Page 93 of Cherished By the Sinners
He slumped.“I guess I never realized how alone I’d feel doing this job.I’m walking a tightrope blindfolded while in a hurricane.I can’t seem to find my balance, and the next stiff breeze is going to push me over and into a black hole.”
She laughed.“You need a therapist.But that’s probably impossible, so talk to me.We’re a couple of regular people who find themselves in a strange situation.We can be each other’s sounding board, so to speak.”
“That’s not a bad idea, but you have to tell your boyfriends about this so they don’t kill me.”
“Deal.”She leaned forward, toward the screens.“Oh, here are a couple more limos.”
Brian saw them, too.They came into the parking garage and pulled up in the same place as Yvgeny’s car had arrived.
Several people got out of the cars.Most of them were men, but there was one woman among them.A woman with a soft, generous figure whose classic hourglass shape drew the eye.She was wearing a dress with an apron over it.An apron with stains all over it.He couldn’t tell from the image on the screen what those stains were.
Was she a cook?
The men were all dressed in some version of a dark suit, but the woman didn’t fit with them.The men looked all grim and dangerous, but she looked...scared.
“Those look like grass stains,” Darlene said.“They’re mostly on the bottom of her apron.”
“Yeah?”Brian asked.“Do vampires have gardeners?”
Darlene looked at him.“They have gardeners, housecleaning staff, and chefs here.I’m sure they employ all kinds of people.”
Brian focused on Darlene for a moment.“You don’t miss much, do you?”
“I had to pay attention to the little things if I was going to stay alive.”She nodded at the screen and the woman who was now making her way into the hotel with the rest of her party.“She’s different.”
“Does that make her a threat?”Brian asked.
“I don’t know,” Darlene said.“We have a lot of new guests arriving, and I think most of them are going to be dangerous.It makes anticipating their needs and avoiding conflicts difficult.”
The woman was walking down the hall now, surrounded by all those men in suits.Anna appeared on the screen.She greeted the woman with a hug and a kiss on either side of her face.
Anna spoke to her for a moment, then moved on to greet the men.
The woman moved aside and waited, wiping her face with her hands.
Was she...crying?
That was odd.He’d never seen any of the vampires cry before.It made them a little more...normal.Or maybe she was a human employee?
More cars arrived, and more vampires entered the hotel.He was beginning to be able to tell the humans from the vamps just from watching them.The vamps all wore expensive clothing and carried themselves as if they were taller than they were.As if they owned everything around them.
Only the woman was different.Her sorrow was genuine and she wasn’t trying to hide it.Whoever she was, he wanted to talk to her, understand why she was crying, and offer to help.
He wanted to find out if she really did have grass stains on her clothing.
Out of all the vampires he’d met, he only understood one of them, and that was Baz.Bazyli shunned money, power, and position, and told the world to go fuck itself daily.He didn’t care about politics or optics or the numbers in his bank account.
Did he even have a bank account?
Did this woman have anything besides the clothes on her back and an apron around her waist?
“I’d like to know what she needs,” Brian heard himself say.“She seems...distraught.”
“All the rest wear the same expression,” Darlene said.“That blankI’m more important than youlook.”
“Don’t you mean theI don’t give a fuckstare?”Brian asked.
“Yup, that one.”
