Free Masks by Karen Chance

to think he wouldn’t. But then he wedged the last package into place and stood up. “If you must know, I wasn’t all that different from you.”
    “From who?” Jerome looked around, as if he thought another vampire had snuck up on them. “Than him?” he asked, after a minute, looking at Mircea.
    “Than either one of you!” Paulo snapped.
    “You mean Martina bought you, too?”
    “No! She . . . found me.”
    Jerome scrunched up his face, obviously confused. Possibly because the phrasing made it sound like she’d picked Paulo up off the side of the street, like a stray cat. “Where?”
    “Here!” Paulo looked irritated. “Where do you think? Where do vampires go who aren’t wanted?”
    “You weren’t wanted, either?” Jerome looked as if he couldn’t quite grasp that. He looked the taller vamp up and down. “What’s wrong with you?”
    “Jerome,” Mircea said warningly, but Paulo didn’t explode. Instead, he rolled the huge waxed round of Parmesan cheese he’d purchased over by the wall and sat on it, to more comfortably watch the impromptu parade.
    “Nothing,” he told them. “Except that my mistress Changed me on a whim. My looks appealed to her, and her consort was . . . inattentive. She thought I would be a comfort when he was away attempting to chisel off bits of other vampires’ territories. But when he returned and found me in her bed, it was
my
bits that were almost chiseled off.”
    Mircea winced, and Jerome moved a protective hand to the front of his hosen.
    “In the end, she convinced him not to stake me, but only on the condition that I go away—immediately. She gave me some money, and safe passage here with some functionaries she was sending to buy jewels for her. And . . . that was it. I found myself on my own after less than a year, in a strange city where I didn’t know the language and didn’t have any friends. I didn’t know what to do.”
    “Sounds familiar,” Mircea muttered.
    “As I said. I don’t know where I’d have ended up, once the last of my gold ran out, but Martina found me. In a tavern, waiting for some of the humans to consume enough that I could get drunk off their blood when I took it. She told me that, if I worked for her, I wouldn’t want to get drunk so badly. That I’d have a future again, and a home and hope. She was right.”
    “And the others?” Jerome asked.
    “They each have their own story, and it’s theirs to tell. But they’re not that different.”
    “You mean that Martina made none of her family?” Mircea asked. He hadn’t been a vampire very long, but that sounded . . . unusual, even to him.
    “I’m saying what I said before—that she does things differently,” Paulo told him. “She says that the idea that everyone needs a master is ridiculous, that it’s perfectly possible to live and thrive without one. Easier, in fact—you make your own rules. If I wanted, I could leave her tomorrow—”
    “And do what?” Jerome asked.
    “Whatever I chose.”
    “Yes, until a stronger vampire came along and decided he wanted you. Or wanted you dead. That’s why we live in families—for protection.”
    “I am protected! Martina—”
    “Who you were just talking about leaving,” Jerome reminded him.
    “I was not talking about leaving! I merely said that I
could
—”
    “And I pointed out that you don’t dare. So how’s that different than being in a family?”
    “It’s not—we
are
a family! We just don’t have a blood bond—”
    “And don’t you think that’s weird? That she never bound you?”
    “She doesn’t need to!” Paulo said, looking exasperated. “I stay for the same reason we all do, because we want to. We know that this is the best chance we have for a future.”
    “But if she Changed you, wouldn’t that be the same thing?” Jerome asked. “Not everybody is held against their will, you know. I wasn’t. Nobody in my old family was—”
    “Yes, and they proved so loyal to you, didn’t