He nodded. “Let me guess. You were with a vamp—someone more than a few days old.”
It took me a minute, before my eyes cut to Twitchy. “A few days?”
Jules glanced at the guy again, who seemed to be taking the relaxation thing seriously. He was slumped in his chair, staring at cows. “Okay, maybe a few weeks. Definitely not over a month.”
“A few— What is he doing here?”
It was a fair question, because baby vamps were, well, pretty useless. They were mostly carried for the first few years in any family, being given easy
, human-level tasks that didn’t require thinking anywhere close to morning, when their brains got all fuzzy. And which utilized the few things they were good at: lifting heavy items, running fast, and, uh, that was about it.
They weren’t even trained much at first, because it took time for their senses to sort themselves out. You can’t just go from a human nose to one like a bloodhound’s and not have it throw you. Or from human hearing to suddenly hearing everything, including conversations a mile off. Or from human sight to vision that could act like a camera’s zoom lens at will—or randomly, if you didn’t know how to control it.
Which was probably why Twitchy had just grabbed the arms of his chair and jumped back—
At a sudden attack of cow.
“Oh, for— I said relax,” Jules snapped, and then sighed when the guy promptly went limp.
“Sorry,” he said as Twitchy slid off the chair and onto the floor, almost like he was boneless.
“You’re not even one of them anymore,” I pointed out, as Jules grabbed him and stuffed him back in his chair. And turned it to face the nice, blank wall to his left, huffing a little with the effort. “Why is he following your commands?”
“Because he’s traumatized,” Jules said, watching Twitchy for a moment to see if he’d stay put. He did. Jules went over to the cabinet with the bronco, which swung outward to show a hidden bar. “There’s a reason they usually separate babies for a while, even from other family members. You know, bunk them with a mentor to see that they don’t walk out into the sun or something, and give them a chance to adjust.”
I nodded. Tony had had a special room he called the nursery, set up behind one of his businesses. Any new vamps he made stayed there for at least the first six months, and sometimes longer depending on how well they were taking it. Because it could be pretty shocking: hearing the family talking in your head all day, the whole bloodlust thing, the new senses . . . Most of the time, babies were considered to be doing pretty well if they didn’t lose their minds and run amok.
You know, too often.
Although I’d never seen one quite this bad.
“Traumatized by what, exactly?”
Jules handed me a glass and then sat on the edge of the cabinet with his own. He didn’t offer the vamp any. It would have been a waste of good whiskey; at that age, everything just tasted gray.
“Like I was saying, he came into contact with someone with power, right?”
I nodded. “Mircea.”
“Hoo boy. Yeah, that would do it.”
“Do what?”
“That,” Jules said dryly, pointing his glass at the vamp. “Let me guess. New guy here was bugging the shit out of Mircea, who told him to be quiet, right?”
“More or less. How did you—”
“Had it happen to me once, as a newbie. Always liked to talk too much. And there was this guy—Roberto. You met him?”
“No.”
“You haven’t missed anything. He loves to torment the new arrivals, or he did. Mircea lent him out to another master a few years ago, and we’re all hoping it’s permanent. Anyway, someone told him my last name was Fortescue, and he thought that was funny as hell. Told me to ‘keep a stiff upper lip, old chap,’ laughing the whole time. I didn’t know why. Till I realized: I couldn’t move the damn thing at all.”
“Move what?”
“My lip. Spent two days sounding like I had a serious speech impediment until someone figured it out and countermanded the order.”
“But it wasn’t an order. It was a figure of speech—”