Page 82 of The Mermaid's Bubble Lounge
“Clearly, somewhere along the way, his feelings changed,” Bracken said. “He built a library to woo you, after all.”
I shrugged. “That’s a him story, not a me story. In answer to your question from way back, though, I used to do full moon runs alone, thinking no one saw or knew about me. It turned out the whole supernatural community knew I was a werewolf but never mentioned it, as I didn’t seem to want to discuss it. Last year, I started getting chaperones because Abigail was back. Lately, though, Fergus goes with me and usually Clive, if he’s free.”
“Fascinating.” He looked in the back door. “The den we walked through is a very handsome room. May I see the rest of your home?”
“You betcha.” I slapped my thigh. “Come on, Fergus. Let’s give Uncle Bracken the tour.” Our house was gorgeous, and I enjoyed showing it off.
When we got to the second floor, I ducked into my bedroom to change into slippers. In the hall opposite the bedroom door, I found Bracken studying an old painting.
“That’s one of Clive’s. It’s how San Francisco used to look two hundred years ago when he’d first arrived.”
Bracken held up his phone. “May I take a picture?”
“I don’t see why not.”
When he finished, I waved him toward the door at the end of the hall. He glanced in, turned to me, and grinned. “And then he built you a second library.”
The library took up what had been two apartments. It had vaulted ceilings, with mahogany bookshelves lining three of the walls. Like in the nocturne, there were small, engraved brass plates identifying the different sections of the library. Each wall had a brass ladder on rails, making higher shelves more accessible. The floors were the same dark wood, though they were topped with rugs in deep oceanic tones.
A large desk stood at the far end. This room could serve as my office, if I wanted one, but I didn’t. I just wanted a library. The desk had a beautiful periwinkle leather chair behind it, but I chose soft fabric couches and chairs in watery blues for the rest of the furniture. I wanted a cozy refuge, a place where reading could give way to napping.
“It was only fair. I had to give up the nocturne library. It had a window seat with curtains and everything.”
Bracken nodded, understanding the seriousness of the situation. “Like Jane Eyre.”
I reached out and squeezed his forearm. “That is exactly right. The nocturne’s window seat had a view of the back garden, the city, and the bay beyond. Sometimes, I’d just hole up in there and stare out the window to think and daydream. Clive always knew where to find me.”
Bracken scanned the room and then pointed at the closed curtains in the corner.
I turned off the lights and nodded for him to go ahead. “As a vampire lives here, all the windows on the second floor have metals shields that drop to block the sun. All except this window, which is why it has such heavy curtains.”
He pulled them back and took in the cushions, pillows, and blankets. “This is quite the cozy reading fort you’ve created.” He sat and looked out the window at the green across the street, the huge trees, the ocean in one direction and the bay and Golden Gate Bridge in the other. “Perfect,” he said wistfully.
“Why no sun shields on the first floor?” he asked. “You have guest rooms down there. No vampire guests?”
“We have a guest room up here, too, if we need it. Most visiting vampires prefer staying at the nocturne. It has everything they could possibly need. It’s also safer for us—meaning me—if we don’t have vamps hanging out here. Now that Clive has given up the nocturne, he enjoys the privacy and solitude.”
“Especially now that he has a wife?” he suggested.
I nodded. “We actually do have Vlad and Cadmael staying with us, rather than at the nocturne, right now, but they’re not in this house. Well, Vlad often pops in, but we gave him my old apartment behind The Slaughtered Lamb to stay in, and Cadmael prefers the folly.”
“The folly?” he asked.
“Oh, my goodness.” I stood abruptly. “You’ll love it. Do you know about dragon follies?”
“I’ve heard of them,” he said, “but I’ve never seen one. Have you?” He took out his journal.
I waved him forward. Fergus bolted up from his library bed to follow us. “When we were in Wales, we stayed in the Drake family keep. A couple of the dragons were not happy about playing host to vampires, so they gave us the most disgusting storerooms in the basement.”
We went down the stairs to the first floor. “Clive sent Russell and Godfrey to find any place safe for them and vaguely comfortable for me. They came back having found the folly. We sneaked out and moved to the folly in the woods. As it’s a dragon’s folly, it was underground, so sun-safe for the vamps. We didn’t get to explore the whole thing, but the first huge cave was intended for the littlest dragons, so they could play pirate. It was absolutely incredible. Godfrey wanted to move in and stay.”
I took Bracken and Fergus back into the den and opened the elevator panel, tapping the button. As we were the last to use it, it opened right away. “The next room, though, was the one that made all the vampires lose their minds. It was a medieval castle with a neighboring village. The dragons liked to attack the castle. Anyway, what was so amazing about it is that the dragon builders created what looked like an infinite sky. There are hidden controls where you can set the time of day you want, and this medieval world was set to midday. The vamps, for the first time in many hundreds of years, were able to stand in the sun.”
“That’s extraordinary,” Bracken breathed, his journal twitching in his hand. He so wanted to start taking notes.
We walked across the garage. “We helped the Drakes rescue a long-lost loved one, and as a thank you, Benvair herself asked the builders to let us hire them for a folly. We had to pay a mind-numbing fee, but the fact that the dragons built a folly for a vampire and a werewolf was unprecedented. They were none too happy, but it was a lot of money, so they sucked it up and did it.”
I walked us to the big metal door. “It’s basically done, but they’re working on making sure all the details are working properly. Once they leave, we’re on our own. No dragon repairman is responding to a service call.”
