Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
I sprint into the freezing air, and my dress feels like cardboard, dried blood flaking off it.
Penny will never forgive me for this. She’ll kick me out of Callisto.
She’ll hunt me down to make an example of me.
Panic rises in my chest as I slide down a grassy hill, onto the road, each new breath more painful than the last.
I’ve spent four years fighting to learn the truth about my family, and I’ve just thrown it all away. My throat catches, eyes stinging as I think of my parents, of their mangled bodies which I’d promised to avenge. Penny is not the only person I’ve disappointed tonight.
What have I done?
I try to swallow my pain, stop my hands from trembling. There’s still time to run back. To be the hunter I promised Penny I could be.
A car honks, and a flash of pink comes to a sudden stop right next to me.
The car is not just pink, it’s hot pink, and it draws me out of my grief for a moment.
“Little hunter.” Elia leans out her window.
Her hair is back up in a bun, and her black gown is hidden beneath a fluffy pink jumper. “Need a ride?”
I stare at her, then back at the castle. “I do, actually,” I say, voice trembling. When I climb inside her car, I see her steering wheel is a gaudy amalgamation of pink fur and glitter. “This can’t really be your car,” I say, rubbing the tears from my eyes.
“If you don’t like it, you can walk back to Tynahine,” she says. I lean back as she pushes down on the pedal.
“I left a bag in the train station,” I say. My throat feels like sandpaper. I can still see Penny aiming her gun at me.
Elia stops at the station, parking just beneath the statue of a Highlander with a seagull resting on his feather bonnet.
I was planning on washing some of the blood off there, but she tells me I can take a shower back at her place.
I try to stop my hands from shaking, but all I can see is Penny’s back as she turned away from me when I was leaving her. What if the Council kills her?
What have I done?
I sit back down next to Elia, trying to keep it together. “So, you’re a blonde,” she says, as she speeds out on the main road of the city. “I knew it.”
“My hair’s black, actually,” I say, removing my wig.
For a moment I expect my old hair, my short black bob, to reappear.
But instead, I reveal Cassie’s auburn tresses, matted with sweat, still half pinned to my wig-cap.
I shake my head, slowly letting my hair breathe, and Elia pulls a face. “What?” I say.
“You look better blond. You should dye it. I might even date you.”
“Yeah, no thanks,” I say. She sounds different. Less guarded. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew what I was?”
“Because you would have tried to kill me,” she says plainly. “I mean, you would have failed miserably. But I think Aliz wouldn’t have been too happy if something happened to you.”
“Sure,” I say. I look at her again. I used to hate her guts. And yet I just ruined my relationship with Penny—with Callisto as a whole—for her. What the fuck is wrong with me? “How do you know my name?”
“Faust told me,” she says. I clench my fists. “He also asked me to keep quiet, so don’t make that face.”
She pulls over on a quiet street. For a second, I wonder if she has a house out here, as well as her apartment on campus. But when she brakes, she doesn’t move from her pink seat. “That thing on your neck. What is it?”
“A tattoo,” I say, and she notices the lie, furrowing her perfectly sculpted brows.
“Here.” She pulls out a makeup wipe and hands it to me. I sigh and wipe the remaining concealer from my neck, revealing the small moon. Elia stiffens when she sees it, her skin paling. “The Astra emblem,” she says, voice low, before adding, “is that a Familiar’s mark?”
“You know what it is?”
“Anyone older than the treaties can recognise one,” she says.
“Never had a Blood Familiar myself, but I studied all sorts of blood contracts back in the day.” When exactly was back in the day?
Based on what she just said, she must be older than the treaties.
“In fact, if you visit my library, you’ll find some of the papers I wrote on them. ”
“Your library?”
“The Palau Collection,” she says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
She notices my confusion and elaborates.
“A few centuries ago, my name was Elia Palau.” My eyes widen, and she uses my confusion to reach out, pressing her cool fingers against the swirling lines of the Familiar’s mark.
Her touch doesn’t have the same effect as Aliz’s.
“You’re Palau?”
“I just said that, yes,” she says.
“The Palau? The alchemist?”
“Oh.” She makes a face, pulling her hand away. “I only practised alchemy for two centuries. But enough about me, tell me about that mark. How long have you had it for?”
I’m still trying to wrap my head around Elia working for the Council. Finding out that she’s also the university’s old alchemist is just mind-boggling. How old is she? “Two weeks,” I say. “We’ve got until the next full moon to get rid of it. The night of your Halloween Ball.”
“And Aliz doesn’t want to seal the contract?” she asks, pulling out another wipe to remove her own makeup. Why a vampire as beautiful as Elia would feel the need to wear makeup is beyond me.
“Of course not,” I say, my chest tightening. “It was an accident.”
Elia stares at me in silence, her eyes wide. “You really believe that?” she asks.
“What do you mean?”
“I can tell you’re telling the truth,” she says, blinking. “You genuinely believe you got a whole Familiar’s mark—a blood contract that can only be performed during a full moon—by accident?”
“Aliz didn’t do it on purpose,” I say. Even if Elia wants to convince me otherwise, I know she didn’t.
“How did you get it, then?” She kicks off her heels, crossing her legs. “She had to give you her blood, didn’t she?”
“Two Red Ribbons tried to kill me.”
“How thoughtful of them,” she says, scrunching her nose. “Jannet and Stella?”
I nod. I don’t like the way Elia is looking at me.
“So, in your mind, these two girls decided that the night of a full moon would be the best time to attack you?”
“If Aliz had really wanted to make me her Familiar, she would have sealed the contract already.”
“And then you would know for sure she’s doing it on purpose,” Elia says. “Maybe she doesn’t want you to know that.”
“Why are you accusing her of this?” I say, my voice hitching. “Isn’t she supposed to be your friend?”
“Of course she is,” Elia says, and her gaze darkens. “But I’m not na?ve. Aliz is still an Astra. And the Astras will manipulate you without you even knowing that you’re under their spell—”
“She isn’t like that!” I shout, my heart racing. I don’t know why her words are getting to me, but I can’t seem to stop myself. “You didn’t see how she panicked after realising what this was. You haven’t spent hours with her looking for her sister’s library, you’ve got no—”
“Ada’s library?” Elia asks. “So that’s what you were doing down there.”
“What?”
“There’s a rose down at the library’s entrance,” Elia says, and I drop the makeup wipe, mouth agape.
“It shows me if anyone ever gets too close.” She fishes out a small pocket mirror, flicking it open.
Inside, I see the reflection of the rose and the candle, and she lifts it up to her nose.
“I knew it was you I saw down there the other day. I could smell your blood without even opening the mirror.”
“How—”
“A witch made this for me back in my alchemy days,” Elia says, handing me her mirror. I sniff it, just as she did, and I smell the rose, the candle wax, and the damp tunnel.
“You said this is the entrance to the library?” So, I was right. But knowing where it is and getting inside are two different things. “How do we get in?”
“Only I can go inside,” she says lightly. “Ada could as well, but she’s dead.”
“You knew her?”
“Well…” Elia’s expression softens, and she lowers her head. “We were lovers, on and off, for five centuries.”
“How old are you?” I know this isn’t the most important question right now, but I can’t help myself.
“I thought you would have guessed after seeing I’m immune to garlic,” she says. “But I was born in Hispania. Back when old Augustus was emperor.”
“You—” I gawk at her, trying to process those words.
“Two thousand years, give or take a few decades.”
“No.”
“Yes,” Elia says. “Born and raised in a small seaside town, in modern Catalonia. Got converted when I was twenty-three.”
I don’t say a word. Two thousand.
“Obviously my first name was not Elia. I’ve had several, depending on where I lived.
First, I was Flora, and then when the Western Empire fell and my native Latin started to branch out, I switched to Clotilde.
Then I was Elisenda, the most feared vampire in Barcelona.
” She smiles at the memory. “A few centuries later, when Ada and I crossed paths in Rome, she started calling me Elia, and it stuck.”
“Your first language is Latin?” I say, unable to wrap my head around this. I knew, based on what Julia had told me, that Elia was old. But I don’t think I’ve ever met a vampire this old. She’s over a thousand years older than Tynahine itself.
“Ita,” she says with a smile, and I assume that means yes.
“Can you get me into the library?” I ask, suddenly remembering what we were talking about.
“The library?”
“Ada Astra’s library,” I say. She crosses her legs, considering my words for a moment.
“Definitely not,” she finally says.
“The cure is in there,” I say. “I can’t become a Familiar.”
“And I can’t let a vampire hunter enter Ada’s library. Forget it.” Panic starts to climb up my chest, but Elia doesn’t seem to care. “Aliz must be wondering where you’re hiding,” she says, changing the subject.
“Can’t you find the cure for us, then?” I ask.