Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Alexandru
I stand at an arched window battered by centuries of Carpathian winters, watching Ms. Renfield load the inferior Renfields into the waiting truck. There are tears and hugs. She kisses the cheek of the unconscious one, hair glowing in the moonlight.
This empathy is unusual for a Renfield. Their line has always been selfish, if not downright mercenary. Her father would’ve sold his own mother for a shiny new pen. I respected that about him.
Could this show of caring for these half-wits whom she has only just met be some sort of trick? I did sense deception earlier, but Renfields are exceedingly crafty. It makes them excellent assistants, but one has to take care with the tiresome process of bringing them under control.
This one will be far more trouble—I can see that now—but she’ll come to heel just as they all do. It’s the Renfields’ lot in life to serve me.
I reach for the leather-bound tome on the side table—Evliya ?elebi’s Seyahatname, the Ottoman traveler’s complete collection of maps—and settle into my favorite chair. I withdraw a silk bookmark from between its pages, the garnet bead at the end glinting like a drop of blood in the firelight.
The book falls open to where ?elebi describes the Wallachian lands I once ruled.
I’ve corrected his errors in the margins over the centuries.
Humans perceive so little of the world around them, but what need is there, really?
They are simply food. Annoying, tiresome, and often inconvenient, but food.
The truck clatters down the mountainside. I hear the creak of the outer door, and then the softer creak of the inner door. Footsteps proceed across the ballroom to the stairway that leads to the more inhabited portions of the castle.
She hesitates briefly, then begins to walk up. Her father was petrified at this stage. He never really got rid of his fear, and he carried an odor of nervous sweat about him all the time.
This one is indeed nervous—I can smell it beneath the lavender soap she uses. But deeper than that is the essence of her—spun sugar with a note of vanilla, bright and sharp like winter air.
Not entirely displeasing.
She makes her way up, one flight and then the next, pausing on the torch-lit landing one floor below, heartbeat quickening. She continues her climb toward where I sit in the main library.
This library occupies the great turret at the eastern corner of the castle—an architectural indulgence that rises three full stories into the sky. Books line the inner walls from floor to ceiling in a spiraling lattice of dark wood and ironwork.
Her father kept his desk on the east side where the morning light came in. I can see him now, hunched over his work, moving furtively from ledger to ledger, muttering and scribbling and tugging at his hair, sometimes crying out in anguish, which stopped being entertaining long ago.
I prefer the fireside reading room, a low alcove off to the side of the turret where the sun cannot reach. The chairs are overstuffed, the rug worn soft by time, and low shelves flank a small hearth.
The door creaks as she enters.
I observe her unnoticed from my shadowy nook. The rugs muffle her footsteps as she crosses the threshold.
Her eyes sweep from shelf to shelf, taking inventory of the layout and filing system. She is assessing the room, and I am assessing her, my new servant.
Her clothing is modern and functional: dark trousers and a dark knit jacket, like a man’s suit jacket, but softer and smaller.
Her raven hair is pulled back from her face in two clips, revealing the elegant line of her cheekbone, the subtle bow of her red lips.
There’s a quiet confidence to her movements.
Finally, she approaches her father’s work area. Her fingers whisper across the pages.
“What the hell,” she breathes.
Her father would never have uttered such crass words within these walls, even as his mind fractured. He was reverent with his speech, his posture always bent in submission.
As Ms. Renfield soon will be.
“What the ever-freaking hell?”
“You will mind your tongue in this castle,” I say, not raising my voice.
She nearly leaps from her skin, whirling around. These creatures. So easily startled. There’s a slight relaxation in her stance when she finally spots me in my chair, its wooden arms carved with serpents.
“You scared me!”
“Questions?”
“Honestly? This is a pretty twisted way to get help. There’s this thing called job boards?”
“That wasn’t a question.”
She meets my gaze without flinching. “Where’s your phone?”
“Gregor will show you when he gets back from town. For now, you will get to work updating my accounts and correspondence and such things.”
“Is Gregor that butler guy?”
“He is indeed that butler guy.” I return to my book.
“You don’t know where the phone is?”
“You will consult Gregor.”
“No idea, then? On the phone?”
I give her a hard look.
“What?” she protests. “You asked me if I had any questions, and that’s a question.”
“And I told you it is for Gregor to assist you with trivialities.”
Her lips part in surprise. Outrage, even.
I sigh. “One of your primary duties as my servant is to make a distinction between bothersome trivialities and questions of import. The bothersome trivialities are for you and Gregor to work out. Questions of import you may bring to me.”
“God, I thought the tech bros in Ashwood were entitled,” she mumbles.
I raise an eyebrow.
“Also, this is a question of import. A question of import from my perspective.”
“Your perspective does not matter.”
“Good grief,” she breathes.
“You will speak with decorum at all times. Know that I can hear even the quietest whisper.”
She whispers, “Can you hear this?”
“I can.”
Another whisper, light as a feather: “Can you hear this?”
“Do you know why you’re alive?” I ask.
She straightens. “You mean in a theological sense? As in, why are we here?”
“I meant, do you know why I don’t just kill you and drink every ounce of your blood before returning to my book?”
“I knew what you meant.”
“You are alive because it’s more convenient to me than killing you and training one of the others.
Your affinity for your father’s work showed me you would be up to speed faster than the others in managing my business empire.
But you are not the only choice. Once the inconvenience of you outweighs the convenience of you, you’ll take your place in the Renfield graveyard decades ahead of time. ”
Her plump lips form into a frown.
“As for the theological sense of it,” I continue. “Your kind is here to provide food for my kind. The lucky ones provide servitude.”
“So lucky,” she says.
I study her for a moment. “Do not test me.”
“As I told you, I’ll pull your empire into shape like a boss.”
I nod my head. This I do not doubt. “In his first years of servitude, your father kept a small notebook where he recorded my preferences and the best ways to serve me. You will do the same.”
“Yeah, I won’t be doing that.”
My voice goes cold as a winter grave. “This is not a suggestion.”
She crosses her arms. “It wasn’t in the contract, was it?”
“Following my commands is implied by the word servitude.”
“Not to me,” she retorts.
“Servitude,” I say, “means obedience without hesitation. Presence without question. Anticipation of needs without prompting. It means knowing what I require before I have to say it. It means you are mine to command in all things.”
“To me, servitude means precision. It means making systems that don’t fail. It means turning chaos into results. I do not fawn. I do not flatter. I do not wait on anyone’s moods. I solve problems. Efficiently—way more efficiently than anybody else you could get for this job.”
“This is truly what the word servitude means to you?”
Her pulse skitters, because of course, she knows that is not what the word means.
I rise from my chair, and she has the good sense to shrink back. “You will follow the commands I give you. You will complete the tasks that I give you.”
Her gaze flares.
“You will sort through your father’s systems and bring my accounts up to date, and you will not bother me with trivialities.”
“Or you’ll drain me and throw my dried-out body in the graveyard?”
We’re standing face to face. “As a last resort. In the meantime, there is a dungeon in this castle made for disobedient Renfields. There is no light. You will count grains of rice from a bag in the pitch-black darkness with only the spiders and rats to keep you company. I must warn you, your father was not a fan of this task. But he successfully completed it several times. Would you like to try your hand at it?”
Her expression lights with disgust. This Renfield is more animated than past ones, though it could just be I’ve become used to her father in his more recent stage, broken and subdued.
“Your most stubborn forebear lasted a full fifty-nine hours before begging to be let out.”
She watches me for a few moments, steeling herself, but I can hear her heartbeat. I can feel her fear.
But what is she thinking? Her father’s thoughts were always visible—anxiety that he might displease me, that I might punish him, that he would cease to be of use.
“That Renfield’s voice was hoarse for days afterward. The screaming, you see. The walls are thick enough, luckily, that even I can barely hear it over the crackling of a nice fire.”
Her gaze flicks out the window. I know what she’s thinking now.
“Don’t even think of attempting escape, or you’ll see the Renfield dungeon sooner than later.” I pick up my book and settle back into my chair. “Gregor will assist you with the phone. Bother me again at your own peril.”
With a huff, she spins on her heel and stomps from the room, presumably to look for the phone herself. “Whatever you say, magic-erase neck.”