Four, p.10
Four, page 10
“They say we don’t have reflections because we don’t have souls,” Geoffrey said, working up his already-bushy brows into an impressive knot.
“And who is this mysterious ‘they’?” Georgia asked.
“Oh, it’s all a bunch of claptrap,” he scoffed weakly. “When I was younger, there were all these stories about how my kind was the devil and we had all these powers. Now we’re just shown as pretty boys who smolder and wear too much leather.”
“Don’t forget the guy-liner and the sparkling,” Georgia added as she leaned back to take in the view.
“Can I please forget the sparkling?” he asked with a little laugh.
Georgia smiled. “All you have to do is get through one little party, and then you can come home and I’ll let you watch your stories, drink as many pureed sausages as you want, and I’ll even make you a vanilla-rodent frappe.”
“Actually, I was going to ask you something very important,” he said. Georgia took note of how he wrung his hands and how he tapped his feet. She stiffened ever so slightly as she waited for the next few strained words from his cracked lips.
“Yes, Geoffrey?”
“I want you to go to the ball as my escort,” he blurted out.
“Um, isn’t this a . . .”—she stopped to look to the left and the right to make sure no one was in earshot—“vampire ball? Last time I checked, I had a reflection.”
“It’s hosted by my family. What can they say?” Geoffrey said. “Anyways, you are my trusted servant, and other retainers will be there.”
“But will they be escorts?” she said, choking slightly on the word.
“Well, it has been known to happen. I rather think I’d prefer to have a little scandal than to be dismissed as the poor old fart without a date,” he said with a little smile.
“Define a little scandal,” Georgia said as she leaned back on the bench. “Are we talking wearing white after Labor Day scandal or wearing a Hitler costume to the Anne Frank Museum level of scandal?”
Geoffrey furrowed his brows again before finally replying, “Well, I suppose that depends on which family you ask. To a Pendragon I would suppose it would be rather like picking one’s teeth in polite company—rather rude but sometimes ever so necessary.”
“Well, how can I possibly refuse to be your toothpick?” Georgia laughed. “Wait, it is the Pendragons hosting, right?”
Geoffrey nodded. “Now, the Jaegers will take rather great exception to a human not being there on tap, so to speak, but since they rather rudely tricked me into going to this dreadful thing, I think I shall take rather great delight in rubbing it in their snooty continental faces.”
“Well, that does sound like a moral imperative if I ever heard one,” Georgia laughed. “But in all seriousness, what would I even do at a vampire’s ball except become the cocktail hour?”
“Oh, you are under my protection as long as you live under my roof. The Jaegers may be snooty blighters, but they do have a healthy respect for the rules. No vampire would dare feed on another kinsman’s servant. If a sheriff were so much as to get a whiff of such an infraction, well, it would take more than burn cream to make his or her day livable after that!”
“You really have sheriffs? You mean that’s not Hollywood crap?”
“Well, they are technically vicecomes, but my family is thoroughly English, so we use the English name. We do still call the high sheriff a praetor, though. Otherwise he simply gets unbearable. It took nearly a thousand years to get him to allow the use of languages other than Latin in his court.”
“Is he going to be there?”
“I bloody well hope not!” Geoffrey said, eyes widening. “He still thinks that America is full of savages in loincloths and a passing fad for wandering adventurers. He can barely accept the Jiangshi, and our family scholars think that the Chinese clan is actually older than his.”
“I’m going to have to take notes,” Georgia sighed.
“Oh, most certainly. Each of the great families has slightly different rules of etiquette, but you know the four laws so you should be fine, and you know how to dance, of course . . .”
“Oh, no . . . no . . . no . . . no,” she said, hopping to her feet. “I can cook and clean and scrub a toilet all night long, but these feet, they have zero rhythm.”
“Oh, don’t be a ninny. You’ll only have to do a waltz and follow a few rounds, maybe a tango if the Azarola have representatives there.”
“You just added more foreign names in there,” Georgia protested.
“The Jiangshi are the most powerful clan right now, and they hail from China and are currently not killing us so we are all very happy. The Azarola are the tricksters who pretty much took over South America, and they are also not killing us either right now so we are very happy.”
“Well, is there anyone who is currently trying to kill you?” she asked.
“The Lung clan from Hong Kong. They pretty much want us all dead, but we have another century treaty so as long as none of us set foot on their land, they won’t kill any more of us.”
“Um, what about rule number one?” Georgia asked.
“Oh, well, yes, about that. The Lung clan founder may have fallen off a cliff, which normally wouldn’t be fatal if she hadn’t been stabbed, poisoned, and beheaded before she took the last step. It’s something we don’t like to talk about, but the Lung decided that since one of us killed their queen, it was fair game for them to retaliate until the guilty party or parties confessed. The Jiangshi blamed the Pendragons since old Uther was fond of axes, and then my clan noticed that the poison came from Cathay—you call it China now—and then someone pointed out that only a Jaeger hunter could have snuck up on their leader, and it just goes on and on. Believe me, if you ever want to get an argument started at a party, just ask who killed Su Min Lung!”
“Good to know,” Georgia said, now staring at her feet. “I still don’t dance.”
“Oh, that’s simple enough. I can teach you.”
“You?” she said as she sized up his bloated belly and wobbly chin. “You can teach me how to dance?”
“I can teach you a waltz and enough not to embarrass yourself. I make no other promises. After all, you grew up in a generation scarred by disco and working.”
“Working?”
“You know, that lusty gyration that makes it seem like you’ve been stuck on an out-of-control trolley car.”
“I think you mean twerking,” Georgia offered.
“Whatever. If I wanted to see a diseased marmot in his death throes, I’d watch those nature shows you keep leaving on,” the vampire grumbled. “Now, I will teach you to dance and the basics of manners, but you will have to help me get clothes. It specifies modern dress.” He punctuated the last remark with a tremendous shudder. “I’ve seen what passes for fashion nowadays, and I am truly terrified.”
“I’m not going to fit in in a room full of your kind,” she said as a late-night jogger ran close by.
“I am certain it will be fine. You haven’t failed me yet!”
“I ruined most of your laundry.”
“Well, other than that, and the burns, oh, and the not feeding my chickens while I was in the bath—”
“I get the picture. Now I’m also getting hungry, and it’s about time for us to start wandering back or else Wang’s will be shut, and you know I’ve been planning my Buddha’s Delight binge all week.”
“Will I get my Shanghai Surprise?” he asked with a giggle.
“Please, try to make that sound a little less dirty,” she sighed as she started leading him back through the streets of Boston . . .
“Just how many families did you say there were?” Gail asked as she stared at the little scribbles she had made on the back of a napkin. Georgia pulled out her phone once more and broke out in a knowing smile.
“Oh, I have an app for that,” she said with a little giggle. “I took this one that someone made for keeping track of information for like those fantasy role-playing games, and I put in all the families and the powers I’d found in each one. That way if my phone was ever stolen, they’d just assume I was her Royal Highness, Queen of the Geeks, and not some vampire’s assistant. See here, I put little icons by each one so I could remember them easily. The sword in the stone is for Pendragon ’cause, well, duh. I have the Chinese character for life force for the Jiangshi, and the little foxes are Azarola. The dragons with the cranky faces equal Lungs—”
“And the arrows stabbed through a heart?” Gail asked.
“Jaegers . . . of course,” Georgia said quickly. “The laurels are for the Caesars, and the little winged lions are for Gryffindor.”
Gail stopped in her little follow-along exercise and gave Georgia a wild-eyed look. “You can’t be serious,” she said.
Georgia’s face remained impassive. “Oh yes, it’s terrible what they did to get immortalized in a series of bestselling children’s books!” she said. “And to think they made her portray the Slytherin as the bad guys—”
“No way!” Gail gasped.
Georgia finally cracked a smile. “OK, I was totally messing with you, but yeah, that’s the symbol for the Tepes clan.”
“Where have I heard that?” Gail mused. She rolled her eyes, and the moans got louder from behind the screen.
“Don’t worry, it’ll come to you.” She too glared at the divider. “Apparently that won’t be all that’s coming soon,” she muttered. “Where was I? Dance lesson montage time?”
Gail nodded, her cheeks getting more flushed. Almost on cue the deejay raised the volume to drown out the noisy couple in the room. Georgia flicked away the page full of icons to reveal a wallpaper of what looked like the Eiffel Tower at night.
“Wow, Paris,” Gail sighed.
“Tokyo,” Georgia corrected. “If it was a daytime shot, you’d see it was red and white. Anyway, you get used to all the families. There are major families who all have big histories and unique traits that tend to rule over what they call the plebs, which are the working middle class of the vampire world. The plebes get to look down on what they call the animals, which are vampires that have been disgraced in some way or who have no powers whatsoever. I never met any of them, but apparently they don’t count with the vampire law stuff because I know Steve said he killed a few of them and he’s still around. They are apparently less than human, but only just barely, and completely inedible to a vampire.”
Gail wrinkled up her nose. “They sound awful.”
“They are,” Minnie offered from behind the screen. “Oh yah, mein schatzi . . . we put them . . . we put them down for their own good.”
“Oh come on, you don’t multitask while getting laid, Minnie. It’s just rude!” Georgia snapped back. “Now excuse me, I’m educating. You know, we could move to that back corner, under the speaker.”
Gail nodded furiously, grabbed both their drinks, and shuffled quickly toward an oasis of purple velour and relative quiet. The two girls adjusted their positions so that the screen was all that could be seen. Gail did manage to catch a flicker of movement in the reflection of Georgia’s phone, but all she could see was one gray pants leg, even though the shadows clearly showed a feminine form writhing on top of the poor victim.
Gail lifted her own phone again and peeked through the viewfinder. Sure enough, now the gray leg was showing up. Georgia cocked a brow and looked at her interviewee inquisitively. Gail started with an “Um—” and just pointed to the leg.
“The other one left. That’s Minnie’s takeout,” Georgia spat, looking pointedly away.
“He—”
“The other one left, OK?” Georgia snapped.
“So, dancing?” Gail said with a desperate smile. She breathed deep as her interviewer finally eased back against the cushion and started smiling again.
“Well, of all the things I’ve been surprised by in the past year, the simple fact that Mr. Geoffrey Lambley is actually light on his feet has to be one of the biggest . . .”
Georgia wiped her brow with the edge of her T-shirt before once more staring at the mirror propped against the den wall. As if by magic, her arm stiffened and her shoulders lowered. She watched in fascination as a string of hair moved behind her ear as she kept peering over a freckled shoulder, rather than into the stern gaze of her partner.
“Focus!” Mr. Lambley snapped before swinging back an arm and resetting the needle on the gramophone that had wandered downstairs for the week. “We will dance all night if we have to.”
“It’s four thirty, I think we’ve already accomplished that,” Georgia groaned. “Look, I’m tired, and I think I’m getting worse.”
The vampire just shook his head and once more adjusted her frame. “Are your shoulders somehow attached to your earlobes? Why do you keep shrugging at me? Now, let’s go again!”
He started sashaying her back and forth to the time of the waltz on the record, but instead of maintaining a three count, Georgia managed to step on his toes three times. Once more he stopped, repositioned her, and walked her slowly through the motions.
She howled an expletive as she once more landed on her boss’s toes. As she jerked away, Mr. Lambley held his head in shame.
“You do know that children learn this dance, do you not?” he sighed.
“My dancing is limited to the white-girl-don’t-spill-your-beer shimmy and the drool-on-your-partner-at-the-end-of-the-night slow dance shuffle. I put my pictures in frames, not my arms!”
“You know, if you spent as much effort on your footwork as you do on making quips, we’d have progress, dear Georgia,” the vampire said in a little singsong voice. “Now, again.”
They started again, and again, until the sunrise warning alarm on her phone forced her to break away to check the polarized film and the curtains for the morning, as well as fix smoothies for breakfast. Luckily she sniffed her glass of red slush and quickly switched it out with the one in front of Mr. Lambley.
“This one is the strawberry,” she muttered in relief as she slurped it down.
“Mmm, is that duck blood?” Mr. Lambley asked.
“Duck, goose, and turkey. The butcher had a blend. Oh, and I added a little marjoram because you said how much you liked it last time, and it was in the window box out back.
He raised his glass for a toast. After they clinked glasses, he promised, “Tomorrow, by tomorrow you’ll have this.”
One week later he banged his head against the wall as once more Georgia ended up sprawled on the couch with her head buried in her hands. “How can a human have so little rhythm? It’s no longer merely comical, it’s unnatural!” the vampire asked. He then eyed her shins. “Are they still bruised?”
“The coffee table is a little worse for wear, but I’ll be OK,” Georgia groaned. “I warned you that I was a klutz.”
“Well, let’s try a different tactic,” he said.
“Oh no, I cannot watch any more Masterpiece Theater,” she moaned. “I don’t care who slighted who or if there are rumors about funny business happening before someone’s coming-out, and I really don’t care about next week’s garden party and if they will ever find proper English roses in time—”
“Oh no, I think that you might need a different partner!” he said, wandering over to his phone.
“Don’t call Switzerland anymore,” Georgia mumbled as she buried her face in the pillows and tried her best to hide in a sea of plaid.
Not ten minutes later, she could hear the door to the vestibule opening.
“Who the—?” she started.
“You said it was an emergency and to bring athletic wear, Mr. Lambley,” a slightly confused yet also ever so slightly robotic-sounding voice said.
“Oh yes, this is definitely an emergency.”
Georgia looked over the upholstery to see a tall, lanky form in a neatly pressed dark suit, slicked-back hair, and sunglasses, even though it was most definitely night. “Oh, not Agent Fucking Smith,” she groaned as she buried her face again.
“Do I need to get a doctor?” he asked flatly.
“Just get changed,” the vampire ordered. “Trust me, Georgia, if I can correct you as you move, I think I can have this fixed! I just need to take a look at those elephant feet you have.”
“Fine, but why him?” she asked. “It’s not like I’m learning the robot.”
“Well, with Stefano off in Japan, I thought his boy was not being put to full use, so I thought he’d have nothing better to do,” Geoffrey said. “You keep telling me not to be wasteful, do you not?”
“I say one thing, and yet you always find a way to twist it in some strange way I never intended,” Georgia sighed. “So tell me, can this boy of Stefano’s even dance?”
“Well, as long as it’s the robot,” a dry voice said from the doorway. A completely different figure leaned against the jamb in a soccer jersey and sweatpants. His hair was not only slicked back but also captured in a teeny tiny black ponytail that splayed out like an untamed feather duster from the elastic band. His light green eyes that clashed with his classic Asian features stared impassively at the sweaty, red-faced girl on the sofa.
“You totally heard that?” she asked.
“You’re rather loud.”
“Oh, that is true, Mr. Matsuoka,” Mr. Lambley agreed. “Now, would you mind helping me show my dear assistant how to waltz? I’m afraid that all my attempts have been futile so far, but that might be because we are just on such different levels. It’s so difficult to slow down enough for a human, you know.”
“As you wish, Mr. Lambley,” he said with a little bow. He then extended his hand toward the lump on the sofa. Georgia didn’t take it, but she did roll to her feet, take a deep breath, and offer her hand to him once Mr. Lambley started to raise a brow.
“Come on, he won’t bite,” Mr. Lambley chided as Georgia kept her distance.
“He’s probably the only one I’ll be dancing with that won’t,” she sighed. As she locked hands with him and he slid an arm around her back, she paused to take in the biceps and the little veins on his arms and just how firmly he held on.
