4. Chapter 4
Bastien
I’m halfway down the corridor before I put a name to what I’m feeling. I stop walking when I do.
Interest.
It’s been long enough that I didn’t recognize it at first. But it arrived unexpectedly in that corridor, and hasn’t left. I tap a fingertip against my chin.
How…strange.
The escort waits three steps ahead, too well trained to hurry me. I let him wait. Behind the doors at my back, eleven women stand in silk, and ten of them I couldn’t describe an hour from now. The eleventh I could paint.
Small. Fine-boned, fair hair unbound, vivid blue eyes when she finally set them on me. Her skin was too pale, but you could see where the color used to be.
Pretty. More than pretty. But that’s not the thing. I’ve seen pretty before. Pretty doesn’t interest me.
Maybe it’s the way my mind kept skipping over her. There one minute and gone the next. As if she was blinking out of sight. Maybe the fact that I had to deliberately focus on her is the reason I committed her to memory.
Has to be that. Some sort of trick.
Clever.
The escort is waiting for me, and I look up.
“This floor,” I say. “How many buyers does Vasile see in a week?”
“That’s not mine to say, my lord.”
Trained well.
I hesitate a moment longer, pondering, then, “Lead on.”
They don’t take me back the way I came. The way I came smells of bleach over blood, and buyers aren’t meant to carry that into a conversation about money. We go up a floor, through a door with real weight to it, into a room that belongs in a different world entirely.
A wide walnut desk. Leather chairs. A rug someone probably died over.
Brandy in cut crystal on the sideboard. I run two fingers along the window frame; velvet curtain, but wood behind it, no glass, no draft.
False. Under the cologne, this floor smells like the one below it. Same bleach. Just stronger downstairs.
Vasile Dumitru arrives with the air of a man heading into the highlight of his month. Someone’s already told him what I’m worth.
“Seigneur Sébastien-Laurent de Val-Serein.” The full name, every syllable given its due, bowed over.
“Monsieur Dumitru.” I nod. “Thank you for accommodating me.”
He twists his hands together. “You honor this house, my lord. Sincerely. When your man made contact, we hoped, but one never presumes. Please, sit, sit.”
I sit while he pours me a drink and hands me a heavy glass. I take a sip.
“Is the brandy to your taste? We keep it for a small number of clients.”
“The brandy is the best thing in your building. Present company excepted. And one other.”
He laughs, warm and easy, and takes the chair across from me. Practiced. Comfortable. He’s good. No leer, no wink, none of the oiliness of the flesh trade. Whatever’s underneath the mask, he hides well.
“The exception,” he says, settling. “Yes. My floor manager told me. You indicated the fair blonde.”
“Yes. That one.” I turn the brandy, let it catch the fire, and don’t drink it. “When I said I’d like her shipped, your man went pale, which I assume is not standard training. Tell me the difficulty.”
The warmth stays in his face. The ease leaves it, just slightly, professionally.
“Most of our clients do not buy outright, Lord Val-Serein. They visit for a tasting.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
“My lord, you understand I say this with the greatest regret. That asset is designated. Sangrey line.” He says the name slowly, watching to see if it lands.
It doesn’t. I’ve never heard it.
I turn my glass a quarter turn. The brandy really is excellent.
“A rare classification,” he goes on, when my face stays expressionless.
“I’d venture the rarest we have handled.
The yield is under a standing arrangement.
Committed. If it were mine to unmake, for you, tonight…
” a small motion of the hand, palm turning up, empty, “but it is not mine. There are levels to this house. She’s not for sale, my lord. She’s reserved stock.”
Reserved.
I consider this carefully.
“Every house I’ve bought from plays this game,” I say. “One bottle kept back. Never for sale…until the number’s big enough.”
Vasile spreads both hands, wounded. “My lord, if I may—”
“You may not. I know how the game works, Vasile.”
He has the sense not to respond to that.
Except my mind keeps snagging on the girl herself, moving down that line with her heart at a dead sprint and her face dead calm. She didn’t drop her eyes once. Not when the others did. Not when I looked at her.
“Am I supposed to beg? I’ve forgotten how.”
Nerve. I like it.
People have always performed something for me. Fear, worship, hunger, or a good copy of one. She didn’t perform anything.
What are you?
Something special. I’m certain of it.
So. He’s inflating something that’s already worth inflating, and neither of us knows exactly what it is.
“Reserved for whom?”
“I’m not able to say.”
He means he doesn’t know. There’s someone above him, and someone above that, and at the top of it, somebody who’s decided she isn’t for sale. Yet.
“Then I’m not buying. I’m dining.” I set the glass down. “A tasting. Tonight, and we’ll see whether your rarest classification lives up to the experience. If she’s what your sales pitch says she is, we’ll discuss terms worth both our time.”
The relief moves through him at the shoulders before it reaches his face.
“The house would be honored, my lord. There are standards for an evening like this. Privacy. No interruption.” He pauses, and something in his face tightens before he goes on. “And one more, if you’ll permit the bluntness. She’s prime stock. I must ask that you not take her too far.”
“Define too far.”
“Further than she can give and be worth what she’s worth in the morning.
” He says it the way a man discusses inventory, because that’s exactly what it is to him.
“If it’s that kind of evening you’re after tonight, my lord—the kind that doesn’t have her walking out under her own power after—we can accommodate that easily enough elsewhere in the house.
I’d steer you clear of the redhead. More trouble than the pleasure’s worth. But any of the others, or a boy—”
“I didn’t ask for others.”
He reads that faster than I expect him to. “Of course, my lord. Forgive me. I only wanted you to have every option open to you.” He clasps his hands. “I will admit that we have never had a call for such a large variety. Our appointments are normally for a particular appetite.”
“You have a good selection,” I tell him. “I’m impressed.”
His smile broadens. “I am glad that you noticed. Our collection is well curated. During your patronage, you’ll come to find that we have something for everyone.
Magic in all forms to give the very best experience, every tasting unique.
And our stock is well maintained, unlike many of the other… ” his nostrils flare, “establishments.”
I think of those pale, half-drained women standing along the wall. Clearly cleaned up for the occasion.
“Good,” I say. “Of course, I’d want to know I’m not exposed, should the evening go further than either of us intends. What measures does the house take, in that case?”
“It hasn’t happened under my management.” His eyes shift.
“I didn’t ask if it’s happened. I asked what happens when it does.”
A beat, and he recalculates me. Not a degenerate after all, or not only that. Careful. Good.
“There’s a physician on retainer. Sedatives, if the need arises.
And should the house ever need to account for a…
loss,” he says it delicately, the way he’d report a shipment gone missing, “we deal with it quietly. Discretion is the house’s finest asset, my lord.
No client of ours has ever been made to answer for an evening spent here. Not once.”
“Who is your clientele, exactly?”
“My lord, you understand there are names I’m not free to give. Even to you.”
“Give me what you are free to give.”
He weighs that, how much flattery costs him against how much information does. “Only that they come from the very best lineages. Old blood, older names. The sort that doesn’t advertise what it collects.”
Old blood. Old names. That’s worth carrying back.
He rises, smoothing his jacket. He clears his throat. “And then, of course, the matter of the fee.”
“Of course,” I say, waving a hand.
The number he murmurs is high enough to flatter us both. Low enough to tell me the truth. He’s not selling tonight. He’s finding out what I’ll pay once he knows how much I want her.
Let him run it. I know what he’s doing.
“My lord.” He gestures to the doorway. “Please. Allow one of our attendants to take you to more suitable surroundings.”
They move me to another room deeper along the same floor, the first room in this building someone’s furnished for staying in, not passing through.
A fire. An armchair in deep leather. A decanter and one glass.
Books, real ones, old ones, spines cracked with actual reading.
I wonder whose library was emptied to furnish this room.
I pick one up, turn it over, put it back down unopened.
A knock. A young woman in compound uniform comes in with a fresh decanter and kneels at the hearth to build up the fire. Pale. Quick hands. She doesn’t look at me once.
“Anything else, my lord?” she asks once the fire is blazing.
“How often has this room been used?”
“I couldn’t say, my lord.”
“Convenient answer.”
“I have no further information, my lord.”
She’s gone before I can decide whether that’s training or fear. Probably both.
Candles somewhere behind me. Carpet thick enough to swallow a footstep. I walk to the fire and stare into the flames. My hand is steady on the mantel. It shouldn’t need to be.
Somewhere below me, down through the warm floor and the cold one under it, a door opens. Footsteps. A guard’s boots, and beside them, bare feet, light and even, coming up.
Her heartbeat arrives before she does.
It’s the blood. Has to be. Sangrey, whatever that’s worth. Rare enough that a man like Vasile held his breath before saying the name out loud.
My jaw is tight.
Rare blood. And it’s been a long time since I’ve fed well. That’s all it is.
The footsteps stop just outside.
I wait for the door.