Page 2 of Bishop's Flight
“Mama, I stay wit you.” Anna was wearing her pink backpack, but she’d already taken her stuffed yellow duck out to hold. “Me and Wack.”
“Oh good.” She picked Anna up and smooched her chubby cheek. “I was hoping you and Quack were going to keep me company.”
She started by checking any messages left that morning on the household line. There was one from the electrician about the dead outlets in Rose’s bathroom—a semiregular problem with vampires—and another one from the tree trimmer. She made notes to return both calls when the house cleaners arrived.
“Anis and Wose?” Anna was tugging on her leg.
“Yes, baby, we’re going to Agnes and Rose’s room now.” She grabbed her cleaning supplies from the utility room off the kitchen, put on her apron, and let Anna lead the way.
While Rose and Agnes employed a team of cleaners to keep up their nearly ten-thousand-square-foot mansion, only Rebecca was allowed to clean their rooms while they slept for the day. It was a trust that Rebecca honored. She felt protective toward both the women; while they were deadly predators at night, during the day they were as vulnerable as Anna or Lucas.
She let the fingerprint scanner and retina scanner unlock the room, then poked her head in, being quiet even though she knew the women were essentially in a vampire coma.
Anna scurried into the room and immediately climbed up on the bed between the two women, Rose in an elaborate chiffon dressing gown and Agnes wearing what looked like a smoking jacket and a pair of velvet trousers.
Rebecca’s heart jumped for a moment, but then she took a breath.
“Hi, Anis.” The little girl kissed Agnes’s cold cheek; then she turned to Rose and lay down next to her. “Wose, I have Wack!” The little girl pressed the duck’s fuzzy face to the sleeping vampire’s cheek, and Rose’s hand moved with ghostly languor to stroke Anna’s soft brown hair.
Rebecca’s heart settled and she let out her breath.
It had happened the first time by accident. Anna had toddled into the room when her mother had been distracted, not understanding that her two doting vampire aunties were asleep. Rebecca had come from cleaning the second bathroom to find her daughter snuggled up with two vampires, Rose’s hand resting on Anna’s forehead.
She’d been horrified until Rose had told her she sensed Anna’s presence and it was comforting.
She set to cleaning the two bathrooms, the floor of the room, the dressers and dressing area, making sure to sort Rose’s delicate dresses and lingerie for the laundry maid to take care of.
There were three maids who cleaned the house from top to bottom every day, a gardener, and a cook. The full-time cook was new, and Rebecca suspected she had been part of the plan to lure her into living with them since Agnes and Rose ate very little besides blood.
Rebecca managed all the household staff, but Agnes and Rose had been trying to convince her to move in since Jason had died when she was pregnant with Anna.
Her late husband had been Rebecca’s childhood sweetheart, and he’d been working on his contractor’s license when he collapsed on a job site, his heart giving out from a previously unknown genetic defect.
Jason and Rebecca had both grown up in foster care. They were disconnected from any living family, so they were each other’s everything. They’d been kids on their own, in love and determined to make it without any help. It had been rough, but they’d been making progress. They got jobs and a shitty apartment. Then they got a better apartment. Then they got married. Then Lucas came and they were a little family of three.
Losing Jason had been devastating in a way that robbed Rebecca of words.
After his death, it had been Agnes and Rose who took care of her and Lucas, not the other way round.
Still, she hadn’t wanted to make any big changes right away. She’d stayed in their little two-bedroom condo in Henderson, the first place that had felt like her own home. She’d found a babysitter in the complex and had been promoted by Agnes and Rose to manage their house instead of clean at the casino.
Now she was making a salary she’d never even dreamed of and was going to live in a mansion.
Lucas popped his head in the bedroom just as Rebecca was finishing up and Anna was snoozing next to Rose.
“Mom, I think the cleaners are here.”
“Good,” she whispered even though she couldn’t wake the vampires. “I’ll grab Anna. Can you get my cleaning caddy?”
Always happy to have a job to do, Lucas perked up. “Sure!” He picked up her cleaning caddy with both hands while Rebecca went to get Anna from the bed.
“See you later,” she whispered to the sleeping vampires. “Anna, time to go. Let Agnes and Rose sleep.”
“Mama?” She lifted her arms, and Rebecca picked up her daughter and buried her nose in Anna’s sweet neck. Every now and then, she still smelled like a baby.
Or maybe that was Rose’s powdery perfume.
Rebecca fluffed the pillows on the couch one more time, then set the automatic lights to begin their cycle at dusk, simulating dawn for the waking vampires.
