Okay, I'm doing you first.
AWESOME: You emphasize the character and have a clear personality with her, you absolutely do not want to use that. I'd argue you do a good job of focusing on her as the selling point of this chapter. She can work for the audience who likes this stuff! So yeah, when it comes to the content, I think you can do well. Also, there are some little things I like, such as the build to the vampire reveal, how you introduce her names, and tiny things like the bookend.
BORING: The protagonist could go here, how she came off as an angry teenage goth chick who is so beautiful, it's a curse and everybody loves her, but she's so above it all and blah blah blah. She's a double-edged sword since, while she ain't for me, I can see her working with her intended audience. Actually, I could probably get into her as a dark, Byronic lead if she didn't feel so much like an angry teenage girl.
CONFUSING: Why didn't she just say the butler's name at the beginning? Here, this part:
“Ms. Kasdeya, your guests are waiting for you.” Someone informed me from the other side of the door.
“Right, I’m coming out.” I answered in a false sweet tone. I walked away from my window and towards the door. Before I could open it, I dusted off my blouse and adjusted my buttons. God forbid if I look out of place in front of my people. I finally opened the door and Joseph stood by the door in an elegant manner.
Just cut to the chase. Here:
“Ms. Kasdeya," my butler Joseph said, "your guests are waiting for you.”
“Right, I’m coming out,” I said in a false sweet tone.
I walked away from my window and towards the door. Before I opened it, I dusted off my blouse and adjusted my buttons -- God forbid if I look out of place in front of my people. I finally opened the door and Joseph stood by in an elegant manner.
I did a little bit more cleaning than expected, but I'll come back to that in "MISSING" part. Other thing that confused me...
The butler gave me a nod and we proceeded to walk down the dim lit hallway. Something about this hallway gave me the chills. Even though I made it that way it still gave me a weird feeling. Maybe it was the crimson colored walls with black vertical stripes that you could barely see. Or was it the narrow passageway that gets smaller when you get closer. And to top it all off, there are no windows so you couldn’t tell if it’s dusk or dawn if you go all the way downstairs or get told ahead of time.
If it's so "scary", why doesn't she just change it?
Finally, is this meant to be past tense or present? She slips into present-tense at times with narration, particularly with her thoughts. I'd make that consistent, preferably with past. Unless it's direct internal dialogue.
MISSING: Could use some cleaning up with formatting and so on. I'll give a couple of examples...
“So, how is everything downstairs?” I asked.
“Everything is wonderful ma’am. We just started serving drinks and food is just waiting for your presence.” The old butler replied.
“Excellent.” I hummed.
We ended up in a huge room. Inside there were people chatting and having a good time.
One touch from me later...
“So, how is everything downstairs?” I asked.
“Everything is wonderful ma’am," Joseph said. "We just started serving drinks and food is just waiting for your presence.”
I hummed. “Excellent.”
We ended up in a huge room. Inside there were people chatting and having a good time.
There's stuff you could do to add to the description for the setting here. I wouldn't put too much, but this is a good place to add it since she entered a new location.
Also, drop the replies and such. Just use said unless it's volume related. Said is nearly invisible, so people won't think about it as just reading along. Another thing, if someone is speaking and you use a dialogue tag, identify who the speaker is as quickly as possible and use a comma, not a period. Period is for beats, comma is for tags.
The butler gave me a nod and we proceeded to walk down the dim lit hallway.
Something about this hallway gave me the chills, even though I made it that way. Maybe it was the crimson walls with black vertical stripes that you could barely see. Or was it the narrow passageway that gets smaller when you get closer? To top it all off, there are no windows so you couldn’t tell if it’s dusk or dawn without going downstairs or being told ahead of time.
I removed some stuff from this one, to help clean up. I'll let you look at it, figure out what, where, and why.
“Perfect,” I thought to myself. “Just what I needed.”
Internal thoughts don't have dialogue tags. Use italicize for direct internal thought. Also, drop to myself. Who else is she going to talk to? ...Assuming she can't communicate via thoughts, vampire and all, but yeah.
Perfect, I thought. Just what I needed.
At any rate, cleaning up the prose would help.
Also, don't use knock knock knock. Write a sentence with her hearing the door being knocked on. Just going to quote something I shared with a friend who asked me about this the other night:
Sometimes, a word mimics a sound, or even is the sound. This is common in comic books, especially for loud noises: Boom! Bang! Crash! Boing! Whoosh! Zap!
This is called onomatopoeia. You can use it in prose fiction, but I advise against the raw form because it can look blatant and naive. The English language allows a refined application: turn the sounds into a verb (the door banged shut) or a noun (the door shut with a bang).
Using this sophisticated variation creates subtle yet vivid effects. Any sound can be turned into a verb or noun, so let your creativity flow. When you want a fast-paced, exciting effect, choose the verb: to boom, to bang, to boing, to whoosh, to zap, to clank, to shoosh. In addition, many English words are actually imitations of sounds, but have become so common that you may not think of them as onomatopoeia: the tap drips, the chain rattles, the horse's hooves clip-clop, the cat meows, the horse whinnies.
You can use onomatopoeia words in all kinds of vivid prose, but the biggest use is in writing for children.
Skipping this part, to cut to the heart of it...
When writing for other audiences, use blatant onomatopoeia sparingly, and apply refined versions mostly to descriptions you
want to make vivid.
I don't wish to polish every little thing, but yeah, some examples. There's cases where you'd benefit from breaking stuff apart. I'll give one last example.
“I…uh,” William glanced at the crowd and back at me. I would be lying if I say that I’m waiting patiently for an answer. Even though I did this for a while, I still couldn’t keep myself under control. “Yeah sure. Why not?”
“Okay, let’s go.” The both of us left the ballroom without a trace which was good because I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to run into one of these douchebags again.
Here are my touches:
“I…uh,” William glanced at the crowd and back at me.
I would be lying if I said that I was waiting patiently for an answer. Even though I did this for a while, I still couldn’t keep myself under control.
“Yeah sure," William said. "Why not?”
“Okay, let’s go.”
The both of us left the ballroom without a trace -- which was good because I don’t know what I’d do if I ran into one of those douchebags again.
To note, some of that is me doing my best to work with your prose, I might word it a bit differently, not the point. Prose could just use some cleaning, those are examples and part of how I did it.
Also, going to add something to make something absolutely clear: does this feel like it's worth reading on past the first chapter? Yeah. I wouldn't have high expectations with the prose, but the fact so much character work is being put in makes me go "Hmm... I'm a bit curious where this goes..."
...And having hit enter to next chapter and there not being one, is this a short story? XD I judged it as an opening, not a full story.