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jackbirdleeETA: Oh, what the heck, I'll just put up the whole chapter!
There are a couple of things you should know before I tell you this story.
The first is that I trusted Calvin Creed more than anyone, because he was the only person who’d ever stuck by me. He had been my one real partner—in life, in crime, in bed, you name it—since I’d washed out of the foster system before I was even old enough to drink, and I was willing to overlook a whole hell of a lot for that. It’s embarrassing to say it, but that was the truth: he could’ve told me to jump off a bridge and I would’ve done it.
The second thing you need to know is that, when all of this started, I didn’t know that vampires were real. I definitely wasn’t on the look-out for them in my daily life. So you can cut me a little bit of slack on that, okay?
Now that I’ve given you my excuses, I guess you want to hear about the murder.
***
I washed up in Monet, Alabama late on a September evening.
Well, that’s a lie. I was dropped off by Creed. I was just meant to act like I’d washed up in town with no money, nowhere to stay. I was pretty good at acting, and it was even easier that night; it wasn’t exactly typical for Creed to trust me on my own. As soon as he drove off and left me on the side of the dusty road, I honestly felt abandoned, alone in a way that got into my chest and haunted my steps.
It was necessary for the job. We both needed somewhere to stay, and we both needed to be working at the Cypress Grove Hotel, and we needed to avoid catching any undue attention because the FBI were on our tail after the last job. There are plenty of towns where two strangers can roll in together and ask for a room and paying jobs without attracting attention, but Monet is never going to be one of those towns.
So Creed was headed over to the Cypress to get a room and a job that he’d already lined up for himself in the hotel’s kitchen, and he’d left me to fend for myself. I’d managed to schedule myself an interview the next day for a job at the front desk, but I needed to find somewhere to stay, and Google was kindly informing me that besides the Cypress, there wasn’t a single other hotel, motel, hostel, or bed-sit for miles.
There was a gas station half a mile down the road, at least. I made my way there and walked inside, and found myself faced with a wall of souvenirs. The mugs and shirts all said things like Monet: It’s a Masterpiece!, or Have a Picture-Perfect Time in Monet. Apparently, whoever had designed the merchandise didn’t know—or didn’t care—that everyone who lives in Monet pronounces the town name with a hard T at the end.
Here are some more facts about Monet, Alabama: it’s placed right on the most beautiful section of Dead Man’s Creek, which is a broad, slow-moving river that I understand used to be marshland before another, bigger river a few miles east got dammed up to create a reservoir some hundred years ago. The backflow ran into the marsh and turned it into a river, and now it’s a lovely spot to vacation, in spite of the name and in spite of how little the locals want you there. The townies border on hostility towards tourists, and they passed ordinances decades ago to keep chain hotels out of town.
Speaking of locals, the woman behind the counter was eyeing me with open suspicion. I wasn’t even thinking of stealing anything, so I figured she gave that look to every stranger who walked into her gas station. I gave her a shy smile—older women tend to like me better when I’m shy—and held up a black t-shirt that just read DEAD MAN’S CREEK in white block letters. “Excuse me, how much for this?”
“Price is on the sticker. No discounts.”
Well then.
I almost reconsidered my plan to ask her about places to stay in town, but I didn’t have many other options, so I brought the shirt up to the counter. I figured she might like me more once I proved I had money and was willing to spend it—and besides, I just liked the shirt. As she rang me out, I asked her, and she started by pointing me towards the Cypress Hotel. I had an excuse ready for that.
“Oh, I know about the Cypress,” I assured her. “My sister works there—I’m in town to surprise her.”
“Hm.” She glared at me for long enough that I started to wonder if our interaction was over, but then she went on. “There’s the bed and breakfast. Mansview House. Queer folk up there, though.”
I didn’t ask which definition of the word she was using; I wouldn’t be bothered by either. I assured her I didn’t need a bag and stuffed the shirt straight into the mini duffel I was already carrying, then asked her the direction to Mansview House.
When I put the address into my phone, it acted like I was going to a private residential address: no business information, no photo of the building, no link to a website. It did occur to me that the woman might’ve been sending me on a goose chase, but I didn’t have any other options, other than going crying back to Creed to tell him I wasn’t competent enough to find somewhere to stay in a tourist town.
He probably would’ve just told me to find a park bench.
So I followed the directions another mile and a half down the road. As the walking path came up against the river, I got a lovely view of the moon rising over the water—and then, perched over the water like a gargoyle, there it was: Mansview House.
Mansview is a grand old mansion, Victorian-style, built by a mayor of Monet circa 1920. It’s sat on a bend in the river and has its own dock. I could tell even in the fading evening light that neither the dock nor the house had been updated in maybe a quarter of a century; the cream paint on the house was peeling and faded, and the yard was overgrown. Between that and the dark windows, the House looked abandoned.
If I’m honest, my first thought was that it looked fucking haunted.
I double-checked my phone, then looked around, hoping I somehow had the wrong building, but there was nothing else nearby. I found a sign where the driveway intersected the road, half-hidden by the knee-high grass, black and gold paint weathered to shades of brown:
MANSVIEW HOUSE
ROOMS FOR LET—PER NIGHT OR PER WEEK
EXTENDED STAYS AT OWNER’S DISCRETION
BREAKFAST & DINNER INCLUDED
INQUIRE WITHIN FOR RATES
I looked at the sign, then looked at the dark building crouched behind it, and gave serious thought to texting Creed. Or maybe I’d call up a ride-share and head to the Motel 6 in the next town.
Those weren’t my instructions, though, and Creed would kill me if I fucked things up. We were standing to make a lot from this job, and we needed every bit of that money.
I sighed and took a step towards the house.
The lights on the front porch flicked on.
I froze under the sudden spotlight, feeling caught. Then I remembered I was a legitimate customer—or near enough—and then realized all the windows were still dark, and I didn’t see anyone looking out at me. The lights were on a timer, maybe, or motion-activated.
The fact that there were lights seemed like a good sign, anyway.
I kicked my way through the grass, trying to scare off any critters before they found my ankles, and climbed up onto the porch. The wood slats were faded but felt solid underfoot, no loose boards or ominous creaking, and with the light on I could see that the porch was populated by three cheerful-looking Adirondack chairs and a matching table. They were covered in dusty pollen, but that’s pretty typical of everything left outside through the summer in that part of the country.
The door looked solid, too, with a cute little cut glass window at the top. There was a sign hung on it that read WELCOME, and the handle turned under my hand, so I went ahead and let myself in.
I found myself in a comfortable, dimly-lit receiving room. There were outdated couches gathered around a fireplace that looked more decorative than functional. The wallpaper was a floral pattern in a soft olive, a choice that had probably been a very classy choice in the 70’s; the flooring was white-washed hardwood, slightly uneven in the way that made me suspect it was probably original to the house, hand-cut.
The only light in the room was coming from a silk-shaded lamp sat on a desk at the far end of the room. The chair behind the desk was empty, but I thought it must have been occupied recently, because someone had left their phone lying beside the lamp.
“Hello?” I called, then flicked a switch on the wall to see if I could get any more light. The overhead fan started spinning, but the attached light remained dark.
I’d like to take a moment to let you know that the attached light should have come on. All three bulbs in the light fixture were blown. I know that now, because I’m the one who changes those bulbs, and every other bulb in the House. I’ve learned that lightbulbs are one of the first things to go when you leave vampires alone for too long: they can see just fine with practically no light at all, and, consequently, they can’t be assed to change a single lightbulb unless they absolutely have to.
At the time, I felt like I was in a badly-lit horror movie. I scanned the room for more switches. Instead, my eye caught on something—movement, or the impression of a shape, or something—and I nearly jumped out of my skin, because there was a hooded figure lurking in the dark doorway across the room, watching me.
The sound I made was more yelp than words, but I did manage a, “what the fuck?”
The figure stepped into the light and revealed, not the cloaked villain I’d been imagining, but a man wearing a black hoodie.
Actually, he was wearing the hoodie version of the same DEAD MAN’S CREEK shirt I’d just bought for myself.
His face was appealingly round, framed with loose, dark curls of hair that spilled out from the raised hood. The warm light from the lamp caught in his large eyes and on a plain silver septum ring nestled under his wide nose. He looked just as startled as I was.
I cleared my throat. “Sorry. Um, hi. My name’s Mason Foster. I’m looking for a room?”
Foster isn’t my real last name—they don’t actually name foster kids that way anymore, at least not in America—but it was a name I used on jobs, because Creed thought it was funny, so he’d had a fake ID and all made up for me under that name.
The guy with the cute piercing was still just kind of staring at me, so I gestured back towards the door, meaning to indicate the sign out front. “It says you rent rooms?”
“We do,” he said. His voice was quieter than I would have expected, but it was rough, too, like it was dragging on the way out of his throat. I wondered if he was sick. He slid behind the desk and started to pull open drawers. “Uh, how long are you staying?”
“Two weeks, I think?”
He continued to search the desk in silence for another minute, then looked up at me again, empty-handed. Now that he was practically on top of the light, I could see that his eyes were a warm brown. There was something in his wide-eyed look that reminded me of an animal—a rabbit, maybe? He was cute like a rabbit, anyway.
“Fifty dollars,” he said.
I played back the conversation in my head, confused, but I hadn’t missed anything.
“Fifty dollars? For two weeks?”
He squinted, wrinkling his nose, and then said, “…per week?” like he was trying it out to see how it sounded.
That was when I realized he was making things up as he went along, which worried me a bit. Here’s the thing: my ability to bluff my way through normal interactions kind of depends on the assumption that the other person knows what the fuck they’re doing. If he’s lying, and I’m lying, then who’s driving the car, right?
“Sure,” I said helplessly, pulling out my wallet, because I was afraid of what he’d say next if I pointed out that fifty a week was still dirt cheap. Since he was cute and I was nervous, I decided to flirt a bit, because at least that was something I was good at. “You know my name now, but I don’t know yours.”
“Charlie.”
“I like your septum, Charlie. Do you have any other piercings?” I put my credit card down on the desk—pre-paid by Creed—and leaned forward a bit, trying to catch a glimpse of his ears under the hood.
He reared back and fixed me with a glare like I’d tried to look up his skirt. Then he looked at the card, and his eyebrows drew down in confusion. “You want to pay with that?”
“Um. Yes.”
“I think we only take cash.”
After a couple of stunned seconds, my brain clicked over, and I realized what was going on.
A cash-only establishment, barely kept up, and staffed by a guy who acted like he’d never helped a customer in his life? I added two and two, and came to the inescapable conclusion that Mansview House was a money laundering front.
That brought my confidence back. Creed and I worked with our share of money launderers and fencers, and it wouldn’t be the first time I’d played the role of an honest customer opposite a surly mobster’s best try at customer service. They weren’t usually as handsome as Charlie, though.
You’re probably thinking it would’ve been smarter to leave, if I thought they were money launderers. First of all, I never claimed to be smart. Second of all, look at it from my perspective: I figured if I kept my head down and didn’t ask any questions, they’d pay me the same courtesy.
“Okay,” I said slowly, thinking through my options. “Uh, I don’t have that much cash on me.”
“How much cash do you have?” he demanded, still quiet and raspy. I squinted at him, and he stared back, apparently unaware that this was a strange question. I didn’t really want to answer that, because the cash was supposed to be my food budget until I saw Creed again and I’d already spent half of it on a shirt.
Before I came to a decision, a cultured, masterful voice interrupted from overhead: “Charlie, we don’t ask guests about the contents of their wallets.”
I looked up so fast that I almost made myself dizzy. At the top of the stairs stood a black man, slim and short, with high cheekbones and fine features that I might have called pretty on someone else. On him, the right word was regal.
He was wearing an embroidered waistcoat in rich peacock colors, indigos and greens over a dark blue dress shirt, like he’d just stepped out of a Victorian painting.
There was a look in his dark eyes that immediately got my blood pumping, something between devilish and amused. It was exactly the kind of look I like to get from a guy, but only in particular situations. I wasn’t sure what to do with it out of context.
He descended the stairs. There was a sleek control in the way he moved that drew my eye, made it impossible to look away from him, even though I was pretty sure Charlie was watching me watching him. The newcomer didn’t look away from me, either, and I knew it was probably because even the dim light in the room couldn’t hide how I’d flushed when I saw him looking at me like a toy he wanted to break. Fuck.
He reached the bottom of the stairs and crossed the room, and then held out a hand to me, all professional. “I apologize. Charlie’s still learning our operations; of course we accept credit cards. My name is Damian.”
“Uh.” I shook his hand automatically while I waited for my brain to come up with an intelligible response that didn’t involve the word sir. Eventually I managed, “Mason Foster. Are you the…manager?”
“The owner.”
I nodded and tried not to look too nervous. When my brain translated that to owner of a money laundering front, it spat back a memory of Creed telling me that he’d never let me talk to anyone too important, that I’d just fuck it up and get myself killed.
Then, as Damian released my hand, his thumb brushed very intentionally across my wrist and over my pulse point, knocking all the thoughts right out of my head again.
He stepped around me and behind the desk. Charlie scooted out of his way, eyeing me in a way that made it clear that he’d definitely noticed my reaction to Damian. I swallowed the burn of embarrassment in my throat, and focused all of my energy on acting like a normal person and not like a horny animal ready to suck off a guy within a minute of meeting him.
You’re probably thinking that, for most guys, embarrassment would be enough of a boner-killer to clear that up. I’m not most guys. Generally speaking, humiliation has kind of the opposite effect on me. So it wasn’t exactly easy to calm down with Charlie still staring at me like he was waiting for me to do a trick.
Then Damian said quietly, “Charlie, you can go.”
Charlie glanced towards him briefly, dark eyebrows shifting in an expression I didn’t quite follow. Then he disappeared back through the dark doorway behind him so fast that it made me re-evaluate my entire impression of him. Had he been staring because he was nervous?
“I wasn’t trying to give him a hard time,” I said, suddenly very worried that I was getting Charlie in trouble. “I just don’t have much cash on me.”
Damian waved one well-manicured hand in a dismissive gesture, sliding open a desk drawer with the other. “Charlie’s new to us. he’s still learning.”
I didn’t ask why, in that case, he wasn’t sticking around to learn how to process credit cards, because I’d already resolved not to ask questions.
Damian pulled out one of those manual card machines—the kind that makes a physical impression of the card—and I didn’t say anything about that, either, even though it was the first time I’d seen one in almost five years. I just slid my card over to him.
Then I realized there was one question I probably did have to ask. “Um. Charlie said fifty per week?”
“Yes, he did,” Damian said, his tone a bit rueful.
“Is that…right?”
He looked at me and raised an eyebrow, some of the amusement going out of his eyes. “You think you can find cheaper?”
“No,” I said quickly, “I just don’t want to underpay you. That’s closer to the nightly rate at most places, so I thought maybe…he could’ve mixed the two up?”
Damian paused, his hands resting delicately on the credit card plate, and studied me. I found myself flushing again under his scrutiny, and I was only able to hold his gaze for a few moments before I dropped my eyes, looking at the desk instead.
He made a small noise at that, a sort of considering “hm,” that made me want to hide under the nearest piece of furniture. “That’s kind of you, but I’ll honor the price Charlie gave you.” He pressed my card into the machine as he spoke.
I nodded, eyes still fixed on the desk, and a comfortable silence fell over us. By which I mean that Damian seemed perfectly comfortable, and I wasn’t worried about awkward silences because I was busy trying to convince myself that it would be a bad idea to hit on Damian.
I wasn’t concerned about Creed getting jealous. He did, sometimes, but I didn’t give a shit; he was adamant that we weren’t together like that, and he’d never shown any inclination towards being loyal to me in that way, so I had a policy to screw around when I wanted to and to take Creed’s moods as they came if he found out.
But that was all I was experienced with: just screwing around. A casual lay with any guy who was willing to get mean or toss me around if I asked for it.
I had barely just met Damian, but it was obvious that there was nothing casual about him. I didn’t know what he’d expect of me, but my instincts said it would be more than I was used to, and maybe more than I could give, considering I was scheduled to leave town within the fortnight.
I had a long history of disappointing authority figures that I respected. You’d think I’d be used to it, but I wasn’t. I desperately didn’t want to disappoint Damian, and I couldn’t see myself being anything other than a disappointment to a man of his caliber. So I managed to keep my mouth shut.
He slid back my card and my fake ID, along with a receipt for me to sign. Another reason I tend to use the same name on jobs: I have plenty of practice signing as Mason Foster. I passed the signed receipt back and finally looked up again, trying to be natural about it. The intensity of his gaze hit me all over again like a punch to the gut.
“Do you have a preference?” he asked.
“Uh?” I responded stupidly, and the corner of his mouth quirked up just enough to let me know that he knew exactly what he was doing to me.
“For your room. We have two guest rooms on the first floor, but most are on the second. You’re our only guest at the moment, so you have your pick.”
“Lucky me,” I said, trying for humor and landing squarely in awkward. I cleared my throat. “The second floor’s fine.” The first floor might’ve been more convenient, and would’ve made it easier to get out fast if I needed to, but there was something appealing about the idea of being deeper in the House. Damian nodded and looked faintly pleased, like I’d given the right answer.
“I’ll have Jasper show you to your room.”
Damian looked up the stairs, and I followed his gaze to see a third man—Jasper, obviously—descending as if he’d been summoned. He was tall and rangy, his hair a rude shock of red on his head and face, and he was dressed in old jeans and a loose, faded denim button-down. His heavy work boots were surprisingly quiet on the stairs.
Right off the bat, I was more at ease with Jasper than with Damian. Not because I wasn’t attracted to Jasper—I was. He was corded with the kind of muscle that comes from hard labor instead of a gym, and there was a look in his slate-green eyes like he was carrying a grudge; in short, he looked like exactly the kind of guy I’d have picked out any day for a quick tumble, especially because he looked like he could tumble me as easily as he liked.
No, I was at ease with Jasper because of the openly dismissive way he looked at me as Damian introduced us. There was a faint sneer on his face, like he’d already clocked that I’d never earned an honest dollar in my life.
I knew where we stood, and I was fine with that. I figured there was very little chance of me finding a way to disappoint Jasper.
“If you would give Mason a tour of the common areas, and then help him select a room,” Damian said.
“It’s late,” Jasper responded tersely. It was near ten at that point, which wasn’t exactly late by my standards at the time, but Jasper looked like the kind of guy who went to bed at ten and got up at six in the morning, so I wasn’t surprised.
“Jasper,” Damian said, exasperated, but I interrupted.
“That’s alright, it’s been a long day. Just my room’ll be fine.” Damian frowned at me, and I gave him a slick smile in return, feeling steadier now that there was someone around to glare at me disapprovingly. “I can look around in the morning, right?”
“Hm,” Damian responded critically, but Jasper apparently took that for approval. He stepped back towards the stairs. I grabbed my bag up off the floor and followed behind him, and—being a coward—I kept my head down as I climbed the stairs, avoiding Damian’s gaze by pretending to watch my feet. But I felt his eyes on me the whole way.
Total monthly words (July): 70,429
Annual words to date (2023): 276,748
Dinner tonight is: leftover pizza!