Chapter 7: The Reckoning Call
The obsidian floor gleamed like a black mirror beneath Aldous Vane's polished shoes. He stood at the wide window of his private residence, the Manhattan skyline sprawled before him like a kingdom waiting to be claimed. In his hand, a glass of blood-red wine trembled slightly, not from fear but from anticipation. He had waited eighty years for this. Eighty years of serving Tomas Rojas, of watching that cold bastard take everything while Aldous smiled and nodded and bided his time.
He raised the glass to his lips and drank. The vintage was exquisite, a 1789 Bordeaux with a copper undertone. The same vintage he had instructed Orla to pour for the little witch's dinner. Irony tasted sweet.
The phone on the marble sideboard buzzed. Aldous let it ring twice, savouring the moment. Tomas would be calling to confirm the good news, or perhaps to ask for advice on how to handle the funeral arrangements. Either way, Aldous would be ready. He had rehearsed this conversation a hundred times in his head. The sympathy. The measured grief. The gentle suggestion that perhaps he could help steady the ship during this difficult time.
He set down his glass and picked up the receiver.
"Tomas," he said, his voice smooth as aged whiskey. "I was just thinking of you. How is the lovely bride settling in? Enjoying her first proper dinner in the manor?"
The silence on the other end of the line was wrong. It stretched too long, too cold, like the pause before a blade falls.
"Tomas?" Aldous prompted, a flicker of unease curling in his gut.
"Where are you, Aldous?" Tomas's voice came through the line, and it was not the voice of a man mourning his wife. It was the voice of a man who had just discovered a snake in his bed. Each word was a blade of ice, measured and lethal.
Aldous blinked. "I am at my residence. Is something wrong?"
"Wrong?" Tomas repeated, and the word came out like a snarl wrapped in silk. "Tell me, Aldous. When did you last speak with Orla?"
The name hit Aldous like a physical blow. His hand tightened on the receiver. Orla. The slender copper-haired vampire who wore severe black silk and called him at odd hours with promises and whispers. His secret. His tool. His... weakness.
"I do not know any Orla," he said carefully. "Is she one of the new staff?"
"You are lying to me."
The cold certainty in Tomas's voice made Aldous's throat constrict. He forced a laugh, light and careless. "Tomas, I have no idea what you are talking about. What has happened? Is Bianca unwell? Did the dinner not agree with her?"
"The poison agreed with her just fine," Tomas said. "It rebounded, as curses are wont to do. The handmaid who served it is dead."
The room tilted. Aldous gripped the edge of the marble sideboard, his knuckles whitening. Dead. Orla was dead. The curse had not taken Bianca. It had taken his little copper-haired flame, the only creature who had ever looked at him without seeing Tomas Rojas's shadow.
"That is... terrible," he managed. "Who would do such a thing? Poisoning a bride on her first night in the manor? You must find who is responsible, Tomas. You must—"
"Bianca is not dead."
The words cut through him like a razor. Aldous's mouth opened, but no sound came out. The wine glass sat on the sideboard, untouched, taunting him. Bianca is not dead. She was alive. The curse had worked, but not for him. It had worked for her, as it always did.
"Bianca is not dead," Tomas repeated, each syllable falling like a hammer. "And the handmaid who served her wine is dead. The handmaid you assigned to her. The handmaid you selected personally, if I remember correctly. The handmaid named Orla."
Aldous's mind shattered. Fragments of memory scattered across the black floor of his consciousness. Orla's laugh. Orla's copper hair coiled tight against her skull. Orla's voice whispering promises of territory and power. Orla's body crumpled in some servant's quarters, dead from a curse that was never meant to touch her.
"Tomas," he said, and his voice cracked. "Tomas, I swear to you. I never touched her. I never—"
"Do not insult me with your oaths."
The line hissed with static, or perhaps that was just the sound of Aldous's own blood roaring in his ears. He could hear Tomas breathing, slow and controlled, the way a predator breathes when it has cornered its prey.
"I put her in your household as a courtesy," Tomas said. "I trusted you to choose someone competent. Instead, you chose a woman who would pour poison into my wife's glass. So I will ask you once, and you will answer me truthfully. Did you put her up to it?"
The question hung in the air like an executioner's axe. Aldous's throat worked, but no sound emerged. He thought of Orla's body, still warm somewhere in that cold manor. He thought of her promise, her ambition, her foolish trust in him. He had told her it would be simple. A few drops in the wine. A single dinner. Territory and power waiting at the end of it.
He had not told her about the curse. He had not told her that Bianca Ricci was a living voodoo doll, that harm done to her rebounded tenfold. He had not told her, and now she was dead, and Tomas Rojas was asking him questions with that blade of ice in his voice.
"No," Aldous whispered. The word came out hollow, bereft. "No, I swear, I never touched her."
Silence. Long and terrible. Aldous could hear his own heartbeat, far too fast for a vampire who had lived three centuries. He could hear the distant traffic below his window, the city humming on, indifferent to the ruin unfolding in this opulent room.
"Then you are either a fool or a liar," Tomas said finally. "And I have no use for either."
The line went dead.
Aldous stood there, the receiver still pressed to his ear, listening to the dial tone that no one had bothered to program out of an ancient phone line. The obsidian floor reflected his frozen silhouette. The scent of expensive cigars hung in the air, stale and mocking.
He lowered the receiver and set it back on the cradle with deliberate care, as if the phone itself were made of glass and might shatter under his touch.
Orla was dead. Bianca Ricci was alive. And Tomas Rojas knew that something was rotten in his second's heart.
Aldous turned to the window. The skyline glittered before him, all those towers of steel and glass, and for the first time in eighty years, it looked like a cage rather than a kingdom. He reached for his wine glass, raised it to his lips, and drank.
The wine tasted like ash.
The wine tasted like ash on his tongue, and Aldous set the glass down with a hand that trembled despite his centuries of composure. He stood at the window for a long moment, watching the city lights blur and sharpen, blur and sharpen, while the truth settled into his bones like a poison of its own.
Orla was dead. Tomas knew. And somewhere in that cold manor, Bianca Ricci was alive and unharmed, her curse working exactly as it was meant to.
Aldous reached for the phone again, then stopped. There was no one left to call.
Across the city, Tomas Rojas ended the call and stood in his study with the receiver still warm in his palm. The manor had gone quiet around him, the servants moving in hushed, frightened currents after the events of dinner. He should go to Aldous. He should drag the truth out of his second with his bare hands, should make him answer for the poison and the dead girl and the audacity of thinking he could touch what belonged to Tomas.
But the bond pulled at him, insistent as a heartbeat, and he knew where she was.
He found her in the courtyard, leaning against the side of a black town car with the door open and the interior light spilling warm across the cobblestones. She had changed out of the dinner gown into something simpler, a dark slip of a dress that caught the moonlight, and her dreads were loose around her shoulders. She looked up as he approached, and there was something almost pleased in her eyes, like she had known he would come.
"Won't you come on a drive with me, my dear husband?" She smiled, slow and dangerous. "It is a lovely night for it."
Tomas studied her for a long moment. The bond hummed between them, curious and warm, and he found himself nodding before he had fully decided to.
He got into the car. She slid in beside him and gave the driver a quiet direction, and the town car pulled away from the manor with a soft purr of engine.
They drove in uncomfortable silence. The city rolled past the tinted windows, towers of glass and steel gleaming against the bruised purple of the night sky. Tomas kept his gaze fixed forward, but he could feel her beside him, the warmth of her presence, the steady rhythm of her breathing. The bond thrummed low in his chest, patient and watchful.
Bianca did not speak. She seemed content to let the silence stretch, to let him sit with his thoughts and his questions and the strange, uncomfortable pull of the tie that bound them.
The car turned off the main road and wound through a gate of black iron, down a tree-lined drive that opened onto a sprawling estate. Tomas had expected something cold and fortified, a fortress to match the woman who ruled a global empire of shadows. What he found instead was a manor of warm stone and climbing roses, lights glowing gold in the windows, a garden that smelled of jasmine and night-blooming flowers.
Bianca paid the driver and stepped out, and Tomas followed.
Before they went in, she paused. He reached out and caught her hand, his fingers wrapping around hers, and felt the faint tremor that ran through her at the contact. He did not know why he did it. The bond had driven him to it, the need to say the words before they could fester between them.
"I need you to know," he said, his voice low and rough, "I had nothing to do with what happened at dinner."
She looked at him, her dark eyes unreadable in the soft light of the porch. "I know."
"How?"
"The bond." She said it simply, like it was the most natural thing in the world. "I can feel if you are happy, sad, lying, and everything else in between. It is quite the useful tool."
He made a sound, something between a laugh and a grunt. "Hm."
With that, they went inside.
The interior of her estate was nothing like his manor. Tomas had expected the cold opulence he had seen in her business dealings, the sharp edges and darker instincts that ruled her empire. Instead, the rooms were warm and lived-in, with worn leather armchairs and shelves of books and rugs that had seen decades of bare feet. There was a fireplace in the main sitting room, dark and unlit, and a grand piano in the corner with sheet music scattered across its stand.
Bianca paid him no mind. She slipped off her heels, letting them fall to the floor with a soft clatter, and then reached behind her back and unclasped her bra, pulling it out from under her dress and tossing it onto the couch without ceremony.
"You are free to return to your manor if you would like," she said, not looking at him. "I can call you a car. I will be in the kitchen. I like to have something sweet before bed."
"All right, then," Tomas said, and turned toward the door.
The bond held him in place.
He stood there with his hand on the door handle, the cold brass beneath his fingers, and could not make his feet move. He could hear her in the kitchen, the soft click of the refrigerator opening, the clink of glass, the rustle of movement. She was not rushing. She was not waiting. She was simply going about her evening, as if his presence or absence made no difference at all.
He wanted to leave. His body refused.
Before he knew it, he was walking into the kitchen.
She was sitting at the kitchen island, a tub of ice cream in front of her and two bowls already set out on the marble counter. She looked up as he came in, and there was something almost soft in her expression, something she would never have let him see in the cold halls of his manor.
"Am I that predictable?" she asked.
"Yes and no." He took the spoon she held out to him. "It is the bond."
"Mm." She scooped two generous spoonfuls into each of their bowls and set the tub aside. "I thought so."
They ate in silence for a while. The ice cream was vanilla bean with a swirl of caramel, rich and sweet, and the kitchen was warm and quiet around them. The bond stretched between them like a living thing, curling and shifting, and Tomas felt himself leaning closer without meaning to.
She set down her spoon. "You know I am going to kill your second, Aldous, right?"
"Yes."
"And you are all right with that?"
"No, not really." He turned his spoon over in his fingers, watching the caramel catch the light. "But he tried to kill you. Contract marriage or not, you are still mine. I mean, you are my wife."
"I am not yours."
"Neither am I yours."
They stared at each other like predators sizing each other up, and the heat of the bond was no longer a gentle pull in his veins. It was a fire, gathering low in his belly and spreading outward, warming places that had been cold for a long, long time.
"I should go," he said.
"You should."
Neither of them moved.