41

Alex led her back up the spiral hallway and along the dim, plush corridor.  

“How could you steal from me like this?” she demanded as she hurried along.  She was the wronged party, damn it, so why did they have to hurry so much?  Yet if she requested a slower pace, then her role would definitely swing from morally superior to physically needy.  Thus determined to keep up, further conversation was impossible.  Her lungs and leg muscles required all the oxygen she possessed and then some.  Kendra thought she saw Alex smirk.  Vexed, she jerked his arm again. What she thought of as a smirk deepened. 

Her leg muscles quivered and burned by the time he paused to push open a door.  She recognized the ballroom when the door was open only a few inches.  Even with that narrow glimpse, it was evident that a party was underway--not of course because she heard loud chatter or raucous laughter, everyone in attendance was a vampire, but because everyone held a champagne flute and gestured more freely than she’d ever seen them do.

“Wait,” she panted.

Alex shut the door.  “What is it?”

“I don’t feel like celebrating.  You’re stealing my life’s work.”

Several emotions seemed to flit across Alex’s face.  He smiled, but Kendra could see that he was nervous.  “Your life’s work?” he said lightly after a moment.  “But darling, you’re only nineteen.”  He opened the door, and ‘helped’ her into the glittering ballroom.

To Kendra’s utter amazement every vampire in the room turned to face them with glasses raised.  Cyril appeared at her side and extended a tray with two flutes of champagne on it.  Alex reached over to take one.  Dazed, Kendra took the other, and raised it only because Alex raised his.  No thief would out do her, not as long as she drew breath.

“A toast to our new science team,” Regis said, and drained his glass.  Alex and the others followed suit.  Kendra sipped hers, almost completely discombobulated.  What does ‘science team’ mean?

As soon as Alex released her hand, she slid over to the side of the room and set the nearly full flute of champagne on a tray that stood waiting to accept empty glasses.  Her anger and confusion were gone.  Instead, she felt drained and lonely.  

Of all the humans in the world, she wished that she could talk with LB.  Her younger self would enjoy the champagne and finery, and especially the quiet, elegant vampires.  Youthful ebullience would keep her from being bogged down by concerns about intellectual property.  No, LB would instead come up with some fantastic scheme to save the day…or night.  Kendra smiled, her spirit suddenly lighter.  LB had shown her that the vampire gathering was an opportunity to mingle and gather information, an opportunity that she could not afford to waste.

“Would you care for something else to drink?” asked Cyril, having appeared at her side again.  

“No, thank you, Cyril.”  Kendra smiled at him, and retrieved her flute of champagne.  Cyril moved as if to object.  “It’s fine, Cyril.  I just wanted my hands free while I thought for a moment.  Do you suppose that Regis might have somewhere in this gorgeous home of his,” she gestured grandly at their surroundings, “a gown suitable for this occasion, and one that he might lend me for the evening?”

“Forgive me, Ms. Tanagawa,” Cyril said and looked worried, “I thought Mr. Sterling would have mentioned it.  All the clothing in the closet and armoire of your room is at your disposal.”  He bowed slightly.

“Would you do me the courtesy, then, of showing me to my room please, Cyril?” 

“Certainly.”  He gestured toward the staff hallway, and a young man wearing a white short jacket, grand but rather less formal than Cyril’s long black tailcoat, appeared.  

“You have the floor, Brian.  I will be back soon I think?”  Cyril looked toward Kendra uncertainly.  She nodded.  He glanced at his watch.  “Have the bartenders start the martinis,” he told Brian, who promptly ducked down the hall.  It must lead to the kitchen.  Kendra shook her head.  Data was always good wasn’t it, yet she had no framework, say a map of the place, to which to attach that bit of information.

Cyril ducked down a hall that Kendra had not noticed before, its initial sections of wall were mirrored to match the ballroom.  She looked over her shoulder as she left, and spotted Alex in earnest conversation with Thomas and Regis.  None of them noticed her leave.  

Predictably, the elevator was hard to spot from the outside and splendid inside, done in brass and teak.  Kendra sighed as she and Cyril moved smoothly upward.  “Is everything in this place disguised?”

Cyril chuckled.  “It seems so at first,” he agreed.  For a moment Kendra didn’t think he would say anything more, but he added, “After a couple of months, though, it’s the world out there that seems ugly…garish.”

“Hmmm,” Kendra encouraged him, both interested and impressed by Cyril’s unsuspectedly poetic depths.  

“I suppose that with their sharpened senses vampires find the diminished distraction restful.”

Kendra waited a beat that she hoped was long enough to be respectful, then asked, “Does Regis offer maps of the house and grounds to his new guests?”

Another chuckle.  “No, ma’am.  New vampires are few, and catch on very quickly--well, they would, being able to see the doors properly--and we haven’t had a human visitor or even any new staff for several years.  Every human new to the place gets lost regularly for the first several months, I’m sorry to say.  Here we are.”  Cyril gestured for Kendra to precede him off the elevator.  

She walked into an elegant entryway.  The floor was carpeted, as all but the ballroom and kitchen thus far had been.  Cyril flipped on electric lights.  An ornate Victorian coat tree stood to one side of an equally elaborate sideboard and mirror.  A fanciful woman’s hat, complete with some sort of feathered ornament, sat on the sideboard.  Kendra turned from it with equal amounts of dread and fascination.  Was the thing meant for her?

To her great relief, she could see the hallway that lead into what seemed to be a huge apartment.  The doors, too, were evident, though I’ll bet there’s least one secret passageway.  

“Let me guess,” she said to Cyril.  “This is where Regis’ human guests stay.”

Cyril smiled and inclined his head.  “Your rooms are to the right.”

Kendra shot him a look of perplexed excitement.  “Rooms, as in plural?”  For a moment she felt like she was in a fairy tale.  

“I’ll wait here a minute.  Shout if you need anything.”  

Kendra hurried down the hall, to the right, and into a room that was half well-appointed Victorian sitting room, and half library.  The books were a fine collection of physics and math texts, though she saw that she’d need to request a few more--What am I thinking?  I’m going to escape--and then she spotted five battered novels on the lower shelf of a reading table set beside one of two comfortable reclining chairs.  She picked up one of the novels and opened the cover that had been crunched and worn into compliancy through many readings.  Kendra saw her name scrawled in pencil on the title page.  The vampires had been in her apartment.  She was torn between fury over the invasion and gratitude to them for having brought her something familiar.  Had they brought anything else?

She hurried through the library/sitting room.  A large platform bed laid under a white canopy that flowed toward the floor from a wooden ring suspended from the ceiling, elegant in its simplicity.  She longed to abandon her plan, and stretch out on it, but hurried to the closet, and slid open the mirrored doors.  Evidently the clothes had been arranged by elegance, with a ball gown and two evening gowns to the left, and LB’s leather jacket and her “at home” clothes to the right.

“Excellent, now Cinderella needs to get a move on,” she whispered, and stuffed herself into the brown evening gown.  The matching pumps she found stored in their box beneath the gown fit, or so she thought.  The heels were higher and far more narrow than Kendra was used to.  She wobbled through the apartment toward the elevator.  When at last she pretended out of desperation to walk on her toes she made fair progress.  As she tip-toed into the entryway she nearly fell.  One of the high heels had caught in the thick pile of the carpet.  She steadied herself on the sideboard, and then, feeling quite ridiculous, marched on her tip-toes to the elevator.

 I can do this.  I can mingle.  The words had become her mantra by the time she stepped back into the ballroom.  She spotted Alex looking at her from across the room, and waved using her fingers only.  It must have seemed more seductive than she’d intended.  He looked as if he could be knocked over with a feather.  Kendra smiled.  It was not the expression of a pleased woman, but rather part of the costume of a determined one.  Mata Hari, whether exotic dancer or spy, might have been proud.  Kendra moved toward the nearest group of vampires, ready to gather data.