“No,” the woman said flatly. “I intend to meet this human girl to whom you’ve taken such a fancy.”
Frederick barked a humorless laugh. “Over my dead body.”
“That’s easy enough to arrange.”
“Edwina.”
“No need to get snippy with me, Frederick.” The woman started pacing again, her heels clicking so loudly across the hardwood floors it sounded like she was determined to break a hole through to the apartment on the second floor. “If I cannot make you see reason, perhaps this Cassie Greenberg will be more malleable.”
At the sound of my name, my heart thundered so loudly in my ears it drowned out the rest of whatever Frederick and the woman shouting at him were saying. I guess this argument concerned me after all.
Maybe I should intervene.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I threw open the apartment’s front door.
The woman in the living room looked roughly my parents’ age, with crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes and graying hair at her temples. Any similarities between the woman currently glaring ice daggers at me and Ben and Rae Greenberg ended there, though. Her dress was an all-black silk-and-crepe affair with velvet puffed sleeves, made in a vaguely historical mash-up of a style that would have looked right at home on the set of Bridgerton.
Her eye makeup, though, was what really drew my attention. The last time I’d seen face paint that dramatic I’d been in middle school, when Sam’s older brother dragged us to see a KISS cover band on a night their parents were out of town. It stood out in such sharp contrast with her overall pallor it made my eyes ache to look at her.
“Is this her?” The woman pointed an accusatory finger with a perfectly manicured bright-red fingernail in my direction. But her eyes stayed fixed on Frederick. “The hussy you have thrown everything away for?”
“Hussy?” I couldn’t believe my ears. Who talked like that? “Excuse me, but who are you?”
“This,” Frederick said, hissing the word, “is Mrs. Edwina Fitzwilliam.” A pause. “My mother.”
Time seemed to stop. I closed my eyes, trying to make sense of what Frederick had just said, and of the ridiculous situation I now seemed to be in the middle of.
His mother?
But how was that possible?
Shouldn’t his mother have been dead for hundreds of years?
Then Mrs. Edwina Fitzwilliam bared a set of sharp, pointed fangs at me, and it all clicked into place.
“You’re a vampire, too,” I breathed, feeling dizzy and weak-kneed.
“Of course I’m a vampire,” Frederick’s mother said, before sauntering across the room like she owned the place. Which, I realized with a start, might be true. I didn’t know anything about Frederick’s finances—or really very much about him at all.
That had never been clearer to me than it was right then.
“I am not going back to New York with you, Mother. That had never been my plan.” His eyes flicked to mine, filled with guilt. “Cassie has nothing to do with it. Leave her out of this.”
Mrs. Edwina Fitzwilliam waved a dismissive hand at me. “Fine. In that regard at least I will do as you say. In fact, out of respect for you, I won’t even eat her.”
“Mother—”
“There is no need to return to New York with me,” his mother cut in. “The Jamesons are arriving in Chicago tomorrow evening. You will speak with them here.” I had no idea who the Jamesons were, but Frederick clearly did. At her words he took a small, involuntary step back. He looked stunned, as though she’d just slapped him.
“I would have thought by returning Esmeralda’s gifts both she and her parents would have inferred my lack of intent to marry her.” He paused. “The last time I wrote I told Esmeralda in no uncertain terms that I would not go through with it.”
It’s a good thing I was standing near the couch. If I hadn’t been, my legs giving out upon hearing the words marry her would have resulted in my landing on the floor—and would have been a whole lot more uncomfortable.
“The message was received, my dear.” Frederick’s mother glared at him. “You could not have been clearer in your intent if you had announced it at a dinner party full of guests.”
“Then why are they coming here?”
“Because the Jamesons interpret your actions, as I have, as a clear sign that you have not been in your right mind since your awakening. They agree with me that this matter cannot be left to correspondence, and that a personal meeting is necessary.”