Chapter 16
T he day of the Council presentation had come, and Tessa was so nervous, she wanted to throw up.
Earlier that week, she’d spent half of a night with Etta, trying on dresses at an upscale vampire-owned boutique that was so obviously outside of her means that she felt like an intruder the entire time. Eventually, she’d calmed down enough to enjoy the process of trying on gowns and posing before the mirrors for Etta’s input. They’d both agreed on a sapphire-blue silk gown with an off-the-shoulder neckline and a floor-length mermaid skirt.
Tessa had stared at herself in the mirror as the seamstress pinned the gown for alterations, overwhelmed. It was the nicest gown she’d ever worn, and no doubt the most expensive. Etta had blithely told the seamstress—another vampire—to have the invoice sent to Amos Hansen. The seamstress’s eyes had widened a bit at Amos’s name, and Tessa had found herself wondering who he actually was outside of their cozy, quiet nights together.
By the time the Council night arrived, Tessa had mostly forgotten the seamstress’s reaction. Instead, her thoughts were occupied with the evening ahead. At Etta’s insistence, instead of having Amos pick Tessa up from her mother’s place, Etta and Fran met Tessa there and brought her to their house, where they got ready for the night.
Their home was on the top floor of a grand old Art Deco building in the Loop. Windows on one side had a beautiful, mostly-unobstructed view of the lake, while the other side looked into the bright lights, skyscrapers, and competing architectural styles of the downtown. The inside was no less impressive, and a stark contrast to the classical elegance of Amos’s home. Fran and Etta tended towards lush fabrics and rich colors, making their home feel like the inside of a very wealthy woman’s jewelry box.
Tessa was sitting on a velvet-tufted ottoman in the most luxurious powder room she’d ever seen, wearing a borrowed silk robe, her hair in rollers, trying not to blink as Etta applied winged eyeliner in a way that Tessa had never seen before.
“I saw this on the internet and I’m obsessed,” Etta said. “I swear, makeup tutorials these days are all made by fourteen-year-old girls who do makeup better than professional artists. I’ve been playing with makeup for over a century, and they’re still better than me!”
Tessa let out a small laugh, trying not to crinkle her eyes. “I know what you mean. When I was in high school, I was obsessed with the ‘smoky eye’ look. In all my old pictures, I look like a panda. But I see high school girls today, and their makeup is flawless . What happened?”
“The internet,” Fran put in, looking up from her phone. She was lounging on the small sofa on the other side of the luxurious powder room, already dressed and ready to go in a three-piece suit cut from fabric in a deep plum color. “It’s exploded over the last decade. I can’t tell you how fast the world has changed since the nineties compared to what came before.”
“It’s just another technological revolution,” Etta said. “When I was young, old-timers were always going on about how rapidly machinery had changed the world. The internet is the new industrial revolution.”
Tessa considered that. “I wonder what the next revolution will be, then.”
“You’ll probably be around to see it,” Fran said.
Tessa blinked hard, caught off guard by the very idea.
“Oh, shit,” Etta muttered. “Smudged it. Hold still.”
Tessa said nothing, staring vaguely ahead as Etta cleaned up the mussed eyeliner with a q-tip. The reality of being Amos’s bloodmate hadn’t really sunk in until just now. Her time with Amos felt like a peaceful reprieve from the real world—a place where time didn’t matter and she could forget the outside world. But being with him forever would be a drastic change. Logically, she’d understood that he was immortal, and that as his bloodmate, she’d become functionally immortal as well. But she hadn’t truly comprehended it until now. One day, she might look back on the rise of the internet with the same distant awareness that she had for things like the industrial revolution. It was hard to fathom.
“There,” Etta said, drawing back to survey her work.
Tessa blinked the stunned vacancy out of her eyes, putting a smile on her face.
“Gorgeous,” Etta said proudly, capping the eyeliner.
Tessa turned to the mirror, unable to hold back a self- satisfied smile. She looked like a goddess, and she hadn’t even taken the curlers out.
Not much later, the doorbell rang. Etta looked up at the clock, frowning. “I told him to be here at eleven. ” It was only quarter-past-ten.
“Guess somebody couldn’t wait,” Fran said with a smirk, rising from the sofa. “I’ll keep him busy until you’re ready for the grand reveal.”
When Tessa was fully styled—makeup complete, hair done—she and Etta helped each other into their dresses. Etta was wearing a gold-beaded gown with full-length sleeves, a daringly deep neckline, and a flowing, translucent skirt.
“Alright, let me go first,” Etta said, nudging in front of Tessa. “I want to see his face when he sees you.”
She swanned out of the powder room and down the hall to the living room. Tessa followed, highly conscious of the slide of the silk around her legs and the soft sweep of her hair down her back, feeling more beautiful than she had in ages.
When she stepped into the living room, Amos was standing on the other side, next to Fran, sharply dressed in a stark black suit with a burgundy shirt and a black tie. His gaze lifted from Etta and landed on Tessa. Even from across the room, Tessa could see the dramatic shift in eye color as his pupils shot wide, vanishing the red of his irises. His jaw clenched as an involuntary growl rose in his throat. Instead of looking embarrassed, he looked downright vicious . He crossed the room, meeting Tessa in the middle with that furious look on his face, a low growl still resonating in his throat.
“ Tessa ,” her name came out just as savage as he looked. He cupped her cheek, gently, searching her face for a moment before his gaze tracked down her body. When he looked back up, that hardness was still in his expression, making Tessa’s heart pound.
“Do you like it?”
He let out a huffing laugh that was half snarl. “Do I like it? Christ alive, it’s taking everything in me not to pin you to the wall and suck you dry.”
Those words shouldn’t have been as pleasing as they were. Tessa pressed her thighs together, a flush climbing her neck.
“Good lord, Amos,” Etta said dryly. “Have some self-control.”
Amos shot her a dark look. “Don’t act like you didn’t orchestrate this entire situation.”
“How is it my fault that she’s gorgeous? All I did was take her dress shopping.”
Amos gave her one more mistrustful look before returning his attention to Tessa, the heat rekindling in his gaze. “Are you ready?” he asked.
She took a steadying breath. “I’m ready.”
The Council’s seat was a beautiful neo-Gothic building near Grant Park. Weathered gray limestone, narrow stained-glass windows, pointed arches, and a towering archway over the massive bronze entry doors made Tessa feel as if she were headed into a cathedral. As they entered the building, she automatically turned to reach for the holy water stoup. She quickly remembered herself and drew her hand back. She hadn’t thought to ask before now, but she’d imagine vampires weren’t keen on the sign of the cross .
The entry was a long, broad corridor. As they crossed the elaborately tiled marble floor, their footsteps echoed to the vaulted ceiling. Tessa tipped her head back to take in the ceiling mural of a beautifully painted night sky. Her gaze slid down the walls, where the mural work gave way to colorfully-veined marble, then to paneled dark wood. There were ornate carvings worked into the wood—moths and owls and bats and foxes and crickets all woven into the twisting vines and leaves of some fantastical nocturnal forest.
“Are we the only ones here?” Tessa whispered into the echoing silence.
“No, we’re just latecomers,” Etta answered.
Amos’s hand found the small of Tessa’s back, gently guiding her forward. “You’ll be an object of curiosity,” he said, almost apologetically. “In the Council chambers, the others will have to mind their manners more carefully than they would have in the entry. We came a little late to avoid that.”
“Ah.” Tessa swallowed past a dry throat.
“Don’t be nervous,” Amos told her. “I’ll rip the tongue out of anyone who bothers you.”
“No ripping out tongues!” Tessa said, her voice high and panicky.
“Aww,” Etta pouted.
“It would eventually grow back,” Amos muttered sulkily.
Tessa knew he was joking, but that joke just drove home how she was very much not in her element anymore. Her heart pounded as they neared the massive arched doors at the end of the corridor. The carvings around this door were the most ornate yet, giving the impression of twisting rose briars and creeping animals surrounding a mysterious portal. Unseen voices murmured through the doors, the words unintelligible.
As they approached, the doors swung open grandly, by some invisible means. It was probably an automated sensor, but surrounded on all sides by vampires, Tessa couldn’t help but wonder about magic.
The doors slowly revealed the grandest space Tessa had ever personally stood in. It was as soaring as any cathedral she’d ever seen. Everywhere she looked was rich, lavish, old opulence. Stained glass windows and elaborate woodwork and complex marble mosaics and soaring pillars and vaulted ceilings and hanging banners and golden gilding and so many beautifully constructed embellishments that it made the entryway look downright drab in comparison.
Tessa was so taken aback by the architecture that she completely forgot to be worried about the occupants of the building. But eventually, she realized the murmur of conversation had died away to perfect silence. She brought her gaze back down to eye-level, taking in the vast crowd of people—all of whom were staring at her .
She pulled in a shallow, choked breath, reaching instinctively for Amos. His hand gripped hers with comforting strength, tugging her close to his side.
“The offer to rip out tongues still stands,” he murmured into her ear.
A slightly hysterical giggle escaped her, cutting sharply through the unnatural silence.
Bodies shifted in the crowd as someone wove through them. A tall, slim man emerged. He was as sharp-edged as a blade, with features that could cut glass—thin, straight nose, prominent cheekbones, steeply-angled black eyebrows. His pale skin had that slightly washed-out look that seemed to be common to vampires, contrasting starkly against his raven black hair. His blood-red eyes skimmed up and down Tessa’s body before flicking to Amos.
“ Amos Hansen has brought a mortal to the Council?” the man inquired, brows rising with salacious glee. He spoke with an accent that Tessa couldn’t place, something vaguely Germanic, maybe. “And here we thought you’d never stoop to tolerate our existence again.” There was a very pointed emphasis in his words. Murmurs arose from the crowd that told Tessa she was out of the loop on something. “How disappointing.”
“Fuck off, Ludolf,” Etta said impatiently.
His gaze slid to her, his disdain written across his sneering face. “In my day, women were more civil.”
“In your day, women kept dying because they wouldn’t stop licking rats,” Etta shot back.
Fran made a choking sound. Ludolf’s gaze cut to her, eyes narrowed. Before he could speak, Amos’s voice cut through the murmurs.
“Do you think you’re safe from me because there are witnesses?”
The murmurs died into another shocked silence. Ludolf straightened, drawing himself up to his full height. He towered over Amos’s average height, but there was no mistaking who the bigger threat was. The crowd’s eyes danced between Amos and Ludolf with nervous anticipation. Tessa clenched onto Amos’s hand, shrinking closer to him.
“Threatening another vampire within the Council chamber is a crime!” Ludolf hissed.
“So is turning children,” Amos answered, his voice lowering to a growl. “Do you want to have that discussion? ”
Ludolf stared at Amos for a moment longer, stiff with fury. Finally, lips pressed into a thin line, he spun away, disappearing back into the crowd. Amos turned his attention to the rest of them, standing rigidly, waiting. After a tense silence, their attention slid away from him and conversation slowly resumed. The murmuring babble of countless voices sounded resonant and rich in the dramatic acoustics of the chamber. Next to Tessa, Etta and Fran visibly relaxed.
“What was that all about?” Tessa asked.
He sighed. “It’s a long story.”
Etta inhaled sharply. “Amos! You didn’t tell her?”
Tessa’s brows rose. She didn’t even have to voice the question. Amos knew.
Chagrined, he pulled her towards a quiet alcove. Discreet glances were cast their way, but nobody spoke to them or approached.
Satisfied they were alone, Amos explained in a low voice, “About thirty years ago, I was tried for killing two other vampires. They had been turning children.” The disgust in his voice told Tessa everything she needed to know.
“Oh.”
“If found guilty, I would’ve been stripped of all my money and possessions and expelled from the community. The Council eventually decided to dismiss the charges against me, but only because I had evidence that at least three Councilors—possibly more—had been covering up the crimes of the two I’d killed. Those three Councilors were expelled from the Council but, otherwise, they faced no repercussions. They’re still part of the community. They still have all their wealth and comfort and nearly as much power as they always did.”
“Is Ludolf one of those former Councilors?” Tessa asked .
Amos nodded grimly.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“I’m not the one who deserves your sympathy.” He pulled her close, kissing her forehead. “But I’m glad you’re here. Ludolf had one thing right—I had been pretty clear about never setting foot in the Council chamber again.”
“We didn’t have to come here tonight,” Tessa told him earnestly. “We can leave. I don’t need their approval and neither do you.”
“I promised you a proper courtship—which includes Council approval.” He crooked a smile. “And considering my history, it’s best I don’t flout our laws if I can help it.”
Etta and Fran approached, looking hesitant. “I see smiles,” Etta said. “Everything’s okay?”
Tessa nodded. “Everything’s okay.”
“Well then, it’s time to mingle,” Etta said. “The whole point of bringing you here is to introduce you to the community and to show that Amos isn’t holding you hostage.”
Fran slung a friendly arm around Tessa’s shoulders, wheeling her towards the crowd. “It’s honestly fine. A solid quarter of the people here are human bloodmates. And another quarter are non-weird vampires.”
Tessa frowned. “That means the other half are weird vampires.”
“Yes, but the vast majority of them are scared of Amos. You’ll be fine.” She started walking Tessa into the crowd while Amos and Etta trailed behind them.
“Why are they scared of Amos? Because of the vampires he killed?”
“Sort of. Amos was less than a century old when that happened. He shouldn’t have been able to kill one six- hundred-year-old vampire, let alone two of them. He’s become a little bit of a legend.”
“Fran,” Amos growled. “Don’t start with that.”
“It’s true, though,” Etta sing-songed, clearly enjoying needling him.
Fran’s math worked out pretty precisely. About half the people Tessa met were either human bloodmates or non-weird vampires. The other half were… weird vampires.
“And you… purposely prolong their lives?” a nearly eight-hundred-year-old vampire woman asked after Tessa explained her job. “But, why waste the time and effort?”
“Palliative care is usually more about making their remaining time as comfortable as possible,” Tessa said through gritted teeth. She’d had the same exact sentiment echoed to her by plenty of ordinary humans, but never quite so baldly, and never with such obvious disdain. “But a lot of people in palliative care do recover, and go on to live for many years.”
The vampire, as pale as Tessa had yet seen, with eyes of such a pristine red they were nearly translucent, blinked at that news. “ Mortal years?” She laughed. “How much can that be?”
“Tessa!” Fran said brightly, appearing suddenly at her side. “I want to introduce you to someone!” Fran had been shadowing Tessa the entire time while she mingled amongst the other attendees, while Amos and Etta remained at a distance. Part of proving her willingness to the Council was to socialize without her vampire hovering over her, potentially directing her responses and actions.
“Oh thank god,” Tessa whispered as she followed Fran through the crowd. “I couldn’t take another minute of that. Who am I meeting now?”
“Nobody,” Fran said with a laugh. “I just figured I should pull you away from ?lftrye before you decked her.”
“She’s just so fucking dismissive of human lives! Like we don’t matter because we’re not immortal!”
“I know,” Fran said, serious now. “I get it. She’s one of the old ones I told you about. She’s from before the Black Plague. She’s never had a human bloodmate, and never intends to. I think that’s why the old ones get so weird. Without a human partner, they lose any sense of perspective.”
“You don’t worry that Etta and Amos are going to end up like that?”
“Nah. We won’t let them.”
Slightly mollified, Tessa allowed Fran to guide her over to a table of drinks and hors d’oeuvres laid out for human attendees. The conversations with younger vampires and their human bloodmates, after the usual small-talk introductions, tended to revolve around the recently deceased Alex Markov and his now-sireless thralls running around the city. Tessa hadn’t been aware, but was unsurprised to find out, that Amos had rounded up the most thralls of anybody.
“He’s good like that,” she found herself saying with unabashed pride. “He doesn’t do things halfway.”
“Oh, yes,” a vampire woman purred with suggestive amusement. “He’s always seemed like the type to get the job done, if you know what I mean.”
Tessa didn’t know whether she should be laughing along or marking her territory. Fran intervened before she landed on a decision, dragging her off to meet some other people .
“I thought vampires didn’t get horny without live blood,” Tessa whispered irritably.
“Oh, no, the desire is still there,” Fran explained. “But the, er, ability is lacking.”
Tessa’s eyes widened as she gained a new appreciation for the length of Amos’s celibacy and his astonishing willpower at keeping their intimacies from escalating into sex. Except for that one notable slip-up, he’d managed to keep things mostly PG-13 between them, despite Tessa regularly throwing herself at him like a drunken sailor on shore leave.
“Huh,” she said, mostly to herself.
Throughout the course of the night, Tessa met an endless swirl of names and faces that she had no hope of remembering, except for the most outlandish ones—who generally happened to be the old ones. They were often dressed in an odd assortment of period garb. One vampire looked as if she’d stepped straight out of the Sun King’s court. Another looked as if he’d just come from embalming Tutankhamun. Yet another seemed dressed to resume guard duties on the Great Wall of China, including the sword. Most of the old ones, however, wore a mishmash of time periods, including one notable vampire who was wearing a snowy white chiton with gold shoulder clasps over a modern turtleneck sweater along with knee-high black Hessians and a jauntily-tipped derby hat.
The clothing was the least of their oddness, though. It was conversations with them that really tested Tessa’s commitment to making a good impression.
There was a twelve-hundred-year-old vampire who looked all of eighteen, who told Tessa she should forget about Amos and find a vampire who’d be willing to turn her. A two-thousand-year-old vampire asked her if it was true that humans nowadays had computers implanted directly into their brains. When Tessa had answered that, except for a few medical exceptions, no, they did not, the vampire insisted sneeringly that she was wrong. Another two-thousand-year-old vampire, who must have been in his sixties when he’d been turned, kept licking his lips as he stared at Tessa’s throat. Amos’s growl was audible across the chamber, and the older vampire quickly turned away, abandoning Tessa mid-sentence.
Then there was a nine-hundred-year-old vampire who pretended not to speak English, even though Tessa had heard him speaking English to another vampire not two minutes before. Instead, he spoke to her in dismissive Andalusian-inflected Spanish, which always sounded lispy to Tessa’s ear, telling her “I do not converse in your ugly language.” When she’d responded back in her third-generation Mexican-American Spanish, “Then we can converse in yours,” he’d only curled his lip and turned his back on her.
“Un placer hablar contigo!” she called snidely after him.
Fran chuckled. “I don’t speak Spanish, but I’m sure he deserved whatever you said to him.”
Eventually, a low, gong-like tone rang through the chamber. Conversation slowly died away to silence as the entire crowd shifted to face the back wall. Tessa startled as Amos appeared suddenly at her side.
“Okay?” he whispered.
She nodded, looping her arm through his. “Are you allowed to be by me?” she whispered back.
“I am now. The Councilors are taking their seats for judgment. Potential bloodmates will go first for presentation, and we’ll leave immediately after. You don’t want to see the criminal trials.”
“ Shhhh! ” someone hissed loudly behind them.
Amos shot a dark look over his shoulder, and the shusher fell immediately silent.
My software developer homebody vampire boyfriend is kind of a badass, Tessa thought, pressing her lips together to suppress a smug grin.
On the back wall, narrow stone stairs led up to a long, elevated, pulpit-like platform lined with elaborately carved wooden seats that looked a great deal like thrones. There were at least twenty vampires, dressed in burgundy robes, ascending the stairs to seat themselves over the crowd. Below them, the floor space remained open, in a large circle, while the crowd naturally parted itself to form an open aisle towards the Councilors.
The Councilor seated in the middle, in the throniest of all the thrones, stood, looking down on the crowd. She was a short woman, with light brown skin and long black hair in a single braid laid over her shoulder. From this vantage, it was hard to tell her mortal age, but Tessa guessed she’d been turned at some point in her twenties, maybe early thirties.
“Amos Hansen.” The woman’s voice carried across the chamber with all the weight and resonance of the room itself.
Amos stiffened beside Tessa.
“You are called before the Council,” the woman declared.
“Is this us?” Tessa asked nervously.
“No,” he said, frowning. “I don’t know what this is. Stay with Etta and Fran.”
Tessa watched as Amos wove through the crowd, coming to stand in the open space below the Councilors .
The leading Councilor looked gravely down on him. “Word has reached the Council that you had an encounter with werewolves very close to the city.”
Tessa didn’t realize how stiffly Etta had been holding herself until she suddenly relaxed.
“What’s going on?” she whispered.
“It’s fine,” Etta whispered back. “They just want details about the wolves. There’s not supposed to be any packs near here.”
Tessa listened restlessly as Amos answered the Council’s questions about the werewolf attack, detailing his memory of that night. It lined up with Tessa’s memory exactly—except where his senses had gleaned far more than her mortal ones ever could.
“Very well,” the Councilor finally said, nodding her head. “The Council thanks you for your testimony.”
Amos bowed, and even from this distance, Tessa thought it looked a little sarcastic.
“Since we have you, why don’t you begin the presentations with your prospective bloodmate,” the Councilor asked, a gleam in her eye. Either she’d noted Amos’s sarcasm and it amused her, or something about Tessa’s upcoming presentation amused her. Tessa desperately hoped it was the former.
A second later, Amos was at her side. She accepted his arm and allowed him to lead her through the crowd toward the central aisle. She let herself sink into the feeling of her beautiful gown, of the clicking heels she rarely had reason to wear, and strode up the aisle like a queen. When she stood before the Councilors with Amos, she felt the weight of their stares like prickling insects all over her skin. She resisted the urge to fidget, keeping her posture tall and still.
“What is your name, mortal?” the lead Councilor asked.
“Teresa Vargas.”
“And how old are you, Teresa Vargas?”
“Thirty-three.”
“And do you come here of your own free will?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you wish to be Amos Hansen’s bloodmate?”
Tessa faltered. She hadn’t prepared herself to pour her heart out in front of a massive crowd of undead strangers. “Uh…”
“It’s okay,” Amos said quietly. “You don’t have to—”
“Because he’s the best man I’ve ever met,” Tessa answered firmly. “And I would be honored to be claimed by him.”
Amos’s mouth clapped shut. He stared at her, eyes dark with unspoken emotion.
“Very well,” the Councilor broke into their moment. “To the Council, I ask those in favor to speak now.”
A chorus of voices called, “ Yea .”
“And those opposed?”
A single voice replied, “Nay.”
The lead Councilor cast a look down the length of the pulpit. The single opponent was none other than the Andalusian vampire who’d disdained Tessa earlier. Apparently her snark hadn’t been appreciated.
Flicking her gaze back to Amos and Tessa she pronounced, “The ‘yeas’ have it. Amos Hansen, the Council grants its blessing to your bloodbond with Teresa Vargas.”