Chapter 37 Gideon
Gideon
Celeste: You’re going to be amazing tonight. I think she’ll love it!
Alaric: If you hurt her, I have the testicle-severing blade ready.
ARABELLA GLARES AROUND THE REPLICA of her theatre, her lips pursed tightly together.
“I’ve stunned the great Arabella Lestrange into silence.” I try to sound flippant, but my pitch rises, betraying my fear. I don’t know yet if this is good speechless or if she’s going to use her sword necklace to carve out my spleen and force me to eat it.
Her obsidian eyes narrow on me. “How?”
The question throws me. In the gaping chasm of secrets between us, she’s opted to grasp for something almost… benign. “I remembered.”
“How?” she repeats, stepping into the club, her fingers grasping the back of a velvet-clad sofa. “I created La Petite Mort and I don’t remember it this well.”
I shrug. “A hundred and fifty years of dreaming about this place, of grieving the woman who owned it, of wishing I could be back here with you, of hoping foolishly for a second chance to make it right. Alaric helped me to translate my memories into pictures. Claude and édouard left behind sketches of some of the interiors, and they helped fill in the blanks.”
“You did this.”
Her words are a serpent kissing my skin, cold and dripping with venom.
“Before you rip my head off and pickle it in absinthe, please, let me ask you a question. Why do you think I built Sanctus Estate?”
She scoffs. “To make millions of dollars. It’s precisely what I would have done if I had the resources to achieve it.”
“I’m touched by how little you think of me.
” I flop down on one of the velvet sofas so she won’t notice how much my legs are trembling.
“The money is a part of it. I won’t lie.
I like nice things. I like feeling safe in a world that hasn’t always been safe for us.
But the reason I built this place is because of you. ”
“Me?”
I pick up an absinthe glass and fill it with soda.
I need something to do with my hands so they’ll stop shaking.
“Everything in my life has been penance for what I did to you. When Lucien turned me into a vampire, it messed me up because I always thought I had the power. But for women, it’s all so normal as to be completely mundane. ”
“What’s normal?”
“Someone taking what isn’t theirs. For you to then have to rely on that person.
For you to scream into the night but no one hears you, or they hear you but they don’t care.
I thought about you, and about everything you’d said about La Petite Mort being your home, something you created for yourself, and I realised that even if you’d sent that scarred creature after me—”
“I didn’t.”
“—that you did it because you’d been trying to build something without him, and I ruined it all.
I met vampires in Vega’s business who were there not because they wanted an afterlife of crime but because they had no other option if they wouldn’t – or couldn’t – be part of a court.
I tried to give them options. My own home had never been a place of sanctuary, so I tried to offer sanctuary for those who were outcasts even among our kind.
And yes, along the way I busted a few kneecaps and turned a few enemies’ skulls into fine tea sets.
When this land came up for sale, I sold all my shares in Vega Enterprises and founded Sanctus.
I wanted it to be a place where all vampires could feel safe.
And meanwhile, you were out there, alive, doing such amazing things that you put my little efforts to shame. ”
Her voice tinges with sadness. “I make rich vampires richer, Gideon. I’m hardly creating world peace.”
“That’s not what I heard.” I grin. “I googled la dame fléau de la Salpêtrière.”
Arabella lets out a slow breath. Her body stills, her hand clasping the sword at her throat.
“Arabella.”
“Yes?”
“When you got sent away for being an unregistered courtesan, did you slay every doctor and nurse in that institution so you could free the female inmates?”
“Perhaps.”
I grin. “You are so beautiful.”
My compliment doesn’t have the usual effect. Her eyelashes flutter shut. She almost looks like she wants to cry. I quickly add a shot of blood to my drink and take a long sip. That’s better. I feel more like myself with blood on my tongue.
“When I was designing Sanctus, I couldn’t stop thinking about La Petite Mort.
It was my sanctuary. The happiest nights of my life were spent in that confessional booth, playing backgammon with you and spilling my secrets, or sitting with the artists, mesmerised by Claude’s brush or Victor’s sharp wit or you.
Mostly you. I thought you died, and I wanted to keep this piece of you alive. ”
I bite back a rising panic, a sense that I’m walking along the edge of a bridge and below me are the turgid waters of the Seine. One false step and I could fall, and Arabella would be torn away from me again.
Arabella glares at the empty stage, eyebrow twitching.
“It’s not an exact copy.” I hurry on before I try to take back my words. “But I did hunt down an antiques dealer in Paris who was selling off the statues that survived the fire, and I even found one of the old confessional booths. Alaric carved these others for me.”
Arabella frowns at the gleaming marble bar and the giant gilded cage hanging over the dance floor. “I see you’ve modernised.”
“I made some improvements.”
“You’ve modernised.”
“We couldn’t very well have gas lamps and privies.
I’d have a vampire revolt on my hands. Usually, this place is pumping, but tonight it’s just ours.
Cocktail?” I gesture to the ornate absinthe fountain on the bar behind us.
“We’ve painstakingly recreated the bloodsinthe you used to serve, right down to finding the perfect brand of French absinthe. ”
Arabella still hasn’t said anything. Reluctantly, I turn away from her to perform the traditional la louche ritual she loves.
I place her bloodsinthe on a tray next to a single shot of blood for me.
Arabella takes both glasses. She swallows the shot in one quick motion, and holds the bloodsinthe to her lips and takes a long sip.
I pour myself another blood shot and take a sip as she asks, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
I swallow. “Because I was afraid of hurting you. You didn’t want to remember the past, and here I am with this effigy of it. I didn’t want you to hate me.”
“Nothing’s changed. I still don’t want to live in the past, and I still hate you.”
She says it without venom, and my foolish heart dares to hope.
“Everything’s changed. You need a place to hold the variety show. I know you’re only directing it because Beth and Maisie twisted your arm, but I thought you could have it here.”
Arabella turns away, playing with the sword around her neck. I hear the rush of air as she breathes out, straightening her shoulders, steadying herself. Have I messed up again? I wasn’t even trying to win her over. I just want to help and—
“Let me make sure I understand this,” she says.
“You want to invite the village of halfwits, future murder victims, and extras in the next terrible teen vampire novel adaptation into your super secret exclusive vampire club? You want Beth trying to sell everyone her beauty elixirs while Isis Meriwether traipses all over the estate pretending to tell fortunes and Komal and Augustin Durant finally either eviscerate each other or fuck on the DJ booth? Why?”
“Because it will make you smile.”
“Hmm.” She stands up and whips my drink from my hands. I reach up to grab it back, but she spins away. Her heels clack on the floor as she steps up the narrow staircase onto the stage. “I’ll show you what will make me smile.”