The Maestro's Apprentice (8 page)

“The
what?
” Adam said.

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“I’m sorry,” the man answered. “There is a dress code to use the front entrance, and for access to many of the areas in the house. Plus, in order to stay here for free, each feeder must provide at least one meal to guests or staff per week. It’s all explained in this brochure.”

“Provide a meal?” Maria said. “You’ve got to be kidding. How are we going to get away from this life if…”

“Shh…” Adam said, taking the brochure from the guard. “This may not be the best place to discuss this. Let’s go in, get our room and then figure out what to do, okay?

Maybe we can talk to the management.”

Maria nodded and looked down. Autumn felt bad for her, and felt guilty that she was excited to be here when the others were so obviously distressed. She took a brochure with a big smile at the vampire, who simply returned the smile, nodded and turned to the next people in line. Then she bounded the two steps to Adam and hugged his arm. “I think it’s going to be fun,” she said, so jazzed about her new surroundings that about it was easy to forget the man in the Internet café.

“Right,” Adam replied. “Fun.”

Maria stared at the ground all the way up the walkway.

They were received in a large, elegant room with about thirty other people in travel and hiking clothes. Some of them hadn’t shaved for days and wore ball caps over oily hair. Autumn tried to figure out which were the vampires and which were the feeders, just from the way they stood. A guy in a faded red Mohawk gave her a menacing stare, nodded his head in a challenge and mouthed, “What are you looking at?” At first she thought he had to be a vampire, but then she noticed the bar code tattoo on the side of his 66

neck, just as a blond woman in a faded wife-beater shirt smacked him on the arm with the back of her hand. He backed off and stood with his hands clasped in front and head down, but still looked at Autumn out of the corner of his eye like a dog that would have liked nothing more than to take a chunk out of her throat.

“These are not attractive people,” Maria whispered to her.

Pleasantly startled, Autumn looked to find Maria offering her a hesitant smile. “Tell me about it,” she whispered back. “The feeders look meaner than the vampires.”

“Will you two keep it down?” Adam whispered. “Let’s just see what’s going on. We seem to be waiting for something.”

“Or someone,” Autumn said excitedly. She looked around. The ceilings were a good twenty feet high, with heavy chandeliers and antique, hand-carved furnishings polished to a high gloss and kept around the perimeter of the room, behind blue velvet rope. The walls were lined with shelves and filled with antique implements from daily life like dishes and spectacles. According to the brochure, it was known as the “Secondary Receiving Room.”

Except for explanations of the process the wealthy Italian entrepreneur Federico Biani went through to contract and build the house in 1890, and its evolution into a private club for the very rich, there wasn’t a lot of information in the brochure. There was no mention of vampires or networking. Autumn guessed they wanted to minimize the amount of information that actually left the premises, and having brochures all over the place touting a meeting place for vampires wasn’t the best way to be discreet.

In spite of the lack of concrete information about the club or the management, however, Autumn found the brochure fascinating, and had to be elbowed out of her 67

stupor by Adam when a man came through a door that led into the room via a round set of stairs, and remained on the pinnacle.

He had pale skin and high cheekbones. He wore a top hat and a black leather jacket over a purple T-shirt, with more accessories than Autumn had ever seen on a guy in her life. He stood there a moment before speaking, hands clasped in front, looking at each person in the crowd, taking his time, nodding a little. Gradually, the talking stopped.

Everyone turned to him.

“Good afternoon,” he said, in a pleasant, yet no-nonsense, voice. “My name is Mick, and I am one of the managers of Biali House. If you have a problem during your stay here, or if you need something—anything at all—you just need to find me or one of my assistants…” He gestured around the room to about a dozen people, mostly men, posted around the perimeter of the room, dressed similarly to Mick. “…and we will take care of things for you.”

Autumn thought they looked like a very large rock band that belonged in the eighties.

Her stomach squirmed pleasantly.

“In case any of you are wondering,” Mick said, “I am a vampire. My assistants are vampires, and I work directly with our host, Freddie Biali, whom many of you probably know is actually the officially ‘late’ Federico Biali. The official story we give to the outside world, of course, is that Freddie is Federico’s great-great nephew. Every few decades or so, he has to go into hiding, only to re-emerge in a different persona. We like to tease him about that. Our nickname for him is the Great Locust, but…” And here he lowered his voice to a whisper and put a finger near his lips. “Don’t tell him.” He gave the audience a conspiratorial nod. Many of them laughed. Autumn noticed he was 68

wearing eyeliner. When he turned his head to the side, she could see he was wearing his sandy hair in a medium-length ponytail.

“Here’s the deal,” he said, raising his hands to gesture with his fingers splayed, showing off black-polished nails. Before he could continue, however, someone interrupted.

“How old are you?” called a woman from the crowd.

He smiled. “Every single day at least one person asks me that question. And it just had to be you, didn’t it? Where are you from?”

“San Antonio,” the woman said.

“Have you been here before?” he asked.

“No.”

“Of course you haven’t, or you’d know all my secrets by now.” He pointed at an attractive Indian guy with curly hair wearing a pink shirt. “I know you’ve been here before. I don’t recognize anyone else out there. To answer your question, I’m five hundred and seventy-two years old, a little older than our host. Astounding, isn’t it? And yet I’ve managed to continue to fit in, as time passes. It’s why I managed to live this long. That, and vampires are
really
hard to kill. As for Freddie, he’s a good friend of mine and we’ve known each other practically forever. He addresses the guests twice a week at the common dinners in the Great Hall, to which everyone is invited, and of course enjoys speaking to our guests, so if you would like to meet him, the next one is…”

He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a PDA. He turned it on and grinned at the crowd. “Technology and vampires, right? The next one is…tomorrow?”

He poked around with the stylus.

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“It’s tonight,” called out one of the assistants—a young-looking Asian man in a white suit.

“Ah! Tonight,” Mick said, looking at the screen. “Ah, yes. Tonight. You think you
feeders
have a hard time keeping up with the days of the week. If you ever get to be my age, whew! Let me tell you.” He put the PDA away and brought his hands together enthusiastically. “Okay, so tonight, Freddie will be addressing everyone. We’ll get some room assignments going, where you’ll find laminated booklets with all the information you’ll need about prices and costs and which activities you’re eligible for and areas of the house you’re allowed in. I’m assuming most of you are free boarders?”

The Indian guy raised his hand. “Actually, I’m a Gold customer. I don’t know why they wanted me to come in this way.”

“It’s the blue jeans, man. They send everybody in jeans to me. You do know, though, there is a pimped-out dress code to most of the Gold functions, right?”

“I sent my clothes here beforehand.”

“Oh, okay,” Mick said, wagging his finger at him to come up. “We’ll just get you to the right place. Everybody else, just hold tight and my assistants and myself will get your information…Oh, before I forget, I would also like to mention that in addition to helping guests feel welcome here at Biali House, I give seminars on fitting in and keeping up with the culture and social mores and not talking like a dusty old artifact and all that good stuff, so everybody make sure you get my card before you leave.”

* * * *

they give to freeloaders like us, I wonder what they give to the real guests,” Adam grumped as he dumped his things on the mattress.

Autumn plopped down beside him. “We
are
real guests. This place is here to help people get on their feet as much as it is to give them a place to show off.”

Adam held up his saxophone. “Eighty-plus years old and all I got to show for it is a beat-up old horn.”

“You have us,” Autumn offered.

“Yeah, well. Not for long,” he said, and put down the instrument. “I’m going to shower and change. I think my spare jeans can hold up through one more wear. Then one of you has to find a washer and dryer.”

“One of us?” Maria said, putting her hand on her hip. “Why can’t you do it?”

“I’m old school,” he said. “Two of you ain’t feeding me, least you can do is my laundry.” At the bathroom door, he turned around. “Ain’t feeding me? Hell you ain’t, if you’re feeding these people in here we don’t even know.”

Autumn widened her eyes at him, surprised he would use such a bossy tone. For a moment, there was the hint of a jolt in her tummy, the beginning of a heat that would make its way down into her nether regions. But when Adam pawed at the air dismissively instead of following through on his demand, the feeling dissipated. Adam shook his head and mumbled his way into the bathroom.

“Wow,” Maria said. “This thing is really affecting him.”

Autumn watched the door close behind him, confused about her reaction. “It’s affecting us all,” she finally said.

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Maria nodded. “Yeah. I haven’t said much about it, but…that thing with the money…sleeping with the guy…”

“I’m sorry,” Autumn said, jumping at the opening. “You are the last person I would ever want to hurt, you and Adam.”

Maria pressed her lips together. Her nose and eyes reddened. “That’s what people always say before they drop a bombshell.” She tried to smile, but wound up looking away and wiping at her eyes. “Shit.”

Autumn leaned forward and put her hand on Maria’s shoulder. “I didn’t know what I wanted back at Claudio’s. How could I? That kind of life is all I’ve ever known. But now, I can do anything. I just…I want to experience things, Maria. And…” She sighed. “I think I’m going to have to go off on my own to do it.”

“You like guys better?”

Autumn looked down. “I love you. I do. I just don’t think I can keep being a couple with you. I want more freedom than that. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Maria put her hand over her mouth and closed her eyes tight, but tears escaped anyway. Autumn tried to pull her close, but Maria put up her hand and waved her away.

“I’m all right. I’m all right.” She stood up and grabbed a tissue from the box on the nightstand. “I’ll tell you what. I’m going to go for a walk for a while, okay? Tell Adam I’ll be back in an hour, or two. You just – you just never know, do you?”

Autumn felt helpless as she watched Maria wipe her eyes in the mirror, straighten her top and fluff her hair. “Maria.”

Maria turned and shook her head. “No. I don’t want to hear right now. We’ll talk later. I’ll help you make yourself feel better then. But right now, I need my pain. Okay?”

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She tossed her tissue in the trash and went out the door, leaving Autumn hugging her knees at the head of the bed, listening to the roar of the shower, unsure what to do.

Next thing she knew, Adam was standing next to her with a towel wrapped around his hips, asking about Maria. Autumn shook her head. “Gone.”

“Gone? What are you talking about?”

“She went for a walk. I, uh…” That was all she could get out before the tears came.

“I…”

“Oh, baby girl,” he said and sat next to her. He put his arm around her shoulders, squeezing her to him. “What’s the matter?”

“I broke up with her.”

“Come here,” he said, even though she was already pressing against his side. “You two are too young to be taking all this so seriously. She’s hurt right now but she’ll be okay. And you will too. You want to tell me why you broke up with her?”

Autumn shook her head. “I just don’t want to be a couple with her anymore. It’s too weird. It doesn’t feel right. I love her, but I just need to be on my own for once in my life.”

“I know the feeling, baby girl. I know the feeling. Listen, why don’t you go and get cleaned up for dinner? I’m sure she’ll be back by then. I’ll talk to her tonight if you want to spend some time exploring, like I know you do. Okay?”

Autumn nodded. Once again, she’d managed to forget about everything other than her concerns about Maria and Adam, even the man from the Internet café.

He hadn’t, however, forgotten about her.

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The Banquet Hall seated five hundred guests in ten rows of tables, each accommodating fifty. At one end of the room, there was another table on a podium, with five empty chairs. Each table held a banquet of every kind of meat, bread, side dish and dessert imaginable.

Mick’s assistants were among the twenty or so formally dressed people who stood sentry around the periphery of the room. In addition to them, a team of waiters were stationed around the place, one at each end of each table and two at the sides of each outside table.

Autumn sat on Adam’s left, in the middle of it all, thinking there seemed to be way too much space between the chairs. In spite of the fact that this was the best meal she’d seen since leaving Claudio’s, she didn’t feel very hungry, and suspected Maria didn’t either. She couldn’t help but be curious about their host, though.

It wasn’t long before she got a look at him. A bell sounded, and shushing sounds made their way around the room as a line of five men came in through a door behind the raised podium table. The first sported spiky red hair and a fitted leather jacket. Mick came in right behind him, absent the top hat, with his hair down around his shoulders, and wearing a long, gray furry jacket in an animal print. Autumn couldn’t tell if it was faux or real, but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Bringing up the rear was a pale guy with smooth skin and dark hair just long enough to curl. He wore charcoal slacks and matching jacket, with a red button-down and silver jewelry, and walked 74