The Vampire & the Rebel (Completed)

Part 3: Chapter 31

"Darn it, Vienne, I am not a helpless invalid."

I smiled sweetly. "No matter how capable you get, you'll always be a helpless invalid to me."

The next councillor was easy to locate, because she came looking for Jamie while I was looking for her.

I smiled at his sister when she arrived. Sure, it was probably second hand nepotism, but I liked her, because she was the one female who I could tolerate Jamie touching without ridiculous levels of completely unvampiric jealousy. Besides her anti-council attitude also appealed to me. She was definitely the sort of squishy human loving vampire I wanted on my new council.

"Hi," she said, oblivious to the way I was stalking her like a predator.

I smiled back at her disarmingly. "Hey, Jamie, tell her what was decided."

"Vienne," he began, emphasizing my name far more than was strictly necessary, "has appointed you to be a member of the new council."

"What? Why me?"

"I like your anti-council attitude. You'll keep them in line."

"But—"

"And if you hate it, you can resign after your mandatory fifty-year term is complete. They're having meetings ironing out the details right now. Hurry along."

The ancillary benefit to her appointment was that if she were occupied, she would interrupt my alone time with Jamie less.

After she stormed off, seemingly displeased, we went on a hunt for the last two. We searched the council building from top to bottom with no luck. I finally gave up, and went back to the dreary meetings that were happening, only to discover that both Davidson and Naomi were already there and had managed to worm their way into it, although why they would want to was beyond my understanding.

I indicated that they should both follow me out into the hall and they complied.

"What were you doing there?" I asked, not bothering to hide my displeasure.

Davidson showed no signs of guilt. "We wanted to see how things were going to be run."

I was torn between annoyance that they had wasted the time I had been searching for them and an impressed sort of surprise that they were so keen they had went this far to help with the reconstruction.

"Well, you're getting to see a lot more of that. Congratulations, I'm appointing you to council."

They both looked surprised.

"Get rid of that expression. We're trying to give humans rights. You're both perfect for that, etcetera, etcetera."

"Why appoint us and not yourselves?"

"I'm not really interested in the day to day workings. Picture this: I trust it to you two, and if I ever think you're doing a bad job I'll simply start a new rebellion and remove you from power," I suggested cheerfully.

"Or, you could, you know, mention your concerns first?" Naomi said dryly. I could have laughed.

"That's hardly any fun."

"And from what I heard in there you'll be able to eject members of either council with a majority vote."

"They're really trying to make my powers less arbitrary, aren't they?" I complained.

"I doubt that's what's happening." Davidson raised a skeptical eyebrow.

My sigh was drawn out and entirely for fun melodramatic flair. "I suppose I can tolerate that. Oh, and I almost forgot, I want you to submit a bill or whatever process they set up to commission a giant golden statue in the capital in tribute to me."