“This isn’t Ned’s house,” Emma said. “Not directly, anyway. This is actually a boys’ school, Dulwich College. We’ll end up a little farther on.”
The cab passed the impressive school and a minute later turned up the drive of a much more modest, but even more venerable and beautiful house, with a brick façade, painted accents, and warm light showing through the mullioned windows.
“Here we are,” she said. “Fortune House.”
The car pulled into a gated yard, letting us out before continuing on to a building that might have been a small stable in another age. Now it was the garage—same purpose, different context. Emma took us through a mudroom that was nicer than Ben’s and my whole condo, with slate tile on the floor in a checkered pattern, shelves made of some expensive polished wood, and brass fixtures. This opened into a hardwood foyer. A kitchen lay through a doorway, and a maid came toward us—an honest-to-goodness maid in a black uniform dress and apron.
“He’s in the library waiting for you, miss,” the young woman said to Emma.
The house must have been bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside. We went from the foyer through a long hallway with a fancy carpet runner, antique sideboards and accent tables that held stunning porcelain vases, a row of paintings on the wall showing everything from hunting dogs to light-suffused cityscapes. The hallway let out into a parlor with a big fireplace, marble mantelpiece above it, more antique furniture, more paintings. Tall windows had heavy drapes drawn over them. Over the fireplace was what seemed to be a life-sized portrait of a man in late-Renaissance attire: a starched white ruff, long black coat lined with fur, a glimpse of doublet and knee-length trousers, shoes with buckles. He was tall and stately, brown hair going to gray, a full beard hiding his expression, and he looked down on us with some amount of pride. The Master, maybe? Next, Emma opened a set of heavy double doors, polished wood, simply carved, and ushered us into the library.
I could have sat on the lush antique Persian rug and stared at the room for hours. Floor-to-ceiling shelves occupied all four walls, with scant allowance made for the door and a set of tall windows opposite. Some of the shelves appeared to slide back to reveal even more shelves. And they were all filled with books. All of them. A myriad of comfy chairs and sofas—the arms scuffed, the seats lumpy and soft—had been well used by people lounging in them, reading all those books.
In addition, the room held display cases and curio cabinets—and yes, they contained even more books. Special books, no doubt, hermetically sealed and brought out for holidays. Many of them lay open on stands for admiring. The cases did hold a few other items—ornate daggers, a thin sword, jewelry, pocket watches, miniature portraits. That was just what I could see from the doorway. I might have squeaked in awe.
“You seem impressed,” the man standing by the curtained window said in a rich voice, an orator’s voice.
He wasn’t young like most vampires I’d met. His brown hair, tied back in a shoulder-length ponytail, was streaked with gray, and his beard was salt and pepper. He might have been in his sixties—he’d lived a whole life already before he’d been turned. He wore a long smoking jacket, pushed back. His cream-colored shirt was open rakishly at the throat, his dark trousers were plain, and he went stocking-footed. The ensemble managed to give off an air of casual elegance. All this wealth and centuries’ worth of collected riches were his and he was quite comfortable with it. He stood hand on hip, shoulders back, posing like the man in the portrait over the fireplace—maybe because he was the man in the portrait.
“This is Ned,” Emma said proudly. “Ned, may I present Kitty Norville, Ben O’Farrell, and Cormac Bennett.”
“Excellent work, Emma,” he said. “Any trouble at Heathrow?”
“None at all,” she answered.
“Hi,” I said, waving, feeling a bit inadequate for the surroundings. “It’s quite a place you have here.”
He smiled broadly at us, like we were new acquisitions for his collection. “I bet you say that to everyone.”
“Oh no,” I said, shaking my head quickly. “Not everyone.”
“Please, look around if you like. Ask questions. I rarely have a chance to show off for visitors.”
“Questions, huh? Anything?” I said.
“Here it comes…” Ben murmured.
“How old are you?” I asked.
His gaze went soft, as if he was doing math in his head. “Four hundred forty-three years old.”
Ben laughed. “Wow, he actually answered!”
I gaped. “I have never, ever, ever gotten that specific an answer from any vampire ever,” I said. I might have fallen in love with the man in that instant. I did a bit of my own math—it took a couple of tries. “Fifteen sixty—”
“Fifteen sixty-six,” Cormac said, and Ned nodded.
“And you were born in London,” I said.
“Born, bred, proud to be so.”
“Wow,” I said. “We have to talk, you have to tell me everything, what was it like, what did you do, who did you know—Queen Elizabeth, did you ever see her? Meet her?”
“You were right,” Ned said to Emma. “She doesn’t stop, does she?”
“Most vampires are so secretive, they won’t say anything about how old they are, where they came from. Like that life is dead to them and they’ll be damned if they talk about it. Why aren’t you like that? Why just let it all out there?”
“Of all the secrets I could keep, the ones about myself are the least useful.”