07 The Return_ Midnight - L. J. Smith

“Your highness will look wonderful in it,” Damon whispered in her ear. “So striking, so
daring—”
“I may even wear my corsets on the inside of my dress.” She looked up at him through
heavy lashes. “Or—would that be too much?”
“Nothing is too much for you, my princess,” Damon whispered back. He stopped a
moment to think seriously. “The corsets—would they match the dress or be black?”
Jessalyn considered. “Same color?” she ventured.
Damon nodded, pleased. He himself wouldn’t be caught dead in any color other than
black, but he was willing to put up with—even encourage—Jessalyn’s oddities. They might get him
made a vampire faster.
“I want your blood,” the princess whispered, as if to prove him right.
“Here? Now?” Damon whispered back. “In front of all your servants?”
Jessalyn surprised him then. She, who had been so timid before, stepped out of the
curtains and clapped her hands for silence. It fell immediately.
“Everyone out!” she said peremptorily. “You have made me a beautiful garden in my
room, and I am grateful. The steward”—she nodded toward a young man who was dressed in black,
but who had wisely placed a dark red rose in his buttonhole—“will see to it that you’re all given
food—and drink—before you go!” At this there was a murmur of praise that made the princess blush.
“I’ll ring the bell pull when I need you”—to the steward.
In fact, it wasn’t until two days later that she reached up and, a little reluctantly, rang the
bellpull. And that was merely to give the order that a uniform be made for Damon as quickly as
possible. The uniform of captain of her guard.
By the second day, Bonnie had to turn to the star balls as her only source of entertainment. After going
through her twenty-eight orbs she found that twenty-five of them were soap operas from beginning to
end, and two were full of experiences so frightening and hideous that she labeled them in her own
mind as Never Ever. The last one was called Five Hundred Stories for Young Ones, and Bonnie
quickly found that these immersion stories could be useful, for they specified the names of things a
person would find around the house and the city. The sphere’s connecting thread was a series about a
family of werewolves named the Düz-Aht-Bhi’iens. Bonnie promptly christened them the Dustbins.
The series consisted of episodes showing how the family lived each day: how they bought a new
slave at the market to replace one who had died, and where they went to hunt human prey, and how
Mers Dustbin played in an important bashik tournament at school.
Today the last story was almost providential. It showed little Marit Dustbin walking to a
Sweetmeat Shop and getting a sugarplum. The candy cost exactly five soli. Bonnie got to experience
eating part of it with Marit, and it was good.
After reading the story, Bonnie very carefully peeked through the edge of the window
blind and saw a sign on a shop below that she’d often watched. Then she held the star ball to her
temple.
Yes! Exactly the same kind of sign. And she knew not only what she wanted, but how
much it should cost.
She was dying to get out of her tiny room and try what she had just learned. But before
her eyes, the lights in the sweetshop went dark. It must be closing time.