Page 90 of Cloak of the Vampire
Zoey seemed to recognize Stefan as well. She tensed but nodded and followed him into the crowd.
I doubted Zoey wanted to talk to Renaldi, but during one of the last lessons with Abe, he told us it was in our best interest to agree to talk with every Lord who wanted to chat us up. None of us wanted to get on any Lord’s bad side by refusing to interact with them.
Once Zoey was gone, I turned to talk to Tansy, but I saw she was already a few feet away talking to a tall, brown-skinned woman with slanted eyes and extremely lush lips. She was wearing a bright-red three-piece suit that was evidently designer, and her dark, wavy hair elegantly fell over her shoulder. I didn’t recognize her as any of the Lords’ Lieutenants, and from the way she held herself—straight, squared shoulders, her chin high and proud—I wondered if she was Lady Kalama from the Kalama League in Oregon, the only one I hadn’t visited during the field trip.
Since no one had sought me out yet, I used my marginal freedom and made a beeline to the bar. Some aperitifs were placed on the bar, and I grabbed one of them, hoping it was strong enough to tamp down my rising anxiety.
“Calm down,” I muttered to myself as I leaned against the bar and watched the crowd. I caught sight of Lord Atalon’s platinum hair and saw he was speaking to an unfamiliar newcomer—probably one from another League. The Lord was wearing a classic white tux with a red tie and highly polished black dress shoes. With his pitch-black eyes, ivory skin, fair hair, and sharp cheekbones, he looked better than I remembered. In fact, looking at his face, I thought he was rather handsome in a clean-cut kind of way.
Averting my gaze from him, I sipped my drink—some sort of cranberry cocktail tinged with AB-positive blood—and then saw Jakob. He was talking to Lord Bowman from the banking League, animatedlywith exaggerated hand motions, but Bowman simply stared at him, face bored—though, to be fair, Bowman’s face always seemed as if he wasn’t even interested in himself.
I was about to take another sip when a flash of red hair suddenly appeared from the crowd, heading in my direction. I tensed, slowly taking the glass down, when I saw it was Margarita walking toward me.
As much as I hated her, I couldn’t help but admit that she looked hot in a black, ankle-length skintight dress and extremely high black heels. She wore gold bracelets and matching earrings, and her wild red curls were tamed into a half-up, half-down do. Her face, too, was prettier than usual, with smoky eye makeup and cherry red lipstick.
She stopped before me. In her heels, she managed to top me by more than five inches. “Henderson,” she said, a smirk on her haughty face.
Tersely, I gave her a curt nod and nothing more.
That aggravating smirk of hers widened. “I hope you are prepared,” she said, her smirk turning into a nasty grin when I narrowed my eyes. My grip on the glass was so hard that I was half-afraid it would break.
“As if you care,” I murmured quietly, staring at her with what I hoped was a blank expression. I refused to let her see just how much she raised my ire.
She snickered. “Of course I do,” she said, voice low now as she scanned me from head to toe. What she saw made her eyes light up smugly. “I want to see you fail, after all.”
Do not slap the bitch ... Do not slap the bitch ...
“But it seems I was worried for naught.” She chuckled evilly as she pointedly looked at my dress before raising her eyes to my face. “It seems my wish to witness you not being bought will come true after all.”
As I struggled to keep my anger in check, I studied her face. Yesterday, Logan had hinted to me she was cooking something up. What the hell could it be?
I got my answer a moment later when a menacing man built like a tank cut through the crowd. He was wearing a suit—it included blacktrousers and a black blazer—but the wine red shirt underneath the blazer was almost completely unbuttoned, showing off his chiseled, hairy chest inked with a grandiose Chinese dragon. His black tousled hair was messy, as though he’d just rolled out of bed, and his dark eyes were glinting with anticipation.
My body was beyond tense—it was frozen, rigid like stone—as I watched the man, the one and only Lord Renaldi, coming to a stop next to Margarita. “Looking good, Wallen,” he said, giving Margarita a once-over so sexual it was a wonder Margarita didn’t look uncomfortable.
Quite the opposite, in fact; the Lieutenant gave him a large seductive smile that made me feel sick to my stomach. “Thank you, my Lord,” she said, giving him a smoldering look that made him smirk, before motioning toward me. “I wanted to introduce you to the noob I told you about: Aileen Henderson.”
As though he only just realized I was there, Lord Renaldi’s face snapped toward me, and his eyes widened in satisfaction. “I believe we met, Miss Henderson,” he murmured quietly, intimately, as if we’d done more than simply talk back in Vegas. He took a step toward me, making my spine stiffen further, as he raised his hand to brush his knuckles against my cheek. “Though I must admit, I remember you being more ...appetizinglast time.”
I wanted to gag, but I refused to give Margarita the satisfaction. “It’s good to see you, too, Lord Renaldi,” I said monotonously, voice tight as the bundle of nerves in the pit of my stomach grew.
He let his hand fall and returned his gaze to Margarita, who was trying to maintain a bland expression but couldn’t quite succeed in hiding her triumph. “She’s one of a kind, indeed,” he said, a secretive smile curling his lips.
“So you’ve met,” Margarita said almost gleefully before she turned to me, so smug and arrogant that I wanted to hit her. “She’ll be a good addition to your collection.”
It struck me then that Margarita had more than one plan. She didn’t just want me to be unbought but if I were to be bought anyway, she wanted the disgusting, sickening Renaldi to buy me.
My heart was beating frantically in my chest as I felt true fear spread through me when Renaldi’s eyes roamed up and down my body as though trying to see beneath my dress.
Was that how my father’s victims felt?
His chest suddenly filled my sight when he stepped so close to me that he was less than an inch away from touching me. “Let’s go somewhere private, Miss Henderson,” he murmured quietly into my ear, making the wrong kind of goose bumps rise on my skin as I started to shake.
I heard Margarita’s laughter growing distant. She left me with this horrible man without a care in the world.
She wanted him to ruin me before the Auction even started.
When his hands suddenly grabbed my waist and began roaming up the sides of my body and his repulsive, excited breaths were in my ear, I slowly lifted my leg, preparing to give him the strongest kick of my life, but then a familiar voice said, “Our Lord requires your presence, Aileen.”
