Donor House: Cate: First Visit to the Donor House (part 2)

[k_a_webb]

Part 1

As Cate stepped into the House she looked around, remembering what the building had been like when it was still a hotel, and it didn’t seem like they’d made a lot of changes to the reception. That made sense, considering the work they’d done to the rest of it. Everyone had talked about it, wondering what the vampires were doing, but no one had been willing to ask questions – even the journalists had been affected by fear, although that hadn’t stopped them from writing articles about the House being a terrible idea that would lead to an increase in the number of vampire related deaths. So far they’d been wrong and she hoped they would keep being wrong. Very few people seemed to understand that vampires were people and that meant that there would be good and bad vampires.

“Good evening,” a female voice said, drawing Cate out of her thoughts, and she stared at the vampire behind the reception desk, unable to believe it really was her. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Alice?”

The vampire nodded. “That’s me.” She smiled. “We’re too short staffed right now for any of us to get out of doing reception duty. You’re lucky you didn’t turn up on a Lewis day. He gets so grumpy about having to sit here ‘doing nothing’ even though he spends the majority of his time doing the paperwork he has been putting off since we started building the House.”

“Lewis does his own paperwork.”

“Won’t trust anyone else with it.” Alice laughed. “That’s Lewis for you, though.”

Cate smiled, realising she had made the right choice. “I doubt you’ll have been asked this before, but have any of you thought of speaking at the local bookshop.”

“I knew I recognised you.” Alice stood and made her way around the desk. “You’re the woman who runs Echoes of Alexandria.”

“Yes, that’s me.”

For several seconds, Cate counted them using the ticking of a clock somewhere, Alice studied her. “You really want one of us to speak at your book shop.”

“One or more.” Care shrugged. “I didn’t think you’d agree, but I thought it was worth a try. From the beginning you said you wanted to be a part of this community and making yourself seen outside the House is one way of doing that.”

Slowly Alice nodded. “You’re right about that.” She brushed a hand through her hair. “You’re going to have to give me a chance to talk to the others, but I think it is a good idea.” With one hand she reached behind her and picked up a phone. “Let me ring Nick. Neither Issac or Lewis are anywhere near ready to talk about their pasts and Nick… well, it’s not going to be easy for him, either. I just think it’s past time that he let go of things he can’t do anything to change.”

“Honestly, you don’t have to do that. I don’t want to make any of you have to change your plans for the night. I just had some spare time and I thought I’d pop in tonight.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.