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It’s great news for me, though. Clive’s a ripper cook, but I’m not used to eating at home this much, and I’ve got an itch for a restaurant with a top bartender and a complicated cocktail menu.
Anna turns the car down a side street that turns out to be a laneway, then turns again into another laneway. Where the hell are we even going? I lean forward to peer through the windscreen just as she picks up a remote control from the centre console and pushes a button. Ahead and to the left, a garage door begins to open.
The garage we park in is huge. There’s already a car in it, and as I wait for the door to close so Anna will let me get out of the car, I guess that at least one more could fit. Maybe two, if they were small.
The second the garage door meets the ground, Anna unlocks the car. She’s not always this paranoid when it’s just me and her, but if Tristan or Clive is with us, her protectiveness soars into the stratosphere. I don’t want to ask her why, just in case that makes it worse for me. Cat thinks it’s because not many people know who I am yet.
I’m stretching when a small door at the back of the garage opens and a blue-haired young woman dressed like a uni student steps in.
“Cool hair,” I say before I can stop myself. Nobody’s reacting to her presence, so I figure they know who she is.
She flashes me a smile but addresses Tristan first. “Welcome, Tristan. I printed the documents you sent and put them in your office, but Jennifer called to say she would be ten minutes late.”
He nods. “Thank you, Lauren. This is Adam, my feeder.” He shoots me a glance. “Lauren is the caretaker here. She’ll show you your room while Clive and Anna get settled.”
I don’t have a chance to reply before he and Pierce are striding through the door, so I give Lauren all my attention. “Nice to meet you. What’s a caretaker do, anyway?” I grab my bag off the pile Anna is unloading from the car, ready to follow wherever I need to go.
“Not a lot,” she replies bluntly. “I live here so the house isn’t empty, make sure the rooms are dusted, vacuumed, and aired out, and when I get a call to say that people are coming, I stock up on groceries or anything else that’s needed.” She winks. “Like a tailor and a barber.” I stifle my groan as she turns to Clive. “The kettle’s hot, and all the rooms have been checked and the beds made,” she reports to him. “There were a couple of things on your list that the local supermarket didn’t have, but I’ll run out now and grab them.”
He gives her a nod and… smiles? Fuck, it’s a super rare Clive smile! Someone alert the media. “Thank you, Lauren. I’m sure everything is as it should be.” I get a snide side-eye before he adds, “You are the perfect scion of a legacy family.”
Wowwww. Was that supposed to put me in my place? Clive’s getting bitchy.
“Do you have uni today?” Anna says hastily, probably wanting to change the subject before I start a fight. Though it totally would have been Clive’s fault. “I can go to the shops if you’ve got stuff on.”
Lauren shakes her head. “Nah, all good. This is my free day. I’ll take Adam up, if that’s okay with you? The stylist and tailor will be here in about an hour.”
“Stylist?” I blurt. Nobody said anything about a stylist.
“That would be wonderful, thank you,” Clive says, ignoring me. “I’ll have morning tea ready in half an hour.”
The petty bitch in me rears his head. “Are we having scones? I’m craving scones.”
To my disappointment, Clive merely nods. “We’ll have scones, then.”
No twitching eye or set jaw? Not even a frown? He must have been planning to make scones anyway.
“Fab,” Lauren announces. “I haven’t had a decent scone in ages. Come on, Adam.” She turns and makes for the door, and I obediently follow with my bag in hand.
We step into a hallway with a glass wall extending the entire length of the right side. Beyond the windows is a paved courtyard with two-story vertical gardens on the opposite wall and cushy outdoor furniture set up around a firepit. I pause to stare, and Lauren comes back and tugs on my arm.
“Come on. Tristan didn’t say he wanted to introduce you, so we need to get you upstairs and then back down to the kitchen before Jennifer arrives.”
That gets me moving. It doesn’t sound like this Jennifer is dangerous—at least not more than any other vampire—but after the last time, I’m not risking anything. “Let’s go.”
The corridor opens into a huge kitchen-slash-meals area that has huge glass bifold doors leading into the courtyard we just passed. The room is a lot more modern than I would expect for a house Tristan owns, and as we pass through it into a living room, the contrast in style is obvious.
“Why does this room feel like it was built in the 1800s and the kitchen feels like it was built last year?” I look around at the stupidly high ceilings with ornate plasterwork and the huge marble fireplaces, then glance back over my shoulder into the sleek kitchen.
“Because this is the original part of the house, which was built in the 1890s, and the kitchen was added on in the sixties and then renovated in the eighties and again five years ago,” Lauren reports, leading me through a doorway into the front hallway. To my right, the wide corridor ends with a solid door surrounded by intricate stained-glass windows. There’s another room near it, and I can hear the murmur of voices, which means Tristan and Pierce are in there.
To my left, where Lauren gestures for me to go, is a staircase, and at the top, a funny little landing with several sets of stairs going in different directions. “Old houses are weird.”
“The word you’re looking for is ‘character,’” she corrects, but she’s grinning like she agrees with me. “This way.”
I’m pretty sure the room she shows me to is at the front of the house, and a quick peek out the big french windows proves me right—and shows me that I have my own little balcony. Score.
The room is huge and comfortable, and Lauren quickly shows me the modern en suite bathroom and how to use the shower, which is way fancier than anything I’ve ever seen before. Who needs a tap when they can have a control panel, am I right? There are days when I think this isn’t so much a job as it is a whole damn lifestyle.
