Chapter 6 #2
This jolts me out of my stupor. “I’m gonna call Kip’s bar and try to see if I can find out if the Snag Tooth Riders might be in tonight. Maybe we can get a sense if they have some information on why Dooley Brogan would go after Razor Johnny. I’m thinking if they go in there at all, it’ll be late.”
“Good. Then you will dine with me in the great hall beforehand, and we will discuss next steps. Gregor, you will prepare something for Ms. Renfield.”
“He doesn’t have to go through a lot of fuss. I can just whip up some spaghetti with the noodles and tomato sauce he made the other day.” I give Gregor a smile. “You could join us with your...gruel.”
This of course, earns me a stern look. “Gregor does not wish to join us.”
“It’s customary to allow members of the household to speak for themselves.”
Gregor casts a wary glance at Alexandru, who says, “Gregor does not want to join us for a meal.”
“How do you know? Maybe he didn’t want to join you in the past, but people change their minds on things.”
“I will not change my mind, milady,” Gregor says. “Such things are not for me.”
“How do you know they’re not for you if you don’t try them?”
“Gregor does not have to try things to know that they are not for him,” Alexandru bites out.
“It is true, milady,” Gregor says, eyes downcast.
I glare at Alexandru. What else could Gregor say? He’s obviously terrified of Alexandru.
“Gregor, see to it that she has fresh bread and fresh butter to accompany her meal.”
“Yes, overlord.” Gregor makes a small bow and leaves the room.
“Well, ummm, thanks in advance, Gregor!” I say.
Because obviously Alexandru isn’t going to thank him.
I give Alexandru one last disgusted look and head to my wing down a hall lined with wall sconces that flicker with actual candles.
They cast long shadows across the oak paneling and the horrific portraits of hunts and battles I try not to look at too closely.
Needless to say, I did not do the décor on the hallway to my part of the mansion.
I don’t know what’s going on with Alexandru and Gregor. The man’s been Alexandru’s servant for around 500 years, but he’s obviously not a vampire, but did Alexandru do some creepy life extension on him like he did for my father? And why does Gregor tolerate this treatment?
I feel like he has Gregor brainwashed into thinking that he could never hope for a better life than this. It’s not okay.
I call Kip’s bar, a.k.a. the Muddy Pint, and I’m happy to find myself talking to a bartender there, or “barmaid” if you are a certain archaic somebody who my mom knows. “Just out of curiosity, do you think that the Snag Tooth Riders might be in tonight?”
“I’m pretty sure, yeah. Doing a lot of prowling, if you know what I mean. They’re like a stirred-up wasp’s nest since the killing.”
Good. That’s a perfect place to interview the members.
I answer a few emails related to Alexandru’s worldwide real estate and financial empire. It’s almost five in the evening in Ohio, which means it’s the middle of the night across Europe, but he does have San Francisco holdings, and Asia is waking up.
I sometimes wonder how my father managed all of this on his old-fashioned 1950s accountant’s ledgers.
I saw those ledgers the one and only time I ever met him when I was seventeen.
I tracked him to a tiny café in Karsovia on spring break, expecting.
..I don’t know what I was expecting. Not what I found: a harried man muttering nonsensically about “the master” and obsessing over a table strewn with ledgers.
Not just the business ledgers, but these other much weirder ledgers with black covers and mystical symbols all over the place.
I looked through one of these more mystical ledgers and asked him about it, but he was barely aware of my existence.
At one point, he plucked a fly out of the air and gobbled it up.
Not exactly the father-daughter reunion I had hoped for.
I saw those ledgers again at Alexandru’s castle when he imprisoned my half-siblings and me for his process of choosing a new Renfield. I got a little too absorbed in them. I might have even lost time.
Which was scary.
I was not thrilled to find them in a box in my wing of Kingston Manor when I moved in there. I could feel their dark pull immediately. I told Gregor to have them sent back to Eastern Europe, but Alexandru wasn’t having any of it. He has them in the mansion. Somewhere.
I dream about them sometimes. I think about them a lot. One time I found myself randomly doodling some of the symbols I saw on those pages.
I think about my father a lot, too. Did he start out normal? Did he have a job and a favorite pub in London and people who knew his name before all of this consumed him?
And who came before him? That would have been my grandparents. Scratching away in that old castle with just Alexandru and Gregor for company. What a miserable existence.
My phone pings. A text from my former boss at InovaSpire.
Serena: do you have a few minutes to hop on a Zoom with the team? Need your institutional knowledge on a Rayburn thing quick.
Me: of course!
Quitting InovaSpire was the last thing I ever wanted to do. It was a great job, and I loved being the organizational whiz, helping to put my brilliant boss, Serena’s, vision into action.
But living in Alexandru’s mansion and working for him full-time was the only way to stop him from using my town as hunting grounds.
Luckily, the InovaSpire gang still needs my knowhow. I go in for consulting once a week and I’m always up for a call.
I hop on with the four of them, all of us in our little squares.
“I know you’re dropping by tomorrow,” Serena says, “but the Rayburn contract is coming up for renewal, and you set up the original Rayburn relationship three years ago. We need to ask about some of the contingencies.”
“I popped it into our shared box,” Malik says.
I answer the team’s questions one by one.
Malik and Varla are my replacements. Malik seems to be in a great mood.
Varla is silent, and uncommunicative toward me—enough so that I wonder if I said something to offend her.
KC, our overeager former intern, who is now on staff, is in one of his oppositional moods, where he makes faces like he’s not quite sure he agrees with me on things.
At one point, he outright objects to one of my answers, insisting my interpretation conflicts with his assessment.
He explains what he means, but I patiently explain why his way doesn’t hold water, and we move on to the next question, and then some budget allocation stuff.
I forgot how nice it is to be able to arrange all these moving parts into a perfect, well-oiled machine, and to make everything make sense. Unlike my life with Alexandru, where there is so much that is inexplicable, if not downright frightening.
I get off the call and tidy up my wing, which consists of a sitting room, an office, and the grand bedroom, all exquisitely furnished.
There are two fireplaces and floor-to-ceiling windows with sweeping views of Silverton Valley.
My wing is separated from the main house by that hallway, but even from here I can smell the glorious tomato garlic pasta sauce that Gregor is cooking up.
My stomach rumbles excitedly.
I finish up and wander out into the ridiculously baroque grand foyer, underneath a grand curving stairway with a serpentine railing that is best not inspected too closely, head for the kitchen, thinking again about telling Alexandru about James.
We are working together, after all. There are times when he shows signs of humanity. Maybe the human he once was, bursting through.
What’s more, he has my back in his own weird way. And more communication is always better than less.
I stroll into the kitchen area. “What am I smelling? Gregor! Yum! And are you baking fresh bread?” I look around for him.
His voice comes from the direction of the little scullery room at the far end. He sounds out of breath.
As I draw near, I hear a rhythmic thunk-splash, thunk-splash. I stop in the doorway.
And there is Gregor, his dark green coat buttoned all the way up despite the warmth of the kitchen, vigorously pushing a long wooden plunger up and down in a tall wooden cylinder. Thunk-splash. Thunk-splash.
I stare for a moment, my analytical brain trying to process what I’m seeing. Wooden cylinder. Cream-colored liquid visible when he lifts the plunger. Repetitive motion. Kitchen setting.
“Are you...” I squint at the contraption. “Are you churning butter?”
“Yes, milady,” he gasps.
My jaw drops. “Dude, it’s the twenty-first century! We could just buy it at Gable’s Grocery.”
No answer. Gregor’s knuckles are white around the wooden handle. There’s a sheen of sweat on his tall forehead. How long has he been at this?
“In sticks. Pre-churned.”
“I am aware.” Thunk-splash. Thunk-splash.
“Not to demean or discount the very hard work that you’re doing. I’m sure it will be delicious but—”
He turns his hooded, heavy-lidded eyes to me. “It is my task.”
“Did Alexandru ask you to make butter like this? I don’t want you to go through all this trouble just for butter for me.”
“It is my task.” The plunger moves faster.
Did I upset him? Is he angry?
“Well,” I stammer, “I bet it will be unbelievably delicious.” I get out of there and stomp back out and up the grand curved staircase into the dining hall, which features a stupidly long wooden table under a weirdly pugilistic iron chandelier.
There’s a hearth off to the side with two cozy chairs. Alexandru sits in one, book in hand, relaxed and at ease.
“You’re making Gregor churn butter?”
Alexandru sighs wearily. “Yes, I heard you carrying on about it.”
“Carrying on about it? Yeah, you could say I was carrying on about it. Why give poor Gregor an unbelievably laborious task that takes whatever long it takes when we can just buy it for like, so cheap? It’s obviously very hard for him.”
He simply shrugs, like it’s beneath his notice.