"I don't…" A waft of air from the hall made her catch her breath. She felt foggy, as if she had somehow drifted off in the middle of their conversation. She had to stop fantasizing so much about this man. "No, sir, thank you. I, ah, drove my car to work."
He bowed to her. "I will say good night, then, Miss Harper."
Surprised, Liling returned the bow. "Good night, Mr. Jaus."
Chapter 2
Valentin Jaus drove his Jaguar up the long drive to the black-granite-and-gray-slate medieval manor he called Derabend Hall. A dozen guards in dark suits stood at their posts around the mansion, which was a replica of Schloss Jaus in the Austrian Alps.
During his human life in the fourteenth century, Jaus and his home would have been referred to as the master and his castle, his guards the garrison. Now the master of Derabend Hall was a major metropolitan entrepreneur, guarded at his lakeshore estate home by private security.
Names and locations changed; life remained the same. So it was for all of the immortals known as the Darkyn.
The men nodded in deference to their suzerain as he followed the path out to the gardens. There he found the old man sitting in the gazebo, his head bobbing as he dozed beside a bottle of bloodwine and an exquisite Baccarat crystal goblet.
Like all tresori, Gregor Sacher had been trained from birth to serve his immortal Darkyn lord. He had been Valentin's human servant for more than fifty years now, long past the age he should have retired. His grandson, Wilhelm, had been at his side since leaving high school, and was now more than ready to lake up Gregor's post. But Gregor had so far refused to step down, always finding some excuse to avoid the comfortable retirement he had earned. Neither Wilhelm or Valentin had the heart to force the issue.
A slim, dark-haired boy whose features were a younger version of the elderly man's came out of the shadows and walked to the steps of the gazebo. "I tried to persuade him to come inside, my lord, but Grandfather insisted he was not tired."
"He is a proud man, Wil," Jaus said as he gazed at his most devoted servant and oldest human friend. "We must allow him his dignity." He came down the steps. "What news?"
Wil updated him on the day's events and various business projects concerning the jardin. "The district attorney's office called in regard to Miss Lindquist. They are accepting the plea agreement our attorneys offered. She will be incarcerated at an appropriate psychiatric facility for the term of her sentence."
Jaus felt satisfied. The confession he had compelled from Diane Lindquist had included the details of the emotional and sometimes physical abuse she had suffered at the hands of her brother. "What of the media?"
"Our contacts at the newspapers, periodicals, and broadcasting companies have been successful in suppressing the story," Wil said. "No more reporters will be sent to the facility. There has been a limited amount of exposure on the Web from independent sources, as usual, but our Internet contacts are now working to eradicate it."
The Internet caused more trouble than it was worth. "Did you see to the video of Miss Lindquist's confession?" He could not allow it to remain in human hands, as he appeared on the tape while compelling the human female to confess. To protect their identities and keep their immortality from being discovered, Darkyn never allowed themselves to be filmed or photographed.
Wil nodded. "The copy given to the police has been erased, and the original placed in our vault."
The old man stirred, murmuring in his sleep. "The vault. Must not… forget… secure… vault."
Jaus went up and woke him gently. "You are issuing orders in your sleep, old friend. Why are you not in bed?"
"I cannot rest when you go out alone, master." Sacher sat up, wincing a little as his arthritic joints protested the movement. "Wilhelm said that you went to the Lighthouse. Did you find Miss Lopez well?"
"I did." He glanced at Wil, who came to take Gregor's arm after Valentin helped the elderly tresora to his feet. "We will talk tomorrow. Rest now, mein freund."
Jaus watched until his tresora and his grandson were safely inside, and then poured himself a goblet of blood-wine. He drained it quickly, refilling the glass and taking it with him down to the seawall.
Light from the full moon turned the lake water black and fathomless, and plated the pebbles onshore in pewter. He knew his guards would watch over him from their various vantage points, but they would not intrude on his privacy. Nor would Wil, no matter what matter of jardin business became pressing.
No one came near the suzerain of Chicago when he walked down by the water.
So many times Jaus had come here to think, to worry, or to brood. It had first become his habit after he had noticed his young neighbor, Jema Shaw, walking down by the lake at night. Jema, his first love. His only love. He closed his eyes, remembering her.
A love doomed from the very beginning.
Jaus climbed over the short seawall and made his way toward the rocks. Despite all his caution and longings and endless inner debates, this was when he felt most ridiculous. He had come to this country to acquire power. A man in his position had thousands of responsibilities, and no time to indulge such useless pursuits. He also knew nothing would come of going to the rock and speaking to his lady. He never dared to do anything else.
Still, he went to her, as helpless as a storm-tossed ship driven to shoals.
"Good evening, Miss Shaw," he said as soon as she noticed him approaching.
"Mr. Jaus." She turned and smiled. "How have you been?"
"Very well, thank you."
Their conversations rarely varied from the polite, impersonal greetings exchanged by passing acquaintances. Before and after such meetings, Jaus often thought of many clever remarks he might have made, but whenever he spoke to Jema, none of them would come out of his mouth.
It would help if she gave him permission to use her given name, but she never had, and the rigid manners he had been taught as a boy prevented him from using it without her leave. Thus they had remained Mr. Jaus and Miss Shaw. It made Valentin want to dash his own head against the rocks. No, that was not precisely true. It made him want to scoop her into his arms and carry her back to his house…
Jaus swore softly as he banished the memory of that night from his mind.
He could never have had her; he had known that. Aside from the fact that Jema was human, an illness believed to be juvenile diabetes had been slowly stealing her life away year after year. Valentin had been well aware that her sickness had meant that they could never be together, and still he lost his heart to her. So he had watched her from afar, pining in silence, or walked down on the shore with a schoolboy's hopes of exchanging the occasional polite greeting with her.
Ironic that he had thought words were all that they would ever exchange.
Jema had not been stricken with diabetes, but by Valentin's own blood. A simple accident in his gardens during her infancy had caused the exposure, when he had removed a sliver of glass from her tiny hand, and had somehow cut himself in the process. Although they would never know for certain, Jema had probably ingested a few drops of his blood by sucking it from her thumb. It should have poisoned her, as Darkyn blood had been fatal to humans for the last five centuries. Somehow it hadn't. That in part may have been due to the Shaws' family doctor, a crazed man obsessed with Jema, who had used powerful drugs to keep her alive while trying to acquire the secrets of immortality.
The mad doctor was now dead, and Jema had completed the transition that had started in her infancy to finally became Kyn. But it was not Valentin's love or blood that had saved her. That honor belonged to Thierry Durand, the Kyn lord with whom Jema had fallen in love. Thierry, who had made Jema his sygkenis, his woman, his life companion.
Thierry, who had cut off Valentin's arm while dueling with him over Jema.
Each time Valentin came down to walk beside the lake, he thought of his loss. It was impossible to escape his memories of Jema, so he embraced them, as he would never embrace her. They were all that he had left, the last spark of feeling in his frozen heart. He had already accepted what had happened to him as his penance, for none of these things would have occurred if he had not tainted Jema as a baby with his own blood.
Luisa is lonely… So am I.
The gardener's pitiful confession slipped into Valentin's thoughts so quietly that at first he thought the words his own. Absently he flexed his good hand. He had not fed on nor had any physical contact with human females since losing Jema. What blood he needed he took from males, or from the supplies the jardin kept stockpiled for their use.
That explained why the brief contact with the Asian girl had produced such unfamiliar sensations. Abstinence had made him forget how warm and alive mortal women felt to touch.
The gardener, the Asian girl, the human. He scowled. Why did he avoid naming Liling Harper, even in his remembrance of her? Her name might sound like some sort of exotic music on the tongue, but she was simply another of the humans who served his jardin.
The girl did not know it, of course. Only humans whose families had served the Kyn for generations were entrusted with the vrykolakas's dangerous secrets. Only they knew that the Kyn were immortal, dependent on the blood of humans, and maintained secret communities and compounds in every part of the world.
Liling Harper remained ignorant of his nature and how much influence he had over her existence. She did not even realize that she owed her only friendship to him, in an indirect sense.
After installing Luisa Lopez at the Lighthouse, Valentin had asked that fresh flowers be brought to her room every day. As the facility gardener, Liling had been given the task. His security guards logged her visits, which grew longer each week, until the two were spending hours together.
Initially Liling's interest in Luisa had worried Valentin, who had ordered an investigation and background check. Through that he learned that the gardener was twenty-six, single, and lived alone in a one-room apartment near the Navy Pier. She had immigrated from Taiwan to the United States at the age of sixteen, and through a series of very fortunate sponsorships by prominent Chinese-American citizens had been naturalized.