Viola Grace - Saguinary Seduction, page 21
Lincoln himself excepted. His partner’s head barely reached his American flag lapel pin.
“Well, I admit, in my day all of my bodyguards were mortal males,” Honest Abe said.
The mortal male who was currently guarding the First Lady nodded ruefully, obviously feeling that those were the good old days. The two women glowered at him in silent, but furious disagreement.
“But this is the modern age,” Mr. Lincoln reminded them hastily. “I helped to create it, if I must say so myself. And you know that a female bodyguard could not do any worse than my male army officers who were supposed to guard me. This one is a whole lot prettier than they were anyway.” He bent again over Ylenia’s hand again.
The vampire lowered her eyes and obviously would have blushed if she had had any blood to do it with. Her partner, on the other hand, looked even more irritated than before.
“I believe that your lady is in the East Room, Mr. Lincoln,”
Mrs. O’Neill said, hastily changing the subject. “She is helping plan Miss O’Neill’s wedding.”
The late president’s smile faded as he remembered that he had lain there in state. Seeing his expression, the First Lady tactfully cast about for yet another topic.
“Our Ylenia will be in charge of the music,” she said cheerfully.
“But I thought you were a bodyguard.”
“I am now,” the vampire explained proudly. “But I trained as a dancer and until last year I even ran a dance exercise 188
Sanguinary Seductions
program called Vamper-cize. Then when I heard about the Secret Service affirmative action program for vampires, I naturally wanted to join. My dance background helped me with the martial arts training, so here I am now. At night, of course.”
Tactful as always, the First Lady refrained from saying that the cut-rate imitators had all but driven a stake through the original Vampire-cize program, with names like Vamper-dance or even Dancing Vampires. One could not, alas, copyright an idea, or Bram Stoker’s estate would be richer than Bill Gates’s.
“And having a lady guarding another lady is so much more suitable,” Mr. Lincoln assured her.
Some of the light seemed to fade from her eyes. “I hope so,” she said hesitantly.
“But?” he asked, fixing her with his strong, sad gaze.
“But…” under the influence of Honest Abe, she could not stop herself. “But I often wonder if I could take a bullet for the First Lady, as much as I love and admire her. Not a bullet, of course, because that would not be much of a problem for me, but a wooden stake. Or a cross. Or a vial of holy water. Or even a clove of garlic.
“I know that George Zagorsky took a stake for the president, when he was still a candidate. That’s how George became our first vampiric congressman and the president’s future son-in-law. But I still wonder if I could do the same.”
“I am sure you could, or else you would not be here,” her charge interrupted firmly. “But we should not keep Mr.
Lincoln from finding his wife. You will probably run into my daughter, so I must tell you that she is a banshee. And you were a famous warrior, so she is bound to wail for you.”
“Well,” he assured her, with a sigh. “I have heard wailing before.”
“Not from a banshee.”
* * * *
Beneath its three cut-glass chandeliers…so huge and elaborate, 189
eXtasy’s Collective Mind
they had their own servant to clean them…the East Room smelled of harsh lye soap. It always did when Abigail Adams was carrying in her laundry as she had been doing since she first moved into the White House, 250 years earlier. The chamber had been unfinished then, but old habits died hard.
So, obviously, did First Ladies.
She almost dropped her soggy burden onto the oak parquet floor when Maeve O’Neill took one look at Mr. Lincoln and started shrieking “Ochone ochone ochone!”
“That means woe, woe, woe ! in Gaelic,” her mother translated helpfully. “It is the banshee lament for a great fallen warrior.”
“I surely do appreciate it,” the Great Liberator answered faintly as he glanced anxiously toward the full-length windows.
The First Daughter had shattered them so often however, that they had long since been replaced by layers of bullet- and banshee-proof glass. Long years of political courtesy stopped him from putting his hands over his ears.
“And who deserves it more than you?” Mrs. Lincoln demanded, staring up at him from her five feet and two inches of height. “This young lady does appreciate the niceties.”
“But right now, dear, we must talk about the wedding,”
Dolley Madison put in hastily, thus earning Honest Abe’s literally everlasting gratitude by diverting the banshee’s attention. “It will be the social event of the season…a president’s daughter marrying a congressman.”
“Especially when she is a banshee and he is a vampire,”
Abigail muttered.
“That means an evening wedding, of course,” the current First Lady put in smoothly. “We’ll have the ceremony in the Rose Garden, with dinner and dancing in the East Room. Alice Roosevelt and Lynda Bird Johnson were both married here, so it is quite a tradition.”
“Dolley is checking out the rose garden right now,” the banshee bride added, in more normal tones. “I know she will have it looking just perfect.”
“And if it isn’t, she will scare the living daylights out of the 190
Sanguinary Seductions
gardener again,” Mrs. Adams murmured again.
* * * *
Dolley Madison did not, however, scare President O’Neill. When he saw a pretty lady with bright blue eyes, lustrous black curls and a gown that lifted, separated and even revealed her ample creamy bosom, it certainly aroused something, but that was not fear.
While her husband sometimes showed up as well, he was the wizened little old man he had been when he had lived here.
This made him no competition, O’Neill thought smugly, for a man like himself, with blue eyes and black curls as lively as Mrs. Madison’s own.
He had, in fact, come out to the Rose Garden when he had glimpsed her from the Oval Office window in the gathering August twilight. She had smiled and waved an obvious invitation to him in return.
For a moment he had, indeed, realized that a ghost was beckoning him and had reacted with a superstitious twinge of dismay. Then he remembered that he himself had lured a vampire into his bed, and with no ill effects, quite the contrary.
At present, he was sharing it with a witch, although the fact that she was also his own First Lady did take the edge off things.
He was planning to put it all in his memoirs, which he was sure would put Bill Clinton’s to shame. Clinton, Kennedy, even Roosevelt…not one of them had ever had sex with a vampire…although a few Republicans might argue about the witch part, where Hillary and Eleanor were concerned.
Still, as heavily haunted as the White House was, no one had ever hinted that any of his predecessors might have actually gotten it on with one of the resident ghosts.
Considering that Dolley’s competition was limited to Abigail Adams and Mary Todd, she was the clear choice. Even during her lifetime, she had aroused rumors that she was Thomas Jefferson’s mistress, while she was acting as his White House 191
eXtasy’s Collective Mind
hostess. That made her an even more likely candidate for a return engagement.
Thinking of that, O’Neill walked into the Rose Garden and toward the trees where she was waiting beside the stone wall.
“Good evening, Mr. President,” she said as she gazed up at him flirtatiously with her twinkling blue eyes.
“And good evening to you, Mrs. Madison,” he answered with his most beguiling grin as he kissed her slim hand. He tried hard to stare at her fingers as he did so, even though it was hard to keep his eyes away from her bodice. As who could blame him, he wondered, when it had been designed to serve as a built-in low-cut push-up bra. Since it was only a bit lighter in shade than the creamy globes it cradled, he could barely tell where one left off and the other began.
“I see that you are admiring my dress,” she said with a teasing smile on her rosebud lips.
“Isn’t that the same one you are wearing in your lovely Red Room portrait?”
“Yes, and I often saw you looking at it,” she said. Moving closer to him, which made her look even further up, she added,
“I am glad that you appreciate it.”
“And isn’t that the same gold chain you are wearing around your neck?” As he reached out to finger the glittering bauble, he saw her own slim fingers close over it. Accordingly, he pulled his own hand apologetically away.
“Yes, indeed, how nice of you to remember,” she said, rapidly batting her eyelashes. “It is a beautiful picture, is it not?
I saw that you admired it, so I could not resist meeting you in person.”
“But not half as lovely as you are,” he said and bent to kiss her fingers again.
As she glanced demurely down in response, he was startled to see her heart-shaped little face frozen in rage. He pulled back in fear, suddenly remembering that she was, indeed, a ghost, and even wondering if she was there to drag him down to some even worse place than New Hampshire at primary time. Then he saw, with great relief, that she was glaring past 192
Sanguinary Seductions
him to a rose bush that seemed to be drooping slightly.
“Can’t those workmen do anything?” she exclaimed. “I must talk to the head gardener again.”
As she vanished, presumably to go in search of the hapless horticulturalist, the president found himself feeling sorry for him. But not sorry enough to avoid another chance to meet the famously charming Dolley Madison…away from the Rose Garden, preferably.
Of course, if the word got out while he was still in office, it could be a terrible scandal…if anyone believed it, that was…which no one was likely to do. He smiled to himself again at that thought.
* * * *
“Mary Margaret Finnegan and Thomas McCoy, Jr.,” the First Lady said, without much enthusiasm as she tapped her pen against the marble-topped coffee table. Her daughter’s wedding was certainly a family affair, but it was a political opportunity, too. Since those prospective guests were, respectively, a major contributor and Secretary of Defense, they were too important to omit from the guest list for the social event of the season, if not decade. In the same spirit, three months earlier the president had sent the First Daughter to the deathbeds of Mary Margaret’s husband and Secretary McCoy’s father, in her role as banshee.
Never mind that the dying warriors in question had been, respectively, a draft dodger and goldbrick. Their next-of-kin were so useful to the administration, those little drawbacks had been easy to overlook.
The Ambassador and Ambassadress of Romania would also be invited, naturally. The Countess Vyrdelek was a good friend of the bridegroom, which was a nice way of saying that he had been her vampiric sire, back when she was plain Tiffany Golden. She had then been an even better friend of the president’s, as his wife recalled grimly. There was no nice way of saying what that meant. She felt her thin lips pursing at the 193
eXtasy’s Collective Mind
thought.
Even more grimly, she pressed her lips yet further together and firmly scratched down the name of Robert E. Lee, the Speaker of the House and her husband’s most likely challenger next year. Combining his Asian-American heritage with his mythically Anglo-American name, Lee would be as formidable an opponent as his namesake had been for…
“Ahem AHEM!”
Too late, Evelyn realized that, as a witch, she had summoned the spirits just by thinking of them. Now she looked up to see that Mary Todd was indeed, speaking from her gilt-framed portrait beside the carved rosewood bed.
“And what about your predecessors as First Lady?”
She was not talking about Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, Roslyn Carter or even Hillary Clinton, as the incumbent knew perfectly well. The living First Ladies would be invited as a matter of course, along with the living former presidents. Mary Todd was clearly thinking of the other kind.
“Well, of course all of you are invited,” the current First lady said in her brightest tone. “There is you and Mr. Lincoln, and Dolley and James Madison, and Abigail Adams and Andrew Jackson, of course. Have I thought of everyone?”
“Jim Buchanan.”
“Well, I’ve never seen or heard him, but he is invited, naturally.” Briefly, she wondered why the other First Couples had elected not to return. Now, if it had been John Kennedy pulling down her sheet. She shook her head firmly to drive the tempting thought away.
“Then I’ll go right down to the Red Room and do it,” she decided, rising from the padded Queen Anne chair. “I’ll write out the invitations and burn them in that marble fireplace. It’s nice to know it’s good for something, even nowadays.”
“We should get them immediately that way,” Mary Todd agreed. “We all like to sit around there.”
No wonder, the First Witch thought. With the red and gilt upholstery and the crimson satin walls beneath the gilded chandelier, it seemed just the place for a séance. If the ghosts 194
Sanguinary Seductions
did not gather there, they should have.
Downstairs, facing the marble fireplace, she raised her hands and intoned the incantation as she thrust the invitations one by one into the flames.
“But you know, Mary,” she said hesitantly, biting her thin lower lip, to show how reluctant she was to say the words.
“Some people are so prejudiced and ignorant…”
“…that they might be frightened at the sight of us,” Mary finished for her. “Don’t worry, they will not see us.” In a more cheerful tone, she went on, “We will see each other though, so I will wear the white satin embroidered with the black stripes and purple flowers. It was imported from France, you know.”
“The one on display at the Smithsonian? That will be beautiful.”
“The newspapers said it cost too much, but I always say, if you buy quality, it lasts,” Mrs. Lincoln answered triumphantly.
In her case, Mrs. O’Neill thought, it had certainly done just that. This particular frock had endured for 140 years.
And Dolley Madison will have her bosom hanging out as always, she thought, but the living guests won’t see her.
“But, Mary,” she said, folding her hands in the gesture of prayer. “I hope that you will convince Abigail not to carry her laundry into the East Room that night.”
* * * *
Under the circumstances, a priest could not possibly preside. Despite his Catholic background, not even the president bothered trying to argue that one. The bridegroom had been baptized Catholic, too, but at this point the sight of a cross was likely to make Rep. Zagorsky burst into an asthma attack, if not actual flames.
The First Lady would have preferred an Episcopal minister, if only to show that she was a witch, but not a Wiccan, which was a religion unto itself. For the same reason, a Wiccan ceremony was out.
As usual, the president quickly found a solution that 195
eXtasy’s Collective Mind
included a political advantage. While the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court had never been known to say a good word for the president and his liberal cronies, he was still delighted to be chosen for the honor of performing this White House wedding. The bridegroom might be a vampire while the bride was a banshee, but this would still be a night to remember.
Few knew at the time, however, that this one would be remembered in about the same sense as the Titanic.
As for the bridesmaids, that decision was simpler. Maeve chose her sister banshees as a way of bringing them to the public’s attention in a positive way. Knowing that too many Irish of all descriptions had been leaving his party recently, the president was glad to honor his Hibernian heritage this way.
After much searching, his aides had even found banshee who also boasted Black, Jewish, Asian and Hispanic ancestry, respectively.
The 15 young ladies were invited to choose their own escorts and had little difficulty doing so. It was, indeed, the social event of the decade.
That made it even easier to select the bridesmaids’ dresses.
Everyone knew that the banshee wore green gowns and the First Banshee had brought that color into the height of fashion again. For the coming June prom season, in fact, green had been the new black.
The bridesmaids’ gowns were emerald satin with wide skirts and puff sleeves. This look did not have to be brought into fashion because it had never gone out, even though other bridesmaids throughout the world must have been hoping that it would.
As the literally crowning touch, their hair had been done by Nadia so that it looked as though it had fallen naturally into those masses of curls and waves. That look had taken an hour per customer to achieve and had helped to make this former vampire bride into Washington’s most popular beautician.
White roses from the Rose Garden would help make the evening truly memorable. Not, as it turned out, that the occasion would need any help in being remembered.
196
Sanguinary Seductions
To show that the bridegroom’s particular ethnic group had not been forgotten, a vampire named Simona was chosen to play the famed grand piano with its gilded American Eagle legs. The menu selection was even easier. Roast beef would be prepared for every guest’s taste with Irish potatoes on the side.
The extra rare, not to say blood rare, portions would be especially popular among the groom’s friends.
The ceremony started well enough, with the Marine Corp Band playing Here Comes the Bride and the roses filling the air with fragrance. The bridesmaids were just as lovely and the bride was the most beautiful of all with her red-gold hair falling onto her high, round lace collar.
