The Donor House: Alice: A Death at the Donor House (part 4)

[k_a_webb]

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

“There are two things we need to do,” Nick said, sounding more optimistic. “We need to ask some of the vampires we trust to guide the new arrivals, rather than it being Alice, Blake or Nadia. That way if a vampire has come from the auctions or has a creator who isn’t trustworthy they might open up more. It’s something we should have done before, but we got complacent. Then the trial period for vampire new arrivals needs to be longer if we don’t know them. Unfortunately it seems that three visits isn’t enough.”

Lewis nodded. “Maybe it should be number of feeds, rather than number of visits. For the first five feeds they have to have someone we trust watching over them to make sure that nothing goes wrong. When they’re in the general populace everyone always watches the new vampires, just in case, so visits aren’t so much of a worry.”

“Okay, that means we need to change the rule book,” Issac said. “I think we need to close our doors to new arrivals, both vampire and donor, for at least a week, to give us time to get things sorted out. Nick can still conduct interviews, but we need to push back any planned new donors until we know we’re right about the vampire and we’re happier about our ability to keep the donors safe.”

“I walked into Dominic earlier,” Alice said, watching Issac as he wrote more notes on his piece of paper. “The donors aren’t going to let us get closed down either.” She smiled, this time a happier smile. “We need to have a gathering and let them know what’s happening, as soon as possible.”

“We also need to find the vampire,” Blake said, from his corner. “I think we need to send someone like Jean-Luc, or maybe Kisten, out to search, because I’m almost certain neither of them were here when she was.”

“Do we trust Kisten to do something like that?” Lewis asked.

Alice looked at Blake. They were the two who had spent the most time with Kisten and she knew what Blake thought. She was certain there was a time when he hadn’t been the vampire she knew, but he’d managed to let go of whoever he had been.

“Kisten is trustworthy,” Alice replied, utterly sure that he was. “I’ll text Garion as well.”

“Is Garion still going to help us out?” Nick asked.

“We talked last night.” It had been a hard conversation, but Alice was glad she’d rung him to tell him, instead of letting him find out via the newspapers. “He knows that we’ve done everything we could to make sure that something like that wasn’t going to happen and now that it has we’re going to do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t happen again. According to him we’ve been good for the town, so he’s going to help us as much as he can. That was the first vampire related death in this town since we opened. So’s Cate.” That had been another difficult conversation. “I think we’ve made enough human friends in Bognor to have some real back-up this time.”

“Good,” Lewis said, smiling. “We get to work now. Blake, you call Kisten and Jean-Luc. Get them out on the streets. If we’re going to find her we need to find her soon, otherwise someone is going to get her out of town. You know where to get them to look. Alice, you get the gathering planned. I think it would be best if you and Nick headed it, if that’s okay with you, Nick?”

“That’s fine.” Nick looked slightly confused, but happy to be asked.

“You two are the vampires the donors know best, because of the positions you’ve taken.” Lewis explained. “Issac, I know you’re going to work on the rule book, but can you also contact the council. We have to get in before they do. Get someone to visit, look around the house, and tell them about the changes we’re making. Hopefully we’ll have the vampire who caused the death to show him that we’re not going to walk away from our problems.”

Lewis sighed. “I’ll contact the donors parents. John, if they decide to come to the house I’d like it if you could talk to them as well.”

“Of course, Lewis.” John smiled at him. “Everything will work out.”

“We also need to have a gathering of all the vampires who visit regularly,” Blake said. “They need to know what’s happening too.”

“Donors first,” Lewis said, nodding, “and then we get the vampires in. The easiest way to do that is for each of us to contact the vampires we know best and leave a message on the notice board for those we can’t call.”

Squeezing Nick’s shoulder, Alice looked around the room. Once again she was grateful that they’d chosen to let both John and Blake get involved in the running of the house. It had proven, time and time again, the right thing to do, because they could see things differently. Nadia was often in meetings as well, but someone was needed to man the reception desk and with what had happened Nadia was the only vampire they trusted. She knew that Alice would tell her what had happened as soon as the meeting ended.

“Let’s get going then,” Alice said, knowing that once she got downstairs she’d be able to give the donors the answers they needed.

Nick was the first to leave, which was what Alice had been expecting, so she followed him. He stopped at the elevators and turned to look at her, their eyes meetings. She didn’t even stop to think as she walked up to him and wrapped her arms around him.

“Are you going to be okay?” she asked.

“I think so,” he replied, curling his arms around her.

“If you need to talk about anything then you know where I am.”

“Yeah.” Nick smiled. “The room next to mine.”

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.