others, and I’d always been scared of her, my brain didn’t connect Angelica as a vampire for some reason, so it was easier to relax in her presence.
“Given recent events, I had reason to put my heart and soul into that one,” I said drily. I chucked the shampoo microphone on the bed.
Her face dropped.
Oh? Was bringing up the reason for my imprisonment impolite? How crass of me to keep hanging onto it like it only happened thirty-something hours ago.
She lowered her arms. “Your guard just called and begged to be relieved of her post.”
I snickered. Bet she called during “Brave” by Sara Bareilles. I couldn’t sing that high, so I just picked any old note that felt right. “How many heard me singing?”
“Every vampire in the tower.”
What? I knew these people were fast. I had wondered if their other senses were heightened, too, with the way Kyros sniffed my neck. “Good hearing much?”
Her eyes flickered in confusion. “Oh, do we have good hearing? Yes. Excellent hearing. Though the old and powerful amongst us are able to tune out disagreeable sounds with more ease than the younger members of the clan.”
She’d just labelled my karaoke as a disagreeable sound. I was onto her.
“I guess vampires don’t like loud noises at all then.” The words slipped from my mouth. My jaw dropped. “I just said vampire!”
“You’re in the presence of a Vissimo.”
“Huh?”
“That’s our name. Vissimo.”
“Right. Vissimo.”
I could say that too!
Hold on. I frowned. “Kyros compelled me so I couldn’t talk to his enemies though. Can I talk freely around any vampire?”
“Beyond general terms, probably not. However, silencing you completely would make things difficult while you’re living alongside us.” Her gaze landed on me. “You’ll likely find it impossible to repeat sensitive or specific information to those below a certain rank. Or outside of a certain location. I’m unsure what exact restrictions Kyros put in place, but those are the common variations.”
Whatever they were, it sounded like there might be wriggle room. Good to know.
I tucked the information away for later. “How many of you are there?”
“In this tower? Two thousand.”
Shitty fucker! Two thousand? That catapulted my escape attempts from hard to impossible. I’d definitely have to leave Bluff City to avoid that many. There was only one place I could evade them, really, and that was the estate I’d left. With that said, I’d only return there to grab my grandmother and skip town.
But the more I knew, the better equipped I’d be to protect my loved ones.
Angie was very verbose this evening considering my position as Kyros’s prisoner. I wondered how much information I could squeeze out of her.
“Do all Vissimo live in towers?” I asked.
She cracked a grin. “No. But we all live with members of the royal family. In this clan, all sub-clans do live in towers, excluding those who live in the core clan with the king and queen.”
So Kyros ruled a sub-clan connected to the core clan ruled by his mother and father. Like a club with satellite branches. “Are all sub-clans ultimately ruled by the king and queen?”
“Correct. The work of each sub-clan supports the cause of the overall clan.”
I puzzled over that one, putting it aside for now. There were far more pertinent questions to ask.
She stepped inside the room, and my brows lifted at my lack of reaction to her. My heart wasn’t thumping in her presence at all. Kyros had scared the fear of less powerful Vissimo out of me, apparently. Or maybe it was the three-day thrall. Maybe that screwed with my usual reactions and thoughts somehow.
“I’m sorry, Basi,” Angelica said, dropping her gaze. “I never wanted any of this to happen to you.”
“Then why did you let it?” I asked her, voice hard.
Whoa, some part of me held a grudge against Angelica. I clamped onto it. “You hired me. Why?”
If she’d shredded my application like Rhys’s, I wouldn’t be in this mess.
Her bright blues widened before she collected herself. “A mistake, I grant you. Not because of anything to do with you though. In recent years, we’ve caught some unwanted attention from humans for never hiring them. I got the sense you were on your own and thought we could trial the addition of a human to the team to quash rumours.”
How odd to hear myself referred to as a human. I mean, that’s what I was. But she said it in the same tone I used for farm dogs.
“This has fucked up my life,” I told her, sadness flooding