A Taste Of A Vampire

“It must run in the family then…” Claire mumbled to herself with a soft voice before she shook her head and blinked. Her mind had shifted from a standstill to racing full steam ahead again. “You’re telling me I’ve inherited this… this home and the estate you sent me information about? This home in the photograph that you sent to me is mine?” she asked in disbelief as she stared at it in her hands.

It felt to her as if she was on the precipice of a cliff that descended sharply, and that she could not see the bottom of. It was dizzying to her in every way.

“Yes, that’s it precisely. You are now the owner of the home, the land, the title of nobility, and a considerable sum of money. You are going to be Lady Claire Everett,” he explained carefully. His tone softened again. “I’m sorry about the loss of your cousin.” He spoke with an almost wistful voice.

She closed her eyes and shook her head. She heard the words he’d said, and she knew what he was trying to convey to her, but it still didn’t make any sense at all to her. It felt like a strange puzzle piece that just would not fit into the puzzle of her mind, as though no matter which way she turned it, it just wasn’t going to fit into any space where the whole puzzle would suddenly become a picture that made any kind of sense at all.

“I know what you’re saying… I mean, I understand, but… it just doesn’t seem real. I mean… Grayson…” As she spoke the name, something in the back of her mind clicked, and years fell away in her memory, back to a summer when she had been a teenager. She had visited her uncle and aunt, and she had helped them with some of their family genealogy work. It was a work of love for her uncle and aunt, and she had some vague interest in it, but she had let it all go when she’d left their home and gone back to her own life, to school and then to college. She hadn’t thought about that summer in a long while. She hadn’t thought about the genealogy work her uncle had devoted himself to, and as she recalled it, something struck a chord in her memory.

She rubbed her forefinger over her chin thoughtfully. “You know, now that I think of it, I do remember my uncle talking about a great-great-great-grandmother by the name of Grayson. He did all the genealogy in our family before he passed on. I didn’t remember anything about her being nobility, though…” Her voice trailed off as she continued to try to piece it all together.

Claire Everett had inherited something she wasn’t expecting at all, and it felt like she had been going along a road and come to a wide river directly in her path with no bridge over it; no way forward or around it. It made no sense to her, and it made no sense in her life.

She frowned. “But… Mr. Dent, I don’t want any of this. I’m… I’m an American living in Manhattan, glued to my job and my desk, I have a really successful career and I’m… I’m busy. I don’t have any place in my life for something like this.”

She tried to sound positive, but her mind had gone in several directions as she processed what he had told her, and every one of the directions was a dead end.

“I’m an investment advisor for one of the top firms in New York. I can’t handle a property on the other side of the world.” She held the image of the property up and her eyes moved over every inch of it. “This is so… surreal!” She shook her head as she stared at the image. “I’m sorry, Mr. Dent, but you really do have the wrong person, and I’m afraid there isn’t anything that I can do for you.”

A heavy sigh sounded from him. She could hear how tired he was just in that moment, and it was magnified when he spoke, though he was kind and thoughtful. “Miss Everett, Lady… Everett, as I’ve explained to you, I have researched this to a fault. There is no one else. You have inherited all that I told you. It’s yours, legally. I understand that this has probably come as quite a surprise to you, but the truth of the matter is that it is indeed all yours. You’re going to need to take it over.”

Claire set the file down on the desk in front of her and closed her eyes, resting her head in her hand as she leaned her elbow on the desktop.

“Mr. Dent… I don’t want it.”

She heard herself say the words, and though she knew somewhere in the back of her mind that she should be surprised at herself for saying them, and that she might regret it later in her life, she realized that she did indeed mean them. She didn’t want any of it.

“Would you at least do yourself and me both the favor of at least coming to the estate to have a look at it before you make up your mind? Please, come out and see it, and after you’ve seen it, then think about what you want to do,” he pleaded gently.

Lowering her hand from her head to the desk, she looked up and her shoulders slumped lightly in resignation. “All right. I’ll think about it.”

“Very well,” he said in a quiet voice. “Could you let me know what you’d like to do as soon as possible?”

“I’ll give it some thought and call you back soon; I give you my word,” she promised him.

They said goodbye, she hung up the phone, and gazed in wonder at the file facing her. It was as if time stood still for a long moment, and she could sense somewhere deep in her that there was a crossroads in her hands.

With a quick shake of her head, she drew in a sharp breath and shoved the image and paperwork, as well as the letter, back into the file it had come in, and she closed it and put it under her arm. She stood up and almost raced out of her office, past her startled secretary, past the cubicles and ever-ringing phones, past several other doors, and down a long hall until she reached a set of double doors.

Knocking sharply, she stood and waited with her hand on the doorknob, her eyes downcast to the floor as her heart pounded and her blood rushed through her.