~~Jack~~
"You think I can have a mansion?"
Julias shook his head and smirked down at him. "Think you can afford one?"
"No, but, I have connections. You, for example."
"I can't afford a mansion either, Jack, not in a dense city anyway. You think I'm a billionaire? I inherited this one."
Hard to believe Julias couldn't afford a mansion, but then owning such a massive house and paying for the help to keep it in good condition must have had a deceptively large cost. Kindred in the Invictus had a way of getting around costs, but it only took them so far. Owning a mansion in a dense city probably was absurdly expensive.
They opened the enormous front door, and stepped into the grand lobby. It'd been a while since Jack had visited Julias in his home, and something was definitely different. So different it made Jack freeze for a second as he computed what he was staring at.
There were people walking around. New people.
"Um... figured your help would be working during the day?"
"I do still have people who work on the house and yard during the day, but these are also here to work during the night." His sire motioned to a couple of women who were walking around with smartphones and wearing earpieces, and a man who had a broom, also wearing an earpiece. And when they saw Julias, a bright smile appeared on their faces. The men offered warm salutes, and the women offered warmer smiles, the sort of smiles Jack was used to seeing on Ashley and Julee's face when they were with Antoinette.
"Ghouls?"
"No. Thralls. I have bound these people to be my servants with the discipline of dominate, and a drop of my blood. The combination makes for ardent, loyal servants. And so it is for my servants during the day, as well."
Jack whistled. A couple more people went by as well, a man and woman, and they both gave Julias a bow when he came by, before they moved on. The woman looked over her shoulder as Jack and Julias moved down the hall, and Jack managed to catch her licking her lips as she watched the taller Kindred.
"That all they do?"
"Ha, no. Beatrice does like to be pampered, in and out of bed."
Ah, to be pampered by your food. Such was the unusual luxury of being a Kindred. Even a Nosferatu could be pampered if they spent the time to get humans to taste their blood. Frequently drinking a Kindred's blood, and the Kindred focusing their will upon the drinker's body to transform them, was how to make a servant into a ghoul. But a few tastes of the vampire's blood was enough to turn kine into thralls, servants. It was much easier to convince a person to drink your blood if they were brainwashed with dominate or majesty though.
Part of Jack felt guilty about it; a bigger part told him it was normal, and correct. He was Kindred, not human, and in the food chain the Kindred were the bigger predator. Course, that made him wonder if he'd feel the same if a Kindred killed his mother by drinking her to death, or turning her into a thrall. He doubted he'd hold his view unchanged.
"Must be a pleasant change for her," he said. "She's told me about her life as a Nosferatu, and how shitty it was. Hanging out in the tunnels till she could use her cloak of night, then hanging out in graveyards and the catacombs cause... well, apparently Nosferatu just like to do that. More or less alone for a good while till she got in with the Carthians, and even then, never a thrall or ghoul to feed on or keep her company."
"Indeed."
"Bet you love spoiling her." Cause the situation was at least a little similar to him and Antoinette, and Antoinette apparently loved to spoil the absolute shit out of him.
"I do. But we're not here to talk about women."
"You sure?" Jack said, snickering. Until Julias gave him a good punch to the shoulder.
"We're here to pick what you're going to wear to the ball."
"Ah, right, that. Antoinette figured you'd want to pick my clothes for me. Said stuff about the unusual nature of the ball, half formal, half casual, but a middle ground wouldn't do?"
"Leave it to a Daeva to know fashion." Julias opened one of the many doors in his absurd, expensive, fancy hallway, and brought him into a changing room. Not too dissimilar to the changing room him and Antoinette had just been fucking in a couple nights ago.
"Oh, that reminds me. Antoinette told me about what she was going to be wearing, and daaaaamn. Not sure if I'm going to be able to keep my eyes off of her. How will anyone, with the amount of skin she's going to expose?"
But his sire just shrugged and pulled open a closet door to expose the deep, dark cave of suits within. "Most people are terrified of her, like you used to be. That's normally enough to dissuade too much staring. That said, I'm sure she'll enjoy a little staring. A lot from you, probably."
"Makes me wonder what the other women are going to wear."
"Like the Prince told you, it's a strange mix of formal and casual, but not a middle ground. You need to wear something that's both very powerful, but without the rigidness of a typical suit. With this sort of dress code, it's actually a bit easier for women; wear something that looks fancy but exposes more skin than usual."
Jack laughed and ran the images through his mind. He loved it when Antoinette exposed skin, wore things that highlighted her curves. God, the memory of her in a corset already—
"Jack, focus."
"Right, right. So, what's the plan?"
"A lot of the men and women will wear clothes that partly reflect the era they were sired. Such is the custom for balls, as you probably picked up on that first Invictus ball you went to."
Jack nodded. He remembered the strange mixture of old and new, expensive suits tailored to look a hundred years old, despite being new. Women wore frilly, fancy dresses, but a lot of them had sported some plunging cleavage, give or take depending on the vampire. Maria's clothes had exposed no skin, but that was understandable.
"What era am I from then?"
"The combination of money and technology. The dawn of cyberpunk."
"... wow that's depressing."
Julias laughed, shrugged, and returned from the suit cave with something in his arms. A suit, the color of silver. And not just silver as in gray, but a bit shiny with hints of black undertones. Silver silver.
"Strange color."
"It fits your background and era. Come here, let's get to work."
And to work they went. Julias called in a man and a woman servant, and the two of them helped Jack try on different sizes of each piece of clothing, and what didn't fit would get adjusted later until it would.
Black shoes of course, cause some things never changed, but the pants were indeed the sort of silver you'd find on a chain, or at least a fabric version of it. The suit came with a couple chains too, to connect a button to a pocket inside the suit jacket. The shirt underneath was white, and the tie black, but the tie also had some silver embellishment, designs that meant nothing but screamed 'money'. The black buttons against the silver vest, the silver pin of the Xnomina symbol on the right lapel, the dangling bit of chain underneath the vest that held a small silver skull, it all screamed the modern age, technology, and money. But at the same time, the chains, the silver designs on the black tie, the color contrasts, it all had a certain pomposity, magniloquence, that screamed Ventrue, without being the dry, deadly suits Ventrue typically wore.
He kind of liked it.
"Look like I'm going to a very, very, very expensive party, with billionaires, and millionaire escort girls. And lots of cocaine."
"That is more or less the feeling we're going for. At the same time, the Carthians and, if they decide to come, the Circle will probably wear clothes not nearly as fancy. And that's fine. Different strokes. This ball is about celebrating the peace in the city."
"So... jeans?"
Julias laughed. He was sitting on the nearby couch, tablet in his hand and scanning across what Jack guessed was Xnomina contracts. "I doubt they'll come in jeans, but they'll definitely wear something they like the look of. They generally don't like suits, so don't expect suits. You remember what Jennifer wore at the Prince's ball."
