Patricia found the first excuse for solitude she could latch onto. As Caldur had been leading her down the hallway, she excused herself to the restroom. He looked a little uncomfortable, but there was a twinge of sympathy.
"All right," he said. Caldur had a friendly gruffness to him, the sort of air it was hard not to just find likable. He nodded off in the direction of the lavatory vaguely as he spoke, "Don't take too long, though. We have a lot of weird stuff to cover."
Patricia darted into the sanctum of the bathroom, and leaned against the door. From one of her pockets she produced an inhaler, and brought it to her mouth. She stopped halfway, and looked at it puzzled. She put a hand to her chest, and started breathing very deliberately. Again, she looked at the inhaler, her frown deepening. Baffled, she put it back in her pocket, unused.
She looked up, her immediate concerns resolved. The restroom was done half in black tile, and half in white-grey marble, with gold fixtures politely adorning the sink, and towel racks. It was bright, in spite of its colouring, the room was pleasantly bright. There was a large bath, more like a small jacuzzi in a slightly kidney bean shape. It was laid out both luxuriously, and tidily. Shampoos were neatly arranged, there was a little rack-dispensory of various different salts for the water, a basket which contained a withered rose petal or two, but was otherwise empty, and off to the other side, a large pit built into the counter which conjoined with the tub itself. If Patricia had to guess what this was for, she would have said it was to hold a champagne bottle.
The sink was... There was something off about it somehow. The whole place came off as lavish, well-moneyed, stylish if a bit... spoiled? And yet the sink, which was arguably the blandest part of this room... and... something else. She stared at it for a moment.
White black marble with a deep scoop for the basin. Long, elegant gold fixtures. She wondered if it was real gold plating or not. It was pristine and beautiful either way. A dish of soap, which appeared to be made of enough sticks and twigs that it must have been fancy. No, none of this was out of place... It wasn't what was here, it was what was missing that was bothering her. She looked around again.
The sink on her immediate left. The massive canvas with a painting of some people in a desert, the luxury yacht of a bathtub, a comparatively modest shower, which really isn't that modest at all, and the door behind her.
There was no... toilet? Ther wasn't a bidet either, which would have fit with the theme of this place. But there wasn't either. And there was no mirror over the sink. Patricia frowned again. She walked up to the mirrorless sink, and pretended she could see herself as she gathered her thoughts.
"Okay..." she breathed. She tried to collapse herself onto her palms, but she honestly didn't feel that worn out. She instead took a few steps back, and sat on the lip of the tub. She lifted her watch, and pressed two fingers to her neck at the base of her jaw, and waited. Her eyes glazed, and she stopped looking at her watch, her arms slowly sinking back to her lap as the other one stayed where it was. She tried a couple more spots on her neck before giving up on the endeavor.
So here sat Patricia, in a lavishly rich, albeit toilet-less bathroom, staring at the blank wall in front of her, somehow not in the throes of a panic attack. She pulled out her inhaler again, and hefted it experimentally. But decided a second time to simply put it away again. She didn't know why she wasn't in the thoes of a panic attack. Normally she'd be huddled in the corner, swimming in adrenaline, and certain she was dying. Whatever element was missing didn't make her any less scared, it just made her slightly more clear-headed about it.
She took a deep breath, and stood up again. She washed her hands. The fancy bar of soap had scratchy twigs in it which gave it a pleasantly exfoliating sensation, and smelled powerfully of lavender. She tried to scrub absently, but without the distraction of the mirror in front of her, it was hard not to focus on the act. She scrubbed at her palms with her fingernails. A circular motion. This gave way to the backs of her hands, each one of her fingers individually. She cleaned off her nails, scraed out from under them, picked at the sides where it meets the skin. Eventually she did actually rinse her hands. She dabbed them try on the towel next to the sink. It was soft, and full, and fluffy. She rubbed it between her forefinger and thumb as she contemplated it. Wherever these towels had been all her life, she couldn't begin to guess. But they were the softest she'd ever touched.
A gentle knock on the door snapped her attention to it.
"Weird stuff to cover," said Caldur, just a tinge of impatience in his voice. "I can practically hear your confusion through the wall, and I really think you should come out here and embrace the weird a bit."
Patricia glared at the door for a moment before reaching for the knob. It clicked open on smooth hinges, and she was once again in the hallway with Caldur.
"I'm dead," Patricia declared. Caldur laughed. He seemed surprised, but pleased, and effortlessly friendly about it.
"Been a long time since I've seen someone figure it out that fast," he said with a smile. He reached into his pocket, and held out a compact mirror. She frowned, and looked from the offered hand to his face. When she made no move to grab it, and chuckled again. "Sebastian doesn't keep mirrors around, and you look like you could use it. So I went and fetched one."
She looked at it again, and gingerly took it from his hand. She couldn't help but notice how smooth his hands were, given that they were hard and calloused. It was almost more like touching marble than flesh. Cold, too.
She blinked, holding the mirror to her chest, not sure if she was ready for whatever it was Caldur was impyling she needed it for. He smiled again. There had been a time when a smile like that would have been comforting, but Patricia felt nothing for it. He was just a strange man who knew more than she did, and had confirmed that she was, in fact, dead. She had rather expected that laughter to fade into confusion. She knew that's how she was feeling.
"Weird stuff," she prompted him after a stretch of silence. Caldur nodded, and motioned down the hallways before leading her down it again.
"Weird. Well, you're most of the way there with the dead bit. You're undead, that part's true. You're not the only one, there are a few of us."
"Us," said Patricia.
"Us. Kindred," said Caldur, not forcing her to ask the obvious question. "If you want to call it something cheesy, but more recognizable, vampires."
Patricia sighed heavily, her shoulders drooping. She rolled her eyes, and looked at him incredulously.
"This is the part where you tell me you sparkle, and ask me to run away with you?"
"Uh, no. No, not even remotely," said Caldur, wrinkling his nose. "Look, forget most of the stuff you know about us. Most of it's wrong, some of it's true some of the time, and very little of it can be taken at face value."
"Okay," said Patricia hesitantly.
"So, let's start with the beginning. About, oh, I'd say, six hours ago you were human," began Caldur, weighing out the time vaguely with his hands as he walked backwards down the hall.
"I remember," said Patricia.
"Then someone came to visit you," he continued. He studied her face for recognition. "Someone you probably hadn't met before... In this particular case, it was Roberto Garrett. Medium height, pale, brown eyes, dark hair..."
"Yes..." said Patricia distantly. She grappled at the hazy memory. "Yes. He came to the office. Said we had friends... friends in common."
"Right. He was talking about Sebastian."
"The man in the Cravat?" asked Patricia. Caldur stifled a laugh, and nodded.
"Yeah, that Sebastian. I keep telling him to update his wardrobe, but the old guy just won't do it."
"But I'd never met Sebastian before... tonight..." Patricia began, but she felt a contradictory memory start to surface. It was hazy, and she couldn't make it out, but she felt instinctively that she'd just said something untrue. "...Had I?"
"Sebastian's had his eye on you for a while. He picked you out of the Kine to make you his ghoul."
"Kine?" asked Patricia. "Ghoul?"
"Oh, fuck," sighed Caldur. "So much to cover. Quick version without the history lesson is that Kine means human, or humans. Ghoul is like... It's like what's just between a human and a vampire. Sorta suped up human, sorta dumbed down vampire. They're kinda like servants, or thralls to a vampire."
Patricia had no words for this. Some strange, anachronistic, European vampire was planning on making her his slave. And instead she'd ended up a vampire.
"So what happened?"
"Roberto was the Childe of Ernesto," said Caldur. He winced, sighed, and grappled with how best to convey the next bit of information. "We can... We can skip the politics for the moment, and get into that later. We'll just start with Ernesto isn't on the best terms with Sebastian, and Roberto was probably trying to gain his Sire's—Er, basically his vampire parent—favour. He was probably scoping you out, and frenzied, or something. Roberto's never been very stable. So he Sired you."
"Roberto was... He was the man talking to Sebastian when I was unconscious."
"Yes."
"And he's a vampire."
"He was. He's dead now."
"I'm dead."
"He's... final dead. Dead dead. Not gonna get back up again," said Caldur, trying phrases until he was sure Patricia was on the same page. "He broke one of the major laws that govern the Kindred; the Masquerade."
"How very French."
"That's a mighty polite way of saying it. I think it's pompous."
"Right. French."
"French," chuckled Caldur. "Anyway, performing the Embrace without permission is a big no-no. Very against the rules. And definitely something punishable by final death. Under normal circumstances, you'd have been killed to."
"Oh."
"You're... well, kid, you're in the eye of the storm here," said Caldur. "You're Ernesto's grandchilde, and Sebastian wanted to bring you into his fold. Maybe even Embrace you some day. So when you made a case for yourself..." he shrugged charmingly. "Sebastian was probably looking for an excuse to keep you around anyway. And besides," he added. He seemed less charmed with the next words. "You're a political bargaining chip that can be used against Ernsesto, too. So that's a double-whammy right there."
"So, I'm a prince's ward because he wanted me before some other vampire got to me, and my willingness to fight for my own self was attractive enough to keep me around as a political bargaining chip against a rival?"
"You catch on quick. Also, you're clinically insane."
