Electric Bellageloo
“So,” Trenchant said, her smile as brilliant as the light of dawn on marble. “What did we think of the book?”
“I gather you liked it,” Fenrir said, settling deeper into his wolf-pelt greatcoat. Smoke glazed the air from his ivory-handled pipe.
Before Trenchant could answer, Anatole piped up: “I read it.” Her smile was broader than Trenchant’s and sharked up to her eyes with excitement. “All the way to the end.”
“Well, congratulations,” Trenchant said, tone flat. “That is what we’re here for.”
Fenrir raised an eyebrow in Anatole’s direction. “You have been rather scarce among events over the last two weeks. One can assume it’s because you’ve been reading then?”
“I finished the book in one night,” Seth said.
“Well,” Anatole said. “One must do one’s part, as well as one’s duty. For that reason, we’ll have visitors around midnight.”
“You missed their appointment,” Fenrir said.
“I, was, reading!”
“So your duty falls on you tonight.”
“Yes, so if we can have this all wrapped up by midnight, that would be grand. It’s just a border dispute between two of my barons. It’s a bother, but the fief must fief on, as they say.”
“Who?” Dracula said from behind her.
Anatole spun, crouching into a defensive stance. Her chair slammed backwards with a crack like thunder. Then she saw who it was, and snapped: “Oh, you again. How about you show some breeding and stop sneaking up on honest folk.”
Seth stood to collect her chair, replacing it carefully.
“What?” Dracula said, brows furrowed.
“Don’t worry. We’ll let you know when we find any,” Seth said.
“Any what?” Dracula asked.
“Honest folk.”
“Oh har har,” Anatole said. “You went through all that trouble to collect my chair just so you can toss a little dart my way? Awfully regal of you. I can see why they call you Nine-Pence.”
“It’s Little Prince!” he hissed.
“So long as you remember that,” she said, sitting back on her chair.
“I missed something,” Dracula said.
“Don’t worry,” Trenchant replied. “If any of us were here altogether, we wouldn’t be, if you get me.” She directed Dracula to a vacant chair. “Now, on to the book?”
“Eager,” Fenrir said. “But I’ve got places to go as well, so I don’t mind.”
“Yes,” Anatole said. “For once, the book wasn’t boring at all! The Vampire Diaries had diaries, just as its name promised, and all the nice, little, evil things that make the nights less dull! Love triangles, brothers duelling to the death, mistaken identities… The whole lot.”
“The Vampire Diaries?” Trenchant said, her tone lilting to the end of the question.
“-Actually played a part! And it wasn’t just some daft meta-magic mumbo-jumbo like last time. It was an actual book! In the book, I mean. A book within a book! The Gilbert ancestor diaries. Can you imagine! Diaries… About our kind…” She laughed to herself, ending it with a gratified sigh.
Fenrir’s brow furrowed. He pushed his glasses back up his scarred nose and leafed around the bookmarks in his copy. “I think you’re remembering that roleplaying thing we tried last year.”
“Just to be clear,” Trenchant said, carefully slipping her copy of Twilight back into the folds of her dress, “The Vampire Diaries…”
“Yes,” Anatole said. “They played an actual role in the story, unlike last time. And Klaus! What an entrance!”
“Klaus?” Fenrir muttered, now leafing furiously.
“I found the book insipid and petty,” Seth said from his chair, arms crossed over his copy of the book. “All that focus on who likes who, I mean, what does it say about humanity? Or even our gens? Hollow and superficial.”
“You take that back!” Anatole said. “It was magical!” She elbowed Trenchant in the ribs. “You back me up, Madame, you loved it, admit it!”
“I, er,” Trenchant said in a daze.
Anatole shoved the cover of her series tie-in copy under Trenchant’s nose. “Look at it, they’re so pretty! With those eyes, and that coiffed hair! I mean… Those cheekbones… Could you not just-” She mimicked snapping her jaws, a playful light in her eyes.
“I…” Trenchant said.
“Yes,” Dracula replied firmly, sliding forward in his seat, a dark gleam in his eyes.
“Come now, Nine-Pence,” Fenrir said, still distracted by his referencing. “Don’t be petty just because your feelings got stung. You know what happens if you put your hand in the mouth of a wolf. Hmm, the only diary I remember was the girl’s diary. Elena, that was her.”
“I just don’t understand why these books are so popular when they teach us nothing,” Seth went on. “Is there even love in this so-called romance gibberish? This Stefan character…” His lips turned down in a grimace. “-He avoids this girl because she looks ever-so-much like his former love, the woman he would have died for, the only woman he could ever love-”
He broke off abruptly, ruffling through his papers, head down.
“Not everyone reads to learn,” Fenrir said. “Draccy, old boy, you remember any ancestor’s diaries in this book? Or a Klaus?”
Dracula peered at the copy still held by Anatole, eyes squinting, lips moving.
Then he finally said: “That is indeed a book.”
“A great book!” Anatole finished for him.
“Ah, elucidating,” Dracula finished.
“Very entertaining,” Anatole added, ad finitum.
“Certainly noteworthy,” Dracula said.
“Stop that, or you’ll end up as you did in your book.”
“I’m in that one too, if you haven’t noticed.”
Anatole glowered at him, but chose to say nothing with a borderline dignified: “hmph.”
“Anyway,” Seth interjected, appearing to have recollected himself. “Anyone have as much of an issue as I have with the plot contrivances in this novel? The lapis lazuli rings, mayhap?”
“Aw, yes, that would be grand,” Anatole said. “Can you imagine, traipsing about the daytime just because some witch gave you a ring?”
“Witches too?” Fenrir said. “Don’t recall any of those.”
“Just so the plot can happen,” Seth scoffed. “Contrived! You don’t even have to wear the damn thing. A chain around the neck is good enough. What happens if I decided to ingest it? Hmm? Would I then be immune to sunlight forever, and no one could steal my ring? I bet that’s going to be a plot point going forward.” He stood from his chair and paced the length of the room, brushing his fingers back through his hair in furious sweeps. “At least in Twilight they had the decency to use the weather, instead of some magical doohickey.”
“Now here’s an idea,” Trenchant said, the smile returning. “Since everyone is so busy tonight, what about we all go home and meet again in two weeks instead. Perhaps we can read this Twilight book that our dear friend here mentioned.”
“And why did the author make Damon so needlessly cruel. Crafted as a moustache-twirling villain, tying the heroine to the train tracks!”
“For heaven’s sake, Nine-Pence,” Anatole said, rolling her eyes. “Sit down, would you? You’re railroading the conversation. And I, for one, would like to talk about this one. We haven’t even gotten to the Klaus’ curse and the wolf girl’s pregnancy yet-”
“-There’s only one explanation.” Fenrir snapped his book shut. “If this… The Awakening is the first book, then it stands to reason that there are other books. You’ve clearly read ahead. Or read the wrong book.”
Trenchant did her best to make her armchair appear unoccupied.
“A baseless accusation!” Anatole snapped. “You take back your words, Sir, or we shall meet on the isle.”
“It’s only baseless if there is no base,” Fenrir said, his tone mild. “I prosit that you, by talking about things that didn’t happen in the book, have not read the book.”
“The brother’s duel was in the book,” Seth said. “But again, only for contrived plot reasons! Both at the same time? Come on, we all know that I… I mean, Damon is the better duelist, and this flopsy birdmuncher Stefan stood no chance.
“You want to see who is the better duelist?” Anatole said. “I’ll show you…”
“Do books always make vampires so heated?” Dracula asked Seth.
“You need only to look at your distaste for your own book for your answer, alder friend,” Seth said.
“Ah, fair point. I don’t mind a good duel. Perhaps at some point, I’ll have someone teach me to read.”
Seth’s incredulity was interrupted by Anatole’s steel-heeled boot clanking onto the table. “Nose out of the book, old wolf,” she said. “We go defend my honour at the isle.”
“What do you mean, learn?” Seth hissed, carefully guiding Dracula out of the line of fire. “You joined a book club without knowing how to read?”
Trenchant nonchalantly slipped her long fingers into Seth’s pocket and extracted his immaculate copy of The Vampire Diaries.
“This is a book club?” Dracula answered.
“Remove yourself from our esteemed host’s furniture,” Fenrir growled. “Lest you make more of a fool of yourself.”
“Oh, calling me a fool now, are ye? I was envisioning a spirited bottom-kicking for you, but now I’m starting to take things seriously.”
The lights in the room darkened like someone was playing with a dimmer switch.
“I guess it can’t be helped,” Seth said to Dracula. “Here, you can borrow my copy.” Seth reached to his pocket but found it empty. His eyes darted to the table, then to the quarrelling Anatole and Fenrir, then to Trenchant, who was sitting serenely like a cat in a bowl of cream, leafing through her copy of the book.
Seth narrowed his eyes, and the room darkened evermore dramatically.
“Erm, excuse me,” a new voice said from just inside the beaded curtain entryway to the Reading Room. He was joined by a female vampire, both finely dressed in fashionable attire. Their masks of officious detachment held in place by sheer force of will in the face of the growing miasma of antagonism.
“I make no accusations,” Seth said carefully, to the room in general. “But I appear to have mislaid my first-edition copy of the book we were discussing. It only arrived the night before last from my procurer, and I cherish it greatly.”
“Oh,” Trenchant said without looking up. “That’s why you had to read it all in one night. Not like you to be forced into rushing things due to a lack of proper planning, dear Prince.”
“-I wasn’t calling you a fool,” Fenrir continued as if the interruption hadn’t taken place, his tone maddeningly flat. “But a fool you will be if you don’t cease making a scene.”
Anatole D’Mycenea, Queen of the Black Water’s eyes flashed black, sharklike, bottomless, and the room took on a damp, drowned quality.
“I am a reasonable creature,” Seth D’Asur, Last Scion of the God King said. “But I have certain inalienable aspects that I feel obliged to not stand back on. Certain possessions that I value, highly.”
“Just admit it,” Fenrir said. “You didn’t read the book. You can’t lie to me. I abhor lies, Queen of the Black Water.”
Just then, an icy howl heard more with the heart than with the ears creaked through the floorboards and high-set basement windows both.
“Er,” the first of the two newcomers by the entry said. “Perhaps, I shall come back later.”
“We can’t,” the lady vampire whispered.
“Oh, your wolf spirit trick won’t work on me,” Anatole spat through clenched teeth. “Do you know how many wolves drown in this sea every year?”
“Has anyone seen my bloody book?” Seth said, eyes fully on Trenchant. There was a sound like the chittering of spiders trapped in a matchbox underlying his words.
The two visitors looked at one another.
“Just split the fief down the middle of the street?” the gentleman vampire suggested.
“Solomon’s bargain?” the lady countered.
“I split and you pick.”
“Deal.”
The two shook hands and hurried out.
Anatole spun on her heel. “Oh, they’ve gone.” She flopped back into her chair, the room seemed to dry a few degrees. “You’re right, of course, Fenrir Jarl. I didn’t read the book. I watched the series. Damned good, that thing. It’s got a spin-off too, and I can’t wait to get stuck into it.”
“What the devil’s a series,” Fenrir said, his brows furrowed over his glasses. The howling had ceased.
“It’s like a film but longer, but broken up into tiny, little bits, that you can watch one after the other.”
“And you watched all of that these last two weeks instead of spending a night or two to just read the book instead?”
“You did it all to avoid those two, didn’t you?” Trenchant said.
“They are an awful bore, and look! They played nice and sorted it out all by themselves.”
“Seen. Damned. Book!” Seth hissed between clenched teeth, his hands flat on the table. The lights licked and flickered as if something alive was trying to burst forth from them.
“Trenchant,” Anatole said. “Please cease being a dog of the female persuasion and give our fuming little lord his toys back, before he allegedly burns this place to the ground as well.”
“Right-o,” she said, tossing the book in between Seth’s thumbs with alarming accuracy. “So,” she continued, “Same place and time next week? What about we give Twilight a go?”
“A no from me,” Fenrir said. “Can’t deal with two romances back to back. Besides, I hear they sparkle. Not sure how I feel about that.”
“But that’s the best part!” Trenchant said in a small voice. “It’s beautiful!”
“I’m sure Seth has a good recommendation for us this time,” Anatole said, seemingly disinterested. “He had one ready last time if I recall.”
Seth scooped up his copy of The Vampire Diaries, and sat carefully back into his seat. He cleared his throat for composure. “I do, in fact.”
“Capital,” Fenrir said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have ice fishing to attend to.”
“You made it seem important!” Anatole said.
“You read into it what you will,” Fenrir replied, rising.
“Wish I could read,” Dracula said, suddenly behind Seth’s chair.
“We’ll make a plan, dear friend,” Seth said, his face a mask of carefully contained emotions.
