Conrad tensed, getting that violent expression again. "Is he here?"
"No. I don't know why I'm here and he's not, but it's the one thing I'm thankful for."
He relaxed marginally. "When did it happen?"
"The twenty-fourth of August, nineteen twenty-seven. On the night of my party celebrating my move into Elancourt. I'd just finished restoring it." The rundown estate had called to her very soul. She'd lovingly overseen every tiny detail of its restoration, slowly bringing the manor and gardens back to life.
She'd had no idea it would be her eternal home... .
"Enough about him," she said, shaking off the pall of Louis. Now that she was here with Conrad, she was determined to enjoy this conversation.
The second-ever conversation of her afterlife.
"Why do you think you became a ghost?" he asked.
"I was hoping one of you might know."
"I haven't heard the subject talked about much in the Lore - ghosts are a human phenomenon - but I understand your kind is very rare. In all my years, I've never seen one before you."
"Oh." She hadn't expected him to impart the secrets to all ghostly life, but a tad more trivia might have been nice.
"Are you... buried at Elancourt?"
"How strange that question sounds, non? Well, unless something went horribly wrong, I was buried in the city, in the old French Society's aboveground tomb." Néomi's... remains were in a coffin amidst that towering vault. There were at least thirty other bodies within. "But then, crypt robbers might have stolen my body for voodoo rituals."
He frowned at her. "Are you jesting about this?"
"Tell me, Conrad, what's the etiquette when speaking of one's own dead body? No jesting about one's bones? Am I gauche?"
He gave her a look that said he would never understand her, and might not bother trying to. "How did you come by this property?"
"I bought it. All by my female self."
"And how would you afford it?" His tone was tinged with disbelief.
Typical. "I worked," she said, unable to disguise her satisfaction. "I was a ballerina."
"A ballerina. And now a ghost."
"A warlord and now a vampire." She couldn't help but chuckle at the disparity. "What a pair we make."
He studied her. "Your laughter... seems out of place."
"Why?"
"Aren't ghosts supposed to be steeped in misery?"
"Right now, I'm enjoying talking to you - so I'm happy. I have plenty of time to be unhappy later."
"Are you usually unhappy?" he asked.
"It's not my nature to be, but my present circumstances are hardly ideal."
"Then we have that in common. Néomi, when my brothers return, I want you to steal a key to my chains."
She breathed, "Steal? Moi? Never."
"I saw you taking things from them already," he said. She gazed up at the ceiling, resisting the urge to whistle with guilt. "Why did you exchange pebbles for your thefts?"
"Well, it's one thing to take something from the living, another to give. I wanted to hear someone say, 'Now, where'd this pebble come from?' well after the fact - it would be like a record of my existence. I thought it would prove me real."
"And now, because I interact with you, you know you're real?" When she nodded, he said, "Then you'd think you'd be more appreciative, more inclined to help me. Néomi, I'm going mad just lying in this room hour after hour."
"You're already mad."
He cast her a glower. "Aren't your kind supposed to be territorial? Get me that key, and then you can be all by yourself again."
"I'm not always alone here," she said. "Families live here at times. And contrary to most ghost stories, I adore having people here. Even if they can't see or hear me, they at least entertain."
"When were the last ones here?"
"Ten years ago. A charming young couple moved in." The husband and wife had been dazzled by the incredible bargain they'd gotten on Elancourt - having no idea it was the scene of a "grisly murder-suicide," as the papers had called it.
The two had worked diligently to restore and modernize as much as they could themselves. When their first baby had come, Néomi had cosseted the little girl, rocking her cradle and putting on floating puppet shows, helping out the exhausted parents as much as possible. Yet when the toddler had begun to cry for an invisible puppeteer, the parents had gotten spooked and moved.
Néomi had been heartbroken - and alone for the next ten years... until Conrad and his brothers had come.
"You've never frightened anyone away?" he asked, as if that was precisely what he would've been doing in her position.
"In truth, I do get very territorial with vandals. I scare them off - and they never return," she said proudly.
"I've already done much more damage to your home than some vandals. Yet you won't help me leave?"
If she gave him a key, he would be gone before the chains hit the ground. And she knew she would never see him again.
Merde, that pang hurt. She inwardly shook herself. "Even if I could get it, why would I give it to you? So you could make good on your threats against your brothers?"
"You would give it to me because, if you don't, then I'm as much your prisoner as theirs."
"Why are you so keen to get away from them, Conrad? They're only trying to do what's best for you."
"You know nothing."
"Then tell me why you hate them so much. Because they turned you?"