Page 19 of Vacation with the Vampire
When we arrived, the café was still open. Light spilled warmly onto the street, laughter drifting out with it. Humans gathered in small clusters, oblivious, relaxed, entirely unaware of what existed just beyond their understanding. It was almost comforting; I was beginning to understand why Thibault ran a den for humans now. Though it was still a mystery why the place I’d known had ended.
I asked the driver to wait for me, and he said he’d “circle the block,” whatever that meant. Then I slipped inside, fittingin, barely noticed now that I was dressed just like any other. Thibault was coming to meet me, cutting through the warm, laughter-filled café like a shark. He was dressed impeccably, as before: sharp lines, dark fabric. A suit that was enviable in its power and refinement.
“Raoul,” he said in lieu of a greeting. Heads turned to look at us, and as much as these jeans and T-shirt made me fit in, I now felt underdressed. Thibault carried a presence with him that made even the humans stand at attention, aware that they were close to power. “I wondered how long it would take,” he added.
“I did not intend to delay,” I replied evenly, but I had wanted to repay Susie for her kindness and for giving me a place to stay. After my visit to the bank this morning, I knew my home still stood, but the fact was, without her I had been lost. Once Thibault gave me my answers, I intended to court Susie. The magic we’d already created today, I wouldn’t need to end it next time.
My old friend nodded, and my eyes sharpened when I noticed something weary—tired—in his expression. “Come,” he muttered, and turned to lead me back to his chambers at the top of the building. They were exactly as I remembered them from yesterday, except now a fire had been lit in the hearth. It was that fire that made it look almost like a place I could have visited two hundred years ago, before my long nap.
I did not sit, but braced myself for the conversation to come. “Tell me,” I demanded. Without Susie here, I was prepared to take some risks, though I hoped Thibault still valued the friendship we’d shared back in eighteen hundred.
His brow lifted slightly, and his presence seemed to sharpen, looming. Like he was unfolding his massive wings and casting a shadow across the room, but without actually doing so. “Direct as ever,” he said.
“You expected otherwise?” I shot back. I recognized some of the knickknacks that decorated the mantel and the shelves. Magical tomes lined up behind glass-paned doors.
A faint smirk touched his mouth as he said, “No.” Then he moved past me, removing his jacket with deliberate ease before draping it over a chair. “Then let us begin with the obvious,” he said. “How did you wake?”
“I do not know,” I answered immediately and honestly. I had a theory, but I did not know if it was true. The fact was, only Louis would know, and only Thibault would know what had happened to the necromancer.
“And the girl?” my old friend asked. His tone was casual, as if he knew he was stirring a hornet’s nest with that question. I sensed his curiosity, his eagerness for an answer, and protective instincts surged.
My gaze sharpened into a glare sharp enough to cut. “No.” I might never have wielded a position of authority and power like he did, but I was still a force to be reckoned with. Soon, that werewolf intruder would find that out, too.
Thibault paused, hand twitching against the jacket he’d draped over a chair. Then he turned, very slowly, and shadows seemed to fall across the room again, a coldness whispering through my bones and warning of danger. “You refuse?”
“I will answer nothing,” I said, my voice steady, “until I have answers of my own.” For a moment, something flickered in his expression, annoyance, perhaps. Then it faded, ebbing away like the outgoing tide.
He exhaled very slowly and crossed the room to the fauteuil by the hearth, dropping onto it with a heaviness I had not seen in him before. He looked tired, truly tired. It wasn’t just a hint of weariness like I’d caught before, but a bone-deep exhaustion he hadn’t been willing to show until now.
“Very well,” he said quietly, but silence stretched for a beat after those words. His gray eyes flicked from the fire to the window as he thought. “Louis is gone.” The words landed without ceremony, but they struck all the same.
My jaw tightened as I was struck with both grief and worry. “Gone,” I repeated. Grief over losing a friend I had expected to still be standing and ready for more late-night talks and philosophical debates on death and magic. Worry because now I would not have answers to my situation with Susie, and I wanted a clear-cut answer right now.
“Dead,” he clarified. “He dabbled in politics for a while after you left, then followed his son to Italy. Word got back to me that he died in Rome in 1854.” His eyes locked with mine and spoke volumes. Death, for Louis, had never been a simple state, considering he was a necromancer.
“What happened?” I asked. Just because he’d received word of his death didn’t mean he’d stayed dead. That’s how Louis had moved through the ages, from one identity to the next.Sometimes posing as his own son, sometimes starting from scratch.
Thibault leaned back, dragging a hand briefly over his face. “I thought a few months, a few years maybe, and he’d pop back up, but… nothing, Raoul. No word at all.” A pause, and another laden look shared between us. “With Louis,” he added, “one never claims certainty.”
No, one did not. It was entirely out of character for him to just vanish off the face of the planet without some word to his oldest friend. He’d given me his solemn vow to be there in three centuries to wake me, and I’d trusted him to do that.
I turned slightly, pacing once across the room. “So the one man who might explain my awakening,” I said, “is missing. Presumed dead.”
“Yes,” Thibault agreed with me. His tone carried an edge, and now I wondered if it wasn’t anger, or pain. If Louis had vanished and I’d gone to ground, that had left him alone to manage the den, the neutral ground he’d created.
“Inconvenient,” I said, sighing and doing what he’d done earlier, dragging a hand tiredly across my face. My entire being called for Susie, to go back to that hotel room and finish what we’d started. Now I’d have to go back without answers.
“Extremely,” my old friend agreed, this time with a curling edge of amusement in his tone. Silence settled again, but this time it shifted into something less adversarial and more familiar. Thibault watched me for a moment, then gestured loosely. “You have missed much.”
“So I have gathered.” I was beginning to feel guilty for making the choice now, though both Thibault and Louis had fully supported my decision. Everyone handled immortality differently, and I’d been around for a very long time.
“The den is gone,” he said. “Tensions escalated. It could no longer be sustained, much as it pained me to make that choice. Old alliances fractured; protections were gone…”
“Fractured into what?” I asked sharply, my gaze sweeping out over the view of the city visible through the tall windows. The bank hadn’t changed as far as I could tell, and neither had several other familiar haunts I’d shown Susie today. It was undeniable that I’d sensed undercurrents, though. Hostility with the werewolf and his bakery, strange glances from the witch I’d run into and recognized purely by the scent of magic.
“Factions,” he replied. “Many, and none particularly friendly.” His expression was bleaker than ever, and his exhaustion hung heavy in the air. Whatever he was talking about, it sounded bad.
“Elaborate,” I demanded, finally crossing the room to sit in the fauteuil across from my friend. Where he sprawled, I sat tensely, leaning forward on the edge of the seat.
