The corridor wound artfully before spilling into the massive main hall where the auction was to take place. Rows of lacquered chairs lined the room, many already occupied by vampires. Jin plucked one of the bidder numbers from the table and found himself a seat. Beside him, Flick did the same, Laith’s kitten snug in the crook of her arm.
The room was filling up. Vampires had come from all across Ettenia. Many of them, to Jin’s surprise, seemed to be immigrants who had retained elements of their home cultures. There were vampires in form-fitting qipaos and others in wide-sleeved agbadas. He caught sight of the flowing folds of Hanfu, the regal skirts of an anarkali, and saris in sapphire, emerald, and onyx, each one beaded more heavily than the last.
On the stage up ahead, the auctioneer’s assistant propped open a stand while a vampire with silver hair and skin the same shade as Arthie’s swaggered down the aisle, a cravat knotted at his throat. He was carrying something large and rectangular and draped in beige.
Look for whoever brings in the auction piece, Matteo had instructed. That’s the pocket you’ll want to pick for the key.
Sir Silver Hair was their man.
The assistant straightened at the sight of him. “Sidharth, what took you so long?”
“Apologies,” he drawled. “I was unaware you’d finally learned how to read a clock.”
The assistant fumed but took the parcel from him and set it on the stand with care, unveiling the object beneath an angled light. Sidharth gave it a wistful look as if it were his, but Jin had stolen and studied enough art to recognize its artist.
Matteo Andoni.
His work had a distinctness to it, an urgency that didn’t quite match the vampire himself—or any vampire for that matter. Time held no meaning for them when their limbs worked eternally. Perhaps that was where the Athereum saw the value in Matteo’s work: that reminder of time passing, that longing, even if they’d never admit to it. Everyone yearned for what they couldn’t have.
This particular piece featured a single stroke of shadow, obscure enough to be anything but defined enough to be a woman. She stood in a blurred street, lamps scattered like souls, her head tilted toward a full moon as if she were a wolf calling for her love. There was something hollow about the piece, haunting and lonely.
“Until later.” Sidharth inclined his head with a flourish. When he lifted his hand for a wave, Jin saw the keys Matteo had promised would be there.
There were three of them, made of brass. Jin barely caught a glimpse before Sidharth slipped them into his right pocket and turned to leave. Jin turned too, leaning closer to Flick, who looked at him as if he’d lost his head when he emptied a pocket of keys into her lap.
“Jin!” she exclaimed as he shuffled through a mess of silver and gold until he found three brass keys that he slid onto a ring. “Oh, this is marvelous. Wherever did you find all this?”
“Under my pillow, love,” he answered. He’d meant for the words to be innocent, but her breath caught, and he curled a crooked grin. “You’d be surprised what all can be found on my bed.”
Truth be told, he had been picking pockets since he’d stepped into the Athereum in preparation for this. In that time, he’d learned it was a lot harder to pull off a believable sneer when one was missing the keys to their own house.
“I—” Flick looked up sharply. The auctioneer’s assistant tapped his gavel on the podium, and the thrum of voices turned down a notch. “Oh.”
Jin followed her line of sight to a new vampire taking the place of the assistant.
Every inch of him demanded attention, from the length of his dark hair to the aristocratic planes of his face. He was a mix of races, that much Jin could tell. Not quite Ettenian, not quite foreign, and he looked vaguely familiar.
He surveyed the room and bent to murmur in his assistant’s ear.
“Keep an eye out,” Jin told Flick, and hurried after Sidharth, who was lingering at the entrance as a flock of vampires in dark gowns and netted hats filed inside, hands at their throats and fangs bared beneath bayonet smiles. Making a fool of himself in front of a lady wasn’t in his nature, but the job was the job.
One hand in his pocket, Jin stumbled on the rug with an oof, pitching himself at Sidharth. He slammed into an unexpected wall of muscle and hooked a finger around the vampire’s suspender to shift his focus as Jin swapped the keys and righted himself.
“Someone’s had a little too much to drink,” Sidharth said, none the wiser as he observed Jin through hooded eyes.
He made to catch his hand, but Jin released him and pulled back with a tsk. “Sorry there, I’m already spoken for.”
Flick’s face popped into Jin’s head at the words before he plunged into the crowd of vampires, slipping through a cloud of perfume and jeweled skirts. If he somehow found himself in possession of a pearl-studded silver barrette and a carved jade fountain pen when he finally made it to the empty foyer, it wasn’t his fault.
After getting the keys to Laith, Jin made his way back to the auction hall. He wasn’t certain whose bidder number he snatched on his way back in, but he sent them a silent apology as he drove up the price of the auction again and again and again.
“Four thousand duvin,” the dark-haired vampire called from behind the podium, “once more from the gentleman in the back.”
That once more sounded belligerent. Beside him, Flick’s paddle went up with excruciating hesitance. Was she worried she’d truly have to pay?
“Five thousand,” he announced. Jin saw the crimson in his eyes, betraying his age.
“Andoni’s work isn’t even worth half that,” someone murmured.
“I daresay I agree,” murmured another.
“Appreciation of the arts is an acquired skill,” Jin said, insulted on Matteo’s behalf.
“I wholly agree,” Flick echoed, prompting others to pick sides.
Another gentleman lifted his paddle, followed by a lady with a cane. The vampire behind the podium called out the next figure.
“Nine thousand duvin,” the vampire announced. “Have we any others?”
He began a spiel about the piece and the cause it supported. Jin’s paddle went up and then a slew of vampires followed, paddles rising and falling.
A figure started down the aisle, and Jin narrowed his eyes. Matteo. The vampire at the podium paused too, scrutinizing him as if he knew him but couldn’t quite see past the disguise. What was he doing?
“Jin?” Flick dragged out his name.
“I see him,” Jin murmured.
Matteo climbed up the front of the stage, eliciting murmurs from the crowd and wrenching the auction to a halt. He leaned close and whispered in the dark-haired vampire’s ear, and Jin was filled with a sense of foreboding too late to act upon it.
Then the dark-haired vampire set down his gavel and looked straight at Jin.
Damn it all.
“Time for plan C,” Jin said. He didn’t understand. The man was stepping away from the podium, moving toward them. What had Matteo told him?
“What’s plan C?” Flick asked nervously.
Jin looked down at the vampire beside him. “Have you ever been hit with an auction paddle?”
“I beg your pardon?” the vampire sounded flabbergasted.
“No?” Jin asked, and slammed his paddle across the vampire’s face. “You’re welcome.”
The vampire shot to his feet, swinging his paddle with such force, Jin barely had time to duck before it slammed into the head of the vampire beside him. The woman leaped up.
Chaos erupted.
“Come along, Felicity,” Jin shouted, snatching her hand, fully aware of how perfectly it fit in his. The two of them wriggled their way out of the row of chairs.
“So sorry,” Flick shouted at someone, and when Jin looked back at Flick she wasn’t stricken with fear or worry, she looked delighted, excited.
As if, perhaps, she could get used to this life.
He pretended not to notice the way she looked at her hand when he released it, ignoring the sparks that echoed down his own. What was he, a schoolboy? It was her hand.
“Come now, the paddle can’t have hurt that much,” he yelled as they ran.
Really, the vampires ought to be thanking him for bringing some much-needed energy to their undead lives. More chairs screeched and an uproar ensued, but when Jin stopped at the entrance to the main hall and looked back, neither Matteo nor the dark-haired vampire were anywhere to be seen.