The Maestro's Apprentice (10 page)

84

“So admitting he’s a vampire isn’t enough? What else could he possibly be hiding?”

“I don’t know. A lot of these guys are pretty old. They’ve had a lot of time to do things they don’t want people to know about, is all I’m saying. They’ve had a lot of time to perfect their…game, for lack of a better word. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“I think you’re jealous,” Autumn snapped.

Maria wrinkled her brow and hung her head briefly.

“I’m sorry,” Autumn said, tearing up, regretting her tone. “I just…I’m sorry.”

Maria nodded, blinking rapidly. “It’s okay. I knew this was coming, Autumn. I did.

You were always so eager when we were together. I knew you were hungry for new experiences. I didn’t really expect it to last forever. I just thought we might have some time before you decided to stretch your wings, is all.”

Autumn smiled. “I still love you. You’re my best friend.”

Maria gave her a sad smile. “Not exactly the title I’d hoped for, but I guess it’ll have to do.” She put her arm around Autumn. “I’ll kick that guy’s ass if he hurts you.”

“He’s not going to hurt me. He’s a hairdresser.”

“Like Sweeney Todd?”

Autumn rolled her eyes at her and sipped her drink. “Sweeney Todd’s a barber.

Everyone knows barbers are much creepier than hairdressers.”

“I hope you’re right,” Maria said.

85

After dinner, Adam presented Maria with a new dress he’d bought her in one of the gift shops. It was long and red and went with a favorite pair of shoes she’d brought from home. She held the fabric in her hands and looked at it as though she had no idea what it was. Then she looked back up at him with tears in her eyes. It brought tears to Autumn’s eyes too, and she was glad Adam had found a way to make Maria happy.

“I got myself a pair of good shoes too,” he said, holding them up for her to see. “I know we can’t really afford it, but it should get us into some of the better events. Maybe we can find something fun to do tonight.”

Maria nodded frantically, unable to speak, and ran to the bathroom. “Thank you,” she sobbed on the way.

“There are methods to make money,” Autumn said tentatively when she was gone.

She sat at the table, flipping blindly through the laminated book of house events.

Adam raised his eyebrows, looking through the clothes he had laid out on the bed.

“Don’t you even think about it. I don’t want you out of this room by yourself, either. Do you understand? No going out. Vampires are natural predators and I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“All they want is to feed and have a little fun, Adam. What’s so wrong with that?”

“Do what I say. I want you here when we get back.”

She flipped a page and let it fall over. “When are you coming back?”

“I don’t know. Could be a half-hour, so you just stay put. Familiarize yourself with what there is to do here or something.”

86

“Yes, massa,” she said quietly.

He froze with a black shirt in his hand, and gave her a stern look. “Oh, no, you don’t.

Don’t pull that ‘massa’ bullshit on me.”

“Or what?”

“Or what, nothing. Just don’t.”

Autumn sighed. Since dinner she had started to feel a little frustrated and couldn’t really account for why. She wondered if it was her encounter with Francois, or whether she felt left out because Adam and Maria were taking a night to themselves.

A few minutes later, Maria came out of the bathroom in her red dress. It was a sleek dress, but Autumn pictured her dancing in a festival in something with ruffles, whooshing her skirt and teasing the boys, wearing huge matching flowers in her hair. She had always envied Maria’s dramatic Latina looks. Maria had always said they looked good together, dark and light, buxom and waifish, passionate and…
and what?
Autumn wondered. What had been her counterpart to Maria’s boisterous passion? Whatever it was, Autumn thought it must have turned into something else, some lust for life in whatever form it came to her, a Bacchanalian ecstasy, a thirst that rivaled that of any vampire she had ever met.

Adam dressed in a new gray jacket he had bought in one of the on-site stores, wing tips, jeans and a black T-shirt. “Put your hair down, like this,” Maria said, sounding almost like her old self, fluffing the hair that already rested on Adam’s shoulders. “And you need some gold. We’ll have to get you a gold necklace when we have money.”

“You girls are going to drive me crazy,” he said while reaching around to take down his hair, smiling in spite of his words. “Better?”

87

“Much,” Maria said. She grinned at Autumn, most likely out of habit, Autumn thought, because the grin disappeared almost as soon as they made eye contact. Maria blinked her eyes quickly and looked away, then forced herself to smile at Adam. “I’m ready. Let’s go see what kind of trouble we can find.”

“With you in that dress, I think the trouble is probably going to find us,” Adam said and held out his arm. Over his shoulder, he said to Autumn, “Remember what I told you.

Stay here. You’ve already gotten into enough lately.”

Autumn nodded and sighed. “I’ll be right here,” she said miserably. She was glad Maria and Adam were going to have some fun, but her energy level was way too high to be stuck in a room by herself, even a ridiculously elegant one like this.

She stared down at the book. It was a large, black three-ring spiral binder with Drings to hold plenty of laminated pages. It advertised masked balls, feeder auctions, vampire auctions, mixers, pool parties, cocktail parties, fetish events, concerts and burlesque shows. Guests could purchase packages entitling them to attend particular events provided they were dressed appropriately.

She flipped to the Nonpaying Guests section, which promised “A Host of Events for You As Well.” She felt skeptical, but discovered many of the events were open to non-paying guests as long as they could pay the cover and had the right clothes. Plus, there were several bars in the place, and a vampire could always sponsor people he or she liked into an event.

“Wow,” she said to herself. “You can get turned on just by looking at this book.” One photo in particular reminded her of something that could be used to advertise a Cirque du Soleil performance—a man in white-tie surrounded on either arm by four women in 88

sequined and feathery dresses. The man wore a leopard eye mask and the women wore elaborate bird masks. The photo was taken from a vantage point lower than the subjects.

The two women on the ends bent their knees toward each other, showing their thighs through the slits in their dresses.

Autumn wanted to be there. Whatever went on during one of those masked balls, she wanted to see it. She wanted to do it. She flipped to another page, to see images from a fetish ball—a slender young man on an X-frame cross getting flogged, a man holding a whip in each hand at crotch level and giving the camera a penetrating look, a woman standing on the backs of two men posed on all fours, holding reins attached to their bits.

She went back to the photo of the man with the whip. Something about the look in his eye liquefied her insides. She slid down in the chair and reached between her legs to press the seam of her jeans against her labia, undulating middle and index finger, trying to make it hurt just a little.

She almost didn’t hear the knock on the door.

Letting her jaw go slack, Autumn groaned louder than her pleasure demanded, just to hear the animal sound of her own voice. When the knock came again, it was more forceful and was accompanied by a man’s voice. “Hello? Adam? Autumn? Anyone?”

She froze. It sounded familiar, but she couldn’t quite place where she’d heard it before. For a moment, she almost pretended not to be there. Then she decided that would be silly, especially if whomever it was had heard her unrepentant moaning. She blushed.

“Co…coming!” she called, which only made her blush harder.

Autumn straightened her hair on the way to the door, combing her fingers through it and snagging a tangle. “Ow!” she muttered, barely working it out before making it across 89

the room, shaking the loose strands from her fingers to the bare hardwood floor. Then she put her hand on the doorknob, took a big breath, sighed and opened the door.

It was Francois, and he had a bottle of Scotch and a boy with straight, longish hair with him. “Hi, Autumn. I thought if you and your friends weren’t doing anything, maybe you’d like to share some Dewar’s. I just got it on the way here. Oh, this is my boy, Josh.

Say hi, Josh.”

“Hi,” Josh said, sizing her up behind Francois’s back.

“Mind if we come in?” Francois asked.

“Uh…sure,” Autumn answered, stepping aside. “Adam and Maria are gone right now, though. They’ll be back later.”

“Do you have plans?”

“Not me. They ditched me to go see what this place is about.”

“Then I arrived in the nick of time,” he said, spinning around to face her, opening his arms wide. “Would you like a drink?”

“Sure,” she said, and went to the minibar to look for cups.

“If you don’t like it,” Francois said as he set the bottle down on the bar, “I have some mixers in my room.”

Autumn shook her head, not at all comfortable with the idea of going back to his room. In light of what she had done with Bill the guitarist in the French Quarter, this struck her as strange.

“No, I think I’ll like it,” she said, finding a small stack of individually wrapped plastic cups and unwrapping them.

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Francois poured without speaking, seemingly content to have her watch him work, and handed her one.

Autumn put her nose into the cup and sniffed. The smell was strong and sharp. She had never been curious about Claudio’s whiskeys, but she had been different then. The sip she took burned all the way down and made her cough. That was twice today, she noticed.

“We should probably water that down,” Francois said and took it back, going over to the mini fridge and taking out a bottle of water. Autumn marveled at the way he made himself at home. “You know, in my old life, I never would have gotten my own bottle of water. If they’d had bottles of water.” He twisted off the cap and poured some into her cup, then handed it back. “Here, try that. Better?”

“Much,” she said, glancing at Josh, who had found his way to a chair and claimed it.

He leveled his eyes at her and did not blink or smile. “Does he want anything?”

“He doesn’t drink until he can behave himself better. He’s like a twenty-year-old child.”

Josh looked away, grinding his teeth. His whole body seemed tense. Before she could look away from him, he turned his eyes on her. There was something dark there, seething just under the surface, barely under control. She turned away and sipped her drink.

“You know what we need?” Francois asked, wandering away from the bar with a cup of his own in his hand. “Music.”

“Oh, it’s too bad Adam’s not here,” Autumn said, suddenly excited. “He could play his saxophone.”

91

“That’s not exactly what I meant,” he said. “Something softer. Violins, maybe?

Hmm?” He turned on his heel and raised his eyebrows suggestively. The gesture reminded her strangely of Claudio.

“Here,” he said before she could react, offering her hand. When she gave it to him, he began to hum a waltz she didn’t recognize, then raised their hands and spun her, endangering the barely filled cups of whiskey. “See what fun we could have if we had an orchestra in our room?”

She wanted to feel like laughing, but had no idea how to respond to him. And then he was off again, taking long strides toward the bed, then flopping onto the foot and sloshing whiskey up onto his hand. Both Autumn and Josh moved for the paper towels at the same time.

“I’ll get it,” Josh growled.

“No, no, Josh, let her do it,” he said, holding his hand away from his body and grimacing. “Can’t you see I did that on purpose to give her an excuse to touch me?”

Josh glared at her for a moment before crossing his arms and standing there.

“Go sit down, boy. And do something about that foul mood before I send you back to our room. You’re the one who wanted to come. Remember?”

Josh blinked and nodded, hanging his head a little. “Yes, sir,” he said, and returned to his chair, looking off to the side and blinking rapidly.

The exchange caused Autumn’s stomach to tighten pleasantly. She remembered how Bill in the French Quarter had spoken sternly to her before having his way with her, and wondered if this man would be the same—
if
she’d wanted to play with him, which she didn’t. He was just a little too smug for her taste, even though he had managed to intrigue 92

her. She handed him the paper towel. “I’m not going to touch you,” she said, her voice soft but firm. “You’ll just have to do it yourself.” She hoped there was a challenge in her eyes.

He looked up at her for a moment, then gave her a surprised smile before taking the paper and dabbing at his wrist. “Clever, clever girl. You know exactly how to keep yourself out of the clutches of a vampire.” He patted the mattress beside him. “But come sit with me. I have to know something.”

“What?” she asked, and sat.

“Why a lovely, and I’m sure very tasty, girl like you is sitting all alone in her room.”

He pinched her chin between finger and thumb and guided her eyes toward him. “Have you been a bad girl, Autumn? Are you being punished?”

For a moment, the tight ball in her stomach warmed. For a moment, her lips parted and her breathing deepened. Then she shook her head. “No. It’s not like that. Adam doesn’t punish.”

“I’ll bet you wish he did, though,” Francois said and turned away from her, leaning back on his free hand, sipping his drink.

Autumn stared. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Francois shrugged. “Just that a lot of the people who are into vampires have those leanings. Call it a hunch, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a red
derriere
right now.”

“No, I don’t,” she said, standing up. Technically, it was true, because the belt-marks Bill had left were now blue.

“That surprises me,” he said, rising with her, moving deliberately, holding his drink off to the side and standing close to her. “Would you like one now?”