As they stepped up to the gigantic, wraparound porch, the front door suddenly opened and a good-looking young man in his mid-twenties came out. He was wearing green scrubs and had a hospital ID around his neck with a terrible picture on it. His hair was dark and cut very short, and his green eyes were clear and friendly.
“Hi there,” he said, jingling his car keys. “Come to visit? Go on in. I’d stay and, you know, do the polite intros, but I’m late and you’re not here to see me anyway. Right? Right. So, ’bye.”
He hurried down the steps, throwing a distracted wave over his shoulder, then disappeared around the corner toward the detached garage. They watched him go, bemused, then Sophie turned and looked back up at the house.
“We can just…go in?”
“Guess so,” Liam replied and opened the front door. After seeing the outside of the house, he was a little more prepared for the beauty and opulence of the foyer. He could hear voices coming from a large room on their right, and turned in that direction. Sophie clutched his arm, pulling him back. “Sophie, what is with you?”
She was chewing on her lower lip so hard, he expected to see it start bleeding. If she could bleed. “It’s just…I met Nostro. And he was horrible. Horrible. And if she beat him…. But we have to bring this to her,” she added, seeming to straighten with remembered pride. “It’s our—my—responsibility.”
“Right,” he said. “Calm down, ease up. You look great, don’t worry about it.” And she did. Her glossy brown hair was piled up on top of her head, being held in place by the miracle of a single hair clip. She was wearing a dark red suit, light-colored stockings, and black shoes. She was pale, but then, she was always pale. He thought she looked like a million bucks. In fact, as he’d watched her pull up her stockings in their hotel room (he didn’t know gals even wore stockings and garter belts anymore), he’d been unable to resist jumping her bones again, and they’d had a wonderful time rolling around on the floor.
She hadn’t bitten him that time, politely explaining afterward that she was still satisfied from the night before. He knew she was lying; he could tell by the way her gaze kept shifting from his eyes to the bruise forming on his neck. But he didn’t push it, figuring she had other things on her mind.
“You look nice, too,” she told him, which was a laugh, because he was wearing jeans (clean, at least) and an old blue flannel shirt (also clean). Well, he didn’t think the big shot queen would much care what he was wearing.
He gripped Sophie’s hand, surprised as always by its pleasant coolness, and practically pulled her into the next room.
“…and they’re doing really well, pretty well, I mean, they’ll still kill and eat anybody who gets too close, anybody human I mean, but I’m keeping a pretty close watch and, um, I guess that’s all.”
The girl speaking was smaller than Sophie, which was pretty damn small. She had red hair and the skinniest, palest arms and legs Liam had ever seen. She was wearing a pleated black skirt and a white blouse, and little white socks and loafers, looking for all the world like a schoolgirl. In fact, she probably was a schoolgirl. Didn’t look a day over fifteen.
“Very good, Alice,” a deep voice said. Liam looked, then looked again. He’d thought it was a shadowy corner, but there was a man sitting in a tall wingbacked chair, a big man, tall and scary-looking and Liam wanted to turn around, cool as a cuke, and walk right of there and back to the truck and then drive all the way back to Embarrass, checking the rearview the entire time. “Once again, I must ask if you wish to be relieved of your duties. You’ve been at this for several months and—”
“Majesty, I love this job, and I wish to keep on doing it. Before I wanted to because, you know, with the new, uh, regime, I wasn’t really sure of my place. So I figured, you know. But now…I—I kind of like them,” she finished, staring down at her shoes.
“Them?” the man asked, distaste clear in his tone.
“Happy, Skippy, Trippy, Sandy, Benny, Clara, Jane, and George.” She smiled weakly. “George’s my favorite.”
“You’ve named them?”
Liam wondered who them was. He bumped into something, and he suddenly realized he’d backed all the way up into the door, totally unconsciously. He told himself to get a grip. They were just vampires, for Christ’s sake.
He forced himself to look around the room while the vampires talked about them, tearing his gaze away from the scary guy sitting in the corner. There were three other people in the room; the first one he noticed was a petite, great-looking blonde standing behind and slightly to the left of the guy’s chair. Even from across the room, he could see how dark and pretty her big eyes were, fixed now on the girl. And she was so small, she easily fit behind the corner chair. The guy seemed totally unaware of her, but he’d cock his head when she’d bend down to whisper to him, and besides, Liam had the feeling no one snuck up on this guy.
There was also a dark-green couch (he supposed some fancy magazine would call it “moss green” or whatever) in the middle of the room, and two women were sitting on it, playing checkers. The one closest to him was a good-looking black gal (shit, he’d never seen this many gorgeous people outside of a Hollywood movie). She was way too thin, with her hair so tightly pulled back he could practically see her skull throbbing, but her skin was a gorgeous dark brown and she had a look about her he really liked, as if she didn’t take a lot of shit.
The other one…he glanced at her, and then his gaze came back, as it had with the man.
She was as cute as a bug’s butt, as Sophie would have said (when she got excited, Liam noticed she mixed up her metaphors). Her hair was blond, but much shorter than the other woman’s, and the light tossed reddish glints into it. She was sitting cross-legged, in tan shorts and a navy blue sweater buttoned to her chin. She wore shoes the color of her sweater, shoes that had a little heel and emphasized the long, pretty shape of her foot. She was watching the other woman’s hands and swung her foot while she waited her turn, occasionally peeking at her shoes and smiling.
She looked up at him (and, presumably, Sophie), and he saw her eyes were a cross between green and blue, the color of the ocean in a postcard. Her chin was pointed, giving her a sharp, foxlike appearance, and her cheekbones were high, emphasizing the prettiness of her eyes and the smoothness of her brow. He had an odd urge to stroke her forehead, which mercifully passed. It helped to glance back at Sophie now and again.
“Hey,” she said casually, turning the full force of her sea-colored gaze on him, and he nearly fell down. Staring at her was like staring at the door to heaven. It promised delights beyond compare…but didja really want to leave everything you ever knew behind?
“So, anyway, Your Majesties,” the schoolgirl was saying, “the Fiends are just fine, healthy as can be…I guess…and they—”
The spectacular blonde on the couch stood so fast, he didn’t actually see it. One second she was leaning over, about to get kinged, the next she was standing and pointing (uh-oh) at Sophie, and the redhead was cowering away from her.
“What…” she began, “is on…your shoes?”
Sophie looked down at her feet, then back up. “Ah…Your Majesty, my name is Dr. Sophie Tourneau, and this is—may I present my…uh…my friend, Mr. Liam—”
“Seriously. It looks like you plowed through—God, is that shit? Is that shit on your shoes?”
“Elizabeth,” the man in the corner sighed.