Iron Night (3 page)

When all three of us were settled around the table we spent a few more minutes like that. Bhumika was telling me some anecdote about her rose garden, and I was nodding mechanically. Chivalry was eating the omelet that had been prepared for him in advance, periodically nibbling at a sausage. Vampires continue to eat food for centuries after our transitions, but the selection starts narrowing the older we get. For Chivalry, the morning sausages that he'd enjoyed for two hundred years were becoming harder to handle, even though he still loved them. Had my mother been at the table with us, all she would've been able to sample were the mimosas.

Of course, breakfast with Madeline always had to be held in rooms that had no windows.

I forked the last of my pancakes into my mouth and had just started my good-byes when Bhumika abruptly said, “Honey, I'd love it if we could find the time for one last sail with Fort this year.”

I couldn't help the expression of surprise that I knew had appeared on my face, and I looked carefully over at Chivalry, who had gone completely poker-faced at the comment. Chivalry was a huge fan of yachting and owned a fifty-two-foot cruiser-racer boat that was completely sail driven and whose deck I had spent many grumpy hours swabbing as a teenager. Early in his marriage, he and Bhumika had done a lot of sailing in all weather, once even participating in the annual Newport-to-Bermuda yacht race, but they had cut back considerably in recent years. In the entire summer, I actually thought that they'd been out on the water only twice. “I don't know, Bhumika,” I said cautiously. “I have been pretty busy. Training with Chivalry, plus all our outings, plus my work schedule . . .” I let my voice trail off.

Chivalry smoothly added his. “It's hard to say how much longer this weather will last. And even with these temperatures, I don't know if I'd want to take the
Gay Belle
out for anything other than an afternoon sail.” Chivalry had named his yacht back in the 1880s, and even though he'd had it completely dry-docked and rebuilt multiple times down at the Newport Shipyard, he'd always kept the name, even as the connotations of the words changed very fundamentally and various other yacht owners periodically gave him sidelong looks, or, depending on their feelings on the topic, enthusiastic toots of their horns. As a teenager, I had repeatedly begged him to change the name to something slightly less mortifying, but Chivalry flatly refused. Of course, no one understood the art of outlasting a fad like a vampire, and he remained convinced that eventually the word would swing back to the old meaning. Of course, he'd also held on to his entire collection of top hats, cravats, and VHS tapes.

“I thought it would be nice to do, though,” Bhumika said. Her tone was pleasant, but I got the impression that she was digging in. “After all, I'd hate to wait all winter before we all went out together again.”

I glanced frantically over to Chivalry, waiting for him to say something. Everyone at this table knew that even if Bhumika lived through the winter, she'd never be going out on the water again.

My brother reached out and ran his fingertips gently across the back of Bhumika's hand. “We'll see if the schedules work out,” he said, very quietly.

For a man who killed all of his wives, it was always stunning how very much Chivalry loved them.

A chill ran down my spine, and I wondered if someday that would be me, caressing the hand of the woman who I was slowly killing. Abruptly, it was all too much for me, and I made a quick escape from the table. I dropped a kiss on Bhumika's cheek and waved to my brother with a promise to see him again tomorrow. Then I was off to my car at a lope that was as close to a run as I could get without being rudely obvious.

Cutting through the house, I did my best to avoid getting in the way of two maids who were giving the front entrance hall its thrice-weekly mopping, and only barely avoided knocking over a bucket of sudsy water. Out the front door, I walked across the white crushed-gravel driveway, giving in to the urge to kick a few times and listen to the pattering sound of dispersed stones falling back to the ground.

My car came into sight, tucked in like a mutt among show dogs, and I froze. Chivalry was leaning against the side of my dilapidated Ford Fiesta, watching me patiently. He must've run around the outside of the house to beat me, but he was looking cool and casual, as if he'd just strolled over.

There was no escaping him, so I trudged over.

“Is this about the trolls?” I asked, hoping to distract him. “Or maybe we're going to go feed sardines to mermaids on tomorrow's field trip?”

He stared at me for a second, then slowly raised one eyebrow. The rest of his face stayed completely bland.

I've never been able to withstand Chivalry's bland expression. “I don't want to go sailing,” I said mutinously. “I'm working forty hours a week and taking the Chivalry Atlas program for bodybuilding. My afternoons off are rarer than bald eagles, and I'm not going to spend one of them with a sweater tied around my shoulders while you nag me about moving sails around or hoisting the spinner.”

“That's not why you don't want to go,” Chivalry said, his voice cool.

I glared at him. “It's one of the reasons. Isn't it enough?”

“Bhumika has asked for this,” he said. He met my glare and simply looked back at me. We have the same hazel eyes, but as I watched, his pupils slowly began expanding until the hazel was completely covered. Besides the occasional fang flash, the eyes are where vampire tempers are most apparent. I looked away—lately I'd spent a lot of time nervously checking mirrors to make sure that my eyes weren't pulling that trick.

I glanced back, and Chivalry's eyes had returned to normal, and now he looked thoughtful. “She isn't asking for much, Fortitude,” he said. He always used my full name like most parents use middle names: when I was in trouble.

“Yeah, fine. Put something together,” I said, looking away again and leaning down to ostensibly brush at the side of the Fiesta. Chivalry had surprised me with a professional paint job for my elderly car, but a few weeks ago I'd come out of a grocery store to discover that some asshole with faulty spatial relations had practically sideswiped my car. There hadn't been any serious damage, but now my blue Fiesta had a streak of transferred orange paint completely up one side that I had been utterly unable to remove. “You have my work schedule,” I muttered, wiping ineffectually at the streak with the hem of my T-shirt. “Call me with a time.”

Chivalry didn't say anything, but he stopped leaning against the car and strolled a few steps away, toward his own Bentley. My brother was as bossy as they came, but at least he never rubbed it in whenever he won on something.

I'd unlocked the Fiesta and slid into the driver's seat when Chivalry spoke again, sounding almost tentative. “You know, I read a good review the other day of Peláez. Perhaps if Bhumika is feeling well tonight she and I could—”

“Oh, don't even think about it,” I said, shooting a dark look at him. “I told you when I got that job—if you go there, you do it when I'm
not
working.”

Chivalry frowned and made an expression that on any other guy I actually would've called a pout. “I don't understand this attitude, Fort. I've been to many of the establishments that you've worked at. I'm simply being supportive of your career choices.”

“Being a waiter is not a career choice; it is a job-hunt default,” I said. “Plus, you are not fooling me. You've been desperate to eat there ever since you found out that the staff is in black tie, and I refuse to feed into this formal-wear fetish that you have.”

“In more civilized times, all gentlemen wore formal clothing in the evenings,” he sniffed, grumpy because I'd seen his motive so clearly.

“Yeah, those gentlemen also died of dysentery because they didn't wash their hands after they took a crap.” I slammed the Fiesta's door shut. While it suited my mood at the moment, that actually wasn't the reason I'd done it. Lately the driver's door was having trouble latching, and had popped open a few times at stoplights. Since I had about five issues more immediately concerning about the car to bring to the attention of a mechanic whenever I finally saved up the money, I was trying to figure out how to live with this one.

It was all part of the Fiesta's charm.

The drive from Newport to my apartment in Providence was between forty minutes and an hour, depending on the traffic. Today there hadn't been any elderly drivers or sightseeing tourists on the two-lane road that always made or broke my time, and I pulled into the small parking lot behind my building just after ten a.m.

I lived in an old three-story Victorian that had been broken into apartments sometime in the 1950s. The first floor was an upscale women's lingerie shop, which actually sounded more exciting than it was, since usually the women going into it were the ones who could
afford
expensive undergarments—mostly middle-aged to elderly women. Each of the upper floors was a single two-bedroom apartment in a state of highly questionable repair, and the owner had a policy of ignoring necessary fixes until we tenants either gave in and fixed it ourselves or just moved out in disgust. Since moving in four years ago, I'd learned a lot about emergency plumbing.

Climbing up three flights of stairs always felt like the last-rep set after a morning of working out with Chivalry. During the first few weeks, I'd actually started giving serious consideration to the thought of moving somewhere that had an elevator, but had given up the idea after I remembered that I'd then have to move all of my stuff out—down all those stairs.

My sofa had originally belonged to a couple in the second-floor apartment. During their move out, they'd abandoned it halfway down the staircase. After climbing over it for three days, I'd finally decided it was good and abandoned and hauled it up to my own living room. Those thoughts kept me company as I made my way to my apartment in a zombielike fugue. In my door, through the dual kitchen and living room, and then I was tumbling into my bed, asleep almost before I hit the sheets.

•   •   •

It felt like barely ten minutes had passed before I woke up to a hand shaking my shoulder none too gently. I came into consciousness in slow stages, registering first the hand, then the loud beeping of my alarm, and finally registering that I hadn't even bothered to take off my shoes.

“C'mon, Sleeping Beauty,” my roommate said. “You have to get up.”

“Don't want to,” I muttered, pulling my pillow over my head. It was immediately pulled away from me.

“Either get up or turn the alarm off. I can hear the damn thing out into the hallway.”

“What time is it?” I asked muzzily.

“It's a quarter after twelve, dude,” Gage said, jostling my shoulder one last time.

I was suddenly, horribly awake. “Oh, fuck me.” I pulled my head up and stared at my roommate in horror. “I overslept by half an hour?”

“Apparently. I just got home and heard the alarm going off.”

I'd had a lot of horrible roommates in the past, all of whom would've heard my alarm going off, known I'd overslept, and probably just laughed about it while they dropped a wet towel on the hardwood floor. Whether I'd just finally run through Providence's available jackass male roommate population or whether I'd cashed in some karmic bennies, the result was that I'd put out my usual Craigslist ad and had found Gage, who was not only a nonasshole (as specified in my ad), but was actually a decent guy.

Gage watched as I half rolled, half fell out of bed, and gave a wholly exasperated sigh. This was unfortunately not the first time this scenario had played out. “Dude, I can run you over if you don't think you'd make it on time with the bus.”

I was already halfway across my room to pull my work clothes out of the closet, and I stopped and said, “That would completely save my ass. But are you sure?”

Gage shrugged. He was even taller than I was, and a former college wrestler built like he was ready to audition for
300
. His dark blond hair tended toward the sheepdog look, and a recent set of Celtic tattoo bands at his wrists and upper arms had just healed enough to remove the bandages and serve as catnip for every girl he passed in the street. At first glance he looked like the kind of brain-dead douche who needed an operating manual to toast bread, but he was actually completing a master's degree down at Brown University.

Burned too many times before, I'd been a little reticent when he'd first moved in. But he'd done his share of cleaning, kept his stuff from encroaching on the common areas, and always paid his half of the rent on time. Admittedly he made a huge lasagna every Wednesday that incorporated about two pounds of Italian sausage and ground beef and forced me to undergo a test of willpower every time I opened the fridge and saw the delectable leftovers sitting in conveniently-portioned plastic containers, but no living situation was perfect.

“I just got back from class,” Gage said. “It's not like I'm in the middle of anything. Besides, it's not exactly in my best interests for you to get fired.”

Given that he'd signed a yearlong lease, that was certainly true, but beneath Gage's grumbling I knew that he would've ferried my oversleeping ass to my job regardless. I routinely caught him helping our elderly downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Bandyopadyay, carry in her groceries. Each time he claimed he was just keeping his kept boy-toy options open.

“You're saving my bacon, Gage,” I called as he left the room.

“Yeah, your tofu bacon,” he grumbled loudly from the living room.

I changed as quickly as I could in the bathroom. My stubble was reaching wolfman proportions, and in my hurry to shave it off I nicked myself three times, once badly enough that I had to stick on one of those little round Band-Aids. My hair was a predictable disaster, but the restaurant I worked at had specific hair policies, so I shellacked it down until I looked ready to head out to a Prohibition speakeasy. Basic needs met, on went the tuxedo pants and the white buttoned shirt. Technically we were supposed to get them dry-cleaned between every two shifts, but since the restaurant refused to reimburse us for the costs and paid only minimum wage, I got by with just Febrezing the crap out of them each day and tossing them into the laundry at the end of each week, while keeping my fingers crossed that the delicate cycle would be okay. Then I pulled on my black dress shoes, which I'd purchased secondhand and which had required only a few applications of glue and a Sharpie to look (from a distance) acceptable. Then the black vest, and finally I put the finishing touches on my bow tie. There was a rule against clip-ons, so I'd had to learn how to actually tie it—after months of practice, I'd gotten to the point where the end result was only a little crooked.