He didn’t reply. Feeling a fool, angry now, I stalked after him.
There was another vast hall or vestibule. No lights, until he touched the switch and grayish, weary side lamps came on, giving little color to the stony, towering space.
“Where,” I said, in Juno’s voice, “is he? He at least should be here. Zeev Duvalle, my husband-to-be.” I spoke formally. “I am insulted. Go at once and tell him — ”
“He does not rise yet,” said Anton, as if to somebody invisible but tiresome. “He doesn’t rise until eight o’clock.”
Day in night. Night was Zeev’s day. Yet the sun had been gone over an hour now. Damn him, I thought. Damn him.
It was useless to protest further. And when Casperon returned with the bags, I could say nothing to him, because this wasn’t his fault. And besides, he would soon be gone. I was alone. As per usual.
I met Zeev Duvalle at dinner. It was definitely a dinner, not a breakfast, despite their day-for-night policy. It was served in an upstairs conservatory, the glass panes open to the air. A long table draped in white, tall old greenish glasses, plates of some red china, probably Victorian. Only five or six other people came to the meal, and they introduced themselves in a formal, chilly way. Only one woman, who looked about fifty and so probably was into her several hundreds, said she regretted not being there at my arrival. No excuse was offered, however. They made me feel like what I was to them, a new house computer that could talk. A doll that would be able to have babies. yes. Horrible.
By the time we sat down, in high-backed chairs, with huge orange trees standing around behind them like guards — a scene on a film set — I was boiling with cold anger. Part of me was afraid, too. I can’t really explain the fear, or of what. It was like being washed up out of the night ocean on an unknown shore, and all you can see are stones and emptiness, and no light to show the way.
At Severin there were always types of ordinary food to be had — steaks, apples — we drank a little wine, took coffee or tea. But a lot of us were sun born. Even Juno was. She hated daylight but still tucked into the occasional croissant. Of course there was Proper Sustenance, too. The blood of those animals we kept for that purpose, always collected with economy, care, and gentleness from living beasts, which continued to live, well fed and tended and never overused, until their natural deaths. For special days there was special blood. This being drawn, also with respectful care, from among the human families who lived on the estate. They had no fear of giving blood, any more than the animals did. In return, their rewards were many and lavish. The same arrangement, so far as I knew, was similar among all the scattered families of our kind.
Here at Duvalle, we were served a black pitcher of blood, a white pitcher of white wine. Fresh bread, still warm, lay on the red dishes.
That was all.
I had taken Proper Sustenance at the last hotel, drinking from my flask. I’d drunk a Coke on the road, too.
Now I took a piece of bread and filled my glass with an inch of wine.
They all looked at me. Then away. Every other glass by then gleamed scarlet. One of the men said, “But, young lady, this is the best, this is human. We always take it at dinner. Come now.”
“No,” I said, “thank you.”
“Oh, but clearly you don’t know your own mind — ”
And then he spoke. From the doorway. He had only just come in, after his long rest or whatever else he had been doing for the past two and a half hours, as I was in my allotted apartment, showering, getting changed for this appalling night.
What I saw first about him, Zeev Duvalle, was inevitable. The blondness, the whiteness of him, almost incandescent against the candlelit room and the dark beyond the glass. His hair was like molten platinum, just sombering down a bit to a kind of white gold in the shadow. His eyes weren’t gray, but green — gray-green like the crystal goblets. His skin, after all, wasn’t that pale. It had a sort of tawny look to it — not in any way like a tan. More as if it fed on darkness and had drawn some into itself. He was handsome, but I knew that. He looked now about nineteen. He had a perfect body, slim and strong; most vampires do. We eat the perfect food and very few extra calories — nothing too much or too little. But he was tall. Taller than anyone I’d ever met. About six and a half feet, I thought.
Unlike the others, even me, he hadn’t smartened up for dinner. He wore un-new black jeans and a scruffy T-shirt with long, torn sleeves. I could smell the outdoors on him, pine needles, smoke, and night. He had been out in the grounds. There was. there was a little brown-red stain on one sleeve. Was it blood? From what?
It came to me with a lurch what he really most resembled. A white wolf. And had this bloody wolf been out hunting in his vast forested park? What had he killed so mercilessly — some squirrel or hare — or a deer — that would be bad enough — or was it worse?
I knew nothing about these people I’d been given to. I’d been too offended and allergic to the whole idea to do any research, ask any real questions. I had frowned at the brief movie they sent of him, thought: So, he’s cute and almost albino. I hadn’t even gotten that right. He was a wolf. He was a feral animal that preyed in the old way, by night, on things defenseless and afraid.
This was when he said again, “Let her alone, Constantine.” Then, “Let her eat what she wants. She knows what she likes.” Then: “Hi, Daisha. I’m Zeev. If only you’d gotten here a little later, I’d have been here to welcome you.”
I met his eyes, which was difficult. That glacial green, I slipped from its surface. I said quietly, “Don’t worry. Who cares.”
He sat down at the table’s head. Though the youngest among them, he was the heir and therefore, supposedly, their leader now. His father had died two years before, when his car left an upland road miles away. Luckily his companion, a woman from the Clays family, had called the house. The wreck of the car and his body had been retrieved by Duvalle before the sun could make a mess of both the living and the dead. All of us know we survive largely through the wealth longevity enables us to gather, and the privacy it buys.
The others started to drink their dinner again, passing the black jug. Only one of them took any bread, and that was to sop up the last red elements from inside his glass. He wiped the bread around like a cloth, then stuffed it into his mouth. I sipped my wine. Zeev, seen from the side of my left eye, seemed to touch nothing. He merely sat there. He didn’t seem to look at me. I was glad of that.
Then the man called Constantine said loudly, “Better get on with your supper, Wolf, or she’ll think you already found it in the woods. And among her clan that just isn’t done.”
And some of them sniggered a little, softly. I wanted to hurl my glass at the wall — or at all their individual heads.
But Zeev said, “What, you mean this on my T-shirt?” He too sounded amused.
I put down my unfinished bread and got up. I glanced around at them, at him last of all.
“I hope you’ll excuse me. I’ve been traveling and I’m tired.” Then I looked straight at him. Somehow it was shocking to do so. “And good night, Zeev. Now we’ve finally met.”
He said nothing. None of them did.
I walked out of the conservatory, crossed the large room beyond, and headed for the staircase.
Wolf. They even called him that.
Wolf.
“Wait,” he said, just behind me.