Chapter 5 Francois
Francois
Arumbling sound echoed down the hallway outside my room, and I glanced at the doorway. Wheels were turning out there. A cart of some sort. But when a woman—a vampire—I’d never met before rolled it into view, it was a cart full of garment bags.
I stood and swept a mocking bow of welcome. “Step into my parlor…” Said the spider to the fly. But I left those words unspoken.
“Francois.” She greeted me with a slight incline of her head, her pronunciation of my name perfect.
But who the hell was she?
I smiled. It was a courtly smile. On the verge of being charming, even. I knew that. I’d used that smile often enough through my life to know the effect it had on women. “I seem to be at a disadvantage…?” I let the words trail off in question—a space for her to fill in her name.
She giggled, and the sound tightened all of my muscles and chilled my bones. It was needlessly girlish but it carried a dark, deadly edge underneath. Like she’d smile sweetly while she clawed someone’s heart from their chest.
I had no doubt this woman could be a formidable enemy. I filed the knowledge away.
She tossed her hair back, and a wave of sickly, candied perfume washed in my direction, polluting the air around me. “Nicole.” She giggled again before adding, “And I’m at your service.” She almost purred the last part.
I kept my smile frozen to my face, despite the fact I had no interest in her.
She was clearly vampire, but that wasn’t the issue.
Vampires often mated with vampires or simply used each other for fun.
It was often a mutually beneficial relationship given that vampires were a lot less fragile than humans.
But I’d never been interested in having a vampire companion. I’d sought my mate to stave off family madness…and then I’d brought about my own madness in my quest to forget and remove myself from the lifestyle my father had created.
In short, I’d created my own fucking madness. By running from the possibility, I’d run to it.
“Francois?” Nicole’s voice intruded on my thoughts. “Shall we begin?”
I renewed my smile to conceal my confusion. Why was she here? How long had I been in lost in my thoughts? I started to shake my head but nodded instead, stepping back a little to allow her farther into my space—but only as far as I decreed.
She tugged the rack of garment bags a little closer, and two male vampires lingered outside the doorway between her.
“Serge and Claude.” She waved absently in their direction.
I glanced at them, taking in all I could in the brief moment, making my examination of them look casual and careless. Interesting. The burliest of them stood with his toes right against the doorway, but he ventured no closer. Did the enchantment keep him out as it kept me in?
Or did he simply choose not to cross? Most vampires couldn’t work magic, and although we often employed the services of witches, there were still some among us who were suspicious and afraid. That was an interesting trait for a security guard.
“Don’t mind Serge.” Nicole spoke, answering my internal questions. “He’s not long awoken, and there are still some things he’s having a hard time with.”
I filed away that information, too, and tried to redirect my focus back to Nicole.
But it was difficult. The knowledge that my mate was nearby thrummed a steady and unfamiliar beat through my entire being.
Hunger gnawed at my gut—for something more satisfying than whatever the Ancients kept providing me with.
My mate’s blood would satisfy me. It would cure me. I needed her.
Nicole sighed and reached toward the rack, eyeing me as she did so. Her lip curled, revealing sudden distaste. “Maybe they were right about you,” she muttered. “The mad prince. Perhaps your mind is gone already.”
I remained quiet. It suited me for her to believe whatever she chose to regarding my intelligence or lack thereof. Especially lack thereof. I’d learn a lot more that way. Escape from the Ancients and the freedom of New Orleans from whatever reign they had planned would be a long game.
I wasn’t usually so patient. Perhaps my time with the Duponts had taught me something.
Father would roll in his eternal grave if he hadn’t been scattered on the wind.
His feud with the Duponts was longstanding and bitter, and I’d always bought into it and been a part of it—but when I considered it now, I’d never truly understood it.
New Orleans had been my home for a very long time indeed, though. No matter how long the Ancients’ fought me, I’d fight back. I’d wait. I’d win. New Orleans belonged to no one but me.
Well, and currently Nicolas Dupont. But it had always been my city.
And I would save it.
“You have no idea of the power under your roof right now.” Nicole spoke again as she turned her back to me, clacking impatiently through the coat hangers.
Her voice was little more than a murmur but it was as if she’d forgotten that I was also vampire, that my hearing was at least as good as hers—if not better because I could almost guarantee I had age on my side.
Age didn’t usually debilitate vampires the way it did humans. We usually grew stronger rather than weaker, frailer. In that way, my father’s frequent bouts of stasis had been unusual. His weakness had made him vulnerable, so he had molded me.
But perhaps Nicole merely thought me crazy after all, rather than deaf—and either way unlikely to respond to her or maybe even likely to retain the information.
“Comment, mon ange?” I threw myself onto my chaise as I lazily asked her to repeat herself. I didn’t need her to. After all, I was neither deaf nor crazy, but she didn’t need to know that. Well, not entirely crazy, at least.
She smiled as she turned to face me, and it was extra bright, extra wattage, extra false. “I have the perfect suit for you to wear this evening.”
I glanced at my frilled cuffs.
Her smile faded. “Something far more modern than you’re wearing now. I can tailor it to you. Make the most of…” She chewed her lower lip as fleeting longing crossed her face. “Everything.” She flapped her hands ineffectively toward me as her gaze dropped to my crotch.
I smiled although I felt nothing. Usually, if an attractive woman looked as though she literally wanted to eat me, my body responded. But not this time. My thoughts were only for my mate. “So. The suit.”
She frowned slightly in response to my barely worded statement. “There are people for you to meet.”
“Ah, yes.” The party Clémence had mentioned. She’d made it sound important. “And I need a new suit?”
“Of course.” Nicole’s lip curled. “When I said there are people for you to meet, I meant there are important people.”
“Mais oui…” I nodded as I agreed with her, deliberately playing dumb. “And I am dressed in my finest, oui?” I held out my arm, observing the dirt clinging to the lace as it partly concealed my hand.
She sniffed but didn’t say anything, her disapproval plain.
I narrowed my eyes at her back as she turned and fussed with something still hanging on the rack. She wouldn’t treat me like this if I was still Prince of New Orleans.
Her disrespect displeased me, and memories of my old life crowded my brain again. I could have been drunk on that power. Maybe sometimes I had been.
I opened my mouth to challenge her, but a pale woman flickered into being at the edge of my view, and I stopped. No, I’d been right before. I had to play along with whatever the Ancients wanted. It was my best shot at achieving a future. I looked directly at my ghost.
She was mine in all ways. She visited me, I’d created her. And now she’d brought me back to my senses.
“I’ll change.” I bit out the words but softened then with a deliberately slow smile. Something a little suggestive, in case she turned around. “Shall we see how I look, chérie?”
Nicole’s back stiffened at my use of the endearment darling. “Take your time.” She waved awkwardly toward the small bathroom.
I looked at myself in the mirror, laughing at the beliefs humans still held about vampires having no reflection. If only we were so easy to spot.
I held my arm out and grimaced at my cuff.
It finished so…so…short. Where was the drape of fabric, the flamboyance, in modern clothing?
Why were men no longer peacocks, presenting themselves in riches and finery, offering themselves to ladies?
I shook my head. That much in life was a competition, surely?
Although, I’d never found my princess or my mate before. So maybe the clothing didn’t matter.
I knew exactly where my mate was now, and I still couldn’t access her.
“Looking good, Francois.”
I whirled around at the musical voice and the slightly grating laugh that followed it. “Maybe you should have updated your wardrobe before now.”
I tried to focus on the ghost, but she was fuzzy.
“Eh…” I behaved like I was considering her suggestion, examining my sleeve again. “Non.”
She laughed again, the sound less grating this time, like it was getting easier to do. “You need to be strong.”
I shivered at the warning in her words, but when I started to ask for more details, she’d already faded from view, returning to wherever ghosts lingered—whatever I’d condemned her to.
Perhaps she was still here, simply out of sight.
I hadn’t paid enough attention to that area of the supernatural community, and why would I have?
Ghosts visited those they chose to, and they held allegiance to no king.
They earned no place on the regular censuses I’d carried out.
We were equally as useless to each other.
Except no longer.
My ghost seemed to have a use for me now. Or I for her. I couldn’t tell yet.
I dressed as best I could in the suit Nicole had left me, studying myself in the mirror one last time before I returned to the butler’s parlor to wait for my next instructions. Oui, I looked sharp. But I didn’t truly look like myself. The man in the mirror, dressed in these clothes, was a stranger.