Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Alexandru
An exceedingly unpleasant racket erupts just outside my chamber window one afternoon. I fling the shutters open to the blinding sunshine, fully prepared to demand silence, only to see Ms. Renfield perched on the east turret, dark hair whipping in the wind, barking orders at Gregor.
She balances on the narrow battlement—absurdly close to the drop—as the two of them attempt to secure some ungainly metal disc into the ancient stone. Likely another piece of her infernal “infrastructure.”
A rope is tied around her waist, but it is not adequate. The knot is careless. Gregor should know better.
She leans out, tightening a bolt with a wrench, her voice brisk, her movements fast. No hesitation. No sense of scale or consequence.
She could fall.
I remain at the window longer than I intend, intensely annoyed.
Why should I care? There are other Renfields.
She glances up suddenly, as if she can feel my gaze. And then—God help me—she waves. A flick of the hand. Utterly casual. Utterly unbothered.
I let the shutters fall shut with more force than necessary and return to my chair, but I find I can’t settle. The clink of tools continues. Boots scrape against stone. Voices rise and fall. And that ridiculous rope.
Eventually, they retreat to the basement to install a generator—some humming, gasoline-reeking contraption.
The next day, she bursts into the library, cheeks flushed, a whirlwind of energy. “We’re in business, baby!” she announces, waving a glowing rectangle above her head like a victorious general hoisting a captured banner.
“Am I to be impressed?”
“Oh yes,” she says, grinning ear to ear. “I am going to blow your mind.”
“Unlikely,” I say.
Cheerfully, she presses on. With Gregor’s help and several “Fiverr freelancers”—whatever that means—she begins what she calls “the great digitization” of my empire.
I stand in the doorway of the library, arms folded, watching her fingers move like spiders over the strange device.
“You expect me to entrust centuries of records—holdings, accounts, acquisitions—to this insignificant contraption?”
She doesn’t look up. “Yup.”
“What happens when it fails?”
“That’s the beauty of it. Everything is backed up to the cloud.”
I sigh. “You wish me to believe my affairs can be stored in vapor and mist?”
She pushes her glasses up her nose. “It’s a network of secure servers. Multiple redundancies. If this laptop were destroyed right now, we’d lose nothing.”
“I’ve seen empires rise and crumble, Ms. Renfield. Each believed their systems infallible.”
“Well, what happens if a fire sweeps through the castle and burns all your paper records? What’s your big plan for that?”
I smile faintly. “This castle is made of stone. It has withstood centuries of war and petty arson attempts from superstitious villagers.”
“Yeah, well, you said I could modernize. It’s in the contract.”
“You are free to modernize as much as you like,” I say. “I would only ask that you retain your father’s ledgers, should your vapor and mist decide to vanish.”
“Fine by me. But check this out.” She turns the glowing square toward me. “Look at this spreadsheet of your European holdings.”
“What is this? An electric ledger?”
“Yes! That’s exactly what it is. An electronic ledger. It’s called a spreadsheet. Everybody uses them now. The Bank of Romania, the London Stock Exchange—it’s all spreadsheets. Electronic data.”
She begins to click and tap.
“This whole sheet is just your London properties. But check this out—when I bring the rents up to market parity, which they are very much not at, this restructuring alone increases your annual revenue by thirty percent.”
Numbers flash across the screen—columns shifting, totals recalculating. It happens so quickly, it’s difficult to make sense of it all.
“See? Old rent.” Tap tap. “New rent.” Tap tap tap. “Old income. New income.”
“It calculates the numbers simultaneously?”
“Yes! It’s like having a hundred scribes—really good ones.”
I frown. I do not sense deception from her, but it all seems outlandish.
“Tiny little scribes. Always there when you need them. They never sleep, never complain, never make mistakes. Guaranteed.”
I narrow my eyes, intrigued. “Like scribes kept in a dungeon. And they know that anything less than precision means death.”
Her smile falters. “Well… okay.”
“And they are chained to the wall. Each one scratching ink across parchment with fingers worn to the bone. They write ceaselessly through the night.”
“Yeah, sure!” she says, brightening. “Except the scribes are made of energy. Kind of.”
I contemplate this. I’ve seen enough technological change in the ten-plus centuries I’ve walked this earth to know that progress can seem outlandish at first. And this Renfield is not delusional, that much I have gathered.
I ask to see the numbers once more. “Thirty percent is impressive.”
Her pretty cheeks harden as though she’s suppressing a smile.
“And they are willing to pay it.”
She nods. “It’s market rent.”
“How did you divine market rent so quickly?”
“My... electronic ledger allows me to communicate with experts all over the world.”
Such an increase in profit across all of my holdings would be nothing short of stunning. I nod my approval. “Carry on.”
She and Gregor toil away at this digitization process, whatever that is.
On her fifth night at the castle, she appears at my study door clutching her electronic ledger, practically vibrating with excitement over some discovery among the American holdings—investments that have apparently sat untouched since the nineteen seventies.
“Dormant!” she announces, as if this single word explains everything.
She should not have approached me without invitation. I should correct this breach immediately, but her eager expression and sparkling eyes suggest she knows something I need to hear.
“Just... dormant!” What I see gleaming in her eyes isn’t simple joy—it’s the predatory satisfaction of a hunter who has spotted fresh tracks. I find this pleasing.
“You will address this matter,” I command.
“I will,” she says. “I’ve already reached out to a new property management company. Your old one… I don’t even know what to say. Your income is going to go through the roof, Alexandru!”
She should be proud of having served me well... so what is this nervousness I detect?
“And?” Her father had a habit of offering good news before presenting something I would not like.
“I’ve created a twelve-month projection, and I’m not even done getting everything shipshape, but...” She makes a mark on the glowing screen with the strange white pencil she sometimes uses and turns it to me. “Look who’s going to pass the billionaire threshold. And that’s in euros, Alexandru!”
I blink, surprised. “That is indeed impressive,” I say.
“I’ll say. And I have something else for you.”
Again, I sense nervousness. Fear, even. Here is the bad news, then.
She reaches into her satchel and produces an electronic ledger much like her own and places it in front of me.
“This is for you and Gregor. I’ve already shown Gregor how to use it.
It’s very simple.” She opens the cover, and it emits a chime.
Images arrange themselves on the screen.
“Do you see this picture of an envelope? This is how I send messages to you and Gregor.” She taps the screen, and the words Hello, Alexandru Miramonte! appear.
“Unsuitable. You will speak to me directly if you have a message.”
“Okay, well, I’m super glad you said that because I have the perfect device for us to speak directly.
” She pulls a small block from her bag and lifts a cover.
A glowing grid of numbers appears. “This is a Jitterbug phone. It’s made to be super simple and will allow us to talk at any time, day or night. ”
“I will speak with you directly or not at all.”
“But this is for speaking directly. Check it out—I’m going to go into the hallway and call you. When it makes a sound, I want you to lift the lid and press the green button. See what happens.”
Before I can object, she vanishes.
Moments later, the infernal device begins to shriek. I crush it in my hand and toss it into the fire.
She returns seconds later. “Uh, there are toxic metals in that phone. You can’t burn it!”
I raise an eyebrow.
“Never mind. I bought extras.” Her heartbeat accelerates in full-on fear. “You’re going to have to learn to use it.”
“I will do no such thing.”
“I suppose we could stick with the rotary phone for direct communication, but eventually you’re going to have to learn this.”
“Again, you will speak to me in person or not at all.”
Her pulse spikes now. She sets down her electronic ledger and adjusts her glasses. “Actually, you will need to use it because I won’t be in the castle.” She shifts her posture, making herself as upright as possible. Armoring herself. “I’m going back to Ohio tomorrow.”
I frown. “Is this a joke?”
She swallows, fear ratcheting higher. “Here’s the thing—I’ll be working remotely from now on. Per our contract.”
“Here in the castle.”
She pulls out the contract and unrolls it. “The contract stipulates here that I shall be doing remote work for you as defined by modern business parlance. Remember?”
“Because this castle is quite remote, as we established.”
“But actually, remote work means I’ll be working from my home in Ashwood, Ohio. I’ll be telecommuting. As specified here.”
“That is wrong,” I say, pointing to the text of the contract. “You will work remotely, with the castle as the center of operations.”
“Yes, but remote means I will not be onsite. It means I will not be at the castle for my work.” She wears a mask of outward calm, but her pulse bangs so hard I’m surprised the oil paintings haven’t rattled right off the walls.
My voice drops to a deep register, deeper than the dungeon. “You will remain here, as specified in our agreement.”
“Don’t you see? Remote work means working from a location other than the center of operations. Which would be somewhere other than the castle.”
I look down at the contract. A strange feeling flickers to life. Shock.
I stare at her in wonder.
“You dare to deceive me?”
She bites her lip.
When was the last time anyone had the audacity? The Renfields were too cowed. My enemies were too afraid. And yet this slip of a woman...
“There was no deception. It was a contractual negotiation,” she says quickly. “It’s not my fault you didn’t look up the terms.”
I surge to my feet, sending the baroque chair clattering across stone. “You deceived me.”
She points at the document. “I wrote exactly what you dictated.”
“You should have clarified,” I snarl. “That is your duty as my servant.”
“I wasn’t your servant when I signed that contract. You should, you know, never sign a contract you don’t understand.”
My sense of shock deepens as the reality of the situation unfolds before me.
A Renfield has tricked me.
It’s been centuries since anyone has gotten the best of me.
But a Renfield?
I could kill her now. Should. But the binding contract prevents me from harming her or her siblings as long as she upholds the terms.
“Do not think you will not pay for this,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper.
“And know this: if you fall short of what you have agreed to in our contract, the death of you and every one of your family members will be exceedingly slow and unimaginably unpleasant. And you, of course, will be last, because I will make you watch as I torture and kill them. I will be looking and waiting for you to fall short.”
She does not flinch. She straightens up, in fact. “And now I’m going to perform my duties to the absolute best of my abilities—from Ohio. You’re getting the highest quality help possible. Help that would not, on any level, be possible if I had to stay here. You’re making out like a bandit.”
I move toward her, unable to stop myself. The scent of her fills my lungs—lavender, vanilla, and the crisp bite of winter air. “Know this: you are alive because I am bound by a law older than the wind.”
I can feel something rise up in her at this last part. Good god, is she going to argue about the age of the wind?
She backs away, but not as far as she should. “I will give you the best service possible,” she says, voice quivering. “Isn’t that what you want? I’ll make you a rich man. You’ve never seen a Renfield like me.”
She backs toward the door with measured steps, never breaking eye contact. Only when her hand finds the handle does she turn and stride away—purposeful, not panicked.