Page 1 of Fangs, Frost, and Folios
One
Giovanni Vecchio, centuries-old fire vampire, former assassin, wealthy collector, and the immortal world’s foremost literary researcher, picked up the tweezers he was using to build a model ship and promptly dropped them.
“What am I doing?” He stared at the miniature galleon in pieces on his study table. Hundreds of wooden parts that he would spend hours assembling so he could put the finished model on a shelf to collect dust with the half dozen other models he’d completed over the past month.
What was next? A model-train room?
He stood and eyed the tweezers on the desk. “Absolutely not.”
It had to stop. He liked a quiet life. He’d fought battles to attain this life and the safety it provided for his mate and his children.
But there was safe, and there was boring.
“Beatrice!” He stood in the study, staring at the fire with his hands on his hips.
It had been her idea to take on more vampire clients, and he’d foolishly dismissed her.
“I should have known,” he muttered.
His mate was blood bound to him; at times he thought she knew him better than he knew himself. Beatrice must have sensed he was getting restless.
“Giovanni?”
He turned to see Caspar in the doorway. “Cas. I didn’t mean to bother you. Is Beatrice busy?”
“She’s currently involved in a very delicate political negotiation.”
He glanced at the clock. “Sadia.”
“Indeed. It’s no easy feat trying to convince your daughter that having vampire parents does not mean vampire hours for the human child.” The older man smiled. “If I recall correctly, I tried something similar at her age.”
“I remember.” Giovanni remembered everything, and it would eventually devastate him. His oldest child was aging. Caspar’s steel-grey hair was turning to pure white. His shoulders were stooped and he moved slowly. He was in his late eighties now, and Giovanni knew he wouldn’t live another decade.
Part of him understood Sadia’s resistance to sleep. Time was precious indeed.
Caspar’s eyes lit up. “I see you’ve started on the galleon. Is there anything I can help with? Isadora is already sleeping, so I feel quite useless at the moment.”
“I can relate to that.”
The old man’s eyes sparkled. “Is that so?”
Giovanni walked to the bar to pour two glasses of the whiskey they both enjoyed, motioning Caspar to take a seat by the fire. “You told me she was right.”
“She usually is.” He lowered himself into a wingback chair angled toward the fire.
There were always vampires who wanted his and his wife’s expertise to find lost correspondence hidden away in a library, pilfered personal journals, or a rare edition of a book that had been out of print for two hundred years.
Giovanni had argued that their lives were full. They didn’t need to work, so why not spend their time with the daughter they’d adopted a decade ago? Childhood sped by too quickly; he knew that from raising two other children.
Giovanni passed Caspar a glass of whiskey and sat across from him. “You handed me two letters the other day. Both of them could be interesting. Model-ship building?” He shook his head. “I’ll turn into a statue like the immortals of Alitea.”
“One letter was from a vampire lord in Benin, and the other was from an associate of Carwyn’s in Colombia.” Caspar sipped the whiskey in his glass. “But I might have a job closer to home if you’re looking for something… intriguing.”
“Oh?” Giovanni stretched out his long legs, his eyes on the fire in the grate. He reached out, drawing it toward him and then pushing it back, pulsing the heat into the room. Los Angeles didn’t get as cold as other parts of the world, but it was the middle of December and the great old house in San Marino carried a damp chill. “I don’t know if I want closer to home. I believe I could use a departure from the ordinary.”
“This might serve. Do you remember Lady Penelope Percy-Reed?”
“Speaking of ‘out of the ordinary.’” Giovanni smiled. “Plucky Penny Reed? Hostess to the wildest country parties in the earl’s ancestral heap? Of course I remember Penny. Damn, I’d forgotten the two of you still corresponded. Much longer friendship than the original romance, I think.”
