Page 9 of Bewitched By a Vampire

Lilian opened the sash windows to let the air in and then set about cleaning the room, pulling the dust covers off the furniture and shoving them into the linen basket on the cart. Once everything was uncovered, she took a cloth and polish and made every surface shine. She followed that with the vacuum, going as far as running it under the bed and using the attachments on the curtains and skirting boards. Miserable old Ellen wouldn’t have a reason to come banging down her door and complaining to her.

When she was done with the first room, she closed the shutters and moved on to the next, falling into a rhythm. She was on the seventh room by the time Night popped into her head again. She pushed him out and focused on her work, and on her predicament. She wanted to curse again, but held it back. What she really needed to do was get in touch with her contact and get a pep talk that would boost her courage and help her go through with becoming Bastian’s servant.

It was too risky.

By the ninth room, she had started wondering what kind of party Night was holding. Would it be an elegant soiree, where the men would be wearing suits and the women fine gowns? An image popped into her head and she found herself almost dancing with the vacuum cleaner. Period dramas had a lot to answer for. Or maybe it was the house. It looked like something out ofPride and Prejudice. She doubted the vampires were going to dance in a beautiful candlelit ballroom and flirt with each other in a very coded manner that most would mistake for idle talk though.

Vampires probably had very different gatherings.

The urge to contact Gillian and ask if she knew what kind of parties vampires held blasted through her, and she denied it, because she was just looking for an excuse to reach out to her contact.

Her friend.

She had known Gillian all her life, and when she had taken on this mission, Gillian had told her she would be there with her every step of the way. But she wasn’t. Lilian was alone, and she had never felt it as much as she did at that moment, when she couldn’t get her mind off a certain vampire or calm her fears about what she was doing here.

What if Bastian returned and wanted to carry out the ceremony with Night still here?

Mother earth, Night would kill her.

She could see it now. Her blood splattered up the walls. Night’s fangs ripping out her throat.

The inevitable harm that would befall Bastian when he claimed her as his servant would no doubt send Night into a killing rage.

And could she blame him?

If someone hurt Gillian, she would kill them too.

The last few rooms passed in a blur as thoughts crowded her mind, and they continued to weigh her down as she pushed the cart to the top of the stairs, where one of the men who served Bastian was waiting. She left it with him and drifted down the stairs rather than heading back to her room, and found herself walking out into the evening light.

Lilian breathed deep of the warm air, savouring the space that surrounded her as she wandered towards the grass. She rubbed her arms as she went in circles, trying to figure out what to do. The coven needed to know that the situation at Bastian’s house had changed and things had become more dangerous for her. She was meant to be giving regular reports, and she hadn’t checked in for a few days, not since she had worked her way into Bastian’s home.

If she could call it working her way in.

She hadn’t even needed to approach Bastian about becoming one of his servants. The vampire had taken one look at her at that fancy bar he frequented when he was in London and had decided she was going to be his. Which was irritating in a way. It was almost as if he believed all humans had been born to serve him anyway, so adding her to his ranks was only natural.

And he hadn’t given her a choice in the matter.

He had tried to place her under thrall, a power to control humans that all vampires possessed, one that allowed them to manipulate their minds and make them do as they pleased, and even control what they felt. She supposed it probably helped them when they were hunting. They used their thrall to make their prey compliant, to make their bite feel good, and, if they were the sort to leave the human alive after taking their fill of their blood, to make the human feel a warm haze akin to pleasure. Humans mistook it for sexual release and thought they’d had a wild night with a stranger.

Which in a way, they had.

Bastian’s thrall hadn’t worked on her, of course, so she had been forced to pretend she was under his spell.

And he had carted her off to his mansion.

It wasn’t quite how Lilian had expected things to go. The plan had been that she would discover he was a vampire and press him to make her an owned human, playing the desperate mortal who had heard rumours they would gain a longer life and wouldn’t get sick if they served a vampire. He was meant to have agreed and then vetted her, like most vampires did when a mortal wanted to be their servant.

She had worked hard setting up a backstory and putting together a paper trail that would tie her to her new identity. Fake bank accounts. Education. Doctors’ records that placed her as a cancer risk because of her family history. Loans. Employment. She had spent weeks expending time and magic to get all the information in place and make sure there weren’t any holes that would give her away, sure that he would run a background check on her.

All the information her coven had painted Bastian as a cautious vampire, one who thoroughly researched things before making an informed decision. Apparently, his business practices didn’t extend to his personal life.

Or at least they didn’t extend to choosing who would serve him.

He saw someone he liked the look of and just added them to his staff whether they wanted it or not.

Entitled much?

Sure, he was an aristocrat, something the pureblood vampires called themselves, those whose family hadn’t been tainted by adding turned humans to their ranks. And sure, she had been warned his breed were haughty and elitist. But some part of her hadn’t believed it until she had witnessed it with her own eyes.

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