Page 24 of Hot Blooded

“I have a master’s in computer science.”

Tessa tried to imagine those broad shoulders hunched in front of a computer screen, those big hands tapping away at a keyboard. It was hard to picture. Amos seemed built for picking up cows and swinging sledgehammers. “Is that what you do for a living? Computer stuff?”

He smiled, amused. “Yes. I do computer stuff. I own a small software development company. My employees are all vampires.”

“What kind of software do you, uh… develop?” Tessa asked, mostly to be polite. She had the technological knowledge of a moderately intelligent cat.

“We build mobile apps for a variety of clients.”

Okay, that she at least vaguely understood. She hesitated to ask the next question, but she couldn’t help herself. “Amos, are you rich?”

He didn’t answer immediately, seeming to give the question genuine consideration. “Well… yes. To be fair, I’ve had advantages that normal people do not. I’ve had over a century to earn and save money, gain skills, and accrue resources. I bought cheap stock in the wake of the Great Depression—including IBM—and have been able to reap those dividends for decades longer than most people ever do. I bought this house in 1943, when housing prices were not nearly so outrageous, paid in full, and I’ve lived in it ever since.”

Tessa frowned. “Don’t you pay taxes on all of that? Won’t the IRS pick up on the fact that someone born in the 1800s is still earning money and owning property?”

“They might, if the house and all the stock was still owned in my name. As governments became more centralized and record-keeping more rigorous, vampires recognized the need for subterfuge when it came to our legal identities and the paper trails involved. The Council here in Chicago—”

“I assume we’re not talking about the city council?”

Amos smiled. “Not the one mortals know about. This is a council by and for vampires. It operates several different equity groups and shell corporations, through which things like homeownership and property taxes and personal savings accounts can be managed without arousing suspicions as to the longevity of the owners.”

“So the Council owns your home?”

“No, I own my home. As far as the mortal government is concerned, yes, a corporation controlled by the Council holds the deed. But we have our own internal system of property laws. We even have our own taxes. In our system, I am the sole owner of my home, my business, my financial accounts and stocks.”

Tessa tried to wrap her mind around the idea of an entire economy, an entire government, operating parallel to and in tandem with the economies and governments of the mortal world. Vampire councilors. Vampire tax attorneys. Vampire accountants. And here Tessa was, sitting next to a vampire software developer.

“You look overwhelmed,” Amos observed cautiously.

“No, I’m fine.” Tessa waved away his concern. “I’m just taking it in.” She glanced down at the iced mocha she’d never opened and set it back on the coffee table.

Amos tracked her movement, his expression closed. “I suppose you need to leave.”

“Hm?” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “No. I don’t have to be at work for another hour and a half. But if you have things to do, I can get out of…” She trailed off as the warmth came back into Amos’s expression.

“No,” he said. “Stay.”

So she did. To her disappointment, Amos didn’t try to kiss her again. There was a new tension between them, not unpleasant, but constantly there. A simmering, buzzing, awareness. Tessa was tempted to just grab Amos and lay one on him. But she resisted. He wanted to court her, and Tessa suspected a 150-year-old vampire’s idea of courtship was a little slower than modern dating norms.

So, instead, she followed Amos as he showed her around his house. The only single-family greystones Tessa had been in before were the kind that had either been converted into businesses or museums. Her social circle didn’t include people with that kind of money.

Except now it did.

In addition to the sitting room, the lower level included the kitchen, a formal dining room, a cozier breakfast room, a living room with comfier furniture than the sitting room, a bathroom with a marble floor, and some sort of wood-paneled den-slash-library situation that made Tessa feel like she ought to be smoking a cigar and complaining about FDR.

“All of the windows have been treated with a transparent UV filter. Sunlight will still burn me through them, but not as badly,” Amos explained as he led her through the rooms. “Though I’m generally not up and about during daylight hours.”

“So guarding me was a special case?” Tessa teased.

Amos’s expression was utterly serious. “Yes.”

Up a set of stairs with a heavy, art-nouveau style wooden banister, the second floor held another sitting room, two bathrooms, and five bedrooms. Three of the rooms had been dedicated to Amos’s business, including one room whose two desks were crowded with large computer monitors, with a bank of computer towers humming against one wall. Two of the bedrooms functioned as guest rooms, though Amos admitted they weren’t often used.

The last room, at the very end of the hall, was Amos’s bedroom. It was pitch dark inside, except for the hallway light seeping in through the open door. The door itself was different from the others, sealing tightly to the doorframe when it was shut.

“It keeps light out,” Amos explained. “The windows are all blacked out and shuttered with light-tight steel blinds, so that even if a window were to break in a storm or from vandalism, light won’t get in. And then, as a very last resort, UV-treated blackout curtains.” He brushed one of the curtains, all heavy black velvet, pulled shut over the windows.

His bed sat in the middle of the room, taking up most of the space. It looked like an ordinary bed—a very nice, expensive canopy bed with heavy wooden posts and more black velvet curtains—but not anything she’d be surprised to see in a mortal’s bedroom. It was made up with clean white linens and a spotless white duvet.

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