Page 33 of Red Masquerade (Red Masquerade #1)

I wandered the house, only just then starting to understand the layout. It was late afternoon, near dinner time, and I thought surely I’d have Vince to myself after dinner. There was no party planned this night, a sweet respite from the drink and debauchery. I passed a parlor, in which the scent of smoke spilled into the hall through the open door.

Sinclair sat on a couch, a book in one hand, a cigarette in the other. He must have heard me coming, because he didn’t look up when I stood in the doorway.

“Come in,” he called, his eyes skimming the page.

It was a parlor I hadn’t been in yet. Perhaps his own private room? The walls were plastered with a deep red paper, decorated with stripes of black. A few bookshelves, a set of couches, and an unlit fireplace. A few ferns sat in pots near the windows, the curtains drawn apart to give Sinclair a light to read by. The electric lights were still yet off.

“What are you reading?” I asked, sitting across from him.

He looked up over the brim of the book. Smiling, his lips pulling into a line, he shut the novel, setting it upon the table. “Just some boring history,” he said.

“I hope I’m not interrupting?”

He waved his hand. “I know too much of history as it is, and I have plenty of time to read more.” He tapped the ash off of his cigarette and offered it to me, but I shook my head.

We sat like that in a comfortable silence, me, the human girl, wondering how I got here, and him, a vampire, a creature that shouldn’t have existed. He watched me watch him, but it was not uncomfortable, just two souls coexisting in a room, breathing the same air, basking in the quiet.

“Can you…” I trailed off, even though I knew he wouldn’t think me ridiculous. “Can you tell me more about—”

“About vampires?” His cheeks hollowing as he sucked in the smoke of the cigarette.

I nodded.

He looked off into the room, like he was considering, thinking. It gave me a chance to inspect his profile, his striking cheekbones, his strong nose. He had tan skin, and his hair curled upon his brow, giving him a boyish charm. He was an attractive man, and if I had met him in any other circumstance, I’d likely let him court me for an evening. If not for the odd conversation at that house party, I might’ve kissed him that night. And what a world of trouble we’d be in now .

His piercing eyes found mine, and he seemed to come to some conclusion. “I can tell you some of it. What are your questions?”

Some of it . An echo of Vince’s warning, before he told me how he turned.

Were there questions inappropriate to ask a vampire? The fact that I sat alone in a room with a creature that could drink my blood should have frightened me. But Sinclair had never given me a reason to think he thirsted for me .

“Just… how?”

He chuckled. “How are we vampires?” Another drag of the cigarette, and he lifted his chin heavenward, expelling his smoky breath. He looked at me. “How are you human? It’s just how you were born, is it not? It’s what you were made.”

“But you were born human, right?”

He paused, thinking again. “I was.” A regretful twitch to his brow. “Though, it’s a one-way street. I cannot change my nature now.”

“Vince told me…” I trailed off, unsure how to keep going. “Was it your choice?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “For many of us—most of us—no, it is not.” He glanced away to the window, and for a moment, I regretted letting the words come out of my mouth. “Though some of us do choose it. It has a great price, this new existence.” His fingers scrubbed at his jaw, his eyes finding mine again, softening just the slightest bit. “For me, it was an accident.”

“An accident? Is such a thing possible?” I asked, sitting forward in my seat.

He gestured to himself, a sweeping hand toward his body, presenting himself as evidence .

“When? And how?”

He laughed quietly, amused by my questioning, like I was a child still in wonder at the world. “Because Séra herself is a young vampire and couldn’t control herself in the throes of passion.”

My mouth fell open in an O , causing him to laugh again.

“She Made me, perhaps five years ago now, if I am remembering correctly.” He had kissed her forehead the night before, and I knew there was some affection there, a relationship of sorts. But—I had seen him with an entirely different couple the night I’d first witnessed a bloodletting. Séra most certainly was not there. There must have been an agreement between the two, though she didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in anyone at the party.

It was a question for later.

“Forgive me if I’m being too forward,” I said.

He waved his hand, as if to push the worry away. Taking another pull on his cigarette. Always smoking, always chasing the high of that smoke.

“Do you regret it?”

Exhaling that smoke again, a cloud of white between us, the scent of tobacco permeating the air.

“I regret that I had not asked for it yet,” he said. “But I would have, eventually. And I regret that Séra had to come to terms with what she’d done.”

“You love her.”

He nodded.

“Is she Made, too?”

He gave me a look. “Did Vince not tell you anything?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t gotten much of a chance to ask .

His brow arched, then he continued. “She’s Born. She had family in the south. Louisiana. And some in France, I believe.”

“What about you?” It felt dangerous to ask these questions, prying into the life of a vampire who I did not yet know very well.

That muscle in his jaw ticked again. “They don’t live far.”

“Do they know?”

He shook his head, breathing in against the cigarette again. Putting it out against the ashtray. Lighting another.

I couldn’t imagine—couldn’t imagine such a strange existence as it is, but if I had to live amongst my human family in the meantime, to keep a secret like that from Flora, I’d lose my mind. Though I suppose I’d already altered all our lives, in a way. My family wouldn’t see me again, and already a distance was springing up between me and Flora.

Sinclair sighed. He turned to me. “What else? I know that’s not all that’s bouncing around in your head.”

I bit my lip. I had so many questions, and I wasn’t sure if Vince was able to answer them all. “Where do vampires come from then?” I asked.

“If I knew, then I’d have the secrets to the world.” He gave me a tight smile, then shrugged. “We came about as any other species, probably. Though I suppose the only thing remarkable about us, besides our strengths and our extended lifetimes, is that we can infect others, like humans, and bring them to ‘our side,’ as it were.”

“Extended lifetime?” Those were the words that I had caught on.

“Yes. We live much longer than our human counterparts. All of us in this house are young. We’re still considered fledglings by some, and will be for a few decades. We can live to many hundreds of years, if the histories are to be believed.” His eyes flicked to the book discarded on the table, then back to me.

“But surely there’s a first vampire? An Adam and Eve sort of thing?” It was difficult to wrap my head around the fact that vampires had been around for centuries, and no one knew.

Or, rather, the stories of them had been disregarded as just that— stories .

Sinclair looked at me directly, an immense weight in his stare. “Do you believe in God, Helena?”

I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable at the question. Swallowing, “I don’t know.”

How could I believe when everything I knew was being flipped on its head? It was the furthest thing from my mind, believing in benevolence, when my brother wanted to wrap his fist around my throat; when monsters were real .

“Many of us believe that we come from the damned,” he said. “That when Lucifer fell, so did his companions, and from those fallen, we were Born, millennia ago. But what do we know? New animal species seem to be discovered all the time in jungles and in deep waters. Are they newly created, dropped here on Earth in a fit of spontaneity? Or have they been here all along?”

“And what do you think?”

Sinclair grew quiet, his mind churning. With his silence, I knew it was a subject he had thought on a lot, perhaps in evening-long sessions, mulling over his species .

Why were things the way they were? Why was I stuck on one path, if I wanted to go another? What was so fundamentally different between me and my brother that he was allowed to raise a hand at me, and I was supposed to allow it? What about my sex made me inherently one step below a man?

It was a dismal subject I returned to again and again, despite my better judgment. Some questions had no true answers, other than that is just the way it is . And if you dwelled on it too long, the gray storm clouds would gather around the edges of your mind and threaten to pummel you with the most violent tempest.

“I think I am what I am,” Sinclair said. “And if I was meant to be this way or not, is it of any consequence?”

I let his words sink in. “So, that’s it? You don’t care to change it?”

“I cannot change it,” he said, watching my reaction.

“But what if?”

“Then I suppose I’d be very unhappy, indeed.”

He tapped his cigarette on the ashtray again. I noticed then it held a dozen or so paper ends. The entire time, his gaze never left me. His fingers moved with a nimbleness I never noticed before. When I’d first met him, it was like he was putting on the part of a man, with clumsy, unsteady fingers. But every move he made now exuded confidence and control.

I crossed my arms. “Why did you tell me to come back?” Flashes of red and writhing figures in my mind’s eye. “What was I seeing?”

He glanced idly away, like some movement had caught his eye outside the window. “I was only tasked with getting you here.” A deflection, a half-answer .

“By Vince?”

He nodded once, his neck stretched to the side, two fingers lifting toward his face, bringing the burning menthol to his lips. But he didn’t inhale. “By Vince. To be where you were, and to convince you to find your way here again. To make myself available to you.” He laughed under his breath. “I went to so many parties.” Shaking his head, he crossed his legs, ankle resting on his knee.

That bitter, slimy taste rose in my mouth again. I swallowed. “Our meeting was planned.”

He opened his palm. Bingo .

“And Séra?”

He blinked slowly, languid, like he had all the time in the world. There was no emotion there, only a watcher’s eyes, a predator’s eyes. I didn’t know when this change in demeanor happened, only that it had, and I suddenly felt like a rabbit in a cage, up for the taking.

His tan cheek dimpled. “Hired months ago, when a spot in your household conveniently opened up.”

I tried not to let the information settle wrong, but a stone had lodged itself in my throat. The bitter taste turned to an uneasiness that grew from my core, deep inside me, and pushed outward, infecting every vein and vessel. The facts were there all along, but I just ignored them, too caught up being with Vince again, too preoccupied with gin and love and the thrill of it all.

I tamped it down.

It’s nothing .

It didn’t mean anything.

I was beginning to make a big deal of nothing .

He loved me, had always loved me.

I took a breath and plastered a quick smile on my face. “And Dixon?”

“Who?” Sinclair nearly dropped his cigarette.

“Lloyd Dixon.”

He had been so vehement against my being here; he had seemed ready to drag me out of this house himself. But he knew Vince, had come to the parties every time Flora and I did—and must have come on his own. There was a familiarity between the two, even if Dixon insisted Vince was dangerous. He had been the one to tell me Vince was waiting for me in the garden.

But Sinclair rolled his eyes. “He’s not one of us.”

“One of…?”

“He’s a high and mighty Born vampire who looks down upon us.”

Everything he meant was alluded to in that one sentence.

I wasn’t sure if Dixon was wary of Vince and the others because of their species or because of something else. Dixon had never shown any indication of losing control as a vampire, never seemed a threat to Flora or me, and in fact always cared more for our safety in the evenings, like our own personal bodyguard. He was so against Flora finding out, wanting to keep her as far from this world as seemed possible. He’d hidden his nature from me this long, was still hiding it from the woman he supposedly loved.

But was he in on whatever was going on too? Was that why he was so concerned?

I stood, my limbs becoming jittery from just sitting. A chill ran down my arms, and I wished I had grabbed one of those sweaters from my wardrobe. While I walked away, I felt Sinclair’s stare follow me, smelled the tobacco from his cigarette,

The view from the window was the gardens. It was early evening, the sun making its way toward the horizon, not yet having hit the equinox. The cypress trees swayed, their blue-hued leaves stretching toward the clouds. From above, all the colors of the gardens were in view—pink and red and bright green bushes, the glowing white of flowers that would soon bloom in the evening darkness. The dark green hedges lining the stone wall boundary. The wrought-iron gate. The brilliant fountains at the center, one with a peculiar marble nymph at the center, who seemed to shine in the dimming sunlight, like she was about to come to life.

I ignored the point at which I felt Sinclair’s view—on the back of my neck—and leant against the windowpanes, their glass already appearing melted with age.

“I do not mean to offend,” Sinclair said, misunderstanding my frustration, the lowness of his voice edged with humor. But he remained on the couch. “I understand he is a friend of yours—”

“What is going on here?” I turned to him fully, the window at my back.

“Here?” He looked around the room like he was missing something. “We’re speaking.”

“No.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “What is going on that I don’t know about?”

A raised black brow. “Clarify.”

“Don’t insult me,” I scoffed. I made to leave the room, feeling heat in my ears. “If no one wants to speak plainly, then I’ll figure it out on my own.”

Sinclair sighed. “Ask Vince. Lest he behead me for revealing too much.”