16. Zombie in the Attic #3
“No,” Genna said. “They don’t get bitten.
They study and develop their powers until they break.
And then they keep studying, trying to push their power level past the vampirism to reach the Paragon threshold.
” She stared at the black altar, her eyes reflecting the dull shine of the stone.
“Few make it. Some undergo a dangerous process to revert to what they once were, but most keep trying, endlessly. ”
She gestured around the room. “The point is that Madaze didn’t stumble into vampirism. He built this room. He imported these texts. He wove those shrouds as part of his study.”
“He did this to himself?” Gabriel looked at the altar.
“I… I had assumed he’d managed to get himself bitten in some shady business a few years ago and then had to cover it up.
None of us dared ask how he’d encountered a vampire, although we all made up theories about it. But he became a vampire on purpose?”
“For power,” Genna said. “Eternal life. Heightened magic. On the Isles, the Lords are almost all vampires or Paragons. It’s a status symbol.”
Miles looked at the silver inlay on the floor. He traced the lines with his eyes, seeing the calculation, the immense resources required. “But Genna... the scope of this...”
“Exactly,” Genna said. “Madaze didn’t set this up alone. Look at the number of looms in the previous room. Look at the volume of material. Look at the spaces for multiple casters in the ritual circle. This wasn’t a hobby closet. This was a cult.”
She slammed the book on the nearest bookstand shut, dust flying into the stale air.
“These books are restricted to the high houses of the Veil Isles. You don’t buy them in a back alley. They were given. Madaze was working with multiple people. And not just local nobles playing dress-up. He was backed by someone from the Isles. A Paragon, or a Lord Ascendant.”
“To what end? Why would Averlians work with anyone from the Veil Isles?” Miles stopped and shivered, then shook his head. “Aren’t they all monsters?”
Genna rolled her eyes.
“Oh. I suppose not. Or whom would they rule? And I suppose you’ve already said why.
For magic that is not practiced here. I just…
I can’t imagine anyone who would make themselves a vampiric pariah in the process.
Madaze had had to go to great lengths to keep his own vampirism a secret.
What could they hope to achieve that would be worth it? ”
“I don’t know,” Genna said. “But you killed the member hosting their materials and ritual space. And you stole their inventory. That’s likely why the side door was broken. They tried to get in and get their things back. But Rookgate stopped them. ”
Miles stared at the silver geometric lines etched into the floor, grasping for a theoretical framework to interpret them and coming up with nothing. He was well-trained and well-read on magical theory, even experimental theory.
And yet, he was standing in an attic listening to a hedge witch explain the metaphysics of a magical system he hadn’t even known existed. Genna was powerful, yes, but this…
“Genna,” Miles gestured helplessly around the room and its plethora of unknown magical artifacts.
“I am a scholar of six disciplines. I can recite the Law of Sympathetic Resonance by heart. I have never heard the word ‘Veilmancy’ spoken in a lecture hall in Averly. Not once. Not even to say it was forbidden.”
He turned to her, desperate to make the pieces fit. “How do you know the practices of a secret magic system on the forbidden islands?”
“I didn’t learn it at an academy, Miles,” she said, her voice rough.
She touched the white streak in her hair.
“I was born in Doline, on the Veil Isles. I didn’t read about these rituals; I grew up stepping over the bodies they left behind.
Now, are we going to discuss my genealogy, or the fact that you’re standing in a laboratory designed to manipulate souls themselves? ”
“Genna. You can tell us.” Gabriel’s eyes were soft and wide.
For a heartbeat, the armor protecting Genna’s expression cracked. Miles saw a flood of words rise to her tongue—names, grief, the geography of a nightmare childhood—only to die behind her teeth. Her shoulders stiffened, the brief window into her history slamming shut and bolting tight.
“It seems that one day soon I will have to. I’ve worked hard to leave it all in the past.” She exhaled a sharp breath and gestured to the profane altar, her expression twisting into a scowl.
“But. Well, leaving it behind doesn’t mean it won’t come for me, does it?
But not today. We need to focus on what’s in front of us, which is trouble much bigger than Vellast was or the house is. ”
“No matter how fast we run, the leash always snaps tight eventually,” Gabriel murmured. “Welcome to the club, darling.”
“I was a member of that club long before you. Darling.”
Miles couldn’t imagine Genna’s pain. To carry that weight for decades—the fear of discovery, the memories of what must be a horrific past—it was a miracle she hadn’t crumbled. He wanted to reach out, to offer the embrace of a friend, to finally understand the silence behind her eyes .
Miles stepped closer, his throat tight with platitudes that felt too small for the import of this moment. “We can wait,” he said softly. “But know that you aren’t alone anymore.” It was a flimsy offering.
But Miles Beauchamp dealt with pain not with platitudes, but by fixing the thing that caused it, and the tools to fix their current nightmare were resting on the black iron lecterns.
If Madaze had used these texts to weave a consciousness into stone and timber, forcing the manor into servitude, then the counter-spell—the unravelling—had to be here, too. It was a fundamental principle of arcane theory: every knot can be untied if you understand the rope.
Miles looked from the book to Gabriel’s tense silhouette. If these forbidden texts held the formula to bind a soul to stone, they held the cipher to release it. Emancipating the manor meant Gabriel could ethically abdicate the title. No title meant no Separation Decrees. Just a ring and a future.
“Hideous as all this is,” Miles said, gesturing to the dark library, “it might be what we need.”
He stepped past Genna, his fingers itching. He flipped open a heavy tome bound in pale, mottled leather that he desperately hoped wasn’t skin. The Weaving of the Shrouds . His eyes scanned the dense, jagged script.
Slam.
Genna brought her hand down on the open page. “Did you hear a word I said?”
“Genna, the methodology for the binding is likely right here,” Miles argued, reaching for the cover she pinned down.
“You don’t dabble in this!” Her voice rose. “You don’t just read the recipe, Miles. The magic changes the reader. To craft a person—or unmake one—you need the kind of power that breaks the vessel holding it. That is how you get fangs. Do you want to end up like Madaze?”
“I’m not talking about practicing it,” Miles insisted, his frustration mounting. “I’m talking about academic study. I know how to shield my mind from corruptive influences.”
“No! How can you? You’ve never even heard of Veilmancy before today.
” Gabriel cut in, his face drained of color.
He looked from the book to Miles, genuine horror in his eyes.
“Miles, step away from the creepy book. I just got rid of one monster master; I am not interested in sleeping with the next one. ”
“Surely there is a line that can be trodden,” Miles said, though the defensive note in his voice sounded weak even to his own ears. “We can’t just leave the house in slavery because we’re afraid of a book. There has to be a safe way to extract the information.”
“It’s not the book I’m afraid of,” Genna snapped. “It’s your arrogance. Answer me! Do you want to end up like Madaze?”
Her accusation brought him up short.
Do you want to end up like Madaze?
Miles looked at his hands next to Genna’s on the page. They looked steady and clean. But he could still feel the phantom vibration of the impact, the way Vellast’s skull had cracked against the desk. It had been so easy. That was the horror of it.
If he could justify killing a defenseless man to save Gabriel, could he justify reading a forbidden book to save Rookgate? The slide into darkness didn’t look like a cliff, Miles realized. It looked like a staircase. And he had already taken the first step.
Miles glared at the book, at all the books waiting here with secrets between their covers.
Before he could argue further, a deep vibration pulsed up from the floorboards, three slow, distinct beats that thrummed through the soles of their boots.
A summons. His eyes met Genna’s, and they both stepped back from the book.
Genna let out a shaky breath, her glare promising this conversation wasn’t over. Nothing was settled, but they made their way through the gloom back towards Velma.