in tonight, and…” She fell backward, and it happened so fast that I was startled—but the sun had peeked over the horizon, and its light struck our part of the world, and in that split second she was dead.

  I got up and walked over to look at her, to try to find some sign of life. There were none; if I’d ever found one of my sisters like that, I would have been screaming and crying instantly, but with Simone, I’d seen this before. I knew that come the evening and sunset, I’d have my pal Simone back again, and while it still seemed a little scary in some ways, I was getting used to it. I kissed her cheek again, and went to take a shower of my own.

  I dressed a little more like my old self, in a pair of jeans and a ruffly little shirt that I liked, and slipped my feet into a pair of comfortable sneakers. I had told Greg I’d meet him at the house at eight, so I took my own luggage, hung a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, left the hotel at seven and drove out to look around my new neighborhood.

  Wow. That’s the best word for it, I think. The house sat on a little over three hundred acres of rolling hills and landscaped luxury in the middle of a “subdivision” called Paradise Roads. The nearest neighbor was a mile away, so to me it was like being in the country again, but this was part of the big city; I was amazed.

  The address caught my eye: 13000 Sunset Boulevard. Can you imagine a better address for a bunch of vampires? I wondered if it might have had something to do with Horace purchasing the place.

  I pulled up to the big gates at precisely eight o’clock. There was an intercom and a TV camera, and I pressed the button to make the house staff aware that I was there
. The camera swung to point at me; a moment later I heard a click, and the big gates swung open, so I drove up the long driveway to the house.

  Nathan was waiting when I got there, and opened my door for me as soon as I’d shut off the engine.

  “Good morning, Miss Amber,” he said with a huge smile. “I was so glad when Mr. Greg called to say you’d be moving in. We’ve needed some life around here for some time now.”

  I smiled back; this old man was so likable! “Thank you, Nathan,” I said. “I thought I’d better come on and get settled in, and Mr. St. John wanted me to let you know that they’ll be arriving late tonight.”

  I walked around to the back of the van and opened the doors to get to my suitcases and boxes, but Nathan waved me aside. “You go on in, Miss Amber, and see which room you want, and we’ll bring in your things.” He waved a hand, and three young men came running from out of nowhere to gather up loads of my stuff and carry it. I thanked them, and followed Nathan inside.

  I’d thought about which of the many bedrooms I’d seen to take as my own, and when I’d asked Horace’s advice he’d only said to take whichever I wanted. There were eleven, as I said before, and two of them were on the ground floor, one at each side of the house. I decided that, since I was supposed to be the “normal” one, I should probably be the most accessible, as well, so I looked at those first. One was all oak and woodwork, but the other, on the west side (the house faced north, so it was on the house’s right side) looked like it was designed for a woman, so I took that one. The young men, who turned out to be Nathan’s grandsons, carried all my things in, and I thanked them again.

  Then Nathan called all the staff together in the big dining room, and introduced me to them all. I had already met his wife, Angel, who was about his age, and their son Albert, who was the groundskeeper. This time I got to meet Albert’s three sons, Michael, George and Jack, who helped him care for the place and did odd jobs like carrying my things in, and their sisters Diane, Denise, Elaine and Faith. Diane and Denise were the maids who cleaned the house, Elaine was one of Angel’s helpers, and Faith, the youngest, was sort of an all-around girl. There were also two more girls (Angel’s nieces Meg and Mary) who helped in the kitchen. I shook hands with all of them, and—though I hate to admit it—I was amazed to find out that they were just people, despite the obvious differences between us. They all smiled and welcomed me, and I thanked each of them.