The Shadows

As Peyton went off on a commentary about the fairer sex and traditional roles at home and in the field, Paradise sat back in the leather armchair. Next to her, logs set by the household’s doggen crackled with orange flames in the marble-faced hearth, the warmth hitting one side of her face and half of her body. All around, her father’s library glowed with yellow light and polished mahogany and the gold accents on the spines of his collection of first-edition books.

The mansion they lived in was one of Caldwell’s grandest, with forty other rooms that were kitted out with equal luxury to this one, if not even greater: Beautiful silks hung from diamond-paned leaded windows. Fine Oriental rugs stretched out across polished floors. Oil paintings of ancestors were mounted up the stairwells and featured prominently over mantels and sideboards. Fine china was set at a formal table for every meal, food cooked and served by the extensive staff.

She had lived here with her father for years upon years, tutored by other ladies of the glymera in all the things that made an aristocratic female mateable: Clothing. Entertaining. Etiquette. Being the chatelaine of an estate.

And what was it all leading up to? Her presentation party, which had been delayed, as with the Brotherhood’s training program, because of the raids two years ago.

Plans for her were likewise going to be reinstated, however. What was left of the aristocracy had moved back to Caldwell proper from their safe houses, and as she was of age, being at least four years out of her transition, it was time for her to find a mate.

God, how she dreaded all that—

“Hello?” Peyton said. “You still there?”

“Sorry, yes.” She jerked the phone away from her ear at a loud crackling sound. “What are you doing?”

“Opening up a bag of Cape Cod potato chips.” Crunch. Munch. “Oh, my hell, these are amazing. . . .”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I still have half an ounce left. So I’m going to finish it and a bag of chips. Then probably crash—”

“No, about the training center program.”

“My father’s already told me I’m going. It’s fine, whatever. I haven’t really been doing anything for three years now, and I would have matriculated in when they first opened the facility up, but . . . well, you remember what happened.”

“Yeah, and you’d better stop smoking. They’re not going to like that.”

“What they don’t know can’t hurt them. Besides, I have First Amendment rights.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, for one, you’re not human, so their Constitution doesn’t apply to you. And two, that’s about freedom of speech, not freedom to light up.”

“Whatever.”

As Peyton took another hit, she pictured his handsome face, and his broad shoulders, and his very blue eyes. The two of them had known each other all their lives, their families having inter-married for generations, as all members of the aristocracy did.

It was the worst-kept secret in the glymera that his parents and her father had recently started talking about them getting mated—

The great bass sound of the front entrance’s door knocker brought her head around.

“Who is that?” she said, getting to her feet and leaning forward so she could see out into the foyer.

Their butler, Fedricah, strode across the floor, and though her father never answered the door himself, he, too, came out of his private study across the way.

“Master?” the butler said. “Are you expecting anyone?”

Abalone pulled his suit jacket back into place. “A distant relative. I should have told you, my apologies.”

“I gotta go,” Paradise said. “Have a good sleep.”

There was a pause. “Yeah, you, too, Parry. And you know, you can call me if you get the bad dreams, okay.”

“Sure. Same for you. ’Day.”

“’Day back at you.”

As she hung up, she was glad her friend was still around. Ever since the raids had gone down and so many of their class had been slaughtered, the two of them had used the phone lines to pass the sometimes forever hours of daylight. The connection had been indispensable in the immediate aftermath of the raids, when she and her father had gone out to the Catskills, and she had rattled around that big barn of a Victorian for months.

Peyton was a good friend. As for the mating thing?

She didn’t know how to feel about that.

Going around the desk, she jogged across to the foyer until her father caught sight of her and shook his head. “Out of sight, Paradise. Please.”

Her brows popped. That was the code for her to take cover in the hidden tunnels of the house. “What’s going on?”

“Please go.”

“You said it was a relative?”

“Paradise.”

Paradise ducked back into the library, but she stayed by the archway, listening.

The soft creak of the massive front door opening seemed very loud.

“It’s you,” her father said in a strange tone. “Fedricah, please excuse us, will you.”

“But of course, master.”

The butler walked off, crossing briefly over that part of the foyer Paradise could see. After a moment, the door into the back half of the house closed.

“Well?” a male said. “Are you going to invite me in?”