Page 80 of Tell Me Why
“I never did like you,” he said. “I found you in possession of an opportunity that I thought might be interesting. If you could refrain from talking me back out of it, I’d appreciate it. I hate to be wrong.”
He dipped his head, then opened the door for Tina, letting her past him and then closing the door after him.
He smiled.
“Shall we go swimming?”
“I needyou to follow Leonard and tell me everyone he talks to after he leaves here in about an hour,” Tell said quietly, his face turned in toward Tina as two of the technicians worked across the room from him.
They’d been here for almost two weeks, now, and Tina didn’t think either of the men in the room with them - Henning and Aleksander - spoke any English, but it was a clever way to get people to have private conversations around you, so she and Tell were both avoiding havingimportantconversations in earshot, when they could avoid it.
“Would you like some tea?” Tina asked, and he nodded.
“That would be good.”
It gave her an excuse to wander the house, so long as she generally made her way toward the kitchen, at the far side of the structure, past Daryll’s office and where a lot of the vampires hung out when they weren’t doing other, more important things.
It was shocking how many men there were, just around, at any given time.
“You’re used to American efficiency,” Tell had teased when she’d pointed it out a few days prior. “This is European aristocracy. You hang out where the power is because that’s where the opportunities come from. Daryll doesn’t realize how awkward and inefficient it is, because he likes being the seat of power.”
“And Crissy?” Tina asked. She was trying not to use the woman’s actual name, even in private, for fear that she would slip up casually when it mattered.
“Clearly she has obvious incentive for them to be there,” Tell said. “Those are the men with links to the rest of the industry, spying on Daryll.”
“They just… sit there and talk and drink,” Tina had said, and Tell shrugged.
“And the minute Daryll does something interesting, they see it and report on it,” he said. “What else would they be doing? Working?”
“Who actuallydoesall of the work?” Tina had asked, and he’d given her a peculiar look.
“Do you want to know anything about it?” he’d asked, and Tina had shaken her head.
No.
No, she wanted to stay as far away from the reality ofthatas she could.
She’d considered, more than once, making the argument that she was superfluous, here, and a liability, that she ought to leave Tell here on his own to do what he was doing, but the problem was that it was evident even to her how much he was relying on her to be eyes where people didn’t notice.
Isabella hadn’t been kidding when she’d said that they treated women differently. The fact that she was as young as she was, a woman, and with no clear role in the enterprise meant that they would turn their backs when they saw her, or give her orders for food and drinks and entertainment, or once in a while go so far as to lay hands on her, just to push her around and demonstrate that they considered her to be powerless.
She hadn’t told him, but Tell had smelled on her that someone had touched her, and that had stopped happening immediately after that. He told her that he just had to make it clear that she was more than an accessory, that she was protected.
If something went wrong, it meant that it was more likely that someone would come for her and actively hurt her to lever Tell, but for now, she got at least a minimum level of respect.
She still got them drinks as they called out to her, still sat in with them like a servant, ready for someone to tell her what to do, but no one had twisted her arm behind her back again.
It was like having a cheat code. They’d go sullen and quiet when Tell went past, but after the first week, they’d started treating Tina like furniture.
It wasn’tallthat dire.
There were men on the property who were kinder than the others, who knew her name and who smiled when they saw her, but…
“It’s the business, isn’t it?” Tina had asked Tell one night, a week in. “It’s self-selection.”
He’d looked up from his notes, considering, then nodded.
“I suspect you’re right.”
