Shadow Rites

“The new cybersecurity expert, for one.”

I glanced up from under my eyebrows. “New—? No one told me about this,” I said. One of our last electronic security experts had died, sitting in the chair in front of his console, attacked by a vamp from behind. It shouldn’t have happened. He should have been able to see the attack coming.

Edmund’s lips twitched. “No. She arrived yesterday, a young Mithran named Pauline Easter, out of Atlanta. When Leo choses a Master of the City of Atlanta, she will go back, fully trained in the proper way to set up cyber protections. Stop fussing with that.” He pushed my hands aside, took my braid, and levered himself on the bed beside me. I stiffened at the unexpected action and had to force myself to relax. In moments Edmund had the knots at the tip unsnarled and was finger-combing my hair. When it was free and hanging in tangled ripples, he took the comb from the satchel and began combing out the knots. I steeled myself for yanking on my scalp, but there wasn’t any. And suddenly I didn’t know what to do with my hands. A vamp, a creature at the top of the food chain, was combing my hair, like . . . I didn’t know like what, except it felt weird.

“I was trained in the art of being a ladies’ maid when I was a young Mithran, newly released from the scion lair,” Edmund said, a faint, amused edge to his voice, as if he was teasing me or testing me.

My eyebrows went up and he chuckled, probably smelling my surprise. The comb slowed and stroked through my hair, smoothing it, soothing me. “I insulted my original master when I first rose undead and was sold into indentured servitude to a Mithran in Charleston,” he said. “She owned a brothel, one of three in the city that catered to the most wealthy. Mithrans were cheaper than slaves,” he added, his voice now edged with a trace of bitterness, like the faint tang of poison in a fine wine. “We healed quickly, we worked nights when humans were sleeping, we didn’t have to be fed often, we could simply be set free on the docks for one or two nights a week to feed.”

“You were starved,” I murmured, and closed my eyes as he combed my hair.

“Yes. Times are . . . much better now, here, in America, for some. For most, I suppose, though the effects of slavery will stain a people with pain for hundreds of years. Eh.” There was a mental of shifting of gears with the syllable. “As a human, I had been educated, overly fond of myself, and a braggart. I was also unskilled in the manners and abilities my new master required, and so was set to menial labor: hauling water, chopping wood, and heating the baths in the elegant old brothel. It was an education I was not prepared for. After a year or two of behavior modification,” he said wryly, “I learned to keep my mouth shut and my thoughts to myself. It was that or starve into madness.

“By taking cuffs and beatings and not complaining, I worked my way up from transporting filth to the drainage ditch leading to the river, to washing dishes and setting tables, to pouring wine and mead and beer for the guests, to training as a ladies’ maid. I was educated, as I said, and learned to turn my gift for words into flattery and blandishment. I developed a silver tongue. The girls liked having a man wait on them, curl their hair, trim their nails, choose their attire for the evening. Someone strong enough to protect them if they called out the safe word, though it was not called such at the time.”

Edmund set the brush down and divided my hair into four sections, then divided the one over my left eye and temple into three more sections. He began to plait this small section in some complicated pattern, not a simple braid, but one where he pulled a few strands loose to hang free with each twist. It felt soft and feathery against my skin. It would never do for fighting, but for now . . . And then I remembered what we were talking about.

“Safe word? That’s a modern term for”—I smiled—“a different kind of bondage.”

Edmund laughed and the sound was a silken warmth that slid under my skin and eased the last of my pain away. He wasn’t exactly using his gift of compulsion on me, but he was doing something. I should probably make him stop, but the sense of discomfort was easing and so I let him continue. “Back then,” he said, “there was no water safe to drink. Everyone drank beer instead or, if they had an extra coin, wine. Stronger spirits were available as well, in every corner of the city. And the beer in Jacob’s House was some of the best in Charleston,” he said.

This time there was a hint of pride in his tone and I wondered if he’d contributed to making the beer. But what beer had to do with brothels and safe words I had no idea.

Edmund said, “The plentitude of alcohol meant that a vast majority of the customers were always drunk, and drunkards are not always careful with their tender paramours. And the management was not in a position to intrude when a paying guest became too heavy-handed. But I was not management. I was neither seen nor heard except when I needed to be.

“When a patron became dangerously inebriated and angry—the two go hand in hand oftentimes—the girl or boy could shout out a word and I would come running. I was adept at calming ruffled feathers and escorting patrons out of the premises.”

“Mesmerizing them?”

He murmured a noncommittal tone.

“Like you’re doing to me now?”

Edmund tied off the small braid and started on the larger one, making it too all feathery and soft. When he was halfway done, he asked, “Was I so obvious? You are difficult to charm.”

Charm? Huh. “Yes, you were obvious. But it helped. I feel better.”