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“Frederick!” Ren calls the second we’ve passed the man at the door. The man reaches for my coat, and I only just get it into his hand before Renfield literally drags me away.
There are waiters with wine glasses everywhere. One of them stops before me and smiles, asking if I’d like one. I’d like to down his whole tray, but I can hardly say that. So, I smile in gratitude and take one, down it, and then I take another.
The waiter gives me this little nodding bow as if to say he understands my need to drink excessively and heads off into the sea of the crowd. Doesn’t look at me twice; people have probably been drinking up their courage or drinking down their self-hatred all night.
Renfield vanishes briefly, looking for someone, I guess. By the time the waiter comes around again, my glass is empty. I almost take two more, one in each hand. But visually that’s a little much. So just the one.
Renfield appears from nowhere.
“This way.” He pulls at me, insistent. I almost spill the champagne down my ridiculously expensive front.
An old, predictably white man somewhere in his fifties is standing to one side of the crush, nursing a martini and an e-cigarette. He smiles as we approach. Like a shark in a suit. I think about spilling my drink on him, or on myself, so I can escape to the bathroom to clean up.
“Frederick, Frederick,” Renfield says, laughing in that way businessmen do when they’re pretending to be friendly. He shakes Frederick’s hand vigorously. “How are you?”
“Capital,” says Frederick.
I blink twice to keep from rolling my eyes.Capital? Who says that?
He does. Frederick does. He’s preening like a peacock, making a point not to look at me.
“This is the goddess, Penelope Elandra Callas,” says Ren. That’s not my middle name, he just thinks it makes me sound more Greek, more exotic, more goddess. Little does he know I’m actually fifty percent stamp-of-authenticity goddess. “Penelope, this is Frederick Svetslander withScatsva.”
Some brand I’ve never heard of. It must be expensive if he’s here, mingling with the golden crowd.Scatsvasounds foreign, so maybe it’s a big name somewhere else. Finland, maybe, or Norway, or maybe it’s a Chinese brand and calls itselfScatsvabecause the word sounds exotic in the other direction.
Regardless, Frederick looks like the kind of guy that would start a fashion company of some kind in Asia. Not in China. Laos, maybe. Vietnam. Somewhere obscure that would look interesting on a company bio.
Now Frederick looks at me. He appraises me openly. I’m supposed to be okay with it—I’m a model, my body is my commodity—but I’m fighting the urge to squirm.
“Good evening, Miss Callas,” he says. “You look absolutely ravishing.”
There are few people more dangerous in this world than rich white men who use the word “ravishing”.
“Good evening,” I echo. Like a fucking parrot.
The window’s not far. If I hit it hard enough, maybe I can jump through it and run. The glass shredding into my skin would only hurt for a few seconds, and then it would heal in the next few. And the fall wouldn’t kill me—only a fellow immortal can do that. But I manage to dampen down the desire, all the same. The time for jumping out of a window and maiming myself in my quest to leave hasn’t quite arrived just yet. But the night is young…
Renfield makes a show of seeing someone he recognizes. “Marley? Marley Lasch, is that you?” He looks between us and he’s just so obvious. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment. Marley!”
And my pimp leaves me standing there with Frederick Scat.
Totally silent, no segue. The crowd closes around us like concrete closing around the feet of some sorry SOB who’s just been dropped into the Chicago River.
I drink.
I narrowly resist the urge to toss the whole thing back at once. It’s just champagne, but my stomach is empty, and nothing gets you properly tipsy quite like good champagne. Of course, my tolerance is at a level which would require at least two bottles of champagne before I’d feel even slightly tipsy—after a couple of centuries of building up my tolerance—it’s built up. And I’ve got Mother’s metabolism.
“Are you having a pleasant evening, Miss Callas?” says Frederick.
He has the air of someone important who stands on meandering porches in the dark, holding a cigarette and not making eye contact with whoever it is he’s talking to. The glass serves mostly the same purpose. He gestures with it.
“Yes,” I say. It’s easiest to lie with single syllables.
“Are you here alone?”
I gesture vaguely after Ren with my glass. “I’m with him.”
“And he is?”
