“And do we make much?” Jerome asked, suddenly more interested.
“Depends on how good you are!” Auria told him. She slapped the gooey length of cloth onto the middle of Mircea’s chest.
He closed his eyes.
“And whether you get a wealthy patron or two,” Marte added. “That’s what you want to work toward. Individual clients are all well and good, but real wealth comes from repeat customers. They get attached and, well, with the senate in town—”
“We’re going to make so much money!” Auria said gleefully. And ripped half of Mircea’s chest hair off.
Chapter Six
“We’re going to lose so much money,” Paulo groused, consulting his little notebook as he and Mircea hurried down the street.
“I thought . . . the idea . . . was to make money,” a newly golden-blond Jerome panted, coming up behind them.
He was pushing the cart they needed to bring home the load of items that were apparently necessary for running a quality establishment. It was empty at the moment, and therefore not remotely heavy, although that shouldn’t have made a difference. “You don’t actually have to breathe anymore,” Mircea reminded him.
“I know,” Jerome wheezed. “But every time . . . I try not to . . . I pass out.”
“You can’t pass out,” Paulo said, irritably. “You’re a vampire.”
“Yes, now,” Jerome said. “But a year ago I was human—”
“A year?” Mircea asked. For some reason, he’d assumed that he was the youngest of their group. Maybe because he didn’t see how a year-old vampire had survived three weeks in the tender care of the Watch.
But Jerome was nodding. “I was Changed shortly before my master died. It’s one reason I was . . . that is, nobody knew me all that well, and—”
“But you’re here now,” Paulo said, looking critically at the miniature version of himself, who was habited elegantly enough in a short mantle of rich brown brocade, but who, it had to be admitted, was ruining it with a fish-out-of-water expression. “You are representing our house. Stop that ridiculous puffing!”
“I told you—I’ve tried. But every time I do, I turn blue.”
“And I’ve told you, that isn’t possible!”
“Well, it’s actually more of a lavend—erp.” Jerome shut up abruptly, as his air passages were cut off by an irate vampire.
“Let’s test a theory, shall we?” Paulo asked sweetly.
Mircea leaned against the side of a wall to wait it out. The Ave Maria bell, which rang at sunset, had already sounded, supposedly signaling the close of the market day. Not that everyone always followed the official hours, particularly at this time of year, with so many eager purchasers roaming the streets. But the later it became, the worse their chances for filling their exhaustive list was going to be.
“The shops will close soon,” he said mildly.
“Not if you know who to see,” Paulo replied, as Jerome wriggled and flailed and kicked the air, because he was being held about a foot off the brick walkway. “Although it might be better for us if they did.”
“It’s that bad?”
Paulo flipped his notebook open one handed. “In the last week alone—and this is in addition to the usual expenses, mind you—we have spent: ten ducats for the fur lining to a cape, six more for six yards of Rhenish linen—highway robbery, that—eighteen ducats each for three turquoise gems, twenty ducats for a quantity of Spanish leather gloves and cedar oil for scenting them, the same for a taffeta coverlet lined with swan’s down that Marte simply had to have, and an utterly ridiculous eighty ducats for eight yards of iridescent Ormesine. And that doesn’t even count what we paid to that thief of a tailor to outfit you lot on the quick. I could have done it three times over for that price at auction—”
“But finding auctions takes time.”
“Which we don’t have, and he somehow knew it, the fiend. And we’re supposed to be the monsters!”
Jerome gurgled something.
“Oh, yes,” Paulo said. “And sixteen soldini for a quantity of perfumed toothpicks Auria insisted upon after a friend informed her they existed! This,” he waggled the small book under Mircea’s nose, “is why Venice very sensibly has men do the shopping!”
“Which we’re not currently doing,” Mircea pointed out.
“And why is that?”
“You were making a point?”
Paulo looked confused for a moment, his mind still obviously on ducats and how few of them they were about to have. But he finally noticed a bug-eyed Jerome still dangling from his raised fist. His eyes closed. Then his fingers opened and a gasping, heaving, and yes, slightly blue vampire hit the road.
And a moment later, so did they, hurrying to the Rialto before the last of the merchants packed up for the night.
“All right,” Paulo said, as they approached the biggest shopping area of Venice. “We need: white wax candles, salted cheese, a songbird because Zaneta’s died and she’s been impossible ever since, sugar, pepper, fifteen boxes of assorted sweets, three ginger pine nut cakes, two cakes with violet syrup—”
“Vampires don’t eat,” Mircea reminded him, wondering about all the foodstuffs.
Their condition made a lot of senses stronger, but taste wasn’t one of them. Vampire bodies prioritized the use of power, preferring the vital over the merely pleasant, and taste wasn’t a huge advantage. He’d heard that it returned for masters, who had energy to burn, but he didn’t think that most of the household fell into that category.
Nor that Martina was the type to feed her servants cake.
“But our human clients do,” Paulo reminded him. “As do newly minted masters. In fact, they’re the worst. Once they can taste food again, they want the best of everything. Despite the fact that half of them were peasants the last time they could taste anything and can’t tell the difference between a decent red and watered down vinegar!”
“Then why not serve them the vinegar?”
He grimaced. “Because Martina won’t let me. She says some of them do know, and we’d damage our reputation—”
“What reputation?” Jerome asked, looking confused.
Paulo stopped mid-sentence to look at him.
“We’re a brothel,” Jerome added helpfully.
Mircea cleared his throat, but the hint failed to register.
“I thought we just gave them a bit of the old, you know,” Jerome elaborated by waggling his hips back and forth suggestively, causing Paulo to look like he wanted to recommence strangling.
“We are not a brothel!” he hissed, jerking the smaller vampire out of the road so that a cart full of farmers, who had been looking at them strangely, could pass.
“We get paid for a tumble, don’t we?” Jerome asked. “So do they.” He pointed at a nearby bawdy house, of the kind that always congregated close to markets. “What’s the difference?”
“The dif—” Paulo shut his eyes. “The difference is night and day! We are cortigianes, not puttana! We discuss art. And antiquities. And literature and music. We grace palazzos and mix perfectly with the owners and their guests. Auria writes poetry—”
“Auria?”
“—and Bianca paints. We entertain dignitaries, visiting sultans, even senators. Possibly even the consul himself!”
“Soooo, we’re a high class brothel,” Jerome reasoned.
“Gahhh!” Paulo tore a page out of his book and thrust it into Mircea’s hands. “You and Wheezer there get this half of the list; I’ll tend to the rest. We’ll meet back here after!”
He left at what would have been a run, if he hadn’t been upholding the dignity of the house. Leaving Mircea standing in the street, staring after him. And wondering what he was missing.