“That’s a relief,” I said.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Billie
“You must’ve had a lot adventures in your day,” I said to Gaston as we were riding down well-worn paths through fields and groves on our moonlight ride some days ago.
“Not really,” he said. “I try to avoid adventures.”
“I thought all vampires had adventures.”
“You know that feeling you get when you’re just watching a sunset or something? You think, it’s good to be right here, today, and I don’t need anything else.”
“Of course.”
“Well, I’d rather be a boring vampire and just have that feeling. That’s why I’ve just been the groundskeeper for Greenwood all these many years. The family lived a long time and the garden is enough for me, plus the horses. I prefer to be boring. I’d say it’s the secret to success.”
“I’ve always loved horses.”
“Horses love you back too, but when they die, it’s not as bad as losing a human,” he said. “There’s always another perfect horse.”
“Well, that’s callous!” But I giggled a little. I knew what he meant. “That sounds nice, actually. I always thought being a vampire would be too much drama.”
“You’re right. But the old ones find a way to just live in the moment. It’s strange to think I’m that old, anyway.”
“How old do you feel?”
“Forty,” he said.
I gave the horse’s mane a gentle stroke and she seemed to perk up just a tiny bit, like she approved. “I guess I see why you don’t want faeries moving in. They probably wouldn’t want you working there anymore. It must be hard to change when you’ve been doing the same thing so long.”
“That’s right. But I’ll manage.”
“You’ve done great work on the cottage. I wonder if you’d—”
He looked at me, his expression hardening, but in a way that seemed more tired than mean. “Don’t get any closer than this,” he said. “Like I said…I don’t get close to humans.”
“Oh. Okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like—”
“I know,” he said. “But it happens anyway. Especially since you’re pretty cute. At least, for now.”
“Aw!” I was both flattered and indignant. Cute for now? I hoped I’d be cute for a while! But, I guess time flew when you were in his shoes. Immortal and all. And I didn’t take care of my skin as much as I should either.
“Don’t take it personally,” he said. “You ride well, too. It’s just, by my reckoning you only have about a week to live.”
“Surely it’s not that bad. I probably have seventy-five years to live.”
“But it does get awkward a little sooner than that.”
“I hate you immortals.”
Now Gaston was holding me as the world fuzzed in and out.
“Billie, look at me,” he said.
I couldn’t see much of anything, as stars filled my eyes.
“Your head is bleeding,” he said. “Can you manage a healing spell?”
“Umm…”
“Stay with me. Look at the moon.”
“Where?”
“Right above us.”
I wasn’t sure if I was looking at the moon or just noise in my head. I was trying to decide if I could feel my body. Oh, there it was. I was made of lead.
“Shit…”
“Hey, Gaston…” I was getting colder. I was scared because I knew all of these sensations were bad signs. “Hey…” I tried to clutch him. “Stay with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m dying, aren’t I?” I whimpered. Yeah, I was really scared. This was terrible. I didn’t get to go do anything. The council killed me, easy as pie, by the side of a dirt road. Live like trash, die like trash. A fitting end for Hill Billie. I bet that was what they were thinking. “This is so stupid…”
I wasn’t even able to help Hel or find the last piece of the box. Nothing. Tears filled my eyes. “You’re right,” I choked out. “I only did have a week to live.”
I felt him move a little under me, and I cried, “Don’t leave me!”
“I’m not!” Suddenly he pressed something to my mouth. Blood. “If you don’t want to die, drink it. It’s all I can do.”
He’s going to turn me. This isn’t what I wanted…
“Come on!” he growled. “I don’t want to do this either! I’ve never sired anyone before! It’s too much responsibility!”
I think, if he had not sounded so reluctant to do it, I might have just gone and died, but when he said that, it sort of made me want to do it. I guess because he wasn’t a fancy, experienced vampire with a whole clan. I didn’t want to get involved in that. But if he was going to have to deal with me the same way I’d have to deal with him, and none of us knew what we were doing, that seemed fair.
I drank, even though I wanted to choke on it. Hot blood. It tasted awful.
He put his arms on my shoulders and forced me up, and then he bit my neck. He didn’t have time to be gentle, I knew that. I was so weak I couldn’t do anything about it. I could barely even moan. Even the pain of his fangs seemed more like a memory or a dream.
The blood loss felt like the last straw. I was spiraling into unconsciousness.
This was just terrible, but in the end, I wanted to keep living so I could have my revenge.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Helena
“Is she okay?” Gaston’s arms were crossed, his stress marked by the full ash tray.
“I told her to just rest up for a day,” I said. “Her familiar barely survived the witch attack only to die because Billie became a vampire, and your sister sure booked it out of here once she found out what happened, didn’t she?” I was definitely feeling snappish, even at Byron. “And dump that shit out,” I said, pointing at the ash tray.
“She is my sister,” Byron said, “but we’re not exactly equals anymore. She is a thousand years old.”
“And you’re not?”
“Not in the same way. She just doesn’t always…grasp human lives.”
“I have never wanted to sire anyone,” Gaston said. “But I thought she was going to die in my arms.”
“There is no way you could have known that Marisa was protecting her,” Jasper said. “I would have done the same thing in your shoes.”
“Feh,” Gaston said.
“Okay, well…” My hands flailed. “Just make sure you take good care of her now! She needs blood, I guess. I just gave her a glass of wine because I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Probably not a bad start,” Gaston said. “I’ll get her blood. I take responsibility.” He stormed toward the door, taking his ash tray with him.
“Vampires always end up making some sort of trouble,” Jake said. “Not a bad guy, but…it’s true.”
I slumped into a chair and kneaded my palms into my forehead. Then I took a very deep breath. “We have so much to do.”
“So let’s do it,” Graham said. “I’m here. I’m unemployed. I have two strong arms and nothing better to do.”
“Yep, still gotta make a living,” Jake said. “Graham, you want to help me finish the flooring and Jasper and Hel can paint?”
Graham furrowed his brows. “You and Jasper aren’t a team already?”
“Like I’m going to let you just slide in to team up with Hel! Nah, you’re going to learn under my paw,” Jake said. “Come on.”
“We’ll all be in the same room anyway,” Jasper pointed out, and I was glad of that. I was exhausted, but if anything could keep me going, it was working with these guys.
Billie spent a day sleeping off her vampirism, I guess, but then she came downstairs, looking pale and puffy-eyed but dressed for work.
“What do you need?” she asked. “I’m ready for action.”
“Are you sure? You’ve been through a lot.”
“But I still want to make my dream kitchen. If I let those witch bitches win…”
“Sure, I understand that,” I said. “At least you can comfort yourself knowing that they lost their powers and their council seats and, by extension, their entire social circle and income.”
“And I’m stronger than ever.” She grabbed a drill. “So show me what you need!”
Billie was definitely overcompensating at this point. “No drilling, babe,” Jake said. “Do you want to help Gaston with the porch? He’s touching up the paint and the rotten bits out there but he said he thought the porch should have furniture and he was wondering about painting the door.”
“He didn’t say that. Gaston doesn’t care about furniture, I already found that out. Before I spiffed up the cottage he was just sitting on the ground for his lunch break.”
“We know you don’t want to drill,” Jasper said. “Get some furniture anyway. Make this place look like a home. The faeries aren’t going to bring a moving truck.”
“That’s what I thought.” She gave us a faltering smile. “It’ll cheer me up. I’ll stay on a strict budget. I’m a master of Goodwill.”
“Go have fun,” I said. “Just remember that faeries definitely like natural motifs. Flora and fauna.”
“Got it. The kitchen is looking great!” she sang out as she went to the porch. She started talking to Gaston and they ended up talking for a while, then went to thrift store together. She came back with some pretty great vintage lawn furniture…and an entire set of plates with chickens on them.
Not quite what I had in mind when I said “fauna”, but…I let it go.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Helena
When a van pulled up to the house four weeks later, I was standing on the expansive porch of Greenwood Manor.
A van? It was hard to imagine faeries riding in a van. That must be quite a journey.
The driver’s door opened and my brother jumped down, dusted off his hands—leave it to Harris to act like the steering wheel he had been holding was unclean because god forbid he had to touch his own sweat—and looked at me with a smile that did seem like it had grown warmer in recent years.
“I didn’t know you were coming with them!” I exclaimed.
“Someone had to drive,” he said. “I thought I’d surprise you.” He shook my hand.
Jake and Jasper were giving us weird looks as they were walking out behind me. Harris noticed them and then looked at me.
“Did you tell them something unfavorable about me?” he asked in an undertone.
“No. They think it’s weird that we don’t hug, I think.”
“Should we?”
“I guess we could.”
“Good lord,” Jake said, watching us try to tentatively back pat at the same time.
“We just don’t hug much!” I said. “I’m sorry!”
“Well, I know you know how to hug,” Jasper said, putting an arm around me. He offered Harris a hand. “So you’re the famous brother, huh?”
“I am.” Harris shook back and Jasper pulled us both into a hug and gave Harris a robust back slap.
“Like that,” he said.
“I guess you’re Jake.”
Jasper snarled. “No! I’m Jasper! I guess Hel told you that Jake is the fun one.”
“I actually said Jake is the obnoxious one, but you’re right. You really do trade off.”
Graham had bypassed us to greet the faeries. Five of them were emerging from the van like pilgrims stepping nervously off the Mayflower. Four were men, one was a woman. For a moment I thought they were all together, but Harris said,
“The faery queen sent five heads of household who have earned her favor but don’t have their own domains,” Harris said. “If any one of them is interested, we’ll discuss further and they’ll want to find a human wife or husband. They’re all, uh, pretty high born…”
I might not have had twin radar with Harris, but we certainly were close enough that I could read between the lines. The faery queen wanted to send this group because she considered this a privilege, but they were not even remotely prepared to live in Louisiana. Not a single one of them.
“Oh…well…great!” If this didn’t go well, I was going to take to bed myself. Out of embarrassment. This was all my grand plan. “Well, this is Greenwood Manor. It was constructed about one hundred and seventy years ago—”
“So, a young house,” one of the men said. He had red hair and was wearing a blue tunic, and like all of them, would definitely need a major lesson in cultural assimilation.
“Yes, yes. A nice, new, young house.”
“This region looks fertile, but the house does occasionally suffer from floods, does it not?” another one of them said. We’ll call him “Silver Staff” because that’s what he was carrying.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, I did look at the flood maps but it seemed to be only in the hundred year flood plain, so not often. The property fronts water but it is pretty far from the house.”
“It will flood more,” Silver Staff declared. “The earth is sick.”
“I worry not about such matters,” the woman said. She had a very thick accent that sounded vaguely Irish. “I am skilled at water craft.”
Graham was looking at them and me like, What the hell is this?
“Well, let me tell you, if you’re skilled at water craft, you’re going to love Louisiana,” I said. “The entire state has a lot of water for magical usage as well as recreation. It’s a hot spot for magic in the Fixed Plane in general, and this house is wonderfully situated with a lot of different terrain on the acreage. So let me give you a tour…”
Gaston and Billie were sitting on the new porch furniture. Billie was saying, “And that was when Mama yelled, ‘I told you not to put that armadillo on that trampoline!’”
Someday I would have to find out how these stories began.
Gaston chuckled in an indifferent way and said, “Bonjour, future neighbors, eh?”
“Oh…neighbors?” Silver Staff said.
“I live down the river a bit, in the cabin, with the horses,” Gaston said.
“Way down there,” Graham said, waving into the distance, because the faeries clearly didn’t see Gaston as a positive.
I brought up the rear and stopped to slap the table where Gaston had his ash tray and empty glass of lunch blood. “I thought we agreed last night that you’re okay with selling this house and you’re not going to cause any trouble?”
“How did I cause any trouble? I’m being very charming. Who doesn’t want me as a neighbor? They’ll feel as if they live in Burgundy.”
“Oh, please,” I growled.
“Of course I want someone to buy it. I worked hard on it. We both did.”
“Well, I want to see what they think of my cottage and my kitchen,” Billie said, jumping up.
I started to feel a little better as the faeries admired the front rooms of the house. They liked the colors of the walls, the fireplaces, the solid wood furniture, old handworked lacy things and flower arrangements Billie used to furnish the house with a simple, old world charm. They even liked the naked lady stair ornament, giving it approving nods.
But then we came to the yellow kitchen. It was a pretty, sunshine-y room, but Billie had been unable to resist throwing the country touches around, the chicken plates, ruffled lace curtains, and some Depression-era storage containers and spice jars. I didn’t think it meshed well, but I let her do it. She’d already been through a lot.
For once, I was unhappy to be right.
“Oh, dear gods, this is the kitchen?” the faery woman said. “It’s very bright. I don’t like these curtains at all. And this is a human oven?”
“Although bright, I think it must be cold in winter without a fireplace or bread oven,” said the fairy man whose hair was almost a bluish-gray color.
“It’s really pretty warm here all year,” I said.
“Isn’t it nice to have a brightly colored kitchen?” Billie said, tugging on her hair nervously. “I’d probably eat my breakfast right here at thi
s island.”
“Eat breakfast here with the servants and the kitchen odors?” said Silver Staff.
“You won’t need servants,” Jake said. “How much time does it take just to maintain an old stove? Here, you can just do this.” He turned on a burner.
“Our human wife will do this, I suppose,” said Blue-Gray.
“Harris…jeez, I think this would be going a lot better if we didn’t have the most Fancypants faeries,” I whispered as Jake and Jasper started taking them upstairs. “I know there are basic faeries who would love living here.”
“There isn’t that much I can do about it!” Harris said. “You know how these things are! Queen Morgana probably has reasons to reward this crew with the guardianship of a parallel.”
“Then why are they acting like they don’t want to live here?”
He paused. “Well, maybe she’s actually punishing some people she doesn’t want in court by giving them the guardianship of a parallel…I mean, that’s definitely what I would do. They can’t say no to the ‘honor’ but she never has to hang out with them ever again.”
“Ohhh.” I nodded. That made a lot of sense. “Great…”
“There are surely some low fey who would love to live here,” Harris added. “But they won’t have the gold to buy it. But you just want the money, right?”
“I guess.” I sighed. “It’s all about the money. I know.”
“I’m sure one of them will want it just to be the guardian of a parallel,” he said.
Well, he was wrong. The faeries would have liked the house better if we never touched it, I think. The more we had changed a room, the less they liked it. That bedroom I stripped of all the gaudy fabric wallpaper and bed coverings? The lady faery immediately declared that room “too plain” but said she could just put up painted paneling or tapestries and bring in her bed with the ostrich feathers.
But they hated that bathroom especially. So dark! So plain! “So…utilitarian,” sniffed Red Hair.
When they walked the grounds, they spotted the original toilet now being used as a planter and went nuts when they learned that we had taken it from the bathroom.
Wolves at the Door Page 18
