Ward of the Vampire
Who in the world would have said no?
Certainly not me.
And don’t fool yourself; you wouldn’t have said no either.
If I’d known what was going to happen… No, even then I’m not sure I’d have refused to go. I couldn’t have. And I mean that quite literally. Couldn’t, as in not physically able to. Not without my body refusing to obey my commands, or losing the simple ability to breathe.
The biggest holiday bash in New York City, with reportedly a dozen different caterers booked for the event, five bands, everyone from New York’s ‘who’s who’ on the guest list, along with a few A-listers flown straight in by private jet from Hollywood, all that in a renovated mansion—a castle, really—right off Central Park… And of course, one of the most famous yet elusive men in town, a businessman, philanthropist and friend of the arts, just turning forty, and an eminently eligible bachelor…
Well, at least that was what newspapers, TV anchors and various blogs had been saying since October. I should know. I’d been reading every article and blog post, watching snippets of news where the party was mentioned almost obsessively.
Why, yes, I did make a scrapbook about it, but that’s part of my job, not a sign that I have OCD, not at all.
See, I think I was one of the first people not directly involved in the planning of that party to have heard about it. It was mid-August when Miss Delilah, my boss, received the envelope, and she must have been one of the very first guests who did. In the following months, that blue envelope became famous enough that dozens of articles and blogs posts were written about it.
Someone—someone obsessive, not at all like me—played Sherlock Holmes and discovered that the thick, textured paper from which the envelope and matching stationery were made had been handcrafted in a French monastery, and that the distinctive blue color came from a local flower. I could tell you which flower, but that’s hardly the point and again I’m not that obsessive about it. Really.
As I was saying, Miss Delilah received the envelope in August, and I got to open it, the way I do all her mail. She wants business correspondence on her desk when she comes down from the penthouse, which is usually around two or three in the afternoon. Personal letters, invitations to Broadway shows, gallery openings and things like that don’t make it to her desk until seven or eight when she’s done with work.
I knew which pile this would go in as soon as I looked at the return address. It was handwritten in elegant cursive letters, like Miss Delilah’s address. I recognized the sender’s name at once. I knew Morgan Ward to be Miss Delilah’s brother.
He’d never come to her office, at least not when I was there, but he called, every now and then. He’d never said more than a few words to me—“Mr. Ward for Mrs. Stanford, please.”—but he has the kind of voice that makes you shiver, and never mind what he says.
You know the kind of voice I mean; one of those rumbling, warm, rich chocolate voice with a touch of whiskey, the kind that any single woman, and probably quite a few married ones, too, would listen to for hours on end even if it meant listening to something as dull as the entire Federal tax code.
Or maybe that’s just me.
I couldn’t recall him writing to her before, and I’d undoubtedly have remembered if he’d sent such a distinctive envelope, closed with a perfect circle of red wax imprinted with a seal in which a W and M were superimposed. It felt old-fashioned and elegant, and I wondered if he’d addressed the envelope and imprinted the wax himself, or if he had a personal assistant to do these things for him.
I carefully slid a letter opener under the wax to lift it without breaking the seal and pulled out a sheet of blue paper that matched the envelope. The same W and M symbol was embossed in silver in the upper right corner.
A
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