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“Hey, guys,” I said with false cheeriness.
Chantal rolled her big green eyes at me, skin glowing the palest shade of pink. “Eden, how nice of you to make an appearance.” Her voice drew out in a long, whining sigh as she angled her lithe ballerina body away from me. Even the flowing folds of her soft pink dress seemed to float away from me.
Rude.
The rest of them followed suit, turning their bodies away.
“Eeds, you really shouldn’t be here,” Carisa, the closest thing I had to a friend in the vamp community, whispered over her shoulder. Her short brown pixie cut and turned-up nose always made me think of her as my own personal Tinkerbell. Even her skin glowed golden, like Tink’s magic fairy dust.
Not that I would ever tell her that.
She’d kick my ass from here all the way back to the east part of town.
“You’re only barely out of bloodlust,” she scolded. “No one wants a scene tonight.”
She did not know how true that was. “You and me both, Carisa.”
When I threatened to make Roofie Dude a himbo for my nest, not only did he not know what a nest was, but he also didn’t know that I was bluffing my ass off.
My nest and I were kind of on the outs.
It’s a long story.
Let’s just say, early in my vampire life, I took some liberties with their kindness.
That is, I was a bloodthirsty fiend.
“You reek of humans.” Chester, the alpha of the nest, threw off a silver glow and stepped further away. His penchant for dark three-piece suits with tails always made me think of Batman’s butler Alfred.
Again, not that I would ever say so.
“Well, I can’t really help that, Chester. I live and work with them, since you haven’t seen fit to let me back in the manor.”
He sneered at me over his shoulder and focused his attention on a Dracula parrot preening its inky feathers.
Carisa threw me a quick, consoling glance. One I probably didn’t deserve. Chester was right to kick me out for my behavior, and since vampires have exceptionally long lives, my punishment was for an exceptionally long time.
Thirty-three years.
I was supposed to stay away from them and their manor for thirty-three whole years.
And I would.
I should have tonight.
But I still had to follow formal protocol. Despite my exile, they expected all vamps in attendance tonight to stay grouped by nest. It kept things from getting messy and territorial.
Lots of vampires in an enclosed space was never the best idea, but the nest groupings helped keep outbursts to a minimum.
Exiled or not, I had to stay right where I was.
Luckily, enough time had passed since my “incident” that I’d stopped drawing attention to myself just by existing.
I wouldn’t be able to pull this job off if that were still the case.
I just had to bide my time until the moment was right.
Not that I ever had any idea when that moment would be. It was more of a gut feeling than anything else. I couldn’t plan for it. I could only go with the flow and see where the night took me.
