Page 45 of Silent Stalker
ELEVEN
It seems your bride is quite displeased with this news.
Like most ofthe men in the brood, Ford and Gerry matched society’s general standard for attractive men. Ford embodied everything bodybuilding, likely capable of lifting cars without the benefit of his preternatural strength. Given a pair of pointy ears and longer hair, and he would put most elves to shame, too.
They dove into the board game with delightful enthusiasm, waging a good-natured war with Emerick, while I spent a shameful amount of time admiring the scenery. The dining room, which was connected to the kitchen through a short hallway that branched to the rest of the penthouse, served as their battlefield.
Had I focused more on the game and less on who played the game, I may have stood a better chance of winning. With the three men competing to be the best, I won even when I lost, so I sipped my hot chocolate and wondered who would get lucky and claim victory.
Between rounds of hot chocolate and failing miserably at figuring out who did what to who where, I worked on making potato soup while Emerick’s chicken roasted, tormenting me with the smells coming out of the oven.
So focused on food, I missed the final moments of the game. Emerick’s victorious crowing made it clear he still remained the prime ruler of the penthouse, though.
“I see we’re going to need to start having game nights up here.” I grabbed a spoon to test the broth of my soup, as the last thing I wanted was a bland mush masquerading as soup. Had I done the shopping, I would have gone on an epic hunt for Irish crumble potatoes, a rare treat my father indulged in. Something about them appealed to both me and my father, resulting in a fierce meal-time battle over who got more of the potatoes.
My mother hadn’t appreciated the times Irish crumble potatoes had come into the house.
“Perhaps a weekly gaming night may be a wise choice, especially with the current situation.” Emerick joined me at the counter, checking on the timer and crouching to peek into the oven through the glass window. “I thought about making a dish from my middle age, such as it were, but then I remembered how much it would cost.”
“What dish?” I asked.
Ford and Gerry joined us in the kitchen, and both men grabbed stools to sit at the island.
Gerry rested his elbows on the counter and winked at me. “It’s chicken. He loves chicken, especially when he can transform a fifteen dollar meal into a demonstration of excess.”
According to Emerick’s scowl, Gerry had landed a cruel blow on him. “It’s not just chicken. It’s chicken poached in clarified butter with spices. It takes quite a lot of clarified butter to make such a thing, but the milk solids shouldn’t be in the pot when trying to cook that way, so it must be clarified. It’s quite delicious.”
“It really is,” Gerry agreed. “I was young when that was a trend of the wealthy, and I got to try it once. It was one of the best meals I’d had in that era. Complete decadence. But I came from a poorer family, and this was before I had been made into a vampire.”
Had I judged on appearance alone, I would have assumed Gerry to be no older than twenty-five. I snagged my phone, unlocked it, and did a search for chicken and clarified butter, discovering the dish had likely come from the Middle Ages, although there was some controversy on when the dish had been first created.
“I stole Gerry from his maker, as his maker had not earned the right to have a brood yet,” Emerick informed me. “I am a far better master anyway.”
“That is not a high bar to reach, Emerick,” Gerry replied. “My maker was a fool. I had been turned due to illness, and my maker’s daughter fancied me.”
“Fancied?” a woman’s voice asked from the general direction of the reception. “Care to rephrase that?”
Gerry grinned, leaned towards me, and said, “She fancied me so much she turned the bride’s brood she’d joined upside down during her war to claim me as her rightful property. While I would have preferred if she’d conquered a little faster, she was worth the wait.”
A pale woman with dark hair stormed into the kitchen, her gray eyes focusing on Gerry. “What sort of horrible lies are you telling this time?”
Emerick laughed, went over to the woman, and kissed her cheek. “Finally got tired of Gerry wandering off and doing unscrupulous things with strange people, Annora?”
“Well, I tried his work first, but I was told he’d been stolen. As there’s only one unscrupulous master willing to steal from our brood, I figured I’d get results if I came here. Then to discover you playing games while filling our mistress’s ears with lies?”
Gerry laughed. “Okay, okay. She did campaign for my hand with her brood, as her father had made her in his last act of madness, so she hadn’t been brought up ready for the life of a bride in a bride’s brood. I couldn’t afford her, but the mistress of her new brood took pity on me upon learning we shared similar fates. I worked off her bride price as a protector of the brood for a hundred years.”
Everything I learned about vampires all pointed to the same place: they were nothing like the terrifying creatures my father had painted them out to be.
I allowed myself a smile at having broken free of more of my misconceptions. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Annora.”
The woman smiled, came to me, and kissed my cheeks as Emerick had kissed hers. “The pleasure is mine. The brood’s various gossips sung me a tale of how our master was beginning to introduce you, and as Gerry had been whisked away, I decided to invite myself over to see what the fuss is all about. Are you feeling better?”
“Much, thank you. Emerick has been hovering, but there are worse things he could be doing.” I adjusted the temperature on my soup to allow the potatoes to cook down more before I went in search of an immersion blender or a masher. If Emerick didn’t own an immersion blender, he would soon enough. “I feel we’re outnumbered, Annora.”
“Oh, we are. Dreadfully. For every one of us, there are at least ten sad, pouty men wishing for better luck and charm. You will tire of the sad, longing sighs and the pouting before too long. Had I been warned vampires become relentless romantics, I may have been a little less inclined to be made! And make no mistake, my father was mad and had made me as part of his madness, but I had reason to want a prolonged life.”
Annora glared at Gerry, who grinned at his wife.
