Ward of the Vampire by Kallysten

said. “I gave you a second chance to be nice. It was all a fantasy. Your fantasy, I might add. I was just along for the ride.”
    Did I say I was confused? Never mind confused. I was two seconds away from having myself committed for psychiatric evaluation.
    Words were escaping me. I needed him to actually explain everything and start making sense, but I could hardly even think. Only when my teeth started chattering did I realize I was trembling. Every inch of my exposed arms and back was covered in goose bumps. Mr. Ward lifted his gaze to the sky, sighed heavily, then picked his jacket from the banister and thrust it toward me.
    In my memory, he’d wrapped it over my shoulders ever so gently. The dissonance made my head hurt, but I did take the jacket and slipped my arms in the sleeves. It was too big, but that hardly mattered. I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to warm up. The fabric was too light to help much for that, but the scent clinging to it, his scent, the barest hint of cologne mixed with cigarette smoke… Heat zinged through me.
    “Come on.” He sighed again, picked up my purse and handed it to me. “Let’s get you inside before you die of hypothermia.”
    He didn’t wait for me to answer and opened the window; I followed him inside, my mind still churning over images and sensations—a fantasy, he’d called it. My fantasy.
    What on Earth had just happened?
    Without thinking, I followed him through two guests-filled rooms, and a tiny part of me noticed that he’d been right. No one stopped him to congratulate him on his birthday. No one knew who he was. No one, or almost.
    In the back of the second room, a man was standing against the wall between double doors and a tapestry that had already been ancient by the time this country was founded. He wore an expensive-looking suit, but his white tie and gloves marked him as one of the staff, as did the way he inclined his head toward Mr. Ward.
    “Stephen, would you be so kind as to find my dear sister and invite her to join me and my… guest upstairs?”
    The man inclined his head again. His eyes flicked toward me and something gleamed in them. I almost want to say recognition, but I was pretty sure I’d never met him before. I‘m good with faces, and he had distinctive features that looked finely chiseled from a dark wood. A neatly trimmed goatee was barely more than a shadow around his mouth and down to his chin, a few gray hairs betraying he wasn’t as young as the rest of the servers offering drinks and canapés to the guests.
    “When you say ‘invite,’ sir,” he said in a deep but quiet voice, “how forceful do you wish me to be?”
    Mr. Ward had started to reach for the door handle. He paused and looked at Stephen, his eyebrows furrowed as he considered the question.
    “Don’t get yourself hurt,” he finally said. “If Lilah is reluctant, please tell her she already insulted me once tonight. That should be enough to convince her.”
    Stephen inclined his head again then pushed away from the wall. He was gone without another word. And I was more confused than ever. A ‘forceful’ invitation? Not getting hurt? An insult?
    “Come,” Mr. Ward said, and my body was moving before I even knew it.
    He’d opened the door, revealing a narrow staircase. Well, when I say narrow… The other staircases in the house were on a ‘Gone With the Wind’ scale. This one? Three people could have climbed side by side. He closed the door behind me, and at once the sounds of the party faded. They weren’t just muffled. They just ceased. Talk about insulation. Someone could have screamed, right where I stood, and no one would have heard even if they’d been standing right outside the door.
    It did not make for a pleasant realization.
    Mr. Ward started walking up the steps. When I didn’t immediately follow, he glanced back at me. I jumped into motion and went after him, my hands clenched on the sides of my dress, lifting it up so I wouldn’t trip