Today’s excerpt comes from Night Myst.
Series Page link: Indigo Court
Book Page for Buy links: Night Myst
THE FOYER TWINKLED. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, with a hundred crystals dangling from the incandescent candlestick lights, and the hallway glittered as if bathed in diamonds from the refracted light.
“How beautiful,” Rhiannon whispered.
Looking to the left, a short hallway forked to the right directly before ending in a set of double doors, their ivory surfaces covered in golden scrollwork. Directly in front of us, a master staircase led up several flights, splitting in a T at the central landings.
To our right, the hallway forked in a left turn, but the double doors were open and music filtered out from the room.
Huge potted plants decorated the foyer, miniature trees in porcelain urns that must have easily weighed a hundred pounds without the weight of the soil or plant. Tables lined the walls—long consoles in marble and wrought brass and bronze. Paintings lined the walls and as I approached the nearest I saw the name Monet and the brush strokes and realized that it was authentic. Whoever owned this estate had money. Good money.
The room was lit with chandeliers and a rotating disco ball, but somehow none of the glitz looked tacky, just sparkly and brilliant. There were odd scents in the air—perfumes that I’d never smelled but that made me think of lush gardens and opium dens.
And then, there were the vampires. I had fleeting glimpses of actual humans in the crowd, but the vampires were easy to pick out. Pupilless eyes might be freaky on Little Orphan Annie, but the vamps made them work. It would be so easy to fall into the blackness, to lose yourself in that shining void.
They seemed to be dancing in slow motion, strobed by the flashing of the rotating light, caught in freeze-frame to the rhythm of the music. The room was filled with Armani and Vera Wang and Calvin Klein and Yves Saint Laurent’s Rive Gauche, and I began to realize these were power players. Old money scented the room, oily and thick and rooted in deals long dust.
“Are there any poor vamps?” Rhiannon whispered, and several of the nearest dancers turned their heads our way. One gave us a long, languorous smile. “Oh shit, they heard me,” she added.
I nodded back at the smiling vamp and murmured under my breath, “Yeah, watch your mouth.”
Such a great series!