Mr. Ward’s gaze broke away from mine. He didn’t argue any further or tell me what I expected: that he didn’t give a damn if my parents were upset with me, or with him for that matter. That none of it was his fault, so why should he try to fix it?

Instead, he said, “I need a shower,” and stood.

Had there been a camera in the room, I’m pretty sure it would have taken a rather amazing shot of a ‘what the fuck’ face, courtesy of yours truly.

It was such a non sequitur that, for a second, I was sure it had happened again. He had thrown us into that fantasy world once more. Our eyes had met, and both times before that was how he’d started it.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

He raised his eyebrows at me.

“It’s called personal hygiene,” he replied, deadpan. “I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”

I rolled my eyes at him.

“Not that. The mind-meld fantasy thing. Whatever you call it. Why are you doing it now?”

“I’m not,” he said with a shake of his head. “Why would you think I am doing it?”

Could I believe him? I wasn’t sure.

“You just… you know. Looked at me.”

“I’m looking at you right now.”

I threw my hands in the air.

“You know what I mean. You did your freaky eyes thing.”

“My freaky eyes thing,” he repeated, the tiniest of smiles curling his lips. “I see. That makes complete sense in your head, I’m sure. But as I am not in your head right now, it makes no sense to me. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

And with no more explanation than that, he started toward the exit. I didn’t let him take more than a few steps before I caught up with him. I was getting tired of his whole ‘I’m not explaining anything’ act, and whether he wanted to talk or not, we weren’t done.

“What about my parents?” I said. “What are we telling them? Who’s going to pick them up at the airport, for that matter?”

Rather than listening to me, he was fiddling with his cell phone, typing something as far as I could see, and it annoyed the hell out of me. I did that thing I tended to do with some frightening regularity around him: I acted on impulse. I grabbed his phone right out of his hands.

I knew how fast he could move. I’d seen him run. His reflexes were top-notch as well. I guess he just didn’t expect me to do something as stupid—as childish—as snatching his phone, which is probably the only reason why I managed to get my hands on it.

I even had time to read what was on the screen before he pushed past his surprise and snatched the phone back.

At the top of it, the name of the contact was Lilah.

The message he’d typed read, Because of you I’m being roped into throwing a charity gala. Thanks ever so much. Still have your guest list from your party last year?

As I was reading, a reply popped up.

Always knew she was resourceful. Are you going to share how she convinced you?

“What are you, five?” Mr. Ward snapped at me as he pocketed the phone. “Has no one ever taught you about touching other people’s things?”

I stared at him, and not because of his rebuke.

“You’re in contact with her,” I said, flabbergasted. “She’s got me trapped in here, and you just text her like nothing happened. Like she’s not responsible for… for all of this!”

His expression turned inscrutable.

“Do you really think yelling at Lilah or waging a war on her would get us anywhere? You’ve known her for years. I assume you know she can be… stubborn.”

‘Stubborn’ was a mild way to put it. She was used to having her way, and when things went awry, she could go to great lengths to put them back on the track she wanted. But that didn’t change anything.

“You said you’ve been trying to get her to release me. What exactly have you done for that? Other than exchange pleasantries?”

He held my gaze for a long time, his dark eyes as tempestuous as a storm.

“You don’t underst—”

I couldn’t bear to let him finish.

“Of course I don’t understand! How could I when you never explain anything! Do we have to be in that fantasy world for you to actually talk to me?”

Muscles clenched and unclenched in his cheek as he ground his teeth. I was sure he’d just storm away again and prove my point, and so was taken aback when he said, “It’s not up to Lilah. She trapped you here because someone…”

He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh.

“Because our maker told her to do so. She can’t release you, not any more than you can leave this house. If I have any hope of getting you free, I need to talk to our maker, but she’s been ignoring my calls, and I don’t know where she is. I think she might be in Paris as well. That might be why Lilah went there. But Lilah won’t say so outright. Maybe she’s been ordered not to. I have a PI taking pictures of everyone Lilah comes in contact with, and if she’s there, I’ll fly to Paris and talk to her. In the meantime, not talking to Lilah wouldn’t help anything.”

When he finished, he gave me an expectant look, one eyebrow raised and a question clearly inscribed in his dark eyes.

Was that what I wanted to know? Had he answered all of my questions? Was I satisfied now?

In truth, it was so much information all at once that I was still trying to process it. It did explain a lot. Not everything, but a lot. It also raised more questions, the main one being why this ‘maker’ wanted me trapped in this house to begin with. I didn’t want to push my luck, though, not when he’d finally given me some information after being so stingy with it.

“Thank you,” I said on a very formal tone of voice. “For explaining. Everything that’s happening… it’s hard enough as it is. Not understanding anything makes it harder.”

Even as I said the words, I remembered saying something similar during our latest trip into fantasy. Was this why he was opening to me? Had my words from that place influenced his actions in reality? I never got to ask. He inclined his head once, then started for the door again. He stopped only long enough to glance back and say, “I’ll see you at noon in the small dining room. We need to start planning that stupid gala.”

For a few seconds after he’d left, I remained where I was, trying to calm my thundering heart.

It was stupid, really, for me to be so affected by those few words. They’d hardly been an invitation for a date, more like an order. And yet… The small dining room was where we’d dined last night. Well, where we’d dined in the fantasy. Was it a coincidence that he’d given me a rendezvous there?

No, it wasn’t a rendezvous, more like a business appointment. In the charade we were setting up, I wasn’t his lover or his unexpected guest. I was his assistant.

Could I play that role? Could I play it convincingly enough for my parents? I wasn’t sure. For one thing, after I went back to my room, I was wondering the same thing I’d wondered about after he’d invited me to dinner: what was I going to wear? I had the hardest time reminding myself that, no, it wasn’t a date, and I didn’t need to change. The jeans and shirt I wore were perfectly fine. For the next hour and half, I made a list on a notepad I found in the desk in my room of all the elements that went into planning a charity gala. It helped me keep my mind occupied so I didn’t obsess over what I was wearing.

I knew from experience how much work went into planning such a party. Last year, I’d worked on it for two full months. I didn’t know when exactly Mr. Ward intended to have the party, but it would have to be soon to be a credible excuse as far as my parents were concerned. The next few days promised to be very interesting.

And by ‘interesting’ of course I mean hectic, exhausting and… all right, exhilarating. I can’t say I wasn’t at least a little bit excited by the challenge in front of me. It certainly would be a better use of my time than wandering from room to room for days on end, waiting for Miss Delilah to come back. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure how I felt about working that closely with Mr. Ward. Or at least, I assumed we’d work on it together. His words had implied as much. I already had trouble sorting out what had really happened since I had stepped into his house and what had only been make-believe; I doubted working with him would make it any easier not to see him as Morgan.

When lunchtime finally came, I took the notepad and pen with me to the dining room. And because I am vain and foolish, I kicked off the ballet slippers I was wearing and put on a pair of high heels. They were navy blue with white stitching, and nowhere as high as the ruby slippers: classy without being over the top. After all, I told myself en route to my lunch-not-date, he’d bought all those shoes for me; I might as well wear them.

I won’t deny that some silly, clearly delusional part of me had expected, maybe even hoped for the same decor and ambiance as last night. It couldn’t have been further from what I found when I stepped in. The curtains were drawn, and sunlight poured into the room. A lone placemat was set at one end of the table, with a metal dome covering a dish, a glass of water, and a bread roll on either side of it. Just beyond the placemat, two more plates waited: one held a salad, complete with strawberries, almonds, and blue cheese, and the other a slice of—what else—chocolate cake. There was no flower, no candle. Instead, the rest of the table was covered in a bunch of papers and brochures, and Mr. Ward was sitting in front of an oversized laptop at the other end of the table.

I looked at my notepad and the page and a half of notes I had scribbled, and didn’t feel like an overachiever anymore.

Mr. Ward looked up when I walked in and gave me an absentminded nod.

“Sit down,” he said. “Eat. What EmCee did you use for Lilah’s party last year?”

I didn’t say a word. I didn’t even move. When he looked up at me again, he was frowning.

“What is it?”

“I’m not a dog,” I said as calmly as I could manage.

His frown deepened.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

My fingers tightened around the notepad. I was shaking a little, and I wasn’t sure if it was from anger or fear. Strange how I always seemed to feel both things when I was around him.

“Sit,” I said in the same cool tone he’d used. “Eat. What’s next? Roll over? Beg for a treat? Don’t you think I’ve been given enough orders since I set foot in this house?”

Mr. Ward’s eyes narrowed, and he pinched his lips tightly together. What words was he holding back? Nothing nice, I supposed.

After a few seconds, he stood. I swallowed the lump of ice suddenly lodged in my throat.

“My apologies,” he said in a neutral voice. He walked around the table and drew out the chair set in front of the placemat. “Would you care to sit, Angelina?”

My mind flashed back to how he’d held my chair in the fantasy. I tried to push that image away. I had to stay in the here and now.

Which would have been a lot easier if, when I sat down and lifted the metal cover, I hadn’t found a bowl of fragrant lobster bisque in front of me.

Judging from Mr. Ward’s expression as he returned to his seat, he made the connection between what my fantasy self had had for dinner and what I was now having for lunch, but he didn’t comment. Good thing, too. I wasn’t particularly interested in talking about the more pleasant version of himself he’d showed at dinner.

He waited until I’d taken a few spoonfuls of soup before saying, still in that cool, neutral voice, “There are eight major high-society parties happening in the city between Christmas and the New Year, three of them on New Year’s Eve. I don’t think we should try to compete with them, not on such short notice. New Year’s Day might be better. What do you think?”

I thought the soup was delicious. I also thought it’d have been nice to have lunch first and work later. Mostly, I thought I didn’t like his ‘I’m trying to be nice and calm’ voice. It sounded fake. I missed my fantasy Morgan. How much of him had been real? What was it Mr. Ward had said? The fantasy was still us, just acting in a way we wouldn’t let ourselves act under normal circumstances.

Which begged the question, why wouldn’t he let himself be nice?

“Angelina?”

A shudder ran through me as he said my name. I met his eyes and had the hardest time reminding myself of where I was and especially with whom.

I thought back on his question and gave a small shrug.

“It’s your party. Whatever you think is best.”

He clucked his tongue, like I was some unruly child.

“If I’m supposed to have hired you for your expertise, ‘whatever I think is best’ is not going to cut it in front of your parents.”

“Well, they’re not here, are they?”

“But they will be. We might as well start practicing playing nice.”

He had a point. I hated that he had a point. And I wasn’t going to concede he did.

“New Year’s Day,” I said, going back to the original topic. I tore a piece of bread as I thought. “Okay. We can spin it as the first good deed of the New Year or a fresh start or something. Did you decide what charity you want it to be for?”

I knew he gave money to some art school and had a couple of scholarships in his name, on top of some occasional donations to good causes. He hadn’t come to Miss Delilah’s gala, but he had sent a nice check, and she’d announced the donation during a small speech to thank the attendees.

“I don’t care,” he said without looking up from his screen. “Do you have a preference?”

I stared at him across the table, the bread forgotten in my hand.

“That’s a lie. You care about these things. You wouldn’t give away so much money if you didn’t.”

His eyes met mine over the laptop.

“So, your idea of playing nice is to call me a liar. Interesting.”

I could feel heat creeping up in my cheeks. I pretended to myself I wasn’t blushing and spoke as levelly as I could manage.

“You know what’s interesting to me? That you claim not to care about so many things when it’s pretty clear that, in fact, you do. Like when you pretend you don’t give a damn about me and yet you’ve saved my life twice and you’re doing this thing so my parents won’t be mad or scared.”

This point went to me.

He looked away and said gruffly, “There was a women’s shelter three blocks away. They had a fire or something, and they had to close.”

I’ll admit that if I’d needed to make a list of charities Mr. Ward was most likely to support, a women’s shelter would not have been anywhere near the top. I suppose it proved how much I didn’t know about him.

“All right,” I said, pushing the empty soup bowl away and pulling the salad closer. “We can make that work with the whole fresh-start theme. Did Delilah send you that list of guests?”

As hard as I tried to keep my voice neutral, my animosity bled through when I said her name.

“She did,” was all he said before returning his attention to the computer.

There were still a thousand things to decide about the gala, but a very different topic came to my lips.

“Is she really your sister? You two don’t look anything alike.”

He didn’t even look up.

“We’re blood siblings,” he said, typing something on his computer. “It means we were turned into vampires by the same maker.”

I’d thought about that ‘maker’ since he’d mentioned her.

“In the invitation you sent Delilah, you mentioned your mother. Is that—”

“Our maker, yes,” he interrupted. “Speaking of invitations, we should probably focus on those first. We can figure out the rest of the details later.”

So, he didn’t want to talk about ‘Mother.’ Duly noted.

I finished my lunch quickly. The chocolate cake, for some reason, did not taste quite as good as when Morgan had fed it to me in our latest fantasy. The entire time I was eating it, Mr. Ward never looked at me, not even one glance. I knew, because I was looking at him. And missing Morgan.

It felt weird to miss someone when he was sitting just a few feet away from me.

Once I was done eating, I moved to a seat closer to him. We worked on the wording of the invitation as well as the guest list. The location, much to his annoyance, was to be the mansion; I couldn’t get out, so we didn’t have much of a choice there. Within a couple of hours, we’d decided on the exact wording and main details. Unlike his birthday, there was no time for custom stationery. Mr. Ward left to go to a printing shop while I continued working, now focused on finding a caterer. So close to the event and on New Year’s day, to boot, I anticipated it wouldn’t be easy, and I was right. By the time Mr. Ward returned around four with a box of folded invitations that we needed to stuff into the already-addressed envelopes, I still hadn’t found a caterer.

The prospect of sending the invitations when so much was up in the air left me jittery. I kept telling myself that it shouldn’t matter to me. After all, Mr. Ward had told Miss Delilah he’d been ‘roped’ into having this gala, but what about me? I was, in essence, working for free for my captor. At the same time, I did want the gala to be a success. It was a matter of pride for me, but more than that, it was for the benefit of a good, worthy cause.

And of course it was all to preserve my parents’ blissful ignorance, something that seemed to become more and more important as the hour of their arrival grew nearer.

 

*