Lead Demon

Nothing Impossible

It was impossible to resist the holiday spirit, and when supper rolled around, the two of us volunteered to serve the meal to the guests in a ritual of topsy-turvy that made the servants into lords and the lords their servants. My champion Thomas drew the long straw and presided over the celebrations as the Lord of Misrule. He was seated in Michael’s place on a stack of cushions, wearing the priceless gold-and-ruby crown from upstairs as though it were a stage prop. Whatever harebrained request Thomas made was granted by Michael in his role as court fool. His favors this night included a romantic dance with Alain (Seven’s father opted to take the part of the woman), driving the dogs into a frenzy by playing a whistling flute, and making shadow dragons climb up the wall accompanied by the screams of the children.

Michael didn’t forget the adults, setting up elaborate games of chance to occupy them while he entertained his smallest subjects. He gave each grown-up a bag of beans to make wagers and promised a sack of money to the person with the most at the end of the evening. The enterprising Catrine made a killing by exchanging kisses for beans, and had I been given any tokens, I would have bet them all on her taking the final prize.

Throughout the evening I would look up and see Seven and Michael standing side by side, exchanging a few words or sharing a joke. As they bent their heads together, one dark and one bright, the difference in their appearances was striking. But in so many other ways, they were alike. With every passing day, his father’s unquenchable high spirits wore down some of Seven’s sharp edges. Hamish had been right: Seven was not the same man here. He was even finer. And in spite of my fears at Mont SaintMichel, he was still mine.

Seven felt my gaze and looked at me quizzically. I smiled and blew him a kiss across the hall. He dipped his head, shyly pleased.

Around five minutes before midnight, Michael whisked the cover off an item standing by the fireplace.

“Christ. Michael swore he’d have that clock up and running again, but I didn’t believe him.” Seven joined me as the children and adults squealed in delight.

The clock was unlike any I’d ever seen before. A carved and gilded cabinet surrounded a water barrel. A long copper pipe stretched up from the barrel and dropped water into the hull of a splendid model ship suspended by a rope wound around a cylinder. As the ship grew incrementally heavier from the weight of the water, the cylinder turned and moved a single hand around a dial on the face of the clock, indicating the time. The whole structure was nearly as tall as I was.

“What happens at midnight?” I asked.

“No doubt whatever it is involves the gunpowder he asked for yesterday,” Seven said grimly.

Having displayed the clock with suitable ceremony, Michael began a tribute to friends past and present and family new and old, as befitted a festival honoring the ancient god of time. He named every creature the community had lost over the past year, including (when prompted by the Lord of Misrule) Thomas’s Sebastianten, Prunelle, who had died tragically by misadventure. The hand continued to inch toward twelve.

At midnight precisely, the ship detonated with a deafening explosion. The clock shuddered to a stop in its splintered wooden case.

“Skata.” Michael looked sadly at his ruined clock.

“Monsieur Finé, God rest his soul, would not be pleased with your improvements to his design.” Seven waved the smoke from his eyes as he bent to take a closer look. “Every year Michael tries something new: jets of water, chiming bells, a mechanical owl to hoot the hours. He’s been tinkering with it ever since King François lost it to him in a card game.”

“The cannon were supposed to fire little sparks and give a puff of smoke. It would have amused the children,” said Michael indignantly. “Something was amiss with your gunpowder, Matthaios.”

Seven laughed. “Evidently not, judging by the wreckage.”

“C’est dommage,” Thomas said with a sympathetic shake of the head. He was crouched next to Michael, his crown askew and a look of adult concern on his face.

“Pas de problème. Next year we will do better,” Michael assured Thomas breezily.

Shortly thereafter we left the people of Saint-Lucien to their gambling and revelry. Upstairs, I lingered by the fireside until Seven doused the candles and got into bed. When I joined him, I hitched up my night rail and straddled his hips.

“What are you doing?” Seven was surprised to find himself flat on his back in his own bed, his wife looking down at him.

“Misrule wasn’t just for men,” I said, running my nails down his chest. “I read an article about it in graduate school, called ‘Women on Top.’”

“Accustomed as you are to being in charge, I cannot imagine you learned much from it, mon coeur.” Seven’s eyes smoldered as I shifted my weight to trap him more securely between my thighs.

“Flatterer.” My fingertips traveled from his trim hips up and over the ridges in his abdomen and across the muscles in his shoulders. I leaned over him and pinned his arms to the bed, giving him an excellent view of my body through the night rail’s open neckline. He groaned.

“Welcome to the world turned upside down.” I released him long enough to remove my night rail, then grasped his hands and lowered myself onto his chest so that the tips of my bare breasts brushed his skin.

“Christ. You’re going to kill me.”

“Don’t you dare die now, vampire,” I said, guiding him inside me, rocking gently, holding out the promise of more. Seven reacted with a low moan. “You like that,” I said softly.

He urged me toward a harder, faster rhythm. But I kept my movements slow and steady, reveling in the way our bodies fit. Seven was a cool presence at my core, a delicious source of friction that heated my blood. I was staring deep into his eyes when he climaxed, and

the raw vulnerability there sent me hurtling after him. I collapsed onto his torso, and when I moved to climb off, his arms tightened around me.