22. Chapter 22
Bastien
Odile arrives an hour early, which is how she tells me she’s come to look at something.
“She let herself in, my lord.” Yves is at the drawing room door with her coat already over his arm. “I did offer to announce her.”
“You’ve offered for thirty years.”
“I have, my lord.”
She’s at the mantel before he’s out of the room. Pale blue silk, gray eyes going over the furniture before they get to me, one finger already down on the clock.
“This is running,” she says.
I look at it. The pendulum is going. Somebody has put a key in that clock and turned it.
“So it is.”
“Bastien.” She says my name the way she’s said it for two centuries. Flat. She takes the chair by the fire without being asked. “Wine. And tell me who I’m meeting, since your note didn’t say anything except come.”
“Rouvel. Tavora. And you.”
“You don’t like Rouvel.”
“He’s discreet, and I don’t dislike him enough to matter.”
“That’s worse.” She takes the glass and rests one fingertip on the rim without drinking. “And the fourth place?”
“The fourth lives here.”
Her hand comes off the glass. Her eyes settle on me. Then a laugh gets out of her, short and surprised, and she picks the glass up properly.
“Finally,” she says.
“What are you talking about, Odile?”
“You’ve found a companion.”
“That’s not what she is.”
“Isn’t she?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, which is her way of telling me she already has one. “I’ve brought two of my own, by the way. I meant to mention it before you heard footsteps and reached for something sharp.”
“Two.”
“Théo and Julian. You’ll like them. Everyone does, briefly.” She examines her glass. “Don’t fret. They won’t remember a word of tonight past the second bottle. That’s rather the point of them.”
“You brought guests to my table who won’t remember being at it.”
“I brought guests to your table who are decorative, delightful, and entirely disposable as witnesses.” She says it without a flicker of apology. “It’s the only kind I keep these days. Saves everyone the paperwork.”
“I’ll tell Yves to set extra places,” I tell her. There’s no point in arguing with Odile.
Serenity comes down at eight.
I hear the shoes she isn’t used to, then the breath, then the small pause on the landing where she squares herself before the last flight.
The smell of her reaches the drawing room before she does.
Warm skin, her hair, the wolf sitting underneath it.
Beneath all of that, the thing in her blood.
Four days in this house now, and my mouth hasn’t gone anywhere near it.
My teeth push down in their sockets. I take my time putting the decanter back on the tray.
She stops at the door in dark blue satin, hair up off her neck, the diamonds sitting where I put them.
“You must be Odile.”
“I must be.” Odile stands and takes both her hands, which she has never done for me. “That’s the Villenave collar.”
“I don’t know what it is. He put it on me and told me a story about an empress.”
“I watched the empress wear it. She had a thick neck and no sense.” Odile turns her head an inch toward me. “It’s better where it is.”
Serenity’s chin lifts, and I know that look. She has been in my house four days, and she has decided this woman is a rival.
I’m a bastard for liking that, but I do.
“Serenity, may I introduce Comtesse Odile de Rosemonde. Odile, this is Serenity Sangrey. My…friend.” I smile at both of them. Serenity is eyeing Odile with suspicion.
“Enchantée, Serenity.” Odile seems oblivious to Serenity’s hostility, though I know that she’s not. “And please don’t bother with all that Comtesse bullshit. Call me Odile.”
“Okay,” Serenity says, eyes moving between the two of us.
“Two hundred years,” I say. “That’s the answer to the question you’re not asking.”
“I wasn’t asking.”
“You were,” Odile says. “And let me set your mind at ease. I’ve watched this man bore himself into a stupor for decades. It’s been tedious. Whatever you’re worried about, I don’t have the patience for it.” A pause. “I have my own collection, and it’s arriving separately.”
“Your collection?”
“You’ll meet them in a moment. Try not to encourage the taller one. He’ll propose by dessert if you laugh at his jokes.”
Serenity looks at her, then her shoulders loosen, and she laughs. And that is when the doorbell rings.
Théo comes in first, tall and loud and already halfway through a story nobody asked for. Julian trails a step behind him with two bottles under one arm, boyish, easy in his own skin. I recognize him as the companion who’d been at the auction, which surprises me.
“You kept the blond?” I say to Odile.
“What can I say? He’s adorable. And, of course, he fucks like a jackhammer.”
“I really wish I didn’t know that about him,” I mutter.
“This is the house,” Théo announces to the room generally, “where you actually live? Odile said ‘a friend’s place.’ I didn’t expect Buckingham Palace.”
“Théo,” Odile says, “sit down and stop showing your roots.”
“I’m not ashamed of my humble beginnings. I bring a lot to the table.”
“You bring a very good bottle of Sancerre, which is the main thing we want at the table.” She takes it from Julian without looking at him, which he seems used to.
“Bastien, this is Théo and Julian. They’re both delightful, and neither of them will remember your name by morning, so introduce yourself as often as you like. ”
Théo takes it as a joke rather than the exact truth, and laughs. Julian just grins and offers me his hand, warm, easy, no idea in the world what he’s shaking.
Rouvel and Tavora come at half past, out of the same car.
Tavora is small and exact and four hundred years old, and she has kept the same two houses and the same three friends for most of them. Rouvel is younger and richer and wears it. He takes my hand in both of his, which nobody does to me. Then he sees Serenity, and his nostrils move.
Odile’s chin comes around. Tavora stops two steps inside the room and doesn’t come further.
“Sébastien.” Rouvel isn’t looking at me. “You’ve been keeping a secret.”
“I’ve been keeping a guest.”
“Of course. Of course.” He crosses to Serenity, bows over her hand, and stops his mouth an inch above her knuckles. “Etienne Rouvel,” he says to her hand. He holds it there one second longer than I’m comfortable with.
She takes her hand back. “It’s Serenity,” she says, and turns to Tavora, who dips her head.
“Ana Tavora,” she says. She doesn’t move closer.
Serenity smiles. “You’ve come the furthest, I’m told.”
“I’ve come from Lisbon.” Tavora’s hands are folded in front of her. “Forgive me. I’ll stay near the window.”
Yves arrives to let us know that dinner is ready, and we sit. Seven of us tonight, which the room hasn’t held in a decade, and the kitchen sends up a feast that only Serenity, Théo, and Julian eat, while the rest of us hold glasses and watch.
Odile’s boys keep up a constant patter, and I’m glad of it, because Serenity is entertained.
“Not hungry, angel?” Julian asks Odile, whose fish dish is untouched before her.
“Not tonight, pet.” Odile pats his hand.
“She never is.” Théo, three glasses in already, leans toward Serenity like they’re sharing a secret. “Honestly, I’ve never asked. I assumed it was a diet thing.”
“It’s not a diet thing,” Serenity says, slanting a look at me.
“See, that’s what I said. I said, ‘Odile, is it a diet thing?’ and she just laughed at me for ten minutes.”
“It was closer to fifteen,” Odile says.
Serenity looks down the table, decides against explaining any further, and picks up her own knife.
“So this is theater,” she says, and cuts into the fish, and eats it without hurrying.
Odile laughs into her wine. Even Tavora’s mouth moves.
She’s good at this. She asks Tavora what the oldest building is that she remembers, and gets a story about a bridge that fell down twice. She asks Odile what I was like when I was young.
“Insufferable,” Odile says. “And he’s kept some animal underfoot the whole time I’ve known him. Horses, dogs. Now there’s a cat who runs the house better than Yves does, and won’t come when anyone but Bastien calls him.”
“So, no change,” says Rouvel, who smirks at me.
Théo laughs at that harder than the joke earns, already onto his fourth glass, and Julian tells Serenity a long, cheerful story about a road trip that ended with Odile buying a pony.
“In the middle of the night,” he says, waving a hand. “Do you know how hard it is to get a pony into a truck in the middle of the night?”
I sit at the head of my own table and watch the room decide it likes her.
Then the venison comes up, and I watch what it costs the four of us who can taste her from here.
God help me.
I should have thought this through. But I seem to have lost the ability to do that since she came into my world.
It’s the heat. Two fires, seven bodies, her skin flushed with the wine.
The warmth lifts the smell of her off her skin and carries it the length of the table.
Théo and Julian are warm too, ordinary and pleasant and uninteresting; mortal blood I could take or leave on any given night.
Hers is the only scent in the room that means anything at all, and every one of us who isn’t human can taste it on the air.
“Is it hot in here?” Odile says, echoing my thoughts.
Tavora sets her glass down and doesn’t pick it up again. Rouvel stops in the middle of a story about a duel and starts again a beat late. He flicks a look over to Serenity, his eyes on the left side of her throat where the diamonds don’t reach.
My own mouth is wet. I don’t fight it.
Odile catches my eye across the table, reads my face well enough, and turns to her boys.
“Théo. Julian. Go find the billiards room. There’s one somewhere in this mausoleum, I promise you.”
“Is there?” Théo looks delighted at the prospect of a mausoleum with a billiards room in it.
“There’s a game room off the gallery,” I say. “Third door.”
They go, taking a bottle with them. The room settles once they’re gone.