Page 7 of Great Service from Top to Bottom

Zee had many names for Reynard. One of them being, a humorless stick of ice. “No, your humor is fine,” I squeaked. Why had my voice pitched higher?

“I’ve been receiving text messages from Zodiac that are clearly supposed to be amusing, but I find them more puzzling than humorous.”

The dick texts. Oh dear. “Zee’s humor is a lot. I’ll ask him to stop.”

“No, please don’t,” he said, with some force. “Regardless of their content, I find that his messages provide some relief during the hours when I am not at the hotel.”

“Relief from what?”

“Work.”

“Oh, I see. Then you don’t enjoy your job?”

He considered the question while watching the city sweep by outside the car’s shaded windows. “It’s difficult to enjoy something you only partially understand, and have little interest in.”

“You mean, technology?” I didn’t understand much of it either.

“Money is necessary to survive in this world. Reynard Technologies serves its purpose, but I have very little interest in the day-to-day running.”

That seemed . . . sad. “If you didn’t have to run the company, what would you do? Do you have hobbies?”

“Torture, mostly.”

“Oh. Uh . . . I suppose there’s not much opportunity for that?”

“Not so much, lately.” He plucked a stray, offensive hair from his perfect pants.

“What’s your ideal job, then?”

He tilted his head in thought. “I’m not entirely sure. Vampires don’t engage in frivolous tasks. Everything we do should be in service to the queen, but with the veil as it is, we’ve had to develop independent lives.”

Like asking an ant to go find a life of its own, without its colony. “What did you do before the veil sealed shut and you inherited Reynard Technologies?”

He’d stolen the company from a small start-up, and past discussions suggested he hated that about himself. There was a great deal of Reynard’s life that Reynard did not appear to like much. When I’d first seen him climb the hotel steps, I’d assumed he was a man with power, a man in control of his fate. He’d had the flashy car, the suit, the driver, the poise. But beneath all that, he sometimes seemed as lost as the rest of us.

“I was a liaison between worlds. I regularly traveled back and forth, overseeing the wealth and lands of the royal family on both sides, ensuring everything ran smoothly, keeping operations under the human radar, so to speak.”

“Then you were vital to the royal family?”

“In their financial dealings, yes. But as you know, barons are on the bottom rung of the hierarchy. Until recently, I doubt they even knew my name.”

“Which was why you had the idea of gifting me to your queen, as a way of climbing the hierarchy, getting your name out there.”

“Indeed. Although it was my wife’s idea. And for my part in that, I remain greatly ashamed.”

“It’s fine. I understand why you did it.” The more I knew Victor Reynard, the more I understood his complicated ways. Nobody was as simple as the front they put on for others. “We’ve all done things we aren’t proud of.”

He looked into my eyes. “Have we, Adam?”

I’d left the door wide open on that one. “I mean, not me.” I chuckled, and plucked imaginary dust from my slacks. “I’m just a boring human who hasn’t done anything, ever.”

“Of course.”

That was the problem with opening up and trusting people. Trust lead to truth, and the truth would destroy everything I’d built at the SOS Hotel, and the relationships that had become precious to me.

We fell silent for a little while as the driver navigated San Francisco’s steep streets and busy traffic. Reynard knew I wasn’t human. Zee knew it too. But if I acknowledged it, that opened other doors. Doors that had to stay locked, barricaded, buried, and topped with landmines so nobody dared go near them.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I thought I’d look into Claymore’s disappearance,” Reynard said. “Although I’ve never met him, the hotel staff speak fondly of the gargoyle. Gideon Cain is at the top of my list of suspects, however, he’s been conspicuous in his absence of late, and gargoyles have been vanishing across San Francisco. Claymore’s disappearance could be related to that.”