Chapter Six
MINA
The confrontation over breakfast had drained me, so I spent the morning on an easy, mindless task — painting the last third of the hallway leading to the east wing an off-white color called Antique Lace. Madame Picard arrived at eleven to manage meals, and thank goodness for that.
I tiptoed into the kitchen an hour after the men had lunch, not ready to face them yet.
“Sit. Eat. You work too much,” Madame Picard recited her usual refrain.
I slid into a stool, gratefully accepting the tarte flambée she’d saved for me. One bite of the creamy Alsatian flatbread, and I groaned.
“So good.”
“It is,” she agreed, all matter-of-fact. “Your guests liked it too.”
Your guests, not ours. She’d been skeptical of my income-generating ideas from day one, but this was the twenty-first century. I had a chateau to maintain without a family fortune or crew of servants.
I munched quietly away, watching her chop vegetables for soup.
Bene wandered in just then, and Madame Picard pointed at him with a knife.
“Out of my kitchen.”
He stuck up his hands. “Just looking for a snack.”
“You just had lunch,” Madame protested. “A big lunch that you devoured like ravenous wolves.”
“Ravenous lions,” he corrected earnestly.
She waved the knife again. “Out.”
He gave her his best lost puppy look — er, lost cub? — with wide, sad eyes, but she didn’t relent.
“Out, I said.”
His hurt expression said, Hey, that works with everyone else.
Ha. Not with her.
He slunk away without another word.
A minute later, an idea struck me. I took another huge bite of tarte flambée, grabbed two scones, and raced after Bene.
“What’s that?” Madame called after me.
I winked. “A bribe.”
It took me a good five minutes to track Bene down. The building was that big, with multiple staircases and hallways to disappear down. Eventually, I found him sunning himself on the south lawn.
“Bene,” I called.
He cracked one eye open, then closed it. “What?”
“I need help.”
“I’m busy,” he said, not bothering to open his eyes.
Obviously.
I used the reset trick that worked like a charm with fifth graders. “I need help.”
He yawned a mighty lion yawn, letting his teeth extend. “Help with what?”
I crossed my arms. “Help with the house.”
He snorted. “You mean, the chateau.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m trying not to sound pretentious. Besides, house works better than chateau.”
He cracked open one eye. “How?”
“You don’t tell someone, come on over to my chateau, or my chateau is your chateau…”
He laughed, and I held up the scones.
He licked his lips, then shot me a suspicious look. “One for you, one for me?”
I shook my head. “Both for you. For an easy half hour of work, max.”
A grossly overoptimistic estimate, but he didn’t need to know that.
I crooked a finger and led him upstairs. Way upstairs, into the attic.
“So, you inherited this whole place, huh?” he asked as we climbed the stairs.
“My grandmother left it to me, my sister, and my cousin.”
“Not your mother or father?”
“My mom and aunt both refused it. They said they didn’t want to die with a mountain of debt and responsibilities.” I sighed. “I’m starting to see why.”
He chuckled. “I guess there’s a good and a bad side to everything.”
We wound around the next set of stairs.
“So, you have a sister, huh?” Bene asked. “I guess she’s the nice one?”
I glared, communicating, No scones for you, buster.
“I mean, is she as nice as you?” He hurried to correct himself.
I decided not to grace that with an answer.
We reached the attic hallway, where I pointed out the tools and materials I’d prepared earlier, handed him the scones, and explained the task at hand.
“You want a what?” he asked, wiping crumbs from his mouth.
“A partition,” I repeated, reaching across the narrow hallway. “Right here.”
He rubbed his chin. “Why?”
“I have a problem with…er…”
He raised an eyebrow, not getting it.
“Bats,” I finally said.
His eyes widened. “Oh. Big bats?”
I nodded. “Very big.”
“I see.” He studied the space. “Do these bats need a door to pass back and forth?”
I shook my head. “Definitely not.”
“Not very practical,” he pointed out. “For anyone other than the bats, I mean.”
“Not my priority.”
“And what is?”
Staying alive seemed too blunt, so I settled for, “Getting a good night’s sleep.”
“Gotcha,” he said.
Lions — especially males — weren’t known for being overly zealous when it came to anything other than sunning themselves or scoring dates.
But I had to hand it to Bene. He turned out to be a damn good assistant.
With me measuring and sawing beams and him hammering them into place, we had a frame up in no time.
It was warm up there, though, and soon, his gray T stuck to his chest with sweat. A welcome diversion, I had to admit. One I allowed myself because I’d had a shitty night and a tough morning. I deserved a little pep-me-up.
All very innocent, of course. Lion shifters were notorious womanizers and definitely not my type, even if this one had the body of a Viking.
Bene made surprisingly good company too, happy to chat about anything but himself.
“All those places you’ve lived… Do you have more than one passport?” I asked.
“I do,” was all he was willing to divulge.
“And you decided to work for Gordon because…”
“Oh, you know. Time for a change.”
“From what?”
“From my previous job.”
Okay, I got the point. No talking about personal stuff.
I turned back to my circular saw and continued cutting planks to size.
“How was your night?” I asked as Bene held the first one in place. A perfect fit.
“Great. We made a few changes, though.”
I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to ask.
“Got my own room now,” Bene went on without prompting.
I couldn’t help myself. “So, the other guys are sharing, then?”
“Nah. We each got a room. Marius and Henrik moved upstairs.”
“They what?” I squawked.
“Well, you know how it is,” Bene said, then dropped his voice to a growly bass, imitating Marius. “Dragons need space.”
I clicked my jaw. That had not been the plan.
“So, we have cats on one level, the dragon above, and the vampire above that,” he said.
My blood went cold. “Above, where?”
“Roux and I are on the ground floor, just where you put us.” Bene held his hand flat, then put the other hand above it. “Marius is one flight up, same level as the drawing room.” Then he moved the bottom hand to the top, marking another story. “Henrik took the top.”
“The top, where?” I demanded.
Bene jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Down there.”
I stared into the darkness at the end of the hallway.
Bene must have caught my expression. “You did tell us to rearrange if we wanted to.”
“The furniture. I said, rearrange the furniture.”
He made a face. “Okay, okay. But, hell. Would you want to room with a vampire?”
“No.” I slapped a hand against the partition frame. “I wouldn’t.”
“Smart.” He chuckled. “Not that this will hold him if he really wanted to get through.”
“No, but it will remind him he’s not wanted.”
“Good luck with that,” he muttered, then caught himself. “I mean, good plan.”
“Do you have a better one?”
“No. But for whatever it’s worth, I think he’ll play by the rules from now on.”
I snorted and got back to sawing planks. Enough for a double layer.
Just in case.
* * *
Thanks to the partition — and the thick string of garlic and the massive crucifix I’d dug out of storage to hang on my side of the structure — I slept slightly better that night, and even better the next.
Over the next few days, things settled into something like a rhythm, and at the end of the week…
“Roux,” I said as breakfast wound down the following Saturday.
“Yes?” He turned, waiting.
A big improvement over our first meeting. These days, he actually noticed me.
Good. I was starting to make an impression. Even if that impression was grouchy, I would take it.
“Are you ready?” I asked, bracing myself for a decisive no.
Roux looked less than thrilled, but he did nod. “We’re ready, as promised.”
“Yeah. Put us to work, boss,” Bene chirped.
I led them out to the north stable block, where I pulled the double doors open and motioned around.
“We need to make the property earn its keep by renting it out for events,” I explained. “You know — weddings, retreats, photo shoots…”
Bene shot Henrik a look, muttering, “Funerals…”
I ignored him the way I did when kids cracked jokes in class. “The plan is to start here, so we have a big, multipurpose space that we can start renting soon — next spring, I hope. When this is done, we’ll move on to creating accommodations and developing other venues.”
“We?” Roux asked, sounding a little worried.
“Not you guys,” I chuckled. “We have a three-year plan.”
“She means her, her sister, and her cousin,” Bene filled in.
So, ha. He’d actually listened. The only gold-star student in an otherwise challenging class.
“Why aren’t they here to help?” Roux asked.
“They’re coming as soon as they can. Dora is finishing her master’s degree, and Gen is…um, getting her affairs in order.”
Affairs in every sense of the word, but I didn’t elaborate.
I waved at the junk that had been heaped inside the barn over the years — everything from decades-old farm equipment to building supplies, furniture, and two beautiful old carriages.
“So, all this needs to be sorted or binned.” I motioned to the dumpster I’d had trucked in the previous week.
Henrik looked affronted. “You mean to say, you expect us to perform unskilled labor?”
I nodded firmly. “Yes — unless you have relevant skills. Does anyone know anything about plumbing, for instance?”
When no one moved, Bene raised his hand. “I know how to flush.”
I sighed and made a mental note. Maybe no gold star yet.
“Roux and Bene, please start there. Marius, over there, please. And Henrik…” I shot him a thin smile and pointed up. “You get the loft — or should I say, the attic?”
Bene snickered.
“I’ll circulate to let you know what we’re discarding and what we’ll keep,” I continued. “The goal is to eventually clear this central space.”
That area was big enough to rig up both of the carriages at once, and the roof was highest there. Someday, it would make a hell of an event space, with stables branching out in two long wings. Right now, though, it was a hell of a mess.
Roux whistled, spotting the classic car in one corner.
“Is that what I think it is?”
I nodded. “1933 Jaguar SS100. We called it Chitty Chitty Bang Bang when we were kids.”
Judging by their expressions, I’d just committed classic car blasphemy akin to calling the Mona Lisa a doodle.
“This is at least a decade older,” Henrik sniffed, probably speaking from personal experience in that era.
“We want to use it for weddings, but we’ll have to get it fixed first. Right now, it’s—”
“Off-limits?” Bene guessed.
I nearly said You bet your tawny ass it is, but a lightbulb went off in my head.
“Yes — off-limits except to the person who clears the most junk today. I’ll let him sit in it when we’re done.”
“Just sit?” Bene pouted.
With offended looks and grumbles, they set about work. But boy, did they work. Quickly. Efficiently. Effortlessly — lifting and moving items I would barely have been able to budge by myself.
Apparently, a chance to outcompete one another and sit in a classic roadster was motivation enough.
I spent a few minutes directing Bene and Roux, then moved to the corner Marius had claimed.
He held up a six-foot steel lamp with one hand. “Trash or keep?”
Three new words uttered just for me, all in a low, gravelly voice that electrified my girl parts.
“Trash,” I said. “Please.”
He chuckled. “That ugly?”
I nodded. “Hideous. Unless you want it for your room.”
He shook his head. “Got everything I need. Or, almost.”
His voice dropped an octave, and I might have suspected some kind of cryptic innuendo if he hadn’t cleared his throat and whirled away.
I grabbed a box of appliances to sort through later and moved on to check in with Henrik…but having no desire to join a vampire in the shadowy attic, I returned to Roux and Bene instead. After a few minutes, I wandered to my own area and checked a pile of boxes stacked as high as my eyes.
Thomas — books and notes, the top one was labeled in my grandmother’s neat print.
A lump formed in my throat, and I reached for it. It was heavy as hell, as I realized when it started to tip out of my hands.
Ugly visions flashed through my mind — visions of my dad’s books lying all over the dirty floor and me crying among them, the last, precious reminders of a lost loved one. Items that deserved better than to be packed away and forgotten in a barn.
I grunted, trying to stabilize the box over my head. But I wobbled, and it did too, tipping far enough to crash.
At the last possible second, though, it floated out of my hands, and a warm, firm presence pressed against my side.
“Got it,” Marius murmured.
I skittered away before the box fell on my head and patted another box at knee level. “Over here, please.”
I had no idea what the box weighed, but it was a lot, though Marius swung it down with barely a grunt.
“Thank you. Thank you,” I murmured again and again, running both hands over the cardboard.
It’s just a box, his expression said.
Not just a box. A treasure chest.
“Thank you,” I whispered again.
Well, I meant to. But our eyes met, and I went all tongue-tied.
Marius, too, and for a moment, we stood quietly, trapped in time.
Henrik thumping around the attic… Bene cracking a joke to Roux…
Everything faded away, and all I saw was the universe in Marius’s eyes.
A softer, gentler universe than the dystopian view I expected to find, with a warm breeze and a peaceful landscape of vineyards and forests as seen from high, high above.
Then Roux called out, breaking the spell.
“Hey, Mina. Where do you want this table?”
I blinked, then gulped, because I’d just been brushed by moonlight. It felt like it, at least — one of those rare moments when an ancestor’s gift briefly emerged, giving me a power I didn’t ordinarily have — in this case, glimpsing the state of someone’s soul at a given moment in time.
Or maybe my mind was just muddled by the rush of emotions my father’s things had set off. Marius certainly didn’t look as gobsmacked as I felt. And the scene I’d imagined was peaceful, while Marius was anything but.
So, just wacky emotions, I decided.
“Over there, please,” I called to Roux. Then I nodded to Marius as casually as I could.
“Thanks,” I said, more businesslike this time.
He replied as cooly as ever. “De rien.” — literally, it was nothing.
I watched his back as he moved away. Was it really nothing, though?