"H-how can that be???" Bell stammered. "You're fifty-nine?"
She leaned toward Max without taking her eyes off Julietta, and whispered into his ear. "Max, she looks like she's thirty. Thirty-five at the very most. Is this a prank? Is there a hidden camera somewhere?"
"There's no camera," Max whispered back, grinning.
"Mhm! Fifty-nine years old, young lady, and still young and beautiful!" Julietta announced. She opened her fan with a snap and laughed behind it like a noble lady in an old movie. "Hohohohoho!"
A few guests nearby turned their heads at the sound. Then they turned away again, smiling and shaking their heads. They had heard that laugh at every party for decades.
Author's Note: Ohh well, she's the Queen of High Society, so it makes sense that she acts like that. Never mind me, keep reading!
Bell watched the golden fan flutter up and down. A thought crept into her head, and the more she looked at Julietta's smooth, glowing skin, the more sensible it seemed.
"Max," she whispered. "Is she also a vampire? That might be the only explanation I could accept."
Max laughed again, a little louder this time. "Nope. She's human. Well, mostly. I think her family line is just blessed. Her ancestors could stay young even when they were really old. According to my father's journal, Auntie Julietta's ancestors are rumored to have been priestesses of Hestia herself."
"Hestia?" Bell repeated. "The Greek goddess of the hearth?"
"The goddess of the hearth, the home, and the sacred fire. Her priestesses were supposed to keep the flame burning forever, and apparently the flame kept them young in return." Max shrugged. "That's what the journal says. I can't prove it, but I've never seen Auntie get older in my whole life, so I don't argue."
Bell's eyes widened. She slowly nodded as the pieces fell into place. After finding out that vampires, witches, and fugitives were all real, a family of blessed priestesses did not seem so unbelievable.
"Now it makes sense," she said.
"Max?"
Julietta's voice cut through their whispering. She had lowered her fan, and her turquoise eyes were now running up and down Max's body with a very serious expression. It was the look of a general inspecting a soldier who had come to battle in pajamas.
"Hmm, Auntie?"
"Uggh! Why are you wearing something like that?" Julietta pointed her closed fan at his chest. "That jacket. That tie. Those shoes! You really have no taste in fashion, Max. None at all!"
Max blinked at her. Then he looked down at his suit as if he had never seen it before.
"Hey, Auntie, first of all," he said, raising a finger, "this is the most suitable and most beautiful outfit I could have worn tonight. Even my girlfriend called me handsome in it." He pointed proudly at his own chest. Bell, standing beside him, suddenly became very interested in the floor. "And second of all, Mom and Dad taught me plenty about what fashion really is. The problem isn't me. It's that your standards are off the charts."
"Off the charts?" Julietta gasped. She placed her hand on her chest as if he had stabbed her. "I am the owner of the biggest beauty company in the Alberian Peninsula! My standards are the charts!"
"That's what I said."
"Still!" Julietta shook her head so hard that her golden curls bounced. "Uggh! Next time the two of you go on a date, I will be the one who chooses what you wear. Both of you. And compared to you, at least your girlfriend has a sense of fashion." She turned toward Bell and looked her over with sparkling eyes. "Look at this beautiful Blonde Elegant Gothic style! The lace, the dark colors, the delicate silver chain at the neck. It's classy, it's refined, it's mysterious. You should be more like her, Max!"
"Thank you, Ma'am," Bell said, and she gave a small, polite bow. She could not help smiling a little. It was not often that anyone praised the way she dressed, and it felt nice to hear.
Julietta nodded in satisfaction and then turned back to her nephew. Her expression shifted to something much more dangerous.
"Now, Max. About that tie..."
And so it began.
She started to nag him about the color of his tie, which she said was dull. Then about the width of his tie, which she said was out of fashion. Then about his shoes, then about his hair, and then about how long it had been since he had visited her. Each complaint came faster than the last, and her voice did not even need to take a breath.
Max slowly lifted his right hand and covered his ear.
"Argh, there she goes again," Max muttered. "No wonder I didn't meet her for nine years. She really hasn't changed a bit... sigh."
Bell stood a little to the side and watched the scene with growing amusement. Julietta nagged like a mother, or a grandmother, or an entire group of aunts all combined into one woman. Max stood in front of her with one hand pressed over his ear, nodding at the wrong moments, with the look of a child who had given up arguing a long time ago. He knew that no matter what he said, she was not going to listen to his reasons.
He looked, Bell thought, strangely small. It was funny to see such a tall man, a former Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitive, shrink like that in front of someone half a head shorter than him.
When Julietta finally paused to fan herself, Bell spoke softly.
"You seem used to this."
"Yeah," Max said with a sigh. "Minus the years I suffered when my parents were still alive. Honestly, this is tolerable. But when my parents joined in, that's when hell started."
"Hell?"
"Three of them. Three against one. Mom would nag about my posture, Dad would nag about my grades, and Auntie would nag about my shoes. It was a full-time job just to survive dinner."
Bell laughed. It was a real laugh, a gentle one, but something about it felt a little hollow. Max did not notice. He was too busy rubbing his ear.
Because to Bell, what Max had just described did not sound like hell at all. It sounded like a warm house. It sounded like a table where everyone talked at the same time, where people cared enough to complain, and where nobody was ever left sitting alone.
She had never had that.
Her smile slowly faded. She lowered her eyes, and without meaning to, she began to remember.
She remembered dinner tables where her parents' attention flowed to her older sibling and her younger sibling, but never quite reached the middle. She remembered report cards that were glanced at and put aside. She remembered achievements that no one clapped for, because no one thought she needed it. She had been mature from a very young age. She was the quiet one, the one who never made trouble, and the one who could take care of herself. Her older and younger siblings had needed help, so the help always went to them.
'You can call it middle child treatment,' Bell thought. 'I mean, I am the middle child, so it's no wonder I was treated like that.'
She had learned to fold her feelings into small, neat squares and put them away. After a while, no one asked what was inside.
Only one person had ever asked.
'Auntie Irmela is the only person who ever gave me warmth,' she thought. 'She was the only one who really noticed me. She asked me how my day was, and she waited for the real answer. I wish Auntie Irmela was my mother. Or at least, I wish I had a mother like Ma'am Julietta, someone who would nag me about my shoes, because that would mean she cared.'
The thought stung, and she felt ashamed immediately afterward.
She could call it jealousy. She was jealous that Max had a godmother who ran across a ballroom just to hug him. She was jealous that he had grown up in a house full of people who loved him loudly. But she crossed the thought out of her mind at once. She still had parents. They were alive, and they were still there, even if they mostly ignored her. Compared to some people, that was a blessing.
They had not even cared when she was being bullied back in Germany. That bullying was the true reason she had left home and flown across the ocean to America, to this state of North Carolina. She had told herself she was going for her studies. She had told her parents the same thing. But she knew the truth. She had been running away.
'And look where running away brought me,' she thought. 'To a stranger's ballroom, in a borrowed dress, holding the arm of a man who says he's a vampire.'
She almost smiled at how strange her life had become.
Bell shook her head slowly and whispered to herself. "I shouldn't feel jealous of the warmth between him and her. I should be more thankful. Auntie Irmela is still alive, and Max..."
Her fingers curled tight.
Max's parents were not alive. That was why Julietta's voice had trembled when she said his mother's name a moment ago. That was why Max had gone so quiet when she said "God rest her soul." Bell had seen it. She had seen the way his hand tightened on her shoulder.
"Max..." she whispered, and she clenched her fists. "Never mind."
She did not finish the thought. She was afraid that if she did, she would say something that would make him sad.
Instead she laughed.
She laughed out loud this time. It burst out of her before she could stop it, the way a bubble rises from the bottom of a glass. It was bright and clear, and it carried over the music so well that both Max and Julietta turned to look at her. Julietta even stopped nagging in the middle of a sentence about neckties.
"And what is so funny, Young Girl?" Julietta asked. Her eyebrow rose, and her fan paused in midair.
Bell, still laughing, wiped the corner of her eye. "O-oh! Don't mind me. Hahahaha! It's just that I love how warm you are toward Max, Ma'am. I love how you two really act like a family, even though you're not blood related."
Julietta stared at her for a moment. Then, to Max's surprise, a pink flush spread across her cheeks.
"O-ohh, well!" she said, and she lifted her chin. "Of course! He is my nephew, and I am his godmother! So I should be like his second mom, naturally. That's how it works!" Then she suddenly snapped her fan open and pointed it at Bell. "But you should not laugh when someone nags at you, or when someone is nagging at someone else, young lady! It's rude! Hmph!"
She hid her half-embarrassed, half-pleased face behind the fan.
"Haha, sorry," Bell said awkwardly, scratching the back of her head. "It's just that it's really funny."
"Auntie, you shouldn't nag her too," Max said. He pressed his palm against his face and shook his head slowly, in complete disappointment. "She's a guest. Have some decency, sometimes."
Julietta whipped her head toward him. Her golden curls swung like a lion's mane.
"How dare you!" she cried. "You speak of decency while wearing that?!"
And she went right back to nagging him.
Max took a deep breath, held it for three seconds, and let it out. He had faced assassins, police chases, and the Top 10 Most Wanted list. But he had never found a way to survive Julietta on a roll.
Then he felt a small hand wrap around his wrist and pull.
His eyes widened as Bell tugged him away from the lecture. "B-Bell!?"
"Let's go and escape from her, all right?" Bell said, and she smiled at him. It was a bright, mischievous smile that Max had never seen on her face before. It made her look about ten years younger. It made her look free.
"H-hey!" Julietta shouted. She lifted the hem of her gown and tried to follow. "I'm not done speaking to you, Max! And where are you taking him, Young Lady Ahlgrymm?!"
But Bell was already weaving between the guests, pulling Max behind her like a kite on a string. Max stumbled once, then twice, then gave up and let himself be dragged along. A waiter with a tray of champagne jumped aside just in time. Two old aristocrats raised their eyebrows. A young woman near the buffet table whispered something to her friend and giggled.
"Slow down, Bell!" Max said, laughing in spite of himself. "You're going to knock someone over!"
"Then keep up!"
Julietta took three more steps and was about to break into a full run when a hand touched her elbow.
"My Lady," said one of her servants quietly. He was a tall, well-dressed man with a tablet tucked under his arm. "Forgive me, but we should go and meet the investors and directors now. They have been waiting for twenty minutes."
Julietta stopped. She looked at the crowd, where the two of them had already vanished. Then she looked at the servant, then at the corner of the room where a group of men in expensive suits was watching her with polite patience.
She sighed. It was the long, heavy sigh of a woman who had too many responsibilities and too little time.
"Fine," she said. She folded her fan against her palm. "Talking about luck. You are really just like your father, Max."
She glanced once more at the place where they had disappeared, and her expression slowly softened.
"And Bell..."
Something changed in her face. The playful look faded, and in its place came a smile that was gentle and a little sad.
"Haha. I remember now," she said quietly. "Ninna also pulled Dietrich away from me when I nagged him. It was the exact same thing. She grabbed his arm, laughed in my face, and dragged him off to the other side of the room. I was so mad at her."
She gave a small laugh that sounded more like a breath.
"Seems your wish for your son has been answered, Ninna. You always said you wanted him to find a girl with the same personality as yours."
Then a single tear slid down her right cheek.
It rolled over her powdered skin and dripped off her chin. Julietta did not move to wipe it. The servant standing nearby quietly took a folded handkerchief from his pocket and held it out to her, and she accepted it without a word.
"Sniff!" she said. "He grew up too quickly, Ninna."
Her voice cracked, and the tears began to fall faster. She pressed the handkerchief to her eyes and her shoulders shook, and for the first time that night, the Queen of High Society did not look like a queen at all. She looked like a woman who had lost her best friend.
"If... sniff... if you and your husband were still alive," she whispered, "I know both of you would be proud of him. No matter what path he chose. Wouldn't you? Ninna? Dietrich?"
Nobody answered. The orchestra was playing a waltz somewhere across the room. The guests were laughing. The chandeliers were glowing. The world was moving on, as it always did.
"Let's go now, My Lady," said the servant gently.
"Alright, alright!" Julietta snapped, sniffling. "Geez! Can't you give a woman a moment?"
The servant's back straightened immediately. He bowed deeply, with his hand across his chest. "Sorry, My Lady."
"Ughh..." Julietta sighed. She dabbed her cheeks again, then waved her hand to tell him to go ahead of her. "Go. I'll be right behind you. I just have to fix my face first, or my makeup will be ruined."
The servant bowed again and walked a few paces away, giving her space.
Julietta stood alone for a moment. She carefully pressed the handkerchief under each eye, trying to save her makeup. Her hand was trembling. She looked at her own reflection in the polished marble floor, a violet shape with golden hair, and she did not like the woman she saw there.
Then her fingers closed.
Both of her fists clenched at the same time. The handkerchief crumpled in her right hand. The fan creaked in her left. Her nails bit into her palms hard enough to leave marks, and the light in her turquoise eyes went from warm and bright to cold and sharp, like the edge of a blade.
It was a look that no one in this ballroom had ever seen on her face. The old aristocrats who called her the Queen of High Society would not have recognized it. The investors waiting across the room would have taken a step back.
"I swear," Julietta whispered. Her voice was low, trembling with a rage she had been holding for years. "I swear I will find whoever killed your parents, Max."
She raised her head toward the ceiling, toward the glittering chandeliers, as if the two people she was speaking to could hear her from somewhere above.
"Whoever they are. Wherever they hide. However long it takes, I will find them, and I will make them pay for everything they took from you and from me."
Her voice rose, and her whole body shook with the force of it.
"I SWEAR!"