She was dressed and out of the apartment before the wolves returned. They were talking with a tall guy by the fountain, so she gave them a wide berth and re-traced the walk from the day before. Edon had teased her that the island of Södermalm, where they were staying, was a kind of Swedish Williamsburg, and he wasn’t completely wrong. Everyone here looked like a runway model, tanned and leggy, with clear skin and bright eyes. This place was way too wholesome for Ara.
Today was Saturday, she realized, and this meant the city was busy with shoppers and sightseers. Boats plied the waterways between the city’s islands. Double-decker tourist buses lumbered by, blasting out the tour guide’s commentary; ferries crammed with people taking photographs or basking in the sun headed out along the harbor towards attractions elsewhere.
The old town was a lattice-work of cobbled lanes and cramped old townhouses, some streets so narrow they were permanently in shade. In the old town’s main square, the buildings were painted in ice cream tones, pastel and summery. If Ara had been a person who liked flowers, her spirits might have been lifted by the hanging baskets brimming with color, or the lush plantings in the window boxes of boutiques and cafés.
But she wasn’t a flower person. She was a kick-some-demon’s-ass vampire. Wandering around here, getting bumped by guides holding umbrellas aloft, or blocked by lines of people waiting to buy pastries or secure a table outside a café, Ara remembered why she’d opted for the night shift.
At least there were plenty of interconnecting paths to follow – streets, bridges, squares. The bigger island where they’d arrived by train had more of a familiar downtown, with big stores and food trucks selling hot dogs or kebabs. There wasn’t the pace of New York City here, but near the main station and the various subway stops people looked a little less well-fed, more edgy and scruffy. There was even a homeless person pushing a shopping cart, muttering expletives in English. Home sweet home, Ara thought. Anything was better than sitting idle in that apartment, watching Mina do her yoga stretches.
Something about the vibe between Mina and Edon grated on her, and it wouldn’t leave Ara alone, even after she’d been walking for hours. Of course she wasn’t jealous. Of course not. Absolutely not. Edon was sexy, but he was just a mangy old wolf these days; his glory golden-wolf days were long behind him.
Anyway, Ara wasn’t the kind to get hung up on a guy. Sometimes she almost envied those great Blue Bloods love stories, like Schuyler Van Alen and Jack Force, or Mimi Force and Kingsley Martin. They were so glamorous, so perfect. Save the world, get married, kiss kiss. All of the fallen were supposed to aspire to their lives, and once upon a time Ara would have been no exception. In her Minty days, dressed in her private-school uniform, she would have thought nabbing herself a hero-wolf boyfriend would have been the ultimate in cool.
Boyfriend. What a stupid word. A wolf could never be a boy, especially when he was as long in the tooth – ha! – as Edon Marrok.
As for Mina the she-wolf: Ara saw just another version of Deming Chen. Beautiful, aloof, stuck-up. Just another cool girl who preferred the company of guys. She’d actually made a lengthwise barrier of pillows in the bed last night, slicing the space in half so Ara wouldn’t “intrude,” as Mina called it.
“Wolves need their space,” she’d said, her tone brusque, looking at Ara with barely veiled contempt. “And sister, you need a shower.”
Ara hadn’t even bothered to reply.
At some point in the afternoon she gobbled down a hotdog and two tall glasses of beer in the diviest, darkest little bar she could find. It wasn’t exactly the Lower East Side, and she couldn’t believe the prices – it was maybe three times as expensive here as it was in New York. Then she lay out in the sun for a while, sweatshirt balled up as a pillow, arms sheltering her face, by a stretch of water that flickered with reflected sunlight. She wasn’t the only sunbather on the stone ledges and park benches of this part of the city.
She must have dozed off – not the wisest thing for a Venator to do, not in public, and not in the daytime. The beer must have been strong, Ara thought, creaking into an upright position. The sun was lower in the sky now, but she knew there were still endless hours of daylight ahead. Damn this endless day. Damn this vacation. Venators didn’t take vacations. How could this possibly be good for her mental health?
Back in the dark bar, which would have been perfect if it had air conditioning, Ara sat at the counter and ordered another beer.
“You visiting Stockholm for long?” the barman asked her. He reminded her of the barman at the Holiday – beefy, bearded, his skin swirling with tattoos. “Here for Midsummer?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Ara glugged back half her beer. She liked the look of it as well as the taste – liquid gold. “Here tonight, anyway. In Södermalm.”
She hoped she was saying the name of the island properly.
The barman grinned, swabbing at the counter, but their conversation was interrupted by another customer, a tourist in an I Heart Stockholm t-shirt who wanted every Swedish beer ever explained.
In an instant Ara knew she couldn’t stick around. Not in Sweden, not for Midsummer, and definitely not with Edon Marrok. This whole thing was stupid. He had work to do, and she wasn’t allowed to work, so what was she, exactly? A useless appendage. Excess baggage, especially now Mina was here. She needed to go back to New York City where she belonged. She could lie low in her place, drink coffee in the bodega on the corner, maybe tidy things up a little. Kingsley would relent before long – surely he would have to relent when he saw how quiet and compliant Ara was acting.
Because it would be an act, a performance. Inside Ara would be seething with rage and resentment, just the way she was now. But Kingsley didn’t need to know that.
So: mind made up. Tomorrow, when Edon and Mina headed out – as they were sure to do, claiming “wolf business” and acting as though they were singlehandedly saving the world – Ara would pack her things, hop on a train and head back to the airport. What was the time difference – five hours, six? She’d be going back in time. Fly out Sunday, arrive Sunday. Home in New York in time to watch the baseball. Not that she liked baseball.
The barman was back, gesturing to see if she wanted another beer.
“If you’re staying in Södermalm,” he said, “you should check out Trädgården.”
He wrote the name, and its perplexing Swedish symbols, down on a bar napkin for her.
“It’s like a big outside bar that turns into a club on weekends over the summer. It’s under a bridge, and pretty cool. I think you’d like it.”
“Thanks,” Ara said, toasting him with her empty glass. He was sketching her a little map.
“It’s here,” he said and pointed to his scrawl. “Under the Skanstull bridge. Far side of Södermalm. You might want to catch the subway from here.”
“I don’t mind walking,” Ara said. She needed to walk off some of that beer anyway. Maybe by the time she got there the sun might be thinking about setting.
“It’ll be crowded,” the barman warned her, but Ara was on her way out and didn’t bother to reply. She had a buzz from the beer, and outside the evening was growing cloudy and cooler, the fading sun increasingly obscured. She crossed the long bridge that led to Södermalm and trudged south, enjoying the thwack of her boots against the sidewalk and the feeling of the breeze dancing on her bare arms. Tomorrow night she’d be back in New York. The vacation she didn’t want would be over. And Edon? They’d be over as well, she guessed.
That was something Ara didn’t want to think about right now.
It was easy to follow the crowds to the club under the Skanstull bridge. Everyone under 30 seemed to be headed there. Once she got over the weirdness of the giant concrete bridge pilings, Ara liked the strange set-up – as though everyone had dragged their grandmother’s living-room furniture outside, and set up a whole lot of makeshift bars. It didn’t bother her that everyone else was in a group, drinking and talking and laughing, or that she seeme
d to be the only person around wearing all black. She pushed her way up to one of the bars, handed over a wad of krona, and received a slippery plastic glass of beer. No talking, no messing around. This was her kind of place.
Perhaps she’d been hanging out too much with wolves, but tonight Ara felt like ranging about the space, keeping moving rather than squeezing onto the end of a picnic bench or perching on the arm of a sofa. Drink and walk, drink and walk. She could survey the crowd and keep an eye out for Nephs. Venators couldn’t go on vacation, she kept telling herself. And club scenes like this one, where the DJ was setting up on the stage and the strung lights were already twinkling, were the kind of places the Nephilim liked to show up – selling drugs, maybe, spiking drinks or picking pockets. Taking advantage of drunk people. That half-demon blood couldn’t help revealing itself, making the lives of the Red Bloods miserable. Ara hoped some Venators were here, to keep a lid on things. Maybe in Sweden Venators didn’t wear black – or maybe they were here in disguise.
The music was getting louder and the sun was setting at last. The lights flashed, changing colors, and more people were crowding the stage. This was going to be one big dance party later on. Ara could sense the energy waiting to explode. A summer weekend, lots of young people, throbbing music, too much sun and drinking … this was the place to be, and a recipe for trouble. Just the kind of recipe Ara liked.
The next beer would be her last, Ara told herself. Then the next beer, and the next beer. She found herself talking to random guys, having those meaningless shouty conversations that went on in clubs all over the world. Where are you from, how long are you here, do you like it … wow, New York City, how cool, I’d love to go there, I’ve already been there, I want to live there some day …. On and on it went. Some guy bought her a drink, and then he’d wandered away and Ara found herself drinking with a group of people, all toasting their plastic glasses. She joined in, beer splashing onto the concrete when their glasses clashed.
“I’m going home tomorrow,” she shouted in the ear of the person next to her, and wondered if she’d even be able to find her way home to the apartment on Mariatorget tonight.
“Too bad,” said the girl – or was it a guy she was talking to? Things were getting blurry. “You should stay in Sweden for Midsummer. It’s the best night of the year, I promise you.”
“I wish I could,” Ara lied. She knocked back some beer and gazed around the crowd. So many blondes here in Sweden. It was a cliché but it was true. That’s why she fit in, with her platinum crop of hair. Ara started giggling at the thought of herself as a blonde Swede. A Viking, she told herself. A Viking Venator.
So many blondes, dancing in front of the stage, drinking with friends, making out with lovers. Weaving through the crowd … wearing a white dress, long hair billowing as though they were in a music video, looking beautiful and serene and somehow above it all ….
Looking exactly like Finn Chase.
Part Two: After the Ball
And pomp, and feast, and revelry
With mask, and antique pageantry,
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.
— John Milton, L’Allegro
14 | It’s Getting Hot in Here
The car would arrive for them at seven, Schuyler was told by the handsome young guy at hotel reception. This hotel in Stockholm was a mirror image of Mimi and Kingsley’s apartment, she thought the moment they walked in through the sliding glass doors. Everything white, with giant light features that looked fragile and expensive. Shiny surfaces that would show every fingerprint. Just as well they were here without the twins. Lily would be spinning in one of those retro Egg chairs by now, or spinning Sy in it to make him sick.
“What car?” she asked, and the receptionist flashed a dazzling smile.
“To take you to your welcome party,” he said, with a slight bow of the head. “Welcome to Stockholm.”
“Welcome party?” Jack was next to her now, standing over their suitcases, his face looking strained. He hadn’t slept at all on the plane: Schuyler knew that because she hadn’t slept either.
Their hotel suite had been booked by the local Venator chief, someone who Kingsley lauded as one of the best in the world – but that was typical Kingsley. He was drawn and worried these days, but he still had some of the old swagger about him. Schuyler guessed this would be some kind of Venator welcome.
“I can’t imagine it’ll be fancy,” she told Jack, yawning as she unpacked. “I brought this one dress with me – do you think it’s OK?”
She held up a navy-blue summer dress with thin shoulder straps. A thin sash gathered the straps in the back, but it wasn’t too girly or fancy. Schuyler liked to wear it in Napa with silver jewelry and strappy sandals, her hair loose. A glass of their own wine in her hand.
That life was gone now, she thought. Gone for the foreseeable future, anyway.
“How fancy can some Venator welcome be?” Jack was barely intelligible through his own yawns. “It’ll probably be at some bar like the Holiday, with beer on tap and nachos. If we’re lucky.”
They slept for a few hours that afternoon, curled up together on the white bed like puppies. Clinging to each other, Schuyler thought, and waiting for the storm.
The car was a black Audi, with a driver who smiled and bowed but said nothing at all. His livery was impeccable. Not very Venator-style at all.
“I already feel underdressed,” Jack muttered to her. He was wearing a linen shirt over jeans.
When pressed, the driver told them, in perfect English, that they were driving to the exclusive Ostermalm area, to a neighborhood called Diplomatstaden. All the embassies were located there.
“A very nice area,” he said, and then fell silent again. “Nice” was an understatement, Schuyler soon realized. This had to be one of the most expensive parts of the city. The car passed grand brick villas, red or golden in the evening sun, that looked at least a century old. It was like Newport on a smaller scale, maybe – or like Southampton with better taste.
“We’re going to meet the Regis,” Jack murmured to her, as though the obvious had finally sunk in. Of course they were.
The car pulled up to a contemporary wooden gate, slatted and opaque, that slid open when he pressed numbers into the iPad resting on the front passenger seat. Beyond a towering thicket of trees, the gravel driveway swooped in an elegant half-circle. A number of cars – Audis, BMWs, Volvos, Mercedes – were parked in an orderly line, attended by young valets dressed all in white. The house itself was white, three stories high with dormer windows and roof tiles the color of salmon. It had two tall white chimneys, and a matching white stable block, which probably served as a garage these days. Schuyler had seen versions of this house before, usually in the Hamptons, but this smacked of genuine old money and nineteenth-century elegance. In the distance, beyond the villa, a lawn stretched to sparkling water.
“We may be underdressed,” Schuyler whispered to Jack, who flashed back a conspiratorial smile. The young valet opening their car doors and ushering them up the broad front steps looked more expensively dressed than Jack.
“I’ve never seen white suede espadrilles before,” he muttered, one protective hand on the small of Schuyler’s back.
“Probably reindeer skin,” she said, and they both laughed. They were still laughing when the double doors swung open to admit them, and they found themselves in an elegant foyer, a staircase swirling to the upper floors, and a model-like waiter on hand with a tray of Aquavit cocktails.
“Infused with lemongrass and lingonberries,” the handsome young server told them, and Schuyler had to suppress more nervous laughter. They’d imagined a glass of beer with local Venators. This was the other end – the far end – of the scale. Thank god she’d remembered to pack one dress.
“What an honor!” called a confident male voice, and a man – tall, round-bellied, his silver hair floppy and glossy – appeared before them, like an ocean liner gli
ding into port. “I am Lukas Stromberg, and this is my wife … where is she? Pernilla! Our guests of honor are here!”
Pernilla instantly materialized: she was a beautiful, willowy blonde who was at least twenty years younger than her husband, dressed in a silver 20s cocktail dress, her slender arms rattling with bangles.
“So happy you could join us,” Pernilla said with a nervous smile. Schuyler felt sorry for her, though she wasn’t sure why. There was something Stepford Wife about Pernilla: her trembling hands gave her away. No wonder the bangles were rattling.
So this was the local Regis and his wife, and about a hundred of their closest friends, from what Schuyler could make out, as their hosts guided them through a series of large, high-ceilinged rooms, all painted an elegant gray. So these were the Scandinavian Blue Bloods, or an even more exclusive sub-set, gathering together for “a little cocktail party,” as Lukas put in, to welcome their illustrious guests from the US.
Schuyler’s head began to buzz with supernatural interference. She was highly tuned to the frequencies of the vampire world, even at large social gatherings, but the messages she was getting confused her. There were secrets here, and a tension that crackled through the house and out onto the expansive green lawn. She felt as though she and Jack were being steered through a planned course, shown off to everybody but never allowed to pause or talk.
The path led, inexorably, to Lukas’ wood-paneled study, its walls painted a washed gray, all the furniture expensive and faux-rustic in a pared-back Nordic way. The paintings on the wall were all landscapes of green meadows and blue skies. It was all a little too perfect, Schuyler thought, as Lukas closed the door behind her and Jack – with Pernilla firmly on the other side.
White Nights: A Vampires of Manhattan Novel Page 9
