Hotel Transylvania Read Online Free

some time ago, and I think now that I am hungry."
    Saint-Germain smiled urbanely. He knew that she was not truly interested in supper, and that her appetite was dulled by her weakness, but he offered her his arm, and she laid her hand upon it.
    The Hôtel de Ville was enjoying one of its busiest nights. In the grand ballroom, twenty musicians played for many dancers, moving on the inlaid floor like a sea of flowers, so many and varied were the colors of silks, brocades, satins, velvets, and laces they wore. There were card rooms, too, where even the banned hoca was played for dizzyingly high stakes. Here there was little noise, and the expression on the aristocratic faces was grim when there was any expression at all. Other games of chance were being played in rooms apart from the card room, and there the conversation was almost as glittering as the gold louis stacked on the tables in front of the elegant gamesters.
    In the supper room, Saint-Germain greeted his many acquaintances with a distinguished inclination of the head and an occasional wave of the hand. He squired Mme. Cressie to one of the more secluded tables, and having seated her, he asked, "What am I to have the pleasure of fetching for you, Madame?"
    "Whatever you're having," she answered absently.
    "I am not hungry just at present," he said, thinking that it was not quite the truth. "I see that they have hams and chicken for the evening, and what appears to be a dish with deviled lobster." He smiled down at her with the full force of his dark, fascinating eyes. "Perhaps you will be kind enough to let me choose for you?"
    She was lost in his eyes, in the depth and promise of them. "Yes," she murmured. "Whatever you think is best."
    There was a little frown between her brows, and her hand stole again to her throat.
    With another careful bow, Saint-Germain threaded his way through the supper crush to the long buffet set out for the midnight repast. As he filled a plate for La Cressie, he paused to talk with le Duc de Vandonne, a youngish man with strange, shifty eyes who was an embarrassment to his family and a shame to himself.
    "I hate these functions," de Vandonne said through tight teeth as he pulled at the lace at his neck. "I dread them, and I hate them."
    "Then why did you come?" Saint-Germain asked, taking his attention from a venison liver pâté with juniper berries that he had spooned generously onto La Cressie's plate.
    "Because if I do not come, then I am castigated by my mother and her two sisters." He spoke in a voice thickened by revulsion. "I cannot escape them: they live with me. So here I am. They expect me to find a wife, to attract some very acceptable virgin to my title and my bed." He sneered. "I have better uses for virgins than that."
    "Oh?" Saint-Germain turned back to the buffet. He knew that le Duc had some of the less acceptable perversions, but even then, the remark puzzled him.
    De Vandonne giggled, and the sound of it froze Saint- Germain. "Beauvrai said it takes a virgin. I wish we could find one. A real one, I mean. One we could use."
    "Use for what?" Saint-Germain raised his brows and molded his features to an expression of faint, polite inquiry, masking the cold dread of certainty he felt
    "You know, for this and for that," de Vandonne said evasively. “This isn't the place to talk about it." Le Due's face grew harder. "You aren't one of us, anyway. Though I hear you're a foreigner, and foreigners sometimes go in for this kind of thing." He reached for another glass of wine as a waiter bore a tray by, and swore when his own clumsiness spilled wine on the cascade of lace at his throat. He tossed off half the wine and turned again to Saint-Germain. "Do you like virgins?"
    "I'm not in that line, I'm afraid," he said, making a perfunctory leg and returning through the gathering crowd to Mme. Cressie.
    "Heavens, I can't eat this much, Comte," she said in pretty confusion as he set the laden plate before her.
    Saint-Germain smiled.