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Chapter Text

Hedonist that he is, Lestat has never particularly cared to be held to the constraints of a schedule. Louis may enjoy the routine and predictability of something as prosaic as the requirements of managing a business–one of his many little idiosyncrasies that Lestat simultaneously enjoys and is frequently irritated by–but for him? Non. He can enjoy the artistry of a well-planned ball or the satisfaction of a business deal well-struck, but he’s always enjoyed the freedom of not quite knowing what’s coming next. In a long, long life, it’s far too easy to fall into a rut and find oneself constrained to it for decades before noticing. 

Even with his taste for surprise, however, Louis holding out a tiny, sooty, sniffling child is a shock he is not best pleased by. 

He flicks his eyes up from the big-eyed, dripping moppet, raising a brow and feeling his lip curl slightly in distaste. The child reeks of smoke and fear and God only knows what else. 

“Put it back,” he says flatly. 

“Please,” Louis says, cradling the child close, the creature snuffling its snotty face into the crook of his neck, right where Lestat likes to press his lips, something he doubts he’ll be doing for quite some time from sheer residual disgust of the current display. Louis gives the sniveling little creature a gentle pat and an even gentler cooing noise into her ear before looking up again. 

Registering the mixture of despair and hope in his lover’s eyes with a growing sense of dread, Lestat has a sinking feeling about how the rest of this conversation is about to go. There’s a frenetic energy to Louis that Lestat doesn’t care for, the energy of an animal with its leg in a trap, a desperate, feral sort of stubbornness. 

As if his usual variety wasn’t enough to contend with. 

“My love,” he says, trying to turn the endearment into a gentling purr, “you cannot-” 

“She can be ours,” Louis says, staggering forward a step. The child still clinging to him makes a small noise of alarm at the lurching nature of the motion, but Louis even before his rebirth was no delicate flower–Lestat would never have been interested if he was–and he doesn’t drop it. 

More’s the pity. Perhaps a quick fumble resulting in a broken neck would have made this farce come to a close so they could both move on with their lives. 

“We can keep her,” Louis says, eyes too bright, burning with something that Lestat has no wish to see there. “You can-can change her. She-”

Lestat lets out a bark of a laugh, unable to help it, startled by the utter audacity of the idea. 

“C’est impossible-” 

“Please-” 

“The gift cannot be given to children!” 

“She has nowhere to go,” Louis says, desperate in a way he has no business being for a girl he absolutely does not know, and Lestat sways under the force when his lover gets a handful of his shirt over his bicep, yanking with a desperate, clumsy sort of strength. “We have to-” 

“The Great Laws forbid it!” He snaps, something he knows he should have covered with his paramour long ago. 

Perhaps then he would not have found himself in this absurdity. 

“We have to-” Louis starts, eyes fever-bright, fervent, shining like a penitent with a glance at salvation.

“We have to do nothing,” Lestat says. To the credit of the child, it has remained quiet, watching them with large, observant eyes, but without crying despite the teartracks through soot indicating that this was recently not the case. In one swift motion, he moves to pluck the unwanted thing from Louis’s grasp, but Louis holds on, getting a hand around her ankle before she’s out of reach. “Let go,” he demands. “I will get rid of it.” 

The child whimpers, reaching back to Louis with open, grasping hands, lower lip wobbling. 

The sight gives Louis an unexpected surge of strength, and he wrenches Lestat’s wrist, reclaiming the child. 

Lestat’s lips draw back, baring his teeth in an annoyed snarl. 

“You do not know this girl,” he says, stalking forward. Louis moves back, the child held more securely now, as if he’s afraid of a second attempt. If it weren’t so absurd, Lestat might laugh. “She cannot be changed.” 

“I’ll do it,” Louis says defiantly. “I’ll-I’ll change her.” 

“No,” Lestat says, low and final. “You won’t. She is too young. You would have her stuck as an infant for all eternity? You would wish that on her?” Clearly reason won’t be enough. Time to appeal to his lover’s ever-bleeding heart. “Return her to her people,” he says, softening his voice enough to coax Louis back to reason. “Ours is not a life for a child. She would be miserable. Put her back, and let her return to her kind.” 

“She ain’t got nobody,” Louis says, and he sinks his fingers into the girl’s tangled, frazzled hair. “Everybody’s gone. All of ‘em. Because of me.” 

If he didn’t think it would make things significantly worse, Lestat would roll his eyes. Honestly, the weight his companion insists on shouldering. 

“Whatever happened,” he says with a vague wave of his hand, “it is no concern of ours. Go put the child back. They will send her to-to wherever it is their spare children are collected.” And then this urchin will be someone else’s problem, and Lestat and Louis can put this entire thing behind them, with Louis hopefully having learned a valuable lesson about staying out of mortal affairs. 

“We’ll raise her,” Louis says. “We’ll-until she’s old enough. She’ll be…” 

“What?” Lestat says, unable to help a half-smile. Honestly, such dramatics for a child pulled from the streets on a foolish whim. “A pet? A lapdog?” 

“No,” Louis says, squeezing the girl so tightly that Lestat hears her let out a whining noise of discomfort, not that Louis seems to notice. “Not a lapdog.” 

Lestat feels his breath catch at the look in his lover’s eyes. There’s a promise there, a pledge of dedication, the presentation of something with which to bind the both of them in a way not so easily broken as mere words. 

“A daughter?” He says, the words clumsy on his tongue. 

Louis nods, the gesture near frenetic in its speed. 

“Our daughter,” he says. “Yours and mine. We’ll raise her. Together. I won’t leave.” He meets Lestat’s eyes, and in them, Lestat sees that Louis knows this is something desperately wanted and so far never given. It’s cruel and manipulative. 

It’s also so tempting he can feel the tug of it in his chest. 

“Please,” Louis says, crossing the room in a blur of movement before falling to his knees, the girl flailing for a moment, obviously slightly dazed at being moved so quickly. Louis doesn’t appear to notice, reaching up to grip Lestat’s hip, head bowing forward as if he’s praying. “Please. I won’t leave. I won’t ever leave.” 

An obvious ploy, something almost embarrassingly clumsy in its execution. It’s utterly foolish, the idea of a child in their home. It’s the set up to a joke, the plot of some dimestore novel not worth the paper it’s printed on. 

“Need I remind you,” he says, throat tight despite knowing he’s being manipulated, “that you couldn’t even be around your own niece without wanting to sink your teeth into her throat?” It’s a low blow, and he knows it, the sort of thing he would usually reserve only for the worst kind of fight, for when he truly needs to make it hurt. Before he’s even finished speaking, Louis is shaking his head with enough force to make the child’s head bobble as well. Really, they might not even need to have this fight. Louis’s fervor might kill the child and take care of the problem. 

One can hope. 

“I’m older now,” Louis says, pressing his forehead against him more firmly, nearly enough to knock Lestat back a step. “I can control myself. I can. We’ll raise her, our daughter.” 

Lestat lifts his eyes to the heavens, cursing every decision that’s led him here. 

But also knowing that it would take a far stronger soul than his to deny his Louis something he wants so desperately. 

“Fine,” he says, resting a hand on Louis’s head, feeling as if he’s added a century to his age in the past five minutes alone. “Keep your wretched little urchin if you must.” 

The breath Louis releases sounds like a sob. 

*

For all of his bold words to Lestat about self-control and all of his practice sating his thirst on animals, Claudia still smells like young, bubbling life, something Louis doesn’t anticipate until it very abruptly becomes a problem. When he rescued her from the burning building, her heart had merely sounded like a bird throwing itself against a cage’s bars, frantic, desperate, her little voice, hoarse from smoke, asking if he was an angel there to save her. Tiny fingers had curled into the fabric of his shirt with a strength born of sheer desperation, and he had felt nothing other than the need to get her out, to not let her faith be in vain, wrapping his coat around her to shield her from sparks as he made his way back out of the building. She had smelled of smoke and terror and tears, nothing appetizing at all. 

In the after, though, when she’s clean from a bath and wrapped in a towel…he can’t help but notice the promising thrum of life beneath her skin, the sweet, new smell of young blood, of new life. He swallows against his hunger, feeling a spark of terror low in his belly, remembering the feeling of his fangs emerging as he stared down at his infant niece. There’s no sister to worry about now, no one who would stop him from-

“Putain.” 

His head snaps up at the sound of the swear, and he sees Lestat roll his eyes before he flings a nightshirt at him, nearly catching him in the face. Claudia giggles at the sight, the first time she’s managed such a thing all night, and he manages the faintest hint of a smile for her benefit before he looks back up. 

“If you’re going to keep it,” Lestat says with a slight wrinkle of his nose that indicates how dearly he wishes they weren’t, “we will have to dress it.” 

“We’ll order something,” Louis demures, hoping his voice isn’t coming out as rough as he fears it is. As he sets her on her feet, Claudia looks up at him with big, trusting eyes. 

The faith only makes him feel more ill. He wouldn’t be her angel if he saved her from fire only to drain her now. Breathing against the worry he can’t voice–he knows what Lestat’s response would be–he tugs the shirt down over her head, wishing he had it in him to smile when her curls spring through the collar first. He breathes shallowly, trying not to inhale her scent too deeply for fear-

But no, as his nightshirt settles around her, it’s his scent that wafts towards him, enveloping hers almost completely. He can smell her, still, but it’s a faint hint. It registers, but not as something that provokes hunger, just something he could track if he needed to, distinctive but not tempting.  

He remembers now, an offhand answer to a question asked long ago. Vampires smell other vampires more strongly than they do humans. Lestat had never elaborated, and Louis had never asked further. They’re the only two vampires in New Orleans, after all. When else would the topic have come up?  

Taking a deep breath and smelling only the faintest hint of Claudia under his own smell, he couldn’t care less about the reason. 

He can only be grateful. 

“Ain’t that for dead people?” Claudia asks when they’ve retreated to the coffin room for the day. There’s no fear in her voice, just a small child’s curiosity at something novel. He shifts her to his other hip to lift the lid of his, ignoring the noise of distaste from the other vampire as Lestat climbs into his own coffin after securing the door. 

“Only sometimes,” he says. Claudia opens her mouth to ask more questions, but it seems the evening from hell has finally caught up with her, and she merely yawns, leaning forward and rubbing her cheek against his shoulder sleepily with the innocence and easy trust of a child. 

The gesture, simple as it is, fills his chest enough to leave him nearly breathless. The rightness of it, of her in his arms, fills him with the same conviction he always wished religion would. 

“Are you going to put it to bed, or simply stare at it all night?” Lestat asks dryly, chin resting on his forearm on the edge of his coffin. 

If she resents being an “it,” Claudia doesn’t mention it, just presses closer, eyes closing. 

“Best to check it for fleas before you allow it in,” Lestat suggests. “You’ll never be rid of them otherwise.” 

“Enough,” he says, but with no true heat. He knows Lestat by now. It’s easier to let him get his shots out of the way now, especially if Claudia doesn’t seem bothered by it. He’ll come around eventually. 

He just needs to show his ass first. 

“We’re sleeping in a coffin?” Claudia asks as he settles with her, setting her beside him. Again, there’s no trace of fear, just curiosity, and he smiles slightly as he reaches for the handle to shut the lid, pausing only at the last moment when he remembers nights of Grace creeping into his room when they were kids, chased by shadows and an overactive imagination. 

“You ain’t afraid of the dark, are you?” He asks, pointedly ignoring the grumbling the question provokes from the other coffin. 

Claudia shakes her head. 

“No,” she says, face scrunching a bit in thought. “Stacey down the hall says monsters live in the dark, but I don’t think so. I ain’t never seen one.” 

“They do,” comes Lestat’s muffled voice. “They eat annoying, unwanted children who don’t know when to stop talking and go to sleep.” 

“And grumpy old men from France who don’t know when to shut up already,” Louis tells Claudia, who laughs, her dimples showing. 

The silence from the other coffin is heavy with outrage.

Louis settles down with the feeling that all is finally right with the world. 

*

He wakes before he means to and far before he should, disoriented. He registers warmth and smiles sleepily, turning his head to kiss Lestat-

But no. 

The warmth isn’t Lestat. It’s too small, its scent too faint and unfamiliar. 

Frowning, Louis looks down in the dimness of his coffin. 

Ah, he thinks as soon as he registers the curly little head pressed against him, Claudia. 

From the sheer constrained dimensions of a coffin, they’d fallen asleep close together, but she’s snuggled even tighter in her sleep, practically burrowed beneath him. It was her pointy little elbow digging into his ribs that woke him. He snorts softly, pushing her back just enough that he can be sure she can actually breathe. She’s completely slack in her sleep the way only a small child ever is, limbs loose and near-boneless. She makes a soft noise in her sleep when she’s jostled, gentle as he tries to be. 

“We aren’t keeping it if it’s going to be this… noisy,” comes the muffled sound of Lestat’s voice. The volume says he’s been awake for a while and waiting for the opportunity to complain to an audience. “It has already woken me twice with its grating sounds.” 

“She ain’t noisy,” Louis responds, rolling his eyes as he resettles Claudia, curving his arm around her. She lets out one long breath before she goes still again. “Go back to sleep.” 

“Would that I could find rest, but alas, there is vermin in my home, disturbing-” 

Louis tunes the rest of his complaints out. He’ll talk himself out eventually the way he always does. 

Closing his eyes and settling his chin on top of Claudia’s head, Louis drops back into sleep, lulled by the steady rise and fall of the small back beneath his palm. 

Chapter Text

Louis wakes to a warm weight sprawled over him, and he smiles before he even opens his eyes, lifting a hand to rub gently along Claudia’s back. Her head is tucked against his neck, and he can feel the tickle of her curls, though he doesn’t mind it. She’s settled a good deal since she came to live with them, but she still has nightmares from time to time of being stuck in the burning building alone. He’s found the easiest way to settle her is holding her, so this certainly isn’t the first time he’s woken up with his child as a blanket. 

“Good morning, little miss,” he whispers against the top of her head, soft enough that he won’t wake her. 

“And will anyone else be receiving such a greeting?” Comes Lestat’s voice, and Louis’s smile widens, even as he carefully shifts to lay Claudia down. She makes a quiet, fussy noise but stays asleep as he settles her, contorting himself enough to pull the blanket over her. “There is still time to pick another, you know, mon cher. You need not burden us with the loudest one. I’m sure there are better street children available. Perhaps we can gather a selection for you to choose from. We can put them in a box like puppies.” 

He rises from his coffin, finding Lestat’s cracked open, only his eyes visible. 

“You gonna let me in, mon cher?” He teases. “Or you just gonna talk?” 

“It would serve you right,” Lestat says. “When it is you who has made me content myself with mere words for so many nights during this new whim of yours.” 

Even so, he lifts the coffin’s lid enough for Louis to join him. Louis does so, straddling Lestat’s hips and leaning down to offer him a different sort of good morning. 

*

“If I am not mistaken,” Lestat says when they’ve stopped at a cafe for the evening to feed Claudia breakfast, “they do require vegetables now and then, unless you’re looking to stunt this one on purpose.” 

“What’s stunt mean?” Claudia asks around a mouthful of grits. 

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Louis chides gently as Lestat reprimands, “swallow before you resume your ceaseless chatter.” Claudia obeys, swallowing before asking again. 

“What’s stunt mean?” She repeats. 

“It means staying small,” Louis tells her, tucking a stray wisp of hair behind her ear. Claudia pulls a face. 

“I don’t wanna stay small. I wanna get real big like you and Uncle Les.” 

Louis smiles. 

“You will,” he reassures her, though he doubts their petite child will grow into a bruiser no matter how many vegetables she eats. 

Still, it gets Claudia to finish her dinner without a fight, and for that, he’ll take his wins where he can.

*

His lover’s child has remained a trial since her introduction into their formally peaceful, happy lives. 

He wishes he could deliver an “I told you so,” but the statement is so obviously self-evident that saying such a thing would simply be butter on bacon. 

“Claudia!” Louis yells now at their wayward housepet. “Get over here right now, young lady.” His tone is firm in a way that might be interesting for other applications in the future. 

If it weren’t utterly failing at corralling a singular human five year old and entirely ruining the possibility, that is. 

Louis turns to him with an expectant, impatient look, and Lestat rolls his eyes, pushing off of the wall he’s been leaning on and walking over to join his lover at the edge of the shade. He has no idea why Louis thinks he will be more successful at wrangling the pest than he has been, but he knows that saying such a thing would lead only to fights and a coffin without company for longer than he would wish. 

“I do not understand why you insist on doing this each day,” he tells Louis. “It would be far easier to simply lock the doors. She is not tall enough to reach.” 

“She’s still growing-” Louis says impatiently, the opening salvo to an ongoing disagreement. 

“Not by much,” Lestat observes dryly. 

“-and she needs some sun now and then.” 

“Well,” Lestat says, leaning against a post and crossing his arms over his chest. “She appears to be receiving plenty at present.” He waves a lazy hand to indicate the child chasing a hoop around the courtyard. 

Right in the middle of a bright, unbroken stream of sunlight. 

“Claudia!” Louis calls again, and there’s now an undercurrent of impatience in his attempt at foolishly soft parenting. Lestat would sympathize if his lover wasn’t the entire reason they were stuck in this absurd tableau to start with instead of settling down to fuck and sleep like civilized vampires. “Come here now, young lady.” 

Claudia looks up, hair tousled and almost completely out of the ribbons it was arranged in earlier. It’s a pity, really, that she’s so careless about her clothing. It’s really the only mildly interesting thing about her as far as Lestat can see. Her hands are too small to be worth teaching piano, her reading is still too poor to comprehend anything of value, and it’s not as if Louis would ever allow him to teach her the finer points of hunting, even if she were capable of killing so much as a lamed, half-blind chicken. At least dressing her up like a little doll is generally satisfying. 

Until she goes and ruins it. 

“You talk to her,” Louis says, and Lestat cuts him a look. For all of his resistance, he is still constantly pulled into parenting the urchin. 

Not that Louis will let him parent how he thinks he should, even though he is certain one night locked in the cellar would produce wonderful results. 

“You should listen, ma petite souris,” he calls. “It is a foolish child who disobeys the parents putting a roof over her head and food on her plate.” 

Claudia looks over, tilting her head, one ragged ribbon finally giving up entirely and fluttering to the ground like a pathetic, rumpled butterfly. 

“Come here, Claudia,” he commands, and to his surprise, she actually heeds him, skipping over, the buckle of one shoe flapping with each bounce. 

“Thank God,” Louis says under his breath, extending a hand to his pet-

Only to have her giggle and dart out of reach once more, back into the sunlight they cannot follow her into. 

“Well,” Lestat says, throwing his hands to either side. “I have done all that I can. Bonne chasse.” 

*

It’s only a lucky grab–and vampiric reflexes–that let him catch Claudia before she can scamper out of reach once more after twenty minutes and four more fake-outs, and she whines through her nose as Louis swings her up onto his hip. He snorts at her pout, and that just makes her scowl more. She knows by now that he’s too strong to struggle against, but like her other father, she has an innate penchant for drama. 

“It’s daytime, Daddy Lou!” She complains as he carts her inside, locking the door behind himself as he goes. “Daytime is for playing. Night’s for sleeping.” 

“Not in this family, little miss,” he says, kissing the top of her head before putting her down outside of the room that will be hers as soon as she can be trusted not to make a bid for freedom in the middle of the day. (For the third time.) “Now go get ready to sleep, alright?” 

She stomps as she complies, but for the sake of avoiding an argument, he lets it pass. 

*

In retrospect, it’s really his fault for trusting Lestat to watch her at all the next week. If he hadn’t had to complete some paperwork that needed to be sent with the waiting messenger, he wouldn’t have, but he’d thought his partner would be able to manage keeping an eye on Claudia for twenty minutes. 

At a certain point, it’s on him for not knowing better. 

“La petite bête does not seem to mind,” Lestat calls at his back as he storms over to where the other vampire has leashed his goddamn child like a dog. Oblivious to the conflict happening in the safety of the shade–their ears sensitive enough to speak to each other at a volume she can’t hear–Claudia strains against her tether to reach a butterfly, the tips of her fingers barely brushing the petals of the rose it’s resting on. “You are being needlessly dramatic!” Lestat calls again, and Louis spares a moment to shoot him a look. 

Lestat throws his hands in the air and then sucks his teeth, retreating into the house. 

“Daddy Lou!” 

He turns at the call of his name, unable to help a small smile. Claudia grins and waves. 

“The hell does your uncle got you on, huh?” He asks her, reaching up to unloop the end of the cord tied to a post. 

Claudia steps closer, and Louis resists the urge to groan when she still remains firmly planted in sunlight, the mischief in her dimpled grin telling him it’s very much on purpose even as she dutifully answers. 

“Uncle Les says I’m a demon invading the sanctity of his peaceful home,” she pronounces each word with care, seeming more proud than chastened, the fact that her small mouth can say the words so clearly speaking to regular repetition, “and then he said a whole lotta French stuff.” Claudia gives him a solemn look. “I think some of ‘em were bad words.” 

Louis snorts, not doubting it. 

“Well don’t go repeating ‘em, alright?” 

Her expression doesn’t fill him with hope on that count, but there’ll be time to teach her not to parrot grown-ups who should watch their language better at a future time. Now it’s time to get her ready to go to bed. 

Which still, weeks later, always goes so well. 

“Alright, little miss,” he says, and he barely resists the urge to give the lead she’s still attached to a tug. He knows Lestat would sense it somehow, and he won’t give the bastard the satisfaction. 

(Even if Louis can admit to it making things easier as Claudia immediately tries to make a run for it only to come up short, exhaling an “oof” as the line snaps taut.)

“Do we gotta do this every day?” Louis says, as Claudia leans her full weight back. It takes more effort to not pull enough to hurt her than it would to just yank her in in one swoop. “C’mon now, little lady, you know it’s time for bed.” 

“No!” Claudia cries, trying and failing to reach back for the buckle located between her shoulder blades. Lingering resentment for treating their daughter like a dog or not, Louis can grudgingly respect the intelligence behind the design, not that he will ever tell Lestat that. “I’m not sleepy!” 

In the end, the need to go to sleep wins out over his lofty goals of being a good parent, and he reels his daughter in, Claudia flopping onto her belly and making him drag her all the way into the shade. He lifts her up and then tosses her, catching her as she squeals. The attempt at breaking her bad mood fails, and she groans with a level of drama that would do Lestat proud, flopping backwards like her bones have dissolved. If he weren’t a vampire, she would have stood a good chance of hitting the ground headfirst with the stunt, but as it is, he just turns to go back inside. 

“You’re a mess,” he tells her, picking a stick out of her hair. 

His only response is an angry huff as he hitches her up to rest against his shoulder until she’s decided she has bones again. 

*

Claudia is still pouting after she’s been fed, bathed, and changed into pajamas, and it’s like handling a board when he picks her up to settle her in his coffin, a reversal of her earlier policy of going boneless. 

“I’m mad at you, and I don’t like you no more,” she informs him. “I wanna sleep with Uncle Les!” 

The declaration is very obviously meant to hurt his feelings and is immediately undermined by Lestat shutting his coffin with a pointed snap. Claudia wrinkles her little nose at the sight, a gesture cute enough that Louis almost forgets how exhausted he already is about fighting with her to go to bed. 

Almost. 

“Gotta go to bed,” he tells her, climbing into his coffin and ignoring the way she wriggles as far away as she can get from him in the confined space. “Otherwise you’re gonna stay little forever. You don’t want that now, do you?” 

“I’m not sleepy,” Claudia declares again, lifting her feet to kick against the lid of the coffin. “I wanna play.” She punctuates each word with a thump of her feet against the wood. 

“And I want the peace of my household restored,” Lestat calls. “Best you learn now, my noisy noisette, we rarely receive what we deserve. Now be quiet before you are thrown onto the streets with the other urchins where you belong.” 

The threat is not a new one, and Claudia ignores it accordingly. Despite her tantrum, Louis can see she’s already getting tired. No matter how much she protests, she’s still a small child, and the dim softness of the coffin is a difficult lure to resist, especially now that she’s gotten used to sleeping in it. 

“Well now,” Louis says, deliberately lowering his voice into a soothing drawl. “If you ain’t tired, how about you tell me a story then, huh?” It’s one of her favorite things, making up stories, and he can see her weighing the cost of holding her grudge against the cost of giving up and telling him what she’s come up with this time. 

“Must the horrors of this new arrangement truly never cease?” Comes Lestat’s contribution. 

“Please, little miss?” He says, poking her side just to make her giggle. “You always got the best ones.”

Claudia sighs dramatically before she wriggles onto her side and reaches for his hand, her own tiny enough that it barely stretches the width of his palm. He closes his fingers around it, feeling the faint thrum of her pulse beneath her baby-soft skin. There’s no temptation in the sensation, not with her covered in his scent from storing her pajamas next to his. There is only the simple, glorious joy of his daughter beside him, heart steady and reliable, a metronome to nod off to. 

Well, a metronome to nod off to when she’s talked herself to sleep. 

(Really, as much as he protests her at every turn, she’s enough like Lestat that it ain’t even funny.) (God help him when she becomes a teenager.) 

“A long, long, long, long time ago,” Claudia starts, and Louis closes his eyes even as he smiles, knowing from a story told to him yesterday that long, long, long, long ago means approximately two months ago in Claudia’s mind. “There was a beautiful princess named Claudia-” 

“Well, we now know that successful novelist is off the table as a future career,” Lestat says, low enough that Claudia doesn’t hear him. 

“-and her royal knight, Sir Louis.” 

“And their court jester, Lestat,” he adds. He expected the dig to provoke a response, but the other vampire shockingly remains quiet. 

He takes the surprise as a gift as he lets their daughter build a fairytale until she drops into sleep. 

*

He’s preparing himself mentally for another morning of allowing Claudia into the morning sunlight and then wrangling her back out–and avoiding the temptation of the leash that Lestat deploys if he’s ever left to his own devices–when he’s brought up short by a strange woman standing in their foyer, her skin a bit darker than Claudia’s and complemented by the warm yellow of her well-made dress. The scene is made stranger by the fact that Lestat has a hand on Claudia’s head in a paternal fashion he never employs while he speaks to the woman, Claudia apparently surprised by the novelty enough to remain still for once. 

“Hello?” He calls, and three faces turn to him. 

“Hi, Daddy Lou!” Claudia calls, but before she can dart over to him, Lestat nudges her closer to the mystery woman. 

“Stay here a moment, ma puce. I must have a conversation with your father.” 

Louis isn’t thrilled that his daughter is being left with a stranger while Lestat has a conversation with him, but Claudia seems to accept it, especially as the woman leans forward with her hands on her knees as Claudia chatters at her at her usual rate. He tilts his head in a question as Lestat joins him, looking far too pleased with himself for Louis’s comfort. 

“You wanna explain the random woman in our house?” He asks, raising his eyebrows. 

“A lovely woman,” Lestat says with a quick, appreciative look backwards, “I met her last night and thought she might make a lovely solution to the little problem you brought into our home. Why chase the little creature in sunlight when we can simply hire a minder to do it for us?” 

“You did not hire a whor-” Louis hisses. 

“Tsk,” Lestat says, flicking his hand dismissively, which only gets him closer to being punched. “And here I thought you were so high-minded about upward advancement for your ladies of the night?” 

At Louis’s unimpressed look, Lestat rolls his eyes, dropping his performance. 

“Mademoiselle Babin is the eldest daughter of an unfortunate but perfectly respectable shopowner who dropped dead mid-fuck with a mistress.” Nothing about this background is particularly reassuring for someone Louis is meant to trust their daughter with. “While it seems his estate will provide for his family, a young lady does like to have a bit of pin money to spend at her discretion, and it would seem her mother is not quite so generous as her dearly departed papa.” Lestat’s smile is beatific, and Louis is more dubious of this plan by the minute. “Mon cher,” Lestat says, acting hurt, “do you think I would allow harm to come to your little stray?” 

“It don’t help that you still call her a stray,” Louis says, even as his eyes flick over at the sound of Claudia’s giggle to find her trying on Miss Babin’s hat, the brim sliding over her eyes. Against his will, he feels himself softening at the sight of his daughter’s joy. 

“Louis,” Lestat says, voice low, and his gaze returns to the other vampire at the sincerity in his tone. “As much as I find her presence in our home a vexation, I would not cause you the hurt of allowing harm to come to Claudia.” Lestat’s expression is open in a way it very rarely is. His voice drops lower, beyond what a human could hear even if they weren’t all the way across the room. “She has made her way into your heart, mon amour. I would not break it by allowing her to be taken from you.” 

Reflexively, Louis wants to pull back from the conversation, wants to sidetrack, wants to cut the tension and sincerity that toes a line he can’t let himself cross, but he can see that Lestat is sincere, and he can’t quite bring himself to so blatantly fling it back into his face. 

“Fine,” he says, clearing his throat. “We’ll let her try.” 

“Bon,” Lestat says, clapping his hands, which makes Miss Babin and Claudia both look over. Claudia carefully balances her borrowed hat with her hands on the brim, walk-running to Louis as fast as her precarious accessory will allow. 

“Daddy Lou!” She says, grinning. “Look!” 

“I see, little bit,” he says with a returning smile. “You look real nice.” 

A little wriggle of joy goes through Claudia’s body at the compliment, setting the feather on the hat bobbing. 

“Perhaps,” Lestat says, and Louis snorts when turning her head makes the hat fall over Claudia’s head before Lestat reaches down to push it back up, “the mademoiselle could take you by the shop where she got it to have one made that won’t blind you.” 

Claudia lights up like a Christmas tree. 

“Really?” She breathes, and Louis winces when her excitement means her little fists crumple the edges of the hat. He sends Miss Babin an apologetic look as he pulls the hat free of his child’s grip, smoothing the wrinkles. 

“Of course,” Lestat says, high on the thrill of his own generosity. He looks to Miss Babin. “The milliner near Jackson Square, if I’m not mistaken. I believe I saw a similar hat in their window.” 

“Yes,” Miss Babin says with a demure dip of her head. She spares a small smile for Claudia. “And I would be happy to take Claudia to pick out one of her own on our walk.” 

“Excellent,” Lestat says. “I have an account there. Have them charge the purchase to it.” 

Miss Babin is clearly surprised for a moment, but she recovers quickly, face smoothing out at once. Louis feels a moment of worry that she’ll spread a tasty bit of gossip about this, but when he reads her mind, all he detects is gratitude for a job. Louis looks down at a tug to his trousers at his knee and finds Claudia looking up at him. 

“Are you gonna come see my new hat?” She asks, and Louis feels a pang at knowing he’ll have to disappoint her. 

“Nah,” he says, taking a knee to be closer to her height. “You go on and pick out a nice one with Miss Babin, and then you can come back and show me, alright?” 

Claudia’s little mouth twists to one side, clearly unhappy, and Louis taps her chin gently with a finger. 

“Hey now,” he says, “none of that. It’ll be a special trip, just for you two ladies, and then y’all’ll come back and show me. We can have ourselves a little fashion show. How about that?” 

Claudia considers this for a moment before she looks back to Lestat. 

“Can I have some gloves, too? Like the ones Miss Babin is wearing?” At a nudge from Louis, she adds a please. 

“Why not?” Lestat says with the generosity of a man who has never run out of money (and perhaps with the determination of a man who very badly wants their child out of the house no matter what it costs him in accessories). “Pick out some ribbons while you’re there as well.” 

At the promise of so many new treats, Claudia squeals, darting forward to hug Lestat’s leg before returning to Miss Babin, tugging at her dress as if afraid any delay will mean a retraction of the offer. Louis laughs, following at a slower pace and handing the woman her hat. 

“Easy now,” he tells Claudia. “The hats ain’t going nowhere.” He swallows back his nerves at having Claudia out in the world when he can’t get to her if something happens. He reads Miss Babin’s mind again for reassurance and finds only amusement at being herded by his five year old. “You mind Miss Babin, you hear?” 

“Yes yes yes!” Claudia says, abandoning pulling for the sake of pushing. “Bye Daddy Lou! Bye Uncle Les!” 

“We’ll be back in an hour and a half,” Miss Babin says, switching her small purse to her other hand so she can hold Claudia’s. Louis can hear in her mind that she finds it slightly odd that neither he nor Lestat walk her to the gate, but she writes it off as the eccentricities of wealthy men. At her side, Claudia chatters a mile a minute about her grand plans for her new hat, and Louis feels his nerves calm to some degree at the way Miss Babin tilts her head to hear her better, attentive to her charge. 

The moment the door is shut, Lestat is pressed to his back in one long line of warmth, lips finding his throat. 

Louis leans into it, shifting his hips slightly just to tease. 

“Well,” Lestat says in a purr that sends goosebumps down his back, “it would seem we find ourselves with no stray underfoot for an hour and a half.” 

“Seems so,” Louis leans back to breathe into Lestat’s ear. 

*

Needless to say, they make the most of every last minute. 

Chapter Text

The presence of Miss Babin has simplified Claudia’s care for the most part. If the woman has questions about the slightly strange hours she’s employed for, she doesn’t raise them with Louis or Lestat, and the generosity of her wages means she keeps her thoughts to herself around other humans as well, at least as far as Louis can hear in her mind. Claudia enjoys her outings with her, and she’s returned promptly for bed each day, not that Miss Babin knows this. She’d asked, once, about Claudia complaining about needing to go to bed as soon as she got home, but a vague answer about putting her down for a nap seemed to satisfy her curiosity, writing it off as Claudia’s natural penchant for drama. 

“Wonder where she gets that from,” Louis had asked Lestat dryly when he’d told him about the conversation later. 

Outsourcing Claudia’s time in the sun has meant far fewer struggles to get her back out of it, but there are times she’s feeling especially mischievous and manages to use a half-second’s inattention to dart right into the full glare of sunlight in their courtyard. Lestat has mused aloud about the idea of taking up cattle roping in order to manage her, and given that he isn’t entirely sure that he’s joking, Louis is still usually the one who catches their devil of a child and brings her back inside. This morning’s struggle had taken longer than usual–the exercise with Miss Babin each day seems to be making Claudia stronger and faster, a terrifying thought–and their daughter is still full of energy, so he sets her loose to run a few laps of their coffin chamber while he gets ready to lay down, closing his eyes for just a moment before the sound of a throat clearing makes him open them again. 

“I believe I have asked before, mon cher,” Lestat says dryly, dangling Claudia by the back of her nightdress between two fingers like she’s dirty laundry, “that you keep your belongings to your side of our chamber.” 

Louis makes a dismissive noise before Lestat drops Claudia onto him, Claudia squealing slightly but seeming to be enjoying herself despite the handling as he catches her, smiling slightly at her giggles despite his irritation with his partner. 

“How many times I gotta tell you not to pick her up like that?” He tells Lestat, shifting Claudia to lay down beside him. “You’re gonna break her one day, you keep doing it.” 

“She has been told repeatedly that my coffin is not to be touched by sticky children,” Lestat says with a dismissive wave of his hand as he settles down. “Whatever consequences she earns in not listening are her fault and hers alone.” 

“But yours is so fancy, Uncle Les!” Claudia pipes up, using Louis’s arm to push against to get high enough to look at Lestat. “Please can I sleep in it? Please please please-” 

Lestat snaps the lid of his coffin closed in a definitive no. 

Seeing Claudia’s lower lip start to wobble–she’s an energetic, cheerful child generally, but he knows Lestat’s repeated refusals hurt her feelings now and then–he picks her up and dangles her above him. It doesn’t get him the laughter he was looking for, but it does make her look less likely to cry. 

“Don’t mind him now,” he tells her, settling her down against his chest. “He just wants to be grumpy in his boring old coffin over there. Trust me, you ain’t missing out on nothing.” 

Claudia sighs, snuggling down against him, head beneath his chin. He reaches up to close the lid of the coffin. 

*

Louis has taken up hunting mortals again. 

It’s something he still struggles with. 

He had stuck to his “vegetarian” ways at the start of Claudia living with them, but after a single skinned knee almost led to him sinking his teeth into his daughter, he’d known something had to give. Lestat had luckily been right there when it happened, head snapping to Louis immediately the moment the smell of blood filled the air, even before Claudia had registered the shock of the fall enough to start crying. He’d clapped a hand over his nose at once, trying to muffle the scent, and he had felt himself pulled almost to pieces between the need to flee, the need to answer the plea of Claudia’s raised arms and teary eyes, and the horrible, evil, unforgivable need to chase the sweet-green-life scent of young blood right to the source and drain every drop he could get. 

“Outside, cheri,” Lestat had said quietly, too low for Claudia to hear as he scooped her up, turning slightly to keep his body between her and Louis, clearly ready to fight Louis off if he gave into the weakness of his biology. 

The shame of it, of Lestat needing to stay between Louis and their daughter for her safety to keep Louis from eating her, would have made him bolt from the house even without the command. He hadn’t even paid attention to where he was going that night, had just run out of the door like the devil himself was on his heels. 

As if the urge to sink his fangs into his own child wasn’t sign enough that the worst sort of devil was already inside of him. 

He’d returned late that night, a scant half-hour before sunrise. He’d sated his thirst on countless stray cats and been steadier by then, but he’d still held his breath as he entered their townhouse, looking immediately to where Claudia had taken her tumble only to find nothing there, thank God. He’d locked up and then made his way upstairs, finding Lestat on their bed with Claudia curled up on his lap. Lestat had been looking out of the window when he entered the room, twirling and untwirling one of Claudia’s curls around a finger idly, but he’d looked over when he caught the motion of Louis shutting the door. He’d shuffled Claudia enough to show Louis her knee, the skin clear and unbroken, sealed by Lestat’s blood spread over the injury. 

“Whole and hale once more,” he’d said grandly, though Louis hadn’t missed how he deliberately kept his voice low enough to not wake Claudia. The tear tracks still visible on her face had hit Louis like a knife to the chest. 

He’d still kept his distance, too ashamed to approach. 

Lestat had known at once what was consuming him, and he’d made an affectionate, impatient noise, rising from the bed with Claudia still in his arms. Louis had moved automatically to retreat, but Lestat had caught the door with one foot, holding it shut. He’d given Louis a look. 

“She is fine, Louis,” he’d said, slowly and firmly. “It’s still a mistake to have her in this house, and I will gladly turn her out with the other strays the day you finally let me,” Louis hadn’t laughed, “but you haven’t harmed her, mon cher. She is perfectly well.” 

“I wanted to…” Louis had said, unable to finish the sentence, the words choked out of him from the crushing weight of guilt. “Our daughter, our baby,” he’d choked out. “And I…”

Lestat’s eyes had softened, and he’d shifted Claudia enough to free one hand to cup Louis’s face, tracing a thumb along his cheekbone, the touch soothing. 

“You’re hungry, mon amour. Of course her blood would call to you.” Lestat had leaned in enough to kiss him softly. “You need to return to your proper diet, Louis. For her sake if not yours.” Master manipulator that he is even when his intentions are noble-adjacent, he’d turned slightly to show Louis Claudia’s little face, sweet and trusting in her sleep, cheek pressed to Lestat’s chest over his heart. Even through his self-hatred, Louis had distantly registered his own surprise at Lestat knowing to soothe her that way, the same way Louis settled her on days she had bad dreams. “She was distressed, Louis,” Lestat said, pressing the advantage he knew he had, stronger than any argument he’d ever made about Louis returning to hunting humans. “She didn’t understand why her daddy had to leave her when she was hurt. If you’re going to keep her, you will have to make sacrifices, cheri. That is what a parent does, n’est pas?” 

Heavy handed or not, it had been effective, and Louis had carried Claudia to coffin with him with the knowledge that the sweet little thing in his arms needed him to do what it took to not be dangerous to her. 

So. The return to mortal blood. 

He still doesn’t eat human every night, but he indulges three or four times a week, enough to dull the edge of the thirst. He does his best to use thoughts to pick the people the world can stand to lose, but he is also usually limited to hunting in the small pockets of time he can get away from Claudia without making her feel like she’s getting left behind. He’s read her mind enough to understand why. Her mortal father left her with her aunt, after all, and there’s always a sense of anxiety from her that Louis will one day do the same, leave her behind and never look back. Tonight’s opportunity is only happening because they’re having her fit for a new spring wardrobe–as much as he complains about her, Lestat takes great delight in dressing her up like a little doll, and Claudia enjoys the attention and praise of being his willing model–and the tailor is discreet enough that Louis can leave the two of them there, the shop closed to anyone else as it usually is when they go in for fittings. 

If his guess is right, he has about an hour to-

“Louis de Pointe du Lac? As I live and breathe.” 

He turns at the sound of the voice, trying to work out where he knows it from. An older man in a good if slightly outdated suit approaches him, beaming. His face is familiar, but Louis can’t quite-

“Curtis Mahoney,” the man says, extending a hand. At Louis’s vague smile of greeting, the man chuckles good-naturedly. “My wife’s in the same sewing circle as your Mama.” 

Ah, now Louis can place him, one of the faces he’d passed by in the rare times he was home in daylight hours in his life before. 

“Nice to see you again, sir,” Louis says politely, already wondering how he can get out of this interaction as fast as possible. Claudia had wanted to wear his glasses while they were waiting for the tailor to pull out some trim options earlier, and he’d forgotten to ask for them back. His family might have already seen his changed eyes, but he’d rather limit the gossip about them as much as he can. “I’m sorry I can’t stay and catch up. I have to-” 

“Daddy Lou!” 

It’s an urge to not to drop his face into his hands and groan as Claudia’s piping voice carries as easily as a piccolo. He looks over to see her beelining right towards him with his glasses still on her face and slipping to her chin with each bounce of her run, an amused Lestat following at a leisurely stroll behind her. She doesn’t even pause when she reaches him, leaping with the confidence of someone who has always been caught. 

He does, of course, swinging her up to one hip. 

“Daddy Lou, tell Uncle Les I can have pink-hello.” Her wheedling cuts off when she notices Curtis staring at her. She waves, though she tucks herself a bit closer, confident enough to say hi but uncertain enough about strangers to keep as close as possible. 

Curtis is looking between her face and Louis’s in a way that can’t mean anything good. 

“I’m Claudia,” Claudia ventures when no one says anything. After only a moment, she extends her little hand the way she’s watched him and Lestat do with business associates when they stop by the house. 

Louis wishes he could feel enough beyond panic to enjoy the cuteness of the gesture as Curtis accepts it automatically, Claudia shaking it with the confidence of a man twenty years in business and not a little girl who needed him to cut her pancakes up for her only an hour ago. 

As it is, though, he’s been struck dumb for the moment. 

“Louis, tell your daughter she has enough pink shoes. She is refusing to listen to reason,” Lestat says, reaching them and shaking his head at Claudia playfully as she wrinkles her nose at him. He turns to Curtis, extending a hand as Claudia pulls hers back. “Apologies for the interruption, Monsieur….?”

“Cur-Mahoney,” Curtis says, seeming to jerk himself out of his own thoughts. “Curtis Mahoney, sir.” 

Can’t stop by and see his mama and his sister’s family, he catches the man think, but he’s got time to get a baby on one of his fancy women? And parade her around at this time of night? 

Louis wonders if Lestat’s ability to freeze time might extend to reversing it. 

*

When the phonecall comes, Louis is expecting it. At his side, Lestat looks between him and the ringing phone, lifting a brow. 

“Do you wish to hire a secretary to take your calls, mon cher?” He teases. “Or are you still humble enough to manage your own affairs?” 

Louis says nothing, staring at the ringing phone like a man walking to the gallows. 

“Very well,” Lestat says with a brisk clap of his hands. “I’ll happily-” 

Louis snatches the phone off of the receiver, and Lestat gives him a smug look that lets Louis know he’s been played. He gives the other man a dirty look as he walks away, taking a deep breath before bringing the receiver up to his ear. 

“Hello?” 

“Louis de Pointe du Lac,” comes Grace’s voice, stern in a way that says she’ll one day be as much a force of nature as their Mama. “I know somebody’s gotta be confused, because there’s certainly no way my brother would have a love child he’s parading around the quarter at night.” 

Louis wonders how Lestat would feel about settling in Saint Louis after all. 

*

“I see no reason why you persist in attending these…gatherings,” Lestat observes as they round the corner to the de Pointe du Lac residence a week after the phone call from Louis’s sister demanding attendance at a party. “You never leave in good spirits.” If it were up to him, his lover would never set foot in the place again, but Louis persists in breaking his own heart with his former family. The music is already filtering out into the night from the soiree, and Lestat rolls his eyes. 

Banjos. Always the accursed banjos. 

“If you’re just gonna complain, go home,” Louis says, his nerves making him snappier than usual. “It’s not like I asked you to come.” 

He heavily implied he wanted Lestat’s company, but for the sake of not airing their domestic dirty laundry on the street, Lestat lets it pass. 

“Alright now, little miss,” Louis says, setting Claudia down and then crouching to be at her level, needlessly fussing with the little lace collar on her dress and the new ribbons in her hair, her outfit a recent acquisition from a shopping trip with Mademoiselle Babin. Lestat regards the ensemble with satisfaction. He is sure his lover’s family will have many qualms to fight over about their newest addition, but they certainly will be unable to say she isn’t dressed well. “You remember what we talked about?” 

“Say please and thank you,” Claudia repeats obediently. “And if anybody asks where I live, I say ‘with my daddy,’ and then I don’t say nothing else, and if somebody asks more questions, find you or Uncle Les.” 

“Good,” Louis says with a slightly strained smile, cupping Claudia’s head for a moment before standing, fussing with his waistcoat for a moment before reaching down for her hand. For all that Lestat still finds her an irritating housepet, he does appreciate that Claudia’s tiny hand in Louis’s does seem to have some magical ability to make him steadier, his shoulders straightening, his posture improving. 

(And if the phenomenon sends the slightest flicker of jealousy through him, well…he has never claimed to excel at sharing.)

*

Lestat peels off when they enter the yard. Part of Louis wants the man by his side, but with Claudia’s existence already certain to stir the pot, he knows he’s better off facing his family without an additional complication to add fuel to the fire. 

He still watches him stride away with no small amount of longing. 

“Daddy Lou?” 

He turns to look at Claudia, watching him intently. 

“Are you sad?” 

He smiles, bending down to kiss the top of her head and then crouching, straightening her outfit one final time. She allows it, though he can tell from her pursed lips that she’s had about enough of him picking at her. As much as she likes dressing up, she still has a small child’s tolerance for fuss. He gives himself one final adjustment of a hairbow–with the way she rests her head against him when he carries her, the right one always ends up a little crooked–and then makes himself stop, bracing her little face between thumb and pointer finger to squish her cheeks gently just to make her laugh. 

“Daddy, no!” She says, giggling even as she bats him off. “No squishing!” 

He gives her one more squish before standing again, taking her hand in his once more. 

And then he goes to find the firing squad. 

*

He doesn’t miss the mental calculations happening on his families’ faces after introducing Claudia, the dart of eyes between him and his daughter, comparing features and drawing conclusions. From skimming Mama’s thoughts, he learns that he and Claudia apparently have the same cheekbones and ears, though she’s apparently undecided about their chins. Claudia presses a little closer to him at the obvious scrutiny, but she doesn’t quail entirely, looking back at them all with interest. He picked her up when the paving stones to the porch proved too far apart for little legs to manage easily, and he hadn’t bothered to put her down again. 

“Daughter?” Levi repeats. “Since when do you have a daughter? You-” 

“Claudia, honey,” Grace interjects with a smile that’s absolutely only for Claudia’s benefit. “How about you go up and see your cousins? You don’t wanna get stuck listening to grown folks’ business.” There’s a censure to the words that Louis is sure no one misses. 

Claudia looks to him, big eyes trusting and curious as to what he wants from her. He smiles at her as best he can manage, kissing her head before setting her down. 

“That’s a good idea,” he says. “I’m sure your cousins would love to meet you.” 

Claudia’s little face twists with uncertainty, and he can hear in her thoughts that she’s a little nervous about leaving him, remembering when her father gave her away to her aunt and wondering if Louis is about to do the same, especially when she’s now meeting an aunt she hasn’t heard about before. He crouches to be of level with her and taps her chin affectionately with a finger. 

“Go on, now,” he says, gently pushing her after Grace when his sister rises and holds out a hand for her. “You follow your Aunt Grace. I’ll be here, promise.” 

“Promise?” She repeats, even as she takes a hesitant step towards Grace. 

“Promise,” he repeats, straightening one of her bows before standing. 

The wait to speak lasts only until she turns the corner after Grace. 

“Explain yourself, Louis de Pointe du Lac,” Mama demands at once, folding her hands in her lap like a queen on a throne, cool and aloof. “I know you know better. I raised you better.” 

“I found her after the fires on Liberty,” Louis starts, but his Mama has apparently been waiting patiently for her chance to blister his ears and won’t be wasting another moment. 

“It's not enough that you would shame our family by fathering a,” she lowers her voice as if anyone else can hear them, “bastard, but then you have to parade her around? In public? Where people can see your shame and run back to tell me all about it? About how my son is dragging his family’s name through the mud with his illegitimate child and his… business partner?” 

“Like I said, Mama,” he says, jaw tight, “I found her after Liberty. I took her in.”

“Louis, the girl looks just like you,” Levi throws in, as if his opinion has been sought at all. “Who's her mama? It still doesn't look good, but you'll have to marry her-”

“Her parents,” Louis says as evenly as he can, “are dead. The girl is an orphan. I took her in.”

“Lying is a sin as much as harlotry,” Mama says severely, as if the house she's living in hasn't been made off of the work of a multitude of sins. “Send the girl away, Louis. Send her to her mother or her mother's people, but send her away. It'll take time before we can show our faces in church after this, but-”

“I am not sending her away,” Louis says, voice firm, final. “She ain't got anybody else. She's mine now,” he barely resists the urge to roll his eyes at Levi’s satisfied look, as if he's confessed to something, “and that ain't changing.”

“I am your mother-” Mama starts, but Louis’s patience has run out. 

“And I am her father,” he snaps, harder than he’s ever spoken to his mother. 

The way her mouth snaps shut at his audacity is more than slightly satisfying. 

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” he says, leaning forward and kissing Mama’s cheek in what he knows is a taunt even as he does it, “I should go say hi to people, don’t you think? Wouldn’t wanna give ‘em something to talk about.” 

He leaves without waiting for a response. 

*

He makes himself circulate the party, even as he picks up whispers in the heads of smiling people about his audacity in bringing his by-blow to his family’s home, as if hiding an illegitimate daughter would be more respectable than claiming her even if Claudia were his. He’s made more irritated by his inability to find Lestat, the other vampire having whisked himself away somewhere to no doubt do something objectionable. 

At his capacity for crises for one night, Louis forces himself not to consider it further. 

Ignoring the whispers and thoughts all around him, however, proves much harder.

-never find a woman from a good family now-

-thought he and that Frenchie-

-said she looks just like him, but I think-

-wonder if he’s got more out there-

-always thought he was a queer one, but-

-got a baby on a whore, for shame-

-hope he’s got something put aside for that girl, nobody’ll ever want her-

After exchanging more pleasantries than he would wish to in a year with people who kiss his cheek even as they hiss vitriol in their heads and behind their hands, his face aching from plastering on a fake smile, he finally decides he’s put in enough effort to retreat. Let them say what else they want. 

He’s had enough. 

*

It feels strange in a way he never thought it would, walking around the house alone. He spent so many years here, and yet he feels like worse than a guest now, like a stranger entering for the first time, unwanted and unwelcome, a trespasser. He pauses when he’s passing through the sitting room, soaking in the feeling, hoping it’ll be something he remembers the next time he’s feeling moony and nostalgic. 

“You really gonna make me an aunt and then not even let me know?”

He turns at the sound of Grace's voice, finding her in the doorway.

“Didn’t really make you anything,” he says mildly. “Didn’t make her.” 

Grace tsks, crossing the room to him. How strange, still, to see his little sister move like a grown woman, her steps slower, firmer. 

“Louis, it's me,” she says, taking his hands in hers. “Tell me the truth, now: is she yours? She looks like you.”

“I think you all are seeing things you wanna see,” he says. “If she looks like me, it’s a miracle. I certainly didn’t pass anything on. I really just found her, Grace. I didn’t make her.” 

It’s a wordless kind of ache in his chest, the desire to tell Grace that it’s impossible for him to have ever made one of his own. It’s an insane urge, and he certainly won’t do it, would never do it, would die before he would do it, but there’s a part of him that wants so badly to give his sister that part of him, to let her know that there’s no woman in the world he would want to make a baby with. 

Grace hesitates a moment, lowering her voice and leaning in, as if there’s spies hiding behind the chintz sofa. 

“Is she… his?” She doesn't need to specify who she means. 

Part of him wants to say yes just to see what happens, wants to see what his family does with the idea that he’s raising Lestat’s child with him, wants to see if a rumor as juicy as that would make its way through the gossip mill. 

It is, incidentally, the same part of him that used to want to kick ant hills to watch the chaos unfold. 

From years of practice, he makes himself ignore the urge. 

“The girl needed a home,” he says, squeezing Grace’s hands. “She didn’t have anybody, and we had the space.” It’s the most he can ever acknowledge Lestat as his life partner, the use of we and the reference to their shared home, and even that has its dangers. 

With his immortality, he wonders if he’ll ever see the day he can do so much as hold Lestat’s hand in public without the risk of them both being arrested and jailed. Can forever include such an impossible thing? 

“A girl needs a mama,” Grace says, not unkindly. “She'll be a woman one day. She needs someone to teach her how.”

“She ain't got you for that?” He asks, half-joking.

(...and half-not.)

Grace bites her cheek for a moment, and Louis breathes through the tightness in his chest, trying not to think of a different world, one in which Grace’s children and his would have grown up together, tripping over each other like a litter of puppies. In another life, Claudia would have known her Aunt Grace from the day she was born, just as Grace’s children would have known Uncle Louis as more than a mythical figure who comes by on random nights with gifts and disappears every other day like he never existed at all. 

Then again, in another life he would never have had Claudia at all. 

“I’m just teasing, Grace,” he says, keeping his voice even as he cuts his sister loose from any responsibility to him or his daughter. “You got your own family to think of. You don’t need to be worrying about mine.” 

“We just have to be careful,” Grace says, her voice pleading for understanding. “We have to think of our children, too, especially the girls. You know how people talk. They’ll wanna get married one day. I want them to have as many options as they can.”

“And you-” He starts, but then there's a streak of pastel blue heading towards him.

He catches Claudia before she's even reached the arc of her jump.

She gives Grace a quick look and then tugs at his collar to get him to lean in. He obliges, and he feels her little hands cup his ear.

“I wanna go home now,” she whispers.

He pulls back, managing to give her a small smile and pressing his forehead to hers briefly. 

“We're going,” he reassures her, and she rests her head on his shoulder contently. He looks to Grace. “This ain't our kind of place anyway.”

His sister looks pained.

“Tell your Aunt Grace goodbye,” he says, knowing he's twisting the knife and taking a mean sort of satisfaction in doing so. 

“Bye bye, Aunt Grace!” Claudia says easily, lifting her head to wave and then turning to wrap her arms around his neck securely, as if afraid he’ll put her down if she doesn’t hold on. He turns to go, cursing himself for being stupid enough to come in the first place. 

“Louis!”

He debates ignoring the call, but he was her big brother too long to not feel the pull of that tone of her voice, the same one he heard when she did something like rip a hem in her dress or lose a ribbon or scuff her new church shoes. It used to mean she needed his help, needed him to save her from the consequences of her own actions, needed him to fix something for her that only he could. 

Now he doesn't know what it means, not with as many broken things as they have between them.

He pauses, turning, Claudia’s face still tucked against his neck. He rubs a thumb against her back idly as his sister catches up. 

“Yeah?” He asks, voice flat. He’s too tired for anything else. 

“I will always love you,” Grace says, stretching to kiss his cheek and lingering to press hers to his for a moment. “No matter what.”

He presses back for a long, long moment, and then he pulls away, hitching Claudia up a little more securely. 

“You, too,” he says, voice a little rough. 

They both half-inhale, knowing there’s more to say. 

In the end, though, when he finally turns to leave, they still haven’t managed to find what it is. 

*

He almost makes it out of the party without crossing paths with his family again. 

But of course good luck has never lasted very long for him. 

“Louis!” 

He closes his eyes, debating whether he’ll suffer more by ignoring his Mama or facing her. He’d deliberately gone around the back of the house to get out by a sidegate, unwilling to make Claudia a circus act by inviting people to look at her. He still has no idea where Lestat is, but at this point, he doesn’t care. All he wants is to take his child home and pretend this night never happened. 

“Louis!” Mama calls again, and he can hear her footsteps. 

Pressing a hand to Claudia’s head to keep it down and hopefully keep Mama from focusing on her, he turns. 

“Yes, Mama?” He calls as she catches up, breathing heavy from the rush. 

“I haven’t finished speaking with you.” 

She’s as incandescent with rage as he’s ever seen her, but he’s too tired to summon much feeling about it. 

“I’m leaving, Mama,” he tells her flatly. “Ain’t anything else to say.” 

“Oh,” Mama says, puffing up with indignation like a broody hen. She pokes him in the chest between her words, as if driving the point home. “There is plenty to say, Louis de Pointe du Lac. You never come see your family, you drop by when you wish at the oddest hours, you don’t come with us on the anniversary of your brother’s death to visit his grave, you never set foot in church with us, you-”

So busy controlling his temper, he doesn't notice Claudia moving, lifting her head from its place on his shoulder and turning to look at Mama. 

Not until she jerks forward in one sudden motion and sinks her teeth deep into his mother's wrist.

*

Lestat looks up with interest at the sound of screaming in the distance. He had abandoned the party to share a bottle of champagne with a pretty maid from two houses down fairly early into the evening, but at the promising sound of something interesting happening, he abandons the woman after an absent and perfunctory kiss to her thigh before he lowers her skirts, slipping back to the de Pointe du Lac household to investigate the commotion. 

He makes his way through the chattering crowd easily. More than a few heads turn to the sound of screaming, but most of the gathered mass are too genteel to be blatantly nosy. 

He doesn’t share their restraint. 

He lifts his eyebrows when he turns the corner of the house and finds Louis and Claudia in the midst of a standoff with Louis’s mother, the elderly woman shrieking all manner of insults. He’s vaguely proud of whatever Louis’s managed to do to set the woman off so thoroughly. He’s usually so cowed by her, so willing to take her abuse on the chin and swallow his hurt back. Lestat has told him more than once-

And then he sees the woman pull an arm back in a slap aimed for Claudia. 

Lestat is at her side, a forbidding hand wrapped around her wrist, before the swing has managed to move another inch. 

She fully flinches, and it’s only Lestat’s grip–not tight but certainly not loose–that keeps her from moving. He gives her a cool, polite smile. 

“Madame,” he says with a nod of his head, releasing her arm and moving to stand next to Louis. “I think it’s time we excuse ourselves from your hospitality, yes?” 

He doesn’t bother to wait for her answer, just looks to Louis and tilts his head in a question. His paramour glares at his mother for another beat and then nods, sharply, turning on his heel. 

He doesn’t bother to say goodbye. 

“You’re mean!” Claudia calls over Louis’s shoulder, little face set in a scowl. It’s clearly the best insult she can think of. 

Lestat, smiling faintly, resolves to teach her a few more. 

*

“Well, that seemed an eventful exit,” Lestat ventures when Louis has had a few blocks to stride his frustration out. “More so than usual.” Louis remains silent. 

Claudia does not. 

“The bad lady was mean to Daddy Lou,” she says, very obviously still nursing a grudge about it. She looks him in the eye, tipping her chin up defiantly. “She was hurting Daddy Lou.” 

“She wasn’t hurting me,” Louis reassures her with an absent pat, still walking with a slightly-inhuman speed. Lestat decides not to point it out. 

“And how,” he asks Claudia, “did you manage to cause such a reaction to her meanness, ma petite?” 

Claudia beams, looking very proud of herself. 

“I bit her!” She snaps her teeth together in demonstration.

Lestat laughs, startled and delighted. 

“Well now,” he says warmly, “that seems to have been an excellent approach to the problem, ma petite lionne. Well done.” He pats her on the head approvingly. 

Louis gives him a look but doesn’t contribute. 

*

Their stray scampers off to no doubt commit as many crimes as she can before she’s stopped as soon as Louis releases her once they’re home, ignoring the dual call of “no running in the house!” that follows after her and skidding around the corner as fast as she can. Lestat watches her go with a resigned sort of calm, closing his eyes for a moment when he hears a crash and a squeak as she careens into something. It didn’t sound too expensive, whatever it was, and he can hear the child pick herself up, so she’s relatively unharmed. Claudia sorted for the moment, he turns to Louis, catching him by the arm as he turns to check on the child, his shoulders weighed down in a way that makes Lestat’s chest ache even as it fills him with rage on his lover’s behalf. 

Really, the woman got lucky with only a bite from Claudia. 

“Lestat,” Louis complains half-heartedly as he’s herded against the wall. “I gotta-” 

Lestat cuts him off with a kiss, pulling back only to nudge their noses together. 

“You’re a treasure, my Saint Louis,” he says softly, pulling back only enough to look him in the eyes. He brings a hand up, cupping that beautiful, beloved face and tracing a thumb over the corner of lips he desperately wants to smile. “Those people are your past, mon amour. They do not know your heart. They would be unworthy of it even if they did.” He kisses him again, trailing off to press his lips to his nose, his cheek, his temple, anointing each patch of skin he reaches with his love, his devotion. “Your family is here, in this house, one of them doubtlessly committing property damage at present but here nonetheless.” 

Louis huffs a laugh, dropping his head forward to rest it against Lestat’s neck for a moment. Lestat allows it, lets Louis remain in his embrace as long as he needs to fortify himself. He would be anything for Louis. To be his shelter until he’s gathered himself enough to stand on his own once more is the smallest sort of request. After a long moment, he feels Louis nod, his paramour stepping back before pulling Lestat in for a quick, chaste kiss. 

“Thank you,” he says, with a caress of his thumb against Lestat’s chin before he goes to find what their resident hellion has gotten herself into. 

Lestat watches him go, content at how much lighter he looks. 

*

Louis and Claudia both look up when Lestat clears his throat as they start to settle down to sleep the next morning, and he lifts an eyebrow in a question when the other vampire extends a hand to Claudia. It takes her a moment before she understands the invitation, and then she squeals with delight, darting over and lifting her hands to be picked up. Huffing a laugh, Louis crosses his arms over his chest and leans back against his own coffin. Lestat notices and looks at him haughtily. 

“Quoi? Elle a fait un excellent travail.” His expression goes slightly more sly. “Tu devrais savoir que je récompense toujours le bon comportement. Isn’t that so, Claudia?” 

Claudia seems too overwhelmed with delight at finally being allowed in Lestat’s coffin to worry about the fact that she has no idea what he just said, but she still chirps out a “Yes!” that causes an almost physical ache in Louis’s chest from the swelling of fondness at the sight of her joy. Lestat picks her up, and Louis can see the effort Claudia is putting into being very still and easy to move. 

“Remember, though, ma petite poupette,” Lestat says, setting her down to stand on her own as he grasps her shoulders to ensure he has her attention, “that this is a singular opportunity as a reward for exemplary behavior. After this, you will return to your father's coffin to annoy him with your chatter. Tu comprends?” 

“Oui, je comprends,” Claudia says in exceedingly careful French, nearly glowing when it receives an approving head nod from Lestat. They’ve only recently begun teaching her, and if she regularly sparks fights between him and Lestat about her accent, she is at least an attentive pupil. 

It occurs to Louis that he should likely object to Claudia being rewarded for biting, especially for biting her grandmother.

“Night,” he says instead, climbing into his coffin. It feels strange doing it alone after so many nights of Claudia with him, but she settles into Lestat’s like a little princess, eyes barely clearing the edge to look at him.

“Goodnight, Daddy Lou!” She says, and he can imagine the dimpled smile that matches her tone without needing to see it.

“Night, little miss,” he says warmly. 

“If you kick me, ma petite, you will find yourself removed from this coffin and sent through a window,” he hears Lestat say as he closes the lid. “I will not tolerate what your father does.” 

Louis falls asleep smiling. 

Chapter Text

When he hears the sound of flesh against stone, tender young skin peeling away as easily as a peach’s, his head snaps at once to Louis, alert and aware before his lover or the child have even fully registered what just happened. He freezes time to get to her first, before Louis can react. 

Before Louis can detect the smell of blood and register it as hunger. 

The child recovers, blinking, and she immediately picks up the tension in both of the adults in the room, big eyes filling with tears as she lifts her arms with a plaintive whine. 

Right towards the adult currently struggling to not sink his teeth into her tiny, tender neck. 

“Outside, cheri,” he says below his breath towards Louis, stooping to pick the child up. There will be time for sense later, for telling Louis that his diet is unsustainable if he insists on keeping an amuse-bouche to hand at all times. 

Now is simply the time to avoid the catastrophe he can feel them all tipping towards. 

He turns slightly, the child held to his chest, her weight registering as much of a burden as a fly’s would, this tiny fairy-child in their home, plucked from the streets and brought into the den of monsters in a wildly macabre distortion of a happily ever after. This close, the scent of her blood is potent enough that it registers as taste, settling on his tongue with every breath, the sweet, honeysuckle richness of it coating his mouth like a film, fresh as the mist off of an orange’s skin when it’s peeled due to the child’s age. With his experience, however, it’s easily ignored, acknowledged as a temptation and set aside just as easily. 

He knows at once, however, that the same isn’t true for Louis. 

He shifts his weight, ready to dodge if Louis gives into the coiled tension Lestat can already see gathering in his muscles, his lover’s body ready to pounce even without his mind’s agreement. Still looking only at the other vampire, he presses the child’s face to his shoulder. Louis’s fangs are apparent, sharp and white and dangerous, his pupils dilated until there’s only a thin ring of stained glass green around the edge. He looks beautiful and terrifying and fierce, alluring to Lestat but no doubt terrifying to a child who is used to nothing more scary than Daddy Lou catching her with her hand in the cookie jar without permission. It would kill Louis if she was scared of him. 

He can’t even imagine what it would do to Louis if he killed her. 

The child shudders, startled and hurt, though her tears are more from confusion than pain. He doesn’t even have to dig into her mind to know this. She projects the way Louis used to, a rarity among humans, usually so passive. Unlike the rest of her kind, she demands attention as Louis used to, sending her thoughts like a beacon on a dark night. It’s one of the reasons Lestat agreed to let her in their home, this similarity. If Louis had to pick a mortal child to keep as a project, it might as well be one who seemed likely to be as interesting as him. 

Now, though, they’re at the precipice of the way Lestat feared this entire thing would end. 

He presses his hand flat against the child’s back, feeling the thrum of her heart through the delicate cage of her ribs, the beat of it as rapid as a bird’s and the vessel containing it just as breakable. He could tear her to pieces like tissue paper if he wished it, flick her into little bits with barely a twitch of his fingers, snap her young bones like asparagus. It takes more effort to hold her gently than it would to crack her open like a pomegranate, tear her to pieces just to savor each stunningly exquisite mouthful. 

And from the look in Louis’s eyes at present, it’s clear his lover is currently tempted towards the latter. 

He breaks a promise to himself in the moment, using his authority as Louis’s maker, as the head of their coven of two, to nudge him away. He does it subtly enough that he hopes Louis can’t even notice. He knows how Louis would feel about it, the knowledge that Lestat could command him in this way if he wished it, and that is a fight he is very happy to never have. He sends it as if it’s his own instinct and not Lestat’s forbiddance to come even a step closer, nudging at Louis like a collie shepherding him away from the siren call of the child’s blood. 

It works. 

The child makes a distressed noise when Louis seems to disappear at once to her fallible mortal eyes, moving too quickly for anyone but another vampire to detect. He winces at the overwhelming wave of horror-fear-disbelief that washes over him, overflowing from her child’s mind and seeping into his like water sucked into fabric. He catches fragments of memory amidst her typhoon of distress: the confused dawning horror of a mother’s still body that won’t respond to her childish pleas for mama to open her eyes, the confusion of being handed to a stranger called aunt who puts her down and then holds her wrist far too tightly, the stunned fear of watching her father’s back as he leaves without a single look back, child discarded like an old pair of boots, handed off to be someone else’s problem. 

Lestat resolutely ignores the familiarity of the throbbing wave of abandonment that resonates in the child like the plucked string of a harp. 

“Quiet, child,” he says, not ungently. “He’ll return.” He’ll have to, after all. 

Lestat is still here with the child, the physical promise between them that ties Louis to him as surely as any wedding band, a living, breathing contract of their union. 

“Da-a-ddy,” the child hiccups, extending her small hands to air, as if she can summon Louis through the sheer force of her need for him. It’s a feeling Lestat can sympathize with, wanting Louis with a wounded thing’s desperation, wanting to wrap himself up in Louis’s love, Louis’s presence, wanting to crawl inside Louis’s very body and soak up the warmth of his light from the source. 

Unfortunately for them both, Louis is currently indisposed. 

“Shh,” he says, settling into an awkward sort of bounce he’s watched adults do with children before. He feels absurd, a hunting falcon attempting to brood a quail chick, but he is also the only available option at present. 

More’s the damn pity. 

The child makes a distressed, keening sort of cry, the urgent whine of a pup seeking the safe warmth of its mother’s belly. This, at least, is something more familiar, the animal need of the young. He can’t recall if he’s ever soothed a child before, but in his life before, he’d tended plenty of pups, always proud of and attentive to his bitches when they whelped. He doubts licking the child will offer her any comfort, but he tucks her closer to the warmth of his body, pressing her tight against him. 

He walks to the door only to lock it–he could handle any intruder easily, but a man can only take so much upheaval in his home in one night–and then retreats upstairs with the child still sniffling on him. He keeps up a stream of nonsense, soothing noises that she doesn’t need to understand, just to hear. He doesn’t even stick to English, switching back to French when he runs out of sweet, child-appropriate things in his second tongue. His father would never have allowed coddling growing up, but he has faint memories of his younger days, whether they’re fiction or true recollections, of soft words for small hurts, back before children grow old enough to know that there is pain parents cannot heal. He remembers, too, the calm sympathies of the monks of the monastery. They didn’t have a mother’s tender sweetness in their dealings with a young child still prone to tumbles, but it had been a peaceful, calming sort of sympathy. 

“Chut, ma petite,” he murmurs as he settles on his and Louis’s bed, the child still clinging to him, caught in the hurricane of her own confusion, her bleeding knee long forgotten behind the distress of Louis’s disappearing act and failure to reappear at her call. “Tout va bien. Que de larmes pour une si petite chose, hm? Très bête pour une si petite chose féroce.” 

As she sniffles, he rearranges her enough to move her injured leg, tugging up the edge of her dress enough to inspect the wound. It’s nothing to a vampire–nothing to someone who’s seen as much hurt as him –but he makes a sympathetic noise anyway when she snuffles at him, cupping her face with one hand, a thumb on her soft cheek, to keep it against his chest as he cuts the thumb of his other hand, softly rubbing his blood into the abraded skin. He makes an amused hum when the sensation of her skin smoothing over startles her into ceasing her whimpers. She sits up, blinking her tear-spiked lashes with consternation as she watches her flesh heal over as if nothing ever happened. She looks to him, eyes wide. He’s distantly pleased at her ability to recover from her own distress for the sake of something interesting. He’d been mildly afraid he’d be soothing histrionics for hours. 

“An impressive trick, no?” He asks, giving into the inane urge to tap her tiny nose with one finger. 

She looks back to her knee, pointing her pudgy little leg like a dancer as she examines her miraculous healing. He leans back against the pillows behind him, letting her come to her own conclusions. Explaining vampirism and its benefits to a child as young as her sounds like a pointless exercise in frustration and an excellent way to have something slip in the future around other people that will cause unwanted curiosity. 

Better to let her come up with her own child logic. 

She pats her knee with her clumsy fingers as if checking that it is indeed whole once more, and he watches with an amused sort of interest that the blood doesn’t seem to bother her, his or hers. A convenient thing for a child raised by vampires, a lack of squeamishness for blood. Even if Louis has strictly forbidden him the pleasures of eating in the sanctity of his own home, accidents do happen. It’s good to know she won’t fall to pieces if he happens to come back a little disheveled from a hunt. When he’s allowed her her fill of confirming that she’s unharmed once more, he rises, carrying her to the bathroom and setting her on the edge of the sink as he reaches for a cloth, wiping the skin clean. When he’s finished, she extends her arms for him once more. It surprises him, the silent request, but he obliges, carrying her with him back downstairs with the same wet rag, wiping up the drops of blood from her fall earlier. Even if Louis sates himself as Lestat hopes he will, better not to invite the temptation of any lingering evidence. 

*

“Where’s Daddy Lou?” The child asks after they’ve returned inside after tossing the rag into the incinerator to burn with his next meal. She turns her head to look at the door, as if Louis operates by the rules of fae creatures and simply speaking his name will call him to her. 

When he fails to appear, he doesn’t miss the wobble of a tiny lower lip it prompts. 

“He’ll return,” he assures her, watching her eyes go glassy with a growing sort of dread. 

He’d so hoped they could be finished with the crying portion of the evening. 

“What if-” She hiccups on the cry she’s ramping up to, and Lestat wishes he still believed in God if only to have some force to direct his own dread towards. “What if he doesn’t come back? Daddy didn’t come back.” 

The phrasing throws him for a moment, wondering when on earth Louis would have left her before without him knowing about it, but the projection of her thoughts tells him she’s speaking of the man who sired her. 

Lestat, resigned, makes his way back upstairs. If he’s to serve as handkerchief for a snotty, crying child again, it may as well be in the comfort of his own bed. 

(And if the lingering smell of Louis on the sheets is a salve to his own nerves, the evidence of his lover’s existence in his life after so long alone, well…the child doesn’t have the benefit of reading minds to discover his secret.) 

“I wan-want Daddy Lou,” the child whimpers, even as it’s his chest she clings to like a limpet. “I want Daddy-Daddy Loooooou.” The name is drawn out on a whining, plaintive little cry, and it’s how he knows for certain that Louis must be at a very great distance indeed. 

His lover’s soft heart would never survive such a desperate call without answering. 

“He’ll return,” he tells her, shifting to support her as she curls into a little ball against his chest. “I promise, cherie. He’ll return to you.” 

That’s their agreement, after all. 

*

He sits with Claudia asleep against him as he waits for Louis, spiraling one little curl around his finger idly. He could put her down, he knows. She has her beloved blanket in Louis’s coffin, and once she’s down, she’s usually out for the day until it’s time for her to arise and wreak havoc once more. She would be fine. 

Still, he holds her, her warm little weight a foreign kind of comfort, her body lax and loose as warm jam. He huffs a laugh when her head fully flops back without waking her when he shifts his weight, and he readjusts his hold, resting her head over his heart and settling his arm to cradle her better. He knows it’s the way Louis holds her when she’s upset, and it seems a good way to keep her calm enough to remain sleeping. He contemplates retrieving another rag to wipe her face clean but discards the idea at once. 

He imagines it’ll be a very helpful tool in the conversation he has to have with Louis. 

*

Lestat retrieves a mortal for Louis and stores the man in an unused room before Miss Babin comes by to collect Claudia for her morning outing after their doomed meeting with Louis’s family. Claudia is clingy after such upheaval, but she’s at last persuaded to accompany her minder with the promise of ice cream, and Lestat brings his offering into the sitting room for Louis to enjoy after their departure. 

“Eat, mon cher,” he urges, directing the blank-eyed mortal to sit for Louis’s ease. 

Louis sighs but obeys, hesitating only a moment before sinking his teeth into the man. Lestat watches with a great deal of satisfaction. Even if he lacks the ferocity to enjoy a struggle, it’s still a pleasure to watch Louis eat, the rhythmic motion of his throat as he swallows, the compelling movement of his jaw as he sucks. Unable to help himself, Lestat indulges for a sip himself, bending his head to the other side of the man’s neck and sinking his teeth in, careful not to disturb Louis’s bite. Louis opens his eyes briefly, pupils wide with the satisfaction of the blood, and Lestat gives him a wink. 

Louis doesn’t return it, but he does finish his meal. 

In the aftermath, Lestat stashes the man in a locked trunk to dispose of once the sun has gone down. He returns to find Louis staring at a wall absently, clearly deep in morose thoughts. 

Lestat resolves to disturb him at once. 

He crosses the room with a predator’s silent grace, moving a leg to either side of Louis’s thighs to straddle him. Louis smiles faintly. 

“Hey,” he says. Still distracted or not, he helps himself to a palmful of Lestat’s ass, kneading at the flesh. Lestat would be offended at the distraction in the gesture, but he knows his lover has had a long night. He’ll allow it. 

He still shifts his weight enough to command a smidge more focus. 

“Enough melancholy,” he orders, pulling Louis’s face up for a kiss. There isn’t enough time for a proper round of lovemaking before the return of their child, but they could still have a bit of fun to lighten the mood. 

Louis, though, seems too committed to being thoughtful, grabbing Lestat’s arm by the wrist as he moves to slip his hand into his lover’s trousers. Lestat obeys the refusal, though he retreats only after a teasing application of pressure first as a reminder of what Louis is declining. 

“And what melancholy haunts you now, my morose philosopher?” He teases, settling more comfortably and resting his arms on Louis’s shoulders with an easy familiarity. “Worry that the child might have caught something from your mother? Rabies is always such a concern with mortals.” 

Louis gives him a reprimanding squeeze with the hands he has on his hips, but he smiles faintly. 

“Was this a mistake?” 

For a horrible moment, Lestat thinks he’s referring to the two of them, their connection, their life together, and he feels his heart shatter as surely as if Louis took a mallet to it. Thankfully, Louis keeps talking, too distracted by his own heavy thoughts to notice. 

“What if Claudia would have been better off somewhere else? With mortals?” 

“Second thoughts about the stray?” Lestat teases. “How promising. I knew my arguments would get through to you eventually.” 

“I’m serious,” Louis chides. 

“As am I,” Lestat returns, making his expression very solemn. “You know how I hate going to bed in clothes. I would welcome a return to the freedom of being free in my own coffin without fear of mentally scarring the stray for life.” Louis is clearly not in the mood to be provoked out of his melancholy, and Lestat drops his attempt at levity, kissing Louis gently in apology and then moving back. “The child adores you,” he scolds gently, taking up the role he knows Louis needs him to fill. “You’re her father. Who else would take her, anyway? You’ve spoiled her terribly. I pity whatever man might try to take her to wife one day. There isn’t a soul on earth who will match her daddy’s generosity. They’ll bankrupt themselves even trying.” 

“She could be among humans,” Louis says. “Have a mama. What do we know about raising a girl?” 

“Well,” Lestat says, “I’ve sampled plenty. Is that helpful?” 

That earns him a pinch. 

“My Saint Louis,” Lestat says, gently chiding, “always so ready to be sorry for your wants. I can assure you there is no mortal on this world who would want to father that girl more than you. You wanted a child, Louis. Why should you apologize for finding one? You retrieved her yourself. Do you think anyone else would have thrown themselves into a burning building for another man’s child?” 

Annoyingly, the question makes Louis’s face darken with guilt. 

“He did look for her,” Louis says, and Lestat tilts his head in question. Louis’s shoulders pull in slightly. “Raymond Landry. That’s her father’s name. He asked around Liberty after the fires, wanted to know if there was a body to bury next to her mama or not.” 

Lestat makes a dismissive noise. 

“After he left her there to start with. I know you’ve seen it in her mind, Louis. She thinks too loudly to miss it. He gave her away, your Claudia. She was waiting for you, waiting for her noble Daddy Lou to run into a fire to retrieve her.” 

“After I caused the fires to start with.” 

Lestat rolls his eyes, already bored with the line of thinking. 

“As I’ve said ad nauseum,” he says dryly, an old, tired argument at this point, “the mortals set the fires and didn’t think about what little waifs would be caught in the flames.” He cups Louis’s face in his hands. “She suits us, Louis. She brings you joy. She is your daughter. Will you do her the disservice of doubting her place in your life? Of handing her off to another stranger as this Raymond Landry did? How unexpectedly cruel.” 

The words do their work, and he sees Louis’s jaw set. 

“You’re right,” he says, tilting his face up for a kiss. 

Lestat smiles, nipping at Louis’s lip gently before rising. 

“I usually am.” 

It’s a pity there isn’t enough time left to do anything with the slap to the ass the words gain him. 

*

In the aftermath of returning to drinking the blood as he should, Louis is slightly more lax in his rules about no meat in the house. They still don’t bring them in front of Claudia, but they put a lock on the basement too high for even their wildly acrobatic child to reach, which allows Lestat some more leeway in enjoying the fruits of his labor at his leisure. So long as he drains the blood into a decanter before bringing it upstairs to share with Louis, it’s not as if Claudia will know whether the crimson in the cut glass is wine or blood. 

How very convenient, Lestat has learned, the trusting ignorance of children. 

He thinks the primary reason he’s allowed this leisure is that it allows them to have meals together as a family, something he knows Louis has missed from his old life. They hired a woman early on to bring meals to the house for the sake of Claudia, and if Lestat isn’t dedicated enough to pick at any of it the way Louis does for the sake of putting Claudia at ease, he can admit that there’s a domestic sort of pleasure to sitting at a table together to enjoy sustenance. 

Especially when he gets to watch his expert businessman of a lover lose every deal he tries to make. 

“Three more green beans,” Louis says, as sternly as if he’s negotiating a shared profit. 

At the stubborn tilt of Claudia’s little chin, Lestat hides his smile behind his glass. She never goes down without a fight, their little cub, something that Louis seems doomed to relearn at each meal, an eternal supper Sisyphus. 

“Zero more green beans!” She declares, moving to fling them off of her plate with her fork with the grandness of a queen ordering the beheading of a treasonous enemy. 

As the one who would be victim to vegetable shrapnel if she succeeds in her performance, however, Lestat reaches out with one hand to stop her. He can appreciate her penchant for drama. 

But he’d prefer not to fall victim to her grand gestures. 

“Did you know, my child regnant, that people who don’t eat their vegetables lose their teeth?” 

Claudia’s eyes go massive. 

“Lestat-” Louis warns, but he’s had his fill of Louis’s tender-hearted parenting for the evening. 

Time for a firmer hand. 

“It’s true,” he says, releasing Claudia’s hand to cross his heart before sitting back and reclaiming his glass, taking a leisurely sip as he studies Claudia as if to determine if she's already falling victim to such a dire fate. “It’s why that man on the street earlier was missing so many,” he says with the air of a professor, nodding at her solemnly. “He refused to eat his vegetables, and now his teeth are all falling out. Well, the ones that aren’t rotting in his-” 

Immediately, Claudia shoves six beans in her mouth, forgoing her fork and using her hands in her desperation, cheeks puffing out like a chipmunk as she chews with a fury. 

“You’re gonna choke,” Louis chides, reaching out with a napkin to wipe her chin. He looks to Lestat with disapproval. 

Lestat salutes him with his glass, tilting his head to indicate his success, Claudia already going back for more of her previously-rejected green beans. 

“You’re a sadist,” Louis says, too low for Claudia to pick up. 

Lestat simply shrugs. If he’s a sadist, he’s an effective one. 

When she’s finally finished her helping of green beans, Lestat takes the liberty of pushing the remaining bowl of them out of Louis’s reach and giving Claudia another helping of roast chicken, previously held back as a bribe. He ignores the look he gets from Louis about it. The child kept her side of the agreement. She should receive her reward. 

“Merci,” Claudia says sweetly, face lighting up as he gives her a drumstick, whole for once instead of torn apart for her by Louis, who has an irrational fear of her choking and all but minces her food as a result. He sees Louis’s fingers twitch with the urge to take it from her even as she holds her prize with both hands with the glee of someone breaking an unspoken rule, and he distracts his lover by pouring him another helping of blood as Claudia sets into her chicken with a delighted ferocity that gives Lestat great hope for her future as a vampire. 

“Drink up, mon cher,” he says, needling at Louis as he fills his glass to the brim. “You’ve hardly touched your own repast.” 

Louis glares at him, but he obliges, having to slide the glass over to take a sip before he can even pick it up. Lestat smiles at him sweetly. 

“What’s that?” Claudia asks, pausing in her chicken leg mutilation and looking at the glass with great interest as Louis takes another sip. 

“It’s bl-” Lestat starts, but in an instant, Louis is behind him, a hand over his mouth. 

“It’s grown-up juice,” he says firmly, pressing his hand harder over Lestat’s mouth in a warning. “You wouldn’t like it.” 

Lestat tilts back enough to give Louis a look, having to jerk his head twice before he’s released. Louis gives him a warning look of censure before he returns to his own seat, Claudia curling over her chicken leg until he’s out of grabbing reach once more. 

“Can I have some?” Claudia persists, giving Louis her most devastating hungry-puppy look. 

Lestat watches her with amused approval. Young or not, she certainly knows how to use her natural advantages. 

“When you’re older,” Louis demures. 

Claudia opens her mouth to argue. 

Lestat reaches for a spoon. 

At once, Louis’s attention is on him, and Lestat gives him a challenging sort of smile as he dips the tip of the spoon into his own glass. 

“She’s curious, mon amour,” he says. “And the source is clean. Why shouldn’t she have a taste if she wants one?” 

Louis looks aghast at the very suggestion. 

“Lestat-” He starts, no doubt about to climb on a very high horse indeed. 

Before he can begin mounting up, Lestat reaches over to Claudia, who obligingly already has her mouth open like a baby bird, canny enough to know the advantage of acting before she can be stopped. 

Louis seems stunned into silence as Lestat deposits the spoonful of blood into Claudia’s mouth, staring at them both with disbelieving eyes. 

Lestat grins before he turns his solicitous attention to Claudia, slipping the now-clean spoon free and setting it back beside her plate. 

“Well, ma fée?” He asks, reaching out to wipe a smear of crimson from her lip with a thumb and then licking it clean. “How is it?” 

Claudia’s jaw moves as she tastes it, rubbing her tongue around her mouth. Her face screws up with distaste, but she doesn’t spit it out. After a moment, she swallows, nose wrinkled. 

“Not good,” she says with a shrug, returning to gnawing on her chicken leg with the satisfaction of a question answered. 

“Lestat-” Louis begins in a tone that usually means Lestat will have no company beyond his own right hand for several days. 

“What?” He asks innocently, sitting back in his chair. “She wished to try it. Now she has tried it and discovered it isn’t to her taste. Now she knows. Ce n'est pas différent de lui faire goûter des olives.” 

“Oui,” Claudia contributes, her mouth full, even though Lestat knows she isn’t yet fluent enough to have known what he said, always such an obliging little echo.

He gives her an approving smile before turning back to Louis. 

“No harm done, cheri,” he tells him. “Simply an exploration of her palate.” 

He can see Louis weighing his desire to start a fight about it against the desire to maintain a peaceful meal. Lestat waits patiently, knowing already which will win. Predictably, Louis soon shakes his head and mutters under his breath but finally lets the matter drop. 

Lestat pours him another glass, filling Claudia’s cup with more water as well. 

“A toast!” He proposes. 

At once, Claudia scrambles to put her chicken back on her plate, grabbing for her glass with a clumsy eagerness that nearly knocks it over. Lestat only taught her about toasting to things a few weeks ago, but she’s taken to it with aplomb. Louis stops her only long enough to wipe her hands off with a napkin and then hands her her glass, holding on until he’s sure she has a good grasp on it. At the expectant looks from her and Lestat, Louis sighs but holds his own. 

“What shall we toast to, pet?” He asks Claudia, who thinks about the matter very seriously for a long moment. Finally, her face lights up, and she straightens, pulling herself to her full–limited–height. Artificially inflated by the stack of books she’s on or not, she still only just clears the edge of the table. 

“Us!” She declares. 

Despite his lover’s lingering irritation, he can see Louis soften like butter in a hot pan in the face of her glowing joy. 

“To us!” Lestat echoes enthusiastically, giving Louis a smile. 

Louis sighs before shaking his head, giving them both an indulgent, resigned smile. 

“To us,” he agrees, both of them holding their glasses at a careful distance, calculated to be close enough for Claudia to tap her cup against but far enough that she can’t smash them with her enthusiasm. 

(Again.)

Lestat takes his sip with great satisfaction as Louis pauses in his own long enough to keep Claudia from smashing her cup against her face with her eagerness to take hers, holding the bottom until he’s sure she can manage. Lestat smiles fondly as Claudia downs a good half of her water with her enthusiasm to celebrate the three of them. 

Perhaps there’s something to being a family after all. 

Chapter Text

The idea of Claudia having her own driver is an idea she floats first with Papa Les, about a month and a half after her 16th birthday, when enough time has passed that asking for something big wouldn't seem greedy after her party and all of her presents.

She chooses him as her first target mainly so they can scheme on how to make Daddy Lou think he came up with it, always the easiest way to convince him of something they know he won’t like. 

“Your own feet won’t serve you, spoiled thing?” Papa Les asks as they run scales on the piano together as a warm-up. Despite the words, his tone is affectionate, and she knows calling her spoiled is meant with the same warmth as calling her beautiful or intelligent. They’re happy to have spoiled her. She’s happy to be spoiled. 

Satisfaction all around. 

“It just makes sense,” she says reasonably, reaching for the new sheet music she picked up with Daddy Lou while running an errand yesterday. It's from a French composer, a small detail meant to put Papa Les in a good, generous mood. “Y’all sleep later than me, and there’s plenty of daylight to do things in.” She pauses as she scans the music, making sure there’s nothing she needs to ask him about before she tries it. She’s been studying piano with him for years, which has given her an edge in taking up the harp with her tutor who comes by three times a week, but as he so often likes to tell her, he has a century and a half of practice ahead of her. Assured there’s nothing tricky in the music that she can see, she adjusts her posture, curving her hands prettily over the keys and waiting for his signal to begin. The music isn’t complicated–not for her, at least–and her fingers move with barely any instruction needed to translate the marks to notes, letting her continue her argument even as she plays. “You know Daddy Lou hates me walking too far by myself, and this way I wouldn’t have to.” 

“Mmm,” Papa Les hums, sounding amused. “And you–start again on that section, Claudia, that was sloppy, you know better–would certainly have no plans to wander where you shouldn’t with the freedom of a vehicle at your disposal, I’m sure.” 

She “hm”s primly, playing the section twice before he gives her a satisfied nod and indicates that she can move on. 

*

It’s while they’re airing out the kitchen– not evacuating after another failed baking experiment, no matter what both of her fathers always say when their household abruptly needs some fresh air after she starts perusing cookbooks–that she floats the idea with Daddy Lou a few days later. They’re stuck outside until the smoke clears anyway, and her using up the last of the eggs on what was meant to be a lemon cake is an excellent entrypoint to her intended goal. She’s careful to focus only on needing eggs and wanting her lemon cake, sneaking her real focus around the edge of her thoughts. It’s not a foolproof approach to parents who can read her mind, but Daddy Lou tends to not dig unless invited anyway, and she’s had plenty of practice on scrambling her thoughts so nothing stands out by now. 

“Think the oven’ll behave for the next one?” She asks innocently. 

Daddy Lou gives her a look the same way he always does when her experiments in the kitchen go awry. 

“What?” She asks, giving him her sweetest blank oh-I’m-just-a-sweet-lamb expression. “This one was going well.” 

“Until it wasn’t,” he says dryly, but she can tell he isn’t that upset about it. He rarely is, which is why he’s the one who usually joins her in the kitchen. Papa Les gets grouchy after inhaling a certain amount of cooking smoke, but Daddy Lou will usually stay patient until she gives up and admits defeat. 

“I think I still have enough to try again,” she says thoughtfully, peeking through the doorway and squinting into the smoky interior. “This was only my second try.” 

“You really want a third round of this?” Daddy Lou asks, sliding down the wall to sit on the ground, propping one leg up and resting an arm across it. 

She moves to join him, pressing close and resting her head on his shoulder. It’s a bit heavy-handed already, so she resists the urge to wrap around one of his arms in a way that has a 100% success rate in pretty new things for her closet. 

“I’ll get it,” she assures him. “Besides, I’ll need to know how for when I’m someone’s pretty little wife one day.” 

Daddy Lou snorts at the joke, an old one in their household that she’s long used whenever she wants to take up a new hobby for no reason. She’s known since she was a little girl that she’ll never have a need to marry unless she really wants to, after all. Daddy and Papa are richer than God and twice as generous, and she’s already the lady of the house, a title she insisted on when she was 12 that Papa Les found funny to play along with and still uses. 

And with her future as a vampire already set as soon as she can convince her parents that she’s ready, it’s not as if she’ll ever be at risk of being an ugly old spinster. 

“You already trying to up and leave us?” Daddy Lou teases. “Got someone you ain’t told your boring old daddy about?” 

“Nobody worth meeting my daddy,” she says sweetly, almost wincing when it’s out. Too far, she knows immediately. Daddy Lou’s done business for too long to miss the blatant attempt to butter him up. 

Sure enough, he says, “Mmhm” in a tone that tells her she’s been caught. 

“You wanna tell me what you’re wasting all your flattering me on?” He sounds more amused than anything. “This have anything to do with your Papa Les mentioning how dusty your dresses end up being from you walking everywhere when you go out during the day?” 

Safe from Daddy Lou’s sight, she pulls a face. Damn. They should have coordinated their attack. 

“I’ve just been thinking-” 

“God help me, not you thinking.” 

“-that a driver might not be a bad idea,” she finishes, ignoring the interruption. “Marie three roads over has a driver, and Dot said her daddy has been interviewing people for her.” These are both mild exaggerations. Marie and her mama share a driver, and Dot’s daddy has been interviewing someone to drive groceries back and forth from their family’s warehouse to the store, but Claudia is loose enough friends with both of them that the chance of Daddy Lou catching her in the fib is low. 

“And what exactly do you need a driver for, little miss?” He asks. The lack of a no is promising. 

“Paperwork, for one,” she says as her opener. Daddy Lou always says the best way to catch somebody’s attention for a deal is to start with what they’re going to get out of it. “It’s annoying for you and Papa Les to have to coordinate people all the time to run papers if people need ‘em when the sun’s out.” 

“And you wanna be our errand girl?” Daddy Lou asks, tone clearly doubtful. 

“Well, it would make errands easier,” she points out. “It took four days for you to pick up that new hat you ordered because the shop kept closing before they said they would.” Papa Les had had the shop owner for supper for being so annoying and rude to Daddy Lou, and the new owner has been much more obliging, but she still thinks the point stands. “If I had someone to drive me, I could have gotten it for you!” 

“You planning to be my enforcer?” He asks, knocking his shoulder against her playfully. 

She straightens up and flexes, making him laugh and push her away gently with a finger against her forehead. 

“Alright, Miss Muscles,” he teases. “Don’t hurt yourself now.” 

“It’s not like you two even use the car during the day,” she presses, folding her legs under her and resting her hands on his knee where he has his leg propped up, setting her chin on top and making her eyes as big and innocent as she can. It’s one of her cutest looks, she knows, and she feels a little thrill of success when she sees his eyes soften. 

“That ain’t gonna work on me,” he says, even as he tucks a strand of her hair back into its bun. “You ain’t that cute.” 

She wrinkles her nose at him, knowing she’s exactly that cute and that he’s a sucker for this particular facial expression. 

He wrinkles his nose back at her. 

“Being desperate doesn’t help you in a deal, you know,” he tells her, rocking his knee gently until she gives up on her pose and sits down, leaning her weight back on her hands. “You always wanna go in acting like you don’t care if you reach a deal or not.” 

“‘Cause doing business is like swimming around sharks: you don’t want any blood in the water,” she recites faithfully. 

He reaches out and pinches her cheek, grinning when she swats at him. 

“Well ain’t you an up and coming Rockefeller,” he coos, teasing her. 

“Rockefeller has a driver,” she says at once, pushing back to her original point. 

He huffs a laugh, amused at her persistence. 

“Well Rockefeller ain’t a 16 year old girl,” he says. He pauses a moment, lifting an eyebrow. “Or my daughter.” 

She doesn’t like the sound of this new line of argument. 

“But if I had a driver-” She rushes to say, trying to steer back around to her point, but she can tell that Daddy Lou is done with the talk for now. 

It’s an effort not to pout. 

“You’re saying no?” She asks flatly. 

“I’m saying let me think about it,” Daddy Lou says patiently, pushing himself to his feet and then reaching down for her. She accepts the help despite being mad at him. “I don’t like the idea of you running all around town on your own, but I’m not saying no. I’m just saying let me and Papa Le-” 

“Again with the accursed baking?” Comes Papa Les’s voice from inside, exasperated. “A quoi sert son argent de poche sinon à acheter des gâteaux si elle en a vraiment besoin?” 

“I’m practicing!” She shouts back. “Il n’y a pas d’excellence sans diligence,” she quotes back at him, something he’s told her plenty when she isn’t as focused on her music studies as he wants her to be. 

“In this, ma petite pyromane, admit defeat and stop punishing us all.” He appears in the doorway and tosses the still-faintly-smoking pan that was her doomed lemon cake into the courtyard. “You will burn our home down in pursuit of pastries, and then where will we be?” 

She sticks her tongue out at him. 

“Well now I’m gonna make muffins tomorrow,” she tells him haughtily. “And a pie!”

He scowls. 

*

She looks up at a knock on her door three days later. 

“Come in,” she calls, tucking her pen inside of her journal and tossing it aside, giving Monsieur Minou the Second an apologetic look when it lands on his tail from his place curled on her mattress beside her. He gives her an offended look and jumps off of her bed, trotting out of her room past Daddy Lou and Papa Les when they enter, bushy tail held high. 

She feels a nervous little thrill in her stomach at whatever is important enough that they’ve both come to her room, especially when she knows they haven’t been hunting yet and it’s a human night for Daddy Lou. 

And when there’s a big decision she’s been waiting to hear about. 

“Yes,” Papa Les says, reading her mind as he drapes himself over the foot of her bed with his usual dramatic sort of elegance. She doesn’t even mind him being in her head for once, too excited by the answer. She looks to Daddy Lou, needing a second confirmation, and he smiles warmly, hooking her bureau stool with one foot and dragging it over to take a seat. 

“Yes,” he says, holding up a hand when she shoves herself to her knees with an excited squeal, “with some ground rules.” 

Knowing that she’s getting her way makes her ready to agree to just about anything, but she just nods, knowing she must look a little crazy with the force she does it with. 

“You will not take passengers,” Papa Les says, and she looks to him, a little surprised that he’s the one starting out with the rules. She scrambles her thoughts before he can pick that up. “Strangers or friends or long-lost sisters,” she pulls a face at this, “ça ne fait aucune différence. You will not stop the car between home and your destination.” 

“And you won’t have a destination we don’t know about,” Daddy Lou adds. 

“But I-” She starts, but this is one of the rare things he seems to be firm about, not even letting her finish her objection. 

“When we wake up,” he says, “we better know any place you might be, and if we stop by one of them after sunset, we’d better be able to find you there.” 

“What places?” She asks, and Daddy Lou smiles slightly at her serious tone before Papa Les starts speaking again.

“Your modiste, our tailor, the milliner’s, any bakery you choose if it will keep you from your attempts to start a fire in the house,” Papa Les drawls, and she kicks him. He catches her by the ankle and gives her a threatening push towards the edge of her bed before he lets her go. 

“The bookshop on Decatur,” Daddy Lou says, picking up the thread of the conversation. “Not on Chartres. I don’t like how that man thinks. I don’t want you there without one of us.” 

She pulls a face but allows it, giddy enough on her imminent freedom to accept a minor limitation. 

“What about restaurants?” She asks, pretty sure she can guess the answer but needing to check anyway. 

Sure enough, Daddy Lou shakes his head. 

“A young girl eating alone in a restaurant invites questions and company,” Daddy Lou says. 

“Especially one as lovely as notre petite fée,” Papa Les observes. Even knowing it’s just meant to soften the rejection, it does soothe her pride a bit. She’d figured the answer would be no–she’s never gone to a restaurant without Daddy Lou or both of them, after all–but she’d had such hopes of feeling like a grown woman, dining alone with a book in her hand. 

Hopefully she’ll be able to wiggle them to being a little less firm on that point in time. 

“Can I go to a tearoom if I take Charlotte?” She asks. She doesn't see her former minder as much for the sake of her not noticing that Daddy and Papa haven't changed in 11 years, and Mrs. Jackson–formerly Miss Babin–is usually too busy with her three small children anyway, but Claudia still considers her something like a friend.

She also considers her an excellent way to claw back a little more freedom from a smothering Daddy Lou and a Papa Les who isn't siding with her for once, the traitor.

*

They proceed through negotiations for a few more potential destinations, and Claudia puts her best effort into arguing her side. Annoyingly, though, Papa Les for once seems in lockstep with Daddy Lou about limiting her, and she grows frustrated as the conversation goes on. 

“It is a large world, cherie,” Papa Les finally says after she grows irritated enough to toss a pillow in frustration. “And you are still young. There are many places that aren’t safe for you until you’ve received the gift.” 

She sighs, flopping back against her pillows. It’s the answer for a lot of the rules she has, the plans for her change one day, when she’ll finally be fierce and strong and powerful like Papa Les and Daddy Lou. 

Until then, she’s stuck in her all-too-mortal body with all of its stupid mortal limitations.

“I could get the gift now,” she suggests, even knowing it’ll be an immediate rejection the way it always is. 

Sure enough, Papa Les rises with an amused hum, pulling her in enough to kiss the top of her head. 

“The answer is still no, my little bindweed, but I admire your persistence.” 

“One day,” Daddy Lou says, standing and putting her stool back as Papa Les leaves the room. 

As if she’s a child and not almost a grown woman, Daddy Lou tugs back her covers for her. She pulls a face and sighs dramatically to make sure he knows what he’s asking of her. 

But she also climbs under and waits for him to pull them over her. 

*

Daddy Lou is as efficient with finding her a driver as he is about all of his business dealings, starting the search the next day even without her pestering him about it. He asks around with the people he knows, looks for references, meets a few people and reads their minds. A few are dismissed as soon as he mentions they’ll be driving his daughter around–the way he glowers at a couple tells her they’re likely also going to be for supper soon for him and Papa Les–and a few don’t pass a practice drive with Papa Les as their passenger, doing the thing he does that makes people feel like prey even when they’re not, his eyes a little too sharp and his smile a little too toothy. Claudia–immune to the fear of it by the virtue of him being her papa–knows it’s a test to see if their nerve will hold or not. 

He and Daddy Lou worry about someone stopping Claudia when she’s out without them, worry about someone trying to rob her. She always has a little switchblade in her handbag just in case (she tried to push for a pretty little snubnosed revolver like a detective in one of her novels and was told a definitive no), and a few lessons from Daddy Lou about where to stab it if she needs to, but she knows that Daddy Lou is especially not eager to see how well she can put his instruction into practice. They don’t want to leave her with some pansy boy who’ll toss her to a robber to save his own skin, and she can appreciate the love behind it. 

Still, she does wish they would hurry up and find Goldilocks already. 

*

It’s two weeks after the search starts that she comes downstairs one evening and finds them both waiting with a stranger, a boy about her age who’s standing politely in the foyer, his hat in his hands. He looks aware of his surroundings–Claudia notes with approval that he doesn’t gape at the grandness of the townhouse, something she’s always on the look for with as much money as she stands to inherit–but not cowed by them, looking her right in the eye and giving her a nod and a small smile. 

Claudia’s first impression is that he’s one of the most beautiful boys she’s ever seen. 

Immediately, she scrambles her thoughts before either of her parents pick up on it. 

(From the sly little wink Papa Les gives her, she knows he hears it anyway, but he’s a fairly safe reliquary for a secret like finding a boy cute, willing to tease but not willing to set Daddy Lou off in a smothering mess by letting him know about it.)

“Claudia,” Daddy Lou says, extending a hand to call her over. “I want you to meet your new driver, Charlie Romero. Charlie, this is my daughter, Claudia de Pointe du Lac.” 

The boy– Charlie, Claudia thinks, rolling his name around in her mouth like a two-penny sweet from the corner store–nods politely. 

“Ma’am.” 

Oh, she thinks. She likes being called ma’am. 

Especially by him. 

She extends her hand with pleasure. 

*

She feels nearly drunk with power the first afternoon she goes out with Charlie. She puts on her newest dress and spends far too long on her hair, tossing bows around her room in a flurry as she decides which one suits her best. Finally, she settles on a green one to match the trim on her dress, clipping some matching earrings on to complete the look. She admires herself in her mirror for a long, long moment before she checks her watch, a pretty little trinket Papa Les gave her from one of his hunts, a slender silver band with a dainty watch face surrounded by rhinestones. Knowing she can’t afford to primp and preen for any longer if she wants to take full advantage of her freedom, she makes her way downstairs, tapping the bannister of the stairs twice for luck. 

When she steps outside, locking the door behind herself and dropping the key into her new beaded handbag, she finds Charlie already waiting by the car. He gives her a smile and moves to open the door for her, gesturing her in like she’s a grand lady. 

Taking it with a thankful tilt of her head and settling into her seat, she feels like she is. 

*

When her outings with Charlie have become routine enough that Daddy Lou and Papa Les don’t openly look for details when she returns home, she settles into the joy of the freedom of her new independence. 

And it is absolutely a joy. 

Daddy Lou and Papa Les have never denied her things, but there’s a different kind of giddiness to picking things out for herself without a parent nearby. Even if Papa Les especially is unlikely to tell her no if she really wants something, there’s a freedom to picking out whatever she wants, wherever she wants, whenever she wants. For clothes, she’s a little less wild in her choices. She’ll have to wear them around her parents eventually, after all, and she likes shopping with Papa Les and Daddy Lou, always an appreciative audience. She picks up a few things here and there and a pair of bright red heels she knows is going to attract notice from Daddy Lou even if they aren’t scandalous enough to be expressly forbidden, but she largely doesn’t worry about her closet, already so full that she and Daddy Lou have to go through it regularly to decide what can go and what can stay in order to make room for more. 

The real fun is in the things her parents won’t see. 

Her most prized find is a little bottle of bright red nail lacquer, which she hides in the drawer that holds her sanitary napkins, the one place she absolutely knows neither of her guardians will ever look. Thanks to Papa Les taking her side, she's been granted the liberty for a few shades of pink for her nails, but the bright, racy, provocative red is still firmly off-limits. 

(Really, for a vampire, Daddy Lou can still be so Catholic.)

But so long as she's diligent about never having bare feet or sheer stockings around Papa Les or Daddy Lou, how would they know her toenails are blazing, fire-engine red? She wriggles them now with delight, admiring the way they make her feel the way she imagines the women on the movie screen do: mature, desirable, confident. She shuffles her way over to her vanity with cotton balls still between her toes, checking the sun's position in the sky to make sure she still has time to play around with a few other things she's gotten on her trips with Charlie, all of them always handed over to be put in the trunk already packaged to prevent him from giving away her secrets with his thoughts. Certain she still has a good hour before sunset will wake Papa Les and Daddy Lou–she’s an expert at estimating the sun’s movements by now–she settles down to play with more of her treasures. 

She holds her little tube of red lipstick like it's a holy relic.

The makeup isn't exactly forbidden. After Daddy Lou took such a firm stance about her nail polish, she'd decided not to ask about cosmetics.

After all, she can't break a rule she wasn't given, she thinks with pleasure as she traces the lipstick in a crimson arc over her lips, frowning and reaching for a tissue when it smudges. She smiles when it’s on and reaches for her cake of mascara and its little brush. 

What fun it is to be an independent woman. 

*

She does hold to her side of her argument with Daddy Lou and Papa Les that got her a driver in the first place, dropping off papers for them for things best delivered during daylight. She doesn’t mind it. As much as she loves shopping, it is fun to feel like an important person, carrying important papers around. She doesn’t usually get to go very far in the buildings–sometimes they don’t even let her past the lobby–but if the people Daddy and Papa do business with find it strange that she’s running errands for them, they know better than to mention it. They might not know that Papa Les is her papa, but they do know that the very rich and very important man Mr. de Lioncourt does things like call her cherie and give her a hand down out of the car when she goes with him and her daddy on a meeting to take notes as their secretary. Around the business people she doesn’t do so much as call him as Uncle Les, a point of caution she learned early, but it doesn’t matter. Even the men who think they’re better than Daddy Lou are too intimidated by Papa Les to treat her poorly, too scared that Mr. de Lioncourt’s ma petite will report their rudeness back and lose them a very valuable client or investor. 

If Claudia enjoys the benefits of such an arrangement, who can blame her? 

Today she’s picking up some shipping ledgers for Daddy Lou, and she’s enjoying the novelty of carrying a little briefcase with her for the purpose of keeping them from getting blown away in the wind. Charlie had grinned when he saw it, and she’d grinned back, and they’d had a funny moment of shaking hands like they were making a business deal before he opened the car door for her. 

She likes it, being silly with him. 

When she steps out of the car, though, she pauses to pull herself up to her full–still annoyingly not-tall–height, drawing the cloak of being Claudia de Pointe du Lac around her like a shield. Daddy Lou’s business dealings might not always be the most respectable kind of thing, but for the people who profit off of it, they know he’s not someone to mess with. 

And neither, she tells herself as she walks into the building with as much poise and confidence as she can manage, is she. 

*

Daddy Lou and Papa Les’s business dealings being just a bit on the wrong side of respectable in society means she doesn’t have access to the really fancy circles, the people in stuffy clothes who do things like go to church picnics. Aunt Grace and her family still get to belong to that world because Daddy Lou pays for their house and doesn’t mention it, and Aunt Grace’s husband gets to do the boring, stuffy kinds of business that don’t fully pay the bills but mean they get invited to christenings. If Daddy Lou did Levi’s kind of business, it’s probable that she’d be like her cousins, always dressed up in things with hems just the right length, always in church on Sunday, always under the eye of someone eager to report back on her misbehaving. 

She certainly, she thinks with delight, wouldn’t be out on the streets at 2 in the morning with Papa Les, dressed as a boy to avoid attracting notice, her hair tucked up under a hat and a vest on under her shirt to squish her chest flat. It was her best gift of all for her 16th birthday, getting to start going out on hunts with Papa Les, and the joy of it is still as fresh as the first day she slipped on her costume. 

Observe, Papa Les says now in her head, our prey. 

She does. 

Three of them, she reports back, as dutifully as she plays scales on the piano at home under his equally-attentive eye. The one with the brown hat looks like he’s a yeller. 

Well spotted, ma petite, Papa Les says, voice warm with approval that makes her feel like she’s glowing from the inside out. He does look like one to squeal at a bite. He flashes his fangs at her teasingly, and she bares her own teeth in response, still flat as any mortal’s but the gesture enough to make him grin. How would one approach such an offering, do you think?

She considers, wrinkling her nose when one of the men slaps a woman’s ass as she walks by. This is one of the things Daddy Lou made as a rule when Papa Les first proposed these outings and Claudia badgered him until he gave in: only the meat the world can stand to lose. She doesn’t know what kind of vampire she’ll be yet, but she knows Daddy Lou wants her to take after him more than Papa Les. She’s not sure if she will or not, but she’s willing to entertain the idea. 

Watching the men laugh among themselves at the woman’s cry of outrage and fear when they bluff a charge at her, Claudia thinks darkly that the world could certainly stand to lose these three. 

Invite them for a drink? She offers Papa Les. She catches the one in the brown hat give a quick, appreciative look back at Papa Les, always so striking with his handsome face and golden hair, especially in a place as dingy as this dark street. Invite the squealer to the alley out back for an invitation for something else? Then get him first and the other two when they go to check on him when he doesn’t come back? 

You are truly an artist, ma petite lionne, Papa Les says, his tone so warm that Claudia feels it all the way down to her toes. A natural to the life. 

Claudia beams, skipping ahead to wait in the alley, knowing that Papa Les will keep an ear out to make sure no one else finds her back there. 

Besides, she thinks, fingering the handle of her switchblade, retrieved from its usual place in her handbag and stashed in the pocket of her disguise, it’s not as if she’s helpless. 

*

They return home that night with the largest of the three under Papa Les’s thrall as supper for Daddy Lou, the man’s lovely kid gloves already in her pocket as a souvenir. They’re too big for her, but that’s alright. 

She can have Charlie take her by the leather goods store tomorrow to have them cut to her size. 

*

“Well now, aren’t those something,” Daddy Lou observes the evening she returns home in her new red leather heels. 

She obligingly poses, his indulgent tone letting her know he’s amused and not scandalized. Papa Les joins him in the doorway to the living room, resting an arm around his waist, and Claudia gives them a full show, kicking her feet like a ballet dancer to show off her lovely shoes. She laughs when a misjudged pirouette almost sends her into a table, Papa Les there in an instant to catch her, lifting her easily over his head to let her continue pretending to be a ballerina with the advantage of his inhuman strength to make her graceful as a feather. Daddy Lou laughs at them both and calls them crazy fools, but when Papa Les extends a hand, Daddy Lou takes it, joining their horrible mismatched dance, both of them spinning her and each other and ducking to let her spin them, too. 

I’m so lucky, Claudia thinks, her face aching with the size of her grin as she tries and fails to dip Daddy Lou, sending them both in a crash to the floor that Daddy Lou takes the brunt of to protect her. I’m so very lucky to be me. 

*

It’s two and a half months of letting Charlie drive her around before Claudia finally decides to act on the temptation she’s been figuring out how to get her way on: letting her have a turn at the wheel. 

“I don’t know, Claudia…” Charlie starts, but he’s not set on his refusal. Claudia can tell. 

She leans over the seat more, batting her lashes, carefully lined with a smudge of kohl and accented with her now-practiced hand with a coat of mascara, both easily washed away when she gets home before Daddy Lou and Papa Les wake up. 

“Please?” She asks in her sweetest, most convincing voice. “I know what I’m doing. My daddy’s been teaching me.” Really, Papa Les has been teaching her and making her swear to never tell Daddy Lou, but the intricacies of how her papa is her uncle and not even that sometimes depending on who they’re around is not something she can get into with Charlie. 

No matter how cute he is. 

“I won’t tell,” she promises, daring to climb over the seat close enough that he’ll either have to move over or let her land on his lap. 

She’s both relieved and a little disappointed when he picks the former. 

*

She can tell Charlie is a little nervous with her behind the wheel as she takes them out into the backroads she’s used to driving on, so she takes it far slower than she does when she’s out driving with Papa Les. With time, he relaxes, and Claudia laughs when he leans back and folds his hands behind his head like he’s a rich passenger and her the chauffeur. 

“Where to, Mr. Romero?” She asks in a fake-deep voice. He laughs. 

Her breath catches slightly with how much she wants to be close enough to feel it vibrate out of his chest and into hers. 

She makes herself focus back on her driving. 

*

With time, Charlie grows more comfortable letting her have a turn behind the wheel. The backroads they go on aren’t approved by Daddy Lou or Papa Les when she’s out with Charlie, but they’re not technically stopping, so she’s not breaking her promise, not really. 

Besides, she’s 16, almost all the way grown up. She doesn’t need to tell her parents everything. 

“Do you wanna be a driver forever?” She asks Charlie today, craning forward to make a tight turn to avoid a puddle of unknown depth. 

Her breath catches when one of Charlie’s hands comes over hers to help her with the wheel. Even through her glove, she can feel the heat of it, and it’s so much larger than hers, so strong, so certain…

It’s an effort to make herself focus on not hitting the embankment at the side of the road. 

“With a client as pretty as you?” He asks, and Claudia can feel her face heat with pleasure. It’s different, she knows now, Charlie calling her pretty, different from Papa Les or Daddy Lou or any of the boys who have been interested enough to catch her eye and even try to curry favor with a few little presents left on her porch, always religiously collected before either of her parents wake up and get curious enough to ask questions. She doesn’t have the words for why it feels so different, but she knows it’s special when he says it, somehow. 

The compliment makes her feel warm in a way it doesn’t when it’s from anyone else. 

“Oh, so I’m just something to look at?” She asks with fake-offense, speeding up a little on such a straight road. They’ve driven this route a few times, and she knows by now where to slow down and where she can give it a little more gas for the sheer joy of the speed. 

“No,” Charlie says, and his voice isn’t so teasing now. “You’re… more.” 

More. Such a small word to feel so heavy. 

“More?” She asks, clearing her throat when her voice goes a little squeaky. “More what?” 

“I’ve never met anybody like you before, Claudia. You’re more. More than any other girl.” 

Claudia bites her cheek to fight off the stupid grin trying to break its way free. 

“Are you buttering me up, Charlie Romero?” 

She feels his proximity like sparks of electricity as he slides just a little closer on the bench seat. When he speaks, his voice is soft. 

“Is it working, Claudia du Lac?” He tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, the places he’s touching her skin sparking like they’re on fire, innocent as the touch is. 

She slams the car to a screeching, shuddering halt. 

Before he’s even recovered from the surprise, her lips are on his. 

*

“Well now,” Daddy Lou says when she gets home that evening, a little late but not so much she's at risk of getting in trouble for it, her makeup hastily wiped off on the drive back. “What’s got you in such a good mood?” 

“Nothing,” she says immediately, scrambling her thoughts as fast as she can. 

It’s significantly harder than usual with how she feels buzzy and floaty far beyond the way she did when Daddy Lou and Papa Les let her have a whole glass of champagne on her birthday. 

(And Papa Les let her have a second whole glass that Daddy Lou pretended not to know about.)

“Doesn’t look like-” He starts, voice teasing, but Claudia is already rushing up the stairs. 

“Happy hunting!” She calls back, darting to her room and nearly slamming the door shut, startling Monsieur Minou the Second from his place on her pillow enough to jump to his feet. 

She doesn’t even apologize before she’s diving for her diary, her fingers almost too clumsy from her excitement to manage. 

Dear Diary, she scrawls as fast as she can, pen flying across the page with such a fervor that she accidentally sends it across the room, diving after it and then scrambling back to her bed. I, Claudia du Lac de Lioncourt, just got my very! first! kiss!

She has to pause in her journaling to kick her feet and squeal before she can finish, writing down every last detail she can remember, down to what perfume she was wearing and the way the scratch of the stubble on Charlie’s upper lip felt. 

She knows already that this is something she’ll never want to forget, not a single beautiful, perfect detail. 

*

She's always careful with Charlie as their romance progresses over the days and weeks after their first kiss, never doing anything that couldn't be stopped or forgotten about later. Daddy Lou passed her off to Aunt Grace when she woke up bleeding a month after turning 15 for some “lady talk,” and she'd gotten vague warnings about going “too far” and “ending up in a family way” like some “loose woman.” She’d left the conversation more embarrassed and confused than anything else, and she certainly hadn’t asked any follow-up questions that would have made it last longer. 

It had been Papa Les who had caught her returning some moon eyes with a delivery boy a few months ago and given her a very frank talk on not getting herself pregnant. Her face had burned like it was on fire the whole time, but it had been a thorough lecture about not getting herself a baby or syphilis, one that had sunk in so much she's sure she'll never forget it.

Still, the kissing is plenty nice all on its own.

“You’re so beautiful,” Charlie breathes now, the slowly setting sun painting him gold like a statue in a church. She traces her fingers over his face, as if she can smudge the light like one of her paintings, carry it home with her on her fingertips, save it in her journal like a ticket stub or a pressed flower from one of the bouquets he’s started giving her when he picks her up. “The most beautiful girl in the world.” He kisses her again, a soft, sweet thing. They can’t go further even if she were inclined, not now, not when they need to get her home soon before Daddy Lou and Papa Les wake up, and she needs to get him gone before they can read this moment in his head and spoil it, either by being overprotective like Daddy Lou would or teasing her until all the sweetness runs out of it like Papa Les would. 

Still, she gives herself permission to steal a few more perfect seconds with this perfect boy on this perfect afternoon in her wonderful, perfect life. 

She dips her head down to his and tells herself she still has plenty of time. 

*

She’s feeling reckless the next afternoon, wild and free and larger than life. She’s a woman in love, finally feeling the same thing Daddy Lou and Papa Les do, the same thing that makes them give each other soft eyes and sweet little touches. She wonders, now, about their restraint. How can anyone feel the way she does about Charlie and content themselves with pats to chests and fingers stroked down arms and playful little waltzes around the living room when she’s playing the piano? They’re sweet gestures, yes, but so small. 

The way she loves Charlie feels too big to even consider such a thing. 

If it makes her speed a little faster, who can blame her? She’s too happy to do anything slow. 

“Easy now,” Charlie says, bracing a hand on the dash. She can hear he’s a little nervous despite the way he’s trying to laugh. 

“What?” She teases, looking away from the road to scrunch her face at him playfully. “You don’t trust m-”

The next few seconds happen in milliseconds and years at the same time. 

She feels the lurch of one wheel hitting the embankment at the side of the road, tipping them skywards. In her panic, her feet both slam down as the car tips up, her right pressing the gas pedal all the way to the floor, her heel catching in the slim gap between the floorboard and the pedal, trapping her foot there. Charlie yells, a wordless sound of panic, and lunges for the wheel, trying to grab it at the same time as her, overcorrecting and spinning it all the way to the right. The wheel hits the ground again. The car lurches forward in the direction it was turned. They shoot into a ditch, the nose of the car dipping down and the back flipping up. Claudia feels her stomach flip along with it as she’s made weightless, held to the car by her trapped high heel shoe. 

The car flips over them, sending them into the ditch. 

She catches a hard blow to her head. 

The last thing she sees is Charlie’s hand, reaching reaching reaching. 

*

Louis looks to the clock for the ninth time. Two minutes have passed since he last checked it. 

Two minutes past the four hours his daughter is late getting home. 

He looks up at the sound of the door, hope a fluttering thing in his chest, but it’s crushed ruthlessly when he sees it’s just Lestat, who sees the rapid life and death of his hope, giving him a shake of his head. 

“No one has any memory of her,” he reports, and Louis feels his stomach clench tighter. That wasn’t supposed to be the answer. He would stay home, and Lestat would go out and skim mortal minds to see where in the hell their wayward child has been to miss her curfew by such a wide margin. Either she would get home and find Louis waiting, or Lestat would return with her in tow. She would have been in trouble of a sort she’s never faced before, and there would doubtlessly be a tantrum and yelling and dire proclamations of their unfairness, but then she would have stormed up to her room and slammed the door, safe at home again. 

Now their house is quiet and still without their daughter. 

“She’ll be fine, mon cher,” Lestat murmurs, moving to stand behind him, chest to Louis’s back. Lestat nuzzles his head close even as Louis stares at the clock without blinking, as if he can simply will it to stop. “She-” 

“She should be home,” he says, shrugging the other vampire off, not in the mood to be petted and soothed. “She knows not to be out after dark without us, not this late.” 

“She is a teenager,” Lestat says, and the reasonable tone of his voice just makes Louis angrier. “She-” 

“Do you not care?” He demands, whirling on the other vampire. “Our daughter is out there, without us, after dark, with God knows what-” He stops, clenching his teeth together. He knows he’s only going after Lestat because he’s a convenient target. 

It doesn’t make him less convenient. 

“And what would you like me to do about it?” Lestat demands, and Louis knows he’s struck a nerve. “Have I not been out there searching for her?” 

“And yet she isn’t here,” Louis snaps back. “If you hadn’t-” 

They break off at the sound of a car outside and almost trip over each other in their haste to open the door. Louis can feel the scolding he’s going to give Claudia at the tip of his tongue, ready to fly free. Honestly, the nerve of her to make them worry like-

The car keeps driving. 

It isn’t Claudia. 

Louis closes the door with the feeling that he’s going to be sick. 

*

Lestat and Louis set aside their enmity after the false relief of the car. He tugs Louis close, pressing their foreheads together for a long moment before pulling back. The urge to yell is still there, the urge to do something with the terror in his chest. 

But shouting at his lover won’t bring their daughter home safely. 

“I’ll be back, mon amour,” he says, giving Louis one quick, chaste kiss. “With our wayward little stray.”

It’s a promise Louis desperately needs him to keep. 

*

Lestat uses his Cloud Gift, searching from the sky. It’s harder this high up to discern details, but it’s something. The night is clear, at least, and he already got far into the city earlier while searching for his errant child, enough that he’s confident she isn’t within the city limits. He has his suspicions about where she might decide to wander off to, and he checks the lovers’ lanes first, far into the empty sprawling land around New Orleans, knowing already that if he catches the two of them there, he’s almost certainly going to wring her driver’s neck for the audacity of keeping his daughter out this late, sending him and Louis into this strained worry. 

He knows the boy is smitten with Claudia, has been since almost the very start of his job as her driver, and despite her admittedly impressive skill at keeping her mind a mess of fighting thoughts to disguise the things she wants to hide, he’s picked up enough to know that the interest is reciprocated. He’d checked, after all, back when he first caught an appreciative thought in the boy’s head of his daughter’s legs in a skirt she apparently wears much higher when there’s no parent around to catch her. He’d wanted to ensure the boy wouldn’t take any liberties, wouldn’t turn any admiration into action without Claudia’s approval. She’s a tough little thing, their daughter, but she’s young still, and she has a young thing’s lack of judgment and eagerness for new experiences. Claudia, though, had returned the boy’s interest, and Lestat had left it at that. It’s endearing, the sweet little gestures between them, the first little flickers of young love, and until now, he’s let it pass without comment, let Claudia enjoy the first heady taste of romance. 

Apparently she has decided to make him regret his generosity. 

Claudia knows better than this, and he’s going to remind her of that fact as soon as he finds her. Her freedom is a gift, and if she can’t handle it in a way that doesn’t send their family into a spiral, it’s a gift that can be taken back. If he can just-

A flash of moonlight against metal catches his attention. 

And then the sight of familiar red sends dread through him with enough force to almost send him hurtling to the earth. 

He lands with a clumsy stumble, not even noticing as he falls to his knees, picking up the familiar little red high heeled shoe with fingers nearly numb from fear. He hears a squeak of metal and looks up sharply. 

It’s the car. 

Upside down. 

In a ditch. 

He’s in the ditch as well faster than a single breath, heart pounding in a way it hasn’t for years, not since those long nights he and Louis sat vigil beside Claudia’s sickbed when she was a child, tracking every ragged breath and stuttering heartbeat, caught between the impossibility of saving her and the impossibility of letting her die. They've grown more careful since then, her illness a hard lesson on their daughter’s inherent fragility. They keep her at home when there's a surge of cholera or polio. They didn't let her take up horseback riding when the other girls of her circle did. They've listened carefully to the thoughts of anyone who spends time with her, weeding out threats with ruthless efficiency. They’ve been careful, watchful. They’ve built a safe world to contain her until she can leave behind her mortality. 

This cannot be the shattering of that world.

No. Ce n'est tout simplement pas possible. Ce n'est pas possible. Pas cette chose laide et horrible. Ce n'est pas possible-

“Papa.” 

His head snaps to attention in the direction of the voice, and he sees one hazel eye looking at him from beneath the car door. In an instant, he’s lifting the wreck of metal, only to stop when Claudia lets out a pained cry. 

“Claudia, ma petite, what’s wrong?” He asks at once, near-frantic in his mingled relief and panic. “Parle-moi, ma petite lionne. Que s'est-il passé? Que s'est-il passé ici?” 

“De-dead,” Claudia says on a sob, and Lestat’s heart stops, wondering if this is a ghost, if the realm of impossibility has opened up again enough to show him his dead daughter, if-

But no. As he lifts the car up, he sees that Claudia is still very much alive. 

The same cannot be said for her driver. 

“He’s dead,” Claudia says with a sob that shakes her entire body. There’s blood on her forehead from what looks like a hard blow, and he sees from tilting the car that she’s somehow gotten trapped by one foot, unable to escape from the wreck even if she had been able to lift it herself. She lets out a pained cry when he rests the vehicle on its side in the narrow space, kneeling to get a better look. 

“Désolé, ma chérie. Attends un peu. Sois forte pour moi. Laisse-moi voir ce qui s'est passé.” 

“Papa,” Claudia whimpers. “He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s-” 

He cuts her off as gently as he can manage, finally finding where she’s trapped. He snaps the strap of her handbag where it somehow ended up wrapped around her foot and the accelerator. He catches her leg before it can hit the ground, already seeing the ugly purple swelling around her ankle. 

If it hurts, Claudia doesn’t seem to notice, staring at Charlie’s unblinking face as tears run down her cheeks, smudging mascara she isn’t meant to be wearing in dark black streaks down her temples and into her ears. He climbs over her carefully, getting in the way of her line of sight to Charlie. She keeps staring, as if she can see the boy through him. He reaches out gently, cupping her face in his hands. Her skin is cool to the touch, and it sends a thrill of terror through him. She always runs warm, their little spark. This coolness doesn’t belong in her. 

“Look at me, cherie,” he says softly, terrified for a moment that he’s found a corpse and imagined the rest, her cool skin superimposing a death grimace on her face for the flash of a moment. Her face, staring back at him, still and unmoving-

-his face, in a tower, reflected back to him over and over and over again, still and unmoving, a pile of bodies, all around, all cool to the touch, all-

He shakes himself, moving one hand down to chafe at Claudia’s clammy little arm, feeling an overwhelming rush of relief when she begins to cry once more. It hurts him, her pain, seeing her suffer in front of him while being helpless to stop it. 

But hurting and alive is a great deal better than placid and dead. 

“Can you move?” He asks as gently as he can manage.

“He’s dead,” Claudia says again, as if that’s an answer. 

He breathes through his kneejerk urge to yell at her, to ask what she managed to do to end up like this, why she would ever be this far outside of-

“Papa,” she whimpers, extending her arms to him in a way she hasn’t since she was a little girl who barely reached his hip. In this moment, she isn’t a headstrong teenager who thinks she knows better than those older and far wiser, a budding rebel intent on causing headaches for her guardians, a foolish infant of a human bucking the authority of her parents and facing the consequences of her own poor decisions. 

She is simply his daughter, hurting and afraid and grieving, reaching for him with the blind trust that he can fix it. 

“I’m here,” he tells her softly, lifting her gently. “Je t'ai eu. Papa t'a eu.” 

*

Louis is trying to think of a number that feels acceptable for Claudia to reach in age before he lets her out of his sight again. 

The number is currently somewhere between 98 and 700. 

He paces the hallway, trying very hard to both listen to everything happening on the other side of the door to Claudia’s room and nothing happening on the other side of the door to Claudia’s room. He doesn’t like being away from Claudia, not right now, even if only to leave her with someone they’ve known as long as the doctor they’ve always used for her, but the doctor had said there was bruising under her dress he needed to take a look at, with his nurse staying with him for propriety’s sake. Claudia hadn’t wanted him and Lestat there for that, and it’s not as if he would want to be there. 

But it doesn’t make his exile to the hallway any easier. 

“Mon cher, sit down,” Lestat says on his ninth round of stepping over the other vampire’s legs from where he’s taken a seat on the floor while Louis paces. “You do her no good wearing a canyon into our hallway.” 

His impulse is to snap, to transmute the lingering fear in his chest into a fight with his partner. 

But Lestat is also the one who found Claudia, and the memory of their little girl cradled like a broken doll in his arms deflates the combative instinct for a moment. 

He still growls when Lestat catches him by the hand on his tenth pass, stopping his motion, but Lestat is the calm one for once, even as Louis bears his fangs with a hiss, wound up and angry and terrified and near-desperate for something to do with it all.

Louis wonders if Lestat’s already used all of his rage up earlier, or if pulling their daughter out of something that could have killed her has a way of steadying a person’s nerves for a while in light of how unimportant everything else is. 

Louis, having been useless when his daughter needed him most, wouldn't fucking know.

In an instant, the writhing meanness in him finds an escape. 

“You said we should get her a driver.”

Lestat’s eyes spark with irritation, even as the hand he keeps around Louis’s wrist remains gentle.

“She said we should get her a driver,” he corrects. “I simply agreed. How was I to know she would decide to venture off into the wilderness like one of the mortals running alcohol past police blockades?”

“Oh,” Louis says with faux-surprise, mouth nearly watering with the relief of an argument to apply his own irritation towards, “so it's her fault you weren't reading her mind? Or his? This can't have been the first time she did this.”

Now Lestat looks truly annoyed.

“I should always be the one delving into minds? So you can keep your hands clean of such tawdry little things? C'est une nouvelle pour moi, que je sois toujours le méchant.”

“Respecting her privacy-”

“-enough rope to hang herself-”

“-running wild like no one raised her-”

“-so smothered by Daddy she acts out as soon as our backs are t-”

“-broken her neck, broken her back, could still-”

“-as if you don’t coddle her as if-”

Their argument comes to a stop immediately when they hear the knob of the door start to turn.

*

“Mr. du Lac?” The nurse asks, poking her head into the hall. 

“Yes,” Louis says at once, and Lestat can tell he barely remembers to move at mortal speed. 

“You can come back in, sir.” She moves back to let him. “She has some bad bruising on-”

Lestat remains in the hall as the door shuts once more, knowing his place isn't with Claudia and Louis so long as there are witnesses. He can hear in the doctor and nurse’s minds that they have their suspicions.

But suspicion of what happens behind closed doors and Lestat at Louis’s side to hear about Claudia’s well being as an equally invested party are two separate things.

So he remains in the hall, alone.

*

Louis sits on the edge of Claudia’s bed as the doctor goes over his examination, one of Claudia’s small hands in both of Louis’s. He chafes it gently, trying to work warmth into it, even as he keeps his eyes on the man in front of him. The doctor’s uncomfortable with it, he knows, the stained glass-nature of Louis’s eyes and the intensity they’re currently showing. 

At the moment, Louis couldn’t care less about the man’s comfort if he tried. 

Claudia is in a hazy half-awareness from something potent the doctor gave her. Even poking at her mind gets him only the haziest impressions, as if someone has pulled cotton wool over her thoughts. It’s unnerving, her quick mind slowed and foggy, but so is every word the doctor says, all of them adding up to something that sits in his gut like a stone. 

It’s a goddamn miracle Claudia’s still alive. 

“Her ankle paid the price,” the nurse says, carefully lifting the edge of Claudia’s blanket to indicate her ankle, wrapped in thick bandages and propped on a cushion, “but it saved her life. From what she managed to tell us, her foot got stuck near the pedal before the crash. It kept her in exactly the right place to not be crushed by the vehicle when it flipped.” 

Even the idea of it makes Louis feel light-headed with terror, his daughter, his Claudia, crushed beneath metal into a bloody pulp.

It takes effort to keep his hold on her hand gentle. 

“She appears to have wrenched her hip fairly badly,” the doctor continues, and Louis partially hates him for his calm tone. This isn’t the kind of thing anyone should be calm about, not for Louis’s daughter, not for his light, his precious firefly cutting into the darkness of immortality. There should be a gravitas to it. 

If he notices Louis’s displeasure, the man is too well-trained to comment. 

“It doesn’t appear to be dislocated–she can still move it, and the joint feels whole–but I’ll return in a few days to examine her again. If it causes her excessive pain, send for me, of course, but some soreness is entirely normal.” 

It’s not normal, Louis wants to snap. Any level of pain is excessive. Claudia shouldn't feel pain, not ever. He’s her daddy. It’s his job to make sure she doesn’t. 

“Her head wound looks frightening, I know,” the man continues, in that same infuriatingly level tone. Louis wouldn’t know. He was in too much of a panic when Lestat returned to note any particular injury above the others, and it’s now wrapped in cotton, a strip of it wound around her head like a bandana. “But I assure you, it’s merely cosmetic. Head wounds simply bleed a great deal.” An insane part of Louis wants to laugh at the joke the doctor doesn’t even know he’s part of. 

As if a vampire doesn’t know exactly how much each part of the human body bleeds. 

*

Even after the doctor is gone, Louis stays with Claudia, holding her hand, needlessly fussing with her blankets, stroking her hair back gently. Lestat comes in as soon as the doctor and nurse have been seen out, slicing his thumb open without a word even as Louis begins gently peeling bandages away. Any questions from the doctor when he returns again about Claudia’s miraculous improvement can be managed by Lestat’s ability to modify mortal memories. 

In the moment, the need to heal their daughter trumps all other petty concerns.  

They work in silence, used enough to each other that they don’t need to exchange words to cooperate. Their fight sits between them like a weight, but they leave it be for now. It’s an easy thing to do with an injured Claudia between them, propped against Louis’s chest so Lestat can seal up the abrasions on her back. Their tension will wait. Claudia’s pain will not. 

The truce is reached without need for discussion. 

*

Louis looks up at a tap on the door to their coffin chamber around an hour before dawn, finding Claudia peeking in at him 

She looks so much like the 5 year old he carried home from a fire that his chest aches. 

“Everything alright?” He asks, and Claudia nods, though the motion makes her wince. He can tell from the dilation of her pupils and the slight way she’s swaying that the pain medication the doctor administered is still very much at work, and he moves to her before she can lose the fight to gravity he can see her struggling through. 

The absolute last thing they need is her gaining any other injuries to add to her list. 

She melts into him when he reaches her, and he wraps his arms around her, resting his chin on her head and swaying gently. He catches Lestat’s eye when the vampire enters their room after locking up downstairs, softening his expression in an apology for their spat earlier. With Claudia awake and looking at least a little less fragile, it’s easy to understand exactly how much he was misplacing his own anger. Lestat gives him a flicker of a smile, letting him know in an instant that their fight is done and forgotten now, and presses a hand to Claudia’s head gently as he passes. It's one thing he has to give Lestat credit for, even on his worst day: he isn't one to nurture resentment the way Louis does, tending the fragile seedling of it until it's grown roots strong enough to rip the foundation of a house apart. Lestat is fire and passion and blinding explosions and then moving beyond it all once the storm has passed, leaving it in his wake without ever looking back.

“Can I sleep with you?” Claudia asks softly, a slight slur to her words. He doesn’t miss that he’s taking almost all of her weight, slight as the burden is. 

He tucks his chin down to kiss the top of her head, lingering for a moment. 

“Always.” 

He guides her to his coffin with a supporting arm around her, climbing in first to help her in. Lestat helps her shrug off her robe and then tosses it to the chair in the corner, kissing her head before he climbs into his own coffin. Claudia winces as she settles in, and Louis wishes with every inch of his heart that he could take her pain from her, could spread his blood on all of her bruises and heal them as quickly as Lestat did the gashes earlier. Unfortunately, though, taking on his child’s pain is a power he doesn’t think any vampire has ever developed. 

It doesn’t stop him from wishing he could be the first. 

He lets Claudia settle, finding the most comfortable way to lay. It’s a tighter squeeze than when she was a little slip of a thing who could still wear one of his pajama shirts as a nightgown, but he’s also spent years sharing the space with Lestat as often as not. Compared to him, their little sprite of a daughter is nothing. After he confirms that Claudia is settled, he arranges himself around her, curling around her in an arc. He reaches up to pull the lid of the coffin closed. 

It’s only around a minute after they’re ensconced in the warm darkness that he tastes the salt on the air of her tears. 

The sound follows after. 

“Shhhhh,” he soothes, pressing his head to hers and wrapping an arm around her gently. He wishes he had the right words to give her, the words that could fix this for her, the words that could keep her from ever knowing this kind of pain. 

But he doesn’t. 

“I’m so-so sorry,” Claudia chokes, and he knows the shuddering of her breath has to be jarring her bruised ribs. “I didn’t-I didn’t mean-” 

“I know,” he says softly, pressing his head against hers a little harder. He can see it, can feel it, can live her pain with her in her head. He feels the drunken joy of being at Charlie’s side, the full bloom of her puppy love crush that he and Lestat have been diligently pretending not to know about. He feels the rush of wind through hair that isn’t his, the unmatched rebellious freedom of being in a fast car on a backroad far away from bothersome fathers who would tell her no. He feels the giddy thrill of the pedal beneath a heeled foot. 

He feels the breathless terror of watching the world fall apart in the span of a couple of seconds. 

He feels the choking horror of Charlie’s still face, inches away. 

He feels the stunned disbelief that it all could have fallen apart so quickly, the heartbreak made all the keener by how safe her life has been until now, how little she’s been forced to lose since she was too young to even remember what losing someone feels like, always secure with her fathers who can't die. They've done her a disservice, he knows now, giving her this borrowed sense of immortality. Why should she have feared death, after all?

He and Lestat have always shielded her from it so carefully.

“I’m so sorry, Daddy Lou,” she repeats. “I'm so-so sorry.”

“I know,” he says, tugging her just a little closer. “I know.” 

He holds her until the tears stop, until she drifts off to sleep, waiting as long as he can until the sun’s rising finally proves too strong to resist, pulling him in after her. 

*

He wakes before Claudia does, likely a result of the pain medication. They haven’t shifted much in their sleep, but she’s clinging to him the way she did as a child, and he takes his time gently pulling free. When he’s sure he won’t jostle her, he lifts the lid of the coffin. 

He finds Lestat waiting, a glass of water and the bottle of medication the doctor left behind for Claudia with him. 

“Bon matin,” he says softly, too low to wake Claudia. 

Louis nods in acknowledgement, climbing out of the coffin and shutting it behind himself, securing Claudia in the safe darkness for a while longer. She’s used enough to it that he knows it won’t startle her. She’d spent an entire month sleeping in the pastel pink coffin that lives behind the swinging wall in her room when she was 14, after all, in her determination to prove that she was ready for the gift and didn’t need to wait any longer. It’s one of the rare times she hadn’t gotten her way, and their household had been in an upheaval about it, tempers high and volume higher. She and Lestat especially had gotten into blistering fights about it, Lestat’s words about Great Laws and unstable teenaged tempers doing nothing to soothe Claudia’s fury. She’d gotten over it, eventually, finally yielding for lack of other options. 

Still, Louis knows she still likes to lay in her coffin in its hidden chamber when she wants to feel like she has extra privacy. 

“Jesus,” he breathes, moving to step into Lestat’s space, feeling the other vampire’s arms come around him. “What a fucking mess.” 

“The boy’s parents collected the body,” Lestat tells him, stroking gentle fingers along his spine. “They slipped a letter under the door earlier thanking us for paying for the arrangements for the funeral.” He pauses briefly. “I also arranged to pay for the arrangements for the funeral.” 

Louis huffs a laugh devoid of any humor. 

“Good idea.” 

They stay in their embrace for a long moment, soaking in the other’s warmth. 

*

Lestat predictably finds Claudia on the roof four weeks after the car crash. It’s the place she likes to go when she wants to hide, a little section of it flat enough to make a good seat for anyone nimble enough to seek it out. Lestat rarely pursues her up here, and for reasons she hasn’t been told and likely never will be, Louis refuses to get on the roof at all. 

Today, though, he disturbs her solitude. 

“You’ve missed breakfast,” he informs her. 

She doesn’t look over at him. 

It’s not the first time she’s skipped a meal or the first time she’s been caught doing so, so it’s not surprising the censure doesn’t warrant a response. He debates letting her know that she’s about to drive Louis into an early–and impossible, for them–grave with how much he’s been worrying about her lackluster appetite, but he doubts the guilt of it would help anything. It doesn’t help that she’s never carried much to lose anyway, and Claudia seeking shelter in Louis’s coffin more than once has meant his lover has gotten to feel the gradual thinning of their daughter in his arms, making his own already-lukewarm appetite worse with the force of his fretting. 

Donc, assez. It’s time for Lestat to take things in hand. 

He climbs out of the window, balancing a mug of milky coffee and a still-warm package in one hand. He crosses the roof to sit next to her, and she lets him, though she makes a noise of protest when he picks one of her hands up and puts the coffee into it. 

“Drink,” he advises. “You’ll feel better.” 

He can hear in her mind that she wants to argue, always such a stubborn little thing, willful as a mule, but she’s also too tired to summon much of a fight. She takes a few sips of her coffee–it’s more milk than coffee, really, the same way she’s taken it since she got it into her head at 10 to start partaking in a misguided attempt at feeling more like an adult–and accepts the pieces of beignet he pulls apart and hands to her, the bits small enough that she needs to do nothing with them but chew, the powdered sugar falling like snow across their thighs. He feeds her bit by bit until the pastries are gone, and she finishes her coffee off more slowly, holding her mug between both hands to soak in the warmth against the night’s chill, her head slowly dipping to rest against his shoulder. 

“I can’t stop thinking about him,” she tells no one in particular. 

“You will,” he tells her. She tilts her head up and gives him an insulted, doubtful look, and he gives her a sad half-smile. Ah, the young, always so certain they’re the ones to invent new emotions. He tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. It’s wild from being untended for so long, dragged around on her pillows or in the silk-lined interior of her coffin, but she’s still such a beautiful thing that it nearly hurts to look at her, his fierce little lioness, knocked down hard from her first true pain. 

But strong enough, he knows, to stand again one day, even if she can’t quite believe it just yet. 

“Did I ever tell you of my first love?” He knows the answer is no, but he waits for the shake of her head. It's something he's barely told Louis, little snatches here and there in the safety of a shared coffin in the hazy unreality of almost-sleep.

He wraps an arm around Claudia, pulling her closer.

“His name was Nicholas-” 

*

Louis looks up from the book he’d been staring at without reading when he hears the shuffling of Claudia’s feet as she pauses at the doorway into the sitting room. He closes his book and sets it aside, trying not to look as outrageously glad as he is to see her. Four and a half weeks after Charlie’s death, and she’s spent most of it either locked in his coffin, her coffin, Lestat’s coffin on a few rare nights, or drifting around the townhouse like a faded specter. 

“Hey,” he says, shifting to make room for her on the chaise with him. 

She shuffles over, and he notes with surprise that she’s actually dressed in clothes and not pajamas for once, her hair brushed and her face washed. She’s still too thin, but she looks better than she has in weeks. He tries not to let his hope rise too high. He’s been too afraid for her since Charlie’s death, afraid of her slow fading but even more afraid of the possibility of a sudden decision she can’t take back. 

He wonders if she’s noticed him watching her on the roof from a place in the courtyard he could run to catch her if she-

“I’m-I’m hungry,” she ventures, the words carrying the cadence of an apology. 

He blinks at her, too surprised for a moment to register the words. When he does, it’s an effort not to grin like a fool. It’s the first time he’s heard those words from her since Lestat brought her back home after that godforsaken night. 

“Well then,” he says, rising and pulling her up after him before she can change her mind and lose her appetite. “Let’s go hunting.” 

The laugh it gains him as he pulls her to the door is soft, barely there, but he clings to it like a precious gemstone, the first thing he’s heard from his daughter in weeks that hasn’t been pain. He helps her into her jacket and grabs his own, pausing to let her grab her handbag. 

All set, they venture into the night for food, Louis already planning to cram in as many stops as he can at all of her favorite places. He doubts she’ll eat even half of it, but for the sake of tempting her appetite, he’ll buy out every restaurant in the city if he has to. 

When she slips her small hand into his and squeezes, he squeezes back. 

*

Lestat wakes five weeks later and knows from the acrid scent in the air that Claudia has undertaken yet another baking experiment that has failed to yield anything beyond a kitchen full of smoke. He smiles faintly when he hears her cursing to herself, skimming her mind enough to know that as frustrated as she is with her failure of a king cake, their house isn’t currently at risk, the failed confection billowing black smoke but no longer on fire. He stretches as he feels Louis begin stirring, nuzzling at his neck in a brief refusal to yield to the pull of sunset. 

“Your daughter is attempting to set our house on fire,” he informs Louis, kissing whatever patch of skin he happens to find first. “Again.” 

“Your daughter already said yesterday she was gonna try so she could get some practice before Mardi Gras,” Louis responds. “I left two buckets of water by the door. She’s fine.” A beat. “Probably.” 

Even beneath the roughness of his newly-awoken voice, he can hear Louis’s relief. In the distance, he hears the clang of a pan hitting the stone in the courtyard as Claudia flings it into the night, swearing dire vengeance on king cakes and toy babies and the entire “stupid goddamn son of a bitch bastard thing.” He smiles slightly at the stream of profanity, her frustration clearly too much to be contained to one or two choice phrases. He smiles wider when he hears her start in in French, truly incandescent with rage if she can't limit herself to one language.

“She’s hopeless,” Lestat informs him. “She’s doomed in this endeavor; we have not raised a baker. She’ll clearly never see satisfaction from her efforts. She dooms herself to disappointment and yet always returns for more.” 

“Hm,” Louis says, shifting enough to look at him with one eye not pressed into the pillow. “She has a capacity for enduring.” 

Lestat contemplates seeking retribution for the casual use of a heavy confession. In the end, though, he chooses peace, claiming another kiss before he lifts the lid of the coffin to start their day and see what damage their child has done to their home now. It’s true, the words, so it’s not as if he can really argue. Claudia does have a capacity for enduring. 

She takes after him, after all. 

Chapter Text

Grace Frenier nee de Pointe du Lac always knew her big brother was a little different than everybody else. In front of other people, he always acted like her friends’ brothers, making jokes and acting tough, but in their house, with their family, Louis was always different: softer, warmer, her indulgent big brother who played tea party and pushed her on the swing and helped her sew her dolly’s dresses back together if she ripped them so mama wouldn’t fuss. She was a little disappointed as a teenager when Louis didn’t settle down with a nice girl and get married–she so wanted a sister after a life of just brothers–but part of her had been happy, too, to be the girl Louis loved most in the whole wide world. She knew it was true, after all. 

He told her all the time. 

It’s why she keeps his secret. Well, it’s one of the reasons. 

She never tells Louis she saw him kiss Jonah Macon the way boys are supposed to kiss girls. 

She’d thought it was a game at first, maybe, something somebody dared him to do. Louis’s tougher than anyone, after all. It’s silly–and a little dangerous–to kiss a boy, but if someone dared him to, what else could her brother have done? He couldn’t look like a sissy in front of the other boys. Daddy would have been spitting mad about it, Louis backing out of something because he was scared. Daddy’s always told Louis that men like them can’t afford to look weak, not unless they stand to get something out of it. 

When Louis had pulled back, though, she’d seen his face. He hadn’t looked like someone doing something as a dare. His face had been soft, affectionate, the same way it looked when he helped her do her hair before a party because they couldn’t afford to hire her a maid and mama always pulled so hard it made her cry. Louis never pulled her hair, not once, not even when they were kids and lots of boys tugged on girls’ hair. Brandon Ardoin had pulled her hair once, so hard it made her eyes water and knocked her down to the ground. 

Louis had beat him up so bad Brandon’s daddy had had to call a doctor to check on him. 

It’s why she can’t make it make sense, Louis kissing a boy and looking soft about it, not her big brother who would beat up anybody who hurt her, who would probably beat up anybody she asked him to. Even if people don’t talk about it because it’s a sin and God doesn’t like it, she knows from whispers about boys who kiss boys, the things the ladies at church say behind their fans to each other when they see a man dressed just a little too well. They’re sissies, weak, prey to sinful devil things. They wear girl clothes and act like girls even though God made them boys. 

Louis doesn’t fit with boy kissers. 

He’s not a sissy. Grace knows that better than anyone. He likes wearing nice clothes and he always lets Grace show off her new dresses for him, but he always dresses like a man. She knows the ladies at church (and Paul, over and over and over and over-) say the devil wears a pretty face to get you and that’s what makes him dangerous, but she can’t see him in Louis, not her big brother who always gives her extra shrimp from his gumbo because it’s her favorite part even though she knows he loves shrimp, too. That just doesn’t sound like something the devil would do, giving their little sister their favorite part of supper just to make her happy. 

So Grace never tells anyone, even Louis, that she saw him kissing Jonah. 

If it’s a sin, she’ll keep it a secret, the same way Louis kept it a secret when she was wearing mama’s shoes when she was twelve and scuffed them when she fell because they were too big on her and then lied and said it wasn't her. Lying is a sin, but Louis had kept it secret anyway, hadn't even seemed to worry about if God would be mad at him for it.

The God she prays to and sings songs for can’t be the type of God who would send her brother to hell just because he kisses boys in secret. She studies the stained glass in church and the stories in the Bible, and she knows that this has to be true. Jesus would understand, she’s sure, wouldn’t hold such a little thing against her brother when Louis tries so hard to be good. There are worse things than loving somebody, even if they aren’t the right somebody. God knows everything, so He has to know this. The newspaper every single day is full of worse things than Louis doing something just a little wrong. If it’s a sin, it’s a little one, surely, worth maybe a disapproving shake of the head at the pearly gates but no more than that. God won’t hold it against him, Louis wanting to kiss boys sometimes. 

And even if He does, Grace knows from the day she starts keeping Louis’s secret, she won’t. 

*

It’s been almost two years since the disaster of a party in which she found out she has a niece that Grace has an invitation to extend to Louis that isn’t likely to end in hurt feelings and family conflict. Mama is out of town visiting a cousin who just had a baby, which means she won’t be home for at least a few days. 

It seems an ideal stretch of time to have Louis over for supper. 

“Hello!” Grace flinches back from the phone automatically at the volume it’s answered with, Claudia’s voice nearly piercing in her clear excitement to be the one to answer. 

“How many times must you be told not to touch that?” She hears Mr. Lioncourt say in the background, voice growing louder as he approaches. “It is not for the sticky hands of children.” 

“I’m not stick-” She hears Claudia start, clearly offended, but there’s a brief scuffle and then the phone has clearly been confiscated. 

“Hello?” Mr. Lioncourt’s voice comes, smooth and calm, like he didn’t just have a struggle with a small child for the phone a few seconds before. 

Having not expected him to be the one she would speak to, Grace freezes for a moment until the greeting is repeated. 

“He-hello,” she says. “It’s Grace. Louis’s sister?” She winces when it comes out as a question. 

A brief pause. 

“One moment,” Mr. Lioncourt’s voice says, and then, faintly as if he’s pulled back from the receiver: “Claudia, retrieve your father. Tell him he has a caller, and I am not a secretary.” 

“DADDY LOU!”

Grace smiles, unable to help it. Even with the girl’s distance from the phone, she can hear Claudia’s yell clearly and knows it must be ear-splitting in person. 

It’s a moment before she hears her brother’s voice, distant and indistinct, clearly speaking to someone else and not the phone. 

“-times I gotta tell you, not to send her hollering around the house? You wind her up and then-” 

His voice grows fuzzy with distance from the receiver, there’s an indistinct murmur of Mr. Lioncourt’s voice, a dismissive noise from Louis, and then her brother’s voice back in the phone, clear and at a volume much more reasonable than his daughter’s. 

“Hello? Grace?” 

“Hi, Louis.” 

*

Grace is sure she’s been in more awkward situations than at her own dinner table, filled primarily by people she’s related to in one way or another. 

It’s just that she can’t quite remember when. 

Mr. Lioncourt unexpectedly proves helpful in keeping conversation moving, pulling topics from thin air and passing them around the table the same way he does the bowl of carrots or the tureen of gravy when asked, but Grace can’t help but feel the strain of it, so different than the days past. 

“Aunt Grace?” 

She blinks, surprised, when Claudia calls her name. She thinks it might be the first time the girl has called her by the title, and from the quick little glance Claudia sends Louis, she gathers that it’s more than slightly coached. 

“Yes, honey?” She asks, giving her a smile. Stranger or not–blood-related or not, which she still has her suspicions about–the girl is a sweet thing, cheerful and chatty, very obviously her daddy’s darling and very used to commanding attention. 

“Do you and your husband not drink grown-up juice at supper?” The question, innocently as it’s asked, makes a quick flicker of alarm cross Louis’s face before her brother gives her a slightly chagrined smile. 

“We, uh-we usually have wine. At home.” 

Well, it would seem that Louis is still an awful liar. 

“Nuh uh,” Claudia says, frowning and tilting her head to look at him, very obviously confused. “Grown-up juice ain’t wine. Wine’s different. Grown-up juice-” 

“It’s rude to reflect what isn’t provided at a meal, ma petite,” Lestat cuts in smoothly. He gives Grace and Levi an apologetic smile. “I’m afraid she doesn’t have much experience with dining in more formal settings. She doesn’t mean to be rude.” 

Claudia gives Louis a look, clearly hurt at being scolded without knowing why, her eyes going a little glassy with tears and her lower lip wobbling, and Louis leans his head towards her, whispering something too low for Grace to hear. In slow increments, Claudia’s hurt fades, and when Louis pulls away, kissing her temple and then handing her the roll from his plate, she smiles and says thank you like she was never upset to begin with. 

Despite knowing it isn’t really proper, a little girl being raised by two bachelors–for all intents and purposes, at least–Grace can’t help but smile, watching Louis being a daddy. She’d been insulted at first, frankly, Louis showing up with a little girl like he didn’t have two nieces and a nephew who have never done so much as sit on their uncle’s knee at a family breakfast. If he’d wanted to be around children so bad, she had three perfectly beautiful ones who would have loved to know their Uncle Louis as something more than a character in family stories or a name on Christmas presents.

Watching him with Claudia, though, she feels her irritation melting away in slow degrees no matter how hard she tries to hold onto it. 

*

She could tell from the start that Claudia is the type of child who likes being around adults more than other kids, and her suspicion proves correct when they retire to the sitting room for coffee after supper, Claudia trailing along like it doesn’t occur to her not to. Paul was that kind of child, she remembers with a pang of hurt and love both, always wanted to join the grownups instead of playing with her and Louis. 

Claudia, though, doesn’t seem to share her late uncle's interest in discussing religion, just seems happier to sit on Louis’s lap and listen as the grownups talk than roll around on the floor with her cousins no matter how many times she signals for them to invite her. She contributes a little girl’s comment now and then, and Grace can’t help but smile at the way Louis always bows his head to listen to her better when she does, even though he likely should be telling her not to talk when grownups are talking. Grace bites her lip, though, and doesn’t say it. 

From sharing a house with mama, she knows how it feels to always have someone at hand to criticize your parenting. 

She sees Claudia watching her girls with interest when they start playing marbles, and she waits for a pause in the conversation to speak to her, catching her moment in the middle of Mr. Lioncourt and Levi debating the advantage of a business investment she’s been trying not to yawn through. 

“You can go join them, honey,” she tells Claudia with an encouraging smile. “They’ve got plenty of marbles. You can borrow some.” 

“I don’t know how to play,” Claudia says. 

“Well now,” Louis says, and Grace wishes she could capture his smile forever. It’s a real smile, a Louis smile, the way he used to smile before Paul’s death, “you’re in luck. Your aunt is about the best marbles player this side of the Mississippi.” Louis gives her a teasingly cocky smile. “Well, used to be. Might have lost her touch now that she’s past her prime.” 

It’s only years of being a wife and mother that keep her from her kneejerk urge to stick her tongue out at him. 

“Don’t listen to him, Claudia,” she says, scowling at Louis playfully. “Your daddy’s just mad he could never beat me.” 

“O-o-oh?” Louis crows. “Well now, that’s some news to me. I recall adding plenty of your marbles to mine when you couldn’t play well enough to keep ‘em.” 

She looks back to Claudia, leaning forward like she’s telling a secret even as she keeps her voice loud enough to be clear to everyone. 

“One thing you should know about boys, honey: they hate when girls are better than them. They’ll make up a whole story about it.” 

Claudia, who has been looking back and forth like she’s watching a tennis match, just blinks at her. Louis, though, grins. 

“Seems to me there’s an easy way to remember exactly who the marble champion of this family is,” he says, rising and setting Claudia down, who looks up at her daddy like she thinks he might have lost his mind a little bit. 

Grace stands, brushing her skirts off with deliberate unconcern, as if she isn’t being willingly baited into playing a children’s game for the sake of ancient pride and sibling rivalry. 

“Well now, if you’re that eager to get embarrassed in front of my niece, I’m happy to oblige,” she says with dignity. 

Louis’s smile is a sharp, beautiful thing. 

*

Not that it matters, Grace says repeatedly afterwards to make sure Louis knows it does matter, but she demolishes her brother at marbles. 

Multiple times. 

It’s absurd, really, both of them on their bellies on the floor like they’re children again and not parents with children, lining up borrowed marbles with the precision of snipers as their children cheer like they’re watching cockfighting and not the adults being very, very silly. Louis puts on a show of being wildly offended when Mr. Lioncourt tries to gamble with Levi and bet against him, and the French man simply smiles like a cat enjoying some stolen cream while saying that he makes it a point of pride to never knowingly bet on losing horses. Claudia, apparently loyal to a point, says she’ll bet on her daddy if he’ll let her borrow some money, but after Grace claims three of his marbles in a row, Claudia abandons ship, telling him apologetically that he’s not very good at this game. 

Grace laughs so hard there are tears in her eyes. 

*

By the end of the night, Grace’s sides hurt from laughing so much, and she doesn’t think she’s felt this light in years. She’s still on the floor, now leaning against Louis’s arm, but her brother has finally admitted defeat and acknowledged her as the superior player, and they’ve surrendered the game to the children. Mr. Lioncourt and Levi are discussing business again now that spectating and jeering is no longer as fun, and Claudia especially is putting all of her focus into reclaiming her family’s honor in the game of marbles. To her credit, she does a better job of it than her father, and Louis bumps shoulders with Grace when she points it out, still savoring his defeat. For a moment, it’s her and Louis in a little bubble off to the side, happy. 

Of course it can’t last. 

“Why don’t y’all come by for Easter?” She asks, nudging Louis playfully, trying desperately to hold onto this slice of joy, so much like better days, trying to stretch it like taffy. “I’m sure Claudia would love to hunt eggs, and we’ve got some little prizes for the children. You wouldn’t even need to come to church if you don’t want to, just come by for lunch and-” 

Louis pulls away. 

The immediate coolness of his absence is enough that it makes Grace want to cry, all of her happy lightness popped in a single moment like a soap bubble. 

“We’ll see,” Louis says, gaze riveted forward. “Gotta check what we might already be doing.” 

Grace knows by now that that means no, the same way it has each time she’s gotten that line. 

They wait out the rest of the childrens’ game in silence, the happiness of a few minutes earlier fading to a bitter aftertaste in her mouth. 

*

After she sees their guests out late that evening, she finds Claudia’s doll forgotten in the sitting room and sighs, knowing from having two girls herself that it will either never be thought of again or will prompt a crying fit that’ll last hours as soon as she gets home and notices it’s missing. She wonders if she could convince Levi to take it by, or if they could hire a boy to-

“Ah, there it is.” 

She looks up sharply to find Mr. Lioncourt in the doorway. He immediately gives her a smile, always so polite and charming. 

It always raises the hair on the back of her neck, silly as she knows it is, Louis’s business partner looking at her. He has the potential to be dangerous to her the way any white man–especially a rich white man–would, just the two of them alone in this room and him far more powerful than her, but it’s a different kind of fear, the look that those striking eyes stirs in her. 

Silly as she knows it sounds, it always makes her feel like a rabbit in front of a fox. 

She makes herself hold her ground as he approaches, refuses to let herself be foolish. Even if she doesn’t know Lestat de Lioncourt well enough to trust him, she knows Louis. 

And there’s no way Louis would have brought this man around her if he thought there was even the shadow of a doubt that he would be a danger to her. 

As solid as she knows the logic is, she still can’t help the little shiver that runs down her spine when he gets close enough that she can smell his cologne. 

“With the way she treats it as if it’s essential to sleeping, you would think she’d keep better track of it, no?” He jokes, holding out his hand to take the doll. “Perhaps that is simply the way of children, though, n’est pas?”

She hands the doll over. 

“Important as salvation until something more interesting comes along,” she jokes lightly, and Mr. Lioncourt smiles, nodding his head in thanks. 

“Merci, madame,” he says, bowing slightly in that anachronistic way of his and then turning to go. 

“Mr. Lioncourt?” She calls after him. 

At once, he stops, and she sees the faint surprise in his expression when he turns back to look at her. She thinks, a little distantly in her discomfort, that it might be the first time she’s ever actually said his name, especially to his face. She quails slightly when those unnerving eyes are back on her, but she folds her hands and presses them against her stomach, refusing to let her nerve fail her. Louis is living a life she can’t be part of now, her brother pulling away from her year by year by year. She knows one day he’ll be gone, long before either of them are dead, a living, breathing ghost. She’s tried to ignore it as long as she can, tried to tell herself that the grief of Paul’s death just did a number on him and he’ll need time to heal. But she’s a grown woman. She has a grown woman’s wisdom now. 

She knows her Louis, loving and sweet and present, is already gone. 

That doesn’t mean that the love is gone, too. 

“I-” She grabs her scattered thoughts together like her children do their jacks when they play, scooping as many of them up as she can before the ball drops in this moment. “He’s terrible at eating. When he’s upset.” The way he lifts an eyebrow doesn’t make her feel better about how disjointed and stupid she already knows she sounds. In another life, this is the kind of thing she would have told a sister-in-law, the little things a sister knows, the important details to someone who’s going to build a life with Louis, the things somebody has to know to make sure Louis has someone to look after him, too. But Grace doesn’t have a sister-in-law to give these words to. 

She has Lestat de Lioncourt, standing in front of her and looking mildly amused at the idea that she’s lost her mind. 

“I’ve noticed,” he says, and she knows it’s the most he can say, the most he can acknowledge that he has a place in Louis’s life that means he would notice such a thing as him not eating right when he's upset. She doesn’t understand the faint amusement he says it with, but he always seems like he’s perpetually in on a joke no one else is, even Louis. 

She wonders idly if her brother finds it as annoying as she does. 

“He likes maque choux with chicken even when he says he’s not hungry,” she says, making herself focus. She can’t give Louis much, can’t even come close to giving him all the things he’s given her. 

But she can try to give him this. 

“With mashed potatoes, though, not rice. If he has to bother with rice, he’ll get fed up and just pick at his plate and then you’re back where you started.” Mr. Lioncourt’s face softens slightly, as if he’s finally understood what she’s trying to say, what she’s trying to do, and it gives her the courage to keep going. “Red velvet’s his favorite cake. That’s what he should have. On his birthday. He likes it the best, even though he’ll tell you not to bother. You should.” Her eyes sting, knowing already in this moment that it’ll never be her place to put a cake in front of him again, knowing already that she’ll never be the one who gets to see the pleased surprise on her big brother’s face when someone reminds him that people care about him, too. 

She expects Mr. Lioncourt to get fed up with her sentimentality, but he just waits, patiently. 

As if he understands the need to have Louis taken care of. 

“And if that little girl of his gets it into her head to start cooking, please make sure he gets somebody to teach her right.” She smiles, wobbly as it feels. “He’ll eat it no matter what, but he suffered plenty when I was learning. Please don’t make that man go through that again.” It had been after daddy died and the money had started running out, her learning to cook. Their cook had been one of the last things to go in the budget, but when it came down to paying for groceries or paying for someone to cook those groceries, the answer had been easy. Grace had never set foot in the kitchen before beyond looking over hors d'oeuvres with mama to make sure they looked nice for guests, but she’d given it her best effort. 

It’s just that her best effort was so, so awful. 

“I made eggs once that made him sick as a dog for days,” she says, and she lets out a strained laugh, throat tight at the memory, silly as she knows it is. “He told me they were the best eggs he’d ever had and that he must’ve caught something eating at a little hole in the wall place when he was out working.” She doesn’t know why she tells Mr. Lioncourt this. It’s a stupid thing to say, something funny to a very specific audience and unimportant to anyone else. But she needs him to know, needs him to understand how much Louis will do when he loves someone. Eating the worst, most burnt piece of toast so no one else has to, planning out her entire honeymoon, helping her sew new trim on an old dress because the budget didn’t stretch to a new one, drying her tears after one of mama’s scoldings and telling her she was doing just fine, don’t be so hard on herself. 

Storming a mental hospital to get Paul back after a single letter mentioned a doctor hitting him. 

She swallows hard, forbidding herself to cry. Whatever Mr. Lioncourt is to her brother, he is still a stranger to her, and he will not see her tears. She clears her throat, speaking when she’s sure it’ll come out steady. 

She wanders rather foolishly between topics, scrambling through her memories to try and pick out the most important pieces of Louis to hand over to Mr. Lioncourt’s keeping, the things that are important, the things that someone who is whatever they are together should know about her brother if he doesn’t already. Louis is always so private, always so reticent to let people in enough to see his pain, to see his worries, to see him. “Worry about yourself, Grace.” “I can carry my troubles myself, little sister.” “Go on and worry about your own problems, now.” She’s fortunate for it, she knows, the protection Louis gave her growing up, the shield he put around her, around their entire family, bearing the burden to keep it from so much as grazing her or mama or Paul’s shoulders. She owes her soft, comfortable life to him, to the things he did at night, in back rooms, in meetings with men she’d cross the street to avoid. He never complained, not even in the way of a man coming home and expressing his relief to be there, the way Levi does. He’d never wanted to talk so she hadn’t asked, but she knows from the little snatches here and there–largely from Paul, before he jum-before his passing– that it was an ugly kind of business to be in, but Louis had never brought it up, never held it against her. He’d built a safe little wall for them to all hide behind. 

And she hadn’t realized until too late that he’d forgotten to keep himself inside with them, not until the walls were so high that he couldn’t make it back over. 

“Take care of him,” she tells Mr. Lioncourt as sternly as she can when she’s finally run out of ramblings. Love him, she wants to say. Love him every single day, even on the ones he makes you so mad you could punch him. He can get mean as a snake like mama can, but he doesn’t mean it, not the way she does. Nobody loves like Louis. He deserves someone who loves him, too, loves him right, loves him all the way, even down to the ugly things. Don’t break his heart, she wants to beg. Whatever this is, please make it last. Please let him keep it. Please don’t take it away from him, not ever. If you’re going to take my big brother away, you better keep him. 

She can’t say those things, though. She knows it. She can only think them as hard as she can while saying the careful words they can dance around the truth with. 

“He’s happy…with you,” she says. “You and that little girl. Just…take care of him, won’t you? Please?” 

Again, that alarmed sense of being prey as he comes closer, but all Mr. Lioncourt does is take her hand in his, pressing a kiss to her knuckles and then lingering, eyes closed. 

“Always, madame,” he says quietly. “I give you my word.” 

It’s an old fashioned thing to do, something that might seem silly or mocking under other circumstances, a pantomime of a time in history already gone. From Mr. Lioncourt, though, it seems genuine, and Grace feels something settle in her at the gesture. 

The moment is broken by the sound of little feet pattering towards them, and Grace doesn’t miss the soft smile on Mr. Lioncourt’s face as he releases Grace’s hand and turns to look at Claudia as she darts into the room. She goes right to him, reaching up to take his hand in hers. She catches the calculating look Mr. Lioncourt shoots her way, seeing how she responds to the moment, and she keeps her face blank. There are worse things to be than so obviously adored by a child, no matter how strange the connection is. 

“Uncle Les!” Claudia says in her piping, little girl voice, tugging at his shirt with one hand in a clear indication to bend down. 

“Yes, ma petite?” Mr. Lioncourt says warmly, heeding the silent request and sinking to one knee, smiling when Claudia leans forward to cup her hand around his ear. Her voice when she speaks is still loud enough for Grace to hear, and she bites her cheek to keep from laughing at Claudia’s failed attempt at discretion. 

“Daddy Lou said to tell you to stop being nosy in other people’s houses and get yourself back outside already.” 

Mr. Lioncourt gasps theatrically, making Claudia giggle. He presents her with her doll with great flourish, like a knight presenting a token to a princess in a play. 

“Such ingratitude for the hero saving your precious Jeanne-Marie,” he tsks, rising. “Go tell your Daddy Lou I have saved him a trip back to the toy store and a crying fit in trying to get you to sleep tonight without your doll and that ingrates should not expect generosity in the future if they wish to be snippy about it in the present.” 

Claudia looks dubious of her own ability to parrot so much, but she nods anyway, giving Grace a little wave before she’s off once more. Mr. Lioncourt shakes his head fondly, sighing and looking back to her. 

“I do apologize for her running in your home. We’ve tried to break her of the habit, but as I’m sure you know…” He shrugs, clearly resigned. “Your brother is a soft touch for little hands.” 

She doesn’t know that, in fact. She can guess it, based on being his younger sister, based on watching him with their younger brother, based on the way Louis always loved them getting what they wanted, but she’s never seen Louis around children he has any reason to interact with. She’s played it in her mind over and over, that night he said “You making me an uncle?” with so much warmth, trying to wonder if she misunderstood, trying to understand where that joy went, trying to understand how it could possibly equal his absence for so long, as if he didn’t care one way or another that she had children for him to spoil, as if his family was just a hobby he could pick up and set down at will. 

But that isn’t something she can get into with Mr. Lioncourt. 

“He loves that little girl of his, doesn’t he?” She asks, knowing her tone is a little sad. 

Mr. Lioncourt hums, expression soft for a moment when he looks back the way Claudia darted off to. 

“Very much,” he says quietly. He looks back to her, appears to be considering something, and then he offers, “He likes to say she’s his firefly.” A slight smile. “A light in darkness.” 

What darkness? She wants to ask so badly she has to put her teeth together to keep it from escaping. What darkness dragged him so low he needed that little girl to drag him back? What is Claudia lighting up like a firefly? What happened to him, to my brother? What was so awful it changed him so much his very eyes are different but that I still don’t get to know about?

But those are questions she doesn’t have the ability to ask, not with where they all stand now. Instead, she smiles. 

“Think he’ll get around to making more? Seems a shame, her growing up with no one to play with.” She teases, and she does smile genuinely when Mr. Lioncourt grimaces at the idea. 

“One insect is enough for our household, I believe,” he says dryly, and it isn’t until she catches him looking at her in that sharp way of his that she knows it was another test, the use of “our” household. He wants to shock her, she’s pretty sure, or at least see how much she knows and what she might do about it. Nothing is the honest answer to both questions. 

“I should get my own to bed,” she says, instead of everything else she wants to. She needs to stop this, needs to know that she’s said what she could and then let it go. Louis’s a grown man, and she’s a grown woman. They both have their own lives to live now. 

No matter how much she wishes they could live them together. 

“I leave you to your bug catching, then, Madame de Pointe du Lac,” Mr. Lioncourt says, bowing his head once more. 

“Frenier,” she corrects automatically. “It’s Frenier now.” 

Mr. Lioncourt smiles. It still has a slight edge to it, but it’s not mean, more sly than anything else. 

“I apologize,” he says. “You are very like your brother. It makes me forget. It suits you, your family name. A pity you should have traded it for Frenier–de Pointe du Lac has such a lovely cadence to it. I do hope you won’t discard it too easily.” 

A troll, she thinks, he reminds her of a troll like in the fairytales she reads to her children at night, full of riddles and doublespeak and tricks. A beautiful troll, but a troll nonetheless. 

Hopefully a troll that will still give her brother a happily ever after. 

“You should get going,” she says, but gently. “Before you have a firefly after you again.” 

Mr. Lioncourt smiles, and this time it’s genuine. 

“Indeed, she’s a ruthless taskmaster, I assure you. I shudder to think what consequences disobedience would gain me.” A tilt of his head as he turns away. “Thank you for your hospitality. It was exquisite, as ever.” 

She walks him to the door in silence. It’s not necessary, really. She already said her goodbyes. There would be no civility lost if she let him let himself out now. 

But she also wants one last glance at her brother. 

“The hell took you so long?” She hears Louis call as she pauses at the door. She peeks out, finding her brother already outside of the gate, Claudia in his arms, her head on his shoulder. It looks right, her brother with his daughter, easy as if he’s done it since she was a baby. “You casing the joint?” 

“Merely an interesting conversation,” Mr. Lioncourt says. 

She misses Louis’s reply as they walk away, the breeze shifting and carrying their words in the other direction. They look right, the three of them, in a way that Grace knows this life will never let them be, at least not in daylight when folks are awake to see them. Whatever goes on in that household, whatever lives inside her brother and his French white and the little girl they’re having a go at raising together against all common sense, it’ll always have to be a private affair, but maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. Louis was always so private with his feelings anyway. Maybe it suits him, his little hodgepodge of a family happening behind closed doors. 

Grace watches them until they turn the corner. 

“I hope you’re happy, big brother,” she tells the night, softly. 

And then she turns around and closes the door. 

Chapter Text

“Is Daddy Lou gonna be done with his dumb business stuff soon?” 

Lestat looks up from the chess board at the question, delivered sulkily, and finds Claudia glaring at the door to the sitting room he shut earlier to offer them privacy. At nine, Claudia has spent plenty of time spectating meetings, but the current investment he and Louis have been looking into–meaning mostly Louis, who has a mind for business that Lestat does not–involves a property adjacent to a brothel, so their nine year old has been summarily banned from the office until they’re back to conversations more suitable for little ears. 

She has not been taking her temporary exile with grace. 

“Is my company such a trial, then?” He asks, eyeing the knight he could take of hers and deciding against it, claiming a pawn instead as a hint to mind her pieces better. 

To her credit, despite her pouting, the move prompts her to focus back on the board immediately, adjusting her bishop to threaten his queen. He smiles faintly, approving, and she smiles back, looking a little chastened by his question. 

“Non, je m'amuse avec toi,” she says, and he knows the use of French is meant to placate him. “I just miss Daddy Lou.” 

“You saw him just an hour ago, silly thing,” he teases, pushing her little plate of cheese and fruit–a meal that doesn’t involve heating the house more in the already-oppressive heat of a New Orleans July–more in her direction to prompt her to eat. He doesn’t bother with eating each day with her the way Louis does to maintain the lie that they’re mortal as she is, but he does do his part in keeping her fed. 

“I know,” Claudia says, picking up a piece of cheese and nibbling at it in a way that always reminds him of a mouse even as she looks at the door again. “I just like when it’s all of us.” 

Lestat softens. 

“As do I,” he says, picking up the apple from the plate and slicing it for her as she studies her next move on the board. 

“Even with me?” She asks, sounding uncharacteristically shy, and he looks to her. “And not just Daddy Lou?” 

He frowns slightly, wondering where the question is coming from. Yes, he resisted her presence at first, but he’d thought she was too young to remember when she was nothing more than Louis’s pastime to him. She’d been an unexpected development in his life, but he’s long since grown attached to her. She’s a funny little thing, clever and unpredictable, and it’s no great burden to reciprocate her affection, always so freely offered. She may not be the other half of his soul in the way that Louis is, but he does love her, does consider her his. The question, then, surprises him. He isn’t as soft with her as Louis is, but he does make efforts to mind his tongue even when he’s angry, knowing all too well the feeling of being a child subject to the rages of an adult picking an easy target. When he skims her mind, however, he finds it’s an extrapolation from something a friend said, overhearing her father telling her mother that he misses the days “before all these damn children.” 

“Especially with you, ma petite,” he says warmly, and he can see her nearly glow in response. It’s true, after all. She may not have Louis’s place in his heart, but she has one of her own. His life has expanded to include her, unexpected as her addition was; he can’t now imagine it without her. He winks at her, resisting the urge to laugh when she blinks both eyes trying to reciprocate the gesture. “You’re far better at chess than him.” 

Claudia grins, accepting another apple slice and then returning her focus to their game. 

*

In the four years they’ve had Claudia, Louis’s aware that they’ve gotten lucky in her being a healthy child. She’s sprained her wrist once trying to jump down the stairs with a blanket parachute like a flying squirrel she saw at a department store display with Miss Babbin–necessitating a long talk on how little girls are not animals and should remember that–and a few sniffles now and then, but for the most part, a benefit of her not being around other children often is that she hasn’t fallen prey to the illnesses they tend to attract in groups. 

When she first complains of her head hurting, then, he doesn’t think much of it. She isn’t prone to headaches, but in the summer heat, stifling even this late into the night, it isn’t surprising. He picks her up even though she’s starting to get too big for it, and she rests her head on his shoulder the same way she has since she was five. He frowns when he feels the warmth of her, looking to Lestat. 

“She feel like she has a fever to you?” He asks. After checking to make sure no one is watching them too closely, Lestat reaches out, pressing his hand to her cheek briefly. After a moment, he shrugs, letting his hand drop. 

“She feels warm, but don’t we all? The heat has been sweltering.” 

Louis hums agreement even though he frowns. It’s warm, certainly, but not enough that Claudia should feel so much warmer than she usually does. Still, it’s late, and there isn’t much of a breeze in this part of town. Perhaps she has just had a little too much heat. 

*

The next warning comes when they wake up before Claudia the next day, even though she’s almost always awake and working on her art or reading a book by the time the sun sets. She still isn’t allowed to try and work the stove without them awake, but there’s always things in the icebox or the pantry for her to pick at when she’s hungry. At nine, she’s old enough to be trusted to know how the door to the coffin chamber works–after multiple, very serious conversations about the importance of never opening it if anyone else is in the house–so she can get to them if she needs them, but she’s otherwise left to entertain herself. They started letting her sleep in their bedroom instead of on a little cot in the chamber with them when she was seven, and she’d moved to a bed of her own in the last year, still close enough that they could hear her if something happened and she called for them but far enough to start letting her have a little more independence. She still sleeps in their bed sometimes, and after a nightmare, she’ll curl up with him in his coffin, but even when she stays in her room all day, she’s almost always waiting for them by nightfall. 

But not today. 

“Claudia?” He calls when he opens the door to the coffin chamber, frowning. “Claudia?”  

He doesn’t even wait for Lestat to finish rising from his coffin, crossing the hall to Claudia’s room. 

His daughter is still in bed, her curtains drawn. Monsieur Minou lifts his head when he notices Louis and hisses the way he always does, but Louis ignores him, moving aside to let the cat leave the room after rising and stretching, nosing at Claudia’s face in farewell and then hopping down. Claudia’s still curled up in sleep, on her belly and wrapped around a pillow, her stuffed toy, a pink elephant named Persephone, under one arm. 

In an instant, Louis feels the first spark of unease swell to life in him. Lestat had been the one to see her to bed last morning so Louis could finish going over paperwork for a new bar they’re investing in, but he’d told Louis, amused, that she’d dropped off to sleep immediately, a rarity for their chatterbox, asleep even before she’d finished reading the next chapter of her book aloud. 

“Claudia?” He calls softly, moving to sit on the edge of her bed and resting a hand on her back to gently jostle her awake. In an instant, he can tell she has a fever, the heat radiating through the cotton of her sweat-damp nightdress and into his palm. He swallows against the immediate fear. 

“Daddy Lou?” Claudia asks, tipping her face enough to look at him, wisps of hair sticking to her sweaty face. Her voice is rough, and even in the low light of the room, she squints, like her head still hurts. 

“Hey,” he says softly, rubbing her back. He forces his voice to be teasing, not wanting to scare her if he’s just inventing catastrophes in his head. “It’s time to wake up.” 

“Mmm,” Claudia says, the noise like a whimper. Instead of bouncing up like a spring the way she usually does, she curls around his leg, her forehead near his knee radiating heat through his pajama pants. He rubs her back a little more bracingly, desperately trying to tell himself this is nothing. She must have woken up at some point in the day instead of sleeping. That’s why she’s tired. She’s done it a few times–she has a room she’s allowed to open the curtains in if she wants to see daylight–and he tells himself sternly that the fact that she’s always still been awake by the time he is even when she does wake up isn’t important. She just stayed up too late. She’s just tired. 

She’s fine.  

“C’mon, you,” he coaxes. “Your painting tutor’ll be here soon. You don’t wanna keep her waiting, do you? Didn’t you tell me you were excited to try out some goach?” The mispronunciation of gouache is deliberate, something he’s been teasing her about since he did genuinely mispronounce it the first time and was immediately corrected with the same fervor he is when he misuses a musical term around Lestat. She’s as serious about her art as he is his music, and she’s equally easy to needle into a fit of irritation, her tolerance for a lack of respect for her artistic medium as severe as her other parent’s. It makes them both easy to wind up, and if he happens to find it funny enough to do it regularly, it at least gives them something to bond over. 

Her lack of correction now, then, is terrifying. 

“Still abed, lazy thing?” 

He looks up at Lestat’s teasing tone. 

Whatever Lestat reads on his face makes the levity on his face drop immediately, and in the next moment, he’s beside him, kneeling beside Claudia’s bed. 

“What’s happened?” He asks, reaching out to Claudia immediately even as he remains looking at Louis. When his hand lands on her and he feels her fever, though, he looks to her, lips pressing together. He moves his hand, resting the back of it against her cheek as if he needs to confirm that it is a fever and not just her being warm from being under her blankets. He strokes a hand over her hair, cupping the cloud of it softly and then tilting his head to look at her face. “Ma petite? It’s time to wake, cherie.” 

“Don’t feel good,” Claudia whimpers, snuggling closer to Louis. 

“What hurts?” Louis asks her softly, still rubbing her back. “Your head?” 

She nods, looking truly pathetic. 

“My throat hurts, too,” she says, and now the rasp in her voice makes sense. 

“I’m sorry, baby,” he says sympathetically, and she curls against him more. He moves to pick her up, shifting to hold her on his lap. “What el-” 

“Louis.” 

The flat, heavy tone with which Lestat says his name sends a chill through him like ice sliding down his back. 

Lestat reaches out and takes hold of Claudia’s wrist, gently pulling it away from her body even as she whines like her joints hurt. Lestat cups her elbow, angling her arm so Louis can see it. He sees what Lestat did at once: an angry-looking, bumpy rash covering her skin, centered around her elbow. Louis feels his blood run cold, staring at the evidence like he can simply will it into not existing, into not being exactly what he knows it is. 

Scarlet fever. 

*

“It’s been going around something awful,” Lestat hears the doctor tell Louis. It would cause more trouble than it’s worth, staying with them and inviting questions as to why, but he waits outside in the hallway to listen in, skimming through the man’s mind in case Louis doesn’t think to do the same. 

In this case, however, he hopes Louis isn’t listening to the man’s thoughts. 

Poor thing, the man thinks sympathetically, even as his mouth says meaningless reassurances meant to soothe a worried father. So soon and already so sick? Especially with this wave so bad? 

Lestat’s jaw clenches. 

“-otherwise healthy child. She’s always been active and-” The doctor says even as he thinks, Three dead today, and that’s only in my rounds. God knows how many-

“-fever down, cool cloths and compresses-” 

-heartbeat is already showing strain- 

“-no other children, which is fortunate, so often it moves through-”

-poor man, his only child, don’t see a wife, either, might have already-

“-water, juice, anything she’ll take, with fevers we always-” 

-already so high, and not likely to get better, should I warn him to look for-

“-recovery, when she’s always so hearty normally-” 

-poor little thing, I wouldn’t put money on her-

Lestat slams his eyes shut and shoves himself off of the wall, stalking away. He’s heard enough. Louis can handle the rest. There’s nothing helpful in the man’s mind anyway. Lestat will seek out another physician, one who understands that Claudia will not die. She’s too robust. She’s an energetic little thing, bouncing off the walls and tearing through the house like a hurricane, a strong little girl who will be a strong young woman who will be a strong fledgling vampire. 

Not like the limp little slip of a thing Antoinette had had in her house the last time he’d visited, the child of a fellow singer, kept for the night to allow her mother to keep her shift at a bar. The child had been asleep in another room, so Lestat largely hadn’t paid attention to her presence after the initial surprise of her being there. She wasn’t Claudia, not interesting like his and Louis’s child, so he hadn’t bothered investigating her beyond asking why she was in Antoinette’s house at all. She gets ideas, sometimes, his mistress. She’s an excellent fuck and a talented singer, but she’s also delusional to the point of it moving beyond pitiable to contemptible. She has a pretty little story she tells herself, he knows, about him leaving Louis for her, putting a ring on her finger and moving her into the townhouse. 

As if she could ever even fill Louis’s shadow in his life. 

“You’ve discovered a maternal urge?” He’d teased with an edge mean enough that he could feel it poking at her confidence in her little plan. 

He doesn’t tell her much about his life, no matter how much she digs. She’s interesting, he can allow that, quick-witted and wicked in her humor, and she’s wildly inventive in the bedroom, willing and eager for all manner of depravity, including the things he would never subject Louis to, knowing that it would bruise his lover’s tender heart to be treated with too cruel a hand in the bedroom. Louis likes passion in lovemaking and loves playing a struggle now and then, but he doesn’t care for mean names or degradation beyond anything said with obviously affectionate teasing. He likes soft words and generosity, likes Lestat giving him enough pleasure that he’s near-insensate with it, likes being bossy with what he wants when Lestat drives him to desperation, likes being spoiled and petted and pampered, and Lestat obliges gladly, always drunk on the carnal delight of Louis’s pleasure, the sight of his companion gorging himself on ecstasy after a lifetime of self-conscious denial. He doesn’t like it hard and angry and vicious quite as much as Lestat does from time to time, always feels guilty afterwards for getting rough even when Lestat wanted it, beautiful, sensitive soul that he is, so Lestat doesn’t push, just provokes him enough to get thrown around now and then and then gladly submits to Louis’s preferences every other time they make love. Louis has his pick of what he wants from Lestat, what he accepts, what he likes, what he craves. 

Antoinette gets the rest. 

And apparently, she’s gotten greedy. 

“Wishing for one of your own?” He’d asked, bending her over the railing of her balcony and reaching under her dress to rip her slip in two for ease of access. She wasn’t, he knew even as he asked. She doesn’t particularly like children. 

But with knowing about Claudia after seeing him out with his family one evening, she’d thought it might give him ideas, her playing nurse to a child, might tempt him into thoughts of them having one together. 

Poor fool. 

“Or is it just the making that compels you?” He’d whispered into her ear, feeling the shudder of it run through her as she pressed back against him with needy little whines. “Shall we practice?” 

He hadn’t fucked her as hard as he usually does, hadn’t gone quite as far as she’ll normally gladly follow. He’d had her on the balcony a couple of times and then had her ride him in the comfort of her bed with his hand clamped over her mouth to keep her from waking the child–really, if she’d wished to put on a performance for him, she could have at least studied the part and learned the accommodations a young life in the home requires–and then he’d called it a night, leaving her trembling but still sensate. 

She’d had a child to tend to, after all. 

“Poor thing,” she’d said with her best performance of sympathy when she returned from checking on the child and climbed back in bed. He’d allowed it. He doesn’t usually stay long after he’s finished with her, but it had been raining and he’d forgotten an umbrella, so he’d let her curl up against him. She’d taken it as a sign, delusional woman, and her tone had only grown more saccharine. 

He’d smoked a cigarette and tuned most of it out. 

“Hopefully it won’t spread to her siblings,” Antoinette had said at some point in her droning. “Such an awful thing, scarlet fever.” 

*

Claudia has been seen by four doctors, each a fool. 

They have to be fools. Lestat cannot face the alternative, cannot accept their dire thoughts as reality, their doubts about Claudia’s chances. It’s vicious, apparently, the current wave of scarlet fever, especially deadly this year for no reason anyone seems to actually know, working through the children of New Orleans like the spirit of the Lord over Egypt, mowing children down without even the prejudice of only taking a firstborn. 

The doctor with a brother in the funeral business thinks with dark humor about how lucrative the tiny casket business is at present. 

Lestat lets him get three streets over and then drains him for the audacity of wondering if he should hand Louis a business card, just in case. 

He watches now from the doorway as Louis holds Claudia while she cries, not from anything in particular, just from an overwhelm of misery. Her body hurts, her head hurts, her throat hurts, she shivers even as she burns with fever, her eyes glassy. Louis rocks her, like she’s a baby, coaxing sips of broth and water into her even as she turns her head away, swallowing too painful. She whines, tucking her face against him, and Louis whispers sweet things, soothing things, still trying to get another mouthful of liquid into her. 

Lestat turns away. 

Perhaps the fifth will be the charm. 

*

Lestat avoids the sickroom for the most part. Louis is possessive of his place as nurse at present, and he can tell he’s ready for a fight, spoiling for something to do with energy that has nowhere else to go. Lestat offers broth provided by the woman they pay to cook for Claudia and brings water, both glasses of it to try and get her to drink and bowls of it to dip cloths into. He tries just once to suggest that Louis hand Claudia over and take a brief respite and had gotten a look fiercer than any he’s ever seen on his lover’s face. 

He’d taken the refusal and retreated, returning to his rightful place as provider and not participant. 

*

Claudia loves books as Louis does, a similarity between the two that Lestat enjoys teasing Louis about almost as much as he enjoys seeing the two of them on a couch together when he returns home from hunting, his two diligent bibliophiles. She devours them with an insatiable hunger, though her tastes run to knowledge while Louis’s tend towards fiction. She has a brilliant mind, their spark, even at the tender age of nine already working her way through texts nearly as big as she is. He finds it endlessly amusing to see her “at her studies” as he and Louis call it, settled at a desk in their office so tall her feet don’t reach the floor in her chair, just swing back and forth in her tiny lace-edged socks–she’s inherited his habit of discarding her shoes at random in the house, something that infuriates Louis, always so tidy–as she focuses on her book, a dictionary close at hand to look up the things she doesn’t understand. She usually undertakes her studies while he and Louis handle matters of business, the three of them ensconced in quiet industry, a record providing the only sound, with brief interruptions if Claudia encounters something even her dictionary can’t elucidate. 

Her latest focus has been animals. She’s been working her way through a book covering the animals native to the continent of Africa, recording the especially interesting ones in the sketchbook he gave her for Christmas, a grand confection of rosy pink leather and gold with her name inscribed on the cover, part of the larger gift of art lessons with a woman they hire to come by twice a week to tutor her. They aren’t masterpieces by any measure, her sketches, but they do demonstrate an innate talent steadily growing with the benefit of lessons, and Lestat enjoys it, the scratch of her pencils and charcoals as he plays at the piano after giving her her music lesson and then setting her loose. He doesn’t have quite the taste for quiet domesticity that Louis does, but there’s a satisfaction to it, he’s found, the mutual pursuit of separate passions, especially when she's always such an easily awed audience. A natural chatterbox, she’s rarely quiet for very long, and he’s served his time as audience as well for many a lecture on all of the things she’s been learning. 

Her latest interest has been hornbills, an animal he’s been told is tricky to capture just right “because their faces look so silly, Uncle Les.” 

Hornbills are unique, he’s been told, because of how they raise their chicks. The mother hornbill seals herself into the nest with the eggs–”it’s called a clutch, Uncle Les,” he can hear Claudia’s voice correct him, such a stickler for accuracy–to protect them, and the father hornbill provides for her and the hatchlings while they grow. 

It’s how he feels now, a father hornbill sealed on the outside of the nest doing his best to provide for the precious lives within, but his offerings are meager, insufficient to fix anything. Claudia grows weaker by the day, responding less and less, even her thoughts growing muted, no longer demanding attention as insistently as she herself does. 

It’s terrifying, the quiet their house has achieved. 

And here sits Father Hornbill, offering food, offering water, offering blankets and sheets and nightgowns and books and medicine and candles because the electric lights make Claudia’s headaches worse. 

Offering everything but the one thing he absolutely cannot give. 

*

The boiling over of the pressure cooker of their home comes when a doctor finally has the temerity to gently suggest that they begin thinking of “arrangements,” a pretty word for the ugliest thing Lestat could possibly fathom. 

The card for a funeral home, pressed into his palm with polite professionalism to avoid giving it to the soon-to-be-grieving father, sits in his hand like a bomb. 

The explosion comes a scarce half-second after the door shuts. 

“Change her,” Louis growls, slamming him against the wall. 

Lestat bares his teeth in response, barely resisting the urge to hiss, to respond to a threat in kind, clinging to the memory that this is his lover, his Saint Louis, by the very tips of his fingers, fighting against every instinct made even stronger by his exhaustion. 

“The gift cannot be given to children,” he says, a refrain of a song he’s sung already. “She would be at war with-” 

“-herself,” Louis finishes with a harsh laugh that hits as hard as if he’d spit in Lestat’s face. “At war with herself, mountains and valleys, more bullshit. She’s gonna die . Right in front of us. If you don’t fucking-” 

“And she will die within herself each day after if I do!” Lestat snarls back, shoving Louis away. The pain is a fierce, gnawing thing in his chest, the knowledge that the one thing he has to give Claudia that can save her is the one thing that would doom her. He could do it, Great Laws be damned, put his teeth to that feverish little neck and then offer his wrist in return, suckle her on his blood until she is beyond any illness’s touch. She would be healed by nightfall, hale and hearty, stronger than she ever was as a mortal. 

And the record of her height on her doorframe would never gain a single other godforsaken inch. 

“Her mind will still age, Louis,” he says, and the words are almost a plea. This must be a shared weight. It cannot be evil Lestat refusing to save their child. Louis must see, must understand, that this thing he asks cannot be done. 

He cannot bear his desperation and Louis’s, not for this, not as they watch their child fade in slow degrees and he ties his own hands to stop himself from giving her the one thing that could save her for sure. 

He is not that strong a man, and he can feel how close his conviction already is to breaking. 

“So what!” Louis declares, driven to madness in his desperation. There is nothing in this moment for him, Lestat knows, beyond the knowledge that Claudia will remain. However it happens, whatever it takes, Louis will do it. 

But Lestat cannot. 

“A child,” he says, begging Louis to understand, “forever. She will be a grown woman in the body of a doll. Forever. It will crush her spirit, Louis. It will kill h-”

Louis shoves him again, and though Lestat knows it’s just his anger and fear driving him, it snaps the first few delicate threads holding back his own temper. 

He shoves back, sending Louis stumbling away. 

“She will be miserable,” he says, and he can feel his eyes filling with tears at the idea, of the suffering he knows she would endure if he did this horrible, hateful thing to her. Claudia, already so bright, so curious, that mind trapped in the prison of her body forever. It would crush her, would grind her down year by year until that sweet laugh, that curious mind, that unexpected sense of humor, that implacable stubbornness, all of what makes her Claudia would be lost to the contradiction of her impossible existence. 

He cannot watch her die. 

But he also cannot watch her decline in slow degrees with a passage of time that will never touch her except to break her.

“Do you not care?” Louis growls, picking himself up and returning to invade Lestat’s space once more. “Is that it? You want it back to the fucking two of us? Huh? No more-” 

Lestat hisses, furious. 

“Do not,” he grinds out between his teeth, “say that. You are not the only one who loves her.” 

Louis’s mocking laugh rings like the bell before a boxing match. 

“Love?” He sneers, as if Lestat has not offered his freely since the first moment their paths crossed, the words still unreturned, his ears always ringing with the lack of an echo. “Is that what this is? You getting to decide if our daughter lives or dies? Only you? Great Lestat, big boss man of Rue Royale?” 

“You do not-”

“You’re incapable of love!” Louis snarls, a mean smile on his beautiful lips, eyes glinting with the light of a predator who tastes blood. “You can run from it, hide from it all you want, dress it up in as many pretty words as you want to. That’s the truth of it, Lestat: you can’t love. You only know how to own.” 

The rage takes control of Lestat in that moment, narrowing the world to his fury, his wrath, the audacity of this fledgling to sink teeth back into him, to take every loving word he’s ever given him and throw it into his face, to make mockery of Lestat’s devotion, offered freely and never returned.

The words flow without any need for input from him. 

“Own?” He mocks, lips twisting in a grin of his own, deliberately biting. “And what of you, taking another man’s daughter to fill in as a child you don’t have? Plucking your sweet little girl from a fire and hiding her from her true father when he searched for her? I wonder what Claudia would think, knowing that she calls her kidnapper ‘daddy’.”

He sees the flinch when it hits Louis as it was meant to, and predator that he is, Lestat chases it, seeks more to sink his teeth into. 

“Though I suppose that’s what you excel at, isn’t it? Such a talent for scouting out other men’s daughters. If she hadn’t caught your eye so young,” he knows as he says it that what’s coming is probably in the realm of unforgivable, but he’s too angry, too hurt to make it stop, “I wonder how long it would have been until you had sweet little Claudia earning you money on her back? Her pimp instead of her Daddy Lou, selling her by the hour for-”

With a roar, Louis hits him hard enough to send him flying through a window. 

*

His defenestration cools the ardor of his rage, leaving him drained and aching on the still sun-warm concrete of the courtyard. 

He hears Louis storm back upstairs, hears the sharp snap of Claudia’s door closing, and still he does not rise. 

He simply stares up at the city light-blurred darkness of the sky above, not a single star shining through. 

*

Louis retreats to Claudia’s room like a wounded thing, the satisfaction of violence fading quickly and leaving behind only shame’s residue, clinging like grease on a dish. 

“Hey,” he tells Claudia softly. “Sorry, I had to take care of something.” 

Claudia doesn’t respond. 

He didn’t expect her to. 

He holds her in his arms, this little girl of his, his beautiful little firefly, and he feels the heat of her fever burning her as surely as the fire he rescued her from. He could do it, he knows, could change her himself. He’s capable of it; he has to be. He’d be her daddy and her maker, and he’d miss hearing her whirlwind thoughts, but that would be alright. She could just tell him her thoughts, could let him ride along with the way they float like dandelion fluff, always light enough to drag him back from the darkness that lives in him, the sucking, squelching mud of his own inherent misery. Claudia, his little butterfly, always floats above it, and fragile as she is, it’s enough, enough to pull him from his own darkness. 

He extends his fangs, gently tilts her head back, her little face sweaty and pained and pallid. 

He lowers his head, feels the heat of her skin radiating to his lips. He could do it. He remembers the process. One bite to her neck, suck enough to drain but not kill, offer her his wrist, let her drink her fill of him until she’s strong once more. He presses forward a scant centimeter, his right fang grazing her baby-soft skin. Even with a touch as soft as that, he scrapes her enough to make her bleed, and the smell makes him recoil at once. It’s not a temptation so much anymore, her blood. He keeps himself fed, and with time, the smell of her blood has become a source of alarm and not hunger. 

Instinctively, though, his tongue seeks the crimson drop dangling at the end of his fang. He knows there’s a sweetness to it because there has to be. Blood is always sweet, rich as syrup, lush as honey. 

But now, in his daughter’s blood, the only thing he tastes is bitterness. 

His breath leaves him in a shudder, and he bows forward, fangs retracting, as he covers her with his own body, like he can simply keep death away if he gets in the way. He is deathless, the immortal father of an all-too-mortal daughter. His heart lives in the most fragile vessel imaginable, plucked from his indestructible chest and placed in the spun glass reliquary that is Claudia. The best of him, the deepest of his love, nestled in the fragile cage that is her, a gift set beneath a guillotine, the blade ready to drop, to destroy him in a way he knows he cannot recover from, to shatter him in the way ice shatters against stone, broken forever beyond any chance of repair. 

He cries until he is empty, and then he gathers her up and retreats to his coffin, hiding her away with him in the darkness. 

*

The seizures begin around 11 am, startling Louis awake with the thrashing. For a moment, he thinks it’s a nightmare, more terrors brought forth by her fever. 

But no, he knows from the instant that he sees the angle of her head, neck bared like an offering–a hateful, cruel joke for her father, a vampire–that something is horribly, unimaginably wrong. 

He hears the catch of her breath as she struggles to breathe, and he shatters one of the hinges on his coffin with how abruptly he shoves himself upwards. He wants to restrain, to make it stop, but he has some vague memory of someone’s thought, some instruction about not restraining a convulsive fit. Or was it to restrain a convulsive fit? Should he-

“Louis, mon cher, move,” Lestat’s voice is an interruption as deft as a knife, though Louis growls when the other vampire’s arms reach into the coffin, taking Claudia from the safe cocoon of its dark warmth. Lestat ignores him, pulls Claudia’s shaking body up and then sets her down on the floor, her head on the pillow from Lestat’s coffin. “She’ll harm herself if she’s contained,” Lestat says, that same low, soothing tone to his voice, even as his eyes never leave Claudia’s body. 

“How-” Louis starts, wondering where the fuck Lestat is getting this information from to be so confident with it. 

“I’ve more years than you, cheri,” Lestat says absently, still not moving his eyes from Claudia, not until he rests a hand over her chest, so large it almost covers the expanse completely. Louis frowns, wondering what in the hell he’s doing when he just said not to restrain her, but Lestat’s touch is gentle, and his eyes close before Louis can catch his attention, face going drawn in concentration the way it does when he’s truly focusing on his abilities. 

Helpless and confused and terrified and useless, Louis waits, half in his coffin, half out, and feels his heart on the edge of plummeting into a pain he knows he will never recover from as Claudia’s little body continues jerking like a puppet controlled by a clumsy child. 

“Shhhh,” Lestat says, voice a gentle, calming whisper, and Louis is ready to snap at him for the audacity of trying to soothe him when he realizes that the sentiment isn’t directed to him. 

It’s directed at Claudia. 

“Quiet, ma petite,” he continues in that same slow, comforting tone. “Rest now.” 

In slow increments, Claudia’s body begins to still, her violent jerking fading to trembling fading to shivering fading to nothing, a still, gentle calmness overtaking her. 

Louis looks to Lestat in a combination of disbelief and gratitude. 

Only when Claudia is completely still does Lestat remove his hand from across Claudia’s chest, moving upwards briefly to stroke his fingers over her cheek before pulling back entirely, dropping to the side and catching himself with one hand. Louis can see a thin trickle of blood from his left ear. 

“Her fever is too high,” Lestat says, opening his eyes once more, looking drawn and worn. “I’ve done what I can, but the human body is fragile. I risk breaking more than I can fix if I try to delve too deeply. Go get some cloths and cool water. The curtains are closed.” 

In the moment, there is nothing to do but obey. 

*

Under the force of the sun in its ascent, Louis knows he isn’t the only one suffering from the bone-deep exhaustion that plagues their kind during the day without the safety of sleep. 

Lestat, however, doesn’t mention it, just sits vigil beside Claudia with him, tending his own cloths on his side, dragging them over her face and arm and leg tenderly before dipping them into the water once more. If he resents being pressed into service as a nursemaid, he keeps it to himself and gives a good show. He murmurs things in French, now and then, but Louis tunes it out, the same way he knows Lestat tunes out the nonsense he tells Claudia. It isn’t the words, really. 

They just don’t want her to feel alone. 

With her so deep under, he dares to speak in her mind, something previously forbidden in their household to avoid questions they can’t answer. He has his suspicions that Lestat is breaking the rule as well, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Is there anything more lawless than death? What is a rule against the thought of their daughter slipping away from them into its cold, uncaring embrace? 

We’re here, he sends her, brushing the words against her mind like a caress. We’re right here. 

He can’t hear Lestat anymore telepathically, but he thinks he feels a familiar brush in Claudia’s mind, her thoughts so muted that he can detect Lestat in brief pockets of silence, his presence betrayed by Louis’s inability to hear him. He looks up, sees Lestat watching Claudia with fathomless eyes. If he feels Louis in her head the way Louis feels him, he doesn’t mention it, a silent agreement to break the rules together. He wants to ask what Lestat is saying. 

He doesn’t, just silently offers another cloth when Lestat fumbles the one he’s holding and drops it. It’s held out in silence. It’s accepted in silence. They return to their vigil in silence. 

Come back to us, he sends Claudia, eyes shut tight with the force he thinks the words as he brings her feverish little hand to his lips, kisses the blistering-hot skin over her knuckles. Come back. 

*

They only leave Claudia when they have a nurse come by to bathe her and change her out of her sweat-drenched nightgown, and when Lestat pulls at him, Louis lets him. He doesn’t want to go far, doesn’t want to be more than a few steps away as if he can guard her against death if he’s just close enough. 

But he also doesn’t have it in him to resist the silent, firm command of Lestat’s hand at his back. 

He lets Lestat guide him to the basement, drains what he’s offered without thinking about it, and then leaves the body to return upstairs, forcing himself to not stop at Claudia’s room first. He has some blood on his sleeve. He needs to change it. It still takes him staring at the door to his and Lestat’s room for a moment before he can make himself commit to walking through it. 

He’s just shrugging into a new shirt when the Lestat enters. 

“I should apologize for earlier,” Lestat murmurs, draping himself over Louis’s back but not committing to the touch until he’s given Louis a chance to shrug him off. 

He doesn’t. 

“I was cruel before, cheri,” Lestat says, shifting his head to kiss Louis’s shoulder. “What I said-” 

“You weren’t wrong,” Louis says, voice rough. “I stole her.” 

Lestat clicks his tongue in disapproval, but Louis isn’t looking to be coddled. 

“They were all daughters,” he says tonelessly. “All of the girls in my-” His urge is to say clubs, the prettier word, the better word. The word that hides the depth of his own depravity. “-brothels.” 

The word is bitter on his tongue and bitterer still where it sits in his stomach like something heavy and rotting. 

“If not you,” Lestat soothes, “it would have been someone else. You paid them a good wage, treated them with dignity, put a roof over their heads. You were not some heavy-handed pimp-” 

“But I was a pimp,” Louis says, with a single, harsh laugh. “Sold other men’s daughters and profited.” He hasn’t let himself frame it this way before, has pushed away the knowledge of it since the night of his turning, his final confession. “It could have been her.” The words make his mouth fill with saliva like he’ll be sick. “One day, when she was older, when she couldn’t find other work.” It was the same old story, after all. Desperation is desperation, and money is money. 

“Raymond Landry has three other daughters.” 

The sentence, delivered like an observation of the weather, is jarring enough to make Louis turn. Lestat seems amused, cupping his face in one hand, stroking a thumb along his cheek. 

“I got curious,” he says with a shrug. “I decided to see who else shared blood with our Claudia.” 

“Why would-” 

“It seems an immoral thing, to accidentally eat a relative. Even vampires should have standards, no?” 

The idea is a dark joke, and under other circumstances, Louis might laugh at it. A vampiric moral code? Tracing Claudia’s family tree to make sure they don’t kill a half-sibling she doesn’t even know? It’s absurd. He doesn’t even know why Lestat would-

“Raymond Landry,” Louis doesn’t miss that Lestat uses his name, not his proper title in relation to Claudia, “has four new children in total. Twin girls first, then a boy, and then another girl, born only a few months ago, my agent tells me.” Lestat smiles faintly. “None with eyes as pretty as ours, I fear. Apparently those were a gift from her mother.” 

“What does that have to do with anything?” It makes him feel worse, honestly, the knowledge of how much family he’s depriving Claudia of. 

“He’s relieved, you know, that none resemble Claudia. It would make the guilt too great.” Lestat makes a disapproving noise. “Personally, I think the apparent demise of one child should delay the arrival of more, but then I am not so well-versed in mortal values.” 

“What are you talking about?” Louis demands. Usually he can keep up with Lestat’s train of thought for at least a few stops, but he’s being left behind now, too mired in his own exhaustion and guilt. 

“Claudia takes after her mother strongly,” Lestat says, sounding fond. “She was quite a striking beauty, I gather, which bodes well for our daughter. The world is so much kinder for the beautiful.” He gives Louis a wink, but when Louis doesn’t respond, his expression goes more sincere. “Did you ever bother to find out why Claudia was left with her aunt, mon cher? Why Raymond would give away his only child, still grieving her mother, in order to start fresh with a new batch at his earliest convenience?” 

No, is the answer. It had always made him feel too guilty, thinking of him, so he’d done what he’s always done when something feels too heavy to carry: he’d ignored it. 

“He couldn’t look at her without thinking of her mother–Celestine, by the way, a lovely name, perhaps we should consider it as a middle name for Claudia in her honor–and so he decided to give her to her aunt. It was easier that way. Less guilt to carry. Less pain to remember. He traded his daughter for his own peace of mind.” Lestat’s tone has gone hard. “Do you think, Louis, that you would simply select another child if we lost Claudia? Could you move on so easily, forget her like an inconvenient result of youthful exuberance?” 

“No,” Louis says, voice a croak. He doesn’t even need to think about it. There would be no child after Claudia. The idea is impossible. He doesn’t even know if there’s a world in which he would outlive her, if fate could be cruel enough to take her from him, too. There would be no other Claudia. 

Because there almost certainly would be no him. 

"C’est ça,” Lestat says, clearly satisfied, as if they’ve solved the entire thing together. He gives Louis a warm smile. “So you have done things in the past you regret. This is simply life, cheri. You should pace yourself. You have a far way to walk to already carry so much.” 

The idea isn’t as positive as he imagines Lestat thinks it is, and he can see that the other vampire knows this. 

“Claudia is happy, spoiled and coddled and happy. This is the only life she knows, Louis, and it’s a good one. Will you doubt her place in your life forever? How unfair of you.” 

“She might have-” 

Lestat cuts him off with a kiss, lingering when they part, forehead against Louis’s. 

“She might have. She might not have. ‘Might’ is not something worth concerning yourself with. There is here and now, and me and you, and our beautiful terror of a daughter.” Lestat kisses his cheek, nuzzles at him. “Always so busy, that beautiful mind of yours, traveling to the past and the future at the same time, and only to castigate yourself with what you find there.” He tsks, teasing. “To the victor the spoils, Louis. You love Claudia. Claudia loves you. Let it be enough. Don’t spoil beauty by looking for ugliness.” 

He pulls back, and Louis closes his eyes, enjoying the sweet, lingering kiss Lestat presses to his lips before stepping away. 

“Now,” Lestat says, “back to our daughter.” 

*

Despite his attempt at remaining confident for the sake of Louis, Lestat feels his own certainty doing its best to slip from his fingertips like one of Claudia’s silk ribbons. She’s strong. She’s healthy. She’s a beautiful, perfect child. She will make it. 

Lestat tells himself the words over and over and over. 

He just wishes he could make himself believe them. 

“Such dramatics,” he tells Claudia softly as he dabs at her brow. Monsieur Minou is curled in a ball at her hip, purring in a constant, low hum, as if contributing his own efforts to tending his owner. Louis–the cat’s sworn enemy, even years later–is gone for now, forced out to sleep for a while. They’re both exhausted from resisting their natural cycle of rest, but Lestat had insisted on denying themselves in shifts. 

It does their child no good for her fathers to be exhausted together. 

“All of this because your Daddy Lou has been busy with business, hm?” He teases, taking her tiny hand in one of his and dragging the cool cloth along her arm, turning it to reach both sides. “If you wished for more attention, you need only have asked, ma petite diva. One bat of those pretty lashes and we’re both yours to command. You know this.” 

Claudia doesn’t respond, too deeply sunk into her fever, restless but unaware. He can hear the struggle in her body, fighting against the fever that threatens to burn her to nothing. He’s nudged at her mind a few times, trying to gently coax it lower. It’s dangerous, playing around with humans to that degree. 

But in this case, it seems more dangerous not to. 

She starts to seize again, her tiny body jerking in spasms he knows he’ll be seeing when he closes his eyes, in his worst dreams, and he shuts them now almost gladly as he rests a hand over her chest and another over her burning forehead, seeking out the thread of her mind. Peace, he sends now, along with the sensation of coolness, a breeze against a sweaty forehead, an ice cube held to a neck in the summer, ice cream dripping in slow, cold streams down a wrist. Still now, ma cherie, settle. He feels the trembling start to ease, and he grits his teeth against her pained panting, her little whimpers. She isn’t aware, not really, but she knows enough to be afraid, to know that her fragile mortal shell is failing her, threatening to drop her beautiful, singular little spirit into an abyss that they cannot retrieve her from. 

He feels it when the first tear falls, trailing down his cheek. 

His fault, he knows, this illness, this enemy who snuck into their home in pursuit of their most fragile treasure. Lestat de Lioncourt, fearsome head of the coven of New Orleans, responsible for defending what is his. Bribes, killings, threats, all of these he’s deployed liberally to protect the delicate eggshell of their perfect life here. Hateful fools with a grudge against Louis because of his race and his ability to accumulate wealth greater than theirs, even playing the game at disadvantage? Dispatched before they can put their nasty little schemes into play. Overly zealous officers of the law poking around a life built between two men, bigots seeking to find someone big enough to make an example of? Shuffled around out of the city after greasing the right palm or sent to respond to a call they won’t return from. Men whose eyes linger just a little too long on a beautiful little girl, minds playing through what they would love to do with such a morsel? Annihilated with great prejudice at his earliest convenience for the audacity of even considering putting their filthy hands on a member of his family. He is a diligent Beauceron, attentive and quick to use his teeth against threats, but gentle to his lambs, tending and herding and keeping them safely within the circle of his protection. 

And yet he’s the one who brought this killer into their home. 

*

The conversation they can’t return to sits between them like an anvil, dragging them down down down into tense silence. They might have had their moment of clearing the air, but that doesn’t mean that an awareness of the lingering tension has been forgotten. 

“I’ll do it,” Lestat says to the air at four in the morning as they both sit vigil over Claudia, still and pale, struggling for each breath. 

He senses Louis looking at him, and he closes his eyes, bracing himself to promise something he knows already that they’ll spend the rest of their lives regretting. 

It will destroy her, he knows that, and it will destroy them, too, to watch her suffer. He is beyond the point in which he can take it all back, reclaim every piece of his heart that is hers. He can’t slot her back into the drawer she arrived in his life in, when she was Louis’s hobby and nothing more. It’s grown beyond his control now. When she suffers, caught in the maelstrom of her cursed existence, he will suffer with her, as will Louis. They are all too much a part of each other to avoid it. He can’t let her die. The choice is both unbearably complex and unbelievably simple. He will watch her life end early, a candle snuffed out by an uncaring wind, or he will force her to drag it around like a broken limb, force her to grow wrong, to put weight on a limb broken and never reset. It will kill her, saving her. It’s the most selfish thing he has ever considered, and the most hateful thing he will ever do. 

And still he knows that he will damn them all for even another day of loving her. 

“If it…” He can’t say it, as if putting words to the threat that hovers over them like a miasma will call it forth into being. “I will do it.” 

He knows Louis as a part of his soul, knows his faces from a thousand different moods. He carries a part of Louis within him as Louis does him, their blood circulating in each other’s veins, a bond no one could ever break. Louis is the other half of his soul. 

And yet he could not, to save his life, say what the look on his face is in this moment. 

After a long, long stretch of silence, Lestat looks down again, moves without thought to sponge at Claudia’s face with a cloth, helps prop her up to try and coax more water into her mouth. He can’t look at her, this girl who lays before him like a lamb with no idea he holds a knife behind his back, no idea even now that her tender throat is stretched over an altar, waiting for the flash of a blade that will remove her from this mortal coil and force her into a miserable half-life that will weigh on her more as the years go by. 

The shame sits on him like tar, the knowledge of what he is prepared to do to their family. 

He has done many horrible things in his long, long life, and now he is prepared to do the worst one of all, and for the worst reason in the world. 

Love. 

*

“It’ll be my fault, too,” Louis tells Lestat before he takes his shift to rest, ignoring Claudia’s devil cat hissing and taking a swipe at him as he rounds the bed. He kneels, gets on his knees, bows his head until it rests on Lestat’s leg. It’s an appropriate pose, he thinks, for a penitent asking for an abomination. “If it-if she-” The words won’t come, even now, even with the ghost of it peeking at them around the corner. “I asked for it. Even if you do it, it was both of us.” 

It feels important, this distinction, this shared sin. If they will damn their daughter to save her, it should be both of them, judge and executioner. 

“Do you still believe in God, Louis?” 

He looks up sharply, having not expected the question. Lestat, though, isn’t looking at him, is simply gazing at Claudia the way one would a flame. It’s only when the silence stretches that Louis realizes he’s waiting for an answer, and it takes him a moment longer because he doesn’t have one ready. 

“I…don’t know,” he says, stumbling over the words. It’s true, after all. For all that Lestat likes to tease him about being his philosophe morose, Louis tries to stay away from the truly heavy thoughts, the ones that might make it hard to keep rising each new day. 

He waits for more, for an explanation, for…a request to pray, maybe? It seems impossible, the idea of Lestat seeking any divine force beyond his own will, but Louis has discovered there’s nothing so shattering as a daughter. Maybe in the light of the tragedy that hangs like a weight around their necks, Lestat has reconsidered, has played with the thought of appealing to a higher power when their power is so goddamn limited. 

Lestat, though, is apparently at the end of his desire to talk theology. 

“Bon nuit, Louis,” he says softly. 

Louis takes it as the dismissal it is. 

*

It’s doctor number Louis doesn’t fucking know and also doesn’t fucking care who brings up something new. Louis by now has had his fill of doctors, men–and even two women, God knows where Lestat found them–who lie to his face while pitying him in their heads. He hasn’t even asked for any of them. Lestat has been the one calling them, as if this a game of cards and he can simply keep picking a new hand until he gets one he wants. 

“A ‘serum’?” He repeats, tone flat with his own exhaustion. 

“Yes,” the doctor says, and Louis tries not to hold it against him that he looks far too young to be a doctor. His eagerness is off putting, too much like when Claudia plays pretend. “It’s a treatment that was first developed in Vienna. It uses blood from horses-” 

Louis, in total honesty, doesn’t pay attention to most of the words that come at him. He skims through the man’s mind instead, going directly to the source and ignoring the meaningless fluff he’s padding his point with. He desperately wishes he had Lestat here beside him, sharing the burden of trying to work through whatever he’s being told by this baby-faced doctor. He’s surprised, sometimes, with the things Lestat accepts and embraces. As a man who predates the discovery of germs and electricity, he often seems almost unsettlingly modern. He knows he’s almost certainly listening to this now, reading the man’s thoughts the same way Louis is. 

But he wishes he wasn’t the only one standing here face to face. 

It’s only when the doctor has gone silent, face expectant, that Louis realizes he’s waiting on a response. 

“I-” He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know if he believes it, doesn’t know if his eyes are even fucking open at this point with how exhausted he is. “Let me think about it,” he says at last. 

“Of course,” the doctor says. A beat. “But you should know it’s in short supply. This wave has hit hard. I’m only offering it now because her case is so severe. If you wait too long, there might not be more left.” 

Louis restrains himself from snapping at him for saying it, for putting words to what Louis already knows, already fears. 

“As I said,” he says, voice strained. “I’ll think about it.” 

*

Lestat returns once the doctor has left, settling at the foot of Claudia’s bed. Monsieur Minou makes an annoyed noise at being jostled but settles when Lestat scratches behind his ear idly, closing his eyes and purring. Little bastard. 

“He seemed certain about this ‘serum’ treatment,” Lestat says lightly. 

Louis’s jaw tightens as he changes out the cloth on Claudia’s forehead. 

“Apparently it’s had great success,” Lestat presses. “40% reduction in mortality if his memory serves.” 

“So we let our daughter be a lab experiment,” he says, voice hard. 

“Hardly,” Lestat says, and something about his reasonable tone just puts Louis’s nerves even more on edge. “There have been plenty of other children who have done their service as lab rats. The good doctor seemed fairly confident in his suggestion.” 

“Stupid people say stupid things confidently every damn day.” 

“Should we table this conversation?” Lestat asks, a thread of annoyance in his voice. “Or should we keep going until you can finally finish picking this fight you seem so eager for?” 

“I’m sorry,” he says, rubbing a hand over his eyes, gritty with exhaustion. “I’m just…” 

He feels the warmth of him before he feels Lestat, pressed to his back, chin hooked over his shoulder. He leans back, lets him take his weight. He wonders, sometimes, what Lestat thinks of the way their family can only exist behind closed doors. It had been apparent already when it was just the two of them, the way that Louis would never be able to exist in the world the way Lestat can and that Lestat would never fully be able to understand that, but it’s become real in a different way since they got Claudia. Even in the small things, in speaking to doctors about their sick child, Lestat can’t be with him, can’t be at his side where Louis wants him. Their discussions, the conversations parents have about their children, always have to happen like this, in private, out of earshot of witnesses. 

He leans back against Lestat more. 

“Tired?” Lestat asks, voice soft, gliding his hands gently over Louis’s arms. The touch is soothing, near-hypnotizing, and Louis gives himself a few seconds to enjoy the peace of it before he makes himself respond. 

“You wanna do it? The ‘serum’?” 

“Mm,” Lestat hums, resting his head on Louis’s shoulder, a pleasant weight. “I think, cheri, that we have very little to lose and much to gain.” 

*

He wishes desperately that he had Lestat beside him when the doctor returns for his serum treatment. He crosses his arms, makes himself stay still as the man sets up, draping a small cloth over the corner of Claudia’s mattress and setting down two bottles and a syringe large enough that Louis wants it nowhere near his daughter. He watches as the doctor carefully pulls Claudia’s pajama top up, tucking it around her chest and leaving her belly exposed. 

Louis fights the urge to immediately cover her back up. 

“You really think this’ll work?” He asks the doctor as the man draws up a measure of liquid in the syringe, flicking it in a way that gets on Louis’s frayed nerves immediately.  

“It has an excellent rate of efficacy,” the man says, and Louis regrets asking. “In most cases, we can expect improvement in-” 

Louis tunes him back out. 

His nose twitches at the smell of alcohol as the doctor swabs a patch of skin on Claudia’s stomach, and he grits his teeth when the doctor slips the needle into her skin. Deft as the man is, Louis’s reflexive response is to hit him, to get him away from her. 

His mood isn’t improved by the way Claudia doesn’t react at all. 

The man pulls the syringe out, pressing a ball of cotton over the spot. Louis moves forward to take over, his tolerance for a stranger touching his daughter at its end. He tugs Claudia’s shirt back down as the man chatters, and it’s a relief when there’s a knock at the door. Lestat pokes his head around, and Louis gives him the faintest flicker of a smile, too tired to manage anything more. 

“All well?” Lestat asks, drawing the doctor away and letting him redirect his chatter away from Louis. “I’m about to leave for a meeting. Shall I walk you out?” 

Lestat winks at him as he leads the doctor away, relieving Louis of the need to pay attention to him at all. 

Louis returns his focus to Claudia. 

*

Louis is drifting, half-asleep and half-not. He and Monsieur Minou have reached an unsteady truce for once, and he can hear the patter of the cat’s heartbeat and the steady rumble of his purr from his place on top of Claudia’s feet. He should return to the coffin room soon, he knows. The sun is setting, which means Lestat should be waking up any moment. For now, though, Louis is as comfortable as he needs to be to start dozing, even with his only pillow the carved wooden headboard of Claudia’s bed. She’s resting against him, propped up because it makes it easier for her to breathe. He’ll have to make sure to tell Lestat that when he comes into the room for his turn. He’ll need to-

“Daddy Lou?” 

He sits up sharply, only remembering at the last second that he’s currently serving as a pillow. It leaves him in a strange half-slouch. 

In the moment, though, seeing Claudia blinking up at him with awareness for the first time in days, he would take any measure of discomfort, bear any paint, contort himself in a pretzel that would make a circus act take notice, all for the joy of those beautiful hazel eyes looking back at him with Claudia’s awareness behind them. 

She shivers, and he notes the thin sheen of sweat across her brow, plastering her hair to her face. He brushes the strands back, automatically, and he breathes through the relief that threatens to knock him flat when he touches Claudia’s skin for the first time in days and finds it cool. 

“Hey, you,” he says, voice rough, eyes blurring. He can’t cry in front of her, he knows this. His tears would startle her or prompt that clever mind of hers into spinning into the possibilities of why her daddy started crying blood. 

It is, however, a very close call. 

“Hey, you,” he repeats again, voice even rougher, pressing his lips to her forehead, heedless of the sweat there. He exhales a breath that seems to make his entire body feel like an overcooked noodle when it leaves him, and he kisses her head again and again, until she giggles weakly, pushing at him like they’re playing a game. He grabs her hands in his when they bat at his face and kisses them, too, for good measure. 

“You’re weird,” she tells him, smiling weakly but still smiling. 

He huffs out a laugh and hides his face in her sweat-damp hair. 

*

Lestat visits Antoinette for the first time since Claudia took ill a week after her recovery, when she’s finally strong enough to begin venturing out of bed on fawn-shaky legs, always with one of them supporting her. She’s impatient with her weakness, their little spark, her spirit willing for what her body can’t quite manage yet, and she has no sense of the degree to which she should limit herself, tenacious thing; they’ve been hard-pressed to come up with enough amusements to placate her into stillness. He’s been pushed into hunting near home to avoid leaving her and Louis for too long, and so he uses the excuse of searching for prey at greater distance to excuse his absence for a few hours. 

Antoinette answers the door immediately, and he barely exchanges a greeting before he’s pushing her against the wall. She makes a pleased noise, and he hears in her head that she’d started to get afraid he’d lost interest in her. 

“I missed you,” she purrs, grinding herself against him, a leg curving around his hip. 

“I’ve been otherwise occupied,” he says, shoving the dishes off of her table and then dropping her onto it, parting her legs and kneeling to get his head between her thighs. 

He works her up to her pleasure thrice, leaving her weak and trembling and giddy, certain that the display is the result of his hunger for her. She goes easily when he picks her up, winding her legs around his waist, delighted. A show like this must mean a ring is coming soon, she thinks. He’s never wanted her like this before. His absence must have made him realize how much he wants her, how much he needs her. He sets her down gently on her bed, strokes and caresses and teases until she’s begging for him, and then he obliges her. He fucks her with focus, with intent, driving her to climax over and over until she’s insensate, fuck-drunk, barely aware of her surroundings. 

And then he tips her chin up, exposing the elegant column of her neck. 

She’s used to providing him un petit coup, and she’s nearly unconscious besides. She makes a vague noise of approving acknowledgement and sighs with ecstasy when his fangs sink deep, familiar by now with the otherworldly satisfaction of feeding him, the near-swoon that follows the initial bite. He drinks, savoring each drop of her luscious blood, made even more succulent by her arousal. She’s been sipping rosemary water with great diligence, he notes, knowing he enjoys the taste of it in her blood. She’d been hoping to tempt him into un petit coup, and she’s pleased that it worked. He sucks from her with a moan of pleasure that she reciprocates as best she can, though it’s more a weak mewl than anything else, an endearing little sound, indicative of how thoroughly he’s pleasured her. Perfect, she thinks, a perfect night, surely indicating that things are serious between them, ready to progress. They’ll be too late on the timing for a summer wedding, but maybe winter would be better, not so hot that way, not so many bugs. She dreams of herself in a wedding dress, a massive ring on her hand, as he drinks as much as he can without risking going too far. 

And then he keeps going. 

He holds her the way she likes to be held, firm but gentle, a hand in her hair. She doesn’t notice that he’s drinking for longer than he usually does, too full of post-orgasmic bliss and dreams of wedding bells. On the verge of losing consciousness, she has a quick flicker of wondering what’s wrong, but he brushes his mind against hers, soothing it away, sending her an image of a beautiful bouquet in her hands. 

She takes her last breath with a smile. 

He pulls back, wiping his mouth with the edge of her discarded negligee. He studies her body, nearly as pale as her sheets from losing so much blood, as he nicks his thumb, the last few beats of her heart giving her flesh enough time to seal over the bite on her neck, leaving the skin smooth and perfect once more. He sets her down, arranges her so that she looks like she’s sleeping peacefully. 

He gets dressed with slow, thoughtful movements, scanning the room to be sure he’s left nothing behind that would tie her to him. He’s always been careful, of course, but it would be like her to try and keep a memento. He rifles through her drawers, just to be sure, and then pulls out a few pamphlets from his coat pocket that he stole from a doctor’s office, clinical, vague things about miscarriage and heavy monthly bleeding that he sets on her dresser as if they had been placed there after returning from an appointment. He’s not sure if it’ll be enough to explain the lack of blood in her body, but he’s fairly certain he can trust mortal squeamishness to take the context he’s offered and wrap up any investigation quickly, especially for a no-name lounge singer not even originally from New Orleans. 

In a perfect world, he would have had the pleasure of one day seeing Louis kill her for love of him, a beautiful moment of passionate jealousy, but perhaps it’s better it ended in this way. He may have accepted his nature enough to eat as he should for the sake of protecting Claudia, but it might weigh on Louis, a homicidal act of passion. 

The cleanest ending here would be taking Antoinette home to burn her in the incinerator, but softhearted romantic he is, Lestat hadn’t felt quite right about it. She might have sometimes been a tiresome pastime, but they had had their fun together, and he can appreciate the loyalty of remaining his mistress for so many years even without any empty promises to keep her faithful. He’ll contact a funeral home tomorrow to anonymously finance a funeral and headstone. She has a standing appointment as a singer at a club every Monday, so her sudden absence should be enough to send someone to investigate and find her. 

Satisfied that the scene has been set, he turns back to look at her one more time. She looks peaceful, he decides. He wishes he could have had a bit more time with her, but her foolishness nearly cost him Claudia’s life, made him a Trojan horse for something that nearly took his and Louis’s daughter away. 

That was always going to carry a death sentence. 

“Bon nuit, ma belle,” he says in parting, turning and making his way to the door, pausing only to slip a pretty ring into his pocket from the little dish of trinkets on top of her chest of drawers. It looks like something Claudia would like. 

He’ll add it to her jewelry box for her to grow into. 

*

“Uncle Les?” 

He looks up from studying the chessboard at Claudia’s soft voice. 

“Yes, ma petite?” He asks, moving a pawn enough to give her an opening to take a rook if she can spot the possibility. 

She does at once, ruthless and cunning little thing, always one to spot a weakness, claiming it as soon as she notices the chance and putting her prize with her little collection of his pieces beside her on the bed. He smiles in approval, and she smiles back before she answers, face going a little more serious as she does. 

“Why are you my uncle?” 

The question throws him, and he reads her mind at once, trying to work out where she’s going with such a question. He could wait for her to lead him there, but her high fever has had him and Louis worried about how it might have impacted her mind. He knows they’re lucky it didn’t leave her deaf or blind, but that doesn’t mean she’s come away with no harm. He searches her memories, testing their soundness, flicking through the recent past, her memories of being cradled by him and Louis, cloths dragged over her skin gently. They’re fuzzy, her memories, and she remembers pain and fear, but she also remembers warmth, the safety of being held, being able to tell when it was him or Louis based on their voices and on the smell, both of them preferring different colognes, but Claudia feeling equally safe with either, as if they were both her fathe-

Oh. 

He clears his throat against the way it suddenly feels tight, foolish as he knows it is. It was a discussion early on, what title he could be granted. Louis, to his credit, has maintained from the start that she’s their equal child, but the complications of a small child calling two men–especially two men of different races–daddy were too dangerous, and Claudia had been too young at five to understand why she might be able to use one title only in private. 

A nine year old, however…

“You needed something to call me, ma petite belladone. ‘Hey, you’ would be rather rude.” 

Claudia giggles at the joke and the deliberately terrible American accent it's delivered with, but he’s charmed to see that she seems a little nervous about the question she wants to ask, something she’s apparently considered for a while but only after her illness had a reason to really seriously pursue

“What if…” She bites the inside of her cheek, pulling into herself slightly, holding Persephone a bit tighter, newly washed to remove any lingering trace of illness and returned to her. “What if…I didn’t call you uncle?” 

She’s imitating Louis, he reads in her mind with a pang of affection, trying to lead him where she wants him the way Louis does in business deals, asking questions and prodding subtly. 

He decides to make it slightly easier for her. 

“And what else might you call me, ma souris?” He asks casually, focusing on the chessboard to make her feel less nervous than having to look at him directly. 

He barely resists the urge to smile when he sees her drawing herself up, hearing her try to remember exactly what angle Louis tilts his chin at when he’s making a deal. She hasn’t got it quite right, overshooting it enough that it toes the line of parody. 

As if he wouldn’t grant her anything her little heart wished even with her back turned to him. 

“What about…Daddy Les?” She ventures, voice wobbling slightly with her nerves. 

“Hm,” he says, looking up at her from under his lashes. “I don’t think so.” 

He can see at once that the answer has broken her heart, her eyes filling with tears and her mind projecting hurt at the rejection, so he doesn’t let the moment linger to tease her the way he planned on. 

(God, but a daughter has a way of making a heart disgustingly soft.)

“I think your Daddy Lou might find it inconvenient to share his title,” he says. “But I believe Papa Les has a nice ring to it, n’est pas?” 

Claudia bounces, once, nearly vibrating with the joy of getting her way. 

“Papa Les?” She repeats. 

He nods, smiling and reaching out to touch her cheek. 

“You must be cautious, though, ma petite,” he says, keeping his voice gentle. “Outside of this home, I must still be uncle, do you understand? It’s one of our secret things, just for our family to know.” 

She nods so eagerly he’s mildly afraid she’ll give herself whiplash. 

“Okay,” she says, and he can see her building up to it even before she says, “Papa Les.” 

He leans forward, keeping one hand on the lapdesk they’re playing their chess game on to keep it from tipping over as he bows to kiss her head, lingering for a moment before sitting back, feeling the weight of his new title settle around him like a comfortable cloak. 

“Now,” he says briskly, sitting back down, “pay attention to where you’re moving your queen, foolish thing. I’ve almost taken her twice. You make a mockery of my diligent instruction with such mistakes.” 

Despite the scolding–his tone deliberately kept light to let her know there is no bite behind his bark–Claudia smiles, warm and bright as the sunlight he can no longer feel against his skin. 

Papa Les, he thinks, as he makes just enough mistakes to give Claudia a good fight before he beats her in their match. 

What a lovely title. 

Chapter Text

“She’s old enough,” Lestat presses, and Louis grumbles, not wanting to have this conversation and especially not wanting to have this conversation when he’s trying to enjoy his post-orgasmic bliss with Lestat’s sweaty body still on top of his, slipping and sliding in a way that’s proving very inspirational for another round. He feels Lestat kiss his shoulder and then his neck, pausing for a quick sip of his blood before moving on. Louis shivers with the pleasure of it but resists Lestat’s neck offered in return, needing to stop this conversation before they rehash a fight that’s started in the past year for what would be at least the hundredth time. 

“She’s only thirteen,” he insists, stopping Lestat’s hand as it makes its way south. 

He’ll always crave Lestat’s touch the way other men crave drugs or alcohol or gambling, but he’s trying to make a point. 

And Lestat’s talented hands won’t help him with that. 

“And as she’s told us repeatedly,” Lestat says, sounding amused, “she’s practically a grown mother of seven at her grand new age. We have only a short window of time before she decides to leave us to establish a household of her own now that she’s so very old and wise.” 

Louis snorts. Entering her teenaged years has certainly made Claudia start to act a bit too big for her britches, and they’ve fought more than one struggle already with her. She’s always been stubborn and strong-willed, and the start of teenaged hormones certainly hasn’t helped. 

It also doesn’t help that there are some fights they can’t win by telling the truth. 

“There will be more picnics,” Lestat says gently, and Louis closes his eyes. 

Claudia had cried for hours yesterday after they’d had to tell her they wouldn’t be going to the picnic the Lady’s Club her friend Dot’s mother is part of is putting on to raise money for charity. Part of it was absolutely just her being a teenager and feeling the “no” more keenly as a result when she’s so used to getting her way, but he knows from listening to her mind that she’d thought it was because they didn’t want to be seen with her around other people. Now that she’s older, she’s started catching whispers, and they’d had to have a talk with her the other day when she punched a girl for saying that her parents said she was the daughter of a prostitute and that’s why she didn’t have a mama. 

(Well, Louis had had to have a talk with her. Lestat had congratulated her on remembering not to tuck her thumb in her fist and to put her body weight behind the punch.)

He takes un petit coup from Lestat for an excuse to pause long enough to gather his thoughts. Even if he absolutely knows what Louis’s doing, he’s a reliable hedonist, and the overture of sharing blood leads to another round of sex before Lestat goes back to pestering him, Louis still draped over him, boneless and breathing heavily. 

“I don't want secrets in our family,” Lestat presses, a little breathless, as if their conversation didn't suffer an interruption at all. 

“So you're saying you'd rather risk terrifying our daughter with the fact that she lives with vampires?” Louis asks, slumping to the side, with Lestat adjusting to face him.

“I’m saying,” Lestat says, nosing at Louis’s jaw, “that I want to be honest with our daughter.” 

“Because you’re always so honest?” Louis asks dubiously, and Lestat lifts himself enough to give him a censuring look. 

“Have I not held to my part of our arrangement?” He asks, a touch testily. 

Claudia answering the door to one of Lestat’s “petits plaisirs”–the term he uses for the men and women he has for a night or two before eating them–who had come looking for him after he left her without saying goodbye the night before had sparked a blistering fight between them when Claudia was eleven, enough that she had been near-inconsolable after they got caught up enough in their fight to stop watching their volume. She hadn’t understood what the woman was talking about or why Louis was so upset about it, still too young and sheltered to even imagine the concept of a mistress, but them yelling at each other had frightened her, so used to only hearing them be loving to each other around her. They’ve fought since they got her, but they’ve always been cautious not to do it in front of her. 

They have, however, had more than one shouting match in the cellar of the house three doors down.

That night, though, Louis had drawn a line in the sand. He had already told Lestat before that he didn’t like him taking lovers, and he hadn’t poked at it more, unwilling to risk the peace of their home. Lestat said he wanted variety, and Louis wanted a stable household.

For Claudia, though? For her, he would risk blowing apart anything, just to make her feel secure. 

In the end, they’d come to a compromise. Lestat tells Louis when he wants someone, and Louis has the option to tell him no or join if he wishes, usually when Claudia is occupied with one of her lessons with a tutor or spending time with her aunt and cousins. He has his doubts that Lestat has always honored the former, brat that he is, but joining a few times has unexpectedly given him a bit more security in his place. Whether fucking the men as well or simply serving mainly as voyeur with the women, joining in has reassured him in a way that’s been effective, if unconventional. Lestat is always more interested in him, after all, to the point that a few they’ve taken for the night have gotten insulted when they’ve all but been forgotten about when things got truly heated. It likely makes him a bad person, enjoying making his partner’s temporary lovers jealous of his place in Lestat’s heart, but it has been good for them as a unit, which has made them better for Claudia’s sake. 

But he’s been waiting for Lestat to make a demand of his own in exchange. 

“So what?” He asks, annoyed, shrugging Lestat’s hands off and moving as far away as he can when they’re still contained in a coffin. “I don’t agree to have the ‘We’re vampires’ talk with Claudia and you stop keeping to the arrangement?” 

“Louis,” Lestat scolds, and he grumbles when the other vampire snuggles close, pinning Louis against the side of the coffin in a way that would be interesting if he weren’t irritated. “Mon cher, I hold to the arrangement because you have asked it of me. You know I can’t tell you no.” 

Louis doesn’t respond to the indulgent tone, too wound up to be in a mood to be spoiled and appeased. 

Lestat tsks, but he also presses impossibly closer, pressing teasing little kisses to Louis’s face, trying to break him. 

“I ask for the sake of our family,” he says, pulling back only to press a hand to Louis’s face, eyes warm. “It’s begun to impact her, Louis. She isn’t seven anymore. There are things she will want answers for. You know what a diligent little investigator she is.” 

“I know,” Louis allows, softening in his resolve and stroking Lestat’s hair back from his face. “I just-” 

They both jump at the sound of pounding on the door to the coffin room. 

“C’moooooooon,” Claudia whines through the door. They’ve managed to negotiate knocking on their door in exchange for knocking on hers, so it’s a relief she doesn’t just burst in, but Louis still has to hide his laugh in the crook of Lestat’s neck as the other vampire grumbles about little pests with a sixth sense for interrupting tender moments. “I’m hungry! You said we could go to that new fancy place if I did all of the math you gave me yesterday.” There’s the sound of paper crammed under the door. “And I did! Now c’mooooon!” She draws the last word out into a pitch that’s near-piercing for vampiric ears. She may not know they’re inhuman, but she seems to have a preternatural sense for the best way to get what she wants anyway.

“A moment, Claudia,” Lestat calls back. “Putaine de merde,” he grumbles under his breath as he opens the coffin. “Always such noise.”

Louis snorts at the sound of petulant stomping as Claudia heeds them under protest, the noise broken briefly by two knocks to the banister as she makes her way downstairs before she continues stomping all the way down. 

Apparently even pouting isn’t worth risking her good luck for. 

*

“Told you not to wear those, little missy,” Daddy Lou says a couple hours into the night. 

Claudia rolls her eyes even as she hops onto his back, Daddy Lou stooped enough to make it easy. She’s getting too big for this, she knows, but Daddy Lou doesn’t act like she’s too heavy, just shrugs her into a better spot and then stands, Papa Les pulling the edge of her dress down where it got tucked under her leg. 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she says, dangling her new–and it turns out, very painful–high heels from her toes until Papa Les takes them for her. They’re beautiful shoes, white leather with tiny pink bows on the toes, and she’d been excited to wear them out of the house for the first time, but she’s learned that shoes worn around her room to admire them in the mirror and shoes worn to walk what feels half of New Orleans are very different shoe experiences, even fortified by Papa Les letting her have a sip of something from his flask that made her throat burn and her nose tingle when Daddy Lou wasn’t looking and her biggest and most begging eyes proved too powerful to resist. She’d tried to tough it out, but after the second hour, it had felt like she had broken glass in the balls of her feet, and Daddy Lou had finally had enough of her near-limping along. She wraps her arms around Daddy Lou’s neck a little more securely, tucking her face down enough to keep talking to him. “They go with my outfit.” 

“And now they’re to go with mine?” Papa Les asks dryly. 

“You bought ‘em,” she points out. It’s true, after all. Daddy Lou doesn’t want her in real heels yet, she knows. He thinks she’s trying to act older than she is, as if thirteen isn’t almost old enough to get married and start making babies. 

Daddy Lou, though, hadn’t been out shopping with her and Papa Les two weeks ago, and Papa Les is easier to convince when it comes to decisions about her clothes she knows Daddy Lou won’t like. 

“And see if I make that mistake again after this disrespect,” Papa Les tells her, holding her shoes by the heels in his left hand.

Claudia smirks after the threat, facing away so he won’t see her do it. As if she won’t get her way eventually if she puts enough prettys in front of her pleases. 

“Don’t need to be wearing heels anyway,” Daddy Lou says, and Claudia looks to Papa Les immediately, finding him turning to her in the same moment, both of them knowing what’s coming next when Daddy Lou is using this tone. 

“Trying to act like you’re all grown,” she and Papa Les mouth along as Daddy Lou says it. She giggles, unable to help it, and Daddy Lou bounces her. 

“Don’t go getting too high and mighty there, little miss,” he warns her. “I’ll make you pick a switch.” 

Claudia makes a face even as she leans down to kiss Daddy Lou’s cheek. The threat doesn’t scare her. Daddy Lou can bluster all he wants about it, but she knows he won’t hit her. He’d spanked her once when she was little and had run away in a crowd because she wanted to follow a parade, and she’d cried so hard about it he’d never done it again. 

“I keep telling you, Louis,” Papa Les says, “a few nights in the basement would do wonders for her attitude.” 

This, too, is an idle threat, and Claudia is fully aware of it. Even if she’s never seen any in the house, she knows they have rats in the basement, which is why she isn’t allowed down there, her parents too afraid one of them will bite her and give her some awful disease. Daddy Lou and Papa Les go down there pretty regularly to try and do something about them, but she still hears noises sometimes, thumps and even sounds like moans. She’d offered to take Monsieur Minou down there when he was alive–he was a good hunter–but they had always said no, not wanting to risk her cat getting hurt. She’d appreciated it, especially when Daddy Lou and Monsieur Minou always disliked each other so much, but she had been a little puzzled that they wouldn’t do the obvious thing and send her cat down there or why any of the rat catchers she’s seen Papa Les lead down there don’t seem to do anything to fix it. 

Then again, Papa Les and Daddy Lou do plenty of stuff she doesn’t understand, like how they like to sleep in coffins even though they have a perfectly good bed. She’s asked about it before, and Daddy Lou said it was just something Europeans like Papa Les do. They had that big plague, after all, so they like to sleep secure so nothing can get them. Daddy Lou said it was actually pretty comfortable, which is why he sleeps that way, too, but she knows it’s one of the things they don’t talk about around other people. 

Other people won’t be so understanding about Papa Les being so European, after all, even if it’s not his fault. 

*

She’s back in her flat shoes four days later for supper at Aunt Grace’s house, knowing better than to ask to wear even her little heels while over there, especially when it’ll just be her. Aunt Grace’s husband especially likes to make comments, and Claudia is too old to bite him the way she did Daddy Lou’s mama when she was little. 

There’s a reason Aunt Grace and Daddy Lou’s mama is always conveniently in bed with a headache when Claudia is there for supper. 

It’s rare that she’s here by herself at all for one of the suppers they only have every few months anyway, and she makes sure to be on her best behavior. Usually at least Daddy Lou is with her, but he’d said earlier that he and Papa Les had things they had to take care of with business, and she should talk about the trip she’s taking with Aunt Grace and her family anyway, a week in New York City that they’re all politely pretending Daddy Lou isn’t paying for completely. She knows Aunt Grace’s husband doesn’t like doing things on Daddy Lou’s dime, but under the force of Aunt Grace and Polly and Flora–the nickname her cousin Florence still uses until Aunt Grace and Daddy Lou’s mama is done using the one they share–he’d been forced to give in. She would prefer to go with Daddy Lou and Papa Les, especially because it would mean getting to do stuff she knows Aunt Grace and her family won’t do, but she’s also excited enough about the trip to take just about anybody so long as she gets to go. 

(Even if she’s still planning to see if she can wiggle her parents into it after all if she just keeps at it.)

“Why don’t you go to Sunday School with us, Claudia?” Benji asks. “You never come to church.” 

Claudia doesn’t miss the tension the question sparks at the table. She’s wearing a little gold cross necklace that Aunt Grace gave her a few years ago for Christmas–back when Aunt Grace’s husband still made enough that they could afford tiny extravagances like that–to be polite, but the honest answer to her cousin’s question is that her family doesn’t go to church. 

She knows even without Daddy Lou to prompt her, though, that that’s not the answer she should give. 

“We’re closer to Saint Augustine,” she says, naming the Catholic church down the road from them. 

It’s not like any of them need to know she’s never set foot inside except for a rummage sale she stopped by for with Miss Babin one morning. 

“They wouldn’t like our church, Benji,” Polly says. At sixteen, Polly and Flora are almost full adults, and Claudia watches her cousin now with envy as she takes a sip from the small glass of wine she and Flora are allowed at supper now, every gesture seeming so mature and elegant, even though Claudia’s dress is still better than either of theirs. 

She looks to her own glass of water–even at home, she’s been told she isn’t old enough for wine yet, so she knew it was a doomed wish here–with a vague feeling of being hard done by. 

“Yeah,” Flora adds, passing Claudia a biscuit when the basket comes around. “Uncle Lou’s family is still Catholic, remember?” 

Claudia and all three of her cousins look immediately to Aunt Grace, seeing how she’ll respond. She switched to being Baptist after marrying her husband, Claudia knows, but she’s also picked up the tension that happens whenever religion gets brought up. 

Aunt Grace, though, doesn’t respond, just takes a sip from her glass and then sedately scoops up a spoonful of her soup. 

Claudia feels vaguely disappointed at the lack of a show. 

“Do Catholics do ice cream socials?” Benji asks, almost dropping his biscuit while trying to split it open until Polly catches it after barely even glancing at it. It’s really a shame her cousin’s stopped playing baseball now that she’s a woman, Claudia reflects. Polly’s the best catcher she’s ever seen. Not that Claudia’s had a lot of experience because her family sleeps later than most kids are out playing, but still. 

It seems a waste. 

“Sometimes,” she demures, having no idea if that’s true or not. Miss Babin has offered to take her to church with her before, but she’d gone to one Mass and known it wasn’t for her. Daddy Lou was in what Papa Les calls “a melancholic way” one Christmas and had taken her to Midnight Mass, but she’d spent the whole time wishing she was back home playing with her new toys and trying not to yawn so he wouldn’t know how bored she was. She’d been afraid he was going to start making her go to more, but after that one time, he’d never gone back to a church as far as she knows, and she’d been glad to never have to suffer through such a boring thing again. 

But it also makes it hard to lie about being a good Catholic girl the way she knows she should. 

“Grandmama Florence says your daddy and your uncle are living in a godless de- hey!” Benji sprays crumbs when Polly shoves his whole biscuit in his mouth to stop him from talking. 

Claudia glares down at her plate, shoving another spoonful in her mouth to keep herself from saying something nobody’ll be able to stop. She wants to storm upstairs and tell her mean snake of a grandmother exactly what she thinks of her and her disapproval of Claudia’s family, but she makes herself stay sitting. 

She won’t give anybody any reason to think Daddy Lou isn’t the best daddy in the world, and she knows that means she has to be on her best behavior. 

No matter how much a certain hateful someone might deserve another bite. 

Mean hussy, she thinks in her grandmother’s general direction, resolving to see if she can slip another garden snake into the woman’s room before she goes. 

*

“You alright?” Daddy Lou asks her on the walk home later that night. He’d brought her a giant bouquet of flowers as an apology for not having supper with her, and she’d handed him her little handbag so she could carry it herself. She uses it now to hide her face. 

“Fine,” she says, trying to keep her voice as even as possible. 

“You sure?” Daddy Lou presses. “You seem awful quiet. Something happen?” 

She presses her lips together, picking up her pace. 

“Claudia-” Daddy Lou says, sighing, and she does stop, turning to face him. 

“Why is your mama so mean to you?” 

Daddy Lou blinks, looking startled, and then his expression looks angry. 

“Did she say something to you?” He demands, and she shakes her head. 

“No, but Benji can’t keep a secret to save his life.” She rolls her eyes. “She’s been saying mean things about you.” And Papa Les, but she knows better than to mention that out in public, even if she can’t see anybody around. “Why? We don’t hurt anybody. She’s always so-so hateful.” 

Daddy Lou studies her for a long moment, and then he pulls her over to a bench. She allows it, sitting down and resting her bouquet on her lap, giving Daddy Lou her full attention. He looks around quickly to make sure no one is listening, and then he leans in. 

“Sometimes,” he starts gently, “people can’t understand things, and it makes ‘em real mad.” 

Claudia frowns. 

“But that’s silly,” she says. “If you don’t understand something, you just gotta learn about it. There’s no sense getting mad about it.” She doesn’t know what kind of book would explain how their family lives, but if Daddy Lou’s mama is that confused, she could try to find one. Or she could just ask. 

Not make her mean little comments for Benji to repeat later. 

Daddy Lou smiles faintly, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. 

“Our family’s just a lil different, baby,” he says, touching her cheek briefly before dropping his hand to hold hers. “Don’t make it bad, don’t make it wrong. Just makes it something other people can’t understand, sometimes because they don’t want to.” 

“But that’s not fair,” she protests, and she can feel her eyes stinging. It’s not right, Daddy Lou’s mama being so awful and Aunt Grace’s husband always being so ready to say something, too. She has the best family in the world, and even if she didn’t, it’s their family. Why should anybody else care? 

Daddy Lou’s face goes softer. 

“No,” he agrees. “It ain’t. But that’s why we’re careful. People can say whatever they want, even if they shouldn’t, but that doesn’t change our family, me and you and your uncle.” 

It hurts Claudia’s heart, a little, the way Daddy Lou can’t even say ‘papa’ here, even when she can’t see anybody else. It’s too dangerous, she knows, people knowing that her daddy and papa are in love. People don’t like it, people of the same sex falling in love. 

It’s why she hasn’t even told papa and daddy she saw Miss Babin kissing her friend Annie one day behind the bookshop she’d taken Claudia to, when Miss Babin thought Claudia was busy waiting in line to buy some new stationery. 

It’s not fair, she can’t help but think again, as the first tear falls. There’s nothing wrong with her family. There’s nothing wrong with Miss Babin and Annie. How can loving somebody hurt anyone? 

She snatches her handbag off of the bench, pulling out her handkerchief and dabbing at her face, angry at herself for crying. She’s thirteen now, not a baby. 

But still…it’s not fair. 

“Hey now,” Daddy Lou says, sliding over on the bench to put an arm around her. “Ain’t worth crying about.” Still, the words are soft, and she knows it isn’t a command to stop. If she needs to cry, he’ll let her. She feels him kiss the top of her head. “It don’t change anything,” he tells her softly. “People can say what they want. Our family is still our family. Nothing will ever change that, I promise.” 

Claudia lets him soothe her until she’s ready to stop crying, and then she hands him the bouquet to carry again so she can hold his hand on the walk home, resolving to see if she can get a snake right into his mama’s bed the next time she’s over at Aunt Grace’s house. Daddy Lou might have made his peace with how things are, but she hasn’t. She can’t change the world, can’t let Daddy Lou and Papa Les do so much as kiss each other’s cheeks in public without risking the police getting mad about it, can’t make everyone see that there’s nothing wrong with her family. 

But she can make at least one person suffer for being hateful. 

*

She lifts herself up without looking away from her book–a book about Egyptian pharaohs, a present from Papa Les–when Daddy Lou returns from the phonecall that interrupts their reading time the next night, expecting him to take his place again and re-stack the cushions so she can lean on them and use him as a backrest the way she was before. When he clears his throat, though, she looks up, blinking as she’s wrenched out of Giza and back to New Orleans. 

“You wanna tell me why your Aunt Grace called to let me know they found two garden snakes in your grandmother’s room?” Daddy Lou asks, eyebrows raised. “Again?”

Claudia pretends to think about it, saving her place in her book with the pointer finger on one hand and tapping her chin thoughtfully with the other as she looks off into an imagined distance. Daddy Lou doesn’t indulge her act the way Papa Les would–he’ll usually join in when Claudia plays pretend–and he crosses his arms over his chest. 

“Claudia,” he says, voice stern. “We’ve talked about this.” 

“We’ve talked about salamanders,” she corrects. “This wasn’t salamanders. This was-” 

“Claudia.” 

She exhales, flopping back onto the cushions. She directs her dirty look to the wall, knowing directing it at Daddy Lou would just make more trouble. 

“She deserved it,” she says, still not looking at him. “She says all that awful stuff, and nobody tells her to shush up or-” 

“That’s because she’s older,” Daddy Lou says, taking a seat at the edge of the sofa by her hip, making her look at him if she doesn’t want to bend her head all the way back to avoid him. “You gotta respect your elders, little miss.” 

“Maybe ‘my elders,’” she says, knowing she’s creeping towards the allowable amount of sass she has before she goes too far but unable to help it, “should show some respect, too. You know what she calls me, don’t you? ‘That girl.’” Claudia growls under her breath. “Can’t even use my name, but I’m supposed to respect her?” She pauses just long enough to make her point. “Nuh uh. She don’t like me, and I don’t like her. She wants to keep running her mouth, I’ll put a copperhead in her room next time.” 

And in the moment, she means it. 

“Claudia-” Daddy Lou starts, and she pulls her hand back when he reaches for it, mad at the world and mad at his mean old biddy of a mama and mad at him for not understanding that she’s protecting their family. 

Papa Les would understand, she knows. 

He’s the one who pointed out which purse was Daddy Lou’s mama’s at a party when she was ten so she could put a frog in it. 

She glares at the wall, telling herself sternly not to cry. She’s mad. She’s not gonna cry about it. 

Her eyes still go a little watery. 

Daddy Lou sighs, a sound like it’s coming out of his soul, and the noise makes her feel guilty. She didn’t mean to cause him trouble. She knows it hurts him whenever he has a fight with Aunt Grace and whenever his mama says something mean. She didn’t mean to make things worse for him. 

When he pulls her head forward to kiss it, she allows him. 

He sits back, still cupping the back of her head to make sure he has her attention. 

“I know you’re just sticking up for our family,” he says, stroking a thumb along the curve of her skull. “And I appreciate it. It’s not a bad thing, wanting to protect us. But you gotta be smart about it, Claudia. We gotta pick which fights we’re willing to see through.” 

Claudia thinks sulkily that she’ll see any fight with his mama through, and she sees Daddy Lou smile slightly, as if he can hear her think it. 

“Some fights ain’t worth the fallout,” he says. He pauses, clearing weighing his words, and Claudia holds very still so she won’t sway him into thinking better of it. After a moment, he exhales and then straightens his shoulders a bit. “You remember the fire when you were little?” 

“When you rescued me?” She asks, and his smile gets a little softer, his hand squeezing her head gently. 

“That’s the one,” he says warmly, before he goes a little more serious. “That fire started because I picked a fight I shouldn’t have.” 

Claudia blinks, stunned. 

“Actions have consequences, Claudia,” he tells her seriously. “You gotta decide which ones you’re willing to risk.” 

She sits under the weight of the confession for a moment before she bows her head. 

“I’m sorry,” she tells her lap, running her fingernail over the edge of her book. “I shouldn’t have put those snakes in her room.” 

“Well,” Daddy Lou says, sounding amused, and she peeks up at him, “I didn’t say that. Seems like she might have had that one coming.” 

Claudia grins, and Daddy Lou gives her a fake stern look. 

“But no more, you hear me?” 

“Yes, sir!” She says with a fake salute like a soldier in a movie. 

He snorts, tugging her pigtail lightly. 

“Alright now, move and let me get back where I was.” 

She flops backwards even more just to make him manhandle her out of the way, giggling as he does. 

*

He and Lestat haven't broached the conversation about telling Claudia the truth again for a few weeks, and Louis is riding the peace as far as it'll take him.

It’s just him and Claudia at home tonight, and Claudia’s already in bed. She’s had a cold she’s been trying to kick for a few days now, and it’s worn her out, leaving her chest sore with coughing and her shivering on and off with a mild fever. It’s not as bad as the illness that almost killed her when she was younger, thank God, but Louis will still be glad when she’s healed up again. 

In the meantime, it’s just his place to make sympathetic noises and pass her tissues and make her put VapoRub on her chest no matter how much she whines that it makes her skin feel tingly and her nose itchy. 

“Better an itchy nose than a stuffy one,” he tells her each time, always getting an eye roll for his efforts that he graciously ignores. He should likely rein her in with her sass, especially right to his face. 

Then again, he is raising a child with Lestat de Lioncourt, drama queen to end all drama queens. If Claudia doesn’t grow up throwing dishes when she’s in a mood, he’ll consider it the height of all possible success. 

“It’s not fair,” she whines now, not for the first time. “You and Papa Les never get sick. Why is it always me?”  

He bends his head enough to press his lips to the top of her head, partially as a gesture of affection. 

Partially for the sake of hiding his face from her. 

The answer is, “Well, we’re vampires, baby, and you ain’t,” and that is not an answer he can actually give. 

(No matter how much Lestat has been pushing at him about it.) 

“It’s just cause you’re still a little thing,” he says. “And me and Papa Les are too big for your germs.” 

She pulls her head back, scowling at him and looking very pointedly to her door jamb, hatched with markings from tracking her height over the years. He smiles at her haughtiness, always so ready to be so grown and always so convinced she already is. He has his suspicions that she’ll always be a dainty thing, their Claudia, but she’s assured them both for years that she’s going to grow up to be just as tall as both of them. 

Louis won’t hold his breath. 

*

Even now after they’ve acquired Monsieur Minou the Second–a fluffy grey kitten given to Claudia on her birthday with a pink ribbon around his throat–Louis is cautious of eating animals around her, wary of her growing attached to another one. When Lestat is home, he can trust his partner to watch her, but just on his own, he has to be careful, always taking them to the alley out behind the back wall of their courtyard. Even if she wouldn’t try to negotiate a second cat or a dog, he can’t exactly explain why he’s draining animals for blood, drinking it right from their throats. 

He’s not a perfect parent, but he’s fairly confident on that. 

Tonight, he lingers longer than he normally does after the cage breaks open, necessitating re-capturing each of his prey for the sake of not wasting a meal, and he’s irritated by the time he disposes of their bodies and returns inside, scowling at a bit of blood on his shirt where-

There are people in the house, eight men, one still climbing in through the window they used to get inside. 

He can hear them laughing to each other in low voices, and he reads in their minds that they’d been watching and waiting, keeping an eye on an open window at the front and signaling to each other when one of them saw him leave the courtyard. 

In an instant, he’s in motion. 

Stupid, stupid, he thinks, sinking his nails deep into a man’s chest and flinging him across the room, to leave a window open on that side of the house, in the room that Claudia claimed as her “lady’s parlor” after she read about one in a book. Claudia had coughed so hard she’d made herself sick when they were in there earlier and he’d left it open to air it out so the smell wouldn’t linger, but he should have remembered to close it, should have known that someone would try to take advantage of what looked like a sleeping house to climb inside. Should have-

“Daddy Lou!” 

Claudia’s cry, sharp and terrified, sends ice through his veins, his head snapping to the stairs. Two heartbeats upstairs, he registers with horror. Claudia’s, fast as a hummingbird, pounding in her little chest. 

And a stranger. 

In his daughter’s room. 

The sound of a heavy thump has him in motion at once, his still-groaning prey left behind as wildly less important than the more severe threat upstairs. 

He clears the stairs in a single leap, bulling through the cracked door to Claudia’s room with such force that he sends it splintering. He finds his daughter wielding her lamp of all fucking things, her would-be attacker on the floor, groaning and clutching a bloody wound on his head, Claudia’s lips peeled back in a snarl as she raises her lamp to strike the man again, her cat growling as he rabbit kicks the man's arm, contributing his own limited ferocity to the effort of protecting Claudia.

Louis is already on the man before the lamp has even finished rising, Claudia's cat darting out of his way and back to her, yielding the fight to a larger predator.

It’s quick, and it’s bloody, and it’s brutal, his vision narrowing to the fucker in front of him who dared to think about putting his hands on Claudia. 

When it’s over, there’s very little of the man left. 

Louis hisses at the remains, heart still pounding like a war drum, muscles still taut with primal, vicious rage, the anger of a wolf discovering a rival in his den, teeth snapping near his pup. It makes him angrier that it ended with such a lack of struggle, his prey ripped to shreds without a single blow returned, like gutting a-

“...Daddy Lou?” 

The voice, hesitant, makes Louis freeze, his panting pausing with his chest still expanded. 

Claudia. 

He feels a wash of terror over him like the rain in a hurricane as he stares down at the mess in front of him, no longer full of the satisfaction of ending a threat that tried to hurt his daughter. 

Now full of the wordless horror that Claudia watched him do it. 

When a small hand lands on his arm, soft as a butterfly, he flinches, pulling away. He needs to leave, needs her to not see him like this, needs to not be a monster to-

“Wait!” 

The word pins him in place like a nail driven into his foot, leaving him facing away but frozen.

He tries to turn away when she steps in front of him, but she grabs him before he can. He can’t look at her, can’t see the revulsion in her-

“Daddy?” 

He closes his eyes, tries to freeze the world the way Lestat can. He’s sick with the idea of it, but maybe he can have Lestat work on her mind, take away the-

When her arms come around him in a hug, it startles him enough to knock him back a couple of steps, taking her with him. She lets out a stifled little squeak of surprise, and his hands come up automatically, catching her even as he falls on his ass to keep her from getting hurt. When they’ve landed, she’s in front of him, eyes big and curious. 

But somehow, fucking impossibly, not afraid. 

“Claudia-” He starts, but her name doesn’t come out clear, not with his fangs still extended, and he stops at once, trying to will them away, made more difficult when he hears a shout from downstairs and an angry snarl from Lestat before he hears a body go flying across the house. There’s a primal part of him that feels Lestat’s rage and responds, pulled to join him, to stand with his maker against the threats to their home. 

But pinned in place by his daughter still in front of him, now reaching out with one hand. 

His brows furrow, and he pulls his head back slightly in surprise when she reaches for his mouth, but he holds still when she touches one of his fangs with a fingertip. Her own brows furrow in thought as she presses against it, testing the sharpness the way she would a knife, and he wants to tell her to be careful, not to add hurting herself to their list of problems. 

In the moment, however, her studious little face has stunned him into silence. 

Her face scrunches more in thought, and with the immediate terror of the moment fading, he can hear the murmur of her thoughts, always so much clearer than any other human even when he tries not to listen for the sake of her privacy. Now, he opens himself up to them. 

So sharp, she thinks. Like Monsieur Minou’s. 

He laughs at that, unable to help it, being compared to her cat of all things, and the motion makes her jump slightly. 

At once, he’s still again. 

“Claudia-” 

They both turn when Lestat makes an equally dramatic entrance through her door, face murderous and hands dripping blood up to his biceps, stopping at once when he sees the two of them on the floor, Claudia still touching one of Louis’s fangs. 

Louis notes with a vague sort of resignation that Lestat’s are still on display as well. 

Jesus.  

He flops backwards and covers his face with his hands. 

*

“So that’s what that’s for,” Claudia says with the satisfaction of a mystery solved as she watches them put the bodies of their would-be intruders into the incinerator. “I knew it couldn’t just be for trash. We don’t make that much.” 

Louis would like for her to be inside, to not be watching them haul away bodies, to not dart forward and fling a limp arm back onto a body as Lestat picks it up to make it easier to move. 

Louis, however, appears to have lost all control over the night. 

“Just so,” Lestat says with a nod of thanks to her, as if thanking their daughter for helping him get rid of a body is simply a chore she’s assisting with, no different than sweeping the kitchen or helping to fold the laundry after they have it delivered home. 

Louis wonders dizzily if one of the rats he had earlier might have been laced with something that has now thrown him into a very terrible, very bizarre dream. 

“Do you burn a lot of bodies?” Claudia asks with that same tone of academic interest, as if she’s simply speaking with one of her tutors and not her father, covered in the blood of men who tried to break into her home only an hour ago. 

“Not so many as we could,” Lestat answers, as if this is all very normal and Louis might not be having a stroke. “We are usually very-à tes souhaits,” he says, handing Claudia a handkerchief from his pocket after she sneezes, holding it between two fingers to keep it clean from the worst of the blood he’s still covered with. 

“Merci,” she says politely, blowing her nose. 

Something about the casual domesticity of the moment in the middle of a pile of bodies sends Louis into a laugh that sounds more than a little crazy. For the first time all night, Claudia actually looks unsettled, and Lestat settles a hand on her shoulder, leaning forward to block her view of Louis. 

“Why don’t you make sure we haven’t missed one, cherie? We wouldn’t want them to make the house smell later.” It’s an excuse to get Claudia to leave for a moment, and Louis is too busy either laughing or crying or both to appreciate the consideration of it. 

Not until Claudia is inside and Lestat is in front of him. 

“Is this a temporary moment of madness?” Lestat asks gently. “Or should I be concerned?” 

It takes a moment for Louis to calm enough to stop, and Lestat waits patiently. When it finally passes, Louis leans forward, resting his head in his hands. He feels Lestat grab his arms and squeeze gently. 

“Back with me?” He presses. “Or should I invent some more chores for our child before she’s convinced her daddy has lost her mind?” 

“I killed someone in front of her,” Louis says flatly. “Ripped him to pieces, right in-” 

He’s startled when Lestat grabs him by the chin, pulling his face up to meet his eyes. Lestat gives him a small smile, reaching for a handkerchief only to remember he gave it to Claudia. With a small grimace, he tucks his hand into his sleeve, using it to wipe Louis’s face. Part of Louis wants to bat him off. It’s the same thing Louis does for Claudia, this. 

But he also isn’t sure he has enough left in him to fight it. 

“In case you hadn’t noticed, my Louis,” Lestat says lightly, dropping his hand but not releasing Louis’s chin. “We’ve raised a rather vicious young woman.” His voice is warm, proud, wildly incongruous with his words. “You may not even have needed to finish her assailant off for her. From what I saw in her mind, she was fully prepared to handle him herself.” 

“Hit him over the head with her lamp,” Louis reports. 

“Hm,” Lestat says, smiling and finally releasing Louis’s face, resting his arm across Louis’s knees instead and leaning forward. “I shudder to think what she might achieve with the benefit of your old cane.”

He makes a grumbling noise when he’s pulled to his feet, but he still lets Lestat pull him into a kiss. 

“What’s done is done, mon cher,” Lestat says, touching his forehead to Louis’s briefly before stepping back, returning to dealing with the bodies. “Now, come on. You are setting a horrible example about labor distribution in the home.” 

He kicks at Lestat’s ankle as he passes, but he still picks up a body to throw into the flames. 

*

“Wait!” Claudia says when Lestat goes to pick up the remains of the man Louis killed in her room, bundled in her now-ruined rug to keep the pieces together. Lestat heeds her, pausing mid-crouch. Claudia glares at the bloody fabric like she can set it on fire herself just by wishing it and then spits on the bloody bundle, giving a firm, satisfied nod afterwards before looking up to Lestat. “Okay, now you can do it.” 

Lestat gives her a warm, approving smile. 

Louis wonders if he might manage to sleep for a few days if he tries hard enough. 

*

“So how does someone become a vampire?” Claudia asks when they’re all back inside, the bodies in the incinerator burned down to charcoal and left to finish crumbling away in the flames and he and Lestat changed out of their bloody clothes. Louis nudges her towards the kitchen. They usually have supper together in the dining room, but he for one is in no mood to stand on ceremony. Eating in the kitchen will serve well enough. 

“They’re turned,” Lestat says, still taking this entire night with easy grace. 

Louis leaves him to it. 

“Who turned y’all?” She asks, tilting her head, even as she obeys Louis’s gentle push towards the table. 

“My maker lived a long time ago. I met him back in France,” Lestat demures, and Louis glances to him, but the other vampire isn’t looking at him. “He died years ago. I’m the one who changed your daddy.” 

Louis leaves them to it as he grabs something at random from the icebox and lights a burner on the stove. Lestat knows more about vampires anyway. 

Louis is also still not entirely convinced this night is happening. 

“Can you change me?” Claudia asks, sounding excited, and Louis’s heart stops for a moment, but when he looks over, Lestat is shaking his head. 

“It would be dangerous,” he says, with a faint apology in his tone. “The gift cannot be given to children.” 

Claudia bristles at this, clearly believing herself to no longer be a child, and Louis does contribute now, leaning back against the counter. 

“You’d be stuck exactly as you are now,” he says, and Claudia looks over to him. “You’d never grow up. Once you become a vampire, you freeze exactly as you are when you’re turned.” 

He can see her weighing this, and he pretends he doesn’t see her quickly glance down to her chest, clearly weighing some considerations he has no desire to consider about her. After a moment, she looks to him again, seeming slightly more appeased. 

“But I can be one when I’m older?” She presses. “When I’m sixteen?” 

Louis clears his throat for the excuse to press a fist to his mouth to hide a smile. He knows she thinks Polly and Flora are the height of adult sophistication, and he’s not sure how to tell her that sixteen is absolutely not an adult without offending her thirteen-year-old sensibilities. Lestat intervenes before he manages to come to a conclusion. 

“Older than that, ma petite,” he says, snagging two glasses from the cupboard and then reaching to grab a bottle of wine. He fills both glasses and hands Louis one, giving him an affectionate squeeze to his side as he passes, settling at the table with Claudia again. Claudia watches him take a drink, and Louis smiles, able to see the cogs turning in her head. 

“Oh,” she says, shoulders dropping as she comes to a conclusion. “Is grown-up juice blood, then?” 

“Yes,” Lestat says before Louis can decide to tell a white lie or not. 

Louis moves with the automatic ease of long-established habits when the contents of the pot on the stove start simmering, dishing up a plate for Claudia and adding a slice of bread to the edge. For the first time in years, however, he doesn’t spoon out a portion for himself. 

And for the first time all night, he feels something like relief. 

“-taste like?” Claudia asks, giving him a quick smile of thanks before she picks up her spoon as he joins them at the table. At a look from Lestat, she straightens her shoulders and sits upright instead of slouching, and he nods at her with approval, answering her question. 

“Like…syrup, I suppose. Or honey. You’ve tried it before, ma cherie. Do you recall?” 

Louis gives him a sharp look at that, but Claudia’s mouth just twists to the side with thought as she chews, swallowing before she answers. 

“No? When I was little?” 

“You are still quite little, ma petite,” Lestat observes, amused, and Claudia pulls a face. 

“Does it have different tastes?” She asks. 

“Mm,” Lestat says, passing her the dish of butter when she reaches for it. “Yes, like honey, the taste changes by the source. For you, there is clover, orange blossom, so on. For us.” He gives Louis a smile that is not returned. “Age, diet, sex, all of these can vary the taste of the blood.” 

“What do-” Claudia notices for the first time that Louis doesn’t have food in front of him. “Don’t you want some?” She asks. 

Louis gives her a faint smile. 

“Food– human food,” he says carefully, testing how she’ll take the distinction. She seems wildly nonplussed. “Don’t really taste like much to us. It’s like…eating paste.” 

Claudia frowns. 

“But you always eat with me,” she says. 

He smiles again, tapping her chin gently with a knuckle. 

“Didn’t want you eating all on your lonesome.” Or the questions it would invite if she never saw either of them eat. 

Claudia absorbs this, chewing thoughtfully, and then offering him a bite from her bowl. 

“So what does this taste like to you?” 

Louis accepts the spoonful that’s held out to him. 

“Like…wet paper?” He says on a guess at the best way to describe it. “I can smell the things in it, but it doesn’t taste like those things to me.” 

Claudia seems alarmed by the comment immediately, slamming her fists against the table hard enough to rattle the cutlery. He feels his heart accelerate, worried that her shock has been delayed, that she’ll soon dissolve into-

“You said my peach cobbler was the best thing you ever tasted, ever!” She cries, scowling at him thunderously. 

He grins, unable to help it, and Lestat chuckles into his wine glass. Claudia, though, seems irate, wielding her spoon at him like a sword. 

“You lied!” She says, face scrunching up with her rage. 

Louis laughs, unable to help it. 

*

He tucks her into bed that morning, and in a rare gift, she lets him. At thirteen, she’s more unpredictable in whether she’s decided she’s too old or not. She’s talked a mile a minute for hours now, asking each question as it occurs to her and then chasing down rabbit trails for more. Telepathy alone had taken an hour and a half, Claudia running from room to room in the townhouse to confirm that they could indeed hear her wherever she was. She’d been mortified at first, predictably, the idea that they could see inside her head, but they had reassured her that they didn’t listen in unless it was urgent and that they’d ask before doing it moving forward. 

(And if he thinks he’s going to have to ride Lestat’s ass about following that rule, he doesn’t bring it up in front of her.)

“You really ain’t scared?” He asks softly, and Claudia blinks her eyes in a way that indicates she was on the verge of closing them for good to sleep. It takes her a moment to process the question, and then she frowns, head tilting slightly and brows furrowing. 

“Scared?” She asks. “Of what? You and Papa Les already killed the bad guys.” 

“And… we didn’t scare you?” He pushes gently. “It’s…okay, if we did.” It would break his heart, but he won’t tell her that. “What we did was pretty scary. I promise, though, we will never hurt you, Claudia. We-” 

“Hurt me?” She tilts her head slightly the other direction, still frowning in confusion. “I know that. You’re my daddy and my papa. You’re not scary.” 

The statement, simple as it, delivered with a child’s innocence, hits like a fist to the gut, warm as the secondary emotion is that follows it. So many years of wondering how she would take it, how they could tell her, how they would work through it, and she gets introduced to the truth in the worst possible way and comes away with this response. She studies him for a moment and then squeezes her eyes shut, concentrating. 

“Read my mind,” she instructs him, and he smiles faintly, opening himself up to it. It’s easy with how loud her mind is normally, and he can tell she’s putting extra effort into it now. 

I love you, she thinks, as loudly as if she was shouting it. He can tell how hard she’s projecting it, how much she means it. 

He tugs her up into a hug, pressing her head to his shoulder. 

I love you, too, he sends back, and if she jumps a bit at his voice suddenly appearing in her head, she recovers quickly, wrapping her arms around him in return. 

*

Three weeks later, Claudia has largely settled in knowing the truth about them. Her research has started leaning into vampires, and if Lestat isn’t quite as forthcoming as she might wish, she seems to merely take it as a challenge, consuming more books as if she’s starving for the information within. One of her sketchbooks gets repurposed for her research, and for safety’s sake, she stores it in their coffin room when she isn’t using it. 

She’s also leaned into telepathy with a glee he did not anticipate. 

Her signal in public that she wants to speak mind to mind is to make eye contact with one of them and then tuck her hair behind one ear, and he has to admit that it does simplify things. 

He could do without her trying to pick out meals for them, though. 

What about him? She thinks tonight after he answers her signal to read her mind. His name is Mr. Roy. I saw him hit his little girl when they were walking down the street the other night. He could be supper. I doubt anybody would be sad to lose him. 

Unlike Lestat, Louis isn’t wildly pleased at her enthusiasm to help them hunt. 

Can’t, he sends back. He lives too close. It gets suspicious if we hunt too close to home. 

It also feels vaguely wrong to kill people his thirteen year old picks out, but he’s not sure how to say that without setting her off in a hissy fit about how very grown she is. 

He would still have it coming, she thinks to him, though she returns to his side when he holds out a hand to her. 

*

Later that night, after they’ve unrolled her new rug to replace the one ruined while killing the intruder in her room–special ordered as a treat from Lestat, a pink, orange, and yellow floral pattern handwoven in India and costing God only knows what amount of money–they’re back in the courtyard, enjoying a breeze in the hot weather. Claudia was leading Monsieur Minou the Second on a chase after a feather toy on a string, but the heat soon does her in, and she returns, sweating slightly. Louis moves his legs to let her sit on the wicker patio sofa with him and hands her a glass of lemonade that she accepts. 

After she takes a sip, though, she grins in a way that has him alert for mischief immediately. 

“Hey Papa Les,” she says. “What am I thinking about?” 

Lestat looks amused at the question, taking a sip of his chilled wine before answering. 

“About how much you want a new dress like the one you saw Mademoiselle Swanson in in her last film.” 

“The answer is no, by the way,” Louis interrupts, and Claudia waves a dismissive hand at him, still focusing on Lestat. 

“And now?” She asks, and Lestat sighs as if she’s asking a great deal from him. 

“Well now you are-” Lestat stops, looking startled. “What did you just do?” 

Claudia grins, dripping self-satisfaction. 

“What?” She asks innocently. “Couldn’t hear me?” 

Slowly, Lestat smiles, still looking puzzled, looking to Louis and tilting his head. 

“Listen to her.” 

Louis raises an eyebrow but does, Claudia turning to look at him. She’s thinking of a new sketch she wants to try and capture, the bird that’s been nesting in the tree she always-

At once, there’s a scramble of images and thoughts and snatches of music, all spinning until he feels nearly dizzy with it, unable to pick out a singular thought under the unexpected whirl he’s presented with. He blinks at her with consternation, and her grin widens, looking like Lestat’s at his most self-satisfied. 

“And how in the hell did you do that?” He asks, impressed and stunned simultaneously. Her mind has always been louder than other humans, and Lestat’s conjectured before that it’s a sign she’ll take to the Mind Gift as easily as Louis himself did, but he hasn’t encountered that particular sensation before, in her mind or in any other human’s. It’s not the silence of his inability to read Lestat’s mind, but he’d be hard-pressed to pick out the focus of her thoughts under the hurricane of other things she just threw around. 

“What?” Claudia asks smugly. “Y’all get to be the only ones with secrets?” 

She screams with laughter when Lestat picks her up, hauling her over his shoulder and then dangling her over their fountain, her fish rising to the surface with the expectation of her feeding them. She giggles, her hands over her head and her fingertips trailing into the water, very obviously not concerned about actually being dropped. 

“Is this how you speak to your parents, rude child?” Lestat demands, but he’s very obviously playing. “Have we not raised you better?”

“I dunno,” Claudia sasses. “Read my mind and find out. Oh wait.” She turns herself enough to stick her tongue out at Lestat. 

She squeals when he dips her enough to wet the ends of her hair, her ribbons trailing like water snakes and startling the fish away. 

“Daddy Lou!” She cries, grinning. She reaches her hands out towards him. “Help!” 

He leans back pointedly. 

“Oh, hell no,” he says, playing at sternness even as he wants to smile. “About time somebody taught you to mind that mouth of yours.” 

Claudia sticks her tongue out at him now, and then sets her sights to trying to wrestle her way free. It’s a doomed attempt, but she’s clearly giving it her best effort, threatening to bite Lestat if he doesn’t let her go and merely laughing when Lestat threatens to do the same. 

Louis watches them, shaking his head fondly. 

Chapter Text

Lestat is being stalked by a fierce, persistent predator, one who has followed his steps for hours now, lying in wait for the first sign of weakness. 

Fortunately, this particular predator barely reaches his knee. 

He focuses on the sheet music before him, unable to help the twitch of his lips when he hears the scurrying of small feet as Claudia takes cover behind the sofa from her previous place behind a side table, tripping once on the edge of the rug but popping back up to her feet like a spring. This is a newer game of hers–hunting him through the house and trying to surprise him, never knowing she’s doomed to fail–but it bodes well for her future as a vampire. He wonders vaguely if she’s aware of how much the chiffon of the skirt Louis has put her in tonight is betraying her, the susurration of the fabric more audible than even her excitement-quick heartbeat. She has at least remembered to take her shoes off before stalking him around the house tonight, he allows, a mistake she appears to have learned from in her previous failures.

He finishes the page he was playing through and then moves quicker than she can follow while she’s lost sight of him in her hiding place, kneeling behind her and leaning in to speak in her ear. 

“Bonjour.” 

Her surprised scream is cut off rather abruptly by the thunk of her head hitting the wooden beam within the sofa as she jolts away from him. 

He winces. 

To her credit, she doesn’t immediately start wailing, though when she turns, her eyes are filling. 

“None of that,” he tuts. “You’re fine.” 

Her lower lip wobbles, and he can already feel the wrath of God that Louis will bring down upon him if he learns that Lestat has damaged the child. He scrambles for a way to fix it, to distract her-

“Would you like to play the piano?” 

She blinks at him, peeking quickly towards the piano and then back to him, one hand still held to her head where she knocked it against the sofa. He stands, extending a hand. 

“I doubt you’ll have any proficiency, but you may try if you wish.” 

She puts her hand in his. 

He settles her on the bench beside him, demonstrating the correct posture, which he notes with approval that she imitates without needing to be prompted. She does her best to curl her hands like his, and he’s annoyed with himself when he feels a swell of fond amusement at how obvious it is that their size will be a hindrance. He tells himself firmly that it isn’t cute, her tiny hands trying to imitate him. 

If anything, it’s an inconvenience, he reminds himself sternly. 

He places his hands over hers, resolutely ignoring the way that they barely fill his palms. He shifts until her fingers are under his, so tiny that he almost releases at her once for fear of breaking them by merely touching them too hard, her fingernails as miniscule as pearl buttons on a lady’s gown beneath his fingertips. He graciously ignores her first wriggle of excitement when he carefully pushes the first key down with her finger–he has had a firm stance since the start that he will not interact with children who wriggle– and continues, playing a very poor and very slow rendition of Bach’s Minuet in G major. 

At the end, Claudia applauds as if she was not the puppeteer pianist of the performance, and the bump to her head has clearly been forgotten. Seeking to reassert their usual routine, he gently removes her from the bench and sets her down on the floor. She looks to him, clearly a little confused, and he looks away, clearing his throat. He’s still not entirely used to interacting with a child, and she throws him now and then when she doesn’t respond the way he thought she would. He thought she would have been relieved to be released after an– almost –successful performance, content to take her victory and return to her little girl pastimes. Her precious Daddy Lou, after all, has never had an interest in the piano beyond whatever simple little duets he’s managed to coax him into performing together through teasing and begging, and she reminds him so of Louis that he’d assumed she would enjoy being released without a struggle to remain. 

He doesn’t know what to do with the flicker of hurt he picks up in her mind. He’s already removed her from the bench, after all. Picking her up again would be absurd, and what child would be interested in playing through classical anyway, especially when she can’t even read the music herself? 

“You may remain and listen if you can be quiet,” he tells her in an offer of companionship. 

He resumes playing, picking a faster tune for her benefit. She likes to dance, he knows, especially when Louis picks her up and twirls her around, but even when it’s just her, she whirls around like a child’s toy released from a string. It’s amusing, he has to admit, the sheer freedom of her movement, uninhibited by adult sensibilities about proper and improper dancing. He enjoys it, watching her dance, her funny little flourishes and clear appreciation for music if only as something to dance to. 

Now, though, she simply stands still for a few moments and then retreats back to Louis’s side, a little pigeon returning to her roost. 

Lestat focuses back on his music and refuses to consider the interaction further. 

*

“I don’t think Uncle Les likes me very much.” 

Louis looks down to Claudia, but she’s not looking at him, still facing forward as they make their way around the block. He squeezes her little hand in his gently, and she looks up. 

“What makes you say that?” 

Her mouth scrunches to one side as she thinks, and she giggles softly when he uses his hold on her to swing her up over a puddle. He’d normally carry her, but Miss Babin has been sick and thus hasn’t been by to take her for her morning outings, so if he doesn’t want her bouncing off the walls, it’s better she walk on her own on this little outing of theirs. 

Even if it’s quite an adjustment to limit his own stride to account for little legs. 

“What makes you think Uncle Les don’t like you?” He presses gently when she still doesn’t respond. 

She shrugs. 

“He say something?” He persists. Lestat still grumbles at times about her, but if he’s said something to her, Louis will-

“He’s like Auntie,” Claudia says softly. “She didn’t want me neither. She just took me ‘cause my old daddy said she had to.” 

He still doesn’t know how he feels about it, the way she speaks of her previous father as her “old daddy.” She wasn’t close with him, he knows that much, but she loved him the way any child would love their father. Louis tries not to dwell on it, tries not to be bothered by the accidental reminders she delivers now and then that she’s only his because he found her and refused to give her back. 

He wonders what she’ll think of him one day if she finds out he took down posters about her to make sure no one would ever be able to take her away from him. 

“Uncle Les is like Auntie,” Claudia says, pulling her little shoulders in. She looks to him. “Is he gonna hit me like Auntie did?” 

“Never,” Louis tells her at once. He pauses in their walk and picks her up, feeling a wave of residual guilt. She’d scared the hell out of him three weeks ago when she darted away in a crowd to join a funeral parade, excited by the music and not understanding what it was for, nearly running right into the path of a team of horses pulling a carriage with the coffin. Terrified and angry at her for terrifying him, he’d fallen into the lessons of his own upbringing, had immediately spanked her for running off and told her to never do that again. Even with him careful of his strength, she’d cried and cried and cried, and he’d read in her mind that she’d felt tricked, that he was going to end up hitting her like her Auntie did and that him not doing it before was him lying to her. She hadn’t learned not to run away from him, he’d seen in her mind in an instant. She’d just learned that he was willing to hurt her if he was mad at her. 

Drowning in guilt, he’d sworn then and there that he would never raise a hand to her again. 

“Neither of us will ever hit you,” he tells her, smoothing a stray curl back, tucking it back into one of her pigtails, straightening the bow on the end. “And Uncle Les is just…” He searches for a word that could possibly sum up what Lestat is. 

(And a word suitable for a five year old to hear, an extra challenge in the exercise.)

“Grumpy?” Claudia provides, and Louis grins. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, kissing her head and then shifting to carry her on one side so he can keep walking. “Uncle Les is just old and grumpy.” A beat. “Don’t go telling him that, though.” 

*

“You gotta stop acting like she’s some pet you don’t want around,” Louis tells Lestat the next morning. 

Lestat rolls his eyes before turning away, tugging his robe down one shoulder and giving him a coquettish look past the curtain of his hair, tumbling artfully in a way that must be practiced. He knows the other vampire had a clear idea of how he wanted to spend the time Claudia is back with Miss Babin for a walk. Having no minder for Claudia has meant having no alone time to fill with fucking like rabbits, but from the scent of her perfume–some cheap-smelling, acrid nonsense obviously picked to be provocative and ending up instead as simply noxious–on his clothes, he knows Lestat hasn’t been doing without, instead crawling back to his floozy of a lounge singer like a dog panting after a bitch in heat. 

It’s possible it’s making Louis a bit less gentle in his approach to this conversation. 

“She thinks you don’t like her,” he says plainly, going so far as to knock Lestat’s hand away when he comes closer and tries to undo the belt of Louis’s robe. 

The dark look he gets for it has him tensing at once from years of working on Liberty. That’s the kind of look that’s usually closely followed by violence. 

Spotting a smudge of lipstick–a godawful neon pink-red that wouldn’t suit anyone’s complexion–below Lestat’s ear makes him rather eager for the possibility. Let him limp back to his mistress with some bruises, some less-than-loving lovebites to remind her that she might be an amusement on the side, but Louis is the one with a key to the front door of the house, the one with Lestat’s blood running through his veins, the one bound to Lestat in a way that woman is not and never will be, not if Lestat still hasn’t found her worth changing. 

Maybe Lestat could use a reminder of that, too. 

“It might be hard to remember, us having a daughter,” he says with fake sympathy. “What with how busy you are.” 

Lestat’s face goes sharp the way a fox’s goes sharp when it spots a pheasant. 

“Busy?” He asks lightly. “And what do you imagine might be keeping me so very busy, mon cher?” 

Louis grits his teeth, the muscles in his jaw protesting at the force behind it. He knows Lestat knows exactly what and who he’s talking about. His lounge singer–and God above does Louis kick himself for ever bringing her into their lives to start with–has sat between them like a weight for years, unacknowledged but present. He knows it’s partially his own fault. If he’d never let on that it bothered him, Lestat choosing to fuck her more than once and not killing her after, then he knows Lestat would have lost interest in her, gotten bored the way he does with every other mortal. It’s only because she makes him jealous that Lestat keeps her around. 

Bastard. 

Lestat’s expression goes softer, and it pisses Louis off at once. He slinks closer, clearly angling for a little kiss-and-make-up. 

Louis steps back. 

“Like her or not,” Louis says. “She’s here to stay. Stop being a jackass about it.” 

Lestat’s expression goes harder, meaner, clearly giving up his seduction. 

“What a coincidence, cheri,” he says, voice grating in its false sweetness. “I was just contemplating telling you the same.” 

Louis leaves the room before he gives into the urge to knock Lestat through the fucking wall. 

*

Lestat is returning later than he intended tonight, skirting the edge of flirting with danger by getting home at 5 in the morning, when the first smudges of grey are appearing in the sky. He hadn’t meant to stay out so late, but he and Louis had fought again earlier, and the temptation to keep his attention by making him wonder where he was proved too strong to resist. 

Well, the temptation to claim Louis’s attention and the lure of Antoinette’s ever-so-limber talents, made even more compelling after such a stretch of abstinence with Louis. 

He half-expects to have his ears blistered when he comes through the door, and he’s partially looking forward to it. The presence of the child has impacted their sex lives horribly, and if he can get Louis wound up enough to-

He finds Louis in the living room, asleep on the sofa, Claudia curled up against him, both of them wrapped in a blanket together, a book still dangling from Louis’s hand. 

Lestat leans against the doorway, not expecting the rush of emotions that swell in his chest when he sees them. They look peaceful, happy, cozy in their little bundle. As he watches, Claudia makes a soft noise and shifts, nosing like a puppy, and without even waking up, Louis shifts in response, arms wrapping around her tighter. Lestat lifts an eyebrow, ready to intervene if he gets a little too enthusiastic in the cuddle and threatens to squeeze her like a grape in a wine press, but they settle quickly, both sighing contently at the same moment. 

The sight makes Lestat’s chest ache with the warmth of looking at them. 

It’s so easy, in the abstract, to fight with Louis and resent the child. They’d achieved a comfortable life together, and then Louis had wanted to change it all on a whim. Lestat had indulged him–because he loves to indulge him, loves to give Louis all of the things he’s always denied himself–but he hadn’t expected to be drawn into it, not really. In his mind, Claudia would be something like a hobby, something for Louis to expend his need to coddle on. Lestat can enjoy some sweetness now and then, but Louis has always had a need to nurture that Lestat cannot and does not want to benefit from. Perhaps a child was a foregone conclusion, frankly. Even when he’s annoyed at the changes it’s required, he can admit that fatherhood suits Louis like a perfectly-tailored suit. 

Lestat wonders, sometimes, if he might have craved the same if he’d had a family he considered worth missing the way Louis does. 

It’s a right of passage, he’d told Louis, a needful little soothing lie for his wounded lover. For his own part, Lestat had never truly missed his natal family, not in a way that would have tempted him to play with fire in returning to them after receiving the gift the way Louis’s has. Gabrielle…was and is and will always be Gabrielle, but for the rest? Lestat had considered them family in their relation to him, but there hadn’t been a tie beyond that. It was names and related degrees of authority, nothing more. It wasn’t something he missed, not beyond the vague wish that he had something to miss. 

I’m your family, Louis, he’d told Louis once, hurt that the feeling clearly wasn’t reciprocated. It seemed unfair, that Louis should still feel incomplete when Lestat put such effort into being everything. What he wanted was impossible, anyway. Vampires by nature of their undeath are sterile. Life cannot come from death, and the changing of children, monstrous atrocity that it is, is forbidden for good reason. What vampire would dare dream of something as impossible as raising a child? 

Well, Lestat thinks with fondness, his vampire, evidently, his Saint Louis, patron saint of breaking his own heart with wishing for impossible things. Though, he thinks with a glance at Claudia, not so impossible after all, this tiny fairy child plucked from a fire, a chick nurtured by monsters. Not so monstrous, though, he thinks, studying the peace with which she sleeps on a man who could kill her with scarcely a thought, that such a thing is as impossible as Lestat expected it might be. 

Nor, he can admit, as unpleasant as he thought, this little bubble of domesticity, a picture of home and hearth he’s never experienced before. 

His…his family, he tries out in his head, rolling the word around to see how it settles. 

It feels good, he concludes in a moment of surprised realization, coming home to the two of them. It’s soothing, seeing the two of them safe and comfortable and warm. It feels like an achievement, his family sleeping peacefully, like a reward for making a world they can be soft in. His own family was many things, but soft was never one of them. Even when he was Claudia’s age, he can’t imagine Gabrielle, let alone his father, ever being comfortable enough to fall asleep with him cuddled close, especially not out in the open like this. He wouldn’t even have known to want something like being held the way Claudia is, snuggled close like she’s something precious. It wouldn’t have occurred to him as a possibility. He looks to Claudia when she makes the quiet noises she usually does when she’s about to wake up, and sure enough, she’s started to stir. He smiles faintly when she almost punches Louis on the jaw with one tiny fist as she stretches, bringing both of her hands to her face to rub at her eyes clumsily. 

When she notices him, her face lights up in a way that makes him breathless for a moment. 

She inhales to call his name, and he presses a finger to his lips. She blinks at him, and he looks to Louis to direct her gaze. She follows the signal and does, giggling when her shifting means that Louis holds her tighter, still asleep. 

“Have you worn him out then, ma petite?” He asks her softly, crossing the room. 

When she lifts her arms to be picked up, it only takes a moment for him to heed her, gently extricating her from Louis’s hold. 

Louis makes a confused, half-aware noise when Claudia slips out of his arms, and he half-shoves himself up, blinking blearily. 

“Time for coffin, I think,” Lestat says softly, amused. 

In his arms, Claudia yawns, resting her head on his shoulder the way she does with Louis, nuzzling her cheek against him. 

It feels…good. 

Louis is still clearly half-asleep, but when he registers Lestat holding a sleepy Claudia, his face goes so soft that Lestat can’t help but lean down to kiss him, a sweet, lingering thing. Affection tendered, he urges him up, herding him towards the stairs. He keeps hold of Claudia, only setting her down briefly on their bed so he can change into pajamas before reclaiming her. 

After all, Louis is tired. He might drop her. 

Very well, he decides as he climbs into his coffin, not bothering to surrender Claudia’s warm weight and settling down with her instead, ignoring Louis’s tired but knowing look as he climbs in his own coffin alone for once. She’ll be his child as well. His child with Louis. 

Their daughter. 

“Bon nuit, petite chose,” he whispers into her curls. “Fais de beaux rêves.” 

Claudia snuggles closer, radiating warmth like a little hot water bottle, tiny fingers curling around a fold of his shirt. 

Lestat falls asleep smiling. 

*

He presses close to Louis’s back the next evening, after their child has been settled in the kitchen to eat her breakfast and drink her milk, and Louis has returned to get dressed for the night. His lover is still clearly a little cross with him, playing coy and refusing to press back against him, going about picking out an outfit as if Lestat isn’t pressing a suggestion of a diversion against the sweet swell of his ass. 

“You were out late yesterday,” Louis says coolly, and Lestat hums, unbuttoning Louis’s sleep shirt for him and kissing along his shoulder as he slips the garment off. Louis rumbles a warning but doesn’t stop him, and when Lestat slowly drops to his knees and presses at his hip to turn, Louis does so, resting his back against his wardrobe. 

“I had business I had to deal with,” he says, slipping his fingertips into the waistband of his pants and slowly slinking them down by degrees, pausing to press his lips to the daring new stretch of skin at his hip just to hear Louis’s breath catch. “An ugly business, not worth your time or attention, mon doux amour.” He occupies his mouth with other matters for a moment, Louis’s hand descending to thread through his hair, tugging with just the right edge of pain. 

“You making-” Louis’s words cut off with a sound endearingly like a whimper, muscles in his stomach jumping as he resists the urge to thrust his hips forward as Lestat demonstrates a particularly clever bit of trickery with his tongue.

Always so polite, Lestat thinks fondly, rewarding him for his sweetness with a sweet reward. 

When he’s brought Louis to his pleasure, he rises, pulling his lover’s ecstasy-slack body closer and kissing him, sweet and chaste, as if his mouth wasn’t occupied by some lovely devilry mere seconds before. He nuzzles at his nose, fond beyond belief as Louis blinks his eyes open hazily. So many years, and still so easily drunk on pleasure. 

Is there any wonder Lestat can love no other above him? 

“God forbid a singer ever take an exit with grace,” he whispers against Louis’s lips. “They always overstay their applause.” 

Louis blinks, alert and attentive at once, and Lestat dares to lean in to kiss his nose, a gesture usually so saccharine he risks a punch to the gut for it. Now, though, Louis just studies him. Lestat smiles. 

“You are my heart, Louis, my every breath, my very soul. There is none who could ever come before you.” He pauses, just to make sure the next bit will sink in. “Before you, or our daughter. We are a family, Louis. I’ve no wish to risk that.” 

He smiles into the kiss when Louis all but tackles him, even as he knows from the sound of Claudia scraping at the bottom of her bowl in the kitchen that they don’t have enough time to consummate the moment as it deserves. Instead, he accepts the kissing with pleasure, and then pulls back, nipping at Louis’s lower lip just to tease. 

“Now, now,” he says with faux-severity. “Do please get ahold of yourself. There’s a child in the home.” 

Louis flashes his fangs and gives him a disciplinary swat to the rear, but he also moves to finish dressing. 

Lestat gives himself another moment to ogle before he also prepares to greet the night. 

It will be a trial, keeping Antoinette as merely a diversion to fill his spare time and not as something to tease Louis with, but for the sake of their family, he’ll manage. 

*

Even indulging often enough that Claudia isn’t tempting as an appetizer anymore, Louis still sticks to animals as much as possible. He knows Lestat disapproves, but they don’t fight about it anymore, a small compromise between the two of them. 

He’s even proven helpful, distracting Claudia in the house or taking her on short excursions or remaining with her at a store to let Louis slip away long enough to feed. Tonight they’ve gone on a ride in a carriage–a special treat after Claudia saw someone else riding in one, and the weather turned cold enough that she can have a hat and scarf to limit any questions about her riding around with Lestat if anyone sees them–and he’s finishing up his last catch for the night, a massive black cat with enough hair that Louis is already not looking forward to having so much fur in his mouth. He tries to move as much of it as he can out of the way, but the cat is struggling, yowling and hissing and spitting, and finally he gives up, opening his mouth to-

“Kitty!” 

Louis freezes, the cat still in his hold, its sharp little teeth sunk into his thumb and its claws hooked in the meat of his palm. 

He hears Claudia’s feet pattering closer, loud in her new shoes, and then she’s in front of him, nearly glowing with delight. She reaches her arms up, hands opening and closing in a clear indication to hand the cat over. 

Louis blinks at her. 

Daddy Lou got me a kitty, he hears in her mind, the sentiment nearly squealed in her excitement, so used to receiving presents that she’s assumed something as novel and exciting as a cat has to be for her. 

Louis is still frozen. 

“Daddy Lou?” Claudia asks, hands dropping and face losing some of its excitement. “Can I…have my kitty?” 

“Uh,” he says intelligently, and she ends up with possession of the cat by accident when it senses the chance for freedom and thrashes enough that it startles him into letting go, dropping it right into her waiting arms. In an instant, he moves to take it from her, all too able to envision those sharp claws digging into baby-soft ski-

“Kitty,” Claudia coos, rubbing her face into the silky black fur. The cat is so massive and fluffy that her head nearly disappears when she does. 

To his complete shock, the cat starts purring, a rumble so loud in its giant chest that it almost drowns out Claudia’s heartbeat. 

“Thank you, Daddy Lou!” Claudia chirps, adjusting the cat enough that she won’t trip over it, even as she holds it like a baby doll, its feet and tail trailing the ground as it glares at him over her shoulder with vibrant yellow eyes full of pure hate even as it keeps purring in Claudia’s hold. 

“Claudia, baby, that’s…not…” He tries, but she’s already walking away, telling the cat with great excitement that it needs to meet her Uncle Les and that she loves it and that she thinks she’ll name it Shoe because it’s black like her new shoes that Uncle Les just bought her and-

Louis watches her go, stunned into inaction and wondering what in the hell just happened. 

*

Lestat lifts his brows when Claudia returns from being sent to find Louis with no Louis in tow. 

Instead, she has returned from her errand with a massive cat who seems almost as big as she is. 

“And who might this…beast be?” He asks. 

Claudia moves her head enough to look around the cat, beaming. 

“This is my kitty!” She says, voice nearly piercing in her happiness. “Daddy Lou got him for me!” 

Lestat barely resists the urge to guffaw. Of the likely reasons this beast was in their home, giving it as a present to Claudia is about as likely as Louis walking down the street naked at high noon. 

“And what might be the name of Monsieur Minou?” He teases, catching Louis’s eye when he enters the room. His lover looks dazed by whatever comedy of errors has made his dinner into their daughter’s new pet, and it’s an effort not to openly laugh and give up his own private joke. 

He looks back to Claudia sharply when she gasps, afraid the creature has sought parity for its near-demise by putting its teeth to her, but she’s looking at him with delight, the cat still wildly lax in her clumsy hold. 

“Monsieur Minou!” She parrots, her pronunciation terrible. “That’s his name! Monsieur Minou!”

Lestat considers informing her that she has now bestowed her cat with the title Mr. Kitty. 

In the end, though, he holds his peace. 

In a household of one human girl and two vampires, Mr. Kitty seems a lesser absurdity. 

*

“We were hoping for a larger percentage than that, sir,” Louis says an hour into a meeting that could have been twenty minutes if he wasn’t arguing with prejudiced fools who resent doing business with him to start with, leaving him holding onto his patience by the tips of his fingers. “With the investment we already-” 

“Daddy Lou!”

Louis wishes desperately that he could freeze time or erase minds the way Lestat can when Claudia’s call is followed by her little head popping through the door, her accursed cat swinging like a ragdoll in her hold, his back paws brushing the ground and a pink ribbon barely peeking through the thick fur at his throat to match the ones in her hair. Her nap was meant to last through them ironing out the rest of these terms, and the presence of his child certainly isn’t going to help him with men already decided on how deeply below them he is. He forces his expression blank as Claudia darts right to him-

Only to be plucked up by Lestat, who sets her on his lap as if he’s been doing such a thing for years and didn’t hand her over to Louis like a sack of flour two hours ago for the crime of being mysteriously sticky in his vicinity. 

Every head in the room turns to gape at him. 

He gives them an unconcerned smile, shifting Claudia slightly and adjusting the cat until they’re both securely settled. 

“Continue,” he says, with an idle wave of his hand, like a king holding court. 

“Uh,” one of the men–the one who’s been the biggest pain in the ass so far–begins, “perhaps this isn’t the place for a-” 

“She’ll be no trouble,” Lestat says, with that same complete lack of concern. “Isn’t that so, ma petite? You can spectate quietly.”

Claudia nods eagerly, miming zipping her lips–something that Louis shoots Lestat a glare for, knowing exactly where she would have picked that up–and settling back, tugging her cat onto her lap a bit better and looking at them all with placid confidence, a little princess surveying a show with interest, secure and comfortable on the throne that is Lestat’s lap. 

Louis grits his teeth and returns to his negotiations. 

*

“I don’t know why you’re so upset, mon cher,” Lestat says later, when the deal has been struck–more lucrative than Louis had dared expect but still a pain and a half to iron out–and their house is empty but for them again, the two of them readying for bed as Claudia is ostensibly doing the same in her room before joining them. “They took her presence well.” 

“Yeah, because they thought she was-” 

“A parting gift from a courtesan?” Lestat says, sounding amused. “Yes, I heard that as well.” He shrugs out of his shirt, flinging it into a corner instead of the basket that Louis has told him to use around seven thousand times in their lives together. Lestat studies his reflection in the mirror, considering. “It bodes well for her that they saw a resemblance to me, though I confess I’m not sure I can see it.” 

Louis rolls his eyes, bending over to pick up Lestat’s discarded shirt and tossing it in the basket while Lestat continues to preen like a canary. 

“It ain’t funny,” he says. “Them thinking she’s yours. You think that’s gonna make them treat her right when she’s older?” 

“Do you think I can’t make them regret it if they don’t?” Lestat asks, amused, as he catches Louis’s eye in the mirror. “I’m insulted at the lack of faith, cheri.” 

“I’m not joking,” Louis says, unwilling to be drawn out of his mood. “You don’t get it. She’s already starting out at the bottom. Them thinking she’s some-” 

“The bottom of what, Louis?” Lestat asks, now sounding more impatient. “Some mortal construction of morality and status? We are above such things.” 

“But she isn’t,” Louis stresses. “She’s human. She’ll have to-”

Their conversation is interrupted very suddenly by Claudia’s cat bursting into the room, legs spread and eyes massive, tail poofed like a feather duster. 

And wearing a bright pink ballgown, a tiny boot on one paw, and a doll-sized tiara slipping down over one eye. 

There is a brief moment of silence as they all stare at each other. 

“Monsieur Minou!” Claudia says, following her cat in with the air of an overworked nanny. “I said no running!” 

The cat does not seem to take her scolding to heart, flipping himself in a 180, hissing at Louis, and then darting from the room once more, knocking Claudia over as he goes. 

Louis rubs his eyes, exhausted and wondering when his life turned into a circus show. 

*

“You gotta stop letting her sit in on meetings,” Louis says after the third time in a week Claudia has joined, making a mockery of the entire thing from her satisfied perch on Lestat’s lap. They’re watching her now as she drags a ribbon around the courtyard for her cat to chase, keeping their voices low so she won’t hear. “It makes the entire thing seem like a joke.” Despite his annoyance with Lestat, he accepts the bottle of wine they’re sharing when it’s passed, neither of them bothering with glasses. 

“Is it not a joke?” Lestat asks, lifting an eyebrow. “Operating under the assumption that you defer to me and not that you are the mind behind nearly all of our investments? I have no pride to defend in this, mon cher. Your acumen for business far surpasses my own.” A teasing smile. “Your taste in music, however…” He makes a weighing gesture. 

“I’m serious,” Louis says, passing the bottle back. “They already think I’m beneath them. My child hanging off my leg don’t help.” 

“But she isn’t,” Lestat says. “She remains with me, letting them all speculate if you’re simply a convenient cover for my lovechild with a lady of the night.” 

Louis frowns at him. Lestat looks amused. 

“You must get over your reservations in poking around in the minds of others, mon cher. You’ll learn all manner of useful things.” He passes the bottle back after indicating Claudia with it. “Par exemple, half of them already believed our little hellion is my souvenir from a passionate and tawdry affair, and I’m rewarding you handsomely by claiming her as your own. Now the number grows with each meeting she attends with me.” 

“And why in the hell would you do that?” Louis demands. Lestat’s mind is already normally a riddle to him, but he doesn’t even know where to begin solving this one. 

“It’s a lovely little story they’ve concocted among themselves,” Lestat says, tugging the bottle back when Louis fails to offer it. Louis lets it go. “A bit melodramatic, but they’ve minds for business, not the arts.” 

Louis waits, knowing he’s being baited into asking about whatever brilliance Lestat thinks he’s dreamed up and refusing to bite. After a long few moments, Lestat sighs, taking another long drink before passing the bottle back. 

“You’ve no respect for narrative conventions,” he complains good-naturedly. “I feed you your lines, and you reward me with disapproving silence.” 

Louis maintains his disapproving silence, moving the bottle out of Lestat’s reach for good measure. 

“Do you want her stuck in this house forever?” Lestat asks, as if Louis has missed something very obvious. 

“No?” He doesn’t, not really, but it’s largely been unavoidable until now. They take her out at night, and his family knows about her, but wandering around with a child invites questions he can’t always answer. 

“It’s as you’ve said,” Lestat says. “She is human. She will need to move in their circles.” 

“And you think being your bastard will help her do that?” Louis asks doubtfully, looking over at a cry from Claudia only to find her giggling as she drags her cat by the ribbon like a fish. He smiles, faintly, before looking back to Lestat. 

“I think it makes our family safer for people who might wish us ill to never know for certain whose she is,” Lestat says, and Louis avoids the urge to point out the fact that Lestat looks amused at Claudia’s antics, knowing that it would ruin the moment. Lestat looks back to him. “When it was just the two of us, Louis, we could keep our business private. No one knew we lived together, no one knew we spent as much time together as we do. But a child shouldn’t be a secret. She won’t always be content in a world bound by the walls of this townhouse.” He pauses a moment. “And there will come a time when people will wonder why I might share a home with a father and daughter. People will talk.” 

“So…” Louis says, catching onto his line of thought. “Your solution is, what? Letting people think I’m claiming her as cover? As a favor to you? And you’re living with us to still be near her?” 

“Precisely,” Lestat says, sounding satisfied that Louis has caught the thread of his plan. “They’ll think it all a clumsy cover job and congratulate themselves for seeing through it, all the while never knowing the truth beneath.” 

“Good for us,” Louis allows, “but how does that help Claudia?” 

“Interesting,” Lestat says with a sly smile as he looks back to Claudia and her cat, now engaged in what seems like a child’s version of a waltz as she hums, Monsieur Minou taking his role as her partner with equanimity, paws dangling loosely. “That our business partners should dislike the presence of our stray in our meetings so very much and yet say nothing. I wonder what that could be from.” 

Louis thinks of an annoyed thought he did catch during a meeting in which Claudia interrupted the conversation to ask what arbitrage is. 

“Because you seem happy to have her on your lap, and they know pissing you off by being rude to her would fuck them over?” As he says it, Louis gets it. “Oh. They think upsetting her risks upsetting her daddy, so they keep their mouths shut.” 

*

Lestat can see Louis struggle with it, the idea of leaving Claudia’s defense to his name. He moves to sit beside his lover, leaning in to kiss him sweetly. He lingers, afterwards, making his voice even lower. 

“Despite my best efforts, you have saddled us with this little demon.” Predictably, it gets him a good-natured shove. Lestat still keeps up his bluster, but they both know that he’s fallen victim to Claudia’s charm by now despite his best efforts to the contrary. “If I can provide her protection with this lie, mon amour, then why should I not?” He smiles. “Or is this a spat of possessiveness? Are you displeased that there should be no further conjecture as to whether she inherited your eyes or not?” 

“No,” he says. “It’s just…” He watches Claudia, and Lestat can see him trying to find the words. He leans in, pressing a kiss to his cheek. 

“I cannot claim you, Louis,” he says softly, and his lover turns to look at him, clearly thrown slightly by the apparent departure in topic. Lestat smiles, a little sadly. “Beyond the walls of this house, you must be my business partner, nothing more. There is nothing I can do to change that. In the eyes of the world, we will never be what we are. Claudia, though…” He tilts his head, looking to her briefly, just in time to watch her trip herself after spinning in place with the ribbon enough that it wound around her ankles. 

Monsieur Minou shows no mercy, pouncing anyway. 

He and Louis pause in their conversation for a moment to watch the show, Claudia giggling until she manages to get herself free, taking off again with her cat in hot pursuit. He turns back to Louis, feeling disgustingly soft at the look on his face as he watches his daughter. 

As he watches their daughter. 

“This is the most I will be able to claim either of you,” he says, and Louis looks back to him. “Half-speak and loaded suggestions and the assumptions of men who think they’re cleverer than us. I defer to your experience, mon cher. If you truly believe it will be a hindrance to her, the suggestion that she could be mine, then I will be sure whispers get around that such an assumption is sheer foolishness. You are her daddy,” he says softly. “To matters of nightmares and toys and stickiness,” he makes a face to indicate his distaste, really how the child manages it so frequently when there is so little in their home to cause her to be sticky is beyond him, “I defer to you. I've no experience with children, and I’ve no experience with being other than I am.” He gives him a chagrined little smile. “Perhaps I should have sought your thoughts on the plan before I set it into motion, but as you know, mon cheri, I am a creature of impulse.” 

“It won’t…” Louis starts before pausing, and Lestat wishes desperately that he could still read his mind, could climb right in that beautiful head and read every last edit Louis makes to his thoughts before he sees fit to share them, “...bother you? People thinking she’s yours?” 

“She is,” Lestat says softly. “She is mine, and yours. She’s our daughter, Louis, even if no one else will ever be privy to it.” 

The kiss the statement earns him is enough to make his toes curl, and he almost forgets that they’re technically meant to be keeping an eye on their child-

-until there’s a shriek and a splash, and Louis is on his feet at once to retrieve her from the fountain. Lestat watches, amused, as she’s scooped out, clearly stunned. Louis fusses at her in the way of a parent who has been worried by his child’s foolishness, but it’s a gentle thing, more for filling the silence than for anything else. 

Lestat rises without needing to be instructed to retrieve a towel. 

Perhaps he’ll take to this parenting lark after all. 

Chapter Text

“Non, non, Claudia, you must-yes, good. That’s better. Just so.” 

Louis smiles without looking away from his book, knowing better than to involve himself in Lestat and Claudia’s piano lessons, not that there’s usually any need for him to anyway. Prone to fits of passion and temper or not, Lestat has proven an unexpectedly patient teacher with Claudia, even though Louis knows it has to grate on him, sitting through all of the mistakes of a child learning a new skill. 

He’d had his doubts about how the lessons would go when Claudia first brought up the idea last year, all too aware of how Lestat usually responds to people who butcher music in his presence. They trade off teaching her–with a few tutors now and then to make up for any knowledge they lack on a subject–and even if Lestat had proven himself to be remarkably patient with her until then, even teaching her how to read sheet music after she’d asked, he’d still worried that piano would be a step too far. It’s the reason he’d begun making a habit of sitting in on their lessons, ready to intervene if Lestat’s uncharacteristic patience finally ran out. 

Now, though, he attends simply as an audience as he reads, content to soak in the simple contentment of his partner sharing a passion with their daughter. 

“Bon, ma petite,” Lestat says warmly as Claudia continues without a hitch. “Tres bon. We will have you a student at the Sorbonne within the year.” 

Claudia giggles but doesn’t pause or make another mistake as she finishes her page, and Louis hears the page turning when Lestat flips it for her. There’s a slight hitch to the melody when he does so, but Lestat must judge it a small enough fault because there’s no correction. He takes over to play through a tricky bit with her, hands guiding hers, and he has Claudia repeat it twice before he allows her to move on. She’s in the middle of the second repetition when the phone rings, and Louis rises. 

“I got it,” he says. 

“As you should,” Lestat says absently, not looking away from Claudia’s progress on the sheet music. “We are currently engaged in more important matters.” 

Louis makes a face but doesn’t comment, well-used to how seriously Lestat takes music. God forbid a phone call disrupt the essential task of teaching their eight year old a new song from Chopin. 

“Hello?” He answers, the piano soft enough at this distance that it isn’t disruptive. 

“Louis?” Grace’s voice comes, and he knows at once by her tone that something is wrong. 

*

Jonah is dead. 

Louis repeats it in his head, over and over, feeling nearly bowled over by the impossibility of it. To have survived the war and returned home, to have started a life, and then to be killed by something as pedestrian as a car accident-

“But why can’t I come?” Claudia asks from her place sitting on top of his coffin as he picks out an outfit, the task made more difficult by his inability to focus on it. “I’ve never been to a wake before.” 

“It ain’t something fun,” he says, as patiently as he can. It’s not her fault, he knows, not understanding that he isn’t exactly in a talkative or indulgent mood just now. She’s young and she’s sheltered and she’s curious. She doesn’t mean to be callous; she’s just too little to fully understand what’s happening. 

Louis reminds himself of those facts once more for good measure. 

“It isn’t an event for spectating, ma petite,” Lestat chimes in from his place artfully arranged on a chair. “It’s a time for saying goodbye.” 

Louis glances at him through the mirror for a moment, suspicious of how well he’s taking this given what happened the last time he crossed paths with Jonah so many years ago. Even if he hasn’t spoken to him in years since then, he hasn’t forgotten Lestat’s jealousy. He would have thought that the man would have been thrilled with his demise, with ridding himself of anyone Louis might want besides him. 

Lestat, though, just gives him a small smile, apparently content to allow Louis his grief when it means a would-be rival is no more. 

*

“But I could-” Claudia wheedles, a whine to her tone. 

“I said no, Claudia,” Louis snaps, harsher than he’s ever spoken to her in Lestat’s presence. “Now enough of this. You are on my last nerve right now. Go.” 

Lestat waits for whatever fight she’ll pick about such a brusque dismissal, but she seems too stunned by ever-patient Daddy Lou being short with her to manage a true fit of temper, though she rallies enough to be obstinate. She tilts her chin up in rebellion and looks to him for moral support, but he simply shakes his head. He imagines Louis will drown himself in guilt about how he said it later, but this isn’t a time for Claudia to kick up a fuss. There’s no reason for Claudia to accompany him. He doesn’t want Louis to go at all, but Claudia’s presence certainly won’t help, not for this. 

His failure to ally himself with her appears to shatter the last of her defiance, and she takes a quick hiccup of a breath–the overture to a session of crying–before turning on her heel and darting away, her ribbons fluttering behind her. There’s the sound of her door slamming shut. 

Louis sighs, leaning forward and rubbing at his temples. 

“I should go apologize,” he says, eyes still closed, as Lestat rises from his chair and nestles against his back, hooking his chin over his shoulder. 

“Hmm,” he says, rubbing along Louis’s side in slow, soothing strokes. “She’ll face worse adversity in life than a firm no from her daddy. Let her rage a bit and get it out of her system. It’ll be forgotten by tomorrow.” 

“Doubt it,” Louis says, sounding tired. “She holds grudges like you do.” 

Lestat magnanimously lets the insult go in light of Louis’s grief. 

(Though he does remember it to bring up again as a weapon in a future conflict.)

“I’ll speak to her, cheri,” he soothes. “Leave our demanding little queen to me. I’ll manage.” 

Louis leans back against him, and Lestat puts his focus into remaining steady, in being a good ballast against the wave of Louis’s riotous emotions, easily detectable in the bond between them. 

“I’m glad I’m doing this with you,” he says quietly, turning his head enough to press it against Lestat’s. “Living this life. Raising her. I’m glad it’s with you.” 

It’s not quite the three words Lestat would give any treasure to hear, but it still feels like swallowing starlight, the glow of it lighting him from within, the soft, gentling warmth of an ember settling in his chest, flowing through his veins until even his toes feel warm from it. He tilts his head–ignoring the way it strains his neck–in order to kiss Louis, keeping it soft, gentle. It’s not an overture to anything, not a moment of fiery passion. 

It’s simply a connection of two souls bound to one another, two broken things who have found a resting place for their jagged edges, slotting them together into their own kind of wholeness. 

“Je t'aime, Louis,” he says softly, “mon cœur, mon âme. Tu es mon soleil, la lumière de ma vie. Je n'ai pas besoin de cet imposteur qui ose se lever chaque matin. Tu es toute la chaleur dont j'ai besoin.” 

“Charmer,” Louis says, sounding as warm as melting sugar. He kisses Lestat once more and then pulls away, moving to knot his tie. 

Lestat bullies his way in, taking over for him. 

“You looking to become a valet?” Louis teases, still submitting to the tending without a struggle. 

“Whatever you need, Mr. de Pointe du Lac, sir,” Lestat teases in an American accent, and Louis makes a tsking noise. “I live to serve, sir.” 

“Smartass,” Louis grumbles, but there’s no heat to it. 

Lestat nudges Louis's face up when the tie is in place and secured with a pin. 

“For you?” He asks softly. “There is nothing I will not do, Louis. Nothing I will not be. Just ask it of me, mon cher, and it’s yours. You know this.” 

“You sound like you walked out of the worst kind of novel,” Louis teases, but his affection is a palpable thing, tangible as a caress. “Bet you say that to all of your immortal lovers.” 

“Just the pretty ones,” Lestat teases with a wink. 

Louis makes a face, but he also pulls Lestat in for a final kiss before he leaves. 

*

He sees Louis to the door and waits until he’s out of sight before he returns inside, making his way to Claudia’s room to smooth ruffled feathers. 

He finds her in the middle of what looks like she’s packing for a holiday. 

“Plans for a Grand Tour, then?” He asks lightly, leaning against her door frame and crossing his arms over his chest. 

Claudia doesn’t dignify the comment with a response, just picks between two pairs of pajamas and tosses the set with bows into her little rucksack. 

“I’m running away,” she says decisively, pausing long enough to glare at him defiantly. “Since nobody wants me here anyway. I’m running away, and I’m gonna be gone, and I ain’t never coming back.” 

“A very reasonable response to being told ‘no,’ I agree,” he says dryly, and her face screws up with irritation. He can hear her debating herself in her head about throwing something at him–a horrible habit, and not his fault, no matter what Louis insists–but she eventually decides that a clean exit is more important than revenge in the moment. She turns with a prim “hmph!” and shoves her hairbrush into her bag. 

“You can't stop me,” she says defiantly as she reaches for her stuffed elephant and shoves Persephone into her bag. She stops to look at him, a challenge in her anger-bright face.

He uncrosses his arms to lift his hands in surrender.

“I should never dream of daring to stop a woman on a mission,” he says. “If you must depart, ma petite, you do so with my blessing.”

She scowls, clearly unsure what to do with a lack of resistance to her imminent departure. He resists the urge to laugh, choosing instead to continue to provoke her.

“I would appreciate a postcard if you can find the time when you've settled in greener pastures. Perhaps I’ll start a collection.”

The statement earns him a stomp of her little foot before she returns to her packing.

“Bon voyage,” he calls over his shoulder with a careless wave as he takes his leave, knowing that trying to reason with her would be impossible at present. 

Safe from observation, he grins at the stifled little squeal of frustrated rage that follows him.

*

To Claudia’s credit, Lestat has to admit that she’s certainly resolute in her plan. Perhaps it should be expected given Louis’s influence–if Lestat has ever met a more stubborn man, it’s hard to recall–but she sets off at a quick clip down the street and pauses only to look both ways before crossing each intersection she passes. 

Lestat, trailing far enough behind that he can duck out of sight but close enough to be sure no one gets ideas about a petite eight year old out for a wander on her own at ten o’clock at night, makes a mental note to tell Louis. He’ll be pleased his efforts at road safety have paid dividends even when she’s in a mood. 

Monsieur Minou seems to be taking their exodus with serenity, draped around Claudia’s small shoulders like a fur stole. Lestat was mildly afraid the cat would make a run for it and meet some grisly fate right before Claudia’s eyes as soon as they were out of the gate, but the monsieur’s contentment with his owner’s company seems to have him in high spirits, especially with no Louis around to ruin this stroll by daring to breathe around him. 

“Well now.” 

Lestat looks up sharply from keeping an eye on a stray dog that was watching Claudia and her cat a little too eagerly to find predators of another sort: men interested enough to stop and say hello to a little girl late at night. 

“What might a sweet thing like you be doing out so late, darlin’?” One of the two asks, removing his hat from his head. Lestat delves into their minds at once and is relieved to find nothing objectionable there. He’s a father, this man, and while his own daughters aren’t of Claudia’s race, his paternal instincts are apparently enlightened enough to still have him concerned on Claudia’s behalf. Lestat still moves to increase his speed. The last thing they need is-

“Y’all should move along now,” Claudia says, her cadence matching Louis’s when he’s at his most fierce out on the streets, her voice even going a bit deeper than its normal little girl pitch. She’s a natural mimic, they’ve learned, and Lestat thinks sometimes she’d be an excellent actor if she ever shows an interest in the stage. He’s not entirely sure when she would have observed enough for this impression, though. 

“Now look here, little girl-” The other man starts, less paternal and more drunk than the other.

His words cut off when Claudia pulls out a knife she absolutely should not have.  

Lestat blinks. 

“I said,” Claudia says, calm and firm and still so Louis that Lestat would be charmed if he wasn’t more than slightly concerned about how these two are going to take her drawing steel, “move along now. Don’t start none, won’t be none.” 

The moment stretches for a long, tense few seconds, and then the would-be good Samaritans evidently decide that whatever this child is up to is no longer their concern. 

“As you were, ma’am,” the first man says, putting his hat back on and even touching the brim of it. 

Lestat can feel Claudia’s pleasure at the gesture, and she nods, neatly, and remains holding her knife until the men have backed away. 

Watching her slide her knife back into her pocket and then straighten her dress as if she’d merely taken a quick stumble–and below the involuntary surge of paternal pride at his daughter’s ferocity–Lestat has a sinking feeling that this night is about to last longer than expected. 

*

Lestat regrets heeding Louis’s injunctions about comfortable shoes for children. 

It’s giving Claudia far too much stamina. 

“-and then join a circus,” Claudia is telling Monsieur Minou, still marching along like a little soldier with no sign of fatigue in sight. “I can be an acrobat, and you can do tricks like a lion.” 

Monsieur Minou seems to have no strong opinions on his future as a stage performer, sighing deeply and settling in on his perch to have a nap, bushy tail swaying gently with each of Claudia’s steps. 

“And then Daddy Lou and Uncle Les’ll come see my show, and they’ll want me to come home and do my tricks for them, and I won’t,” she says decisively, relishing her imagined moment of triumph and marching onwards with renewed vigor.

Lestat rolls his eyes and wonders if anyone has thought to invent hobbles for children. 

*

Three hours into the night, Lestat’s feet are hurting–if he’d known she was going to commit for this long, he would have worn more comfortable shoes himself–and he’s wondering exactly what manner of creature Louis brought into their lives. An hour and a half in, he’d had enough and had begun to try and sway Claudia’s mind, sending little slivers of doubt, little whispers of giving up and going home. 

She’d swatted each and every one away like a bothersome fly. 

If anything, each had simply made her pick up her pace. 

They’ve achieved nearly five miles now, and Lestat is beginning to grow concerned that the sun will outpace her better sense. When he’d set out after her, he’d imagined her stomping around for an hour or so and then returning with her tail between her legs, ready to roll over and submit to his forgiveness. He would have come up with some sort of punishment Louis wouldn’t be angry over–no sweets for a week or some such–and called it a night, welcomed his child back home before Louis even knew about her attempt at joining the life of a vagabond. 

Now Lestat is mildly worried that Louis is going to return from an emotionally draining night only to find the house entirely devoid of his family. 

*

He has a brief moment of hope when Claudia takes a tumble, going down in a flurry of ribbons and cat when she trips on a loose stone in the road. He can smell from the faint trace of blood on the air–carried to him on the breeze–that she’s scraped her palms, and the hitch in her breathing suggests she might cry about it. Lestat readies himself to step forward, to pick her up and carry her home and let this all be a funny story he can tell over and over to embarrass her with when she’s older. Surely injury will finally be the thing to break her will, mild as the injury is. She’s a tough child, but there’s no Daddy Lou here to coo and coddle and make much of her scrapes until she’s asleep for the day and one of them can seal the injury over with their blood, an oft-repeated miracle she’s yet to grow suspicious of. Surely the prospect of tending her own wounds will shake her confidence in this plan of hers. 

Claudia, though, rallies quickly, brushing her hands off against her skirt briskly and rising, reclaiming her cat and settling him around her neck once more despite his meows of protest, shoulders squaring like a soldier as she resumes her marching, seeming to have discovered a second wind in the face of adversity, something that will doubtlessly be an advantage when she’s a woman and a vampire but that is proving merely a deeply irritating complication while she’s still a little girl and very human. 

Lestat allows himself one moment of considering leaving her to her own devices. 

And then he continues following. 

*

Salvation from his child’s foolishness ends up coming via her stomach. 

At the point it happens, he would have accepted just about anything. 

Claudia hasn’t had a meal yet–Louis too busy getting ready to leave after the phone call, and Lestat not always reliable at remembering she needs more than one meal a day like them–and he can hear her stomach growl when she catches a whiff of hamburgers on the air, her and her cat lifting their noses at the same time for an investigative sniff. For the first time in over an hour, she pauses. 

Lestat snatches at the brief moment of weakness the way a drowning man would reach for a rope.

It smells so good, he sends in a suggestion to her mind, and wouldn’t it be so much better if she had Daddy Lou or Uncle Les there to buy her something to eat? It’s not his best work, but he and Louis are in agreement that the fact that they can read her mind and speak in her head is something she isn’t ready for, so he has to remain subtle in his manipulation. He won’t go so far as to control her the way he could–it wouldn’t feel right, dominating her admirable will in that way–but he’s also ready to bring this night to a close and return home. When he pushes the first suggestion, her mind takes over from there, her anger and hurt having had time to burn out on her walk around half of the city. 

She thinks of the little treats she’s always provided with. Louis is fastidious in mortal conventions of eating, so she isn’t allowed as many sweets as she might wish for, but she knows that Uncle Les is always reliable for a piece of candy in his pocket if she can pickpocket him the way he’s been teaching her. It started as an idle game, this little habit of theirs, but he’s sure it could serve her at some point, and she’s a deft hand at it, even if she’ll never be able to fool him the way she would a mortal. At this point, it’s de rigueur when he readies himself for the night to slip a wax-paper-wrapped sweet in a pocket or two for her to discover if she can be clever and tricky enough. 

He can sense that she swallows now against the way her mouth is watering with the idea of one of the hard caramels he’d had on his person yesterday, slipped out of his pocket when she claimed to want lessons on how to waltz, sneaky little thing. He’d been so proud of her cleverness that he’d given her the second one gratis. He knows that Louis disapproves on principle, but after an argument about it, he does put effort into not managing Lestat’s relationship with Claudia as much as Lestat knows he wants to. 

It also means that their child works for her treats, limiting exactly how many she can wheedle in a day, an extra boon to the habit. 

He nudges at her a little harder, encouraging her to think beyond treats. Her hunger has made her more receptive to manipulation, and the nudge is enough to set her down a path that has her taking a single step back. She thinks of the times Louis has given up his portion of a shared meal to give her more. She has no way of knowing, after all, that such a thing is a relief for someone who can only taste human food as if it were paper pulp. All she knows is that when she's hungry and there's only so much of what she wants, her daddy always hands it over. She thinks of the times her Auntie sent her to bed hungry, not even always when she was naughty, sometimes when there just wasn't enough. Auntie never gave up her bowl to let Claudia have it.

But Daddy Lou always has.

Her mouth purses to one side, and she reaches up to scratch at Monsieur Minou’s fuzzy cheek while she thinks. Lestat remains where he is, leaning back against a tree out of her line of sight. He can feel her faith in her decision weakening. Rebellion is all good and well in the throws of a temper tantrum. 

But an empty belly has a way of re-organizing a person’s priorities. 

In a stroke of good fortune he could only dream of, the wind picks up, blowing cold and sharp. He sees her shiver, even as she shrugs into the warmth of Monsieur Minou as if he’s a scarf. The winter has been mild so far–as most winters are in New Orleans–but the wind now is sharp, and he can hear Claudia thinking longingly of stealing one of their sweaters or curling up under a blanket with Daddy Lou, safe and warm and content. 

Lestat can allow that her resolution still holds out for a few minutes longer, so very stubborn and willful, but another gale of cold wind and another grumble from her stomach decides her. 

Finally, she turns around and starts the walk back home, Lestat resuming his place as her shadow. 

*

Lestat trails Claudia until she’s almost all the way back to their home, at which point he unlocks the front gate before she turns the corner before retreating inside to wait. He hears the clang of the gate shutting, and then there’s a pause before her footsteps come closer. She tries the knob to the door–locked–and then he hears her sit down. He wonders idly if her plan is to simply wait instead of having to eat crow and ask to be admitted back in. After a few seconds, though, his plan to wait her out as a lesson in consequences crumbles. 

He can hear her crying. 

She’s worried, he can hear in her mind, worried that the damage is done. She’d been confident about herself when she was high and mighty on the force of her annoyance and hurt, but now she’s returned home after a failed attempt at running away. She hasn’t tried this before, he hears her worry, so she doesn’t know how she’ll be received. Is anyone even home? Uncle Les goes out for business or for important dinners–it’s why he doesn’t usually eat with her and Daddy Lou–and Daddy Lou didn’t say when he’d get back. She can’t decide which would be worse, he reads from her clearly, both of them gone or both of them waiting and angry with her. 

The thought makes her cry harder. 

Sighing against his own tender-heartedness–Louis’s fault, surely, the consequence of the company he keeps–he opens the door and sits next to her on the stoop. 

Immediately, she clings to him like a barnacle. 

“Second thoughts about your attempt to seek your liberty, cherie?” He asks lightly, and she nods, not pulling away. 

“Can I come home, please?” She asks, sniffling against him, and he presses her head a little tighter reassuringly, even as Monsieur Minou abandons their reunion and goes inside to investigate if his food dish has gained any offerings in his absence. 

He should likely tell her no, let her worry and wonder more. There are children who would kill to live the life she does, to have her charmed existence of being spoiled and pampered and loved. It would be a good lesson in appreciating what she has, the idea of losing it. Perhaps it would keep her from repeating this foolishness again. 

In the moment, though, he can feel her terror that the answer is no, and soft-hearted fool that fatherhood has made him, he can’t stand her distress. 

Christ, but a daughter will ruin a man. 

“You can always come home, Claudia,” he tells her softly, something he himself was never told. 

Claudia sniffles, and he hands her his handkerchief to wipe her face off as she pulls back slightly. She does so, dabbing at her cheeks before looking back at him. It would be easier to tell her no, he reflects, if she were an ugly crier, snotty and red-faced, but unfortunately God has a sick sense of humor and gave him a beautiful little girl who merely looks like a tragic young heroine when she cries. 

Truly, it might be for the benefit of the male population of New Orleans that Louis is likely to be so protective of her when she’s old enough to be interested in romance. God only knows how many hearts she could break when she’s older if she’s set loose to reach her full potential. 

“Even when I’m big?” She asks, sniffling. 

“Even when you’re big,” he assures her, straightening one of her pigtails. 

“Even when I’m a grown up like Addie?” She presses. 

Lestat resists the urge to smile. Addie is Miss Babin’s fifteen-year-old sister who has accompanied them on a few outings this year, and he knows Claudia has decided she’s the very height of sophistication, too young to know that Addie is as much a child as she is. 

“Even when you’re one hundred years old like Madame Lalier and so blind you can’t even see your horrifically old daddy and your still-devilishly-handsome uncle.” 

Claudia gives him a small smile. She likes the owner of the confectionery store they usually patronize, but the woman’s advanced age has also yielded much concern and commentary from Claudia, so used to her ever-youthful parents. To an eight-year-old, sixty-six might as well be one hundred. 

“We’re your home, ma petite lionne,” he tells her, and her face goes a little more solemn in response to his tone. “Your daddy and myself.” He nudges her chin gently. “And you will always be able to return to us. Tu comprends?” 

In lieu of a response, she throws herself at him in a hug that would likely knock him back if he weren’t as strong as he is. 

As it is, he simply returns the embrace. 

*

By the time Louis returns, Claudia has been fed and her bag unpacked, her room straightened up as if a child-sized hurricane hadn’t torn through it in a temper mere hours before, and her knife confiscated and put well out of her reach. Her failed attempt at running away has left her meek and obliging, and Lestat discovers that he doesn’t care for it. It’s unnatural, their spark so quiet, and it’s a relief when she perks up when settling down with her book while he plays the piano. They work in companionable silence for around an hour before there’s the sound of a key in the lock of the front door, and he sees Claudia perk up, tossing her book aside immediately and darting to investigate. 

Knowing already that it is indeed Louis, Lestat just continues playing, smiling faintly when he hears the impact of Claudia throwing herself into a hug. 

“Well now,” he hears Louis say, sounding tired but amused at such an enthusiastic greeting, “what’s this about?” 

“I’m sorry I was mean earlier,” Claudia says. “That wasn’t nice.” 

If the words are slightly coached in their phrasing, Louis doesn’t remark on it. 

“I’m sorry, too,” Louis says softly, and there’s the sound of him kissing the top of her head. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. That wasn’t nice either.” 

Lestat makes a face at the needless apology when Claudia would likely benefit from a more consistently firm hand, but he simply continues playing. 

It’s not as if he has much room to cast judgement, after all. 

*

Lestat toys with the idea of sparing Louis from a conversation about Claudia’s attempt to leave behind home and hearth, but he eventually decides the consequences would be greater if he didn’t tell him immediately. As much as he wishes to spare Louis further worry after such a heavy night, he also wishes to not be punished with enforced celibacy for at least a week if Louis finds out he withheld the information later. 

“Where in the hell did she get a knife?” Louis asks, aghast and focusing on the wrong detail entirely as Lestat fills him in while they ready for bed after Claudia has been fed her supper and sent to take a bath and change into her pajamas. “Did you take it from her?” 

Unseen, Lestat rolls his eyes, annoyed by the lack of faith. 

“No,” he says with fake sincerity, “I thought I would let her-”

He catches Louis as he moves to storm out of the coffin chamber. 

“Some credit for my parenting, s’il te plait,” he complains. “Yes, I confiscated the weapon from the eight year old. It is out of her reach, there are no more weapons hiding in her toy box, and we have had a firm conversation about not playing with knives.” 

Really their conversation had been about not playing with knives without supervision–he’s not unreasonable, after all, and if she has an interest, there’s no reason she shouldn’t learn–but he’ll cross that bridge if and when they arrive at it. He can only handle so much domestic strife in one night, after all. 

“Christ,” Louis exhales. “That could have ended in them killing her, you know that. She can’t go around acting like that. They could have-” 

“Louis,” Lestat says gently, disrupting his lover’s enthusiastic construction of a horrible fate that didn’t even happen, “stop, cheri. I was there with her. I would never have let harm come to her. Our little cub got to test out her teeth, some strangers learned a lesson on minding their own business, and all has ended well.” 

He can see Louis struggling with moving on, with letting this night go and not working himself up with all of the “what if”s that never came to pass. He worries horribly, his Saint Louis, which isn’t so surprising after a life lived on the knife’s edge of losing everything with even the smallest mistake, carrying his family’s security on his shoulders from such a young age. Even in immortality, he had simply picked up a new burden, plucking their spark from a fire and giving himself something new to worry over. He chose to love a fragile human girl, and now he pays for his choices in fretting over her like a broody hen with a single chick. 

God, but Lestat loves him for it. 

“Claudia managed enough exercise for a week,” Lestat says teasingly, “and I managed an excuse to buy some new shoes to replace the ones her stubbornness cost me.” 

“As if you need a reason,” Louis says under his breath, but when Lestat tugs him in, he goes easily. “Swear, you’ve got more shoes than most women.” 

“Mon cher, is this truly a fight you wish to pick?” Lestat asks with a raised brow, giving a significant look to Louis’s wardrobe, stuffed full as it always is, Louis always so attuned to changes in fashion. “If you’ve a wish to compare and see who is the greater dandy between-” 

Louis cuts him off with a kiss. 

“Thank you,” he says softly when they part, pressing his forehead to Lestat’s briefly. “For looking out for her.” 

Lestat smiles, resting a hand against Louis’s neck and stroking over the warm skin there with a thumb. 

“Always, mon coeur,” he says. “Pour vous deux? Le monde.” 

*

It’s not a surprise when Claudia abandons her room for their coffin chamber for the night, appearing right before they’re both about to lay down. Lestat hadn’t even bothered angling for a fuck, knowing that a squabble between Louis and Claudia would almost certainly mean an apology delivered by means of sharing a coffin for the night. 

Completely predictably, it only takes Louis catching her eye to have Claudia gratefully skipping over, her blanket wrapped around her like a cape and Persephone under one arm.

“You’ll raise a holy terror in coddling her like this,” Lestat says, too low for Claudia to hear. 

Out of sight of their child, Louis kicks his ankle before settling in his coffin, extending a hand to help Claudia in. She doesn’t need it, not now that she’s big enough to climb in on her own, but she takes it, settling down with the ease of years of practice. Her head pops up over the edge, smiling. 

“Good night, Uncle Les!” She chirps, all ill-feeling from earlier apparently forgotten completely. 

“Bon nuit, ma cherie,” he tells her, deciding to follow her lead and let bygones be bygones. She flexed her wings and found unrestricted freedom to be not quite to her tastes. With any luck, she’ll remember this experience the next time she gets into a snit and feels the call of the open road. He exchanges a good night with Louis as well before both coffins close. In the darkness, he exhales an exhausted breath, flexing his sore feet and making a mental note to make sure that Louis is the one who will have to chase down any future escape attempts. 

Resolution made, he falls into a well-deserved sleep. 

Chapter Text

There is a vampire terrorizing 1132 Rue Royale. 

It is not, in fact, either of the vampires who live there. 

“Claudia,” Louis says, as sternly as he can manage without being harsh, “enough playing. Eat your egg-” 

“Vampires don’t eat eggs,” Claudia says in an atrocious accent that Louis imagines is supposed to sound Eastern European but that mainly just sounds garbled. “Vampires eat blood.”

Louis takes a breath and prays for patience. 

“Well this little vampire eats her breakfast,” he says, using his foot to hook around the leg of her chair and yank it back into place when she tries to shove back from the table. 

She hisses at him like a cat. 

“Claudia,” he says, taking up a forkful of her eggs. “You can eat on your own, or I can feed you like a baby. Your choice, little miss.” It’s usually a foolproof way to get Claudia to act right, telling her that she’s acting like a baby at her grand age of freshly seven. 

Now she just hisses again. 

“Vampires aren’t babies,” she says, trying to push herself away from the table. “Vampires are big girls, and they eat blood.”  

Louis has a brief moment of trying to remember why he wanted to be a father so badly. 

*

Perhaps he’d have more patience with her new vampire stage if he just knew where in the hell she’d picked it up from, but even after putting his head together with Lestat, they have no idea. The first time she’d very seriously told him, “Daddy Lou, I’m a vampire now,” he’d been sure he had to have been imagining things. When she’d repeated it, he’d worried that she had somehow–impossibly–worked out the truth about them, but within a few minutes, it had been clear that she’s modeled her understanding based on the popular idea of vampires and not on anything to do with the two she actually lives with without knowing it. 

Down to the cape she managed to wheedle Lestat into buying her God only knows where. 

“Time for bed, little miss,” he tells her tonight. 

Immediately, she has her cape held in front of her face, only her eyes peeking out at him. 

“Vampires never go to bed,” she says in her horrible accent. “Vampires don’t need to sleep.” 

Lestat presses a hand to her head to step around her without knocking her over to enter their coffin chamber, and when she hisses and pulls back into her cape, he rolls his eyes, though he looks amused. 

“She’s clearly done her research, cheri,” he says, shrugging out of his robe and hanging it on the door of his wardrobe. “Perhaps you should heed her.” 

Louis gives him an unimpressed look before he turns back to Claudia. 

“You ain’t a vampire-” 

“I am a vampire!” 

“-and it’s time for bed. Go on now. I ain’t gonna tell you again.” 

He can see her weighing the costs and benefits of continuing to argue with him. She takes after Lestat in her resistance to being told what to do, but he’s about at his limit for parenting their “vampire” for the day. Finally, he can hear in her mind that she decides that dying on this particular hill might endanger her promised trip to buy a new hat tomorrow, and with a final hiss and flip of her cape, she’s gone, the sounds of her scrambling up on their bed carrying to him. She has a step-stool to make it easier, the frame too high for her to climb up easily on her own. 

Unfortunately, he was informed last night that vampires don’t use step-stools. 

“It’s truly astonishing, mon cher,” Lestat observes from inside his coffin, “that in a world of possible children, you managed to find the strangest one on your first try.” 

Louis slips out of his own robe and throws it right at his face. 

*

Louis has never read Dracula, but he learns that at some point in the novel, the vampire crawls around on the outside of the castle like a lizard. 

He learns this when his seven year old manages to climb the wall of the townhouse using the rain gutter and get nearly to the roof before he and Lestat come outside just in time to see her lose her grip and fall, right towards the unforgiving pavement below. 

Even after Lestat moves inhumanly fast to catch her, dropping to his knees with her in his arms to absorb the momentum without hurting her, Louis still can’t manage to breathe. 

He has one hand pressed to his chest and one pressed to the wall, struggling to remain standing when his heart feels like it’s about to pound out of his chest and his lungs haven’t remembered how to work again. He wonders in a distant, dizzy sort of way if vampires can have heart attacks. He thinks he might be either way. He can see it too clearly, the way Claudia’s little body would look on the ground, her head split open, slowly surrounded by a halo of blood, her limbs twisted wrong. 

He was the first one to see Paul, after all. 

“-OF ALL OF THE FOOLISH DECISIONS. WE HAVE NOT RAISED YOU TO-” 

He tunes in as Lestat is reaching the crescendo of his angry yelling, Claudia still in his grip, held so tightly Louis thinks she’ll have bruises. Lestat is terrified. He can see it. He can feel it. The same fear is writhing within him, growing in intensity through his bond with Lestat, resonating between the two of them like a tuning fork. He’s tempted to join him, to blister their daughter’s ears until some sense can get through. 

But one look at Claudia’s terrified little face stops him short. 

“Lestat,” he says, quietly but firmly. “Stop.” 

Lestat looks up, chest heaving, eyes fierce. 

“She almost broke her foolish little neck,” Lestat snarls, and Claudia whimpers. The noise goes unheeded. “There are things I cannot fix, Louis, things that she can do to herself that would-” 

“Lestat,” he says, sharper. “You’re scaring her.” 

“Good,” Lestat all but hisses, and Louis knows that the anger is coming from fear, from the same after-images on display in his own head, her limbs twisted, her skull cracked open like an egg, those sparkling eyes dull and lifeless, unblinking. He can see it so clearly that he feels sick with it, so clearly that he knows he’ll be seeing it in his nightmares. “She should be scared. Of all of the reckless, FOOLISH-”

Louis uses the distraction of the speech he’s ramping up to to snatch Claudia out of his arms, curling her up against him. She goes easily, clinging to him and trembling. Bold enough to try scaling the walls like a spider or not, she’s a little girl, and Lestat’s volume and intensity are scaring her, compounding her fear from her fall. 

It gives Louis the focus he needs to keep from doing the same. 

“Talk a walk,” he tells Lestat, as evenly as he can. “Come back when you’re ready to be a parent.” 

It’s unfair, he knows that, a cheapshot. As much as he resisted her at first, he knows Lestat has tried to be a good father, even though Louis can gather from the clumsiness of his attempts at times that he’s working without the advantage of a good model to copy. He also knows this isn’t a moment in which anyone would shine, even if they came from the most perfect family on earth. Claudia scared them both just now, and he understands the anger beneath the fear, the easier emotion to chase like a hound after a rabbit. 

But Claudia’s shaking gives him enough distance to leash his baser instincts, her little heart pounding in her chest. Recovering from the initial shock of it, the knowledge of how badly she almost just hurt herself has set in, and it isn’t helped by one of her parents going after her and another going after the other for going after her. She’s scared, and she’s young, and the only thing that’s going to sink in right now is more fear. 

He and Lestat maintain eye contact for a long, tense moment, even as he rocks gently from side to side and pats Claudia’s back, leaning his head down just enough to whisper soothing bits of nonsense in her ear. In the end, it’s a quiet whimper from her that breaks Lestat’s intensity, sending him spinning on his heel and stalking away into the night. 

“I’m sorry,” Claudia says, her shuddering growing more intense after picking up on so much tension between them. 

“You’re alright,” he says softly, turning to take her inside. 

*

When he’s gotten her calm, he makes sure to tell Claudia that she is never to try scaling walls again–and really, how would he have known it would one day be something he would have to tell his child–vampire or not, but the experience seems to have been its own lesson in what happens when little girls do things they know they shouldn’t. Resilient as she is, she still sticks close for the rest of the night, nodding off against him while he reads from her new book to her. Eventually, he migrates up to his and Lestat’s room with some vague plan of putting her down for the night, though he’s still there when Lestat does finally return, still holding her. 

“There is meat in the basement,” Lestat says with no preamble when he enters, not quite looking at Louis. He pauses, just briefly, as he starts to unbutton his suit. “He had plans to set fire to the home of a woman who rejected his advances.” Louis knows it’s an alternative to an apology, that little detail, Lestat taking the time to find him someone morally objectionable to eat. 

“She thought you would still be mad at her,” Louis says, but gently. 

“I am,” Lestat says shortly. “We have not raised her to be a fool who gets herself killed doing something so asinine.” 

“That’s not what she got out of it,” Louis persists. “All she got out of it is that she was scared, and then you yelled at her.”

Lestat doesn’t grace him with a response, just tosses his jacket into the corner opposite the laundry basket in what Louis knows is a deliberate move meant to get under his skin. He ignores it. 

“What would your father have done?” He asks, still tracing idle shapes along the delicate column of Claudia’s spine. She’s out cold against him, floppy as a ragdoll, and he’s loath to surrender the pleasant, grounding warmth of her in his arms. 

Lestat pauses in his motions, a button on his shirt still between his fingertips. 

“Far worse than harsh words,” he says quietly. 

“And do you want the same for Claudia?” Louis asks softly. “You want her to think about you the way you do your father?” 

He sees Lestat’s jaw clench, and he knows the answer is absolutely no. 

“We only get one chance with her,” he continues, needing them to be on the same page. “What we do now is what turns her into the person she’ll be one day. You want her to be a grown woman thinking it’s alright for people to yell at her?” 

“When she’s being foolish? Yes,” Lestat says, all stubbornness. “You do not help her by coddling her.” 

“It ain’t coddling her to not-” 

“-soft-handed daddy giving her ideas about-” 

“-treat her right, or she won’t-” 

“-a spoiled brat who doesn’t know how to-” 

“-how she’ll expect people to-”

A quiet noise from Claudia stops them at once, though she just shifts a little in her sleep and settles again with a sigh. When Louis looks back to Lestat, he finds him watching Claudia, expression softer. He approaches slowly, as if expecting to be shooed away, but when Louis doesn’t comment, he sinks to his knees beside the bed, reaching out gently to hold Claudia’s little hand, rubbing a thumb across her tiny knuckles. When he speaks, he remains looking at her. 

“She terrifies me, this little thing you brought into our lives,” he says, with the cadence of a confession. “She is too fragile to hold as much of my heart as she does, Louis. Si elle nous quitte, elle l'emportera avec elle. Je ne sais pas comment supporter ça.” 

It’s a more honest confession than he’s ever gotten out of the quiet safety of one of their coffins, the dark a potent field in which to sow secrets that feel too heavy in light. 

“I know,” he says softly, and Lestat finally looks to him. Louis smiles faintly. “I know you like calling me broody,” he makes a face briefly to indicate that he still doesn’t care for it, “but sometimes it’s all I can think about, all of the things that could go wrong, all of the ways she could be taken from us.” 

“Made worse when she quite literally attempts to fling herself from this mortal coil,” Lestat says dryly. He looks to Louis again, raising an eyebrow. “Is this the portion of the narrative in which you instill in me an important life lesson about treasuring fragile things and speaking softly and the delicate beauty of daisy petals and all other manner of nonsensical things poets like to say about children?” 

Louis risks jostling Claudia enough to kick at Lestat’s shoulder, safe from retribution with her in his arms. Lestat scowls at him but doesn’t leave, still holding Claudia’s hand. 

“She’s our only one,” Louis says, and Lestat’s annoyance decreases, expression going more sincere. It’s true, after all. Even without a discussion, Louis knows that Lestat won’t agree to a second. Claudia was a miracle he slipped in before Lestat could stop him. 

Besides, he thinks a little ruefully, Claudia doesn’t have the temper of a child who would do well with siblings. 

“What we do with her matters,” Louis continues. “We don’t get to start all over if we don’t do it right.” 

“And I, brutish Lestat, am ruining your lofty ideals of rearing the perfect child?” 

Louis ignores the acid in the question. 

“No,” he says, and he can see he’s surprised Lestat by not rising to the bait. “I’ve made so many mistakes with her it’ll be a miracle if she’s even half-functional. I’m just saying it matters, what we do, and we gotta act like we know it.” 

“Is this related to your stark refusal of hitting as a correctional measure?” Lestat asks lightly. 

“Yes,” he answers honestly. “You weren’t there. She was scared of me, Lestat. Scared of what I could do. I don’t want that. I don’t want my daughter afraid I’ll hurt her when I’m mad.” 

“Or shout when you’re angry?” Lestat asks lightly, but Louis can see he’s not in a mood to fight about it. He leans forward and kisses him, lightly, squishing Claudia a bit in the process but not waking her. 

“I get it,” Louis says gently. “She scared the hell out of me, too, but she’s young. She’s gonna make mistakes, and if she thinks she can’t tell us about ‘em, it’s just going to make her try to hide things she shouldn't.” 

When Lestat looks to him, Louis knows he’s thinking of Louis’s own secrecy from his family, something Lestat had seen in him at once. He doesn’t want that for his daughter, doesn’t want her to feel like she has to hide herself from them for fear of what they’ll think or say. If she’s in trouble, if she’s confused, if she thinks she’s a vampire and should be able to scale buildings like a spider, he wants her to know she can come to them. 

(Hopefully early enough to talk her out of the “trying to climb the outside of the house” things.)

“Well,” Lestat says briskly, releasing Claudia’s hand and standing. “That’s that settled, then. Should we address the vampirism next?” 

Louis drops his head back and groans. 

*

Even Lestat has had to admit that their daughter can’t attend business meetings for as long as she refuses to change out of her costume or give up her act. He might take no small measure of delight in discomfiting their business partners with Claudia watching everything from her perch on his lap, but there’s a difference between a well-dressed and well-behaved little girl watching–mostly–quietly and a child who insists that she’s a vampire and wears a costume. 

There’s a line between bemusing and irritating, and Louis is well-aware that Claudia’s vampirism is currently trampling all over it. 

He hadn’t expected how much he would dislike it, having to go to meetings alone while Lestat stays with her, the way it would feel to go back to facing stupid, ignorant people without someone beside him who he knows is on his side. He’s gotten too used to it, he knows, the equality he enjoys within their home, his partner’s support. Lestat might still slip up at times, but Louis knows that he’s considered them equals from the start. Whether it’s being from France or just being Lestat, he still can’t quite tell, but he’s grown comfortable in the give and take of power between them, the way he knows they’re equal and the way he knows they both know that they’re equal. 

The same can’t be said once Louis sets foot outside of the refuge of the townhouse. 

Still, as much as Lestat might insist that they can leave their finances to well-appointed agents, Louis doesn’t like leaving his livelihood in someone else’s hands. He doesn’t trust anyone else to have their best interests in mind, not in the way he does. They might be rich beyond all imagining now, but he’s all too aware that money can come and go. He already clawed his family back from ruin once. He has no wish to do it a second time by getting lazy. 

Even if it means leaving Lestat behind to play nanny. 

“Mrs. Perrier already dropped food off,” he tells him tonight. With their child still haunting the house as a vampire–including hiding behind the curtains to jump out and scare people with demands for their blood–he’s started taking meetings elsewhere. “Claudia alr-” 

“Count Claudia!” Comes the interjection from their little eavesdropper who is meant to be working on her penmanship and not chiming into their conversation. 

Louis takes a deep breath, counts to three, and begs himself to remain patient. 

“Claudia-” 

“Count Claudia!” 

“-already had a sandwich earlier, but there’s soup that can go on the stove if she’s hungry again. You remember how the stove works?” 

Lestat looks far too insulted at the question for a man who has absolutely started a kitchen fire in their home before. 

Twice. 

“I will manage to feed the child, I assure you. I haven’t starved her yet.” Lestat nudges him towards the door. “Claudia-” 

“Count Claudia!” 

“-and I will have a perfectly fine evening.” 

Lestat looks far too amused at Claudia’s antics, and Louis withholds a goodbye kiss as a disciplinary measure. He goes to the other room to tell Claudia goodbye, bending to kiss her head. She ducks him, pulling her cape in front of her face. 

“Vampires don’t kiss,” she garbles at him. 

Louis considers arguing. 

And then he pats her on the head and walks away. 

*

For the sake of their privacy, they don’t spend a lot of time socializing with the “right” kind of society, but it’s important to him that Claudia doesn’t grow up entirely feral. The hours they keep make it hard to plan any kind of outing with most families with children Claudia’s age, but there’s a few who work in businesses with later hours or who have enough of a vested interest in working with him and Lestat that they’ll make time for their daughters to play with Claudia. It usually works out fairly well. After so much time spent alone or with them, Claudia had been a bit shy at first around other children, but she’s largely adjusted, even having a couple join her and Miss Babin on their morning walks now and then. 

And then comes the evening she bites Samantha Henley hard enough to leave teeth marks indented into her skin. 

He’s immediately mortified when he realizes what the screaming is about, and he picks Claudia up at once and makes her apologize. From her perch on her mother’s hip, Samantha doesn’t accept it, and while Mrs. Henley gives him a polite, tight-lipped smile, Louis can hear in her mind that this is almost certainly the last time they see the Henleys at any event they’re at. Apologies given, he excuses them, Claudia remaining stony in her silence until they’re home. Lestat lifts his eyebrows at their unexpected entrance from his place at the piano, but when he sees Louis’s expression, his own turns more serious. 

“She just bit Samantha Henley,” he tells Lestat without preamble, putting Claudia down. 

“Vampires bite!” She declares defiantly, tilting her little chin up, the very picture of stubbornness. 

“She’s not incorrect,” Lestat says under his breath. 

Louis shoots him a dirty look. 

“We do not bite,” Louis says, deliberately not looking at Lestat when he says it, not trusting what he’ll see on his face. “That is not acceptable, Claudia. You know better.” 

Claudia snaps her teeth at him. 

“Go to your room,” Louis says at once. “Right now, Claudia.” 

“I don’t-” She starts, but Lestat rises, standing by Louis in a show of solidarity. 

“Now, Claudia,” Lestat says, just as firmly. 

Under the force of both of them, Claudia’s defiance collapses, her eyes filling before she spins on her heel and darts away. 

*

Even knowing it makes him hopelessly soft, Louis does feel slightly guilty when Claudia’s two weeks of punishment are up. She’s had no treats, no shopping trips, and no playdates, and it’s dimmed her spirit a good bit, leaving her holed up in her room with the sympathetic company of Monsieur Minou for most of it. She’s been quiet, accepting her punishment stoically, and it’s upset the entire balance of their household. Placid isn’t something that suits her. They’d decided on the punishment when Louis was still irritated with her, and he hadn’t wanted to backtrack after, but it’s a relief when he can start doing things she’ll enjoy with her again. 

Thus the visit to the water to let her catch fireflies. 

She was clearly determined to be in a bad mood at the start, sitting sullenly and not even touching the jar she always uses to catch them. After a bit, though, the excitement had worn her down, and soon she’s back to herself. Louis watches her, content, rowing them in slow circles.

He’s so content, in fact, that he doesn’t see it coming when she hits him with a roundhouse in the conversation. 

“I saw you and Uncle Les kissing,” Claudia says with no lead-up, still tracking a firefly and not looking at him. 

Louis’s mind goes blank for a moment. 

“I was sneaking,” Claudia explains without a single trace of shame, looking back to him. “I sneaked real good, and I saw you and Uncle Les kissing like how Dot’s mama and daddy kiss.” 

Louis’s knee jerk response is to tell her she’s wrong, a lifetime of knowing about the consequences of that kind of behavior rearing its head. It’s safer to tell her she misunderstood, to make her think there’s no way she saw what she did. 

But lying to her face feels wrong, especially when she’s looking at him with so much trust. 

“You can’t tell anybody about that,” he tells her instead of responding to the observation itself. “Other people won’t understand, and it’d get me and your uncle in a lot of trouble. It has to be a secret, alright?” 

“Do you and Uncle Les love each other like mamas and daddies love each other?” Claudia asks, no trace of guile in the question. She’s earnest in her questioning, he knows, ever his curious girl. She doesn’t know how thorny the ground she’s treading around is. All she knows is that something has happened that she doesn’t understand and now she wants an answer. 

Louis tries to think of a good one to give her. 

“How does it work?” She continues without waiting for him to respond. “Two men loving each other like mamas and daddies do?” 

Jesus, what a question to have to tackle, especially alone and with no idea it was coming. 

“It works…like love?” He says, resisting the urge to cringe at himself. Claudia’s face crinkles with a lack of satisfaction of her curiosity. “It’s the same thing, just not between a man and a woman. That happens sometimes, with men and men or women and women. But other people don’t like that it happens, which is why it has to be a secret.” 

“Aunt Grace’s husband says you two are living in sin,” Claudia reports, and Louis presses his lips together for a moment. 

“And when did he say that?” He asks, as evenly as he can. She’s only met the man once, and Louis hadn’t heard him say anything. 

“When you were getting my jacket,” she says, pausing to try and grab another firefly. She fails, and Louis has to grab her by the back of her dress to keep her from going overboard when her eagerness beats her good sense and makes her try to lunge for it. When he has her settled in her seat again, she continues. “Aunt Grace said, ‘Don’t start’ and her husband said, ‘They’re living in sin, Grace. Am I just supposed to ignore that?’ and then I tried to listen more, but Aunt Grace saw me and made him hush.” 

“Your Aunt Grace’s husband says things he shouldn’t, sometimes,” he says, forcing himself to remain calm, not to row this boat to shore, drop Claudia off with Lestat, and go wring the man’s hateful neck for spreading his poison around Louis’s child. He’d known from the man’s mind–the only safe one to read, he knows, all too aware that reading anything hateful in Grace’s would break his heart in a way he doesn’t know if he can heal from–that he’d been tempted to say something all night, make a scene, rebuke the two sinful devils sitting at his table. The latter had made Louis darkly amused. 

As if it wasn’t the table he goddamn well paid for along with every other lick of furniture in that house. 

“Samantha said her mama said you and Uncle Les are bad,” Claudia says. “That’s why I bit her. She said you and Uncle Les are bad because we don’t live like good people.” 

Louis hasn’t managed to find a response to that before she continues, swinging into yet another topic change. 

“Ms. Clancy at the flower shop said vampires are sins,” Claudia says. “Miss Babin had her Dracula book with her when were walking, and Ms. Clancy saw it, and she told Miss Babin she was…suldying?”

“Sullying,” Louis offers on reflex. 

“Sullying,” Claudia says, sounding out the word like she’s trying to remember it, “her soul with demon talk and sinfulness ‘cause vampires are devils.” 

How strange, Louis thinks, that his daughter should be able to so deftly break his heart with no effort. He opens his mouth, not even sure what he’s going to say, but Claudia continues once more before he can, little chin tilting up, eyes shining with determination. 

“That’s why I’m Count Claudia now,” she says decisively. “I don’t wanna kiss boys ‘cause they’re icky, but if I’m a vampire, then I’m doing sins, too. That way we can all do sins together. ‘Cause we’re a family, and people who do sins can’t go to heaven, and I don’t wanna go to heaven if you and Uncle Les ain’t there.” 

Louis doesn’t know if he’s ever felt so much love at one time before, swelling like a balloon in his chest until it seems like a miracle he doesn’t explode with the force of it. His beautiful, funny, wonderful little girl, thinking she’s damning her own soul so they can all be even. His eyes sting something awful, and he scoops Claudia into a hug as much because he can’t not as to hide his bloody tears from her. She goes easily after a surprised squeak rather like a mouse, curling up against him and nuzzling her head in against his chest. He squeezes her as tight as he can without risking hurting her, bowing his head until she’s enclosed within the protective cage of his body. She’s too precious, he knows, too fragile and beautiful to be left undefended. In this moment, he needs to surround her, needs to enclose her where nothing can hurt her. 

“Are you sad?” She asks innocently, and when she tries to tilt her head up to look at him, he gently presses it back down, needing to buy a little more time until he can get hold of himself. 

“No, baby,” he says, voice rough. “I’m happy. Real happy.” 

“Being happy makes you cry?” Claudia asks, and he can hear her doubt. It makes him laugh, wetly. 

“Sometimes,” he says. “When you get real, real happy, sometimes it fills you up too much, and some of it comes out as tears.” 

“Oh,” Claudia says. “That’s okay, then.” 

She settles back against him, content to snuggle close. He can hear in her mind how much she’s trying to push all her love into him to try and make him feel better, how earnestly she means it, how deep her emotions run, how much she’s his as he’s hers. He lets out a startled laugh when he realizes she’s trying to rub his back the way he does hers when she’s upset, and the realization does nothing for his efforts to stop crying, so overwhelmed for his beautiful little spark. 

His Claudia. 

*

By the time Lestat returns that night–a scant half-hour before dawn–Louis is too worn out to have the conversation they need to have. Instead he kisses him hello, picks up the sleeping Claudia from her place beside him on the bed, and settles down with her in his coffin. Lestat notices. 

“You’re not letting her sleep in our room?” He asks. “I’d thought you were set on that.” 

“Not tonight,” Louis says, tucking Claudia in comfortably beside him. 

“Did something happen?” Lestat asks, concerned at once, and Louis feels a thrum of warmth for him. “Is she well?” 

“She’s fine,” he says. “It was just a long night. I want her close.” 

He can see that Lestat doesn’t fully believe him, but he’s also stuck with having to believe him since Claudia isn’t awake to have her mind read. After a moment, he nods, clearly not happy but choosing to listen. 

“Sweet dreams, mon cher,” he says. 

Louis smiles, reaching for the lid of his coffin. 

“Night.”

*

After finally signing the last contract the next night, sending it off so that people who don’t keep vampiric hours will have it before they fall asleep, he goes to find his family. He follows the soothing rumble of Lestat’s voice all the way to Claudia’s room, where he finds them curled up on her bed together, Claudia tucked into the circle of Lestat’s right arm as he holds a book in front of them, reading, Claudia’s little face solemn and attentive. 

“-and in spring, when she would return to her mother from the Underworl-” Lestat notices him in the doorway, tilting his head in a question, and when Louis nods, he closes the book, ignoring Claudia’s little noise of protest. 

They’d already discussed how they wanted to handle this earlier, and Louis joins them, slipping his shoes off and climbing onto Claudia’s bed to sit against the footboard. He lets Lestat do most of the work during the conversation, the other man always more eloquent. 

And less easily flustered. 

“But why?” Claudia asks after they both reiterate the need to never tell anyone about them being together, brows furrowing. “You just said it’s not a sin to love somebody. Why do people get mad about it then?” 

He and Lestat exchange a quick glance, and Lestat takes over again. 

“Do you remember the man in the bookstore when we bought this?” Lestat asks, lifting the book of mythology he was reading her. “How angry he was?” 

“Yeah?” Claudia asks, frowning. “He said that God would be mad about it ‘cause it was all devil stuff and lies.” 

“For some people, love is like that,” Lestat explains, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear affectionately. “When they don’t understand something, they want to get rid of it. It’s always very stupid people-” 

Louis clears his throat, and Lestat ends that line of thought right there. 

“-but people who hate something can be dangerous.” 

“It don’t make it wrong,” Louis says, and Claudia looks to him. “It just means it’s private. Like…” He struggles to think of a comparison. “Like how we wear pajamas at home but not outside.” 

Lestat is visibly amused at his floundering for an analogy. Louis ignores him. 

“Love’s like…pajamas?” Claudia asks, tilting her head. 

“It’s about time and place, cherie,” Lestat says, sparing Louis from digging himself deeper. “We wear pajamas around our family but not anyone else. It’s the same for how your daddy and I are together. It’s not wrong. It’s just private.” 

“Oh,” Claudia says, apparently appeased. “Okay then.” 

Louis is thrown by how easy her acceptance happens, but Claudia just snuggles in against Lestat again, nudging at the book he’s still holding. 

“Can we go back to reading, please?” She asks, and Lestat looks to him with a question in his expression. 

Louis smiles slightly, moving to join them against the headboard, Claudia between them. If she’s content with the answer, then he’ll let sleeping dogs lie. Claudia wiggles a bit, getting comfortable, and Louis lets her settle before he leans in, resting his arm along the headboard to go around Lestat’s shoulders. Lestat smiles and dares to lean in to kiss his cheek over Claudia’s head. Claudia doesn’t even bother looking up, already focused on the book, visibly impatient to resume the story. 

“D’accord,” Lestat says briskly, flipping it open. “Now let us see where we left off with dear Persephone.” 

*

Their household settles unexpectedly easily in the weeks after. To his surprise, Claudia proves quite discrete. Louis keeps a close eye–and ear–on her out in public at first, but even when the subject of families and love comes up, she doesn’t say anything. He reads in her mind that she thinks about her own family each time, but she seems to have taken their talk to heart. They hadn’t told her the full dangers, not wanting to scare her, but it seems to have been enough. 

And Louis finds he enjoys it, no longer having to watch himself so closely in his own home. 

He’s still not one for excessive physical affection in front of witnesses, but he no longer polices himself or Lestat so stringently. They’re still chaste, but they’ll embrace or touch each other’s shoulders or sit with an arm around the other. If anything, Claudia seems pleased by it, always eager to jump in the middle and soak in their affection like a little flower through sheer proximity. Tonight they’d swung her between them on the walk to a festival, though they’d stopped when they turned onto streets with witnesses, Louis picking her up to keep her from being trampled or separated from them in the crowd. 

It’s a little late for a child of Claudia’s age to be out–and strange for any child to be wearing a cape the way she is–but New Orleans is a town made for nightlife and used to strangeness, so they don’t attract too many glances, the crowd also providing Lestat an excuse to stick closer than he normally can in public. He and Louis catch each other’s eyes from time to time, and they laugh when Claudia catches a wink between them and tries to replicate it. 

Always usually a good eater, Claudia samples from any food booth that catches her interest, and the distraction means Louis gets away with only having to take a couple of bites when they’re offered, tossing the rest when she’s distracted. Count Claudia appears to be reconsidering her stance on human food in the face of so much on offer, and he’s enjoying getting her to eat without having to hear about how she’ll perish if she doesn’t eat blood and how oatmeal is poison to vampires. He grins at Lestat’s misfortune when he’s pressed into service with a piece of taffy Claudia offers him, stuck chewing the equivalent of paste until it’s finally been worked enough to swallow. 

Lestat steers them away from the food after that. 

They buy a few little trinkets from some vendors, including a pair of screw-back earrings for Claudia that Louis knows are almost certainly going to be lost immediately but that will hopefully delay her pestering them about getting her ears pierced for a while longer. Pierced ears still raise eyebrows in polite society, especially for a girl her age, but because of the hours they keep and the people who tend to be out during those hours, she’s seen a few women with pierced ears and decided she wants hers done, too. Louis is hoping he can keep her distracted long enough for her to give up. 

He’s not optimistic, not with a child as willful as her, but he’s trying to be. 

Lestat wanders off to follow someone with a look in his eye that tells Louis the festival will soon be down one participant, and he distracts Claudia by letting her try to play a game at a prize booth. He ends up spending far more than any of the toys are truly worth letting her try to get a ball in one of the holes on the other side of the booth, but Claudia enjoys the challenge, so he sits back and lets her try, though he gathers from the angle of the targets that it’s meant to be impossible. He’s spent about three times what the pink elephant she’s been eyeing is worth by the time Lestat returns, and she’s started to get frustrated. 

“Uncle Les,” she says, turning to him and holding out one of her two remaining balls from this round. “Can you help me?” 

Louis feels vaguely insulted at not being asked first. 

“Of course, ma petite,” Lestat says warmly. 

Louis gives him a look when he freezes time–including Claudia–long enough to hop gracefully over the counter of the booth, but Lestat gives him an innocent look, snapping a piece of what seems to be fishing line from over the hole of the target and then returning. 

“I’m pretty sure that’s cheating,” Louis observes dryly, and Lestat shrugs, hopping back over the counter. 

“If it is, mon cher, they started it. I’m simply evening the score.” He resumes time and aims. 

The ball goes in neatly. 

Claudia cheers loud enough to make a few bystanders jump and then turns to the gobsmacked booth attendant. 

“I want the elephant, please!” She asks, almost vibrating in place with excitement. Lestat gives her an approving look for her manners. 

And then he gives the attendant a look that has the man scrambling to hand the elephant over. 

*

“Et comment appelleras-tu Monsieur Éléphant?” Lestat asks on the walk home, Claudia back in Louis’s arms, worn out from the fun and close to falling asleep. Her cape has been removed after she got caught on the edge of a fence and almost strangled by it, the fabric now folded over Lestat’s arm for safe keeping despite Louis’s vague hopes that it could be lost. 

“Elle n'est pas un monsieur,” Claudia says, pausing to yawn and almost hitting Louis in the face with her new toy when she moves her hands to rub her eyes. “C’est une fille.” 

Lestat bows playfully. 

“Désolé,” he says with faux-sincerity. “And what is the name of your lovely young lady elephant?” 

It takes Claudia a moment to respond, more asleep than not. Finally, though, she exhales the word, inaudible to ears that don’t belong to vampires, her eyes closing as she snuggles down against Louis’s shoulder for a nap on the way home. 

“Persephone.” 

*

“I don’t think I wanna be a vampire anymore,” Claudia says that morning when he’s tucking her into bed, Persephone snuggled in one arm. She’s looking at her cape draped over the chair in the room, so he has time to control his expression and resolutely not think about how that sentiment would not be a good one to hear when she’s older, as much as it’s a relief to hear now. 

“Oh?” He asks, sitting down beside her. “And why’s that?” 

“It’s kinda boring,” she says thoughtfully. “All vampires do is eat people and wear capes and have sharp teeth. They can’t even read books or anything.” 

Thinking of the pile of books he’s working his way through downstairs, he can’t help but smile, amused. 

“They could,” he says. “Seems to me a vampire could do just about anything a human can.” This is toeing the line of a risk he shouldn’t take, he knows, but he can’t resist. Even if she’s absolutely too young to know the details, he doesn’t want her to grow up thinking about vampires negatively. 

Not when he needs her to accept the gift one day or else kill him with the pain of eventually losing her. 

“Mm,” Claudia says thoughtfully, barely resisting a yawn, even as Louis can see her eyelids growing heavy. 

“So what’ll you be instead?” He asks her softly, more to talk her to sleep than anything else. “Mermaid? Centaur?” He sorts through his memories, trying to come up with more, but mythology and fairy tales have always been Lestat’s purview more than his. 

“Mm-mm,” Claudia says, shaking her head, eyes closed. “Just Claudia.” 

Louis smiles, reaching out to touch her soft cheek. 

“I think that’s the best thing of all,” he says softly. 

He waits to leave her until she’s all the way under, still smiling. He stands carefully, tugging the blanket up over her and then looking to reassure himself that he’s secured the lock on the bedroom suite. When that’s done, he bends down, pressing a gentle kiss to her head before rising and making his way to his coffin. 

Chapter Text

Stalks In Shadows–called Shadow by his littermates and mother, who refuse to acknowledge his proper title–is among the fiercest toms on the streets of Light City, defending his territory ruthlessly but fairly. He will not tolerate other toms attempting to encroach on his home, but he allows queens and kittens safe passage as is right and proper for a cat of his power and breeding, a descendent of Fights With Dogs, who established their clouder in Light City many generations ago, winning the territory from a pack of dogs who learned a lesson in challenging her power. 

He can feel his ancestors hissing with shame on the day he is captured by The Eater. 

He fights as fiercely as he can, biting and clawing and kicking, but The Eater is notorious among the cats of Light City for his strength, even stronger than other half-legs. He is one of the two who smell different from other half-legs in Light City, but he is the only one who preys on them. The other strange half-legs at least has the courtesy to pick his prey from among his own kind instead of laying waste to the cats and dogs and rats at random. 

Shadow is going to lose this fight. He knows this. There is not a cat yet who has escaped The Eater after he has spotted them. But still he must fight, must maintain his dignity until-

The Eater drops him. 

Shadow is stunned as he lands in strange, small limbs, and it takes him a moment to register that he is being held by the half-legs kitten who is in the same clouder as The Eater. 

His immediate urge is to bite her and escape. She is a kitten, after all, and though he is a monster, if The Eater is worth anything at all, he would focus first on seeing to his kitten before pursuing vengeance. It could buy Shadow time to-

The kitten is nuzzling him. 

Shadow sniffs at her, wondering if this is a trick, but the kitten simply continues nuzzling him with open, easy affection, as if they have grown up together and this is not their first meeting. Her front legs are small and not quite large enough to hold him in the way an adult half-legs can, but he can tell she’s putting effort into being as careful as she can. He purrs in appreciation, nuzzling her back. 

From a glance at The Eater, Shadow gathers that the kitten’s interest has spared him this day.

He watches him with no small amount of smug satisfaction as the kitten carries him away. 

*

Adjusting to Kept life is a bit of a struggle, even when he’s finally convinced the kitten to stop trying to put coverings on him like her toys wear. 

After a life on the streets, Shadow is used to his routines of patrolling and fighting and hunting. It feels wrong, somehow, this easy life of a territory defended by walls and The Eater’s appetite. He barely manages to prove himself a capable hunter with The Eater around, though from the noises the kitten makes when he attempts to bring her a dead mouse as a present–even leaving it right on her bed for her convenience–he gathers that his hunting is not welcome anyway. 

“Cats do that,” The Eater says as he blatantly steals Shadow’s present for the kitten, picking it up by the tail as she stands on the other side of the room with Shadow in her front legs like one of her large soft toys that she likes curling up with when she’s napping. 

Shadow hisses at the audacity of the theft, and The Eater rolls his eyes, though his tone is still gentle when he talks to the kitten. 

“He’s gonna keep doing it,” The Eater says, and Shadow can gather from the tone that he’s up to something. “If you don’t want him bringing things in here, we’ll have to get rid of-” 

“No!” The kitten says, holding Shadow a little too tightly until he wriggles to get her to stop, careful not to scratch her. “He won’t do it again. Right, Monsieur Minou?” 

The Eater looks doubtful of whatever the kitten has told him as he turns to make off with Shadow’s present, but he leaves, which is always a joy. 

When the kitten puts him down, Shadow chases him enough to get one bite to his ankle before he retreats back to the safety of the kitten’s presence, hissing smugly when The Eater turns to glare at him but is unable to seek parity. 

Perhaps there are some advantages to being Kept.

*

Even if she is not his by blood, Shadow’s new kitten does her lineage proud. He quickly grants her the name Pounces Fiercely for her cleverness and agility in stalking the other two who share their residence. To him, she is merely Pounce, but he is insistent on her full title for any creatures who pass by their territory, including his sister Bird Snatcher, called Birdie by her family. She is his kitten, after all, a credit to his name, and courtesies must be maintained. 

“She is a half-legs,” Birdie complains when she first visits after hearing rumors that he has chosen a life indoors as a Kept. “And her teeth are flat. What does it matter if she can pounce so very well if she can only do it with two? And if she cannot even kill when she bites?” 

“She bites as fiercely as any of us,” he tells his sister, batting at her head for the disrespect, as if he is not her senior by several of their littermates. “Just yesterday she drew blood on another half-legs kitten.” The Eater was not so pleased with Pounce’s fierceness in defending her toys, but Shadow had made sure to groom her with extra affection to convey his pride. 

And he had hissed at The Eater extra fiercely for his audacity in scolding Pounce for her excellent work 

Birdie thinks it arrogance on his part, but she refers to Pounce by her proper title from then onwards. 

*

Shadow is wary of the other strange half-legs who shares his and Pounce’s territory at first. Even if he doesn’t share The Eater’s habits openly, Shadow is still careful to avoid him if he doesn’t have the protection of Pounce’s presence. With time, though, he relaxes. From the information he gathered during the times Pounce was holed up with the two bigger half-legs for sleeping in their strange room of boxes, no one seems to recall the other half-legs ever eating anything other than other half-legs. 

He also has excellent claws for offering scratches to Shadow’s chin and cheeks, which makes it easy to decide on his name when Shadow has decided he’s earned such a thing. 

“You’re quite the clever beast,” Scratches Well says, demonstrating his well-earned title with some careful attention to the fur around Shadow’s ears in a short break from the noise box he paws at to cause the sound that makes Pounce twirl around the room like she’s chasing something invisible. Shadow doesn't understand the appeal, but he’ll usually indulge her in a few rounds of chase. Today, though, she is with The Eater venturing out from their territory, and it is simply him and the other strange half-legs to keep an eye on things. Shadow purrs to show Scratch his pleasure. For her many virtues, Pounce’s claws are too dull to hit the spot in quite this way–one of The Eater’s worst offenses is when he wrangles her to trim her claws with a tiny metal device that clips right through them, denying her a weapon, the wretch–and Shadow would never let The Eater close enough to try. “I must give you credit for that, little beast. You have no idea how close you came to departing this mortal coil, only to receive a stay of execution by appealing to the lady of the house. Well done.” 

Scratch sounds amused, so Shadow lets him talk as much as he wants. 

So long as he keeps the scratches coming, he can say whatever half-legs things he wants. 

*

For his many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many faults and crimes, Shadow must allow that The Eater is a doting parent to Pounce. 

Well, at least to the best of his limited ability. 

Shadow took an unexpected journey from the house today with Pounce and her half-legs minder who takes her for a walk when the sun comes up. Pounce recently received a smaller version of one of the strange wheeled boxes that half-legs use for transporting their fresh kittens around, and to Shadow’s initial chagrin, she’s taken great delight in rolling him around in it. He’d resisted at first, but she had persuaded him to give it a shot with a few nibbles of cheese, and he’s found it’s not so bad, Pounce rolling him around. 

Even if he’s always a little wary of leaving The Eater with access to Pounce’s room without Shadow’s supervision to make sure he doesn’t ruin anything. 

When Pounce was busy playing with the half-legs kittens from other clouders, Shadow had waited quite contently with Watcher of Pounce. He hasn’t spent much time with Watcher, but he can tell she has a good mind, and if she can’t quite meet Scratch’s skill, she is still willing to pet his head, which is pleasant enough. Today, though, he had been busily grooming himself when there was a cry of alarm, and he had looked up to see Pounce running back to Watcher, who had stood when she heard one of the other kittens call out. 

The sight of Pounce’s eyes watering–something he knows by now from many seasons of being Kept means that Pounce is upset–had his hackles raised at once, but Pounce hadn’t answered any questions from Watcher. Another larger half-legs had come up to them with her own eye-leaking kitten in tow, but he had gathered from Pounce’s body language that this kitten was not a good kitten, and so he had hissed to let them know their presence wasn’t welcome. 

The way they had ignored him had been an insult that made it clear that Pounce’s judgement was entirely sound in not liking them. 

“-insist that she apologize to my daughter,” the larger half-legs said, puffed up like an angry bird. 

“I’m not sorry!” Pounce had exclaimed, nearly a hiss of her own. 

Shadow had given her an approving headbutt for her ferocity against their enemies. 

They hadn’t stayed long at the park after that, Watcher and Pounce returning to his and Pounce’s territory with brisk steps that jostled him in his wheeled box. He had complained a few times about the rough treatment, but Pounce had been too upset to heed him, and he had soon vacated it to ride on her shoulders instead, a much more agreeable perch even if it leaves his legs dangling. 

Watcher doesn’t stay long after dropping Pounce off, and Pounce doesn’t speak to either The Eater or Scratch despite their inquiring noises, darting off back to her room in their territory. Shadow goes with her, naturally, and he’s busily and skillfully consoling her when The Eater comes in to ruin his hard work. 

Great Cats forfend he ever mind his own business. 

“How many times do I gotta tell you, you can’t be biting people just because you get mad at ‘em,” The Eater says, tone disapproving. 

Shadow hisses at him in his own disapproval, but The Eater ignores him, even daring to approach the bed until Shadow takes his place as guard, pinning his ears back. Pounce is already upset. He won’t have The Eater distressing her further. 

“Move your cat, please,” The Eater says, sounding tired, but Pounce doesn’t heed his treacherous words. 

“He’s mad, too,” she says, and Shadow hisses in agreement. 

“Miss Babin said you bit Sarah Dupree when y’all were playing. We’ve talked about this, Claudia, you can’t be doing that. Ain’t nobody gonna wanna play with you if you go around biting people when you disagree with ‘em.” 

“She deserved it,” Pounce says, nearly a hiss of her own, which fills Shadow with such pride that he turns and sits on her lap, purring. His kitten is clearly holding her own against the The Eater. He’ll let her try out her own teeth on this one. 

“And why’s that?” The Eater says, daring to sit on the edge of the bed. Shadow looks to Pounce to see if she would like him to get rid of their trespasser, but she just sinks her fingers into his fur, so he allows it. 

“Why don’t I have a mama?” Pounce asks, and The Eater’s mouth closes. Pounce continues. “Sarah said it’s bad I don’t have a mama because everyone has a mama but I don’t. You could marry Miss Babin. And Miss Babin could be my mama.” 

This seems quite reasonable to Shadow, but of course The Eater can never simply be logical. 

“I’m not gonna marry Miss Babin,” The Eater says, and Shadow can tell he’s trying to be gentle with Pounce. If Shadow’s understanding of “marry” is correct, then The Eater is already married to Scratch, but he gathers that they haven’t told Pounce this. 

It’s characteristically rude of The Eater, but he is mildly disappointed with Scratch, especially when the issue of “marry” is causing Pounce such distress now. If Shadow were a half-legs, he’d marry immediately to make Pounce feel better. 

Really, it’s as if The Eater understands nothing of the sacrifice for the sake of kittens. 

“Why not?” Pounce asks, and her eyes fill like they’re about to leak again. Shadow gives The Eater a dark look. Really, he just got her calm again. “Why can’t I have a mama?” 

“Is it so bad to be unique?” 

They all look over to find Scratch at the door. He shows his teeth briefly in that half-legs way that means friendliness and then comes over, taking a seat next to Pounce. Shadow looks at his claws longingly, but he seems focused on the kitten, so he holds his peace, flopping over a bit to cover Pounce’s lap better in a gesture of affection. Scratch brushes a bit of fur behind Pounce’s ear, a gesture that Shadow knows by now is about the closest half-legs get to properly grooming one another. It’s insufficient for caring for a kitten properly, but Shadow appreciates the gesture. Whenever The Eater goes after pounce with the wooden thing for her fur, Pounce always wriggles in a way that says it’s unpleasant, which necessitates biting The Eater until he ceases. Scratch at least knows how to at least try to do it correctly. 

“Mamas are highly overrated, cherie,” Scratch says, ignoring a look from The Eater, as he should. “Everyone has one. Would you prefer that our family be so pedestrian?” 

“What he means,” The Eater says, “is that our family is just a lil different. That’s all. We’re still a family.” 

“Promise?” Pounce asks, eyes a little less glossy but still on the verge of leaking. Shadow gives The Eater a hard look to make sure he knows not to ruin this. 

“I promise,” The Eater says, voice soft. “We will always, always be a family, Claudia, no matter what other people might say.” 

Shadow complains when he’s dislodged as Pounce scrambles to press against The Eater, but he allows it. 

He might be the weakest at it of the three adults in their territory, but at least he can sometimes contribute to raising their kitten correctly. 

*

Scratch is teaching Pounce how to make noise with his noise box. 

Shadow is…tolerating it. 

“Non, non, Claudia,” Scratch says, putting his paws over Pounce’s. “Like this.” He presses at the box with her paws under his, and it makes noises that are far easier on Shadow’s ears. He rests his head on his paws from his place on top of the box with contentment. If Scratch can simply teach Pounce to make noises that way, perhaps it won’t-

The moment Scratch removes his paws from Pounce’s, she makes the horrible noises again. Shadow makes the decision to go on a patrol until the noise has stopped, hopping down from the noise box and rubbing against her foot as he goes in an affectionate farewell. 

He swats at The Eater as he passes. 

The bad noises are almost certainly his fault somehow. 

*

What Shadow didn’t know before being Kept is that half-legs kittens take so very long to reach their full size. Pounce is exceptional even if she’s not grown, but it does complicate his visiting the queens in the neighborhood when she needs him so very much even years after he first found her. 

“There you are, rogue thing,” Scratch says this evening as Shadow returns from visiting the lovely calico he’s been courting for four years now who lives a few half-legs territories down. He had meant to be back before Pounce and the others woke, but he’s clearly been gone too long if Scratch has bothered to go looking for him. “You’ve upset your mistress terribly with your absence.” 

Shadow complains as he’s picked up, but Scratch has done it enough times now over the years that it’s not unfamiliar. He still keeps up his protests as he’s brought inside–really, so undignified, as if he’s a kitten to be carted around–but when he’s brought to Pounce’s room, he finds her leaking from her eyes, cuddled against The Eater. 

“We’ll find him, baby,” The Eater is saying, rubbing a paw along her back. “He probably just-” 

“A delivery,” Scratch says, holding him up with one hand, “for the mademoiselle of the house.” 

“Monsieur Minou!” Pounce cries, her usual noise that means him. 

Shadow purrs in apology for leaving her alone, nuzzling at her head hard enough to push it back some. He’s usually careful to be back by the time she wakes to resume his place as her guardian and teacher. He pins his ears when The Eater gets too close and shows his teeth when he dares to touch Pounce’s head, and The Eater takes the correction with grace, stepping back to Scratch, who leans in towards him. Shadow is amused by their restraint around Pounce. From his patrols around the house to ensure everything is secure, he knows they nuzzle in the way cats do and even roll around together on their bed regularly without the strange coverings they wear otherwise, but they only engage in these actions when Pounce is out of their territory with Watcher. He’s not sure why they’re so shy about affection in front of her. He does know, of course, that it’s somehow The Eater’s fault. 

Most things are. 

*

Shadow rejoices the day Pounce is judged big enough by the older two-legs to have her own room. 

Life is much more fun when his kitten can sneak out with him instead of being stuck in the box room. 

“Give it back!” Pounce says, chasing him, her teeth bared in half-legs joy. 

Shadow speeds up, the ribbon from her fur still trailing from his mouth. She’s slowly gotten better with putting her ribbons in, but she still doesn’t know how to secure them as tightly as Scratch does when he puts them in her fur for her. 

The loose knots make them easy prey. 

He leaps for a tree in the little stretch of them near their territory. He doesn’t usually lead Pounce so far away without Watcher with them or after dark when Scratch or The Eater can keep an eye on her, but the weather is crisp and beautiful, and he’d decided earlier that Pounce could use a bit of chasing. It’s been raining for a few days, keeping both of them stuck inside of their territory, and even spinning around with The Eater while Scratch pawed at the noise box has barely put a dent in Pounce’s energy. 

And from sharing a bed with her for years, Shadow can attest that Pounce kicks terribly in her sleep when she hasn’t gotten enough energy out. 

“I’m gonna get you!” Pounce calls after him, and he turns his head at the sound of her dull claws against the bark, surprised. Pounce is a good climber–for a half-legs, anyway–but The Eater is always militant that she not climb without an older half-legs there to catch her just in case. Today, though, Pounce seems confident in her skills, hiking up her coverings and making her way up after him. Shadow starts to descend, to let her win her ribbon back without having to go too high. He doesn’t want to limit her, but she’s never climbed this high befo-

A sharp scream makes him turn his head sharply to Pounce. 

Just in time to watch her fall. 

He jumps after her, but she’s already hit the ground. He drops her ribbon and darts to her, nudging at her face. She’s making horrible, shuddery, whimpering noises, her front right leg held to her chest, her eyes squeezed shut but still leaking. 

Shadow knows in an instant that something is very, very wrong. 

“Da-daddy,” Pounce whimpers, and Shadow knows that this is the sound she makes for The Eater. 

After a final reassuring nuzzle to her nose, he’s off, streaking back to their territory as fast as his paws can carry him. 

He slides in a half-circle when he bounds inside, unable to get good traction on the stone floors, claws scrabbling uselessly. When he’s recovered, he’s off again, leaping up the stairs. He darts right to the entrance of the box room, and he growls with frustration when it remains closed. He scratches at it with all of his might, yowling and growling, and he manages to get onto his side and work a paw under the door, clawing at the rug. The older half-legs are deep sleepers when the sun is out, he knows, but Pounce needs them. At this point, he’d even take The Eater alone. 

Hissing with frustration, he jumps up and tries to leap at the door, bounding against it over and over until he finally hears noise from inside, the rustle of someone turning over in a box. 

He tips his head back and yowls , as loudly as if he was warning another tom to stay away from his territory . 

There’s the thump of a half-legs paw covering hitting the closed entrance, and he scrabbles under the gap again, fishing his paw under in the hopes that one of them has wandered close enough to catch with a claw. If he can just make them angry-

“Shut up!” Comes The Eater’s voice. “Goddamn cat.” 

Shadow returns to scratching at the door, using enough force that he leaves a few marks in the wood. The sun is going down now, and he knows Pounce can’t see in the dark as well as he or the older two-legs can. She hates the dark. She can’t be alone in it. 

But Shadow also can’t return until he has at least one of the half-legs in tow. 

“Putain de merde,” Scratch says. “Claudia!” He yells Pounce’s half-legs name. “Claudia, retrieve your beast!” 

Shadow yowls again, repeating it over and over and over-

He spooks back a good foot and a half when the door to the chamber opens suddenly, Scratch glaring down at him. 

He ignores him, darting to the box that The Eater sleeps in. For whatever reason, Pounce thinks that The Eater will fix this. 

This means that Shadow will bring him to her no matter what. 

The Eater drops the lid of his box when Shadow jumps into it with him, startled. Shadow has no patience for his foolishness, immediately sinking teeth into one of his front legs and trying to pull him up. The Eater says one of the sounds he never says around Pounce, and then the lid is open, Shadow flying through the air as The Eater throws him. 

“This fucking cat,” The Eater growls, turning his bleeding front leg to look at it. 

Shadow returns, getting his teeth into the fabric of his covering and tugging, putting all of his weight into it. The Eater tries to toss him again, but he dodges. 

“Claudia!” The Eater calls. “Come get your cat!” 

Silence except for the ripping of fabric as Shadow’s teeth prove too sharp for it, ripping a large hole. He grabs another mouthful. 

“Claudia!” Scratch calls, but there’s an edge to it now. 

Finally, they appear to begin understanding that he has need of them. 

“Claudia!” The Eater calls, and there’s a flicker of fear in his voice now, one that Shadow hasn’t heard since The Big Sickness when Pounce was so ill everyone was afraid for her. He shakes Shadow off, and then he’s gone, far faster than any half-legs should be able to move, Scratch disappearing along with him. 

By the time Pounce catches up to him and Scratch, they’re already leaving Pounce’s room, smelling of fear, though he can tell Scratch is working very hard at not betraying it. He yowls, and both sets of eyes dart to him. 

In an instant, he’s off. 

And, miracle of all miracles, with both half-legs following. 

*

Even Scratch receives a few bites from Shadow’s impatience as they dither on the edge of the territory. He knows they don’t care for the sun, but Pounce is waiting. He can’t understand why they don’t go. 

“-get her,” The Eater says, trying to pull away from Scratch, who holds him tight. 

“And we will do her no good if we both burn to ash before we reach her,” Scratch says through his teeth, trying to wrestle The Eater to keep him in place. “Merde, Louis, be reasonable. A few more moments, mon cher, that’s all.” 

The Eater makes angry noises back, but Shadow doesn’t bother listening to them anymore, doing frustrated laps to the edge of the territory and back, glaring at the sun and the useless half-legs with equal irritation. This is kitten-foolishness, this stupid game they’re playing, all while Pounce is still beneath the tree, needing them. 

As soon as the sun has dipped fully below the horizon, Scratch releases The Eater, and they’re finally, finally off. 

When they get in range to see Pounce, Scratch and The Eater do their disappearing trick again, reappearing at her side. Breathing heavily, Shadow catches up, collapsing to his side and panting, keeping an eye on them but unable to stand again just yet. The Eater scoops Pounce up with infinite gentleness, though she still makes a piercing half-legs noise when it jostles her injured front leg. 

“Easy, baby,” The Eater says, “lemme see.” 

Pounce shakes her head, eyes leaking and making mud on her face where the leaking mixes with dirt. She’s still breathing in shallow little pants, and Shadow can see that she’s in a great deal of pain. He wants to nuzzle her, but he’s still catching his breath. Before he can force himself upwards anyway, Scratch is in front of Pounce and The Eater, cupping Pounce’s face in his paws. Pounce still takes her gasping, shuddery little breaths, but as she and Scratch look at each other, it slows in tiny increments, her body going more relaxed, her pain less evident. 

“Nous y sommes, ma cherie,” Scratch says, voice low and soothing. “You’re alright, ma petite lionne. Everything is alright. Sois calme maintenant, ma douce.” 

“What’d you do?” The Eater asks, but it’s not angry. He shifts to hold Pounce better as she goes lax as if she’s been scruffed, Scratch leaning forward as if exhausted from doing something. It takes him a moment to respond. 

“A simple suggestion, mon cher. That’s all. Just something to stop the pain for now. Take her home. I’ll fetch the physician.” 

They both rise, The Eater cradling Pounce like she’s a fresh half-legs kitten and not almost too big to be carried this way. Pounce resigns himself to remaining here until he can catch his breath, but The Eater looks to him. 

“Grab him, will you?” He says, looking to Scratch. 

“Gotten fond of the beast, have you?” Scratch asks in a tone that says he’s playing. His hands are gentle when he picks Shadow up. 

The Eater doesn’t bother responding as he turns towards their territory, Pounce still settled securely. 

“Well done, clever thing,” Scratch says to him softly as they follow. 

*

Pounce ends up with some strange half-legs contraption around her injured leg, something hard and white that smells strange. Shadow is dubious that it will fix anything, but Scratch seems satisfied with the situation, which suggests that it might have some real use. 

If it had just been The Eater’s idea, Pounce would have bitten it off himself. 

Shadow sits with Pounce after the half-legs who comes to see her when she’s unwell has left. The half-legs gave her something that’s made her seem dizzy and giggly, and she’s giving The Eater a struggle as he tries to settle her down in her bed. 

“There’s-there’s elephants,” Pounce says, head lolling and pupils massive like she’s spotted something she wants to hunt, “on the ceiling, Daddy Lou.” 

“Oh yeah?” The Eater says, in a tone that says he’s not really listening to Pounce at present. Normally, Shadow would hiss at him for the audacity, but the half-legs proved himself useful in helping Pounce, so he’ll give him a pass. 

For now, at least.

*

After her fall, Scratch and The Eater put locks on the doors into their territory that require a key they keep away from Pounce, even after she’s healed and gotten the strange half-legs thing off of her leg. Pounce complains and whines, but they remain firm. 

Remembering his fear when she hit the ground, Shadow quite agrees with the decision. 

Still, he makes sure to bite The Eater just so Pounce knows he’s still on her side. 

*

Pounce doesn’t get sick very often after The Big Sickness, but The Eater frets even when she so much as sniffles. 

As someone who also doesn’t like it when Pounce is ill, Shadow can sympathize. 

(To a point.)

“Easy,” The Eater says, voice gentle, when Pounce lurches upwards and begins making her hoarse, painful sounds. Shadow can hear the congestion in her lungs, and he kneads at her leg in comfort. She’s been making the sounds for a few days now, and he gathers that her chest has started hurting. In a rare moment of being sensible, The Eater is gently rubbing at her back in slow, soothing circles. If he weren’t an evil fool, perhaps Shadow could teach him how to knead properly. “Easy. You’re alright.” 

Pounce keeps making the noises despite The Eater’s words, but The Eater keeps rubbing gently until she’s done. Obviously exhausted, she flops onto The Eater in the way of an exhausted kitten. Shadow graciously ignores that it jostles him, simply settling down and going back to his kneading. 

“I hate being sick,” Pounce says, her voice a hoarse whine. 

“I know,” The Eater says, reaching out to brush Pounce’s fur from her eyes. “I hate you being sick, too.” 

“Still unwell?” 

They all look up to see Scratch in the doorway. 

“I’m dying,” Pounce declares, managing to flop even more, spreading out across her bed and The Eater’s lap, front paws dangling over the edge of the mattress. 

“Don’t say that,” The Eater says, and it’s a trace too sharp. Shadow pins his ears at him for the audacity but continues kneading at Pounce’s side, healing her as the only one capable of it in the territory. 

“Such dramatics,” Scratch chides, but far more gently. Really, Shadow marvels sometimes that The Eater couldn’t have picked up better kitten-rearing habits from sheer proximity. Scratch may not be as good at it as Shadow himself is, but he’s still many degrees superior to The Eater. 

Still, Shadow thinks with resignation, Pounce seems inordinately attached to The Eater despite his shortcomings, which does her credit even if it’s misplaced. 

He moves over when Scratch joins them on Pounce’s bed. It makes him have to shuffle closer to The Eater, and the two of them engage in a battle of wills when he puts a paw with claws extended against the offending limb that ended up far too close to his beautiful self. The Eater attempts to resist, but when Pounce scoops Shadow up like a toy, The Eater is forced to shift to accommodate them both. Shadow looks at him smugly, purring. 

*

The Eater and Scratch coddle and soothe Pounce, and Shadow eventually vacates the bed to give them room as they sit to either side of her, one of their strange flat boxes opening in front of them, the ones they like to stare at while making their half-legs noises at each other. He’s never understood the appeal, but if Pounce enjoys it, it can’t be too bad. He uses the steps beside her bed that are there specifically for his convenience, picking his careful way down. Once upon a time, he would have jumped without a thought and landed with dignified grace, but even with the gentle life of a Kept, age is age, and Shadow isn’t quite as limber as he used to be. 

Besides, who else is here to see his weakness? 

Simply his clouder, who have known his protection all of these years and have so far still looked at him kindly even when he is no longer the tom he once was. 

All but The Eater, but he was always going to be a hopeless cause anyway, he thinks with a flick of his tail as he begins his daily patrol of the territory. 

*

Pounce heals, but slowly, and Shadow softens slightly towards The Eater when he sees how much the half-legs worries. He’s had another half-legs here to look at Pounce, the one who usually comes when she’s ill, but Scratch is escorting him from the territory now, so it’s just Shadow and The Eater and the sleeping Pounce. She’s had some strange half-legs liquid that makes his nose itch, but it seems to have soothed her enough to sleep, even if Pounce can hear that her breathing is still a little labored. The Eater is extricating himself now from holding her up while she sleeps, propping pillows beneath her. He waits a moment, petting over Pounce’s head gently until she settles once more and then pulling a bit of fabric up over her. Shadow is pleased he’s remembered. Half-legs are so very bad at staying warm on their own. He watches The Eater watch Pounce, but it’s not quite as suspiciously as he would have done a few years ago. 

Shadow is old now, his joints achy, his leaps less high. He knows that one day soon he will have to leave Pounce behind to fend for herself. As well as he’s trained her, he knows she’ll still need help, and if nothing else, The Eater has proven himself capable of that, at least. Even if he isn’t quite as good at it as Shadow, he tries. When Shadow is gone, The Eater will have to step up. 

From watching him with an ill Pounce, Shadow has hopes he might surprise him one day. 

As a gesture of goodwill, Shadow follows The Eater from the room and bumps his head against the half-leg’s ankle in a gesture of gratitude for his assistance in looking after Shadow’s kitten. 

And then he bites him and hisses before darting back to Pounce. 

It wouldn’t do to let him get too comfortable, after all. 

Chapter Text

In the year and a half after Charlie’s death, Claudia has avoided romance, too gunshy after such a disastrous first attempt. 

Around six months after his death, she accepted an ice cream date with a brother of a friend of Polly’s, but it was only to make Daddy Lou stop looking so worried all the time. Really, for a man who’s about as overprotective as they come, him having a bee in his bonnet about Claudia’s non-existent love life has been a wild and unpleasant surprise. So she went on the date with the sweet, polite, boring-as-all-hell Jacob, let him kiss her hand at the door, and went inside to show off her little bouquet of flowers to Daddy Lou and Papa Les. 

And then she rinse and repeats with about four more boys, none of whom get more than a third date or a kiss to the cheek. 

“While I applaud your exploration of new pursuits,” Papa Les tells her one night over supper–blood from a wine glass for him, étouffée for her, and nothing for Daddy Lou, who had to go “handle some paperwork” that seemed a lot like him being angry enough to bust heads together–tilting his head slightly as if studying her, “there’s no need to keep up this marathon of courting when it seems to only make you miserable, cherie.” 

“I’m not miserable,” she tells her rice. “It’s fun. Ain’t you the one who usually wants me to have fun?” 

“I’ve always encouraged you in your amusements, yes,” Papa Les says. “You know I’m not one for quiet contemplation and Spartan ideals, but it’s hardly inspiration for a sonnet for a young woman to come home with a look on her face that would suggest she just spent an hour digging for spare change in a gutter and not in the company of what would appear to be a perfectly charming young man.” 

“If you think they’re so charming, why don’t you date ‘em?” She shoots back, stabbing her fork into her supper harder than she needs to. 

“Have they all been so bad that you would offer them for supper?” He asks, sounding amused more than anything. “My, my, it would seem things are even worse than I feared.” 

“I’m not hungry,” she says flatly, moving to push herself up. 

Papa Les catches her by the wrist before she makes it more than a step. She keeps looking forward, defiant even if she knows she has no hope of actually getting loose, but when he squeezes gently, she looks at him from the corner of her eye. 

“Désolé,” he says, his teasing dropping entirely. “It wasn’t my intention to upset you.” 

“Well you did,” she says defiantly. He doesn’t rise to the bait, just tugs her gently back to the table. “I just said I’m not hung-” 

“A few more bites, s'il te plaît,” he says, not giving up until she heeds him, sitting down again. “If only to spare me your father’s fretting if he returns and finds that I’ve left you unfed.” 

Claudia finishes her supper, even downing a slice of icebox cake for good measure. 

And then she retreats to the solace of her coffin and her diary. 

*

She’s half-dozing in the satin interior of her casket, flashlight still on, when there’s a knock on the wood. She stretches, yawning, and then undoes the clasp, finding Daddy Lou. The sympathy on his face says he and Papa Les have been talking about her again. 

She feels the immediate urge to slam the lid shut. 

“Hey,” he says, sitting down and seemingly-casually resting an arm along the edge of the coffin, which just serves to make sure she can’t close it, “how’d your date go?” 

She considers turning over and just lying face down until he gives up and leaves, but after a moment, she sighs. 

“It was great,” she reports. “We saw a movie and then got sodas. He was polite and sweet, and he’s got a great ass.” 

The latter detail was meant to make Daddy Lou uncomfortable enough to drop the issue, but despite the little flicker of distaste she catches in his expression, he doesn’t give up. 

“You know you don’t have to-” He starts, but Claudia is at her limit for well-intentioned sympathy. As it turns out, pity chafes, and she already feels rubbed raw. 

“Daddy Lou, can we please just…not?” She asks, letting a plea slip through her voice. “I know you mean well, but I don’t wanna talk about it. The date was fine. I might go on another one. Can we please just leave it at that?” 

She can see that he wants to keep prodding. That’s how he is, her daddy. If there’s something wrong, he wants to fix it for her. But this isn’t something she wants to hand over to be fixed. She just wants to be allowed to be sad and pathetic without feeling like she’s dragging their household down with her. She knows her parents love her, and she knows they’d do anything she asked to make her life better. 

But sometimes a girl just wants to wallow. 

“How’d your meeting go?” She asks in a peace offering, a safe topic of conversation that’s well-away from her dating life. 

Daddy Lou groans, sitting down more completely and leaning more heavily against her coffin. She grins. 

“Jesus,” he says, rubbing at his eyes briefly before he lets his hand drop. “I swear, those fools couldn’t find milk on a dairy farm. If they weren’t-” 

She lets Daddy Lou tell her all about how stupid their would-be business partners are, dropping off around the time he’s going into how one of them managed to knock over an entire crate of imported Bordeaux and then panic enough to take out a flat of port for good measure. She stirs briefly when he picks her up, but she just tucks her head tighter against him, relaxing into the hold. She’s far too old for this, she knows, getting toted around like a little kid and tucked into bed. Even if her fathers’ strength means she’s no struggle to carry, she’s almost a grown woman. 

Still, she submits to the babying contently, letting Daddy Lou settle her down and pull her blankets over her. She presents her head for a kiss, eyes still closed, and hears a warm chuckle before he obliges. 

“Dream something good, alright?” He says softly, pressing a gentle hand to her head in benediction before he steps away. 

She’s already busily obeying before she manages to return the sentiment. 

*

Claudia wakes earlier than she usually does the next morning, rolling over and scritching Monsieur Minou the Second’s ears for a bit, and then finding that she’s managed to still be up before ten. 

To her, it’s practically dawn. 

She lazes about as long as she can stomach, but by the time she’s gotten dressed, done her hair, made breakfast, had her coffee, and practiced her guitar and her harp–her piano practice still reserved for playing with Papa Les–it’s still only a bit after noon. 

Feeling restless, she thinks of a poster she’s seen around about a new show in town with a touring company, some translation of some Italian something, with matinees at two on Saturday and Sunday. She usually only sees shows with Papa Les, but the longer hours of near-summer mean she couldn’t go with him or Daddy Lou, ruling out seeing the evening shows without inviting questions about a young woman out and about on her own. 

A matinee, however, especially so early in the show’s run…

She picks up the phone and makes a call. 

*

She’s gotten a new driver since Charlie. She’d resisted it at first, and it’s not as if Daddy Lou and Papa Les were eager to have her out on the roads again so soon, but even if it was originally only a point of argument, it was convenient to have her available to run errands, and she did eventually miss the freedom of someone to cart her around town when she wanted. This one she helped choose herself, which she knows was meant to be a treat. 

Joe Clancy is built like a goddamn brick wall, has a scar across his face from “a misguided fit of youthfulness, Miss du Lac,” and is in his fifties, very definitely not a potential love interest. He has a cauliflower ear from a stint as a boxer, and she knows that Daddy Lou feels better with her out and about with someone who could put up a fight if someone messed with her, even though she’s only ever seen him be polite and friendly. 

“Afternoon, Missy,” he tells her this morning. The Missy is a compromise. Miss du Lac still poked at aching wounds, even delivered sincerely and not teasingly, but he hasn’t been willing to use her first name the way she’s said he should. 

“Hi,” she says with a smile, accepting the hand up into the car before sitting and putting on a pair of Daddy Lou’s sunglasses she took from the latest place he’s tried to hide them to keep her from stealing them. “Already saw your sister off to the train?” 

“Did indeed,” Joe says, climbing into the driver’s seat. “Where to?” 

“Orpheum, please,” she says, settling back. 

“Feeling cultured today, huh?” He asks with a smile as he pulls onto the road. 

Claudia smiles faintly in return. 

*

Despite her invitation, Joe doesn’t accept the offer to see the show with her, waving her off with a, “Seen enough culture from my sister dragging me around all week.” She teases him about culture being good for him but lets him go about his errands, sending him off with some papers Daddy Lou needed delivered to a couple of lawyers. 

It’s not the first time Claudia’s seen a show by herself, and the theatre isn’t very crowded. The staff know her already, especially from the times she’s come with her parents, who are generous patrons, so all she has to do is walk up to the box office and accept the ticket she called ahead for, being waved through without question. 

(And if the sense of importance the treatment gives her was part of the reason she came at all for a little pick-me-up, it’s not like there’s anyone there who can read her mind and call her on it.)

*

The show, some comedy from Italy that’s been translated and brought over to America, isn’t much to write home about, though she still enjoys herself. She’s always loved the theatre, and she and Papa Les used to play actors at home for the exclusive audience of Daddy Lou and Monsieur Minou when she was little. She knows from the stories she’s managed to get out of him that Papa Les used to be an actor, and part of her has toyed with the idea of auditioning for a play herself, though she hasn’t told either of her parents that. This show, though, is shaping up to be one that is enjoyable but not memorable, even the music-

The most beautiful woman Claudia has ever seen walks on stage, and it’s suddenly the most entrancing performance she’s ever watched. 

*

The people in the audience around her give her a slightly strange look with the eagerness she jumps onto her feet with for a standing ovation at the end of the performance, and she knows she’s being slightly too enthusiastic. She restrains herself from whistling, but it’s a close call, and she’s one of the last ones still on her feet when the cast begins to walk off the stage. 

When it means the beautiful woman looks right at her, though, and winks, she can’t regret it. 

*

The woman’s name, Claudia learns from loitering in the theatre until one of the stagehands she knows takes notice and invites her backstage, is Isabeau Alessi. She’s 19, the daughter of actors currently on a break from touring, from Florence, and signed to the company for at least the next six months. 

And she continues to be so magnetically attractive it’s a struggle to look away from her. 

“Du Lac?” Isabeau repeats when the stagehand, Maurice, has introduced them to each other. She tilts her head in thought for a moment, eyes still on Claudia’s, and Claudia has to remind herself to breathe. Isabeau’s eyes are a striking amber-brown, and the kohl lining them only makes them more arresting. “Where do I know that name?” 

With the way she’s putting all of her focus on not looking to where the top two buttons of Isabeau’s blouse are unbuttoned to reveal the upper swell of a very generous endowment, Claudia doesn’t manage to get her thoughts in order enough to respond before Isabeau makes a noise that indicates she’s remembered. 

“Ah!” She says. “Now I recall. Someone mentioned your father is one of the patrons here, yes?” She smiles in a way that makes Claudia’s skin tingle. “Should I ask you to thank him for me? I gather I have him to thank for a good part of my salary.” 

“He-we-the-yes,” Claudia manages, and she barely resists the urge to immediately turn and flee. Jesus, what is wrong with her? She clears her throat as if that was the problem. “He-we’re big fans. Of theatre.” The delivery of this is both embarrassing and also a lie. Daddy Lou enjoys some shows, but he only attends as often as he does because she and Papa Les drag him with them while ignoring his protests. 

Isabeau, though, just seems charmed, giving her an exaggerated curtsy. 

“Well then,” she says, checking a small clock on her dressing table, “I have an hour before I have to be back for the second performance. I’d love to hear about the other shows you’ve seen if you know anywhere nearby that can manage a good cup of coffee.” 

To stop herself from saying anything else embarrassing, Claudia simply nods. 

*

That afternoon starts a little routine between her and Isabeau, who insists on going by Beau. She stops by the theatre, lets Joe drive off to handle errands, and then she and Beau explore New Orleans together. It’s different, New Orleans in daylight instead of the night she’s used to seeing it in, and if Beau laughs a few times when Claudia gets them lost because the streets look different in the sun, it’s not a mean thing. 

It is, in fact, a rather addictive thing. 

“Sometimes I think you must do this on purpose,” Beau teases one day when Claudia’s gotten them turned around trying to find a hat shop that she knows should be in this general area. “Trying to get me alone?” 

Claudia keeps her attention on the little map she bought at a bookstore so she won’t have to look at her. 

“They’ve done some construction in this area,” she lies. “Things look a little different.” 

Beau casts a disbelieving look to the very not freshly constructed buildings around them. 

“I think you simply have a terrible sense of direction,” she says, and when she reaches for the map herself, their hands brush. 

Claudia feels the touch zing all the way down to her toes. 

*

“Tired of the hunt already, cherie?” Papa Les asks her one night when they’re out, Claudia in her boy costume. Thrilled as she is by the changes, her figure has made it harder to dress up this way in the last couple of years, but it’s not as if anyone looks that hard at night during the hours she’s usually out with Papa Les, too busy taking care of their own business. 

Or as if Papa Les couldn’t take care of anyone asking inconvenient questions. 

“No,” she says, breathing through another yawn. Beau’s job means she keeps slightly closer to vampire hours than most humans, but Claudia has still been getting up earlier than she usually does to go spend time with her, and she’s been feeling the strain. 

“Really?” Papa Les asks, clearly dubious. “Because it would seem to me you’re about to drift off before we’ve even found our first meat.” 

“I’m not,” she says resolutely, squaring her shoulders. She gives him a big-eyed, innocent look. “Unless you’re feeling your age and wanna go home, Papa Les. The elderly do need so muc-”

She giggles when he grabs her by the back of her jacket like a scruff and hauls her down the street with him, grumbling about disrespectful daughters and the behavioral benefits of a good whipping. 

When she points out a man following a woman down the street with a predator’s focus, she’s still grinning. 

*

If Claudia’s showing off a bit when she gets them private access to a new art show that’s come to town through the benefit of Papa Les giving a lot of money to the gallery’s owner through the years, she plays it cool. 

(At least as much as she can when admiring the art means Beau staying much closer than she usually does.)

“This artist must be a woman, I think,” she says thoughtfully, as Claudia is barely paying attention to the painting in front of her, too busy trying to subtly inhale as much of Beau’s perfume as she can. 

“Oh?” She asks, voice admirably even. “Why’s that?” 

“It’s in the curves,” Beau says, and the last word comes out of her mouth like a caress. Claudia stares very intently at the canvas in front of her even as she notices absolutely nothing about it. “Only a woman can properly appreciate women this way, don’t you think?” 

Beau leans in enough while studying the brushstrokes that Claudia feels the swell of her breast against her bicep. 

“Y-yeah,” she says, feeling very appreciative indeed. 

*

“Is it fun, being an actress?” Claudia asks during a picnic one afternoon. They’re both laying on their backs to watch the clouds through the tree tops, their heads right next to each other. 

Claudia feels a little buzzy in a way that has nothing to do with the bottle of wine she snuck out of the house to go with lunch. 

“Very,” Beau says. “It’s very-oh, look. A pigeon.” She points, and Claudia leans her head in to follow the line of her arm. 

“Pigeon?” She asks, turning her head to look at her. “I dunno what pigeons look like over in Italy, but that ain’t like any pigeon I’ve ever seen.” 

Beau turns her head to crinkle her nose at her, and Claudia crinkles her nose back. 

“It’s your game,” Beau complains. 

“Yeah, and you suck at it,” Claudia teases, feeling bold from the alcohol. “That’s obviously a chicken.” 

Beau shifts and then rolls onto her front, propping herself up on an elbow. Claudia shifts enough to look up at her. 

“Is this what you did before me?” Beau asks, resting her cheek on one hand. “Sit out in fields alone and pick out birds in the clouds?” 

“Maybe,” Claudia teases. “Lots of ‘em up there.” 

“Hm,” Beau says, looking thoughtful. “I’m not so sure. I think there’s far more interesting things to look at down here.” 

At the look on her face, Beau laughs, bending down to kiss her forehead and then flopping back to lay beside her again. 

“You’re precious,” Beau says, voice warm. 

Claudia picks out a cloud-animal as quick as she can for the sake of not combusting on the spot if she thinks about what just happened too hard. 

*

“You been waking up pretty early recently,” Daddy Lou observes one night, even as he stays perfectly still as her subject for a sketch she’s been working on. 

“Not really,” she says, smudging at a line and then drawing it again. 

“Ain’t even been staying up ‘til dawn with us,” he continues, like she didn’t answer. 

She glances up at him, but he’s still looking at the book she allowed him as a prop to keep him from moving and ruining her composition. 

“The days are longer right now,” she excuses, scrambling her thoughts just in case, focusing only on the movement of her pencil on the paper. “Been spending more time out in the sun.” 

“Been spending more time out without Joe, too, from what I hear.” 

Claudia looks up sharply, feeling betrayed by Joe blabbing about her. Daddy Lou must feel the intensity of the look because he glances over, expression softening. 

“He ain’t been tattling,” he reassures her. “Couple of people mentioned you not being with him as much, that’s all. They were wondering if everything was alright.” 

“Everything’s fine,” she says, jabbing at her sketch hard enough to snap the lead of her pencil. She scowls, reaching for her sharpener. “Just been seeing the city in daylight some, that’s all. I’ve only seen most of it at night when everything’s already closed.” 

“You sure nothing’s-” 

“Don’t move!” She tells him when he starts to turn towards her. He gives her a look for being bossy but obeys, returning to his pose obediently. 

“Just seems out of character for you, that’s all.” 

Her irritation at people talking about her fades a bit. She knows by now about what happened to his brother, though she’s never told Daddy Lou that she knows, so she knows he’s concerned about her suddenly acting different. He just worries, that’s all. 

It’s just that his worry is very unwanted at present. 

“Aren’t I supposed to be out socializing with people?” She asks, keeping her tone light. “I am the lady of the house, after all.” 

He snorts, though he obediently holds still. There’s a reason she’s done more sketches of him than Papa Les, who enjoys being sketched but is godawful at staying still when he’s told to. 

“You know you can talk to me if something’s bothering you, right?” He asks, not playing along with her. “Whatever it is.” 

“I’m fine, Daddy Lou,” she reassures him. “I’m just trying something new for a bit.” 

And if the some thing is a some one, that isn’t something she’s ready to share just yet. It’s not like she thinks they’ll take it badly, but she doesn’t know what Beau is with her yet, and she’s reluctant to invite questions about it when she doesn’t have answers. 

“If you’re looking to try something new,” she says, “you could try holding still instead of wiggling all over the damn place and ruining my sketch.” 

When a throw pillow flies to hit her squarely in the face, she grins. 

*

“So you’ve always lived in New Orleans?” Beau asks her one afternoon while Claudia is being nosy in her dressing room while Beau gets ready for the show. 

“Mhm,” Claudia says idly, flipping through an old script from a shelf in the corner, tracing her fingertips over the notes in the margins. She looks up when Beau sits down next to her, a small mirror in one hand so she can finish her kohl. 

“That’s so sweet,” Beau says, knocking her knee against Claudia’s before focusing back on her reflection. “I’ve grown up on the road for as long as I can remember. I always say Florence because it’s where I was born, but I don’t know that I can really say I’m really from anywhere in particular. Staying where you were born seems so…what’s the word in English? Quaint?” 

Claudia feels embarrassed for no real reason she can put words to at how limited her travels have been. She’s been around the United States a bit, but with vampires endemic to Europe who can’t know that she knows about them, she wasn’t able to take any trips overseas like a few of her friends were. She’s argued about it before, but Papa Les has said that other European vampires are vicious, and he doesn’t want her over there without him. Papa Les and Daddy Lou have discussed traveling a few times, but the hazard of immortal parents is that time stretches for them, so there haven’t actually been any plans made. 

But it’s not as if “My vampire parents don’t want to risk me getting eaten by other vampires” is an answer she can give. 

“Is your family from here, too?” Beau asks, handing her her rouge to hold while she cleans up a smudge at the edge of her eye. 

“It’s just me and my dadd-” She catches herself before she says daddy. It’s common enough to still call her father daddy, but somehow the word seems too childish to use around Beau. “His family is here, too, but we don’t see them much.” They used to see them more, but Daddy Lou looking the exact same for thirteen years tends to prompt questions they can’t really answer, so he’s had to start visiting them less often. “It’s mostly just us.” And Papa Les, but she can’t say that. 

“You still live at home?” Beau’s voice isn’t accusing as she reclaims her rouge and starts tapping it on, but Claudia still feels a little defensive. 

“Mhm,” she says, accepting the stick of kohl when it’s handed to her. It’s fun, playing assistant to Beau, invited into the orbit of her job. “I have my own little part of the house, though. I even have my own parlor.” 

And if it’s a parlor she was first granted when she was a little kid playing pretend, she will die before she ever says it to Beau. 

“So sheltered,” Beau says, sounding amused. “Like a lovely little dove in a coop.” 

“I am not sheltered,” Claudia says at once. It’s true, after all. She has more freedom than anyone in her friend group, something they’re often jealous about. 

There are many advantages to parents who can’t follow her around in daylight, after all. 

“Hm,” Beau hums, clearly teasing, “I’m not so sure, Dove. You seem very sheltered to me, sweet, pure little thing, so very innocent. I’ll bet you’ve never even been kissed.” 

“I have, too,” she fires back, feeling her face heat even as the memory aches in her chest. The only person she’s ever kissed on the mouth is Charlie, but she absolutely isn’t going to tell this beautiful, worldly girl that. 

“I don’t know that I can believe you, pretty Dove,” Beau says, leaning forward. She rests a hand on her leg, and Claudia feels her breath catch slightly at the intriguing pressure of Beau’s thumb against the inside of her thigh just above her knee. Even through the fabric of her dress, her skin tingles with the contact. “Maybe I should ask for proof.” 

Claudia swallows against her desert-dry throat. 

“Proof?” She echoes, eyes already on Beau’s lips. 

Without bothering to answer, Beau kisses her. 

*

“Good afternoon?” Joe asks, raising his eyebrows when he picks her up from the dress shop down the street that was her excuse for sending him off while she was with Beau. She doesn’t think Joe would blab on her, but she’d rather not take the risk if she doesn’t have to. 

“Mhm,” she says, feeling like she’s floating. She knows her grin must look absolutely stupid with how big it is, but she can’t help it. 

Not when she’s so, so happy. 

*

When she hears rustling from the coffin room when she gets home at sunset, she darts into her room so fast she almost trips herself, shutting the door and locking it for good measure before she slides like a baseball player for her journal, almost sending it flying in her haste. 

Dear Diary, she scrawls, still smiling, lips still tingling with the phantom sensation of Beau’s against them. Her name is Isabeau-

“Claudia?” Daddy Lou calls through the door after knocking on it twice. “Everything alright?” 

“Fine!” She says, voice just slightly too high. She looks around for an excuse to keep him from asking to come in, eyes landing on the package containing a new dress that she threw almost clear across the room in her scramble to get to her journal. “Just trying on a new dress. I’ll be out in a bit.” 

“...alright,” he says, and if he doesn’t sound completely convinced, she ignores him, writing as fast as she can to make sure she won’t ever forget a single detail. 

*

The first time she and Beau make love is the first time Claudia ever makes love with anyone. 

She’s more nervous about it than she would like to admit. 

Even with the added confidence of some lovely lingerie she picked out and hid in her drawer with her sanitary napkins to keep it well away from the eyes of anyone else in the house, she feels clumsy, uncertain, and she barely resists the urge to zip her dress back up when Beau undoes it. She seems to sense it, pulling back and teasingly nuzzling Claudia’s nose with hers. 

“Are you shy, my pretty Dove?” She asks. 

“No,” Claudia says defiantly, but there’s a slight quaver to her voice that makes Beau’s expression soften. She leans in, kissing Claudia’s mouth and then trailing along her cheek, her jaw, until her lips are above her ear. 

“You needn’t be nervous, Dove,” she says, voice affectionate even as the whisper of it in her ear gives Claudia pleasant goosebumps. “It’s just me, silly thing. Just us. What is there to be nervous of?” 

Looking like she doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing. Beau getting one look at her naked body and finding it undesirable. Doing something wrong that ruins everything and makes this whole thing just one more regret she’ll have to carry for the rest of her immortal life. 

She looks up when Beau sits back and cups her face in her hands, expression gentle. 

“Do you want this, Claudia?” She asks, serious but still kind. “If you don’t, that’s fine, cara. We can sit and talk, even kiss a little if you want. We don’t have to-” 

“I want to,” Claudia blurts out. Her clear enthusiasm makes her want to cringe with embarrassment, but Beau just seems charmed, leaning in to kiss her sweetly. 

“Well then,” she says warmly, “no need to be shy or to worry so much, sweet Dove. I want you. You want me. What else is there to worry about?” 

A lot, Claudia thinks, but when Beau holds her by the hips to slide her down the mattress enough to get horizontal, she lets her, submitting herself to the giddy, delicious terror of something completely new. 

*

In the aftermath, Claudia is sweaty and panting and dazed. 

And completely blown away that other people can know how good sex feels and manage to do anything else. 

“Well?” Beau asks, propping herself up on one elbow. Claudia feels the silly urge to cover herself back up when Beau’s gaze rests on her naked chest, as if they weren’t just doing something far more intimate than just looking. She resists, but it’s a close thing. “How was it?” 

“It was…” Claudia struggles to think of a word good enough to describe it. Surely no one else can have done it this good? Surely they have to have invented something in this bed together? There’s no possible way that anyone else could have experienced what she just did, not if she hasn’t heard people shouting about it from the rooftops. She knows Dot let her boyfriend feel her up in the backseat of his car once, and she’d said it was so awful she wasn’t going to do it ever again until she had a ring on her finger in exchange. 

“Have I fucked you senseless, then?” Beau asks, sounding delighted. Claudia doesn’t love the phrasing. It feels impersonal, as if Beau was just performing some routine task. But she doesn't know how to say she doesn’t like it without sounding childish. Instead, she just rolls to her side, pulling Beau in for a kiss. “Mmm,” Beau says, humming with pleasure and chasing Claudia’s lips when she pulls back. “Such a lovely thing, my pretty Dove.” 

The words settle on her much better, sweeter and gentler. 

When Beau glides a hand down her stomach, she presses her hips up into the touch. 

*

They end their lovemaking when Beau has to get ready for her show. 

Claudia watches her get dressed with proprietary appreciation, not bothering to put her own clothes on just yet. She’ll need to get home soon, she knows, but she wants to suck this moment of every ounce of sweetness it has, wants to chase every last drop of pleasure. She’s pulled the bedsheets up over her chest now, but there’s a thrill to it, being naked when Beau isn’t. It makes her feel seductive, desirable, the feeling growing stronger each time Beau catches her eye in the mirror with blatant desire in her expression. 

“You’re a temptress, pretty Dove,” Beau says. “Here I am, trying to ready myself for another day of earning my bread, and I’m to contend with the distraction of a goddess lounging in my bed, naked and lovely.” 

Claudia feels stupid with so much joy inside of her, barely resisting the urge to giggle. 

“And should a goddess not inspire worship?” She dares to ask, feeling near-giddy with her own boldness. It’s an effort not to duck under the sheets and hide after she’s said it. 

From the look of open want in Beau’s face, however, she gathers that her lover doesn’t mind it. 

*

In the wake of her and Beau consummating their relationship, Claudia is bursting to tell someone that she’s with someone. With Daddy Lou and Papa Les still not currently options, not until there’s been a little more time to let things settle between the two of them, she decides on an audience who will be both open and trustworthy. 

Thus the visit to Charlotte’s house. 

“Richie, don’t-thank you.” 

Claudia laughs at the naked relief on Charlotte’s face when she catches the bowl before the baby can sling it off into the stratosphere from his high chair. From visiting before, she knows that Charlotte’s youngest is apparently set to be a baseball player with how much he likes throwing things. 

“Still looking to help the Pelicans finally bring home another win?” She asks the baby teasingly, and Charlotte shakes her head with fond resignation as she picks up her second-youngest, Arissa, who still goes by Rissy until she can grow into her name some. 

She thinks, sometimes, about whether or not she’ll miss it, not being a mama herself. Her existence is proof that vampires can raise children, after all, but she wonders if she’ll be missing out on not making any of her own. She could, she knows. Her parents haven’t pushed her about the gift, and she knows they’d let her find a man and pop out some babies first if she wanted to. 

Thinking of Beau, though, she doesn’t know that she wants to fuss around with a man anymore, hypothetical babies or no hypothetical babies. 

“Well now,” Charlotte says with a sly smile, “what’s that expression on your face for?” 

“Nothing,” Claudia says at once, though she can feel her ears burning. Charlotte raises an eyebrow, shifting Rissy to one hip and turning all of her focus on Claudia. 

“Doesn’t look like nothing from where I’m standing,” she says, smiling wider when Claudia redirects her gaze to helping Richie manage his spoon. “Claudia du Lac,” she coos, “are you in looooove?” She stretches the last word out like taffy, and Claudia can feel her shoulders getting higher defensively, even though the emotion in her belly is a swirl of pleasure-embarrassment. 

“Who’s in love?” Annie asks, peeking her head around the doorway and then stepping aside, giving Claudia a smile of greeting before she answers the plea of Rissy’s raised arms and accepts her from Charlotte. From being on the inside of a unique arrangement herself, Claudia clocks the movement as Annie and Charlotte start to lean forward to kiss each other before catching themselves. It’s an unspoken open secret, Charlotte’s family dynamic. Claudia is trustworthy enough to be inside the house and to know that there are four adults in residence and not two, but she’s never seen any of them be affectionate with each other beyond what could be dismissed as platonic. She’s also rarely seen Charlotte’s husband’s lover, Caleb, who supposedly lives here as gardener and driver the same way Annie lives here as nanny and cook, a thin veneer of respectability to cover up the fact that the marriage that lets the household exist at all is in name only. 

Well, in name and in whatever let the children happen. 

“Does your boring old governess get to know his name?” Charlotte teases, distracted as she spoons another mouthful of oatmeal into Richie’s mouth. 

Claudia wets her lips, considering and doubting whether she should actually go through with her need to tell somebody about her new relationship. Charlotte and Annie know she knows about them, but they’ve never actually used the words. Then again, they don’t have the protection of Daddy Lou and Papa Les and their ever-so-convenient bribes. Her parents may still have to keep their lives private, but they also don’t have to bother coming up with titles that excuse them sharing a house in a way that business partners generally don’t. They pay good money to make sure of it. 

Maybe she can afford to be a little daring, too, she finally decides. 

“Isabeau,” she says simply, and Charlotte and Annie’s heads both snap to her. There’s a moment of wariness, of wondering if she’s implying something or if this means a threat to their family, but she smiles. “It was…unexpected,” she says with a shrug. “But I’m happy.” 

After a moment, Charlotte smiles and moves over to kiss Claudia on the cheek. 

“Then I’m happy for you.” 

“Aw, Lottie,” Annie says, saccharine-sweet. “She takes after you.” She shrills a laugh when Charlotte dumps Rissy onto Claudia’s lap to chase Annie with a rolled-up dishtowel, and
Claudia watches them, grinning. 

And wondering if she’s getting a glance at her own future, happy and loving and playful. 

She rests her cheek on Rissy’s head and soaks it in. 

*

Claudia is going to die. 

She’s going to die of shame, and then her parents are going to kill Beau for being the cause. 

“Such dramatics, Dove,” Beau teases when she says as much out loud, squishing herself onto the vanity stool with her, knees to either side of her hips, something that would usually be welcome. 

But not when Claudia is staring at a very visible hickey Beau left on her neck, a dark wine-purple oval in a shape that means it absolutely can’t be excused as anything else. 

Claudia feels sick. 

“It’s a love bite, not something shameful,” Beau says, curling down over her shoulder to nuzzle at her. “You Americans and your fussy-” 

“What the hell am I supposed to tell my parents, huh?” She asks, touching her fingers to the mark like she can just rub it away like in a charcoal sketch. 

“You didn’t seem concerned when I was giving it to you, Dove,” Beau teases. “Not with all of those pretty little noises and pleases.”

She pushes Beau away when she tries to go for the other side of her neck. Yes, in the moment, she very much enjoyed Beau’s mouth at her throat, the wild flare of pleasurable vulnerability, the little spark of pain in the midst of so much ecstasy. 

But she hadn’t known she was going to end up with a souvenir of the experience. 

A souvenir visible to everyone. 

*

She and Dove kiss and make up–and do a bit more besides–so she leaves for home in good spirits, and fluffing her hair around her face means the mark can be hidden a bit. Over the next couple of days, she even lets herself believe that maybe it’ll fade without anyone noticing it at all. High collars in the heat are uncomfortable but not nearly as uncomfortable as explaining a hickey to her parents would be. 

Naturally, though, her luck can’t hold forever. 

With a business man’s sense of weakness, Daddy Lou strikes when she’s not expecting it, on a night they’re watching a fireworks show while Papa Les is enjoying one of the kills Daddy Lou doesn’t like watching. She has her mouth open for another bite of her sandwich when he opens his investigation. 

“Been wanting to ask what’s up with you,” he says, eyes still on the sky. “You’ve had me worried, you know. Ain’t been acting like yourself.” 

She closes her teeth on nothing, setting her sandwich down and avoiding looking at him the way he’s avoiding looking at her. 

“Everything’s fine,” she says. “Just been trying out some new stuff, that’s all.” 

“This ‘new stuff’ have something to do with that mark your neck? The one you’ve been trying to hide?” He asks lightly, and Claudia wishes briefly that lightning would go ahead and end her misery. Jesus, of all of the things to have to talk about with her father. 

“Daddy Lou,” she complains, “please, can we just-” 

“Give me just one more second of putting us both through this, alright?” Daddy Lou asks, and Claudia is at least relieved to see that he looks nearly as uncomfortable as her as he looks at her. “Somebody hurt you?” 

She shakes her head. 

“You sure?” 

She nods. 

“Nobody did nothing you didn’t want?” 

She can feel her ears burning hot enough that it’s like she stuck them against the stove, but she shakes her head, hoping that staring straight forward and answering as quickly as she can will get them through this before she self-immolates through blushing. 

“You sure?” 

She nods. 

“You forget how to use your words?” 

She glances at him and then sighs. She knows he’s just asking because he loves her, and to his credit, he’s apparently put thought into how to make this as painless as possible. She draws a steadying breath and then turns to look at him, back to the armrest of the bench. 

“No, nobody hurt me,” she says, keeping her tone to the neutrality of delivering an update on numbers in a business transaction. “No, nobody did nothing I didn’t want. I’m fine, Daddy Lou. I promise.” 

She offers her pinky solemnly, and he huffs a laugh, shoulders losing their tension as he links his with hers carefully, shaking on it. 

“I don’t mean to smother you-” 

“I know,” she says, swinging her legs around to lean against him, wrapping both of her arms around one of his and resting her cheek against his shoulder. “You just worry, and then you make it everyone’s problem.” 

He elbows her, but gently, so he doesn’t dislodge her. He brings a hand up to rest over hers. 

“I get to know his name?” He asks lightly. “You ain’t mentioned anybody recently.” 

“Can’t just pluck it out of my head?” She teases. 

“Not through a head as hard as yours,” he teases back, and she shoves him, still not letting go. “Besides, you know I don’t dig around in there without asking.” 

This is true. Papa Les doesn’t do it as much as she knows he wants to, but she does know he doesn’t try as hard as Daddy Lou to stay out of her thoughts. She’s been told she projects them like Daddy Lou used to do–something that’s pleased her before, this similarity–but it’s not as if she can control that, and there are plenty of things a young lady wants secret, especially in her own head. 

It’ll be a relief when he’s her Maker one day, if only to make sure he can’t dig around in there anymore. 

“So?” Daddy Lou prompts, but in a tone that tells Claudia she could refuse if she really wanted to. 

In the moment, though, she doesn’t want to. She wants to tell him about Beau, wants to invite him into this little slice of happiness with her. She ducks her head a little shyly. 

“Her name,” she says, putting just a touch of stress on the pronoun, “is Isabeau.” 

If Daddy Lou is surprised about her seeing a girl, he doesn’t betray it, which isn’t too much of a surprise. For one thing, it would be hypocritical to tell her she couldn’t love among her own sex, and for another, he and Papa Les have always made it clear that she’s free to pursue love wherever she might find it. 

Well, Papa Les had used those terms. Daddy Lou usually just danced around it with vague statements like, “You know I just want you to be happy.” 

“Isabeau,” Daddy Lou tries out, and even without the Mind Gift, she can hear him thinking about where he knows it from. 

“The actress from the play that’s in town,” she offers, and he makes a noise that says he remembers. “I…got to talking with her after, and we went walking a few times, and…” She trails off, shrugging. “We’ve been seeing each other.” They’ve been doing a lot more than just seeing, really, but she’ll swallow lye before she says that now. 

“Y’all been seeing each other that long?” Daddy Lou asks, and beneath his attempt at hiding it, she can hear that he’s a little hurt she would have kept it secret. 

She shakes her head. 

“Nah,” she says. “It was just us being friendly at first.” 

“And now?” He prompts. 

She smiles, tucking her face against him a little tighter. 

“Now we’re more than just friendly.” 

He makes a noise of playful disgust, and she bumps against him. 

“You asked,” she accuses. 

“Yeah, I did,” he allows, squeezing her hand with his. “You should invite her over. I’d like to meet her.” 

She lifts her head. 

“Invite her over?” She repeats. 

“Gotta make sure she’s good enough for you,” Daddy Lou says, and she rolls her eyes. 

“I’m a grown woman,” she complains. Really, she’s about two months shy of it, but she’s close enough. “I can make my own choices.” 

“Indulge your father,” Daddy Lou says, chucking at her chin gently. “Have her over for supper.” 

“You’re so nosy you wanna eat paste?” She asks, lifting her eyebrows. 

“Only for a good reason,” he says. “Now will you let me meet this girl of yours?” 

She pretends to think about it, but finally she sighs dramatically, leaning against him again. She’s been wanting to introduce them anyway, and if it’ll make Daddy Lou and Papa Les stop gossiping about her the way she knows they have been, all the better. 

“If you insist.” 

*

For the sake of not accidentally lighting something on fire, she doesn’t actually do any cooking on the night Beau comes over, though she supervises reheating the food Mrs. Perrier dropped off, along with a few things bought from a restaurant nearby. Her hovering ends when Papa Les teases her about proving herself to her “lady love” with her non-existent skills in the kitchen, and she flees to her room to finish primping until it’s time for Beau to arrive. 

Claudia can’t help her urge to laugh when Daddy Lou and Papa Les fill their plates after they all sit down, knowing what’s coming for them. She bites her cheek as she watches Papa Les spoon potatoes out before passing the dish on. He gives a good act, but she knows him well enough to know he’s already dreading it. 

“-after New Orleans?” She tunes in to hear Daddy Lou ask. 

Beau swallows and then pats at her mouth with her napkin. Claudia is relieved. For someone who never eats unless he has no other choice, Papa Les does not like people without good table manners. 

“I’m not sure yet,” she says, pausing to take a sip of her wine. “It all depends on the company, you know. Ours is so small that we usually only have a few weeks notice before it’s time to move again.” 

“So you expect to be in the wind again soon?” Papa Les asks lightly, and Claudia cuts him a look, knowing from his tone that this question is meant as a warning for her. He ignores her. “It seems a hard way to live, constantly on the road. I imagine it must be hard to set roots down anywhere when they’re so soon to be ripped up once more.” 

Claudia stretches her leg under the table to try and kick him. 

“Normally, yes,” Beau says, and she gives Claudia a quick glance that makes her feel near-giddy with the sweetness of it. She gives up trying to cause bodily harm to her father, no longer quite so annoyed. “But I’ve found New Orleans suits me. I’ve been looking into a couple of the theatres here to see if they might have a place for me.” 

Claudia, who didn’t know this, feels as buoyant as a balloon, head fizzy as champagne. 

“You’re staying in New Orleans?” She asks, cutting Daddy Lou off even though he had his mouth open to ask a question. 

“I’m hoping to,” Beau says, smiling at her. “It’s a beautiful city. I’d hate to say goodbye.” 

When Claudia extends a foot now, it’s gentler, and she finds Beau reaching the same moment. They slot their feet together, a private little embrace just their own. 

*

She sees Beau out herself after supper, herding Daddy Lou and Papa Les away when they try to play “good hosts” just to be annoying. They’re clearly amused at her fluster, and she shoves them without mercy to make them be anywhere else. 

Then she turns the corner to rejoin Beau, smoothing out her dress. 

“So,” Beau asks as they step onto the porch and shut the door, “did I impress them, do you think?” 

“I was impressed,” Claudia offers, daring to lean forward enough to kiss her. The gate means that no one can see them unless they contort themselves in a way that would be almost impossible, but it still feels daring, a gesture of affection out in the open and not in the safe privacy of Beau’s room. 

When Beau presses her against the wall and offers a much deeper kiss, Claudia’s nerve still almost falters. 

Almost. 

They neck until Claudia feels a hand creeping towards the hem of her dress, and then she puts a stop to it. Even if they didn’t have incredible hearing and the ability to read minds, getting that frisky in close proximity to her parents would be off the table. 

As it is, she’s just desperately hoping they’re heeding her request for privacy. 

“I like your family,” Beau says, smiling. “It’s very…non-traditional.” 

Claudia smiles, glancing back to the door. It’s nice, being able to introduce her parents as a unit, even if she still called Papa Les her uncle just in case. She hasn’t gotten to do that before, hasn’t gotten to be a family around a witness. Not for the first time, she thinks about what the future will look like, the four of them a little coven of their own. She knows Beau will say yes to being a vampire, after all. She’s not that close to her family, and her job keeps later hours anyway. It’ll be harder for her to find a theatre that’ll be open as late as she needs when the sun is out longer, but they’ll manage. She’s sure of it. They’ll be a happy foursome, Daddy Lou and Papa Les, and her and Beau. 

She smiles into their final goodbye kiss for the night, pleased that she’s already found her immortal companion before she’s even immortal. 

*

“She likes admiration, your Isabeau,” Papa Les says from his place in her doorway that night. 

Recognizing his tone as the one he uses when he’s telling her something he wants her to draw her own conclusions from, she pauses with her hairbrush still in hand, making eye contact with him through her mirror. 

“Doesn’t everyone?” She asks lightly. 

“Hm,” Papa Les says with a small shrug. “Not quite in the same way, I think.” 

Claudia presses her lips together, resentful at this unneeded attempt to try and pop the bubble of her joy. 

“Well, I do admire her,” she says, voice slightly testy. “So it’s fine.” 

“What’s happening?” Daddy Lou asks, appearing from the hall and resting an arm around Papa Les’s waist. 

“Papa Les is being weird about Beau,” she says flatly, and she sees the two of them exchange a glance. She sets her hairbrush down with a snap, turning. “I love her, and she loves me. Why do you have to try and ruin that? Don’t you want me to be happy?” 

Papa Les considers her for a moment, and then he’s behind her faster than her human eyes can track, hands on her shoulders as he bends down to kiss her head. 

“Désolé, ma petite,” he says. “Perhaps I’m simply being too suspicious.” 

She hums primly but accepts the apology. They just worry, that’s all. They don’t know Beau yet. 

“We need to talk about you two always having a chaperone?” Daddy Lou teases, and she shoves herself to her feet, planting her hands against Papa Les’s back and pushing him towards Daddy Lou, using him to sweep them both out. 

“Okay, good talk, now get out of my room immediately.”

“He’s right, Claudia,” Papa Les says, clearly enjoying himself as he leans back enough to make her put her full weight into trying to evict him. “It’s easy to get carried away when you’re young and in lo-”

“Goodbye!” She says, snapping her door shut and sliding down to sit on the floor. 

Despite her embarrassment, she’s still smiling. 

God, her parents are the worst. 

*

“How’d you know Papa Les was the one?” She asks Daddy Lou one night when they’re out on the water to let her catch fireflies. She knows it’s childish, but it’s still one of her favorite things to do, both of them out in the bayou together. It feels special, the way it’s just for them. 

It also offers the perfect chance to ask questions she doubts he’d answer with any chance of an audience. 

“Who says he’s the one?” Daddy Lou teases. “Maybe I’m just waiting until someone else comes along.” She rolls her eyes, making sure he can see it. 

As if she hasn’t seen them being gross and in love her entire life. 

(As if she hasn’t enjoyed it, seeing her parents so in love, a model for what she wants in her immortal companion.) 

“You were friends first,” she says, knowing it’s true from asking to be told the story repeatedly while growing up. “And then one day he asked if you wanted to be with him forever, and you said yes, and he changed you. How’d you know you wanted to say yes?” 

Daddy Lou considers her, pausing in his rowing for a moment as he thinks. 

“You got a point to these questions?” He asks instead of answering, and she shrugs, tracking a firefly until she can catch it to avoid looking at him. 

“Just curious,” she says. “Papa Les said he knew you were the one the first time he heard your thoughts, like you were calling to him without even knowing it.” It’s one of her favorite parts when Papa Les tells her the story, in fact. “But how did you know?” 

Daddy Lou is quiet for a few moments, the only sound the movement of the oars in the water, but she knows him well enough to understand that it’s a thinking silence and not a “I’m not gonna answer you” silence, so she bides her time and traps a few more fireflies, planning out a new painting of their bayou trips. When she’s thinking through how she can make the fireflies pop and if she might be able to use tiny spots of gold leaf as reflections on the water, Daddy Lou answers. 

“When he saw the ugly parts of me and still kept looking,” he says, voice soft. “That’s how I knew.” 

Claudia smiles, satisfied, before turning to catch another firefly. 

*

The first time she ever set eyes on Isabeau Alessi was a Saturday. 

It’s a Tuesday when she walks into Beau’s dressing room with the intention of surprising her only to find her riding her naked co-star like he’s a prize stallion and she’s a jockey at the Kentucky Derby. 

She’s so surprised she doesn’t even turn around and leave immediately. 

She just stands. 

And stares. 

And hurts in a way that feels like a thousand shards of glass driven right into her heart as the bouquet she was holding tumbles out of her numb fingers. 

*

She manages to escape the theatre before Beau manages to find enough fabric to cover herself and give chase. 

At least that’s what Claudia tells herself when she storms out, knowing that the idea that Beau doesn’t care enough to try and stop her would hurt even worse. 

“Back so soon?” Joe asks. His expression is teasing at first, but when he sees the look on Claudia’s face–and the tears she’s pretending aren’t welling in her eyes–it drops into concern. “Miss Claudia, are you-” 

“Home,” she says, sharper than she’s ever spoken to Joe. She all but throws herself into the car, swallowing hard against the knot in her throat. “Please.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” Joe says, so kindly it almost breaks her right there. 

“Cara!” 

Beau’s voice is like a fire poker driven through her chest, one brutal thrust of unforgiving metal, cracking bones and burying deep into soft, painful flesh. 

“Dove, please!”

She loses control of herself for one moment, hand moving too late to catch a sob before it escapes, hurt and humiliated and embarrassed and angry that she ever loved someone who could hurt her so badly. She hears flapping like dressing room slippers trying to keep up with the car, but Joe–God bless him–gets them through traffic easily, increasing speed until there’s no choice but for Beau to give up. 

Claudia refuses to look back. 

*

She knows she should go find somewhere else to cry. She could leave a note, call later. She has enough pocket money at any given moment to buy an apartment of her own if she wanted it; a hotel room for a night, excused as a special treat, is certainly within her capabilities. Her parents will be up soon, she knows, and there isn’t enough time left in the sun for her to get all of the broken hurt out of her. She should go. She will go. She’ll pack up a dress or two, grab her toothbrush, and be on her way. She’ll get righteously drunk and order room service and read a good book and eat lobster in a deep, hot bath while drinking champagne and forgetting about treacherous bitches who’ll take a girl’s heart and still turn around and fuck someone else. She just got her parents to stop worrying about her. There’s no sense in them hearing her breaking apart from something so goddamn stupid. 

She makes it as far as the rug in her room before her heartbreak knocks her to her knees.

She curls into a little ball and cries and cries and cries. 

*

Predictably, it’s only a scant few seconds after the sun sets before her door is open, and barely a heartbeat before there are hands on her. 

“Baby,” she hears Daddy Lou say, on his knees next to her and trying to pull her up so he can look at her. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?” 

On her other side, Papa Les doesn’t talk, but she feels his hand on her back, and she knows he’s read her mind when he inhales sharply. 

“Oh, ma petite,” he says sympathetically, and the softness of it just makes her cry harder. 

She lets Daddy Lou pull her up, and she cries until she’s ready to stop. 

*

Louis leaves to retrieve food when Claudia’s sobbing tapers off, and they leave her in her room in a miserable little ball on her bed. He knows Louis doesn’t want to leave her, but he can sense that she wants a moment to collect herself, so he herds him out, sending him off in search of nourishment for the sake of giving him something to do that isn’t just hating the actress who’s broken their daughter’s freshly-repaired heart. 

It’s not a surprise when Claudia appears in the doorway. 

Neither is the resolute expression on her face. 

“I want you to change me,” Claudia demands. 

Lestat keeps looking at his sheet music. She’s snappy, edgy, her pain surrendering its place to anger, and it’s only a few more notes before he can tell her patience runs out. 

“Did you hear me?” She demands. She storms forward, and he knows exactly what she’s planning on doing even without reading her mind. 

It’s something he’d do, after all. 

“I said I want you to-” 

He catches her wrist before she can slam the fallboard onto his fingers. He looks to her. 

“This is neither the time nor the way to ask for the gift,” he says evenly, knowing she’s desperate for a fight since the target that deserves her righteous fury is too painful to face at present. “I know you’ve been raised better than that.” 

She glares at him, nostrils flaring like an angry bull before a matador. 

“I’ll get Daddy Lou to do it,” she says defiantly. 

Lestat doesn’t laugh, but it’s a close thing. 

“He won’t,” he says, knowing this even without an actual discussion. Louis would never risk Claudia like that, would never let his first attempt at making a fledgling be their daughter. It’s a foregone conclusion that Lestat will be the one who changes her. 

On a day that isn’t this one. 

“He will,” she sneers, and it doesn’t take the Mind Gift to know that this venom is covering up an ocean’s worth of hurt. He doesn’t need to be a vampire to understand this. 

He just needs to be her father. 

“It won’t fix anything, ma petite lionne,” he says, keeping his voice soft even as he can see her winding tighter, a cobra flaring her hood before she strikes. 

“It would fix me not being a fucking human,” she says through her teeth. “I hate it. I hate them.” 

A convenient thing for someone who will one day need to eat them to survive, but something inconvenient when he’s facing his daughter asking for what he will not give her. Too many of their kind have been turned in pain and desperation, including the night that he turned Louis, as necessary as it was. He doesn’t want that, not for his little lioness, already so fierce. Her turning will be a gentle thing, a joyful thing, a sealing together of their family. He knows the theories about their kind being frozen in ways beyond the physical at the point of turning, and he’s observed enough in Louis to make him certain there has to be some grain of truth to it. He and Louis didn’t have the luxury of a peaceful transition into this new life. 

But Claudia will. 

“Let go,” she demands, but she’s already wound herself up too much to make that an option. Louis won’t change her, but he wouldn’t put it past her to do something desperate to force their hand. Heartbreak is a drug beyond anything humans have come up with on their own, and he doesn’t trust Claudia under its influence. 

When she ducks her head down to bite him, he lifts his eyebrows even as her teeth sink deep. It hurts, of course it does–her dull human teeth don’t cut cleanly like his and Louis’s–but he rides through the pain, having faced far worse for far less. Claudia’s jaw flexes, trying to drive her teeth in deeper, but he can see the first little shudder impacting her breathing, and he knows what’s coming soon. 

He just waits until she realizes it, too. 

When the second shuddering breath escapes her, she bites harder for a moment, as if trying to distract herself with viciousness, but the third has her pulling away. He gentles his hold on her hand, knowing now that she isn’t going anywhere. She curls over like a wilting flower, and he shifts to push the bench away and join her on the floor. She falls to one hip, a hand flying out to catch herself even though he already had a hand at her shoulder to steady her before the reflex engaged. She’s trying so hard to get herself together, he can tell, his tough little thing. 

But when he opens his arms, she dives into him. 

He sits back so he can hold her more comfortably, her face pressed to his shoulder, her hands gripping at his shirt so hard that it’ll be a miracle if she doesn’t pop some of the stitches. She shudders, her breath coming in short, painful-sounding gasps, her hot tears already soaking through the material at his shoulder. He presses one hand to her head, cradling her, and the other on her back, gliding in slow strokes along her spine. 

“I-I-I loved her,” Claudia manages to get out, and the words are followed by a thin, keening kind of cry. “Papa, I loved her so much.” 

He closes his eyes, fighting back his own rage. Someone should die for this, for making his daughter feel like this. She loves with everything, their spark, with every last inch of her heart, and he’s furious that this foolish human should disregard it so easily, should shatter her when she only just put herself back together. 

His mouth waters with the urge to sink his teeth into the faithless wretch’s neck, and it’s only Claudia clinging to him like a shelter in a storm that keeps him where he is. 

*

Claudia cries herself empty in his embrace and nods off against him with only the slightest nudge of a suggestion. He’s hoping if nothing else, then the outpouring of emotion will have tired her enough to get some good rest. He’s gathered her up and gotten halfway up the stairs when Louis comes through the front door. He pauses, turning back. Louis lifts his hat in acknowledgement before hanging it on a hook and shrugging out of his jacket, turning a critical eye on Claudia. 

“She asleep?” 

“Exhausted herself,” Lestat confirms. 

“Goddamnit,” Louis says, swearing at nothing and sounding exhausted. “She just started acting like herself again. The fuck do we do now?” 

“I know of one thing we could do,” Lestat says, voice hard. When Louis gives him a disapproving look, he rolls his eyes impatiently. “As if you haven’t already considered it,” he accuses. He’d partially been hoping that Louis would take care of it when he was out. Claudia deserves to wake up and know that the person who hurt her has been dealt with. “As if anyone who would hurt her like this wouldn’t deserve the worst sort of death.” 

“And you think killing her girlfriend will fix anything?” Louis asks. “That wouldn’t-” 

Claudia stirs slightly, making a soft noise, and their fight breaks off accordingly. 

Lestat turns, continuing to carry her up to bed. 

*

At Claudia’s request, Louis and Lestat give her and Isabeau privacy the day the actress turns up on their doorstep like a kicked dog after nearly a week of their daughter haunting the house like a ghost, as if they’re back in the first days after Charlie’s death. 

If the privacy is given by them standing just outside of the door able to hear everything, it’s not like Claudia will ever know. 

“Dove, you know you’re chief in my heart,” Isabeau pleads, and there’s a thump. From skimming Claudia’s mind, Louis gathers that the actress has fallen to her knees in supplication. 

When Claudia takes a step back, yanking her hand free, Louis is so full of pride he could nearly burst from it. 

“I’m not an option you can pick up and put down at will,” Claudia says, coldly, as cutting as Lestat at his most vicious. 

From the slight curve of Lestat’s lips, Louis gathers he isn’t the only one impressed with their daughter’s fortitude. 

“I am not a pastime. I am not something you pick up when you feel like it for your own amusement. I am your first and only choice. I am everything,” Claudia says, evenly and firmly, a queen passing a sentence, “or I am nothing.” 

“Clau-” Isabeau starts, but the sound of Claudia’s shoes against the floor carries clearly, and then there’s the sound of the front door opening. 

“Get the fuck out,” Claudia snaps.

There’s a scuffle, and he moves to enter the room at once, but Lestat restrains him long enough to see that Claudia has turned an attempt at an embrace into spinning Isabeau around to press her against the wall, a knife to her throat. Isabeau seems startled. 

Louis, who taught Claudia the move, isn’t, and he lets himself be drawn back until they’re peeking through a crack in the door. 

“It’s over, Isabeau,” Claudia says, and the use of her full name appears to shatter the last of the actress’s hopes at reconciliation. She sags, and Claudia moves the knife away, resting it at her side. “Now get your raggedy ass out of my house.” 

With one last shuddering little gasp, the actress does, fleeing with her hands pressed over her face. Louis doesn’t bother reading her mind to find out if it’s true remorse or not. Anyone who would put his daughter through this doesn’t deserve a second chance. Even if Claudia weren’t already decided, there’s no way he would let them try again. His daughter deserves the best. 

And Isabeau Alessi has proven that she can’t measure up. 

Claudia’s resolute defiance lasts until the sound of a car pulling away, and then she takes a breath that shakes, and Louis crosses the room to wrap her up in a hug, joined by Lestat on the other side, both of them pressing Claudia between them until she’s ready to stand on her own again. 

*

“You knew she was going to cheat on me, didn’t you?” Claudia asks Lestat one night when he’s joined her on her perch on the roof, relieving Louis of the nervous watch he always undertakes without her knowing when she seeks out this particular refuge. 

Lestat rests his chin on top of her head, considering his answer. 

“I had my suspicions,” he finally says, apologetically. “She likes the chase.” 

“Well, she caught me,” Claudia says tonelessly, and Lestat squeezes the arm he has around her a little tighter. “I’m so fucking stupid.” 

Lestat tsks. 

“There’s no sin in falling in love, cherie. You gave your heart to someone unworthy of its keeping. The fault isn’t yours.” He bites back the urge to go into vicious detail about what exactly this Isabeau deserves for her betrayal. Louis has been resolute in insisting that Claudia wouldn’t want to hear it, and if Lestat doesn’t entirely agree, it doesn’t seem worth it to introduce more strife into their household. 

Even if he’s nursing his own dark thoughts on the many ways the woman should pay for hurting his daughter. 

“I just want someone to love me like you and daddy do,” she sniffles against him. Lestat freezes, though Claudia doesn’t appear to notice. “You would never do that to Daddy Lou.” 

“Of course not,” he says, keeping her head pressed against his shoulder so she can’t read his expression. 

*

“You’re acting weird,” Louis tells Lestat one night after he’s gotten Claudia down. She’s back to staying up with them again, but she’s also been trying not to go to sleep at all, necessitating pulling out the dullest books he can get his hands on to lull her to sleep when he reads aloud while she works on her art, which has taken a wildly depressing turn in theme and color palette since her breakup with Isabeau. 

“Weird?” Lestat repeats, pulling on a pair of pajama pants. Claudia has taken to creeping into their coffin room again unexpectedly the same way she did after Charlie, so the caution is necessary. “How so?” 

“You been quiet,” Louis says, and though he doesn’t mean for it to come out as an accusation, it does. He knows he’s not being entirely fair, knows that Claudia hurting has just made him testy, but he can only handle so many crises at once, and he doesn’t need his partner acting off when their daughter is hurting. He pulls a shirt over his head, and Lestat is at his back when he has, needlessly helping him pull it down and then pressing close, chin over his shoulder. 

“Just considering some things,” Lestat says, shifting to kiss Louis’s neck in a blatant attempt to turn a conversation he doesn’t want to have into foreplay.

“Very specific,” he says lightly, even as he tilts his head to let him continue. “I get to know what about?” 

He feels Lestat hesitate, and he rests his arms over the ones wrapped around his waist, pressing gently in encouragement. 

*

Lestat delays answering by nuzzling at his lover’s neck, considering exactly how honest he should be. 

It’s shameful, he knows, that his daughter’s heartbreak should leave him so thoughtful on his own decisions, but he’s never claimed to be a saint. 

It’s always been easy in the past, telling himself that he needed the variety of his petits plaisirs. His and Louis’s is a love that will last in perpetuity, after all. It simply seemed logical that introducing a little variety now and then would keep things interesting. He knows that Louis is more content than he used to be with the benefit of their current arrangement, his lover now welcome to join in as he wishes and Antoinette long dead and gone, even if Louis doesn’t know about the former. Louis has even picked out a few petits plaisirs of his own, always strapping young men who offer a great deal of fun. Lestat has almost felt regret a few times when he’s drained them later for the audacity of being attractive to his lover, though Louis doesn’t know about that part.  

Just as he doesn’t know about the men and women he’s enjoyed even without Louis’s approval and participation, the ones he’s been told no about and enjoyed anyway. 

“Lestat?” Louis prompts, refusing to be distracted even as Lestat slips his fingertips under the waistband of his pajamas. 

Lestat, thinking of the man he enjoyed two nights ago after Louis said no three nights ago, presses open-mouthed kisses to Louis’s throat in an apology his lover doesn’t know he’s being offered, slipping his hand down further. Louis leans back against him, eyes closed, allowing the distraction. 

Lestat makes it worth it. 

*

Later, redressed and nestled in Louis’s coffin together, Lestat studies his lover’s sleeping face, ignoring the exhaustion of the risen sun in order to do so. How beautiful, his Saint Louis, sweet and gentle and thoughtful. 

How unknowing of the many times Lestat has fallen short of his expectations. 

He traces gentle fingers along the curve of his cheek, the angles of his face as familiar as Lestat’s own after all of these years. So many years together, a life together, a daughter together. He’s the other half of his soul, his Louis, host and recipient of the best parts of him. 

And knowing and then un knowing victim of countless infidelities. 

You would never do that to Daddy Lou, he hears in his head like an indicting echo, their daughter’s unknowing condemnation of his own behavior. How trusting, his little lioness, so sure of her parents’ love that she can’t imagine a betrayal between them. It’s what she should think, he knows. There’s no need for her to know the tawdry little details of any strife between them, no need for her to know how many times they’ve fought about the very thing she’s nursing a broken heart about now. 

How wildly inconvenient, to know that he shares something with the hateful little viper who has hurt his daughter so badly. If she deserves to die for what she’s done, what does that leave for him as proper penance for doing the same thing a hundred times over? How can he-

He lifts his head at the sound of the door to the coffin chamber swinging open, but he knows immediately who it is. He undoes the latch of Louis’s coffin, thankful for the foresight of them both being dressed again. If Claudia is surprised to see him emerge, she doesn’t betray it, just looks at him with big, tear-glossy eyes until he stands and opens his arms to her, his daughter nestling in against him like a chick seeking shelter, face against his chest. 

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I know it’s stup-” 

“Chut,” he scolds without heat. “If you weren’t allowed in here, we would have put a lock on the door years ago, silly thing.” 

Claudia doesn’t laugh, but she also doesn’t apologize again, just lets herself be herded into his coffin with him. He can sense that she’s a little embarrassed by her neediness, but he doesn’t mind. He would never have thought to go to his own father for comfort. It feels like an achievement that she seeks it from him and not just from Louis. 

And the question of if she would still do the same if she knew the truth about him sits like a rock in his stomach. 

“I’m so tired of crying,” Claudia complains when they’re settled. The shape of his coffin gives them more space than in Louis’s, but she still keeps fairly close, hands curled up against her chest the way she slept as a little girl after a nightmare. The posture makes him feel so much affection for this little thing who clawed her way into his heart that it’s a wonder his chest doesn’t cave in from the weight of it. 

“It will pass, ma douce,” he says. 

“It doesn’t feel like it,” she says, stubborn in her pain. Her human eyes are too weak to see in the dimness of the coffin, but his work just fine, and he sees her eyes well up again. He cups her cheek in a hand. 

“All things pass in time,” he tells her. “It’s something you’ll learn well when you’re a vampire.” 

“Which could be now,” she says, pressing her perceived advantage like the natural little predator she is. 

“The answer is still no, ma petite,” he says warmly. “But I admire the determination.” 

Claudia grumbles at him, but she doesn’t push further. 

“Can you make me sleep, please?” She asks quietly. 

“Bien sûr,” he says softly, reaching into her mind and sending gentle tendrils of the desire to sleep, cutting through the whirling thoughts of what she’s had and lost. She resists him at first despite asking for it, willful thing, but within a few breaths, she succumbs, the tension leaving her body as she falls asleep. He stays in her mind for a few moments longer, making sure there’s nothing in there but sweet dreams, and then he retreats. 

He wonders how many times Louis’s mind has spun in the same painful whirl, feeling that same sharp edge of betrayal. 

Too many, he knows. Far, far too many. 

He doesn’t want that, he thinks as he studies Claudia’s tear-stained face. He doesn’t want to cause something like this, doesn’t want to hurt someone he loves above all others. At first it had been about making Louis jealous, and he’d enjoyed it, but in the most recent years he’s told himself it’s been harmless fun. What Louis doesn’t know won’t harm him. 

It’s a lie that’s been easy to swallow before now. 

Enough, he decides, a quick answer to the question he’s been asking himself for days. No more breaking their arrangement. No more secret petits plaisirs. They deserve better from him, Claudia and Louis both. 

And now they’ll get it, he thinks as he follows Claudia into sleep, feeling the rightness of the decision as he makes it. 

*

In the weeks after the betrayal, Claudia rarely wanders far from home and almost never during daylight. She knows it’s a cowardice that’s unbecoming in a future member of their coven, but she’s too afraid of running into Beau. 

If Daddy Lou and Papa Les are aware of her being a chicken, they don’t hold it against her. 

“You don’t need to keep doing this,” she tells Daddy Lou tonight as they walk away from one of her favorite restaurants after a meal made up of more food than anyone could possibly eat, especially when one of them doesn’t eat. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Daddy Lou lies as he offers his elbow to her. 

She bumps against him before she accepts it, winding her arm in his.

“You’re ridiculous,” she accuses him, but her voice is affectionate. “You’re worse than a broody hen. Papa Les is being nice when he says that.” 

“Alright now, little miss,” he says with faux-sternness. “Don’t go getting too mouthy now.” 

Despite the words, when she grins, he smiles in response. 

And if she notices that he’s leading her in the direction of her favorite place to get dessert, she lets him do it without comment. 

It still hurts, losing Beau, losing the person she thought she would be with forever. 

But she still has Daddy Lou and Papa Les, and she knows they aren’t going anywhere. 

“Love you,” she says softly, and she closes her eyes and leans into it when he leans enough to kiss the top of her head. 

“Love you, too,” he says warmly. 

She presses her cheek to his arm briefly in affection. 

And then she turns her focus to deciding what she wants for dessert. 

Chapter Text

Polly Frenier has never really known quite what to think about her Uncle Louis. 

He’s always seemed to be a near-mystical figure to her, appearing only at night, almost always with presents, like he’s a character in one of the stories she likes to read in the books she borrows from her friends because Daddy and Grandmama Florence don’t like anything “witchy” in the house. She’s always appreciated that he doesn’t give her girly things just because she’s a girl. Flora likes ribbons and dolls and frilly things, but even though she’s always minded her manners like Mama and Grandmama Florence always tell her to, he knows somehow after one birthday that she doesn’t like getting matching things, like he plucked it right out of her head. After that, her gifts are always different, and miracle of miracles given how rarely she sees him, they’re always things she likes. 

It’s Uncle Louis who buys her her first baseball mitt. 

And Uncle Louis who knows somehow to give it to her when Daddy isn’t looking, Grandmama Florence already upstairs with a “headache” because Claudia came over, and Grandmama Florence still hasn’t forgiven her for the frog in her face cream from the last time she came for supper. 

“Thank you,” she breathes, nearly buzzing with the joy of it, her eyes stinging slightly, silly as it is, especially when she’s thirteen and too old to cry like a baby. She’s been asking for a baseball mitt of her very own for two years now, but Grandmama Florence says it isn’t ladylike to own sports things, and Daddy always agrees with Grandmama Florence, and Mama always tries to keep the peace. “I love it.” 

Uncle Louis smiles, the crinkles around his eyes barely visible beyond the dark glasses he always wears. She knows they unsettle the other grownups, Uncle Louis’s eyes, but for her part, Polly’s always thought they’re pretty, like looking at sunshine through a leaf. It seems a pity he has to keep them covered up even at night, but when she asked before, Mama said it’s because his eyes are sensitive to light. 

Thinking of the way he tracks things like cats at the edge of the yard even when it’s so dark she can barely make them out as smudges, she has her doubts about his eyes being bad, but Polly knows a thing or two about secrets. 

It’s why she’s already planning where she can hide her beautiful new mitt. 

She startles her uncle and herself when she darts forward for a hug, and then she bolts into the house, eager to stash her treasure away safely. 

*

Shopping with Claudia is surreal, no matter how many times she ends up on a shopping trip with her over the years. 

“Oooh, what about this one?” Claudia asks now, snatching up a scarf that looks like cashmere and holding it up to her face, turning to Polly and Flora for their opinion. 

“It suits you,” Flora says, smiling. “You always look so pretty in pink.” 

Claudia smiles in return and then tosses it over her arm, not even bothering to ask the price. 

If she weren’t so naturally charming, Polly might hate her just a bit, her pretty, outgoing cousin who apparently has a line of credit at any store she cares to shop at, more confident at fourteen than a lot of people are fully grown. 

She wonders, sometimes, whether it comes more from Claudia just being Claudia or Claudia being an only child to a daddy who seems to love nothing more than making her happy. 

No matter what bills he pays for it later. 

“Oh, Polly,” Claudia gushes, nearly floating over to her with a hat that she has to stand on her tiptoes to put on her head, even though Polly inherited Mama’s height along with her looks, teased affectionately as she’s grown up that she’s Mama’s twin and not Flora’s, who took after Daddy’s mama. “You have to have this one.” 

“Too rich for my blood,” Polly says, but with a smile, moving to take it off. She doesn’t need to check the price tag to know it’s true, after all. 

Besides, looking at the price tags on the things Claudia buys tends to make her feel a little lightheaded anyway. 

Claudia makes a dismissive noise, waving her hand easily in a way Polly’s seen Mr. Lioncourt do, her fingers even glittering with rings like his, a newer fashion decision of hers that makes her wonder if her cousin is copying him on purpose or not. 

“I’ll put it on my account,” she says, with the easy confidence of a girl raised with more money than she could ever possibly spend. “Daddy Lou won’t mind.” She reaches up, adjusting the hat and then nodding in satisfaction. “Besides, it looks so good on you! You have to have it.” She says it like it’s a natural law. She grabs Polly by the hand, tugging her along in her wake. “Now c’mon. We gotta find you some gloves to go with it.” 

Shaking her head in fond disbelief, Polly follows. 

*

“What do you think Uncle Louis does for a living anyway?” Flora asks that night as they’re getting ready for bed. Even with separate rooms, they still like the routine they’ve had since they were little girls sharing a nursery, taking the day off together each evening. 

“Dunno,” Polly says with a shrug, admiring her new hat at a few more angles before putting it back in its box carefully, running her fingers over her lovely matching gloves. She knows she should have said no to all of it. 

But they are so very pretty. 

“Daddy says it’s devilry,” Flora says thoughtfully. “Who knew the devil paid so good?” 

“You looking to take a job?” Polly teases. 

“Seems like it pays better than churchgoing,” Flora teases back. 

“Did you know Claudia goes to business meetings?” Polly asks, working through a tangle in her hair carefully. “She said that’s why she didn’t come home with us to have supper.” 

“Maybe they have to put her to work to help pay for her shopping bills,” Flora jokes, but she turns in her chair, resting her arms along the back of it and her chin on top of them. “Kitty Parker said her brother heard Uncle Louis used to run a nightclub. Maybe that’s where all the money comes from?” 

“Is there that much money in nightclubs, though?” Polly wonders. She can’t quite make it fit. She knows people like drinking, but there can’t be that much money in it, can there? 

“Maybe it’s something to do with Mr. Lioncourt,” Flora offers. “Lots of money in Europe.” 

“But what about before that?” Polly says. “Uncle Louis used to earn enough to support the whole family, and that was before Mr. Lioncourt came along.” This is information they’re not supposed to know, but Polly once got bored on a rainy day and went snooping in the office. She knows Uncle Louis’s handwriting, and so she knows he used to keep tidy, precise ledgers, every number carefully accounted for even if he didn’t note where they all came from. 

She also knows from comparing them to the current books that Daddy is not as successful as whatever mystery business Uncle Louis used to do, not that she told Flora that part. It would feel disloyal, telling someone else that their Daddy isn’t very good at supporting their family. She wonders, sometimes, if that’s one of the reasons Daddy doesn’t like having Uncle Louis here. It seems impossible that Uncle Louis could do anything else that would make him so mad. Nightclubs aren’t the most respectable business there is, after all, but it seems honest enough as far as she understands how it works. It’s like a grocery store, but alcohol instead of flour and crackers and coffee. 

It hardly seems enough to make Daddy so disapproving. 

Polly turns to put her gloves in a drawer and pauses when she sees her trusty baseball mitt already tucked inside in its usual place, worn over the years until it’s soft as a kid glove. She smiles slightly, touching it with her fingertips. 

Whatever business Uncle Louis does, it can’t be that bad. 

Not if it’s done by somebody who uses the profits to buy his niece a baseball mitt even when nobody else would. 

*

She figures out part of the mystery behind the tension in their family entirely by accident a few days after her conversation with Flora. 

It so often pays off, listening at doorways. 

“-around our girls,” she hears Daddy say. “Who knows what they’re picking up from being around him and that wild girl of his?” 

“You’re making mountains out of molehills,” Mama says in response. “And Claudia is sweet-” 

“She left a salamander in your mother’s handbag just last week,” Daddy says flatly. “Again.”

Polly bites her cheek to keep from laughing. It’s not that she approves, really, but Grandmama Florence was the one who gave Claudia an up and down before making a comment about how wild hair reflected poorly on a girl’s upbringing. At a certain point it has to be at least a little bit her fault for provoking Claudia. 

Anyone else would have learned better by the fifth reptile, surely. 

Or by the squirrel. 

“...she’s spirited,” Mama says, always the peacemaker. “She’ll settle.” 

“With what example to follow?” Daddy asks. 

“I had a wild stage,” Mama says. “And then I got it out of my system. It’ll be the same with Claudia. You’ll see. She’s just young.” 

“You weren’t raised by two sodomites in a house of sin paid for with who knows what kind of criminal activity.” 

Polly blinks. 

“Levi,” Mama says, voice hard, a warning in her tone that has Polly fixing her posture automatically from pure habit. 

“I know you love him, Grace-” Daddy starts, but Mama doesn’t let him finish. 

“I do love him,” Mama says, tone final. “He’s a good man and a good father.” 

“Who can’t bother to come by except at night?” Daddy asks. “Like a criminal?”

“I don’t wanna fight with you,” Mama says. 

“And I don’t wanna fight with you,” Daddy says, voice pleading. “But Grace, you have to know this isn’t good for the children. You want them around that kind of corruption? Even your Mama knows he’s too far gone, him and his Frenchman.” 

“His business partner,” Mama says, and the last two words are a warning that Polly wants to tell Daddy to heed. Nothing good happens from ignoring that tone, she knows from personal experience. 

Daddy, though, has clearly never been told things like “I know I don’t hear hands in that cookie jar” enough times to recognize the hint to change what he’s doing immediately. 

“They’re homosex-”

“Enough,” Mama says, harder than she’s ever heard her mother speak before. “Come find me when you’re ready to stop being so ugly.” 

When she hears determined footsteps heading towards the door, she scrambles so quickly she nearly trips over her feet in her haste to get away before she gets caught. 

*

Homosexuals, Polly thinks that night. 

Well…that makes a few things make more sense. 

And then she rolls over and goes to sleep. 

If it makes Grandmama Florence so mad, after all, it can’t be too horrible. 

*

Polly and Flora, different as they are, have always told each other everything. The things have grown in importance over the years from the days that they traded little girl secrets like sneaking into Mama’s room to play with her cosmetics, but Polly knows that she and Flora always tell each other everything first, even when the secrets are so big that no one else gets to know them. 

Which is why she’s the first and only one Flora tells when she winds up pregnant three months after their eighteenth birthday. 

“W-w-what-what I am gonna do?” Flora sobs, face buried in Polly’s lap, the last word drawn out on a muffled wail as she cries. 

Polly pats her back even as her mind spins, having absolutely no idea how to answer that question. She hadn’t even known Flora and her boyfriend Jimmy were even fooling around like that. Flora’s always been the good twin, the proper twin, the twin who minds her manners and smiles prettily and never scuffs her shoes playing kickball. Amidst her stunned mind whirling, she does feel a little vindicated that she, the naughty twin who never acts like a lady in the way everyone seems to want her to, isn’t the one who is now standing on the edge of ruining her entire future. 

She doesn’t have long to savor it, though, not when her unexpected victory as the good twin comes at the expense of her sister’s pain. 

“Daddy’ll make him marry you,” she says, the words she knows she should say, even as she can’t help but wrinkle her nose slightly at the idea. She hates Jimmy, personally. One of the biggest fights she’s ever had with Flora was when she started dating him. His family comes from money, and she knows Grandmama Florence is pleased at the idea of her “marrying up,” but Polly has disliked him from the beginning, smug and spoiled and arrogant. 

Really, of everyone Flora had to go and get loose with…

“He-he won’t,” Flora chokes out, and Polly’s would-be suggestion just seems to make her cry harder. “I told-told him I’m pregnant, and he sa-said it wasn’t his, and he’d tell everybody I was lying.” 

Polly grits her teeth, thinking of how badly she’d like to take her baseball bat out of its hiding place and beat his fool head in with it. 

What is she even supposed to do here? She’s always been the planner of the two of them. Flora is the sweet one, the helpful one, the one who always says please and thank you and never gets her new dresses dirty and always bakes the prettiest cakes. Polly is the planner and the schemer, the one who comes up with the ideas and usually takes the fall for them, too. If she can’t be the pretty one, she’s made do with being the clever one. 

Right now, though, she’s at loose ends. 

With marriage off the table, she knows there’s another solution, one that she knows she isn’t supposed to know about, one that’s illegal but still possible if someone knows the right people to ask. And if they have the money to pay for it. 

Polly, though, has neither. 

They’re going to need help, but who is there to help them? They’d need someone with money, who would be willing to give them the money, and who would be able to keep their mouth shut after. Who would possibly-

In an instant, a name pops into her head. 

*

It takes her four days of trying before she catches her uncle out and about, and she only catches him at all because she snuck out of the house after dark. She’d tried going by the house during the day, but no one had appeared to be up. She knows, then, that now is her time to strike. Who knows when she’ll get another chance? 

“Uncle Louis!” 

He looks surprised when he turns and sees her, and then he looks concerned. 

“Polly?” He asks, like he can’t believe it’s her. “What’s going on?” He seems alarmed, and it’s not like she can blame him. 

This is the first time she’s ever come to him, after all, instead of waiting for his increasingly-sporadic appearances at their house. 

“I need your help,” she says, and she looks around, leaning in and lowering her voice. “And it has to be a secret.” 

Uncle Louis studies her for a long, long moment, and then he turns back to 1132 Rue Royale, gesturing her inside. 

*

She swears Uncle Louis to secrecy, and then she makes him swear it again on a Bible for good measure. 

And then she explains the whole ugly tale. 

“-and I promise,” she says, desperate to make him agree, desperate to fix this whole thing and to not get in so much trouble in the process that it’ll be a miracle if she ever sees the outside of the house again, “I’ll pay you back, twice as much if you want-” 

“She’s sure?” Uncle Louis asks, cutting her off. 

Polly nods, only realizing she needed the interruption to take a breath when she feels her lungs burning. She inhales. 

“Yes,” she says. “She’s sure. She said-” She said she’s two months late, is what she opened her mouth to say, but relative or not, Uncle Louis is a man, and Polly is too shy to actually finish that sentence. “-that she’s sure.” 

“Who’s the boy?” Uncle Louis asks. “Right thing to do is him marrying her. Nobody’ll ask questions if they get it done soon enough.” 

Polly barely resists the urge to make a face. It’s not as if Uncle Louis would know that’s a worse option. He hasn’t been around enough to know it. 

“He won’t do it,” she says. “And it’s his word against hers. If he goes running his mouth, it’ll ruin her anyway.” 

Uncle Louis’s face goes dark. 

“I could talk to him.” 

She’s a little thrown by the implicit threat in his tone. She’s only ever seen Uncle Louis as a friendly, distant relative or as the doting father of her cousin. 

She didn’t know he could seem…scary. 

“He wouldn’t be a good husband,” she says, a little unnerved at his unexpected intensity. As if he senses her discomfort, Uncle Louis seems to deliberately soften his expression and relax his posture. “She shouldn’t have been with him anyway.” She can’t help but say it. It’s true, but it’s not like she can say it to Flora. 

Still, someone should hear it. 

“Jesus,” Uncle Louis says, sitting back and rubbing a hand over his face. 

Polly waits nervously, quiet for as long as she can be until her nerve breaks. 

“Will you help us?” She asks, worrying the hem of her dress enough that she feels a stitch pop. 

Uncle Louis drops his hand and nods, looking tired. 

“Let me make some calls.” 

*

It’s an elaborate lie they come up with for cover, and she knows it only sells at all because Mama and Daddy still need money from Uncle Louis now and then, so they can’t ask too many questions. With the excuse of a girl’s trip with Claudia as a very late birthday treat, supervised by Uncle Louis, Polly and Flora’s absence is excused for a long weekend. She knows Daddy especially doesn’t like it, but she knows Mama has been hurt that Uncle Louis has been staying away more, so she’s happy that he seems to be taking an interest in them again. 

That part of the lie makes her feel guilty, but she resolves to be extra good and not worry her Mama for at least a month to make up for it, her own private little penance. 

On the drive to the doctor–a good one, Polly’s been told, the one important people go to when their daughters end up with unwanted complications–the car is silent. It’s just her and Flora and Uncle Louis, and she knows her sister is too ashamed to say anything, as if she’s the only one responsible for it happening, and as if it wasn’t just awful luck it happened at all. 

The fact that Uncle Louis hasn’t done anything to shame her doesn’t seem to register to her sister, but Polly notices and appreciates it. 

Really, for a man who comes and goes like the breeze in their lives, who knew he’d be so good in a crisis? 

*

The whole thing gets done quickly. Uncle Louis waits in the car, she holds Flora’s hand, the doctor does her work, and then it’s over. 

Uncle Louis takes them to a hotel, checks them in under fake names, leaves them money for food, and then says he’ll be back to check on them the next night and to call Rue Royale if they need anything. 

Three days later, Flora is recovered enough to go home, and Uncle Louis drops them off, the car loaded with packages that Claudia apparently picked out, the purchases meant to support their cover story. She’s worried about her cousin knowing the secret, but Uncle Louis seems to sense her worrying and tells her that all Claudia knows is that they needed a break from their house for a bit. 

Polly is grateful for how thoroughly he seems to have thought the whole thing through. 

“Thank you for the trip,” she tells him on the porch, Flora already in the house. The words are for the benefit of either of her parents if they’re listening in, but she also feels the need to say something. It’s a lot she’s asked of him, and he really had no reason to do it at all. 

And yet he did. 

“Anytime,” he says easily, with an easy smile as if he didn’t just help them break the law and fund the whole thing besides. 

She hesitates a brief moment, and then she steps forward for a hug. He’s stiff, at first, but then he softens slightly, patting her on the back twice. It feels a little awkward; she can’t deny it. She can’t remember the last time she's hugged him, as much as she’s seen Claudia do it. 

Still, it feels like she owes him something in exchange for what he just did for them. 

After a few moments, she steps back. 

With a final smile and a wave to her Mama when she comes to the door to ask what’s taking Polly so long, he walks away. 

And she knows already that this whole thing will never get brought up again. 

*

By the time she’s nineteen, Polly has accepted that she’s never going to be popular with the boys the way Flora always has been. 

Given the fact that she exclusively likes girls, this is a bit of a relief. 

It’s been an easier thing to accept about herself since a friend of a friend of a friend dropped enough hints to let her know she was in similar company, and the other woman mentioned a “club of like-minded women who gather to socialize.” 

As a way to describe a secret basement club for lesbians goes, it’s not half-bad. 

Though she could do without the walking the streets alone in the early hours of the morning to get there and back. 

Tonight, she’s trying to remain cool on her way back from Ruby’s. She usually walks part of the way with a woman named Nancy, but she hadn’t been at the club tonight, and no one else who was leaving at the same time–staggered, of course, for safety–had been headed the same direction. After the fifth turn the two men behind her follow her on, she wishes desperately that that hadn’t been the case.

Polly’s heart pounds as she gives up on playing it cool and starts running. Her terror flares higher when she hears her pursuers increase their speed as well. She’s fast, faster than most boys, even, but in these goddamn heels-

She lets out a cry when one of them gets close enough to grab her by her hair, pain flaring across her scalp. 

She grits her teeth and whirls, lashing out with an elbow. It’s been years since she got into a fight–not since she was still a little girl teaching boys a lesson about not letting her play baseball on their teams–but the instinct and experience are still there. 

So is the fury of someone thinking she’s an easy target. 

“Bitch,” her assailant spits out when the blow knocks him to the side. She growls, spinning to kick him between the legs, and he goes down with a grunt. 

Before she can take advantage of the opening to run, though, the other man is there, getting a hand around her throat and slamming her against the wall. His friend going down has clearly made him even angrier, and he squeezes, choking her. She digs her nails into his wrist, trying to pry it away, but he crowds her, so she can’t even get a leg up to kick him. She gasps for air, her vision starting to tunnel. She’s going to die here, she thinks in a moment of horrible clarity. They’re going to kill her, right here, in this alley. Tomorrow morning the police will-

The man pinning her to the wall lets out a cry of pain and releases her, stumbling back. Polly drops to the ground with a gasp, sharp pain flaring through her wrist when she catches herself clumsily. She gasps for breath, trying to focus enough to see what just happened, and she finds a boy standing over her assailant with what looks like a metal pipe. A glint of blood on the end says it’s what made the man drop her to start with, and the boy lifts it again, bringing it down once more. When he pulls back, moonlight glances off of his face when his hat shifts backwards enough to show-

“Claudia?” Polly gasps. 

Jesus, she thinks dizzily, maybe she’s already dead. If so, she had no idea heaven would be so confusing. 

Her cousin glances to her briefly before she brings her pole up again to go after the other man, but before she can bring it down, they’re joined by yet another person hopping into their little party. 

Because why not at this point.

“Claudia,” Mr. Lioncourt says from the mouth of the alley. His expression is fierce, and there’s something… off about his teeth, glinting in the moonlight, as if they’re just slightly too sharp. 

Polly decides that’s as good a time as any to pass out. 

*

When Polly starts to rouse, her first sensation is that her bed feels wrong. Her sheets don’t feel like cotton. They feel like…she frowns without opening her eyes, flattening her palm against the material. Velvet? And why is her hand so close to the edge? And why is she still in street clothes? And why-

Everything comes back to her an instant, and she jerks upright, eyes flying open. 

When she registers a person right in front of her, she flinches back automatically, hands moving to protect herself, to stop him from-

“Easy,” a voice says, and even though it takes her a moment to place it from nearly a year of not hearing it, her body starts to relax before she even has a name to match to it. 

She drops her hands, still trembling slightly from the surge of adrenaline. 

“Easy,” Uncle Louis says, voice gentle. “You’re alright.” 

She may or may not be alright, she thinks, but she is absolutely confused. She looks around, trying to orient herself, and she realizes she knows this place, even though she’s only been here once. 

1132 Rue Royale. 

“You back with me?” Uncle Louis asks, and Polly looks back to him. He doesn’t have his glasses, she notes distantly, and she has a brief flare of satisfaction that he doesn’t seem to need them after all, his eyes seeming perfectly fine in the lights of the sitting room she’s in. She was right all along. She knew it. 

Amidst her wild confusion, though, it’s a little hard to enjoy it. 

“You’re safe,” Uncle Louis says, and he moves slowly, like he’s trying not to startle her, as he sits back on his heels from where he was crouched next to the sofa. 

“What…?” She asks, thoughts still feeling simultaneously too fast and too slow. 

“What do you remember?” Uncle Louis asks, and despite her confusion, she can’t help but cut him a look. 

She can tell he’s hoping the answer is “not much.” 

“Claudia,” she realizes in a moment. Her cousin was there with her, in the alley, where the men-

“She’s fine,” Uncle Louis says, voice soothing. “I promise. She’s just upstairs. You want me to go get her?” 

She isn’t entirely sure what she wants, honestly. Her head is still whirling too much. 

“The men in the alley-” She starts. 

“Dispatched like the villains they were,” chimes in an accented voice from behind her, making her jump. Uncle Louis shoots a look over her head, but when he rounds the corner of the sofa she was laying on, Mr. Lioncourt looks unbothered, as handsome and aloof as ever. “So, you’ve decided to rejoin the land of the living after all.” 

“Lestat,” Uncle Louis says warningly, and Mr. Lioncourt gives him an impish look in response, though his tone is more courteous when he speaks to her again. 

“Are you quite well, Mademoiselle Frenier? Should we send for a physician?” 

She’s shaking her head before she’s even consciously processed the question. God, the last thing she needs is a fuss when nobody is supposed to know she-

She moves so suddenly that she appears to startle both of the men as she shoves herself to her feet in a panic. 

“What time is it?” She demands, horror making the bottom of her stomach drop out. The sudden lurch to her feet was a mistake, she knows it in an instant, the room spinning. She staggers to one side, trying to correct herself, but she feels herself falli-

There are suddenly gentle hands on her arms, guiding her back down. 

“Still night,” Uncle Louis reassures her, helping her sit back down. “You sneak out?” 

Feeling her face go a little hot, she nods, closing her eyes as much as to avoid looking at him as to try and make the world stop spinning. 

“A bold venture,” Mr. Lioncourt observes, and he sounds both amused and approving. “I must applaud your fortitude, though I must also wonder exactly where a young woman would be going this time of night.” 

“Enough,” Uncle Louis says, a hand still on her arm. When she opens her eyes, she finds him looking at Mr. Lioncourt, unamused. 

“What?” Mr. Lioncourt asks, all innocence. “I discover your niece wandering the streets of the city at one in the morning, attacked by ruffians, and I’m not allowed to ask questions? It seems a small enough thank you in exchange for rescuing her.” 

“You’re being an ass,” Uncle Louis says flatly, and Mr. Lioncourt rolls his eyes. 

Polly feels vaguely like they might have forgotten she’s watching them. 

Given the fact that she can’t actually say why she was out, she’s not so certain that’s a bad thing. 

“Are you not also dying of curiosity to know why a young woman from such a fine, upstanding family would have found herself in such a state?” Mr. Lioncourt asks, very clearly enjoying himself. “I do have to wonder if it might have had something to do with a certain establishment in that area. I believe they cater rather exclusively to women with very particular tastes. A coincidence, perhaps?” 

Polly feels lightheaded with terror, her stomach churning. 

“I was out for a walk,” she blurts. “That’s all. I couldn’t sleep, and I wanted to-to walk. I just got lost.” 

Uncle Louis looks like he pities her for how bad the lie is, and Polly looks down at her lap, eyes stinging and chest aching with humiliation and terror. She isn’t Uncle Louis. She doesn’t have the protection of being a man, and a rich one at that, to keep her safe, to give her options beyond keeping her name clean so she doesn’t bring their whole family down. Maybe it would be better if the men killed her. Once Uncle Louis tells her family where she was, once they make the connection to Ruby’s-

Mr. Lioncourt tsks.

She looks up. 

“Such dramatics,” he says. “As if-” 

In a motion too fast for Polly to follow, Uncle Louis grabs the pillow her head was on and whacks Mr. Lioncourt with it. 

Polly blinks. 

“Go be somewhere else,” Uncle Louis orders. “You ain’t helping.” 

“I would argue I was quite helpful this evening,” Mr. Lioncourt says haughtily, but he still turns and bows to her slightly, accepting his dismissal. “Mademoiselle.” 

Polly stares at him as he goes, terrified he’s going to go find a phone, terrified he’s going to call her house and-

“Hey now,” Uncle Louis says, and she jumps when he turns her face back to his with a gentle hold on her chin. He smiles slightly, expression kind. “Take a breath, alright? You gonna pass out again, otherwise.” 

It takes her a moment, but she finally obeys, and she’s humiliated when she can see him slow his own breathing for her to match. When she no longer feels quite so dizzy, he releases her chin, and she looks down, digging her nails into the sofa on either side of her. Her vision goes blurry, and she hates herself for how close she is to crying. 

“Please don’t tell anybody,” she says, throat too tight to manage more than a whisper. “I didn’t-I wasn’t at that-that place Mr. Lioncourt was talking about, but if you tell anybody…” She feels the first tear slip down her cheek, and she scrubs a fist over it angrily, humiliated and still terrified. Uncle Louis might not be a traditional sort of person, and he might have kept Flora’s secret, but surely he won’t want to risk being connected to someone who’s going to drag their family down. He won’t want-

“Ain’t nothing to tell, far as I can see.” 

Her head snaps up to look at him. He winks. 

“You stayed home all night, and we never even saw each other. Ain’t nobody gonna hear different from me.”

She gives him a small, tentative smile. 

*

Claudia tries to insist on joining Uncle Louis in taking her home, and Polly is honestly a little stunned when he tells her no. 

She hadn’t thought he was capable of it, frankly. 

“Don’t need your nosy self in other people’s business,” Uncle Louis says, pushing Claudia back inside. “And we’ll be talking about you running off on your own later, young lady. Count your own worries.” 

Claudia stomps her foot, but Uncle Louis seems resolute, so finally she sighs, turning to Polly. 

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she says sincerely, moving forward for a brief hug before pulling back. 

“I’m glad you were there,” Polly offers, a little thrown by the affection. She figures it must be from Claudia being in her own home, this more casual version of her cousin. 

Though it’s not like Polly’s seen her in this context before to know for sure. 

“Alright now, enough goodbyes. Get yourself back inside and stay there. You hear?” 

Claudia mimes a talking mouth with her hand, sassing him, but she laughs when Uncle Louis feints a blow at her, his hand not coming even remotely close to making contact. She sticks her tongue out at him and then darts inside, giving Polly a wink over her shoulder before she shuts the door. 

“I swear we tried to teach her manners,” Uncle Louis says, shaking his head, but Polly can hear the fondness in his tone. “Little menace.” He turns to her. “You ready to head home?” 

She nods. 

*

Uncle Louis drives them most of the way there, and the sound of the engine gives her a good excuse to not try to come up with smalltalk. They stop away from the house, though, to walk the rest of the way, and it feels rude to remain silent then. 

“What was Claudia doing out so late?” She asks. She knows it’s rude to pry, but she is curious. Her cousin has always had more freedom than anyone else she knows, but being out on the streets dressed like a boy in the middle of the night seems like wildness she wouldn’t expect from even Claudia . 

“What were you doing out so late?” Uncle Louis counters, looking to her sidelong. The question isn’t delivered harshly, but she knows a refusal to answer when she hears one. They walk in silence for a moment, Polly feeling too shy to try for another question, and it’s Uncle Louis who breaks the silence next. “Flora doing alright?” 

She glances at him, a little surprised. It’s been over a year since Flora’s “troubles,” the word they use when they talk around it. If she wasn’t doing alright, Uncle Louis would have heard about it by now, but the question seems genuine. 

“Mhm,” she says, nodding. “She’s expecting a proposal soon,” she offers, a bit of family gossip that he would know by now if she still came around enough to hear it.  

She bites back the urge to ask why he doesn’t. 

“Same boy?” Uncle Louis asks, sounding surprised. 

“No, thank God,” Polly says before she thinks about it, slapping a hand over her mouth once it’s out. 

Uncle Louis, though, just grins, seeming amused by her taking the Lord’s name in vain. 

“Good,” he says with a nod. “Wouldn’t want someone who would leave her that way.” 

“This one’s better,” Polly says, and it’s true. “His name’s George. His family’s in the newspaper business.” 

“That so?” Uncle Louis says. 

“Mhm,” she responds, warming to her topic. “They’ve been going steady for almost a year now. He’s real sweet on her, and he treats her right.” She wants to tell him she’s been asking George’s older brother about maybe getting a job doing anything that lets her get close to writing news, but it’s a silly, stupid dream, and she knows it. She’s been secretary for the Lady’s Social Club, and she wrote a few columns for her school’s newspaper, but it’s not like anybody down in New Orleans is going to hire a lady reporter. Up north, maybe, but not down here, stuck in the middle of traditional values so heavy they feel like they’re crushing her sometimes. 

“You alright?” Uncle Louis asks, and she jolts out of her self-pity, giving him a flicker of a smile. 

“Yeah, sorry,” she says. “Just wandering in my head.” 

“Wishing you had somebody, too?” Uncle Louis ventures, and he snorts when she wrinkles her nose at the idea. “I’ll take that as a no, then.” They walk for a bit in silence. “You still playing baseball?” 

Polly smiles sheepishly, shrugging. 

“Now and then. Can’t really do it much anymore, though. Not so many people looking to let a nineteen year old woman on their team.” 

“Their loss,” Uncle Louis says, and Polly feels a rush of warmth towards him for it. “What else you been doing if not baseball?” 

She shrugs. The honest answer is nothing, but that feels too pathetic to say. She considers making something up, giving him some fluffy answer about helping Mama out around the house and learning how to run a household of her own, but some crazy little urge in her says to tell him the truth. 

What’s one more secret on top of the ones he’s already keeping for her, after all? 

“Been writing some,” she offers, trying not to sound shy, even though it’s not something anyone else in the family knows outside of Flora. “I want…” She pauses, reconsidering for a moment if she should actually go through with saying it. After a second’s thought, though, she decides to go for it. It would be nice if someone else other than her sister knew something true about her. “I wanna be a journalist.” 

“Looking to be the next Nellie Bly?” Uncle Louis asks, but though it’s a joke, it doesn’t feel mean, doesn’t feel dismissive. 

It gives her the courage to answer honestly. 

“I wanna tell women’s stories,” she says, and Uncle Louis’s noise of acknowledgement means she doesn’t feel silly saying it. “Every time you open a newspaper, it’s men men men, and even when a woman does make it in, it’s always a white woman. Who tells our stories? Who records our history? Who-” She cuts herself off, knowing she’s sounding like someone giving a speech. 

“So you wanna be Ida B. Wells,” Uncle Louis says, and again, there’s no mockery in his tone, nothing that says he thinks she’s being silly. “Sounds like a noble calling to me. What’s stopping you?” 

She sighs, unable to help it. 

“Ain’t no way my daddy would ever let me do it.” Ain’t no way Daddy could ever afford to let her do it, either, but she knows better than to say that. “If I wanna get into news, really get into it, I’d have to be in New York.” 

“And?” Uncle Louis prompts, like he doesn’t see the problem. 

“New York’s a little far to commute,” she says, and even though it’s meant as a joke, there’s an edge of bitterness to it she can’t quite hide. 

“Hm,” Uncle Louis says thoughtfully. “You never know.” 

They arrive at her house before she manages to come up with a way to say that she does know and that it’s never going to happen, which is probably for the best. 

After everything she’s asked of him, she can’t ask him to carry her disappointments, too. 

“Don’t go out wandering alone again, you hear?” He asks, before he gives her a boost up over the garden wall. “It ain’t safe.” 

“I won-” She cuts herself off briefly, stunned at how easily he lifts her, like it’s not costing him anything at all to push her way up over his head so she can reach the top. She straddles the wall once she’s over, looking down at him. “I won’t,” she recovers enough to say. 

“Your window that one on the corner, still?” He asks, and she doesn’t think to ask how he would know that before she nods. “Flash the light when you’re inside so I know you’re in safe, alright?” 

She nods again and then focuses on getting herself down the other side safely. 

When she’s back in her room, she does flash her light, and she sees him in the distance when she squints. 

She watches him until he’s out of sight, disappearing into the night like he was never there to start with. 

*

She keeps her promise and doesn’t sneak out again. Being attacked takes a good deal of the thrill out of it, and none of her club friends live close enough that sneaking by at night to walk together would be possible. 

As a result, she’s bored out of her mind only a week later, nothing to look forward to beyond Grandmama Florence finding something new to tell her she’s doing wrong. 

When Mama knocks at her door and says she has a letter, then, she’s both surprised and delighted for anything to break up the monotony. 

“You seeing somebody you ain’t told me about?” Mama teases. 

“You ain’t got enough to worry about, getting Flora ready to marry?” She teases back, and the joke is enough to get Mama to leave without lingering to see what the letter is about. 

With no return address on the envelope, Polly has no idea herself as she sits down at her desk and reaches for her letter opener. 

On the inside is a business card for a bank, an account number written on the back. She frowns at it, confused, and then she pulls out a small piece of folded paper with “Polly” written on the outside. From seeing it on gifts over the years, she knows it’s Uncle Louis’s handwriting, and she tilts her head in confusion, opening it. She fumbles when a slip of paper falls out, and she sets the letter down to get on her knees and search for it, finding it halfway under her bed. She straightens up, examining it. It’s…it’s a train ticket. 

A train ticket to New York City. 

Her ears go buzzy with disbelief as she stares at it, as if looking away will make it disappear. Still looking at the ticket, she makes her way back to the desk, looking back to the letter only after exerting deliberate willpower to do so. 

There’s an apartment in Harlem waiting for you, the note reads, along with an address. You don’t have to take it if you don’t want to, but it’s yours if you do. Claudia told me it’s in a good neighborhood, but if it isn’t and you want a different one, just call. I’ll sort it out. Either way, the money is yours. See Mr. Clarence Rollins at the bank. He already has instructions to help you however you want to use it and to let me know if the funds run low.

Go tell those stories. I’m looking forward to reading them. 

-Uncle Louis

She reads it five times before it truly sinks in for her, and then she pinches herself so hard she knows she’ll have a bruise on her arm to match the ones she’s been hiding under high collars all week. 

“Thank you,” she tells the letter, barely able to see it through the way her eyes are watering. She crushes the paper to her chest. “Thank you thank you thank you thank you.”

And then she launches herself to her feet. 

She’s got a future to get started on, after all. 

Chapter Text

The first time Charlotte Babin meets Lestat de Lioncourt, it’s when the man saves her from a painful tumble down the stairs of the bakery she visits each evening to purchase the next day’s bread at a discount to pocket the difference in grocery money for her own use. 

Her first observation is that the man is almost disconcertingly handsome. 

Her second observation is that he seems exactly the sort of man to know that he’s almost disconcertingly handsome. 

“Madame,” he says with a small bow, smiling slightly as if he’s party to a joke only he can hear. “You are unharmed, I hope?” 

“Yes, thank you,” she says, tilting her head slightly. If she were a woman who liked men, he might be her type, she thinks idly. She’s always liked pretty eyes and strong features. There’s a certain quality to him that makes him appealing the way art is appealing, nice to look at even without sparking anything else. 

“You’re out alone at such a late hour?” The man asks, and immediately Charlotte reaches for the hatpin she keeps stashed in her bag, a handy gift from her grandmother that she’s deployed before on men who don’t like to hear no. 

“Not at all,” she says primly. “My brother has gone to retrieve a package. He’ll be back shortly.” 

A complete fabrication. If she actually had a brother, the issue of inheritance wouldn’t be so damned tricky, and she wouldn’t be pocketing pennies from buying slightly-stale croissants in order to have funds her mother won’t have her nose in. 

The man in front of her looks satisfied in a way she can’t understand, as if he’s solved a problem and is quite pleased with his own cleverness in doing so. 

“If you’ll forgive me my forwardness, Mademoiselle Babin, have you any experience in the position of governess?” 

It isn’t until she’s already walked away with a card, an address, and a time to visit the next morning that she realizes she doesn’t remember giving him her name. 

*

Charlotte prides herself on being a logical, reasonable person. She has no plans on actually meeting a random stranger at an address she’s never visited before. She’s read enough newspapers to understand what happens to women who follow strange men to strange locations after receiving strange offers. No matter how tempting the prospect of a job is for the sake of having money of her own, she decides resolutely, her life is worth more than some vague promise of good pay and a measure of independence.

And then she interacts with her mother. 

“-wandering out at all hours of the night,” Mother says, several minutes into tonight’s lecture after catching her sneaking back in, and Charlotte focuses only on the faded upholstery of the chaise across from her, waiting for it to be over. She knows by now that arguing does nothing but make it all last longer. 

Besides, the forced forfeiture of her spare change means that opening her mouth right now means something she can’t take back might tumble out. 

Mother collapses onto her armchair, a hand to her head as if overcome by Charlotte’s audacity in buying day-old baked goods, horror of horrors. She wonders, sometimes, if Mother practices these poses in a mirror or if the drama comes to her naturally. As a child, she found it distressing, Mother’s supposed faints and fits, always running around fetching and apologizing and soothing. 

Now she just wonders what Mother would do if she faked a faint of her own one of these days. 

“As if it isn’t enough that you’ve yet to marry,” Mother says, a hitch to her voice as if she’s about to cry. That used to work particularly well on Papa, Charlotte remembers. 

She’s less impressed, personally. 

“A spinster, holding back your sisters, draining our household by remaining another mouth to feed when our funds-” 

Charlotte goes distant again, staring at the flower resolutely, tracing every last petal with her eyes until she’s convinced she could draw it from memory. 

“-and a thief, besides,” Mother says, voice now going shrill as she tosses the change she took earlier on the floor, the coins scattering like shrapnel. Charlotte watches a quarter roll under a side table and hopes Mother doesn’t notice. 

She’d like to reclaim it later. 

“It isn’t enough for you, is it? That you should already be a burden to me in my old age?” Mother’s lip wobbles. “You must steal from your own mother as well?” 

Charlotte inhales. Exhales. Inhales. 

“I’m sorry, Mother,” she says, knowing her lines from years of performances. A wicked little urge grips her, and she can’t resist an addition off-script. “I suppose I’m just doomed to disappoint you.” 

“Hateful girl,” Mother hisses, throwing a needlepoint pillow at her. 

It bounces off of her forehead and hits the ground. 

Charlotte stares at the embroidered duck looking up at her, already planning what outfit to wear to her interview. 

*

Charlotte has never had a job before, but even she thinks the process she just went through wasn’t quite right in acquiring one. 

Her new charge, however–a cherub-cheeked girl named Claudia, dressed like a pretty little doll down to her matching hair bows–seems perfectly content, chattering along a mile a minute the entire time they’re out. Charlotte is a little nervous when they enter the milliner’s shop, only considering for the first time that she’s not exactly sure how to go about setting up a line of credit when it’s already too late to consider that complication, but Claudia doesn’t share her concerns, marching on in with a proprietary air that’s wildly startling in a child so young. 

“Hello,” Claudia says to the woman behind the counter. “I would like a hat, please.” 

Charlotte is charmed by the display of manners and the very cute imitation of an adult, but she steps forward to explain and hopefully figure out how to actually make a purchase. Prior to Papa’s death, she only went shopping with Mother, who always handled the transactions, and after his death, it’s not as if they could afford to run up lines of credit anymore, at least not from what Mother’s always said. Before she can figure out how to ask such a thing, though, Claudia is already speaking. 

“Please charge it to the Lioncourt account,” she says, clearly repeating something she’s heard before. 

The saleswoman smiles. 

“Back without your daddy today?” She asks, and Claudia nods. 

“Daddy Lou has important business,” she recites, clearly feeling important herself just from getting to say it. Claudia turns, looking briefly to Charlotte to indicate her. “This is my gov-gorven-” She stops, frowning. “This is Miss Babin,” she says, instead of trying to remember the word. The saleswoman looks to Charlotte and smiles in greeting, obviously seeing that Charlotte’s a little confused. 

“A pleasure,” she says. “We’re well-used to Miss du Lac here.” 

In evidence of this, Claudia proceeds right to the line of hats. 

Charlotte, feeling a little dazed at the entire exchange that just happened in front of her with no need for her input at all, follows. 

*

As promised, she takes Claudia home after an hour and a half, her charge skipping happily at her side. The hat–a miniature of hers, which she’s vaguely flattered by–won’t be ready for a couple of days, but at Claudia’s insistence, they’d stopped by a bookstore where Mr. du Lac apparently has a line of credit. It had occurred to Charlotte that she might be expected to rein in Claudia’s shopping, but it wasn’t something she thought to ask about during her “interview,” and Claudia had acted as if it was something normal for her. When they get back to 1132 Rue Royale, though, she is a little nervous. 

Claudia, though, seems entirely content. 

“Hey, you,” Mr. du Lac says when they arrive, already at the door like he was waiting. 

“Hi, Daddy Lou!” Claudia chirps, darting right to him and lifting her arms to be picked up. He obliges, setting her on one hip. 

“Y’all have a good walk?” He asks, looking to Charlotte. 

“Yes,” she reports, resisting the urge to fidget. He has stunningly intense eyes, and she has the unnerving sensation that he can see right through her. “We also stopped by a bookstore,” she says, lifting up the wrapped package of the picture book Claudia picked out. “I hope that’s alright.” 

“Only one?” Mr. Lioncourt asks, appearing out of nowhere suddenly enough to make Charlotte jump slightly. He looks to Claudia. “My, it would seem you’re capable of restraint after all.” 

“Lestat,” Mr. du Lac says in clear warning, but Claudia appears unbothered by what could be an insult, turning back to Charlotte. 

“Thank you,” she says politely, extending her hands for her book. 

Charlotte hands it over, and Claudia turns back to Mr. du Lac. 

“I like her,” she reports. “She can keep walking with me.” 

“It’s rude to talk about people in front of them,” Mr. du Lac scolds, but lightly. He turns back to her. “Thank you for taking her out. Should we expect you the same time tomorrow?” 

Charlotte, unsure what to even say, just nods. She hasn’t been formally told that she’s hired, but surely making a plan like that indicates that she is? She isn’t quite sure how to ask without sounding foolish. Mr. du Lac gives her a small smile and then turns to go inside, leaving Mr. Lioncourt behind. Charlotte folds her hands behind her back, not sure if she’s free to go or not. Mr. Lioncourt, though, seems unbothered and in no hurry to follow Mr. du Lac and Claudia, leaning against the doorway. 

“Has the little madame frightened you off, or are you still interested in squiring her about?” He asks, and Charlotte can’t quite tell if he’s joking or not. 

“She’s a very sweet child,” she offers. It seems like a safe enough thing to say, but Mr. Lioncourt makes a dismissive noise. 

“She has her moments,” he says with an absent wave of his hand before he pushes himself off of the doorway he was leaning against. “I take it our agreed-upon salary is still amenable?” 

Given that it’s a salary that made her a little light-headed just hearing out loud, the answer is very much yes, and she nods. 

“Excellent,” Mr. Lioncourt says briskly, turning to go inside. He pauses, though, and looks back to her. His eyes suddenly look piercing in the way a wolf’s do, and Charlotte feels an immediate, primal urge to flee, like a rabbit before a fox. “I trust we can rely on your discretion, yes? Our privacy is very important to us.” 

“Yes,” she says, and she manages to not have it come out as a squeak, but just barely. She clenches her teeth together against the urge to fill the silence with more prattle as he examines her, the scrutiny giving her the most unnerving sensation of having her mind read. After a moment, though, he nods, seemingly satisfied at whatever he’s read in her expression. 

“Bon,” he says, tipping his head in acknowledgement. “Until tomorrow then, mademoiselle. Good day.” 

Fighting the inane urge to curtsy, Charlotte takes the dismissal and leaves, wondering if this is always how getting a job feels. 

*

It doesn’t take Charlotte long to work out the mystery behind her strange hours. 

For two queer men raising a child together, after all, there is bound to be some finagling to make the whole thing work. 

Her best guess as to her hours and as to some of the things Claudia tells her is that their family can be the most free at night, which makes a sort of sense. Charlotte’s grown up with the daytime set, but she’s snuck into backrooms accessible only with a referral and a password with Annie enough to know that their kind of person tends to be freer after the sun’s gone down. She’s never crossed paths with either Mr. du Lac or Mr. Lioncourt at any of these meetings, but she keeps more to the Sapphic crowd anyway, and even beyond preferences, she’s sure men of their wealth probably have their own little circles accessible only to people who can give a five year old an unlimited line of credit at any store her little heart desires. 

She arrives back with Claudia today with what is frankly an embarrassment of riches. There were three new dresses and a lovely new jacket ready for her at the tailor’s–ordered by Mr. Lioncourt, Charlotte guesses based on the style, Mr. du Lac preferring Claudia in things more like the popular sailor outfits–along with a stop at the bookstore, the toy store to replace a doll’s ripped dress and pick up a few other things while they’re there, and a confectionary to retrieve Claudia’s prize for memorizing a poem Mr. Lioncourt set for her. Putting it all down in the foyer of 1132 Rue Royale after renting a cab to carry them there–paid for with the little coin purse of discretionary money Mr. du Lac always keeps full for her to use with Claudia on incidentals–it’s almost overwhelming, such a display of purchases, especially for a child so young. 

Mr. Lioncourt, though, just thanks her for her efforts and bends to pick up the first package, trailing Claudia along like a little duckling behind him. He’s trying very hard not to act soft with her, Charlotte can tell, and she wonders if that’s just down to her presence, or if that’s how he usually behaves. She can’t picture him as a father, not really, not even after months of knowing him even if only in passing, and she almost wishes she could tell him he can drop the act so she could get a peek at him in action. Mr. du Lac, with his gentle smiles and his easy manner, is easy to see in the role of daddy, but Mr. Lioncourt seems as ill-suited to it as a cattle hound trying to-

“Nothing for yourself?” Mr. du Lac asks, jolting her out of her own thoughts. She blinks. 

“No, sir?” She says tentatively. 

“You should next time,” he says. “And please,” he says, bending enough to grab another package, “no need for sir.” 

“Yes, sir,” she says in a tentative joke. 

He rolls his eyes at the cheek, but it’s accompanied by a small smile, and he doesn’t protest when she helps him with another package. 

*

She never goes wild with the money, no matter Mr. du Lac’s assurances that he doesn’t care how money gets spent when she’s out with Claudia, but the little treats she gets with her charge does mean her already-generous salary goes far farther than it would otherwise. 

It also means she can give up a portion to her mother that she pretends is a larger portion than it is while barely feeling the strain of it at all. 

“As if the cow deserves a penny,” Annie complains today while they’re snuggling in her bed at her boarding house, sweaty and content in the afterglow. She kisses Charlotte’s shoulder. “You should never have even told her you got a job.” 

“And have no other way to explain where I go every morning?” Charlotte asks lightly, checking her little wristwatch–an unexpected gift from Mr. Lioncourt for her birthday, which she didn’t even know he knew, and one that insisting on giving back had only led to it being slipped into her pocket when she left for the day–on its place on Annie’s bedside table. She sighs, knowing she has to get going soon before Mother gets suspicious about her “book club.” 

“You could move in here,” Annie offers softly, and Charlotte nuzzles at her. She’s thought about it, of course. With her salary, she could more than afford it, but she knows that moving out would mean Mother refusing to ever let her see her sisters, and as much as she loves Annie, she can’t quite make herself be brave enough to give up her family completely. Before she can even begin to say this, though, Annie kisses her. “I know, I know,” she says. “It’s complicated.” 

“I love you,” she offers, and Annie smiles, moving to lay on top of her again. 

Charlotte sets her wristwatch back down. 

She can afford to be a little late. 

Especially when she now has a salary to threaten to withhold, she thinks with satisfaction. 

*

Curious as she’s been, Charlotte hasn’t ever asked anything about Claudia’s parentage. She assumes Claudia is likely the natural child of one of her employers–Mr. du Lac is her best guess, based on the shared cheekbones and the similar eyes and the sweet way he interacts with her, though Claudia acts like Mr. Lioncourt to such a degree that it’s often uncanny–but the official story is that Claudia was adopted after the fires on Liberty Street, a fortunate orphan plucked from poverty and placed on a silk pillow, raised by Mr. du Lac, who wanted to be a father but lacked a wife to make that happen, and his business partner he shares a residence with, a slightly-strange arrangement, but one undertaken by men with enough money to make people look the other way. 

The day Claudia asks to visit her mama’s grave two years after she began working as her governess, then, is quite a surprise. 

“Your mama’s grave?” Charlotte repeats. 

Claudia nods at her solemnly, looking nervous but resolute. 

“The church only lets you go inside during daytime, and Daddy Lou and Uncle Les don’t go out at daytime.” She pauses, biting her cheek briefly. “And Daddy Lou doesn’t like when I talk about before I started living with him and Uncle Les. It makes him sad.” 

Another piece of evidence suggesting a connection to Claudia’s origins that he’s keeping secret, Charlotte thinks idly. 

“I wanna say hi to my mama,” Claudia says, clearly attempting to sound firm. Charlotte smiles faintly. She has a tendency towards bossiness, her charge. Then again, she’s the pampered and beloved only child of two unbelievably rich men who indulge her every last whim. What else should anyone expect? Besides, from a lifetime of dealing with Mother, Charlotte is reticent to police Claudia too harshly. There are enough quiet, obedient little girls in the world. 

Claudia’s steadily increasing certainty in herself is a refreshing change of pace. 

She can see that her silence is making Claudia a little worried. She’s not a child prone to nervousness, really, but she’s clearly decided this is a very large favor to ask and has worked up her courage to ask it. Charlotte smiles, touching the top of her head lightly before adjusting one of her bows. 

“Then let’s go say hi, shall we?” 

Claudia’s smile feels a beam of sunshine before she turns, slipping her hand into Charlotte’s with the ease of two years of practice. 

*

They stop only to buy a little bouquet of flowers with some of Claudia’s discretionary money, still always kept safely in a little coin purse in Charlotte’s pocket. 

Charlotte watches Claudia pick out which arrangement she wants with amusement, her charge’s little face serious and focused. She has no idea what criteria is being used to judge each arrangement’s suitability, but Claudia discards offered bouquets ruthlessly, until the unfortunate woman just trying to turn a trade as a flower seller looks slightly put out at such a discerning child. She looks to Charlotte for help, but Charlotte just shrugs. So long as she’s not being blatantly rude, she’s content to let Claudia be as choosy as she wants. 

The woman looks back to the flowers, seeming a little annoyed. 

“Those ones,” Claudia says at last, pointing to a bouquet of pink peonies and baby’s breath. She turns to the woman. “I want that one, please.” 

Charlotte gives her a smile for the good manners, offered without prompting, and then steps forward to pay. 

“Those aren’t really graveyard flowers, honey,” the woman says, having already been informed what they’re buying a bouquet for. “They’re more for weddings and such. Wouldn’t you prefer-” 

“I want that one, madame,” Claudia says firmly, and Charlotte bites her cheek to resist the urge to smile at the blatant impression of Mr. Lioncourt, clearly selected as the most intimidating person for her to copy. 

The woman looks to her, and Charlotte just shrugs again. 

If nothing else, Claudia is a girl who knows her own mind. Charlotte certainly isn’t looking to argue with her. 

*

Claudia seems a little nervous as they approach the churchyard, and Charlotte stops when she does, Claudia holding the bouquet but looking at the ground. 

“Something wrong?” Charlotte asks, and Claudia shrugs. Charlotte leans down. “You wanna tell me about it?” 

Claudia glances up at her briefly. 

“I haven’t seen my mama in forever. What if she’s mad ‘cause I ain’t been to see her?” 

Charlotte feels her eyes sting at the sentiment, unexpected from Claudia and thus even more potent at tugging at her heartstrings, but she just reaches out and cups her soft cheek in one hand, waiting until Claudia looks at her, uncertain in a way she almost never is. 

“She’s your mama,” Charlotte says. “She’ll just be happy to see you again.” 

Claudia gives her a tentative little smile and then nods, confident once more. 

They step into the churchyard together, and it takes Claudia a moment to find what she’s looking for. It’s clearly been a while since she’s been here, but after a unique-looking tree–clearly picked out by a younger Claudia as interesting enough to remember–she walks with purpose until they’re in front of a small headstone that reads Celestine Hendrix Landry. Claudia lets go of her hand and steps forward, placing her bouquet in the little stone vase. 

“Hi, mama,” Claudia says, voice sounding a little tight. 

Charlotte steps back a bit to give her space as Claudia begins explaining her absence to her mother and telling her all about her daddy and her uncle and her fancy new house and her cat and how many pretty new dresses and dolls she has, filling her mother in on everything she’s missed. 

*

When they leave, Claudia’s eyes are dry even if Charlotte can’t quite say the same, touched by the scene and a little aching at the fact that she knows she would never do the same with Mother. Claudia, though, is chipper as they go, skipping along beside her as if relieved of a burden. When they return to Rue Royale, though, she pauses, pulling Charlotte to a stop. 

“Don’t tell Daddy Lou and Uncle Les, okay?” She asks seriously. “It’ll make Daddy Lou sad.” 

She doesn’t feel quite right about it, but it seems a small enough lie of omission. They rarely ask what they get up to, anyway, unless Claudia offers them some particularly exciting news or Charlotte needs to hand over the coin purse to be filled again. Besides, if the loss of Claudia’s mother bothers either Mr. du Lac or Mr. Lioncourt enough that Claudia hasn’t been by to see her grave, it seems rude to poke at aching wounds. 

Especially when her entire job is taking Claudia places she wants to go. 

“Our secret,” she says with a wink, and Claudia grins, trying to wink back and managing only to blink at her. Charlotte smiles, touching her cheek gently and then steering her home. 

*

Charlotte meets Julius Jackson on a Tuesday on a gorgeous November morning, when she and Claudia are taking a walk through the park after a brief stop by Celestine’s grave to let Claudia tell her mother about a new theatre show she went to see with her parents the night before. At eleven, Claudia is more a little sister than a charge, and they’re well past formal with each other. Today the little minx has stolen her handkerchief from her handbag and run ahead, waving it in a taunt and darting out of reach, almost impossible to catch, nimble and wily as an ermine. Charlotte isn’t bothered, not really, but she keeps up a bluster to keep Claudia amused. 

“-can’t catch m-” Claudia’s tease cuts off when she doesn’t turn around in time to see how close to the lake she’s gotten, and her foot catches along the small wooden lip alongside the boardwalk. 

“Claudia!” She cries out, picking up the edge of her dress to run, already knowing she’s too slow to-

“Whoa there.” 

From seemingly nowhere, a man is there, catching Claudia by the arm and pulling her back to safety, not letting go until she’s regained her balance. 

“Almost took a dunk there, little sister,” the man says, and even through her residual panic, she notes how warm his voice is, like the sound of a smile. He turns to her when she reaches them, and Charlotte feels an impossible zing of connection, like she’s known him before somehow and only just now remembered. 

When he smiles at her, it feels like sunshine. 

*

She pursues a courtship with Annie’s blessing, both of them eager to shake Charlotte’s mother’s suspicions about her daughter’s long, long delay in courting anyone. Even if she doesn’t buy it, the show of going steady with Julius buys her some grace from judgy relatives and talkative neighbors, and there is an appeal to his company. He has a gentle spirit and a warmth in the way he interacts with the world that draws people to him, something that Charlotte has always been envious of in others. Mr. du Lac is the same way, the same kind of magnetic draw. 

Julius also makes her laugh like almost nobody else. 

“That can’t be your middle name,” she says, dabbing at tears in her eyes. 

He observes her with clear satisfaction at amusing her, even as he does his best to play at seriousness. 

“Hand me a Bible,” he says, resting his right hand over his heart. “I’ll swear to it. My mama did indeed name me Julius Antigonus Jackson.” 

“Of all of the characters, why that one?” She asks, smiling. 

“Why not that one?” He challenges, losing his fight and returning his expression to its usual smiling state. “You know anybody else in those plays who got to be chased by a bear? Seems to me Ole Tig made a name for himself.” 

“Tig?” She asks, laughing. “Don’t remember him being called Tig anywhere in my copy.” 

“Well now,” Julius says, “I reckon his friends had to call him something . Antigonus is a mouthful. We just didn’t hear about it ‘cause it didn’t come up.” 

“And you know this how exactly?” She asks, lifting an eyebrow. 

“I know a man who speaks to the other side,” he waggles his fingers at her like a magician. “I got in touch with Billy Shakes himself, man told me all about it. It got cut–that’s the professional term.” 

Charlotte rolls her eyes, though she can’t help but smile. She’s never met someone who leaps faster into silliness than Julius. 

She likes it more than she’s ready to admit to herself. 

“So they had to keep the whole thing in the play, but to his friends, he was certainly Tig.” He claps his hands together as if wiping them off with satisfaction at providing his answer. 

“Well now,” she says, feigning wide-eyed sincerity, “seems a shame nobody else gets to use the name since it didn’t make it in. Why don’t you make use of it? In homage?” 

“Maybe I already do,” Julius says, still committed to his nonsense. “Could be I have a whole host of friends who only know me as Tig.” 

“And I don’t get to be one of the chosen few?” She asks with mock-outrage. “After we’ve split a sundae? If that doesn’t give me rights to Tig, I don’t know what will.”