Fingers trembling a bit on the wheel, I turned my jeep down the familiar drive toward the Wardes' home. The green-haze of gently shivering undergrowth surrounding the road was ethereal beneath the gray-sunny glow from behind the expanse of clouds above. The property was completely transformed by the daytime.
Gravel crunched and ground beneath the tires, setting me on edge. Truthfully, I couldn't tell what was more worrisome: the fact that I was driving into a lair of vampires or that I was about to go on my first official date with Mason. The fear and anxiety all balled up together such that I couldn't tell where one started and the other ended. Despite the two warring emotions, I felt the small flicker of a third: excitement.
Scott had made me promise that, for the second date, he would be permitted to officially greet Mason. I wasn't too clear on the details of how that meeting might occur. But, it brought a smile to my face to remember his mustache ruffling in indignation the other night when I'd told him that Mason's mother would be supervising the date instead.
When I rolled up to the expansive mansion, Mason stood on the porch with his hands in his jeans pockets. A self-assured half-smirk already played on his lips. His tousled copper hair shone dimly in the clouded light from the sky. The navy long-sleeve pullover he wore over a collared shirt threw his freckled face and golden-ivory skin into relief. The perfect-fit of the garment brought forward the limber muscling of his arms and torso. It left very little to the imagination in a way that shouldn't've been possible for such a comprehensive ensemble.
The moment I parked, he moved swiftly to the door to open it for me.
"Hello," he greeted in his low, melodic bass, "I assume you had an uneventful trip?"
"Yes."
His sure-hand extended to assist me in exiting the car.
Grateful, I took it warmly. I'd chosen to wear one of the skirts I'd bought on our outing to Kenai the other weekend. I'd be around more of his family today; I wanted to make a good impression... My mouth twitched toward a petulant frown.
That doesn't matter!
Mason slowly and carefully pulled me close before tilting his head to whisper in my ear.
"Relax."
Butterflies fluttered anew in my stomach and I straightened my skirt. Amusement crinkled his glittering-green eyes as he interlaced his fingers with mine, squeezing.
"Come on in."
The solid heels of my borrowed ankle-boots clacked unnervingly upon the stone steps as he led me to the door. With my un-augmented hearing, I scoped out the house; there were little thuds and scuffs of motion, as if multiple people were home in various rooms. It was big enough, however, that my hearing couldn't quite reach every single space. As I began to slough off the shoes in awe of the grand and sparkling floors in the entryway, Mason stopped me.
"It's alright," he murmured, "I'll just be giving you a quick tour and then we'll head back out."
"Are you sure?"
Such pristine hardwood floors looked as if they shouldn't even be walked on.
"It's quite alright."
I recognized the feminine voice, but I turned with imitated-surprise nonetheless. The mother-vampire stood in the grand archway beyond the staircase, elegantly posed to one side as she regarded us with a small smile. She was dainty, with smooth curves both to her face and body, and a relaxed nineteen-fifities style to her golden-brown hair.
Nostalgia swept through me as I recognized the subtle Italian and French hints in her high cheekbones and small nose. I myself had inherited high cheekbones from my mother's side, but a slightly more Roman nose from my father. I tried to stifle that traitorous, but instinctual ease.
"Hello," I breathed shakily
Her polite smile broke into one of warm amusement. It lit up her chocolate-brown eyes. She approached slowly, like she was refraining from startling a small animal.
"Hello, Sara," she greeted, her voice like dripping honey, "It's nice to finally meet you. I'm Claire."
She extended a hand that I took, trying not to wince at the coldness.
"Claire," I repeated, releasing her.
"Welcome to our home," she waved to the foyer, then folded her hands back in front of herself, "Mason made mention that you would prefer that this date be chaperoned?"
"Y-yes,"
A rosy blush warmed my cheeks.
"Don't be embarrassed," she chided gently, "I think it's a wonderful idea. I'll just be shadowing the pair of you as you go about; please don't mind me in the slightest."
"Thanks," I whispered.
"This way," Mason encouraged, tugging gently on my hand.
To the left of the main entry was a set of French doors at the base of the staircase, but instead of taking me through those, he moved to ascend. Immediately at the top, I noticed something that nearly made my jaw drop.
A gigantic, weathered cross hung on the wall opposite us. I flared my nostrils, immediately smelling its ancientness.
"How... how old is that?"
Mason followed my gaze, "Good eye. It's about five hundred years old, give or take."
"Can private citizens just... own something like that?"
"This one's a family heirloom," he explained, pursing his lips with chagrin.
"From the sixteen hundreds?"
"Very late fifteen hundreds, actually," he laughed softly, "But yes."
"It's from Paul's side," Claire piped up, approaching the cross and running her fingers over the smoothed wood, "One of his ancestors was a priest in England- Are you alright?"
"F-fine-!" I squeaked out.
A vampire had just walked up and touched a cross. Just the other week I'd seen Mason and Kira stopped by celtic warding symbols simply scratched onto the doorframe. What on earth was the exception at play here?
"I'm fine. It's just... for something to be passed down through so many generations is just..."
"Incredible?" Mason finished.
An infuriatingly-knowing smile twitched at the corners of his lips.
"Yes," I huffed.
He reached to cup my face, his cool hand gentle as it slid from my jawline to test the temperature of my forehead. His green eyes sparkled with amusement as he appraised my still-disheveled composure.
"Was going up the stairs a little much for you?" he teased.
I scowled.
"Ah, there she is," he dropped his hand, guiding me once more with a gentle squeeze of the hand in his, "This way..."
The left hallway was short and only overlooked the foyer. The right portion was much longer and contained a bay of windows that looked into the backyard before sprawling around a corner beyond sight.
He led me right and Claire floated along behind us. This hallway was flanked by many doors past those windows, but he drew us to the very end and stood before one that likely overlooked the backyard.
He lifted a lazy hand and rapped with his knuckles, "Kira?"
"Come in," she answered in a sing-song tone.
Mason obliged, pushing open the door. It was as if we'd opened up into the backyard itself. The room was wall-to-wall plants aside from a twin-size bed squished into the corner close to the door, but even that was cloaked in a green comforter. Kira sat on the floor diagonally and with her back to us, staring at the corner of her room. There stood an assortment of stools, shelves and ottomans arranged like a sculpture and decorated with a mixture of succulents, draping vines, and a few orchids.
Kira, sketchbook in her lap, was outlining a perfect image of the display she'd clearly set up herself. As we entered, however, she set the pad aside and bounced up.
"Hi, Sara," she greeted, bounding over and reaching out to pinch the hem of my skirt, "Wearing it already, I see?"
"Yes," I confirmed, cautious of her forwardness, but eager to ask questions all the same, "Are all of these plants yours?"
"Each and every one!"
"Wow," I said faintly, struck again by the anomaly.
Plants weren't on the same level as animals. They had little in the way of 'instinct'. Yet many plants tended to die in the presence of vampires. It was well documented that whenever our people had captured a vampire, the plants around the prison would wither. Yet Kira's room stood in stark contradiction to everything I knew.
"I am the president of the horticulture club," she said petulantly, examining my astonishment with an air of insult.
"I don't know that horticulturists deck their rooms out to this degree."
"On the contrary!" she disagreed brightly, "The internet has proven that I'm not strange. There are plenty of people out there that do this exact thing."
She waved a hand flippantly at my skepticism.
"Oh, go on!" she enthused, "You've got plenty more stops before the main event. Mason's quite romantic, you know, he's planning on - "
"Kira," Mason's sharp voice cut over her next words and she giggled. He looked at me, eyes glittering with chagrin, "She ruins all of my surprises."
"It's alright. I'm not fond of surprises anyway."
"I think you'll like this one," she said, narrowing her eyes in thought, "Anyway, you ought to move on. You're wasting daylight - shoo!"
"Our time or your time?" Mason wondered with a snicker.
"Both! Now, get!"
Mason led me out past Claire who rested a shoulder against the doorway. Our trip was short and the door we arrived at was already cracked open. Mason noticed my glance toward the door beside Kira's.
"Samuel's room."
"The Labelle twins...?"
"Yes, they moved in with us at eighteen."
"Everyone gets their own room," Claire said with an air of authority, "But Samuel's not home right now."
My eyebrow twitched. Someone had readjusted at the sound of their name just beyond the closed door. I managed to control the expression. Mason knocked at the one before us.
"Come in," a familiar masculine voice called.
Leo sat in the middle of a maelstrom of scraps, screws, and various other plastic and metal paneling. He had a screwdriver in-hand and was working away at what looked like an antique device of some kind, given its size and dulled color scheme.
Anne sat on the couch in the corner of the room, watching from afar as she filed her nails. Her violet eyes flicked up to us as we entered, roving over my appearance head to foot. Cocking an eyebrow, she returned to her manicure and my shoulders slumped. Mason's hand squeezed mine. When I looked at him, he was glaring at Anne with narrowed eyes. She didn't notice. Or pretended not to.
"Mi casa es su casa," Leo waved a hand distractedly about the space.
One of the walls is a deep navy while the others were the color of cream. Various wooden furniture was littered with odds and ends and mechanical parts, but a bed wasn't present here. Just the couch Anne was perched upon. The colors would've given off a nautical feel if it weren't for the various land-bound sport paraphernalia hung on the walls: baseball bats, signed photographs, hockey sticks...
"What are you working on?" I wondered, relinquishing Mason's hand to step closer to his project, "That looks like... a radio."
"Ding-ding!" he grinned, holding up the... well, it looked like a firecracker with a wick out of each end, "Now what's this?"
I crouched. Mason came up behind me to brush the tips of his fingers along my shoulders.
"Metal hotdog on a spit," I suggested and heard a low snort from Anne.
Leo raised his eyebrows, tilting his head from side to side, "Close... it's a capacitor."
"Are you restoring it?"
"Sort of," he shrugged, picking at a few wires, "See, Annie threw a wrench in it. Now I gotta find and fix the issue."
I glanced around, reaching to pick up the nearby tool lying among the scattered screws. He stared for a moment as I offered it to him, before giving me a consolation chuckle.
"What are you; fresh off the boat?"
I narrowed my eyes, "What?"
He blinked.
"Oh, you're serious?"
"You wanted to find the wrench."
"It's an idiom," Mason explained shortly.
I glanced up curiously to see him looking away with a hand covering his mouth.
"I know plenty of American idioms!" I protested indignantly, "Just not this one."
"To throw a wrench in something means to mess it up on purpose," Mason explained.
His voice was now thick with suppressed laughter.
"If you want to get two things done at once, what idiom would you use?" Anne asked, tilting her head toward the conversation with a wide smirk.
I know that one! I thought, brimming with excitement.
"You catch two pigeons with one fava bean."
The lot of them stared emptily at me. All except Anne who merely smiled wider.
"Why... with a bean?"
Leo set down his tools to stare. Anne laughed, her voice a sharp chime.
"What?"
"The expression is to kill two birds with one stone."
"Why would you want to kill the birds!?"
"Why would you need to catch two pigeons if you weren't going to eat them?"
"Whatever. Birds were involved."
A low, rumbling chuckle hiccuped out somewhere above me and I glanced up at Mason. He turned away, hand still over his mouth.
"So why did Anne ruin your radio?" I said, ignoring his laughter.
"For fun," Leo said simply, still-chuckling at my fading embarrassment, "If I figure this out, I get to mess with her car next and she has to figure out what I did to it."
"Oh, so you go back and forth?"
"Precisely."
"What happens if you can't fix it? Does it stay broken?"
"No, the one who broke it will fix it at a cost."
Passing money from one family member to another didn't seem particularly helpful. Especially if they were pretending to be underage foster-kids. Especially since money didn't seem to be an object in this family in general.
"What cost?" I wondered with a frown.
Leo winked. I stared for a moment, then wrinkled my nose and straightened up.
"Time to move on?" Mason asked lightly.
"Yes," I said flatly, taking his proffered arm.
"You asked!"
"I regret it."
"Would you like to see my room?" Anne asked, not moving from her spot on the brown-leather couch.
I nodded, drawing closer to Mason as I did so. He brought his arm, and my hand on it, in close for a squeeze. Cold radiated from beneath his navy sweater, but I didn't mind it too much. The gesture warmed me.
Anne moved fluidly into a standing position and led the way from the room. We trailed after and I noticed Claire hang for a moment in the doorway.
"Mind your manners," she said in a clipped tone, "No vulgarity in front of guests."
"I wasn't vulgar!" Leo whined, but she stepped away crisply.
"If you need a restroom, we have this one here," Anne pointed to the door we passed over; it was left ajar and smelled mildly of citrus-vanilla cleaner, "But this here -" she pulled open the next door "- is my room."
Where the previous two had been messily arranged, this one had a very careful and clean aesthetic in mind. From the grand canopy over the king bed to the vanity stacked with various colorful makeups, everything was in-order.
"Woah," I breathed, looking for permission to move about.
Anne took a step back, her chest puffing out.
The colors were cream and gold with only hints of coral and navy, a continuation of the thought from Leo's room with a truly royal spin. The front-facing windows were framed by carefully curved curtains that lead down to a cushioned bench. I walked up to it, resting a knee on it to lean and inspect the view from the window. This was the first bedroom that actually complimented the house's natural aesthetic instead of overriding it.
From the soft cloudy light filtering in, I viewed the room in its entirety. I hadn't noticed the sewing machine until I'd turned around; it had been behind the main door. There was an antique shelving unit that centered the little workspace. It held bolts of fabrics and pinned-up projects-in-progress.
"I like this better," I whispered, returning to Mason.
"Because it isn't a pigsty," Anne sniffed, "If you would like, you may use the sewing machine whenever you wish."
"Really?"
It was an electric foot-pedal model, new and sleek and immaculate. It didn't appear well-used, but given the state of some half-finished dresses, I could only assume that it was simply well-maintained.
"Thanks."
"I can tailor that sweater for you too, if you'd like."
"Uh," I pinched at the butterscotch knit sweater. The waist was a little lower than mine and the sleeves did go past my fingers... "That's alright. I don't have anything underneath this."
"Oh, come on," she sighed, extending her hand petulantly for me to take.
I placed my fingers tentatively in hers, suppressing a wince as I did so. Mason gave an encouraging smile as I glanced back over my shoulder. His green eyes sparkled with intrigue despite the slight nose-wrinkling disdain for Anne's attitude.
She took me in through the door I'd noticed before, and immediately honed in on one of the many, many racks criss-crossing the walls. The first thing she picked, I turned up my nose.
"No."
"Don't be a-"
"I know what I like," I said firmly, pointing for her to put the lace-up crop-top back where it belonged. "That's not it."
Oddly enough, Anne smirked at that, turning obediently on her heel and rifling once again. She picked a dusty-blush, long-sleeve turtleneck this time with a small v-cutout at the chest. I surveyed it skeptically.
"My bra will show - "
"Then you'll borrow one of mine," she said simply, "Despite the baggy clothes you like to wear, I think I can accurately guess your size. You're very similar to me."
"But you're an hourglass shape."
"It's a good thing we're not trying to put anything of mine over your hips then."
I winced. She handed me the top and bra then stepped back expectantly, hands on her hips.
"We may have the same equipment," I started, allowing a bit of bite back into my tone, "But I'd still prefer privacy."
She rolled her eyes, but swiftly exited, hips swaying left to right rather moodily.
With a sigh, I removed the top and replaced it with the turtleneck-jumper that tucked neatly beneath my skirt without a single seam. Anne had definitely provided me with a push-up bra replacement instead of just a t-shirt bra. I examined myself in the mirror, feeling a prickle of nerves upon viewing the well-defined shape of my body.
But... it looked good. And felt better than that bare-it-all crop-top would've. Especially in this climate... damn vampires probably couldn't feel just how cold this place was.
Folding up my bra and the sweater, I left them in-closet. Then, tentatively, I opened the door and emerged.
"All finished."
"Lovely," Anne said and I heard a hint of pride in her voice. When I looked up, her violet eyes had warmed. Her eyes reached my face. "Chin up. With confidence, now. This is a date."
My eyes drifted to Mason. His expression was one of slack-jawed amazement that only half-recomposed under my curious gaze. He'd closed his mouth, but his eyes were still wide as he drank in my appearance; significantly altered by changing out only one item of clothing. Apparently.
"Thanks," I said quietly, returning to Mason.
"If you don't improve your math-skills by the next calculus exam," she threatened with a mischievous glitter in her eyes, "Kira and I get to decide your whole outfit; makeup and all."
"God forbid."