He set down the paper bag with the fresh rolls and came over, slowly and with a disconcerting smile playing on his lips. “Maybe I should talk to the guy. I can be very persuasive.” I hadn’t mentioned any of it to him to prevent something like this, but I guessed he knew that already. I shook my head anxiously and swallowed. A smirk formed on his lips. “I wished I could have eavesdropped on this dressing-down you mentioned. I bet you were ferocious and sweet.” Before I could flare at him, he kissed me, and the result was two more hours of bliss that made me forget everything else.
He drove me to the uni afterwards, way too late. The preceding night had done something to me. I kept smiling and was practically beaming with happiness. Astrid and Alexandra had been waiting for me impatiently, and wanted to hear every detail of the evening and night. I’ve always been of the opinion that the things that happen between a man and a woman in bed are nobody else’s business, and that was my maxim. Astrid and Alexandra were disappointed by my silence, so they told me again unbidden what Andreas had said. In annoying detail.
Everybody noticed how cheerful and contented I was, and many people asked what the occasion was. When Andreas asked me the same question later, my two nosy friends told him gleefully and in unison that I had spent the night with my sweetheart.
“I wish I could have made you glow like that. I’m happy for you though,” he said dejectedly, gave me a hug, and toddled off. Could it be that he was really in love with me after all? No, I couldn’t believe that. Not him.
I left the building with Astrid and Alexandra. Michael was already waiting for me, his car parked across the street, and now he quickly came over to meet me. I could see that he was frustrated with having to assume human speed. My two friends giggled and were eager to say hi. I was a little embarrassed by their behavior. Before I got into the car with him, Astrid whispered into my ear: “In case you ever get fed up with him, I’ll take him off your hands.”
Michael put a possessive arm around me. “Don’t you dare pass me on to Astrid.”
I laughed out loud. “Do I look like I’m crazy? So what is the plan for today?”
“If that is okay with you, we’ll watch a movie with Stefan and Iveria. They’d like to see you again.” I wondered if they really wanted to see me, or were merely doing him a favor.
Sitting next to him in the car felt good. I looked out the window and watched the current of the Salzach river drag by as we crossed Staatsbrücke. Being able to enjoy somebody else’s company without saying a word is a wonderful gift. I wanted to savor this moment, but my phone rang. It was Silvia, a woman I knew from work. She was living with her boyfriend Manuel, who was an alcoholic. Apparently they’d had a fight and now she didn’t know where to go. She was currently walking around in the vicinity, and when I heard her panicky voice, I offered her my place for tonight. “I think I’m going to stay at your place overnight,” I ventured, and Michael nodded his agreement. We met up with Silvia, who was frazzled and anxious. I comforted and hugged her, offering to stay with her. She threw a glance at Michael and said that she preferred to be alone. We took her to my apartment, where I told her to make herself at home, and then we left. When we arrived at Michael’s house, I saw it by daylight for the first time. It was a gigantic, palatial building, surrounded by a high fence that was hidden behind a thick hedge. The wide driveway afforded the only view of the mansion, and from the street all you could get was a vague glimpse. The rose trellises on the front façade promised a beautiful curtain of roses in summer. The curved driveway ended right in front of Michael’s garage. He parked the car in front of the wooden door, embellished with intricate carvings. We approached the front door and were met by Iveria. “You’re practically beaming,” she stated and licked her lips. I was happy to see her and gave her a hug, asking how she was doing. “Much better now,” she said with a mischievous smile, which got her a scowl from Michael. We entered a large room with a gigantic screen, where Stefan was lounging on a comfy maroon couch. He rose and with an amused grin asked to be hugged. Before I could see what was so funny, he had put his arms around me and kissed my cheek.
Michael looked annoyed. “Okay, guys, enough.”
“Come on, don’t be so stingy, I was looking forward to an enthusiastic greeting,” another cheerful voice chimed in. It belonged to Alessandro, who had just come down the stairs.
Puzzled, I looked back and forth between Michael and Alessandro, but then said with a sigh: “Right, I forgot that I’m just some sort of ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet to you people.”
Looking at Alessandro made me think of Sarah. She had been in love with his thick black hair, his athletic body, and his handsome face, which was a little too chiseled for my taste. I asked him whether he’d talked to her recently. At first he didn’t seem to know who I was talking about, so I added a sharp: “My best friend; you slept with her.”
“Oh, right, her. Yeah, she was nice. We didn’t speak afterwards. I only called her because Michael forced me to anyway,” he stated blithely.
I narrowed my eyes at Michael. He shrugged it off. “You were so weirded out by my conversation with Phillipe, you wouldn’t have given me a chance. Without Sarah’s intervention, you’d have fled the club then and there. I reckoned you would come to my party for your friend’s sake.” I should have been outraged at this revelation, should have reproached them for doing this to Sarah, but I was secretly pleased at the thought that he had moved heaven and earth to see me again. I gave him a loving smile and kissed him on the lips. He put his arms around me. The way he looked at me caused a warm, tingling sensation all over my body and gave me the feeling that I was special. When I thought back to our first dinner at Europark and the ensuing adventure, I was reminded of a still-unanswered question. I asked: “Do you know who was responsible for the attack that night?” I wasn’t sure how they would react to my question.
“We can guess, but we’re not completely sure. You don’t know him,” Michael finally said.
Then I found out that Alessandro was Stefan’s son, and thus Michael’s grandson. While I was still processing that, the doorbell rang. Their dates had arrived. Stefan’s girl was named Tanja. She was a short, likeable brunette. The other woman was tall and blonde. Her name was Bianca.
A beamer projected the film Heartbreakers onto the screen. I snuggled up to Michael. It turned out that Tanja had been with Stefan for a while already. She worked in a plant nursery and had known him for a long time. We chatted. Nobody paid any attention to the movie. It was as if Alessandro, Michael, and Stefan were siblings who spent a chill evening with their girlfriends. Somehow we ended up talking about Goethe, and the fact that he had an eighteen-year-old girlfriend when he was more than eighty years old. Bianca declared how disgusted she was by young women taking up with old men. Tanja and I exchanged knowing glances and smirked. So she knew what Stefan was. Michael changed the subject by asking Bianca what her parents did for a living. The devious bastard! I knew it was no accident that he had steered the conversation in this direction. Bianca launched into a lament of her father’s troubles with alcohol, before asking what my parents were like. That was exactly what Michael had aimed for. I whispered a quiet ‘nice try’ in his direction and pretended I hadn’t heard the question. But Bianca didn’t let up; she asked what they did for a living. I felt cornered. Michael grinned and watched me attempt to avoid having to give her an answer. “I can’t tell you, or else I would be obliged to kill you,” I whispered conspiratorially, before excusing myself to use the bathroom. When I returned, they had changed the subject. A short while later, Alessandro and Bianca left together.
I could finally ask Tanja how she had come to know the truth about Michael and his kind.
“My parents are skilled in magic and also practice it, so I was in contact with the paranormal from an early age. I met Stefan when I was a small child. He came to my parents’ nursery to buy a very rare plant, one that only grows with magical support. My father plants and landscapes the gardens of most
Peris in Salzburg. When I was fifteen, I helped him with some maintenance work in Michael’s garden. I was trimming the hedges when Stefan came out of the house with a young woman, probably his then-girlfriend. I saw how courteous and affectionate he was treating her. That was the day I fell in love with him. He however didn’t notice me at all. He only recognized me as a woman when I had passed twenty. I’m well aware that most relationships with Peris don’t last, but neither do most human ones, right? There’s never a guarantee that you’ll stay together and remain happy,” she explained, sounding contented. Safe and sound in Michael’s arms, I listened to her stories with mounting fascination. “And can you do magic as well?”
“A tiny little bit.” She proudly lit a candle, purely by the power of her mind. I was impressed. Michael and the others thought it was a neat trick. Michael kissed me. “You’re a cute one. You watched Alessandro manipulate Sarah’s thoughts without freaking out, and then you hurled Nikelaus through the room as if you had done stuff like that all your life. But if Tanja lights a candle, you’re all but doing cartwheels with excitement.”
“She’s a human, that’s different.”
“Oh, really, and what are you?” Affronted, I threw him a dark look. I was me. My instinct told me that I was exactly what I was supposed to be, even though the thought of being anything more than human scared me immensely, and literally raised the hair on the back of my neck. Tanja hadn’t noticed the change of subject; he’d obviously camouflaged the last exchange from her. “All you have to do is focus your thoughts on the accruing flame. You mustn’t let anything distract you from that. I trained stuff like this my whole life. The only prerequisite is a certain magical element however. Either you have that or you don’t. You know what, why don’t you try it?” she suggested. My parents had always given me concentration exercises when I was a child. I glanced shyly at Michael. He shrugged his shoulders. “You can try it, but it won’t work. Promise me you won’t be disappointed.” He wanted me to be in a good mood, the egoist. I was a little scared that it would actually work, so I merely pretended to try, and of course the candle did not start to burn. Michael hugged me from behind and kissed me to comfort me. That alone was worth a failure.
A short while later, my phone rang. Andreas wanted to know if I would be joining him and his buddies at the campus party. When I declined, he wanted to speak to my boyfriend. I ignored his request and ended the call with a curt “See you on Monday.” Thirty seconds later he called again. I shook my head and didn’t pick up, but he tried again. I rejected the call and it rang again. At some point Michael was fed up with the game. He took the phone from my hand. “This is Melanie’s boyfriend. You had something you wanted to tell me?” He listened, grinned, and then asked: “Do you want to threaten me? No, you listen to me now: If you bother her one more time, you and I will meet in person.” He hung up and handed me my phone back. While he was speaking, Stefan had commented under his breath: “The guy is suicidal.”
“If he tries to harass you or impose on you, you will tell me,” Michael demanded emphatically, his face stern. Sure, so he could bust his jaw or break his neck. I would certainly tell him nothing of the sort. But I couldn’t argue this now, so I nodded reluctantly.
We changed the subject and had a really fun evening. At some point we cheerfully excused ourselves for the night, and Michael led me up to his bedroom. It was the same room I had woken up in after the vampire attack. I was finally alone with him. Nothing stood between me and his glorious body. I jumped him, wrapping my legs around his waist and kissing him with abandon. For the first time I felt as if we were a perfectly normal couple. There was a bathroom attached to Michael’s room, or rather, a bath oasis, with an oversized, oval-shaped tub in the center of the room. Soft music was playing and the rim of the tub was lined with loads of small tea lights, waiting to be lit. I couldn’t resist the temptation this time, so I asked if I could try and light them by magic.
“You never give up, do you?” Michael chuckled.
“I didn’t actually try earlier,” I admitted, and he made a sweeping gesture across the line of candles, inviting me to try now. While I visualized a small flame springing up around the wick of each tea light, growing and intensifying, I kept my eyes shut. When I opened them again, all the lights were burning. Michael looked at me with a smile. I suspected that he was in fact responsible for this bit of magic, not me. When I asked him directly, he left me in the dark. The sight was beautiful, but one thing was not as it should be: Michael and I were still fully dressed. I needed to change that. I started to undress slowly, in time with the music, and registered with satisfaction that the desire in his eyes grew hotter and more urgent, until he couldn’t wait anymore. He took me before the tub had been filled with water.
The next morning I woke up alone in his bed. That was the downside of being with a man who didn’t need any sleep. I took toothbrush and clothes from my backpack and went into the bathroom. Even though I hadn’t slept much, I felt wide awake and joyful when I went down the stairs and into the kitchen. Iveria, Michael, Stefan, and Alessandro were sitting at the table talking. Michael was sitting with his back to the door, so I went over and planted a kiss in his neck, and he turned around, beaming. He was feeling adventurous and had a thousand ideas what we could do that day. But a phone call from Silvia interrupted our planning. A woman had been killed in the neighborhood that night, right in her apartment. The police was hoping to find clues by talking to the neighbors. I had always felt safe in the area, so the shock and surprise were all the more trenchant. How could the killer have murdered the woman and gotten away unseen and unheard? However, turning back to my conversation with Michael I quickly forgot about the call again. Tanja came shuffling into the kitchen, looking tired and exhausted. She sat down next to me and I gave her a mischievous smile. “Didn’t sleep well?”
Stefan pulled her into a sideways embrace. “I hear you didn’t get a lot of sleep either.”
Michael put an arm around me and joked: “The difference being that my girl is bouncing off the walls. You must be doing something wrong.”
Stefan’s grin split his face. “It’s good to see you happy again for a change.” Tanja wanted to know how exactly I had met Michael. I told her about going out to Peri’s Night, and how intimidated I had been by him and his pals.
“She almost ran away screaming,” Stefan told her with a laugh. While Tanja and I continued to chat, the others began a camouflaged conversation. Of course Tanja didn’t notice any of that. The Peris were used to not being overheard, so I guessed they were forgetting that I was the exception. They spoke about how good I was for Michael. Apparently he had been listless and unhappy for a while before he met me, but I couldn’t glean what the reasons were. Then I glanced at my watch. It was almost ten. I grabbed my backpack, gave Michael a kiss, and wanted to head for the uni, but he insisted on driving me there.
He picked me back up at four p.m. sharp. He had brought a travel bag. When I asked him about it, he told me that there was a business dinner planned for the evening and I was supposed to accompany him. Since it would get late and he didn’t want to take me home afterwards, he had been in my apartment to fetch my study stuff and other things I would need. How had he managed to get into my apartment? I opened the bag. He had packed my make-up, underwear, a pair of jeans, and a shirt, but nothing I could wear to a formal dinner. When I said so, he gave me a self-satisfied grin: “I’ve taken care of everything.”
Steamrollered, that was how I felt. Michael was really used to having everyone dance to his tune. He didn’t even realize how arrogating he was. He took me to a hairdresser. I wanted to do my hair myself, but he insisted, since this would be an important dinner. I was supposed to look like the girlfriend of a businessman, not a poor university student. I answered that statement with icy silence, but he ignored it.
An elegant, dark green dress was waiting in his room, complete with accessories and matching shoes. It was the dress I had tried on two months before
in the Europark store. I had half an hour before we had to leave. I put on some make-up and slipped into the underwear that came with the dress: a sexy green bra and matching string. No way he had been thinking of this business dinner when he’d bought that! I put on the dress and the green heels, and went into the kitchen, where he was waiting for me. “Wow, you look absolutely fantastic,” was the first thing he said. He held out a beautiful new winter coat. “I don’t want you to be cold again.” I pointed at my dress. “You were there. I wasn’t sure whether I had really seen you.”
“I bought it the very same day.”
“What if we hadn’t gotten together after all?”
“That was a risk I was willing to take.” His expression told me that he was certain there had never been a risk.
“You’re nothing if not confident.”
“After more than a thousand years on this earth, anything else would be rather pathetic, don’t you think?”
“What if I blunder?” I asked in a worried voice as we walked out to the car.
“Just be yourself. Well, without your special abilities.”
“How am I supposed to switch them off? So far it all happened subconsciously. Maybe I had better stay here?”
“Oh no, I want to show you off.”
We drove to the restaurant in his new Audi R8. In a separate room, seven people were already seated around a table. The only familiar faces belonged to Stefan and Tanja. Michael greeted a vampire called Zarin first. He was attractive, his looks suggested Swedish origin, with blonde hair and blue eyes. Zarin introduced his pretty companion as Melissa. The next person was a woman with black curls called Rebekka. I didn’t know what she was, but most certainly not a human being. She had several diamond-shaped scales on her forehead, which glittered blue. Next to her, a red-haired Peri named Rubin was seated. He neglected to introduce his companion. She was blonde and looked rather worn out. Tanja on the other hand was radiant. I was happy to see her, so I hugged her and complimented her outfit. As soon as we’d taken our seats at the table, the supernatural creatures exchanged pleasantries. That sounded approximately as follows: “I heard about your success in Paris, very impressive.” “Why, thank you, from what I’ve been told you were inimitable in England.” Zarin showered Rubin with praise regarding his human. The Peri thanked him and offered the vampire a sip of her blood. My shock at this offer was written in my face, but I thought that nobody would notice, since my status as a lowly human didn’t seem to merit close scrutiny. Rubin’s girlfriend rose from her seat and walked over to Zarin like a trained animal, baring her wrist for him. Before biting down, he threw me an amused glance. So he had registered my aversion after all. The others didn’t seem to have the slightest problem with the proceedings. One thing was clear already: I couldn’t stand this red-haired Peri.
Peris Night: Terakon (Secret Language) Page 12
