The Maestro's Butterfly (8 page)

“You’re thinking of leaving?”

“Been thinking about it for a while.”

“And how will you get your meals?”

“If it’s like you say, and there are people who need to live like this, then I’ll just find those and give them the choice. Simple.”

“It is not simple,” Claudio said. “You will return to my doorstep, half-starved.

This I see in your future.”

Adam shook his head. “I just think there has to be a better way, that’s all.

Deceiving people and luring them into your life, then making them dependent. It’s just—” He shook his head and growled in agitation. “It’s just not a good way to be.

People need a normal life.” He slapped his hand against his chest. “Look at me. I’m eighty years old. I ought to be somewhere retired, with a place of my own. A wife.

Grandkids. Hell, great-grandkids by now.”

“And yet here you are, cursed with immortality.”

Adam turned to him. “I’d give it up in a heartbeat to have a son.” He shrugged.

“Or a daughter.”

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“Children are no guarantee of anything. For us, they are not even a possibility.”

“Well, I guess that’s a good thing,” Adam muttered. “Or I guess we’d have more young-uns running around than the place could hold.”

Claudio put his hand on the cross and moved around to Adam’s side. “You think this ‘more normal’ way of life would work for you? You cannot go to the supermarket for your meals, Adam. People are your meals. Human beings. You think they will come to you with their resumes to apply for the position? Hmm? No. They are afraid of us.

We have to make the decision for them. They have to have time to realize we can give them a good life. But in the beginning, they are afraid. They have to be groomed, like horses.”

“They’re not horses, Claudio, any more than we are. And then Miranda and this thing with Victoire. That’s just—”

“I have known my brother a long time,” Claudio said. “This is a game between us. Nothing more.”

Adam shook his head. “What happens if you lose? He takes her away against her will?”

“I won’t lose,” Claudio said. “At the end of thirty days, she will understand that life is better with me, and she will want to stay.”

“And if that doesn’t happen, then Victoire gets her. I know the terms of the bet. She doesn’t have the choice of going back to the way things were if she decides she doesn’t like being fed on and being fucked whenever someone else wants to fuck her. Either way, from the moment she agreed to come out to the house, Miranda really didn’t have a choice about whether she lived with or without vampires in her life.”

“She never had a choice from the beginning. She is
made
to serve vampires. She would not have chosen otherwise.”

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Everyone was at the dinner table when Claudio and the others arrived home.

He found Miranda with the corner of his eye but did not look at her directly, though she glowered at him. He smiled to himself. It was obvious she was angry because she wanted him, and that was a good sign. She would make a good feeder. And she would be a pleasure to train.

“Good evening, everyone,” he said. They answered him with a chorus of

“Maestro”
and
“Monsieur.”

Adam looked over the shoulder of one of the feeders to gaze at the beef stew and cornbread in her plate. “I do
not
see how you all eat that foul stuff,” he said. She grinned up at him.

“You’ve forgotten how good it is, Adam,” Gena teased. “You told me you loved your mama’s cooking when you were young. You should reacquaint yourself with solid food.”

He shook his head. “Uh-uh. Give me my liquid diet any day of the week. That right, Seth?”

Seth smiled. “I don’t know. I can get into a rare steak once in a while. It’s not like real food, but it’s good. Easier to sink my teeth into it than it was back in the day.”

He opened his mouth and touched the tip of his finger to a fang, then pulled it away with a scowl and looked at it, squeezed it, and licked off the blood from being pricked.

“Back in the day,” Adam said, rolling his eyes. “You don’t know a thing about back in the day.”

As his family bantered, Claudio moved around the table slowly. Gena caught his eye in a silent greeting. He put his hand on her shoulder as he passed and she patted it while drinking her iced tea. Five female and two male feeders lived here, seven in all. Miranda would make the eighth. Each vampire needed to feed about twice a week.

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One feeder could service one vampire well enough, which meant Claudio had enough chattel to keep his vampires well-fed and give them enough variety to keep them from getting too bored. He was proud of what he had established here.

Yet now Adam wants to leave.
The thought gave him a sour taste in his mouth. It seemed that, each time things began working smoothly, someone decided they needed a change. He was convinced Adam had no idea how good he had it. Claudio had found him playing his saxophone in New Orleans clubs in 1942 and had spelled it out for him: As a black man in early 20th-century America, and a musician, Adam had had few options. With Claudio, and as a vampire, he would have much more power. Adam had jumped at the chance. But, bit by bit, the lifestyle of taking what they had needed from non-vampires had worn on him. Claudio had known this day would come, but now simply was not a good time.

And what did Miranda want?
he wondered. Adam had spoken the truth—no matter what Miranda decided to do, she would belong either to Claudio or to Victoire, and she had no idea she could not choose freedom. It wasn’t fair. Then again, Claudio du Fresne had never claimed to be a fair man. Either way, Miranda would have a long, healthy life. She would be taken care of. Then again, he felt confident she would choose to stay with him at the end of the thirty days, so the whole point was moot.

“Will the show go on,
Monsieur?”
a shy-looking girl with soft red hair asked, then took the last spoonful of her stew. Seth made his way over and touched her lightly on the shoulder. When she looked, he motioned with his head for her to follow him.

Claudio waited patiently for the request to unfold. It was obvious that Seth was planning to take her, either as a meal or for sex. “Of course it will,” he said, as the girl stood with her empty plate. “Tomorrow I will attend the meeting of the board of directors of the theatre. I have something to offer them they will not refuse. Several of them already see things my way. I will wear the black Armani.”

Gena cleared her throat and became suddenly much too interested in the contents of her plate. Claudio stopped mid-sentence and turned to her. “What is it?” he 56

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asked. His eyes fell on feeders and vampires alike, one by one. Some of them looked worried. Others knitted their brows in confusion. Andi looked at Gena.

“Andrea,” he said. “My suits. Did you steam them as I asked?”

Andi shook her head.

“And why not?”

“I didn’t have time.”

“Didn’t have time? What were you doing that was more important than what I asked you to do?”

“You ask me to do a lot,” she said.

Everything went silent. “Take your plate to the kitchen,” he said quietly.

“But—”

“Go,”
he ordered. “Now.”

She pushed back noisily from the table and took her plate and glass to the kitchen, setting them down heavily, leaving her chair far away from the table, then inched toward the doorway near the redhead, where she lingered. The two held hands.

“Come here,” Claudio said.

As the redhead watched, wide-eyed, from the doorway, Andi approached Claudio gingerly, with her head down. He grabbed her by the arm and gave her several hard swats on the rear, leaving her sniffling. Miranda had frozen, mouth open and spoon over her bowl. Claudio pulled Andi up to her tip-toes by the one arm, and shook her like a naughty child. “Go and do it now.”

“We were going to watch
Gladiator
.”

“No films in the women’s cottage tonight.”

A couple of the girls rolled their eyes. One of them sucked her teeth in disdain, growing silent when Claudio’s eyes fell on her. The redhead hurried over to Seth, who put his arm around her. Adam leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, looking at his feet. Chloe thumped her blond boy-toy of the day lightly in the head and smirked at him when he turned.

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“Now go,” he said to Andi, turning loose. “Before I decide you need more.” He looked at Miranda, who lowered her eyes and started moving her stew around in her bowl.

“Those of you who insist on acting like children will be treated as children,” he said, resting his eyes on Chloe, who looked at the ceiling.

“Do you want dinner?” one of the other girls said hopefully.

“Perhaps later,” he said, his voice tight. “Miranda, come into my bedroom when you finish with your meal,” he said. “Don’t linger.”

Miranda snapped up her head and gave him a startled look just before he swept from the room and headed down the basement stairs.

While pouring himself a brandy in his room, he noticed his bed looked strange.

The covers were not even on both sides, and they certainly weren’t pulled tight. He bent over and pressed the fingertips of one hand into the mattress. Well, he thought, at least Miranda had bothered to do as she was told, which was more than he could say for his little Andi, who knew better. He wondered how long that would last, and if punishing Miranda so early for not following his instructions to the letter would help or hinder her progress.

He sighed, and changed into his favorite robe, a short one of royal blue silk. He left his clothing on the poorly made bed, sat in his chair and waited, rubbing his cock through the fabric. How he would love to bend Miranda over the bed and redden her derriere with a riding crop before plunging into her.

But his very next thought was of his brother Victoire, and what he had said backstage the night before. Miranda had taken her seat and Victoire, who was known to the world as the Jack of Spades, had sat watching Claudio apply his stage makeup. He was dressed in a fitted ‘30s-style chalk-striped suit, his black curls slicked back under a matching fedora, leaning on the dressing table while absently performing playing card acrobatics. He’d gone on and on about how the most exciting part of any game was when the tide turned and something completely unexpected happened. Of course, 58

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Claudio’s mind had been on the approaching show and on winning over Miranda. He had felt more than a little irritated by his younger brother’s antics, especially when he had sprayed the cards all over Claudio’s dressing table. Claudio had looked up to see that Victoire-cum-Jack had one card left between two fingers, which he had then presented to him. Claudio had ripped it out of his hand angrily and tossed it onto the dressing table.

“Joker’s wild,” Victoire had said, and strolled away chuckling to himself.

Claudio was beginning to wonder if that should worry him.

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Andi’s spanking had left Miranda without much of an appetite. It wasn’t because she objected. In fact, if it had been a scene from a movie, it would have been masturbation material for weeks, maybe months. Maybe it would have wound up in permanent rotation in the kinkier parts of her brain. But the fact that it had happened right in front of her eyes, and that Claudio had said the word “
punishment
” more times than she cared to count in the past day and a half, and the fact that she didn’t know whether to be really, really turned on or scared to death made the concept of beef stew seem rather artificial and mundane.

She looked into her bowl to see if her appetite would return. It didn’t. It appeared to have been frightened away.

All the same, someone put a hand on Miranda’s shoulder and made her jump.

“You should eat that. You may need your strength if you’re going down there with him.” The voice was Adam’s. She looked up, and thought how pleasant and open his expression always seemed. It was hard to imagine him poking his fangs into someone.

The thought made the wounds on her neck throb.

She nodded but didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to move the spoon up to her mouth, because she was afraid people would see her hand shaking.

“You’d better hurry, too,” Chloe said. “Claudio likes to punish people who don’t do what he says. You could find yourself as the main course, which makes little Andi just an appetizer.”

Seth snorted from trying not to laugh. A couple of the girls tittered. Miranda felt as she had when she had been mortally frightened of her ninth grade literature teacher, a condition usually exacerbated by the sniggling of the other students, which made her forget things like her name.

Determined not to fall prey to whatever mood Claudio was in, Miranda forced 60

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down a few bites and excused herself. Everyone was quiet as she stood, except the girls who had rolled their eyes. They nudged each other and laughed. Gena told them to be quiet.

“Bunch of children,” Miranda muttered.

“Most of the time,” Gena agreed. “Are you sure you don’t want more? You need to eat well after the first vampire bite.”

“I’m fine.” Miranda said. Her hand shook in spite of everything she did to control it, so she caught it in the other one, glaring at the girls. They looked elsewhere.

If she had to face a perverse Frenchman in a foul mood, there was no way in hell a couple of spoiled brats were going to intimidate her. After all, it was one of these brats who had ticked off Claudio in the first place. She would be having a word with her if she got into trouble as a result. Miranda shivered at the thought.

Claudio had left on the light to the basement stairs. On the other side of the door, she let herself tremble openly. The last time she had gone down those stairs had been mere moments before finding out she was the prisoner of a vampire.

She wondered briefly why he slept down here, instead of taking a room upstairs, since he obviously had no problems with the sunlight. There were so many things about him she didn’t know. She wondered if the anger she had felt this morning had gone, or if it had simply been masked by the shock of seeing him spank Andi, by hearing that commanding, angry tone in his voice and by what had happened with Seth.