“The vampire orphan from Europe was freed from his obligations to the council ahead of schedule and will be joining us Friday as well. And I’ve decided on the last two candidates to be brought over –”
“Cool!” Lillian said.
“Well, Pierre for one.”
“Hmm, Pierre,” Lillian cooed.
“I thought you were gay,” Shamira said, amused at the schoolgirl-with-a-crush sound the necromancer had just made.
“I am, but Pierre is just . . . hmm.”
“He’s a submissive, but he’s also a helpless romantic,” Clara filled in with a smile. “He’s also former French Intelligence, and he’s been living in D. C. for a while. He’s a good choice,” she said, suddenly suspicious. “So the orphan Yosyp and now Pierre . . . what aren’t you telling me?”
Shane took a step backward. “Bunny.”
Look at Clara’s face, Shamira could have sworn that her friend and lover had just been insulted in some dire fashion. “Who or what is Bunny?”
Lillian smiled. “You are being way too harsh,” she told Clara. “Bunny is the sweetest –”
“Sweet? She makes my teeth rot just thinking about her! Pink? No one wears pink bondage equipment!”
Shamira snickered. “A pink-loving submissive?”
Clara threw her hands up in exasperation. “That’s not the half of it! No one is that cheerful!” Then Clara stopped and looked a bit ashamed of herself. “I always wondered if she was just compensating for –”
“I think that’s who she really is,” Shane said. “And it came back. Yes, that’s one of the reasons I decided on her.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Shamira asked.
Shane looked at her. “Bunny was diagnosed with Leukemia when she was eight years old. It went into remission, but it’s come back.”
Lillian smiled. “She’s only nineteen, which is young I grant you –”
“Hey, I was eighteen!” Clara said.
“And you turned out rather well,” Shane said. “But Bunny has lived every day since the initial diagnosis like it was her last. She’s cheerful, bubbly –”
“Air-headed,” Clara muttered.
Shane grinned. Clara couldn’t handle that much cheerfulness, but Bunny was completely oblivious. She just liked everyone. “She was involved in sports, she’s a black-belt in karate, president of her high-school class, cheerleader . . . the whole shebang. She was another donor until recently . . . I thought she was angry with me when she stopped, but she’d started treatments again and just hadn’t wanted to worry me. I think she was hoping it would go away again.”
“It’s not, is it?” Clara asked, her earlier annoyance all but vanished.
“No. She’ll be dead within four months, and it will make her so weak that I don’t think she’d survive the change. I’ll give her my blood this weekend, and she plans to overdose on sleeping pills this week. She’s already written her ‘suicide note.’ She even wrote it on pink paper with hearts and bunnies on it.”
Clara rolled her eyes. “She would.”
“She’s only nineteen? How long was she a donor?” Shamira asked, a little uneasy. But at least she wouldn’t have to kill this one.
“She discovered our kind at cheerleader camp. Some kids there were attacked by a rogue werewolf in its wolf form. I sent a couple of enforcers out when we heard about the rogue, but it seemed we needn’t have bothered. Rabid weres aren’t quite as intelligent as they should be. It had gone after Bunny when she was alone in her cabin but she outmaneuvered it and then beat it to death with a ceremonial spirit stick that had a high silver content.”
“A cheerleader beat a werewolf to death with a glorified baton?” Shamira asked.
Shane grinned. “She had no intention of shuffling loose the mortal coil lightly. She’s a good person and a fighter. Anyway, the werewolf changed back about the time my enforcers showed up. They called me, calmed her down, arranged a meeting, and she’s been a candidate ever since. And no, nothing sexual happened until she turned eighteen,” he assured the former cop. “By then, I had told her all about my house and she had admitted her own particular interests.” He grinned, but more to himself than anyone else. “She had a most interesting birthday celebration that year.”
Clara threw her hands up again and left the room. She couldn’t argue with Shane on this, but she didn’t have to accept defeat with any kind of dignity.
“Calm her down,” Shane said, still amused by Clara’s reaction. “And Shamira –”
“Yes?”
“You did good tonight. Again. See if you can get Clara to help you with your history and research on that faerie ritual, then get some rest. After taking care of those four young men, I’ll bet you need it.”
Shamira smiled. Thinking about her first-ever gangbang did NOT make her want to get some rest, but she did want to talk to Clara, so she quickly hunted her friend down.
“Do you really hate her that badly?” she asked.
“I don’t hate her,” Clara growled, then she let her shoulders fall a bit. “I’m being silly, I know, but it’s . . . it’s the aesthetics of it. A shiny happy submissive? A shiny happy vampire? It’s just not right.”
Shamira stared . . . then started to laugh, then she started to laugh harder. When she fell on the ground and started rolling around in pure merriment, Clara couldn’t prevent herself from grinning.
“You . . . you’re a vampire snob!”
“Am not!” Clara said, sitting down and punching Shamira in the arm. “Okay, maybe a little.”
Shamira righted herself. “Damn, I needed that.”
“I’m sorry,” Clara said, leaning against her friend and resting her head on one powerful shoulder. “You’ve had a worse time of things that dealing with your image. So, four guys?” Clara was smiling. “You had quite a night.”
“Five guys, if you count Henry. Which I guess we should,” Shamira replied. “Plotted the death of a woman I hardly know, fought a couple of weird entities . . . no big.”
“You need a vacation.”
“I’ve only been working for three weeks. Hell, I’ve only been dead three weeks. I don’t think I’ve accrued any vacation time yet.”
“Bah!” Clara said. “Hey, let’s go rafting next week. Go to be early, then go up to the Ocoee River. C’mon, there aren’t many outdoorsy types around here. Though we could probably get Renata and Lillian to go. Renata loves the water, and Lillian actually tried out for the Olympics as a swimmer. The season’s almost over, and I’ve been looking for someone to go with me.”
‘I’d like to go with you,’ Shamira thought, then found herself questing that statement. She really did want to “go” with Clara. “Sure,” she said. “Sounds fun. Do I have to take an official day off?”
“Nah, I’ll requisition you for a day. It’s all good.” Clara stood up. “Well, let’s get back to your studies. Figure out how fucked you are when you talk to the faeries on Saturday.”
Shamira wondered how appropriate of a comment that would be.
———- ——————-
Friday night . . .
———- ——————-
Shamira was sitting in the main hall of Shane’s impressive estate. She hadn’t been sure what the dress code was for meeting future house-member, and she’d fretted so much that Clara had actually been forced to get out of bed and help her come up with a suitable outfit. It was strange, but Shamira seemed to be sleeping in Clara’s room so often that a lot of her clothes, costumes, and personal items had made their way in there. She wondered if she was intruding too much on Clara’s personal space? ‘She hasn’t said anything,’ Shamira thought.
Shamira was dressed in a flowing black skirt from the waist to the ankles, with a bare midriff, and a black-silk vest that stretched around her ample bosom. Her hair was actually out of its braid, flowing down over her submissive collar and muscular shoulders. She’d taken no small amount of pride at the approving glances that she’d gotten from her co-workers.
“Nervous?” Clara whispered into her ear.
“About meeting the new people, facing down the spider guy, or killing the wife of a judge?”
Clara grinned. “You’ve got a full dance card haven’t you? Oh, Lillian’s on board for the rafting trip, so we just need to ask Renata. Wait, there’s Shane. Means that the limo is probably pretty close.”
“And that Yosyp guy is coming too?”
“He waited at the airport. His flight got in about an hour before Renata’s did.” Clara leaned back. “I’m in for a long couple of weeks,” she said.
“How so?”
“Well, I haven’t subbed for a while, so –”
“Wait,” Shamira interrupted, “Subbed? As in –”
“Whenever we get new doms, I sub for them for a session to make sure that they aren’t going to hurt our full submissives.”
Shamira shook her head. Clara? On her knees? For reasons she couldn’t even describe, that offended her.
“It’s okay,” Clara said. “I’m not really fond of it either. I subbed to Shane for a month before I’d let myself be dominant. I knew what I wanted, but I wanted to make sure I did it right. If a dominant doesn’t know his or her limits or gets sloppy, then a sub gets hurt. And I’d rather it happen to me than to you –”
“Let me do it!” Shamira whispered heatedly. “I can heal faster than anyone else here. You shouldn’t have to do that.”
Clara looked surprised at her lover’s vehemence. She also realized she truly saw Shamira more as a lover now than “just a friend.” That was odd for her. “Don’t worry,” she said in a reassuring tone. “It’s just one session each, and you can do a lot more kinds of harm than just physical,” Clara continued. “Do you really want to be in Sebastian’s clutches?”
Shamira shivered. Sebastian was the werespider that was going to be joining them in a few minutes, and just the thought of him touching her made her skin crawl. By his picture, he was absolutely gorgeous, but that knowledge that he could turn into an eight-legged, creepy-crawly —
But it wasn’t the limo from the airport. Instead, two other people that Shamira had never seen before walked through the front door. One was a man in his late thirties who had an athlete’s build but carried himself with a certain sense of flair. Definitely James Bond type in the tux and artfully slicked back hair.
“Lillian,” the man who was Pierre said, sweeping across the room to kiss the redhead’s hand. Monique rolled her eyes but didn’t appear to be too jealous. Lillian just liked a person with manners; it wasn’t going any further than the art of flirtation for her girlfriend and the Frenchman.
The other girl could be none other than Bunny. She even looked like a cheerleader, complete with hourglass figure, medium-sized and naturally perky breasts, big blue eyes and a smile that seemed to be naturally plastered on her face. She was dressed in pink tennis-shoes, a white denim skirt, a pink v-neck shirt with a Carebear on the front. And like cats being able to find the one person in a room who’s allergic —