Forty
U pon awakening, I could feel it in my bones that the house was empty. The bed was cold again. I knew Vince was gone before I truly came to my senses. I had the distinct memory of him pushing the hair from my eyes, kissing my face, and whispering that he would return.
But when I opened my eyes, a dark red rose, almost black at the tip of the petals, sat against my pillow.
The sweet smell of the flower seeped into me, wrapping itself around me like a hug. I set it gently on the table beside the bed, careful not to crush the petals.
It was just like the one in my bedroom—the one I’d found in the garden, then on my pillow, back then.
He had been watching over me.
Visiting me in the night .
I dressed hastily and pulled my shawl tight around me as I padded down the hall, footsteps muffled by the slippers on my feet. No voices echoed down the marble halls, only a few of the dead servants scrubbing at the floor, dusting light fixtures.
I didn’t think about what that meant—where Vince and Sinclair and the others might be, what they could be doing. Or if anyone else showed up, any other vampires.
The servants fluttered about, cleaning the floors in the wake of last night’s party. None of them looked up at me as I passed.
How strange to walk amongst monsters, and know they had no power to hurt you.
These were all Made vampires, and Vince was their Sire—and they could do nothing to me.
I made my way to the colonnaded veranda outside, greeted by a soft rumble of thunder out in the distance. The sky was a deep gray, a large collection of near-black mountainous forms along the horizon. Every few seconds, lighting would flash from within, bringing with it the delayed grumble of Mother Nature.
I leant against a column, the marble a stark white against the hazy green of the lawn. The large fountain before the stairs to the porch still bubbled, the drive swept of all evidence of the previous evening’s carousing, no cars left behind, no stray scarves or shoes.
A breeze picked up the ends of my hair, warning me to return inside. The rumbling continued, those dark clouds creeping ever closer. The water of the Sound, gray and bleak, roiled at the growing storm. The humidity was tangible, a suffocating force, stealing the air from right before me.
My short skirt billowed around me, tossed around by the wind .
I shut my eyes and felt the tempest growing, welcomed the unsettling show of power. A moment later, water sprinkled from the sky, falling from that darkness looming over the manor.
It was coming right for the manor.
I stepped down from the veranda, fully exposed to the elements. It tossed my hair, my skirt; at first it was like the flirty peek of a lover, lifting the fabric and threatening to expose me, then it grew violent, gripping at me, pushing against me with invisible force.
Yes, yes, more, more.
The gates of the garden stood before me. The wrought iron creaked as the wind rattled against the bars. I found it unlocked, and pushed the gates open, slipping between the small crack I made in the iron.
The cypress trees swayed, the moonflowers shut against the dim light of the afternoon, protecting their waxy soft petals from the gusts of air. The gravel crunched under my shoes.
In the daylight, it became clear this was not simply a garden. Of course it wasn’t, nothing in this house was as it seemed. And if it’d been a church, then this must’ve been the graveyard—a detail I’d missed my first time within the gates, the midnight hour obscuring the true nature of these stone paths. .
The flowers were overgrown, and amongst them, large flat stones jutted upward. Marble, concrete, granite… all peeking over the closed blooms, wanting to be seen, remembered.
The one closest to me was stained emerald with moss. The moonflowers grew uncontrolled around it, their vines wrapping around the stone, creating a wall of greenery so thick I had to pull the branches away. It was plainly decorated, with a simple border, the name of the buried carved so shallowly I had to run my fingers over the relief to read the name. Myrtus Gaczko. The years underneath were lost to time.
I felt an energy in the stone, an acknowledgment of my presence.
Scanning the gardens, I saw many more.
And the statue of the nymph, overseeing them all, her creamy marble skin streaked and weathered.
The wind whipped my hair around my face, the raindrops pelting my skin. Lightning flashed, and the thunder was so much closer now, only seconds after the spark of light. The earth seemed to growl its displeasure, the sound rumbling in my bones.
I wondered how it would feel to stand with my feet in the water of the Sound and let the storm rage around me. Was I strong enough to withstand the pull? Or would I fall into the depths and get swept away? Then I would not have to worry about Vince’s true nature, or Lucas and Wright.
The next headstone was equally concealed, but the decoration was more ornate. And the next was weathered to a completely smooth surface. They sat in rows, tucked in amongst the brush and flowers, the walkways coming within inches of the stones. They’d been paved over, planted over. Visitors to the garden would walk over their bodies, six feet under, decaying and rotting into the lush earth, moistened by the Sound.
How many bodies surrounded me now? How many were underneath this earth? And how many had no markers, cursed to the endless obscurity of forever?
I touched each stone, laying my palm on the flat cool surfaces. I didn’t know what made me do it; it wasn’t a reverence for these dead, because I did not know them. These souls, buried next to this manor that hosted parties to ruin—did they ever make themselves known? Did they ever appear as apparitions and warn the humans that wandered into their domain?
I came upon a hedge, a wall of thorns that reached up above the height of a man. It was indistinguishable from the other four walls of the garden, the stone packed so tightly with vines, but I knew, after only a few moments—this hedge was where I’d been cornered. When that vampire had begged for my blood, offered to change me.
I reached up into the vines, feeling the cool wall beneath my fingertips, damp with the growing storm, the vines creaking in protest against the wind. Trailing my fingers along those vines, plucking a flower for my hair, the petals fluttering in the breeze. The hedge formed a corner—and around the corner was a door, overgrown with moss and gorse and rose bushes.
A shed of some sort? No—this was a graveyard.
A tomb.
I hadn’t realized it in the dark that night, and the knowledge of it now sent the hairs on my neck upright. The vines moved like snakes in the wind, restless and slithering against the hidden exterior. The stone slab of a door, sealed shut with iron bars, much like that of the garden’s gates. But the lock was broken, and I swore I saw deep indentations in the stone block, gashes stained a deep rust color, and a large crack traveling diagonally from the mechanism. Like a great force had tried to get in.
Or out .
The wind howled, moaned. Ghostly and frightening, whistling through leaves and tree branches, debris from the plants whipping in the air.
The moan grew like it came from within that tomb. Agonizing, rattling me deep in my bones, a sound of anguish.
I jolted as a hand grabbed my arm.
“Helena!”
Séra whirled me around. Her approach had been covered up by the sound, the patter of rain.
“What are you doing?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out.
Had she heard it? Did she know what was within? The dead from long ago, or—
“You must get inside,” she said, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward the house. It stood tall against the riotous sky, the usually clean exterior looking stained black with the rain.
She wore a blue raincoat and hat, already soaked with water, and she pulled me away quickly, her grip strong.
“The sky is about to open up and you’re outside,” she said, more to herself than to me, shaking her head.
“I needed to clear my head,” I said.
Séra scoffed as the iron gate of the garden clanged shut behind us. “You’ll get a chill,” she said. “And if you’re sick, who’s going to keep Vince occupied?”
“He seems occupied enough as it is.”
She glanced at me. “What do you mean?”
“He disappears. If he’s not with me, he’s doing… whatever it is that he does. ”
“You can always find me,” she said as though it were obvious. We stepped under the covering of the veranda, just as the rain came down in sheets. My dress was soaked through, the slippers ruined.
“I don’t know where you are half the time,” I said. I didn’t say how much I wished to invite Flora over. How much I wished to go to the city again—to get out of this house. It was grand and beautiful, but I was tiring of seeing the same walls, days on end. Of feeling like I was being watched, some specter spying on me for Vince—just as Séra had, just as Sinclair had.
“Then that’s something we’ll remedy,” she said with a soft smile.
A servant appeared at the front door with two towels. Séra wrapped one around my shoulders, pushing my wet hair from my face.
Where were they before? Where had everyone gone? And what made them come back so suddenly?
“You’re not my keeper, Séra.”
She just shrugged, and I followed her back inside the house, into the foyer. I could hear the squall outside through the pelting of the roof, the creaking of the windows.
“I want you to like it here,” she said simply. “Whatever I can do—”
“Where were you?”
She paused just before the ballroom, shucking off her raincoat into the hands of the dead-eyed, silent servant. “We just went out. Vince was called into the city.”
“And you left me here?”
She shrugged again. “He didn’t want to wake you. ”
I crossed my arms, ignoring the way my clothing clung to my skin, cold now with all the water that soaked through. “Where is he?”
It was too odd—their swift return, the sudden sense of life once more in the manor. As though I’d awoken in a dream-world and I was its sole inhabitant, until somehow, that veil had been lifted. And he hadn’t found me, Séra had. The slight frown to her lips, the forced smiles…
“He’s gone to his study. Working,” she said, and motioned to one of the many waiting servants, all standing in a line against the wall, hands clasped, like automatons waiting for instruction. “Let’s get you a bath.”
“I’m fine.” I just needed out of these clothes.
“I insist,” she said, grabbing my hand once more. The feeling of her cold skin, in conjunction with the drops of water on her fingers, was a peculiar sensation. We started up the stairs, my slippers squeaking against the polished floor, a servant following, presumably to run the bath.
She said nothing else as we made it to the hall of our bedroom. The servant went ahead of us, and as we approached Vince and I’s bedroom door, which stood ajar, the sound of running water coming from inside. “Would you like me to help?”
“You are not my maid anymore, Séra,” I said, shucking off the towel. And I just wanted to be alone.
She wasn’t giving me a straight answer. And I knew there was more to what she was telling me. Who had called Vince and summoned him away for the morning? Who was so important?
Séra opened her mouth to retort, but her words were drowned out by loud laughter suddenly spilling down the hall. It echoed, jumping from polished surface to polished surface; a man’s laughter, deep in its timbre and dark.
There was a warning in that laugh.
Séra’s eyes widened, hands coming up to brace the doorway on either side of me. Caging me into the room.
“You’re running out of time Vince!” It bounced off the walls, the gleeful lilt of his voice contrary to the unspoken threat.
“Go in the room,” Séra whispered to me, moving closer as though to block my exit.
“Who is that?”
“A scoundrel,” she hissed. “Go.”
But then the figure of a man passed the end of the hall, and though he had no reason to travel down this corridor, he stopped in his tracks and seemed to sniff the air. He was dressed entirely in black, skin pale as the moonflowers outside. And then his head whipped toward me, eyes landing on me immediately, and he grinned a grin so unsettling, that even from dozens of feet away, my blood ran cold.
I recognized him.
I should have listened and escaped into the room. Whatever he wanted, that grin told me it was no good. My pulse quickened in my ears.
“There you are,” he said, as though he were looking for me.
Marcel Brancato.
I swallowed, and in the blink of an eye he had traversed the hall, standing not two feet behind Séra. The vampires I had lived with for the past few days had seemingly made every effort to disguise their differences from me, but this man—who I had thought was just a man—had no such inclination. The closer he got, the more I saw the blackness of his eyes, the hollow darkness of unrestrained hunger.
How had I not noticed this weeks ago?
Séra whirled around, pushing me behind her. “Back up,” she hissed at him.
He only chuckled at the display of her teeth.
Vince and Veronica turned the corner then, a wall of fury, and there was murder in Vince’s eyes. “I told you to leave,” he said, voice so low I hardly heard him, but not too low a vampire couldn’t hear. Veronica stood completely still, her hands like claws at her sides.
The intruder simply rolled his eyes. “I said what I needed to say to you, Vering.”
Vince’s lip curled at the use of his old name. “And now you will go. She’s of no consequence to you.”
Another laugh. “You’ve been hiding a human, and haven’t even offered to serve her?” Marcel’s eyes flashed. “The lack of hospitality is appalling. Especially from you.”
He was entirely changed, a different personality with the visage of Marcel Brancato. There was no way this was the same man—There was no way I’d dined with a vampire—
I hadn’t seen him eat anything. Only throw back drinks.
Much like Séra had, like they were water—
Vince stalked forward, eyes trained on the vampire, who seemed to know how to push every one of his buttons. They knew each other. There was familiarity there. They weren’t strangers to each other. But how?
I didn’t dare breathe, or move, even though both Séra and Vince now stood between me and Marcel Brancato .
“Relax,” he said, raising his hands. “I’m not an animal.” But he grinned at me again, showing off his teeth. “How does one get their hands on something as lovely as you? I’ve been trying,” he said, pointedly, “but they always run away.”
Vince wrenched his shoulder back. “Out.”
The vampire shrugged him off and made to walk back down the hall. No qualms with giving Vince his back. Cocky confidence.
Much like the man I had met.
“Veronica,” Vince commanded.
Her eyes flashed as she joined Brancato, walking behind him. “I’ll escort you out,” she said, dripping with venom.
He only laughed, and when they made it to the end of the hall, he turned, giving us one last farewell. He looked directly at me once more, smirking, but when he spoke, it wasn’t to me.
“He’ll be glad to hear you’re doing so well— Vince Thornton .”