The worst was that the Vampyres did nothing.
Nothing.
Nobody moved to interrupt Sanchez. The emcee did not order security to remove him. Nobody turned to look at the pleading man or raised a bidding paddle. They all acted as if he did not exist.
A sickened anger tied her stomach in knots. This was horrendous, degrading, and it didn’t matter that cold logic said there could be no good way to handle candidates like Sanchez, or that his petition had been doomed from the start. The number of visa applicants was overwhelming to begin with. If the Vampyres gave into one Sanchez who broke the rules, they would never be able to stop the flood of others.
She didn’t know what was worse—their show of indifference or the humans who chose to abase themselves onstage.
And I’m one of them, she thought. She wiped her face with a shaking hand. How in God’s name could I have ever thought this might be a good idea?
Scratch that, I never thought it was a good idea. It was my only idea.
The reason was simple. When you pissed off the devil, you ran out of options real fast.
The buzzer sounded. With agonizing politeness, the emcee escorted Sanchez off the stage, and the next candidate came on.
The person behind Tess elbowed her with a hiss, and she eased the stage door closed to step into the wings. Her blood pounded in her ears, and her shaking breath caught in her throat. This was far worse than any kind of normal stage fright, magnified as it was by anger, revulsion and fear.
As if from a long distance away, she heard the buzzer sound. And again.
When it was her turn, she stepped forward and waited just behind the curtain for her cue. If she held herself any more rigidly, she felt like she might break into pieces.
The emcee walked toward her with a practiced smile and a sharp, disinterested gaze. Holding out a hand, he beckoned to her. She walked forward into a flood of hot lights, stopped at the X taped on the floor and faced the crowded hall. Her cold fingers curled automatically around the microphone when it was shoved into her hand.
The lights on the stage had turned the Vampyres into shadowy figures that made them seem even more menacing. She wanted to scream at them, or laugh at the absurdity of the whole scenario.
Instead, the intolerable tension fractured and she iced over with a clear, clean anger. None of them would listen to anything she might say anyway.
Not bothering to raise the microphone, she said in a calm, flat voice, “My looks are entirely forgettable, and I’m smarter than almost anyone here.”
Screw them, if they weren’t able to see what advantages there could be in any of that. Screw all of them.
On the mezzanine floor, one of the Vampyres turned from his conversation to look down at her.
He raised his paddle.
Blinded by the bright lights shining in her face, Tess couldn’t see if her words had caused any reaction. She only knew she wasn’t going to stay on the stage for one more moment. She had to go somewhere quiet to try to figure out her next move. Pivoting, she strode to the emcee “Where’s the exit?”
Giving her a strange look, he walked with her to the opposite edge of the stage, where another young woman in an aide’s uniform waited in the wings. Plucking the microphone out of Tess’s hand, the emcee moved on to the next candidate.
Despair weighed down her limbs until she felt as if she were moving through water. She asked the aide tightly, “How do I get out of here?”
Like the emcee, all of the servers and aides at the Ball were human. The woman gave her the same strange look as the emcee had, incredulity mingled with envy, and darkened with the faintest tinge of resentment. “I know candidates can’t see it when they’re on the stage, but you’ve been selected for an interview.”
Tess blinked. She couldn’t have heard that right. The words didn’t make any sense. “Excuse me?”
“Someone wants to interview you.” The aide checked the screen of her iPad then rapidly input something with a stylus. “Go down the hall to the back staircase, then up to the second floor. Remember, one flight up is the mezzanine level. The second floor is two flights up. Your interview will be in room 219. He’ll be with you shortly.”
He.
She was almost getting used to the slightly nauseous tension that clenched her stomach. “Who is it?”
Even as she asked, the aide turned away to beckon the next candidate offstage. As the woman stepped into the wings, she clutched at the aide’s hands. “This is my sixth year auditioning. How did I do? Did someone ask for me?”
Tess turned away. The only way she would find out who wanted to talk to her was by going up to the room. Feeling dazed, she went down the utilitarian hall and walked up two flights of stairs.
The building was old. During the California gold rush, it had been one of San Francisco’s premiere hotels, but it had been partially gutted and renovated in the 1920s to be used for the Vampyre’s Ball.
Away from the glittering elegance of the main ballroom, the building showed its age. Still, the upstairs was a little better than the hallway backstage. There were a few touches of faded glory, in the scratched and peeling gilding on the stairway railings, in the worn carpet, and in the crown molding at the edges of the ceiling.
The upstairs rooms had once been hotel rooms. As the thought occurred to her, she clenched both hands into fists.
Relatively few Vampyres reached enough prominence to support a household of attendants, but when they did, they set their own rules for what happened in their domain. She had heard rumors that in some households, attendants provided more than just blood and assigned work. They also traded sexual favors in return for the kind of lifestyle that a wealthy Vampyre patron could offer.
Even if an attendant never gained the opportunity to be turned, regular bites from a patron boosted a human’s natural immune system, and they could live as long as a hundred and thirty years. There were reasons why Haley had gone naked onto the stage, not least of which was the opportunity to live more than half again one’s own natural life span and to die in one’s sleep of old age.
Room 219 was tucked between others in the middle of the hall. As soon as she gripped the door handle, her muscles locked up and she stood frozen, unable to make herself step into the room and yet not able to walk away, while rapid-fire thoughts snapped at her heels like feral dogs.
This “interview” could be another version of the casting couch scenario.
If there’s a bed in the room, that’s it, she thought. I’m out of here.
I think.
Stop being histrionic. Sex is merely a biological function. People have been trading sex for survival for thousands of years. You’re not a fourteen-year-old virgin. You’ve had sex before, and guess what? While none of your partners had been memorable enough to stick around, it wasn’t the end of the world. Death is the end of the world.
Think of the devil you left behind. If you leave now without exploring all your options, you’ve got to find another way to protect yourself from him. And the whole reason why you’re here in the first place is because you haven’t found another way.
Just remember—if you’re going to choose to trade sex for protection, make sure you get an agreement in place beforehand.
Suddenly angry at her own dithering, she yanked the door open and stalked inside. It wasn’t likely that sex would become part of any discussion anyway. Not with the Vampyres’ love of beauty, the glut of gorgeous people readily available to slake any appetite, and her own average, forgettable looks.
The unoccupied room was entirely bare, except for a utilitarian, conference-style folding table, four chairs, and two unopened bottles of Evian set at one end of the table.