What the hell do you wear to a vampire meeting?
I go for red.
"You look…nice," Lacey says with a chuckle, and a shake of her head when I exit my bedroom door.
She'd waited for me in the hallway, lounging against the wall as if she didn't have a care in the world. Lacey was very easy about everything, the way she pushed off the wall, the way she inclined her head to me appreciatively, glancing me up and down in my red dress - it was hardly revealing, but it was a nice dress, and it showed off my curves, and red seemed like an appropriate—albeit cliché—color to be around vampires in - and offering her arm to me in one smooth motion.
I'd been wondering about something, and now seems like the best time to say it of any.
Here's another thing about almost dying: it makes you pretty bold.
"Lacey, are all of the vampires here lesbian?" I ask, my mouth going dry as I say the words, and they were pretty pointed, but, if I was going to be kicked out of the house, it'd be nice to know at least what I'd been missing.
Lacey's mouth quirks sideways at that, and she suppresses a chuckle as I slip my arm through her proffered one, resting my fingers on the top of her forearm gently.
"Please—call me Lace," she says, voice light. "And though that word, 'lesbian,' is relatively new, in the grand scheme of history…yes, I suppose that's what you'd call us," she says, inclining her head toward me so that the word "yes" drifted with warm, sweet breath over my skin. I shudder at that, my pulse racing.
Lacey looks ahead, then, down the hallway as we walk together.
"Regina started the…family," says Lacey softly, biting her lip. "A very long time ago. She wanted to find people who were like her. It's lonely, this existence, and she didn't want to be alone. So we found others who matched our ideals, who, like us, preferred the company of the…sweeter sex." Her warm, rich voice elicited another throaty chuckle. "And, believe it or not, I know your next question, my dear. No, we don't usually prefer the romantic company of other vampires, so no, we don't perform mass orgies in the halls. That's not how this family was built or why we are together, for frequent, easy and constant sexual congress."
"I wasn't going to ask that," I say with a flush, but I'd been about to ask something similar. Vampires and sex seem to be inextricably linked. "I'm just so curious about all of you," I tell her, then, which was very true.
"Are you undead? Are you dead? Are you cursed? Do you have souls? I'm sorry," I realize, all in a rush, as she casts a sidelong, bemused glance at me, "if any of this is offensive. I just don't know what's real, based on things like television and books and stuff like Dracula."
"Ah, Dracula," says Lacey with a chuckle. "Did you know that its author, Bram Stoker, actually stole most of his material? Ah, rather he was inspired by another work of fiction. It came much earlier than Dracula, but no one much knows of it. It's called Carmilla. Have you ever heard of it?"
I shake my head, but she doesn't allow me to feel ignorant.
"Don't worry, ma chere, not many people have." She inclines her head toward me, the slant of her mouth charming. "Though it is, I must admit, a very sweet little book. It is about a vampire woman," she says, with twinkling eyes, "who loves another woman with all of her heart."
I stare at her in open shock - if it came before Dracula, this made the book pretty darn old—and it contained lesbians? Would wonders never cease…- and she nods with a laugh. "Though, I must admit, it doesn't get the science of vampirism right either, it's a very lovely tale."
She cocks her head, considering my questions. "We have never died, no—we're still very much alive, but we're not truly immortal, as you consider that definition. Vampires simply live for a very long time. We are not cursed, and if you believe that human beings have souls, then yes—we have souls, too. Vampirism is a sort of…super virus," she explains, anticipating my next string of questions. "It's transmitted with blood, but quite a bit of blood, and you must be almost entirely drained in order for it to work. A vampire must give most of his or her blood to you once you've been almost completely drained. Being a vampire makes you stronger, faster, more powerful than a human being, with a much-extended lifespan, and you crave blood. And that's really it. We don't sleep in coffins. But the sunlight does affect us as a side effect of the virus—we can be in it, but not for very long, or we become weak." She laughs.
"Garlic sadly doesn't work on us, and yes—you can see us in mirrors. A lot of people built a lot of superstitions around us, because, of course, people rising from their graves is a somewhat off-putting thing. Humans fear death, and we don't have mastery over it, but I suppose it looks like we do. Thus we were feared, and stories tend to grow around that thing you are afraid of."
I ponder all of this for a long moment, turning things over in my heart. "Are all vampires like you? Like the Mills'?" I'm not certain how to phrase it, but it seems to me from how Regina had been so angry about Mal attacking me that they weren't any sort of blood-thirsty, human-killing vampires, but I didn't know if this was true of all vampires.
Lacey shakes her head, her mouth tightening. "No. We're peaceful. We want to be left alone, live out our lives in peace, spend time together in friendship and…love." She looks at me quickly before continuing, "but others do not want the same things. There are many vampires who seek to destroy and kill. So no. Like all humans, all vampires are different."
I was awash with a million more questions, but we'd found our way to the ornate door carved round with cherubs and vines and violets and I knew it led to the drawing room I'd been taken to yesterday. I straightened my shoulders as Lacey took a step forward, her hand poised to knock on the door.
But Bell opened it, Lacey's hand falling on air. Her bright blonde curls danced around her sweet, cherubic face as she takes in the sight of both of us, her pretty pink dress swirling about her knees, her pink high-heels the exact same color as the fluffy skirt of the dress. Her cherry-red mouth was pouting, and she looks right past Lacey at me, her eyes growing wider as she takes me in.
"Lace, you're late!" she chides, and Lacey's smile grows wider and more indulgent as she steps forward, placing a chaste kiss on the side of Bell's mouth. But Bell didn't even really acknowledge her. She was still staring at me.
"Are you…are you all right?" she asks, pulling me into the room with a gentle hand before shutting the door behind me with a soft click.
"She's fine, Bell," says a gravelly voice in the smoke-shrouded room. A woman is sitting at the same card table that Bell and I had played gin rummy at just yesterday—but it seemed like a lifetime ago now.
She was shuffling the cards, and, as I watched, began to deal herself a game of solitaire. Her full lips seemed like they were stretched into a permanent frown, and her bleached blonde hair was carefully slicked into a pompadour at the front of her head. She wore a loose-fitting blazer, and the top six buttons on her creamy shirt beneath it were unbuttoned, so that I could see the gray sports bra under it. This woman is hard butch all the way, and just seems hard in general as she glances up at me, her dark eyes flashing.
"She's still kicking, isn't she? She's fine."
"Jane, Mal could have killed her," says Bell with wide eyes, making small, reassuring circles with the palm of her hand on the small of my back.
"And she didn't, did she?" asks Jane, kicking back and balancing the chair on its back two legs, regarding me with a tilt of her head and quick eyes. "So give it a rest. God, you'd think the rest of you had never had a drink before."
"Not like that, Jane," says Lacey lightly, but there is a bit of an edge to her voice.
I feel eyes on me, then.
And there are other women in the room, it's true, but I know the weight of these eyes, a familiar weight that makes butterflies beat against my heart.
I glance to the back of the room, to the wide fireplace that smolders.
She stands there, leaning against the mantle, her hands curled loosely in her pockets, her long brown ponytail loosely curved over one shoulder, and a cigarette dangling out of perfect, full lips.
Regina.
Her bright eyes have me in their sights, and the way she gazed at me…my heart beats too fast, my breath coming in short gasps.
There is a magnetic quality to that gaze, and I'm pulled by it, tugged by it, drawn by my heart all the way across the room, until I hadn't even realized that I'd come the full way, and I was standing before her, close enough to touch.
Her gaze rakes me up and down, taking in the dress, my body, and my skin pricks at that, goosebumps rising to be so wholly appraised in a single glance. Her dark eyes flash, darkening, and she takes a single graceful step toward me.
She sets her hand purposefully on the mantle behind me, then, and she towers over me in her stiletto heels, this beautiful, intense creature, as she stares down at me with unblinking mocha eyes that seem electric in the dimly lit room.
She stands close enough to me that when I breathe out, my breath comes between us like smoke. She's so cold that if I touched her, I'd be burned by it.
But I want to touch her just the same.
"Are you all right?" she asks me, then, and her voice is a low growl as she offers the question.
Yes. I was all right.
But as I stare up into her eyes, I know that I wasn't really.
I was completely bewitched by her.
And that isn't really all right, is it.
Someone clears her throat behind us, and Regina straightens a little, her eyes flashing as she gazes past my shoulder to the woman standing behind us.
Lacey.
"Emma, I feel that I should introduce all of us, if I might," she says, then.
There is a violin dangling from her hand, and I remember her as the woman who had played for us yesterday. How could I forget?
But everything else fades away as I gaze around at the assembled women—noting, with a fair amount of relief that Mal was not among them—realizing in one odd, surreal moment, that I was standing in a room full of vampires.
Who were all staring at me.
"Full introductions would be wonderful," I say with a quavering breath. She didn't hesitate.
"I am Lacey—call me Lace, though," says Lace with a wink.
"You've met Regina and Bell…and, most recently Jane." Still at the table and still leaning her chair back on two legs, Jane throws me a salute.
"But this lovely here, is Mu-Mu." Lace indicated an intense, serious-looking young Asian woman who leans back in her chair, her arms crossed at the waist. She wears a buttoned dress shirt, with a loose tie, the top few buttons open at the neck, and her tie dangling. Her hair is pinned up in a no-nonsense but pretty updo, a few stray brown curls escaping it. Mu-Mu seems to be able to stare right through me, and I feel completely exposed to her.
I shiver a little.
"This here, if you remember, is Tiana." Lace indicates the stunning black woman who raises her ever-present martini glass to me, giving me a wink, her Elvis-style hair tilting a little to the side, her purple sheath dress shimmery today. "This is Lena." This woman is taller than even Regina in her six inch heels, her red hair flows down her back like a waterfall of satin, silver band around her bare upper right arm twinkling in the firelight as she gives me a fierce, wild grin.
"And this," says Lace, clapping her hand on the last woman's shoulder, "is Elisabeth—but call her Elsa."
Elsa was lounging backward, her elbow on the back of her old wooden folding chair, her shoulders curved away from me under her immaculate white dress, nonchalant and easy.
She has long, white-blonde hair that's currently pulled away from her face in a tight braid, a sharp white fedora, throwing her eyes in shade.
She appears to be in her twenties, though I half-wonder if she was actually much, much older. She gazes up at me from under the brim of the hat, just then, and her grin is lazy, wide and it takes my breath away.
She doesn't glance at me for long, but she gives me an appraising gaze, too, raking over my body with her icy blue eyes that seem to be able to see right through the fabric of my dress.
I actually blush when Elsa looks at me, but then she goes back to her conversation with Lena, and I'm just left with my blush.
A few icy fingers curling around my elbow make me turn a little, and Regina is there, glancing down into my face, gazing deeply into my eyes in the dim light as if she's searching for something. "Have you considered what happened to you this morning?" she asks me then, quietly.
Lacey steps forward, shaking her head. "I read her. She won't tell anyone about the vampirism, at least—that's not her intention," she says, warm green eyes on mine.
Regina glances up at her, and then back down to me, taking another deep pull of her cigarette before flicking the ash off with long, graceful fingers.
Again, I realize that cigarettes are terrible for you, no one should use them, I know, I know, but when Regina takes a pull on it, it's just so damn sexy.
And now that I knew she was a vampire, I realize that cigarettes probably don't affect her like they do humans.
So I no longer felt quite so terrible for thinking she was incredibly attractive when she smokes.
"It's not just about that, though, is it, Lace?" asks Jane, her chair thumping down in an instant. She rolls onto her feet, stretching overhead. Her permanent frown seems to deepen. "If she spills the beans anytime, anywhere, whether she intended to or no, we're in jeopardy."
"But I won't—" I begin, but the door to the room opens, just then, the door we'd recently entered.
And there, framed in the entrance to the room, the setting sun behind her outlining every one of her dangerous curves, stands Mal.
She's still stunning, still lethally beautiful with her round, curving hips sheathed in a pencil skirt today, her breasts hardly concealed by the vintage cream-colored top that follows her lines perfectly. Her long blonde hair is swept into an up-do that seems to sparkle with crystals, and her makeup is retro and flawless—honestly, she looks like a movie star from the fifties.
But when she gazes at me, just then, her eyes flashing like a lioness who's picked out the weak zebra from the watering hole to hunt, she doesn't really look like a movie star.
She looks dangerous.
"Mal…" Bell's voice is gentle, but there is a surprising hard edge to it. "You know you're not to come here tonight—"
"Last I checked, Bell," Mal snarls as she prowls into the room, the door thudding shut behind her, "it's my house too."
I don't even register the fact that Regina is moving—she's at my side, and then, in an instant, she's in front of me, between me and Mal, her hand behind her back, and her fingers curving and cold around my wrist, but the pressure there is a reassuring weight.
"Leave," whispers Regina.
It's only a single word, but it seems, for half a heartbeat, that the red and black checkered floor beneath us seems to shudder a little with the gravity of the syllable.
Mal pauses in her approach of us, pauses with one pointed toe before her, on unreasonably tall stilettos, and the other beneath her. She pauses as still as a mannequin, and then a very slow, lazy grin begins to spread across her face, twisting her full red lips.
"All right," she says, tracing her finger over the curve of her shoulder and down her neck, toward her collarbone as she looks past Regina and directly into my eyes.
The ruby-red nails on her hand seem to prick her skin, because she now had two little wounds on her neck…exactly where mine are.
I shudder as her smile turns malicious, and she turns on her heel, practically flouncing back toward the door.
It slammed shut behind her.
"Lacey," says Regina softly, quietly, "please follow her and make certain that she obeys the letter of her punishment."
Lace turned to me, brows up. "She has to leave the house for a week," Lace tells me with a careful shrug. I don't really believe in capital punishment, and I certainly don't believe in punishment in general…but I'd also never been almost drained dry by a vampire who sought me out for a nonconsensual drink and purposefully hunted me down and apparently had not a shred of remorse for either of these things. I honestly didn't even know what it was about me that she found so utterly repulsive.
From the very first moment that I'd met Mal Mills, she'd seemed to have it out for me, and I didn't know why. But it was incredibly unnerving.
"But…doesn't it seem like she's going to try to drink me again?" I manage to keep my voice from shaking, but just barely.
Lace is already out the door, closing softly behind her as she follows Mal, and Regina turns her full attentions to me.
"This is her warning, this week away from the safety, companionship and home of the Hotel. To do so again would be complete and irrevocable expulsion from us. And I promise you: she doesn't want that," says Regina's voice, still dark and growling, but softer as she gazes down at me.
I realize, then, that Regina's fingers are still at my elbow, still curled gently over my skin, still cold as ice. She seems to notice it at the exact same moment, too, and she lets go of me, taking a step back, and reaching up for her cigarette, taking a pull and flicking the ash away.
"We need to discuss if she's leaving or not," says Jane, then, nodding toward me and crossing her arms. She's sunk down into her chair again, but the way she looks at me…I realized she doesn't trust me. And probably wants me gone.
"Let's not be hasty," says Bell, stepping forward briskly so that her pink skirt flars out around her. "Yes, Emma knows about us. But she isn't like Betty—"
"Let's be honest, we thought Betty wouldn't be like Betty," says Jane, pulling a hand over her face for a heartbeat before sighing and leaning back again.
"Who was Betty?" I asked, worrying at my lip with my teeth.
"Betty was the only other employee of the Sullivan Hotel who found out about us. She worked here in the forties," says Bell, pulling at one of her curls alongside her face so that it elongates like a spring. "Um…she fell in love with—"
"She doesn't need to know all the details," says Jane with a growl.
I realize with a start that her full lips are up and over her teeth, and her eyes have darkened...and her fangs have grown.
I take a step back, but Jane isn't looking at me—she's looking at Bell.
"Well, anyway," says Bell hastily, with a quick, conciliatory smile as she spreads her pink-nailed hands. "She fell in love with someone here and when things didn't really go as planned, she threatened to tell everyone."
"What happened to Betty?" I ask, breathing out.
I'm close enough to Regina that this breath hangs suspended in the air, like I'm standing outside on a winter's night, even though I'm actually standing in front of the fire.
I feel the cold length of her behind me, can see her out of the corner of my eye as she tosses the stub of her cigarette into the blaze and she leans against the mantle again, her eyes not on Bell.
But on me.
"She was out on a boat. She drowned," says Bell, her pretty face contorting in a grimace.
I stare at her.
"It wasn't…it wasn't foul play," says Bell quickly.
A little too quickly.
"But the facts of the matter are that she would have gone to the authorities and the town with the knowledge that we're vampires. And we'd have to leave. Everything we've built would be destroyed."
I'd been thinking it for so long, I finally said it: "What I don't understand is how you can stay in one place for so long anyway," I say with a shake of my head. "Storybrooke looks like it's a small town—don't people get suspicious?"
"We trade out the task of figurehead of ownership of the hotel every generation or so, and we're not seen in the town that much," says Tiana, taking a sip of her martini and leaning back in her plush chair, her hand resting lightly on her bare thigh. The slit on that dress goes spectacularly high.
"To be perfectly honest," she says, leaning forward, her red mouth curling upwards, her dark eyes dancing, "I don't think our dear Emma here is going to say anything. I think she should stay with us. She did just arrive."
"All the more reason not to trust her," Jane rumbles.
"I don't want to go," I say then, my hands curling into fists. I swallow, try to find something tactful to say…fail. "I didn't volunteer to be tricked, almost drowned, bitten, drained. I didn't want this knowledge. But now that I have it, I don't see what's so different about me. I need a job. I'm a good worker, and I'll do my best here. Just because you're vampires…it doesn't change anything."
That sounded weak, even to my ears, and Jane chuckles—though it doesn't sound at all humorous—as she pushes her chair back and balanced it on the back two legs again. "Right," she says, with a snort. "You're in a house full of vampires, and you're not the least bit alarmed by that fact? Every human fears us, Emma. We're predators, pure and simple. We're the stuff of nightmares."
Regina straightens at that, and I can't help it—I don't want to see her out of the corner of my eye, I want to be looking at her headlong. I turn just as Lacey slips back into the room, leaning against the door as she shuts it, her arms crossed.
"I want her to stay," Regina says softly.
The room stills.
Regina steps forward, but she doesn't look at me.
She moves past me without even acknowledging me, though her long ponytail drifts over my bare arm as she stepped past—it feels like silk, and I shiver as she moves past me, close enough to touch, to stop, but I don't.
She slips past Lace, and then she's out of the room, and into the corridor. The door shutting with a soft click.
"Welllllll, I suppose that's that," says Bell uncertainly as she gazes at the shut door.
"Great," mutters Jane with an eye roll, turning her attentions back to her game of solitaire.
Lacey appraises me with a single brow up as I stand, alone and unsure by the fire, shifting from foot to foot like I'm the new kid in second grade.
I feel awkward and out of place, and my skin pricks to attention, all my thoughts revolving around the fact that Regina had left, and I very much want to go after her.
That is, until Elsa stands.
She'd been silent during the proceedings, but she'd been watching me from under the brim of the white fedora.
I was awash with too many feelings, too many uncertainties. Why had Regina said that? What did she mean? Did she feel this strange thing growing between us?
I'm desperately attracted to her, but I fight against that. I don't want to be desperate about anything, but every single time I'm around Regina Mills, I seem to lose all of my reasoning abilities in favor of my heart pounding much too quickly, and my body curving toward her like I'm compelled by her form.
Elsa strides over to me, her hands in pockets sewn into her dress, her head cocked a little. She's lithe and lean and seems to be in complete control of every inch of her body.
She leans her shoulder against the mantle, giving me another once over, her blue eyes flashing as her lips turned up at the corners.
"Been a strange day, huh?" Her voice is warm and low, but there's a little laughter to it, too. I glance sidelong at her, turning to the fire, instead, holding out my hands to the blaze. I feel cold.
"Yeah," I manage, biting my lip as I breathe out.
"It's going to start getting stranger. Just a bit of friendly advice," says Elsa, her brows up as she glances down at the fire, too. "The guests are going to start arriving tonight for the Conference."
"Conference?" I ask her, turning to look at her.
She's so beautiful.
Beautiful is actually not the right word for Elsa.
She exudes sexuality, confidence.
She's gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous, but there's this iciness to the glint in her eyes, the turn of her smile. It's incredibly difficult not to be attracted to her on sight, and if I was being completely honest with myself…I was.
It wasn't like with Regina, though.
Elsa was beautiful, yes…but there is something about Regina that draws me to her.
It's different.
"The vampires, the world over, meet once a year. It's called 'the Conference.' They chose to meet here this year. They meet here every couple of years or so, because it's an out of the way place, and safe from most curious bystanders. So the hotel will be practically filled with vampires," says Elsa, her mouth twitching into a smile again as my heart begins to beat faster—not from attraction, but from fear.
"The thing about the Conference, of course," she whispers, leaning closer to me as she grins wickedly, "is that there are going to be many vampires here who aren't really like us."
"Like you?" I breathe.
"Let's just say they don't have the same values as us. And they don't look at humans the same way." Elsa smirks and reaches out between us.
Her fingers are at the curve of my neck, then, drifting down, touching feather soft, until they circle the bite marks on my neck.
I shudder under that touch, the ache growing brighter beneath my skin.
"But don't worry," she says, removing her fingers.
I'm breathing so quickly that I'm panting.
"I'll help you," she says then with utter nonchalance. "If you want me to."
"That's…very nice of you," I manage, glancing back up into her eyes. They're considering me, and for a moment, I see a flicker beneath them of something I can't quite place.
"I'm…very tired," I manage then, beginning to back away.
I run into Jane's table with my thigh, and she mutters something dark at me as her piles of cards for the game shift and merged together.
"I'm sorry," I tell her, and then I'm across the room and out the door before I can say or do anything else.
The corridor was blessedly empty.
I walk along it quickly, unhappily noting that the sun has slipped below the horizon.
Did I feel safe at the Mills Hotel?
Not really.
Then…why do I stay?
I don't know.
I do know.
I…wasn't completely sure.
Yes. I was.
A/N: Yes, I know, I'm sorry, there was a lot of Elsa appreciation, but everything has a reason so just go with it for now, okay? :)
Not sure whether or not I'll knock out another chapter tonight (or this morning I suppose since it's already 5am here), so if I don't, this is farewell until this afternoon, where the possibility of another shit load of updates awaits us because I'm currently sick and have nothing better to do.
So Goodnight/Morning.
****P.S.: Lena = Zelena, Mu-Mu = Mulan, Elsa = Elsa (obvi), and Jane is just a random, in case anyone is curious****
Oh! And I love reviews, just sayin ;P
xoxo - TheLoveOfApples