YEAR OF THE VAMPIRE 14

Chapter 14

Music from: You Make Me Feel Euphoria

They made it out of the library and across the quiet street in moments. Ivy could see that Deidre was still on the lookout for the bird of prey, as she had termed it, but the late afternoon sky was clear of predators. After they dropped Deidre off at the dance studio, where three of her friends exchanged laughing whispers about Dred, he and Ivy set off out of town.

She didn't quite recall agreeing to go with him to Brylinden Hall, but there she was, in step with him.

"If you want to know anything about the Hall," he said, "you can ask me, you know."

"But you're new here."

"I can still find out." His eyes were raised to the treetops nearly bare of leaves, their long branches reaching into the sky like black fingers. "Ask me anything."

She nodded, actually thinking about the offer. "So, whose house is it? I mean, so many of your family live there, but who actually owns it?" She realized how overstepping it sounded, and added, "If you don't mind answering."

"I don't really know." He chuckled, glancing to her as the Hall came into view. "It's just in the family. For a long time, you know?"

She nodded, marveling again at the regal, somehow moody Hall.

"Some of us pass through, kinda, like Strasse and Stansa during the summers, I hear." He pushed open the wrought iron gate between the brick pillars at the proper entrance of the estate. "And for troublemakers."

"Like you?" she asked without thinking. "I mean—"

"Sometimes." He laughed and let her through the gate, then followed and closed the gate behind them. "Others, too."

"I didn't mean it, Dred," she said hastily.

"It's all right." He headed them up the front steps between the tall, square pillars standing like sentinels at the stone entry.

The late sun was suddenly dimmed by a large mass passing over the house.

Ivy stopped halfway up the steps, looking up, but not seeing whatever had flown over. "Did you see that?"

"No. Maybe a cloud."

She looked at the other clouds, all moving languidly across the dark blue and purple sky. "It was moving too quick."

"Must have been Deidre's bird of prey," he said, laughing as he opened the door.

Ivy crossed the stone porch and stepped inside the house, into the front entryway. "Maybe. Has Evandis started a new sculpture?"

"How do you know about that?" He stopped, staring at her.

She shrugged, unsure she should mention what Vohn had told her. "He seemed so broken up over it, I thought he'd—"

"Yeah, he is. He's got the marble in the second floor drawing room now."

She looked up the staircase. "That was quick."

"Evandis keeps a lot of marble on hand, buys it up when he finds something he likes. It's heavy, though, so most is in the basement." He rubbed his shoulder. "It took four of us to lug it up."

"Vohn, too?"

He laughed, nodding as he started off across the ballroom. "Vohn mostly, yeah."

They were halfway to the doorway to the kitchen when quick steps on the staircase made Ivy look there.

A parachute-sized lilac skirt whirled down the steps, cinched at the waist by a tight corset, above its neckline Scarlet's pale neck and slender arms seeming to float as she glided down the case. She reached the bottom in seconds, twirling in a series of perfect pique turns, stopping to face Ivy and Dred.

Ivy smiled at the display, holding her breath as the woman swept across the parquet to them. "Beautiful . . ."

"Do you think so?" Scarlet's hair was pulled up, a few tendril's falling to each side of her face. "Why, thank you, Ivybelle."

"Are you doing the play?"

Dred cleared his throat. "Yeah, they're working on something."

Scarlet's head lifted, sending Ivy a poised, aloof appraisal. "I play the lead, naturally, in our little play. I'm going out to the garden," she said, looking back over her shoulder in a dramatic fashion, her dark hair lying on her shoulder in a wispy tease, "to be gazed upon." She disappeared down another hallway Ivy knew led to the back gardens.

"Who's going to look at her?" Ivy asked, following him into the kitchen.

"Rocky. He's gonna paint her again. With Rimbladt." He rolled his eyes as he opened an overhead cupboard in the painted white hutch. "Some Georgian debbie-can't thing."

"I think you mean debutante."

"Close enough."

She peeked out the window of the door that led out to the kitchen herb garden. "Who's Rimbladt?" Past the dying off herbal plants in the small, raised bed, she could see Rockfort setting up an easel as Scarlet crossed the grass to him. Rockfort turned as she neared, made a sweeping gesture to the white wicker chair a few yards away, and bowed to her faux curtsy.

"Uh, our cousin. The guy Vohn beat when he decapitated the statue." He laughed. "Kind of low-key nobility from some little country that still needs titles. In Europe."

"Real nobility?" Ivy marveled at the scene, which she knew was likely not a scene at all, but rather the artist's natural mannerisms as he positioned Scarlet for her sitting. "I don't see him yet."

"Yeah, he's probably off sharpening his swords or something."

A loud clunk from high above jerked her attention to the ceiling. A rumble of something hard rolling followed.

"That's Evandis now," Dred said. "Chunking off marble on the second floor."

She smiled, looking upward, something satisfying in the sound of the prissy man's resilience.

"Face up," Dred said, tossing her a small item.

Ivy barely caught the mini-size candy bar. She sent him a look. "Face up? What is that, a hockey term?"

"No, it's like, 'hey, this is coming your way.'" He shrugged, ripping off his candy's wrapper and stuffing the whole piece in his mouth. "I hear it all the time at school. Don't you? Or don't girls say that kind of stuff?"

"You mean heads up, not face up." She opened the candy, smiling at the chocolaty whiff it brought. "Thanks."

"Oh. Heads up. Got it." He grabbed a few more miniature-sized candy packages and pushed the pumpkin-shaped bowl back into the cupboard and closed the door. "Let's go, check out 'Vandis' work. Give him some pointers, eh?"

The drawing room on the second floor was everything Ivy expected in a drawing room, from its Louis XIV style tables and chairs to the oriental folding screens blocking off what appeared to be a work area. Ivy stopped as soon as she stepped in the doorway, feeling Dred nearly collide with her as he stepped to her side. He prodded her in, staying close.

"Don't worry about disturbing him," he said. He spoke more, but the swooning draw of a harp down the hall drowned out most of his words. He cleared his throat and escorted her in. She stepped in with him, the sweep of the harp seeming to usher them inside.

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