Twenty-Eight
A n hour later, our meals abandoned, he stood and came to my side to lead me through the pitch dark room. A hand at my elbow, another on the small of my back. I didn’t feel strange eyes on me anymore, like the room had cleared out, and we were truly alone in that midnight dining room.
A brush of air against my skin, as though someone moved by; another murmur from Vince, before he guided me through the inky black. Candles had begun to flicker out, one by one, as the evening went on, until only a few dim smudges of light remained.
Out in the hallway, silence greeted us once more.
“What is behind all of these doors?” I asked.
“Some are guest rooms,” he said.
Just like in his house ?
“The other floors lead to other clubs. This building is a hotspot, of sorts.”
“Other clubs?”
I could see him glance at me, eyes shining in the dark. “For other species.”
No wonder he’d told me to be quiet in the lobby.
I said nothing more as we left the way we came. Half-expecting to run into someone else—some other vampires— what other species, exactly? This evening he’d only given me a glimpse of his world, a sliver of his story, and already my mind whirled.
His fingers held mine tightly, squeezing every so often as though to remind me—or himself—that he was there.
Out on the street, the evening had turned even chillier. The doorman gave another nod of acknowledgement as we passed. Vince reached a hand out, holding a few bills in between two outstretched fingers, which the doorman promptly plucked and stuffed into his pocket, nodding once more in thanks.
Adam Vering would never have been able to just hand out a sum that large like it was nothing.
A chill swept through me, a cold breeze raking its fingers through my hair.
Before I could say anything, before I could remark on the chill, Vince shucked off his jacket. “Here,” he said, draping it about my shoulders, dark like a cape.
“Thank you.”
He wrapped his arm around me, pulling me to his side as we walked down the street.
“I needed to take you out properly,” he said, a small smile pulling at his lips. “I wanted to pay this time. ”
Though his tone was teasing, I knew he was remembering our past. The meetings at cafes, far on the other side of the city. Stolen kisses in the garden outside my family’s house. His strange appearances on my street, when I’d have to run outside and shoo him away, for fear he’d be seen—and he’d say that all he wanted was a kiss.
The amount of people on the sidewalks was minimal in the late hour, but still substantial, the nightlife in the city still rearing. Almost out of habit, I peeked at them between my lashes. Angling my face downward, lest they recognize me. Watching for any flashes of recognition, I eyed each passerby warily.
But, no, we were too far from my family’s neighborhood. No one here would run and tell on me, reveal to Lucas where I was, who I was with.
Vince said nothing else. I glanced at him, finding his top lip curled just enough. Inspecting each person on his own, but distaste had settled about him instead. A seeming contempt for all the other people around us.
The rich, the aloof, the flappers and their men. Giggling women, clinging to arms. Older couples, noses angled high.
“If you don’t like people, why do you host parties?”
Vince glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. His face relaxed. “What makes you think I don’t like people?”
“Because I knew you,” a slip of the tongue, “I know you. None of your partygoers ever seem to personally know the great Vince Thornton. You’re supposedly absent. No one recognizes you. So why have them?”
He paused. “Because I hoped you’d come one day. ”
I nearly faltered in my steps, but kept going. His fingers on mine tightened again.
I knew he’d been waiting for me, knew he was looking for me. And he’d said the house was for me, all of it was for me.
But it just hadn’t hit me how much he meant those words.
It’s like his spirit had been calling to me in the only way it could. I wasted the days away, jumping from one party to the next, Flora in tow, and somehow, he’d known that he just needed to throw his own to get me back.
“Will you keep hosting them?” I looked up at him, at the way the streetlights accentuated his cheekbones, and caught all the detailed stitching on his clothing.
“Only if you wish it.”
We’d found the driver, parked some blocks away from where we’d dined. When he saw us, he started the vehicle, the engine roaring to life.
Vince opened the door, holding it wide for me.
“What about the other parties?” I didn’t know how to word it, what exactly to call whatever happened in that room between all those vampires. But Sinclair said they were for feeding, for pleasure, for sharing. Some sort of bloody bacchanal.
For a moment, Vince froze, perhaps not expecting my question.
“I saw it.” He couldn’t be too surprised, too worried. He’d shown me that vampire couple, after all. He’d revealed more about his world, about how he’d been Made, and somehow, I knew the two were related. “What are they?”
His lips pressed into a line. “You will know soon enough.”