Four, page 17
“Oh, the Tepes are here. Lady Pendragon must be making the rounds.”
“I don’t see Geoffrey with her. I better go find him—”
“He’s probably with Lorcan now, and I wouldn’t interrupt that conversation if I were you,” Stefano warned.
Mina Pendragon continued to flirt and smile with the exotic stranger. Georgia quickly looked away as the vampire lady moved even closer.
“Old Vlad and Mina have a fair bit of history,” Stefano said. “I think the affair has lasted a good four hundred years now.”
“So I’m guessing vampires aren’t into the whole monogamy thing. I mean, she’s with Lord Pendragon, right?”
Stefano laughed again. “Oh, the American puritanical tradition lives on,” he dismissed.
“It’s not like that. I just don’t know how it all works. I mean the Jaeger has two women, right? Does it work both ways, or is it like humans, where if a man has two women he’s a player, but if a woman dates two guys then she’s a slut?”
Ren interrupted briefly to hand a new glass to both Stefano and Georgia. She briefly inspected the red liquid in the glass and took a quick sniff before daring to take a sip of something that tasted very expensive and alcoholic.
“Ren, can you ask if Geoffrey is indeed meeting with his sire? I wouldn’t want his date to worry.”
“Very good, sir,” Ren said with another bow.
“You look a bit surprised. I take it that your relationship with Geoffrey is more modern?” Stefano asked.
Georgia resisted the bait and instead snuck another peek at the window, but both Lady Pendragon and Vlad had disappeared. “You didn’t answer my question,” she said.
“Come, let’s have a stroll in the gardens and talk, and don’t worry, I won’t bite . . . unless you ask me to.”
“That must be such a classic vampire pickup line,” she said, shaking her head. Still she started following him as they meandered through the hedges and fairy lights.
“You really aren’t fazed by us at all, are you, Miss Sutherland?” Stefano asked. She shook her head again and took a sip of the wine. “Well, I suppose there have to be some humans like you just to keep it interesting. In answer to your question, there is no difference to us whether the shell looks male or female, and we don’t have the same conceit that only one soul is meant for another. Existence is too long to be tied down by that, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve only got sixty or seventy odd years more to ponder that idea,” she snorted. “So the whole mate thing is temporary for all of you?”
Stefano shrugged. “There are those that choose to have long-term relationships, to be sure. We are all part of families, same as you, but our families come from ideals as much as blood. Meenakshi Pendragon is what you’d call a free spirit. She might have been made to be the mate of Lorcan, but come on, no one could endure that much brooding for more than a century. Quite frankly, the council was shocked that they even produced one successful offspring, let alone two.”
“Two?” Georgia said, suddenly interested.
“Oh yes, Geoffrey’s brother, Edwin, is around here somewhere, but I’ll warn you that he totally takes after his father. Between the two of them, they make listening to Emily Dickinson seem cheery.”
“It’s so weird to think of vampires having two parents,” she said.
“Why? Don’t you have two parents?” Stefano asked. “You’ve seen too many Hollywood movies. I mean, if you believed them, then anyone we feed on would sprout fangs. It would be as if every Big Mac consumed could turn into a human.”
“And your parents are in there?” she asked, motioning back to the house.
“One of them is. My other sire, Klaus, doesn’t like to travel. I only see him when I’m in Austria for the summer.”
“Austria, Japan, you seem to travel a lot.”
“My servant likes to tell you my plans?” Stefano asked.
“I just remembered that’s why you were away. Ren doesn’t talk about you very much. Mostly he’s been helping me learn how to take care of your friend.” Georgia watched as the vampire’s face sank a wee bit. She quickly piped up with, “I would like to know more about you though.”
“Oh really,” he said, his smile returning. “What would you like to know?”
“How you and my boss became friends. You two don’t seem like you have a lot in common except how you love ordering Ren around.”
Stefano tilted his head side to side and stared off over a rose garden. Georgia watched him pace a bit with a bemused little smirk on his face, as if he wasn’t quite certain where to begin. A fresh scent of jasmine and cut grass replaced the deadly vampire funk in the air and let Georgia catch her breath and take a few more peaceful sips of wine. As she looked over her glass and took in the sharp jawline and big baby brown eyes of her new companion, a little bit more of a blush crept across her cheeks.
She quickly looked away again. Stefano took notice, and she cursed her lack of vampiric reflexes under her breath as the creature definitely noticed her reaction. He motioned to a bench between the trellises.
“We actually met during the war, that one you mentioned before,” Stefano said. “At that time my family and the Pendragons were at odds, so I was asked to visit Geoffrey’s estate and try to open up a dialogue between the families again. Claudia and Lorcan, in particular, can’t stand each other, so the sheriffs thought if their children could play nice, it might help ease the tensions.”
Georgia eased onto the stone and kept nursing the wine. In the meantime Stefano paced around her, slowly circling in with each anecdote. “London wasn’t the most glamorous of places back then, so our good friend Mr. Lambley had stowed away to Boston to take over one of his mother’s many random houses throughout the world.”
“The one I now live in?” she asked.
He nodded, “That very same one. Oh, if you could have seen it then—always full of life, full of music, and never wanting for a fresh supply of immigrant women looking to make it big in America . . .” He trailed off and coughed slightly as he noticed the furrow starting in her brow. “But it turned out that Mr. Lambley and I liked many of the same things—jazz, opium . . . jazz singers on opium. The adventures we liked to have! The local police chief was a bondsman then, and while the humans had a lovely calm town to live in, the two of us had virtual free rein to cause mischief and eat very well.”
“That doesn’t sound like Mr. Lambley, plus aren’t his family against eating people?” Georgia challenged him.
“The Pendragons object to killing humans, a sentiment I both admire and respect, but that certainly doesn’t stop them from feeding, my dear. Geoffrey was a master with the British accent and the puppy eyes and his copious amounts of cash. He was truly a vampire’s vampire back then. If he ever grows his fangs back, you’ll see what a charmer he can be. There was this one night where we snuck into Fenway Park and dined on three stewardesses, most of the grounds staff, and the first baseman until almost sunrise. It was magic. The popcorn vendor, he actually tasted like popcorn! Did Geoffrey never tell you about that night?”
“Did you ever meet Ted Williams?” she asked without skipping a beat.
Stefano broke into a huge smile, showing off all his fangs to full effect. “I saw him play and even caught one of the men who caught one of his home runs. I still have the ball on my mantel! It’s right next to my autograph from Babe Ruth.”
“I never knew that European men were so into baseball,” she mused. “You’re not a football fan?”
“Geoffrey has tried to get me into it, but I’m probably the only Jaeger who doesn’t cheer Germany on in the World Cup. I’ve always preferred the more laid-back pace of a good baseball team. I like the stats, the atmosphere, the strategy of it all, but there is something I must confess to you, Miss Sutherland,” he said, easing beside her with a deeply apologetic look in his eyes.
“Oh?” she said, trying not to laugh at his exaggerated hangdog face.
“I . . . am . . . a Yankees fan and have been for nearly a century,” he said. “As a lady from the Boston area, can you ever look past this?”
Georgia raised her hand to her forehead and looked away in disdain. “Oh Stefano, you may be an infectious colony of microorganisms inhabiting a dead body and you may very well think of me as a light snack, but I could overlook that. However, your love of the evil empire simply cannot be forgiven,” she gushed.
Both of them burst out laughing again. “You’re a better actress than most of those dames on Geoffrey’s soaps,” Stefano said. “Did you know that once we spent a weekend in Hollywood doing a mock casting call?”
“You and Geoffrey?”
“Oh yes, he had me write out all of this terrible dialogue, and we’d watch them perform for us. The best-looking ones were invited back to our suite, of course.”
“Oh, of course!” Georgia said. “So, your epic bromance is based on soaps, drugs, and baseball?”
Stefano nodded. “That wouldn’t be entirely incorrect,” he said, inching closer to her. “But what I want to know is how you ended up responding to that advertisement, and then here, tonight, in this stunning dress . . .”
“I ended up telling him the whole story, which you know by now,” Georgia said to an eagerly listening Gail. “And he regaled me with all manner of oversharing stories about him and Mr. Lambley. Let’s just say that if you do get the job, you won’t want to sit on the gold velvet sofa in the formal living room. Just trust me on that one.”
“So this Stefano sounds pretty, um, pretty,” Gail said, giggling slightly before taking another drink.
“Oh, everyone knows just how good-looking and charming Stefano DeMarco can be, especially Stefano,” Georgia snorted. “I can sum up ninety percent of my conversations with him by simply dropping a random famous person’s name, inserting a fabulous locale, and then finishing with a line about how delicious someone tasted.”
“Oh?” Gail said.
“You know that really good-looking guy at the party, the perfect one that you don’t dare approach?”
Gail nodded.
“Well, Stefano is his not-quite-as-attractive but really chatty friend who talks your ear off all night, buys you drinks, and makes you forget pretty much everyone else for a while. Between him and Mina, I have never seen two individuals who can talk quite so long to anyone and say so little, and then—like social ninjas—they can just go poof and reappear in another group and start the cycle anew. I’m pretty sure that they take pride in mingling. It may be an Olympic sport in the making, at least at their level.”
Georgia eyed the level in Gail’s beverage and then signaled to the hot waiter at the bar. “Still, if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have met and promptly forgotten so many bland bloodsuckers that night. At one point I got the rare privilege of seeing them both in action. You see, these affairs start with so much talking. You hear who’s sleeping with whom, who’s feeding on whom, and just where the vampire hot spots are for this decade. Apparently Norway is the perennial favorite to go for winters, while Sydney is where you should spend your summers.”
“Our summer or theirs?” Gail asked.
“Well, it’s winter in the southern hemisphere technically then too,” Georgia conceded. “South America is also a hot spot, since there aren’t as many legal issues to deal with if random people show up missing. The Azarola, in particular, have connections there that make it easy. Although the family started in Europe, most of them now live below the equator and have taken up the pharmaceutical or agricultural professions, if you get my drift.”
“So there are vampire crime lords too?”
“Oh, that can’t possibly surprise you at this point,” Georgia laughed. “I was honestly more shocked to meet a vampire accountant. I mean, he’s had an eternity to perfect math. How sad is that? He seriously tried to talk my ear off for an hour on just how modern general ledger codes evolved from something in ancient Sumeria or Egypt or something like that. To this day I’m not entirely sure what a general ledger has that makes it so much more fascinating than a specialized ledger, but I will forever associate it in my head with ancient kings and goats.”
“Well, are there vampire doctors and lawyers too? I know you said there was a phlebotomist,” Gail asked as she ogled the waiter. He set down an electric blue concoction in front of Georgia, prompting her to raise a brow.
“Lawyers—” she said, still checking out the frosty drink in a highball glass that looked rather like nuclear waste created by Smurfs. “Oh, there are plenty of lawyers in the group. Doctors are a different story. I found most of them to be mad-scientist types, and what we would call a doctor, a vampire calls a veterinarian. Excuse me, what is this?” she turned to ask.
“It’s from an admirer,” the waiter said. “It’s a Tsunami—one of the house specialties.”
Georgia paused to take a deep breath. “You can take it back. I don’t accept drinks from strangers, even ones that admire me.”
“Are you sure?” the waiter asked, still hovering over the drink.
Georgia nodded. “Tell him that I get the message, but I’m not looking to play tonight. Oh, and can I have a real drink as well? Vodka martini, extra dirty.”
“You have an admirer,” Gail teased. “I wouldn’t turn down a free drink.”
“That wasn’t a drink, it was sugar, food coloring, and way too much Malibu for any human to consume,” she scoffed. “Don’t tell me you like little umbrella drinks.”
Gail raised her fingers in front of her face and made a little pincer. “Maybe a little.” She then did the pincer again to frame the waiter’s shapely butt, which was brilliantly in view as he leaned over the bar to whisper something to the bartender. She quickly snapped back to attention as Georgia cleared her throat. “So, the party was a bust? Vampires don’t throw the best soirees?”
“They are apparently great fun if you are a vampire,” Georgia sighed. “But they are similar in that they start with a whole bunch of boring and awkwardness, and then there comes this magic moment when enough alcohol enters everyone’s bloodstream and the band starts getting louder, the conversations start getting louder, and then people start to forget just enough of their manners that the whole affair begins to get fun . . .”
“So, you can get drunk,” Georgia giggled as she watched a pair stagger past the coatroom as she and Stefano dared to reenter the fray of the main ballroom.
The young vampire nodded. “Once the alcohol is suspended in the blood, we can enjoy it just as much as you, but, sadly, only for a brief while. No matter how hard we try, it always fades far too quickly. It’s the same for other intoxicants,” he lamented. “Did I tell you already about the night in Bangkok where I managed to sober up just in time to realize that—”
“Oh, there you are!” a lilting British voice cried just as she rounded the corner. Somehow Mina could project her voice over not only the din of the crowd but over blaring strains of eighties’ guitar solos.
“Is that . . . Billy Idol?” Georgia asked as a guttural voice began to shout, “It’s a nice day for a white wedding,” over the music.
In the blink of an eye, Lady Pendragon had swooped to Georgia’s side, dragging a wild-eyed Geoffrey in tow. “Isn’t he magnificent?” she gushed as she swooped around the confused human. “I was so tempted to break the rules just once to keep him forever.”
“Oh yes, you did have quite the time in Thailand as well, didn’t you, Mina?” Stefano laughed. “I remember you and those birds. Wow.”
“Come on, Stefano, not in front of Geoffrey. That’s his mom!” Georgia snapped.
Mina burst into uproarious laughter. “Oh, sweetie, how charmingly American of you,” she said. “Geoffrey was far too busy with those fourteen hookers and the donkey to play with me. Oh, that was a fun Christmas, wasn’t it, Stefano, darling? Anyway, I was so close to just ruining his career so I could keep him to myself, but I knew that I couldn’t keep such wonders from the world so I let him go. He has no idea, but he had a doppelganger in the seventeenth century—a Welsh mercenary who liked to drink and get in fights too. I should have kept that one, but alas, the plague is so unpredictable, isn’t it?”
“I never really thought about it . . .” She trailed off as “White Wedding” faded into sitar music. “Who is the deejay?”
“Oh, I picked the playlist with my favorites from the past few centuries,” Mina said, breaking into a huge smile. “Yes, and I think there is a little jazz in there too, for my boys. Stefano, dear, I hope you haven’t talked this poor girl’s ear off. I have so many more wonderful people to introduce her too.”
“You know, I really haven’t gotten to spend any time with your son,” Georgia said quickly. She eyed the packed dance floor. “And I promised him I’d dance.”
“You did?” Geoffrey said, wide-eyed. He then watched as Stefano and Lady Pendragon both were motioning over more people to mingle with. “Oh, yes, of course. I know how you love to dance, Miss Sutherland.”
Before Mina and Stefano could so much as turn around, Georgia and Geoffrey had slipped into a mass of widely different dance styles. The vampire settled on a pseudo-waltz step that almost fell in line with the twangy Indian-inspired music. Georgia stumbled a few times at first but finally managed to find her rhythm in the corner of the floor.
“I thought I’d never get away,” Georgia said. “And you looked like you were one conversation away from a coronary. Can vampires have heart attacks?”
“I’m starting to think that they can,” the vampire sighed.
“What?” Georgia asked as they swayed too close to the speaker.
“Never mind,” he said, sweeping her along the floor. As they got toward the edge of the dance floor, however, the vampire’s eyes widened again as none other than the trio of hunters themselves lay in waiting by a table full of empty wineglasses. Next to them a heated argument in some foreign language raged even louder than the music. Geoffrey tried to swing his dance partner away from the scene, but before either of them could blink, a short and scandalously dressed redhead had yanked away Mr. Lambley and led him out toward the center of the dance floor, calling something back in German that didn’t sound particularly kind.
