Subtle
Carlisle

12 Brookshire Drive, the card read. Ask around.

Ask around for what? I read the address again. Perhaps he thought I might need directions—but then, I could just as easily track him. It couldn't be that hard. I flipped the card over absently, half expecting there to be something else. To my surprise, there was. Rodney & Graham, Attorneys at Law. Beneath it, a separate set of numbers and a street name were scribbled illegibly.

I resolved not to worry about it as I turned up the steps of my modest house on the edge of town. After all, I had only agreed to go because I already had other plans. At least I had had plans until I received a telegram that afternoon: Something came up.

I'm sure Malakai got a good laugh out of that one.

At a quarter to eight on the dot, there was a knock on my door.

I was upstairs dressing, having trouble with my necktie as always. I had never felt completely comfortable in the stiff layers of the time except in this. I had put on my second best suit for the evening; a light gray silk that I had worn on only one other occasion. It didn't seem very practical on a beginning physician's salary, but it was my favorite. I hoped in a bit of ill humor that it was up to Malakai's standards.

There was another knock.

I went down the stairs, thinking foolishly that Malakai had sent someone to make sure I left on time.

"Yes?" I asked before I had the door open.

"Docta Cullen?" a stout, older man addressed me. He was balding and a little portly but not at all unpleasant to look at.

"Yes?"

"I 'ave a carriage a'waitin' for ya per Mista Ross's requist, sir."

"Ross? Oh, Malakai."

"Yis, sir."

I looked over his round head to the glinting carriage waiting in the street where two beautiful black horses stamped their hooves impatiently in the cold.

"Thank you, but I don't really think that's necessary," I started to say.

"I was told," the man persisted, "ta give ya dis, if dat be da case."

He held out a tri-folded stationary page to me. I took it graciously, though I didn't want to know what it said.

I unfolded the first crease.

Get in the damn carriage.

I couldn't help a small smile as I saw what was scrawled on the bottom fold.

Please.

Well, he was cheeky. I had to give him that.

"All right," I gave in. "I'll be right out." I would find out soon enough that it was useless to argue with Malakai when he set his mind on anything. He usually got what he wanted in the end.

My tie had come loose somewhere between finding my coat and getting into Malakai's lavish version of a carriage and I was still fiddling with it unsuccessfully when someone shouted at us—"George! Hey! George! What the hell?"—and the carriage lurched unexpectedly to a stop, undoing all my work.

I swore quietly and began again.

"Mind da horses!" George snapped back.

"You bloody well nearly ran me over!" the voice continued angrily.

George stepped off the coachman's seat with a stiff, "My apol'gies, Mista Graham."

Graham? My head popped up at the name. Of Rodney & Graham? What was Malakai doing with a lawyer?

The carriage door swung open and a blackened silhouette sprang out of the cold night air. I drew in a slow breath, and was immediately glad I had hunted earlier that day.

I liked to think that two hundred years of abstaining from human blood had somehow made me immune to the smell, but that did nothing for me now. My hands froze on my neck, my eyes wide. He had the most delicious scent I had ever come across. Like a bakery, only a thousand times better. It startled me how powerfully it affected me.

"Thanks so much, George," Graham replied tersely, stamping out a cigarette under his heel before climbing in, his olive skin glowing faintly in the dark light. The door snapped shut behind him and the cabin filled with his warm scent. George snapped the reins and the carriage began moving again. "Oh, hello," he said when he saw me, sounding both surprised and a little put off, like I wasn't entirely welcome.

For the briefest moment, I thought he had to be one of the Undead. Of course, his heartbeat and emerald eyes said otherwise. Still, it was almost inhuman. I had never before seen a mortal with such personal beauty. He was maybe thirty and, save for a thin white scar above his right eyebrow, his skin was flawless. I wondered vaguely if all of Malakai's friends were just as beautiful, if he collected them or something. In the brief time I had known him, it wouldn't have surprised me.

Graham drew a tin of cigarettes out from under his wool cloak and rolled one between his pink lips. He hesitated a moment before offering the tin to me. "Smoke?"

"No, thank you."

He pocketed the tin with a shrug. I watched as he rummaged around for a match and, finding one, went to strike it on the carriage wall before he stopped and looked skeptically at me.

"You don't mind, do you?"

I shook my head.

"Thanks." He cupped the flickering flame to his face and exhaled a wreath of pale smoke. His hands shook. "You must be Carlisle."

That surprised me. "How do you know my name?"

He frowned at me but said nothing. "Your tie is all wrong," he said suddenly, pointing at it with his lit cigarette. He tipped toward me, looking bothered by this.

I pulled at the pale fabric self-consciously. "I've never quite gotten the hang of it, I'm afraid," I admitted.

"Here, let me," he offered, pushing my hands away from my neck before I could get out a reply.

"I . . ." I started to say but, having no reason to refuse the offer, I could only give a defeated "Thank you," though I felt awkward accepting his help.

"Makki told me you were young," Graham was saying through his cigarette, his eyes fixed intently on my neck. "But, I have to say, I hadn't expected you quite this young."

Though he said it with perfect politeness, there was no doubt in my mind that he meant it for an insult. I frowned. Age was something of a sensitive issue for me and I certainly wasn't about to let an anonymous stranger use it against me.

"I'm sorry," I said tersely. "I don't believe I caught your name."

"No?" He took out the little tin again, frowning. "Makki talked of you endlessly all day and I just assumed . . . but it looks like not." He discarded his spent cigarette out the window and returned to his side of the carriage, lighting another. "Graham," he said after another moment, looking vaguely disappointed. "Cecil Graham."

I asked him if he was the Graham to Rodney & Graham.

His laugh was artificial. "I suppose so."

I wondered what he meant by that as the carriage jostled us out of the city along a winding country road. He was never quite still, always twitching this or that finger, licking his trembling lips. I was half inclined to ask if anything was the matter when the night outside exploded into a brilliant orange light.

Cecil laughed once at my surprised expression—"Subtle isn't it?"—and lit another cigarette.

I assumed he meant the enormous house glowing gaudily at the end of a long gravel drive. Elegantly carved out of marble and pine, the house resembled something more akin to the Queen's palace than the home of a fledgling vampire. It was hard for me to imagine that anyone so young could be that rich—even if his father did teach at Oxford.

There was another carriage pulling out just as ours rolled up to the cascading front steps. Our door was opened for us by a cold-looking butler. Cecil motioned me out ahead of him. I stepped out, trying to figure out what Malakai had to do to be able to afford such a flashy estate.

"What . . . ?" I turned to Cecil, but he was already up the steps. I followed behind quickly.

A friend or two, I thought bitterly, feeling every one of my twenty-three years. That had to be the biggest line I had ever heard and I had fallen for it anyway. It shouldn't have surprised me that there were more people here than I had been promised. This was Malakai, after all. But I would never have expected quite this many. They were everywhere.