Chapter 112 Off.

Miller’s text came through at six in the morning. The news? Our meeting with the Countess was set for tomorrow evening.

I told the girls over breakfast, and they all had characteristic reactions.

“We must prepare!” Elsa slammed both palms on the table, rattling the syrup bottle and our dishes. “She is royalty, as am I, so we must be certain to put our best foot forward.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, babe. I kind of think it’ll be pretty chill. She’s just an American teenage girl when you get right down to it.”

Ayra was already pacing on all fours in the living room with her bushy golden tail wagging like a blur. “Master! We should bring a gift! It’s polite!”

“Again, I don’t think that’s necessary. If it was, I’m sure Miller would have given me a bit more coaching.” I took a sip of my coffee.

Juniper pulled up her tablet. “Grey makes a good point about the girl’s contemporary roots. Even so, I’ve been reading about vampire courts in literature,” she said without looking up. “They genuinely seem to follow a modified version of European aristocratic protocol, which isn’t dissimilar to what Elsa is used to as princess of Elfhaven.”

“Juniper, I love that you’re all taking this so seriously, but she’s a kid from Minnesota,” I said, leaning against the kitchen doorframe. “She probably watches the Packers and eats lots of… blood-infused cheese.”

Still, the girls had a point that it paid to be prepared. Everyone in the area knew the basics about Anya Beaumont, and more rumors were leaking out all the time.

She was a dhampir, half human and half vampire, standing in for her parents while they served out a century-long banishment in Hell.

By all accounts she’d grown up pretty normal for a girl whose mom was the most famous vampire in human history, and she’d been managing Wapa Lake’s supernatural population on her own since she was about fourteen.

What nobody really knew was what she was actually like as a person. Miller had called her “evenhanded for a kid,” which could mean anything. Kids were a diverse lot.

Juniper kept scrolling. “I am finding some additional details about her household. Apparently her uncle or older brother or something is Death.”

I waited for the rest of the sentence. It didn’t come. “Death, you say?”

“Death. The personified concept of Death. According to this subreddit titled r/WapaLore, Dracula created his consciousness centuries ago, from what I can gather. He serves as one of Anya’s guardians.”

“Dracula created an incarnation of Death itself and it’s this girl’s big brother or uncle or something.” I rubbed my face with both hands. “I’m fine with that.”

Ayra’s tail had stopped wagging entirely, which was a first. “Is Death… friendly?”

“The sources paint him as a bit of a goofball, actually.” Juniper scrolled further. “Anya also has a pet called Tria. A Cerberus Retriever.”

I leaned forward off the doorframe. “Go on.”

“Three-headed dog, essentially. But it can apparently take the form of three beautiful women, who are actually married to a veterinarian.”

“So her dog is also three hot married women. All married to the same guy, it seems. Anything else worth knowing?”

She tapped the screen a few more times, squinting cutely. “Let me see… Her current day-to-day guardian and chief advisor is a werewolf named Beverly California.”

I stared at her. “That is a wild name for a werewolf. For anyone, actually.”

Juniper shrugged one shoulder. “If you say so.”

Clementine had been leaning against the kitchen counter through all of this bullshit exposition. One hoof tapped slowly against the floor. “She’s not even old enough to vote,” she said. “Stop acting like we’re meeting the fucking Pope. I bet she still has her learner’s permit.”

Elsa spun so fast in her seat that her long blonde braid slapped my cheek. “She is a countess, Clementine. A different set of rules apply to her than for mere mortals such as you.”

“Not in Minnesota. Countesses aren’t exactly baked into our lawbooks.” Clementine took a sip of her coffee, looking me up and down. “Sit on your face later?”

“Yes. But stay focused.”

The rest of the afternoon was wardrobe crises and debates, one after another, and I was the designated judge for all of them. Honestly, I was used to seeing Elsa and Ayra mostly in see-through negligee, buck-ass naked, and variants of that, so it was a little refreshing to be reminded how they looked in actual clothing.

I tried to distract myself from my own nerves by watching TV, but every ten minutes Elsa came downstairs in a different outfit and planted herself between me and the screen.

“The silver pauldrons or the gold ones?” she asked on visit number three, holding up one of each.

I furrowed my brows. “Where did you even get gold pauldrons? On eBay again? And I don’t think they go well over a knitted sweater with ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ printed on it.”

She beamed. “Correct!”

Ayra, meanwhile, settled on her outfit much faster, but was trying on different leashes. “I’m not letting you wear that in public,” I warned her.

She whimpered and trotted away only to come back out two minutes later with two more leashes to show me.

Somewhere around outfit attempt number sixteen, Elsa decided she needed a bath to properly prepare her skin for whatever she ultimately selected. She announced this and then she looked at me with those enormous blue eyes and said, “Sir Grey, I require your assistance with my bath.”

I thought about protesting, but I’m not gay, so I went along with her as she grabbed my hand and pulled me upstairs. I also had the sense from our bond connection that whatever she needed me for was necessary in her mind for working herself out of her own nerves.

The bathroom was big enough for us both, but just barely. She ran the bath, dumped in enough of that lavender stuff she’d bought online to make the whole room smell like a botanical garden, and stripped out of her clothes while I was still rolling up my sleeves.

She caught me staring and lifted her chin. “You’re overdressed, my love,” she informed me with a devious little smile.

“I was thinking I’d start by helping you wash your hair.” I gestured at the shampoo bottle on the ledge like it was evidence in my defense.

“I was planning for you to get in this tub with me and use my body the way a good champion ravishes his First Maiden. Take off your pants.” She pointed a dainty finger at my groin for emphasis.