12. Shemaiah
SHEMAIAH
Tonight’s new moon party is less chaotic and more hidden than normal.
Rather than a swirl of dancing couples and revealed flesh, most of the guests move behind the hanging tapestries in small clusters.
A string quartet is stationed at the end of the hall.
If I didn’t know exactly what’s happening behind the fabric overhangs, I’d almost say this party is tasteful, thanks to Ruby’s influence along with the inspector’s presence.
I’ve eaten my full share, maybe enough to fill the lake two times over. I should feel settled, but I can’t seem to convince the rest of my body to be quenched. I want something. My instinct to hunt burns through me, incinerating the satisfaction, igniting the insatiable need to feed, to fuck.
When Letty Lourx finds me, I immediately accept her advances and lead her behind a tapestry. It doesn’t matter that I’ve already taken from Mrs. Kinny, Mrs. Frellman, and Kendra Hawkes. It isn’t blood I’m after now.
Letty is older, experienced, and newly widowed. She came to her first new moon party three months ago, and I craved her, but she spent the night with Jafeth. Last month, she wasn’t invited as Noah opted to keep the numbers small following Hammish’s demise.
Letty Lourx is just what I need.
I sit on a bench and point to the floor at my feet, but the moment she drops to her knees it feels wrong. Too much like my father, who always preferred to take rather than give. As she unclasps the button on my pants, my stomach sours. When her hands brush over me, I’m flaccid.
“Come here.” I tug her up to straddle me. I’ve always enjoyed a woman riding my lap, the unhindered view of breasts in my face while she takes her pleasure, driving the show, getting just what she wants. This is what I need. Nothing like my father.
I lean back, and she undoes the top of her dress. Large breasts break free from their confines, capped by pert little nipples. An image flashes in my mind. Pippa. What color are her nipples? Are they large or small? Would they pucker for me?
My cock twitches.
Letty kisses along my neck, her hands working their way down between us.
We’re so close to one another I can taste her rosehip scent on my tongue and find myself wishing for something different.
I shake my head and hold my breath, staring straight ahead at the Mavarri tapestry depicting a victory celebration after some war, the caricatures woven in sexual poses.
I need this. It doesn’t matter that Letty doesn’t smell like citrus and sunshine, like fresh rain and soured hope.
I’m not after blood. I’m after pleasure.
She curls her hand under the waistband of my undergarments, knuckles brushing sensitive skin, but still my cock is only half hard. If even that.
It’s just the stress of the day. The inspector. Mrs. Darning’s peculiar behavior. Pippa passing out.
Pippa. She was so frail when I pulled her into my arms. The desire to go check on her hits like a wave that almost pulls me under.
What the hell is wrong with me? I have a beautiful woman in my lap, and all I can think about is the woman upstairs who plays the piano poorly and who smiled so tenderly when her eyes fluttered open to see my face.
Letty takes my cock in her hand. My very limp cock. Fuck!
I push her away and stand so quickly she falls on her lush backside. I wince. “Forgive me.” I offer my hand.
“Is it me?” Letty’s brows wrinkle for a moment, but the concern vanishes when I help her to her feet and she loses her balance, falling against me, hands splayed wide over my chest. She giggles and tries to kiss me, but I turn my head so she gets my cheek.
“It isn’t you.” I extract myself from her hold. She looks down, a pitiful frown twisting her face. I should just feed from her. At least then she wouldn’t feel rejected. But I’m already full. Well, full and not full. I straighten my jacket. “Give me your wrist.”
Holding my breath, I sink my fangs into her blue veins and release my venom as I drink.
Her taste is delightfully sweet, but like every other drop of blood tonight, it does nothing to quench my thirst. My stomach rolls, threatening to return the blood I’ve gorged myself on. It all tastes the same, feels the same.
I don’t want cloying rosehips. I want orange blossoms and… Fuck! Stop thinking of Pippa fucking Willoughby!
Letty moans just as Jafeth steps around the heavy tapestry.
“Ah, here’s where you’ve… come,” he says with a knowing smirk. He would never let me live it down if he knew how wrong he is.
“Oh god, yes,” Letty moans, expression glazed from the euphoria of venom. “Two of you.”
I wipe the blood dribbling from my mouth with the pad of my thumb and address my brother. “What is it?”
“Our guest is here,” he says, and I know he’s referring to the inspector. “But there’s a surprise.”
“What do you mean a surprise?” I tuck myself back into my pants and do up the clasp.
Letty runs a hand up Jafeth’s chest and hooks her fingers around the top of his vest, pulling him toward us. Or attempting to.
Jafeth laughs. “Feisty tonight, are we, sweetheart?”
“I’ve always fantasized about having two men—two handsome men, like you—pleasuring me.” She stretches between us, one hand gripping Jafeth’s vest and the other fisting my shirt.
“I don’t share.” I remove Letty’s hand.
“I do,” Jafeth smiles and winks at her. “But I’m afraid I’ll need to take a raincheck. My brother and I are called to other things at the moment.”
Letty pouts. Full of venom, eyes glassy, she pinches her exposed nipples and lays down on the bench, knees bent and pussy exposed. Her hand slides between her legs, her scent strengthening. Jafeth’s eyes go black.
But I feel nothing. Not even a twitch in my groin.
“We could be detained a few—”
I grab Jafeth by the shoulders and turn him away from temptation.
“Spoilsport,” he grumbles, but leads me from the gallery to a drawing room just down the hall.
We used to play here as children, and though all the games and toys are gone, the comfortable feel of the room is not.
While there is a level of opulence to most of the manor, this room speaks to normalcy.
From the worn burgundy carpet, the muted, two-toned wallpaper flourished in white and gray, and the worn leather couches that face each other in front of the fire, everything about it communicates that we’re ordinary, even if it’s a lie.
Noah sits at the end of one couch, ankle crossed casually over his knee, gaze fixed on a man I recognize as Inspector Ricin, who’s taken the position across from him.
Anna and Kay sit primly to the side of Noah, while Ruby stands in front of the fire, whispering to a woman I don’t recognize.
With only the inspector on the furthest couch from the door, the room feels unevenly weighted in a way that sets me on edge.
Jafeth juts his chin in the direction of the unknown woman. “That’s the surprise,” he whispers. “Her name is Lucy Thaddox, and apparently she’s Ruby’s best friend.”
“How?” I ask.
“How is she here or how are they best friends?”
I scowl, but his attention isn’t on me. His eyes are pitch black, gaze locked on Lucy Thaddox.
This might be a problem.
Ruby smiles and laughs at something her friend says.
That might be a problem, too.
Ruby is moral to a fault. I’m certain she was only willing to go along with lying to law enforcement because it serves the greater good. Hammish Roan deserved to die, and none of us deserve to be punished for making sure it happened.
But will she be able to lie to her best friend?
The two women stop talking, and Ruby’s friend glances at me, then at Jafeth before turning back to Ruby.
She leans forward and whispers something in Ruby’s ear, and though I can’t quite make out her words over the din of side conversations happening inside the room, a hollow pit opens in my overly full stomach.
“Is this everyone in the household?” Ricin asks, noticing that Jafeth and I have entered.
“Apart from the women you already spoke with,” Noah replies.
Zarah is absent by design. She was locked up for long enough that she slipped from New Essik consciousness.
No one remembers her from the new moon parties she attended decades ago.
She was introduced to the inspector earlier as our cousin who’s visiting to console us in our grief and only arrived after Hammish’s death.
After quick introductions, Inspector Ricin pokes Miss Thaddox, and she grimaces.
Jafeth tenses beside me. He’s frowning—a completely unfamiliar expression for him—his jaw working under his skin.
“The book,” the inspector whispers to Thaddox. “Give it to me.”
She looks nonplussed at his request, but hands him a small booklet. He snaps it out of her grasp and flips it open, readying a length of charcoal.
“Well,” Inspector Ricin says, his gaze swinging to Noah. “Based on what I’ve heard so far, I hope we can make this quick. Can you just confirm for me how your father died?”
“His heart gave out.” Noah, ever succinct and to the point. It’s clear he’s as eager to get out of here as I am. Though, I’m not sure where else I’d go. I have no desire to return to the party, despite the restless feeling inside me.
“Not that he had much heart,” Jafeth mutters, too into his drinks to mind his tongue.
The inspector doesn’t seem to hear him, but Lucy gives him a shrewd look. Yes, I’m quite certain she’ll be an issue if not handled correctly.
Noah proceeds to tell the inspector the story we all agreed to, adjusting the real time of our father’s demise, since we didn’t report him dead until after our last new moon party.
“Were doctors called?” Lucy asks.
Jafeth scoffs.
“I’m a doctor.” Noah plucks something invisible from his slacks, slides a hand over the fabric, then looks up at the woman, his gaze cold.
“And the body?” Lucy glances at Ruby.
The inspector glowers, clearly not amused with her stealing all the questions. Jafeth chuckles into his glass.
“We burned the body as is customary in our family,” I answer.