Every doorway looks identical from the outside. The only way I manage to navigate at all is by cataloguing the tapestries (half of which I acquired) and artwork in relation to each other. Each piece is tastefully placed in its own alcove and accented by too-bright pools of spot lighting. But every hallway looks the same, every intersection just as bland and uninteresting as the one before it, and as far as I can tell there aren’t any windows anywhere.

“Didn’t anyone ever mention that fresh air is good for, well, everyone?” I ask as we bustle past what seems like the millionth Ming vase tastefully displayed on its waist-high pedestal under some hazy but adequate light.

“This fortress was not built for comfort,” Archard states and I pounce on his slip,

“That’s the first time you’ve called it a fortress and not a mansion,”

“It has been, converted, from its original purpose,” backpedaling is obviously NOT one of Archard’s virtues as he stares straight ahead. The conversation dies completely, the only sounds those of our footfalls. My bare feet barely make a hushed whisper but his black loafers make the stones ring out with a steady beat.

After an interminable walk, we turn a final corner and I stop dead in my tracks. We’re at the top of a winding staircase which widens as it descends before spilling into a grand room made entirely of marble and bathed in soft yellow light. It’s so shocking after the end of the endless dullness of the hallways that I stumble and Archard grabs my arm at the elbow to stead me.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!” I shout and as he slowly releases his grip he says,

“Easy now,” he doesn’t let go fast enough and I reflexively shove him away. “You’re just as prickly as a pear, aren’t you,” Archard mumbles and I almost feel guilty for my actions, almost.

“Oh yes, I’m just an awful guest. I’m not someone whose had their rights violated or been nearly murdered or anything. I haven’t been abducted from my home and is even now being held against my will,” he gives me another of those disappointed-dad looks and I wince internally out of habit, but will not take the words back. Archard, however, is not the type to say things out of spite and presses his lips together to keep from slipping. I precede him down the stairs but am forced to pause at the bottom as I don’t know which way to go.

“This way,” Archard indicates by nodding at the two story high double-doors on the left-hand side of the chamber. Composure now firmly back in place; he braces his hands on either side of the door and I make a mental note that he has to strain to open them. Indicating that I may enter, I step forward and can’t help but gasp at the sight before me.

It’s a wonderful library at least three stories tall with marble arches effortlessly holding up the ceiling. There isn’t any place in the hall that isn’t filled with bookshelves or staircases leading to even more shelves built into the stone walls, except for a narrow walkway in the center of the room that serves as the main artery for foot traffic to and from the magnificent collection.

I don’t even know where to begin as there aren’t any overt signs or symbols or other cataloguing markers to tell me which books live where and how they relate to one another. I step forward and freeze as a too-familiar voice rumbles from everywhere,

“I knew you couldn’t stay away.” It’s all I can do to keep a lid on my better judgment (which is screaming at me to run fast and far in any direction that will permit flight) and pause with both feet on the runner, knowing that heading right will lead me toward that awful rumbling and heading left will make me appear weak and flighty. Once again that rich-husky voice emanates from the corner, adding, “I knew you’d seek me out.”

Jarvis’s tone is so smug it makes me long to punch him. To kick and claw and scratch and bite—to unleash the full extent of my rage toward him—though I know I’ll be hopelessly overpowered and he won’t kill me no matter how I provoke him. Blood boiling, I turn back toward Archard but he’s become almost a shadow behind me; there, but no longer a participating entity in my life, he follows me silently as I make my way toward that sinfully wicked voice and the inevitable confrontation there. For a split second I wonder if Archard’s acting as a bodyguard, and whose body he’s supposed to be guarding.

“You knew I’d seek out this place,” I counter, rounding the last bookcase and beholding Jarvis sitting in a pool of buttery light behind an antique elm desk, gleaming in the warm glow. “You knew of my affection for books—you gave me a first edition once, do you remember?—and conveniently decided to conduct your affairs in the one location you knew I’d be drawn to. Does it please you?” I ask, flirting with danger as my tone vacillates between fire and ice, words cutting and searing simultaneously, “Does it please you to be reminded how completely you control me, Jarvis?”

“You’d do well to remember such things,” he growls, languidly stretching in his seat before rising to his feet with all the effort of a cat rising from a particularly satisfying nap. Gliding toward me, he doesn’t stop until he’s eclipsed the soft light on his desk, but I refused to be cowed or back up. You exist now only because I will it, Jarvis projects directly into my mind and my chin snaps up as I glare defiantly into the now-molten depths of his eyes.

“I exist because I will it!” I scream and he smiles that infuriating, know-it-all smile again. However, our tableau is broken by a tinkling laugh; one part chiming ankle-bracelet bells and one part pins dropping on a glass tabletop. A tall, beautiful woman appears from the shadows and she glides up behind Jarvis, wrapping herself around him with all the sensual pleasure of a paid professional. Peeking over his shoulder, she stares down at me and snickers,

“She’s so feisty, Master Jarvis. I didn’t know you liked them defiant from the first,” she purrs in his ear, knowing full well that her voice will carry far enough to reach Archard as he stands at the edge of our circle of light. “You’ve never played with ME that way,”

“Vanessa,” Jarvis murmurs, “this is Solaine.” He guides her out from behind him and she dances around his body, never moving more than a hair’s breadth away from him and somehow molding herself against him without looking ridiculous.

Of course, Vanessa is not only tall, but beautiful as well. Her artfully tousled red-gold hair falls, curling, around her face and past her waist, playing peek-a-boo with every womanly curve while accentuating her jade-green eyes. Once her skin might have held a child’s freckles but is now smooth as porcelain after years without exposure to the sun. I hate that her breasts are full, and round—forgetting for a moment that I’m no longer ugly little sister to the supernatural community—or that her waist is tiny and flares out to form perfect buttocks over flawless legs.

Before I started working with vampires on a regular basis, I was appalled by their fashion sense and Vanessa’s just the type to push the envelope of respectability. True, we’re deep within Jarvis’s private domain; and true, if you’ve got it, why not flaunt it? But still, a white baby-doll dress that floats ethereally around her (fabric more gauzy than opaque) only reaching to the tops of her thighs isn’t clothing, it’s lingerie. And lingerie is for the bedroom…Except when you can’t find anything more covering, I remind myself as I wrap my arms around my newly-lithe torso. Maybe it’s the white vinyl garters reaching down to fasten thigh-high white stockings covering miles of leg descending to white ballerina flats that smacks of impropriety to me. Maybe I’m just a close-minded, prudish bitch, too.

“Solaine,” Vanessa chirrups, extending her hand toward me as if I’m expected to bow before her and effectively ending my perusal of her attire.

“Vanessa,” I reply, arching an eyebrow at her extended hand and tightening my arms around myself. Her sweet-innocent smile fades as she drops her playful pretense.

“Lady Vanessa,” she responds, steely resolve entering her tone and I laugh in her face.

“Last time I checked a ‘lady’ wouldn’t be caught dead wearing something you could find at ‘Pimp’s n’ Ho’s DressUp Boutique’,” her arm rears back and I wonder if she’ll break my jaw when she connects, but the deafening impact isn’t followed by any pain and I realize that her hand’s impacted with Jarvis’s fist, centimeters from my cheek.

“Vanessa,” Jarvis’s thoughtful rumble makes me wonder if I’ve misjudged him before he adds, “that’s for me to do.” Thunder rocks though the room and I wonder how I’ve come to be lying on the floor. Then my jaw starts throbbing as if it’s trying to detach from my head and I know; Jarvis has belted me to the floor. Vanessa’s tinkling laughter now sounds more like glass shattering and the only thing I can do is lie quietly and watch the two of them, knowing that—once again—my eyes have bled out into luminescent, gasoline-slicked pools of hatred.

“Oh, Master Jarvis!” Vanessa giggles, clapping her hands with delight, “you always take things too far. I was just going to chastise her, not hurt her!” He inclines his head regally and takes her by the shoulder. They’ve moved out of my line of sight when a fine trembling starts in my toes and works its way up my body until I’m quaking uncontrollably. “Oh, she’s still Turning,” Vanessa says, suddenly bored and Jarvis murmurs something in confirmation.

“Wh…what?” I gasp before I can think better of it and the beautiful bimbo sneers,

“Why do you think you’re suddenly lovely, whelp?” Vanessa asks, but answers before I can draw breath to ask, “You’re Turning—the Beast is feeding off the excess of your humanity, whittling away at your imperfect body, until there’s nothing left but a pure vessel,” I can’t ask anything as I hear her voice drop as she addresses Jarvis, “I suppose it’s best if you break her in, Master. I just wanted to teach her a lesson but she probably wouldn’t have remember it anyway.”

“Your message would have been lost on her,” Jarvis concurs in the same quiet tone as they walk away from me and my shuddering attempts to rise. I hate that they stride away so confident that I’m of no further concern and I have to concede that I’m not any kind of threat. The only solace I find is in a secret, internal voice that I’ve never heard before whispering, Now is not the time.

“Well, I hope I’ll recognize ‘the time’ when it DOES arrive,” I mutter, clenching my teeth together and attempting to bring my mutinous limbs under control. After an eternity—ten minutes, ten seconds, far too long—the shaking in my limbs ceases and I lie limply on the floor. I hear them murmuring as they stroll though the library, that awful, shrill-merry laugh and an answering, rumbling chuckle grating on each and every one of my nerves as I try to remember what it’s like to breathe without pain.

Archard detaches himself from the shadows and offers me a hand up, but I shake my head and roll to my knees before the pain rolling through my jaw forces me to stop and wait for the agony to recede. Instead of saying something about my lack of manners, he simply steps back and folds his hands across his midsection in a pose of infinite patience. I hear Vanessa’s awful shatter-giggling one more time before I hear the thud of the doors as they close soundly.

The lazy way Jarvis returns is only undermined by the click-click of his shoes as he makes his way back toward where I am using his desk to lever myself to my feet. I stare across the desk at him, mutinous defiance burning in my swirling eyes, and even though once I was blinded by the muscular expanse of his shoulders and the sable waves of his hair I see him for what he is; a monster wearing the face of a man. He exhales loudly before he sits in the old leather chair behind the desk and stares at me though steepled fingers.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” he sighs, the books add the weight of their silence to his statement.

“It absolutely does,” I reply, mustering every bit of anger left in me as my emotions manage to filter past the pain in my jaw. Despite the fact that I’m sure Jarvis held back when he slapped me, if I’d been wholly human I’m sure he would have shattered my jaw and the pain is receding far more quickly than it had any right to. “It absolutely DOES,” I repeat, resolve giving strength to my statement.

No, he says, whispering in my mind with that honey and butter tone, you don’ t have to fight me.

“YES I DO!” I shout in both my voice and my mind, and the rows of books multiply my voice until the whole hall is shaking with echoes of my outrage. “It’s all I CAN do, you bastard! I can’t undo the past and I can’t unmake myself and I can’t even escape you in my own head!” I know my smile is more snarl than joy and I might imagine that he flinches as I continue, “But I can fight you, you son of a bitch, and that’s all that matters to me now!” Suddenly he’s no longer in front of me, my throat screams in protest as I feel fingers digging into my tender flesh and a thumb hook up under my jaw as I am lifted off my feet. I feel my back pressed against an unyielding coldness that I know must be Jarvis and out of the corner of my eyes I catch a flash of a face so twisted by rage that I fear—for the very first time—that he may take what remains of my life in exchange for my words.

His black hair tosses about his face though wind has never touched this hall and his eyes have bled out into pools of midnight pitch. Never before has he allowed me to see his fangs extended and in that moment he bares more resemblance to a pit viper than a man.

You fight too much, too hard. Tell me, after, if it was worth it…and before I can ask the obvious, “After what?” his head has recoiled and snapped forward, fangs sinking through my neck and almost into my spine. Again I find myself screaming my throat raw but it makes no difference. A flash of verse, less than half-remembered, races through my mind,

And you know that if it ever did relent, it would not be because it cared. The words echo though my mind, but the voice that speaks them if familiar, female, and kind.