Page 15 of Just for a Taste

I required a full bag of saline after the vampire drank directly from me for the first time. Duca de’ Medici had been far too greedy, Doctor Ntumba later informed me, but I could have discerned as much. The world was a blur of sound and color, and I could only gather snippets of Doctor Ntumba’s snappy Italian scolding. In my current state, I could not translate.

She carried me into my room and gave me the IV in my bed. I drifted in and out of sleep until the following afternoon, strange, staccato dreams broken apart by a handful of minutes where I would drowsily listen to birdcalls outside my window until I fell back into slumber. Even after I recovered, I struggled to resume my studies for the rest of the week. My focus had waned entirely, all thanks to Duca de’ Medici’s confusing behavior.

We had shared a noteworthy few days, I thought, and yet I had hardly seen him at all since. He did not even allow me brief daily glimpses or stilted conversation around the abbey like he had at the beginning of my stay. I saw him through my window at night once, stalking around the grounds and scrawling furiously in a notebook. But even if I had the chance, I wouldn’t have called out to him. No, instead I had relegated myself to replaying every moment together over and over in the desperate hope of finding where I had gone wrong. Had it been how pathetic I looked, bawling in front of him in the aviary? What if I had been too informal and offended him? Most horrifyingly of all, was it my reaction to his teeth plunging into me?

I tried to speak with Doctor Ntumba about it once, but she pointedly changed the topic. The way everyone was dancing around the question, I was alone in trying to answer it.

Signora Carbone and Signore Urbino had also been unusually absent. Prior to that first feeding, I saw them daily, and now I only crossed their paths when I went through the gardens for meals. Even then, they always huddled together, muttering inaudibly to one another.

Lucia noticed the difference in me long before the others. She pointed out the torrents in my moods as astutely as a weatherwoman, and sometimes I swore she could predict where they were going from one morning to the next. At one point, I theorized that she was gossiping with Signora Carbone about the differences in the music I checked out. Maybe she was mentally cataloging how much I was eating, or perhaps I was that easy to read. Regardless, I quickly came to appreciate her jokes and the general pleasantness of her company.

“Would you like to go on a walk, or have dinner with me?” I asked her one day during my bath. She was scrubbing me gently today, which meant she could tell today had been difficult for me. She paused what she was doing and gave me a strange look.

My face felt warmer than the water. “What is it?”

Lucia smiled, then picked up my other arm and resumed her scrubbing. “I never expected you to ask me that, signorina. How come?”

I shrugged, lowered myself into the water past my chin, and blew bubbles out of my nose.

“Signora Carbone says you’ve been so needy because you don’t have teatime anymore.” Lucia’s tone was light.

Needy? I had been called many things in the past by many people—distant, reserved, avoidant. Needy was a first. I wasn’t sure how it made me feel.

I sat up in the tub, and to my dismay, the minute movement had a dramatic effect. Water rushed to fill the space I had left, a cascade of bubbles rolled down my arms, and steam rolled out around me. “I’m done with my bath, Lucia.”

“I’m sorry, Signorina Cora!” Lucia cried, holding up her hands. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

After rising from the tub and wrapping a towel around myself, I looked Lucia dead in the eyes. “No, it’s okay. You’re right.”

Lucia studied my face for a moment, searching for traces of anger but finding nothing. She visibly relaxed and helped thread my arms through my robe, fresh from the towel warmer. Occasionally, I would forget how spoiled I was in this abbey, but the simple joy of a warm, fluffy robe always reminded me of how much of an outsider I was to this place.

With a hint of residual caution, she said, “I don’t think it’s a bad thing. When you first came here, signorina, you were always nice, but I don’t think you ever spoke with me without a reason. For many days, it was like you weren’t really there. But now I hear you laugh and complain, and sometimes you even talk about silly things with me. It’s nice to take care of a house that feels like it has people in it. I can tell Signora Carbone is happier too.”

In the mirror, my reflection tilted her head to the side. “What makes you think that? I don’t think I’ve seen her very much at all lately. When does she even go to bed?”

“She’s always busy like that,” Lucia responded with a giggle. “It means she’s happy. One time, when I was a child, I dreamed she didn’t sleep—that she actually spent all night working in her room and only pretended to sleep when others were around. The next night, I hid in her closet, but she was asleep every time I looked out. When she found me, I had to scrub the floors myself for a week!”

I tried not to wince as Lucia plaited my hair. No matter how gentle she was, the feeling of my hair being touched always felt painful and vulnerable. She was used to my jumping by now, at least.

“So you grew up with Signora Carbone, then?” I asked.

“Yes,” Lucia replied. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve lived with Signora Carbone. We took this position together so that I could return to my birthplace. It was her dream to work as a head conservatrix, and mine to come home.”

“Do you—” I stopped. How could I ask her if she enjoyed her job? How hadn’t I considered it before? I supposed I spent most of my time trying to forget that it was me getting pampered, and that it was another person doing the pampering.

“I do like being a lady’s maid, though,” she said, somehow reading my mind. “It’s nice to be a part of making someone happy every day, and the pay is quite good. The only bad thing is that I don’t get to leave very often, and when I do, it’s to a town with only one bar!”

Yet another thing I had never considered came to mind—the possibility of Lucia leaving the abbey before me.

“Are you going to stay here long-term, then? Now that you’re home?”

“Until I have enough money saved up to open my own salon,” she replied, then added with a cheeky smile, “or Signora Carbone gets tired of dealing with me and tells Duca de’ Medici to fire me.”

At the sound of his name, I sank into the chair. The robe had gone cold again, just like how my blood felt.

“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “I think I’m the one more at risk of being kicked out of this place.”

Lucia gaped, nearly dropping the hairbrush. “Why would you get kicked out?”

Uninvited and unannounced, a familiar feeling pricked the corner of my eyes. I winced at the uncomfortable feeling in my throat but suppressed it

“I—” My voice came out soft, hoarse. Even though I was holding back tears, speaking was a dead giveaway. I cleared my throat, despite knowing it wouldn’t help. “I think I did something wrong, Lucia, but I don’t know what. Duca de’ Medici hasn’t talked to me in days. It’s like he hates me. Nobody is talking to me anymore, and it feels like I’m going crazy for asking about it. The thing is, I don’t have a plan B if I get kicked out of here. I don’t have anyone—or anywhere . ”

I expected Lucia to either come swinging with refutations or comfort me without addressing the issue, but she did neither. Instead, she stood there, not saying a word, with her gaze on the floor. I stared at her, brow furrowed, until she finally met my eyes and spoke. “I wish I could tell you what is going on, signorina, but I can’t. I promised it would be a surprise.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t see Duca de’ Medici around the house very often. Signora Carbone told me long ago to keep my distance from him. I can promise you, though, nobody here hates you. Especially not Duca de’ Medici. You’ll just have to see.”