Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter
Thirty-Three
Aliz cannot kill.
She’s innocent. She’s never wavered in her resolve to get rid of the Familiar’s mark, and that innate compassion of hers is the very reason why she can’t take someone else’s life.
She lies beside me, still and silent, and I run my fingers through her hair.
“We’ll find a way,” I whisper.
She clasps her hand over mine and closes her eyes.
Tynarrich’s dining hall is quiet but for the violent rain battering the windows, shutters raised now that night has fallen. “You knew there was no library,” I say once Elia shows her face.
“Where’s Aliz?” she asks.
“Studying,” I say. Staying apart from her is becoming more and more uncomfortable. The dull itch in my neck burns. I swear I can almost feel them, as though there are actual vines, actual thorns pressed to my skin. I scratch at the lines through my tartan scarf, and Elia pulls my hand down.
“When Ada was alive, she had the most vivid memory you could imagine. It went beyond photographic. She could remember the day we met in colourful detail. She could remember the scents, the fabric of my dress, and each insult I spat in her direction. Everything.”
I stare at Elia, taking in the bitterness with which she speaks.
“She is the library. Even as a ghost, she knows each and every book she’s ever read by heart. So I knew she would have the answers you were looking for. Consider it a miracle that she decided to tell you. She is fickle, even in death.”
“How exactly did she become a ghost?” I ask. “Did she die in the library?” I’ve never seen a human ghost, never mind a vampire one.
“She died in Budapest,” Elia says. “And I’m not entirely sure how her spirit managed to cling to our world.
I found her ghost after her father burnt her books.
She’d been dead for four years when Ares got through her labyrinth.
Probably compelled a witch to show him the way.
And when I came down to look at the wreck, she climbed out from the ashes, with no memory of her death or the bitch who killed her. ”
“Catherine,” I say carefully, and Elia’s jaw tightens.
She clearly doesn’t want to talk about Callisto’s founder, so she continues.
“I’d left my alchemy days behind by then, but I figured Ada must have left traces of her soul in The Book of Blood and Roses.
Whether this was intentional or not, I’m not sure.
But she’s been haunting her library ever since. ”
“Do you visit her every month?” I ask, and Elia offers me a sad smile.
“I would be a fool to do that,” she says. “Break my heart, again and again? I feel as though my life has been a drawn-out epilogue since the day she died. And seeing her frozen in time is just salt in the wound, Rebecca.”
“Be careful with my name,” I say. “That day, when I first saw you in the tunnels, you’d come from the library, right?”
“My wounds don’t heal as fast as Aliz’s do,” she admits.
She then directs me back to the matter at hand.
“If you’re going to undo the contract, I think the Halloween Ball is the ideal place.
A disguise, loud music—and that little palace has more hidden rooms than you would expect.
Ada wasn’t just hunting animals, you see. ”
I shiver, trying to get the ghost’s face out of my head. What did Elia ever see in Ada? “Right.” I look out the window, shutters open to reveal a foggy night.
“Come check it out tomorrow,” she says, getting up. “And I’ll try to get more dirt on your professor. If he is a Vassal, then he would be the best target for this so-called eternal fountain.”
“No.” I grit my teeth. “If he is a Vassal, he might know more about my parents’ deaths than Callisto ever told me.
” I look across the quiet hall, ensuring no one heard us.
Elia frowns at my words. I can’t kill him until I know the truth.
He might even be able to tell me, outright, if he was working for them—and if Penny knew I was going to be recruited before my parents died.
There must be someone I can kill. I snap the pencil between my fingers, staring down at an essay I’m writing for Integration on the fall of the Old Council.
Centuries ago, the bloodthirsty family heads were murdered one after the other by their heirs in a bizarre yet calculated massacre known as the Coup of the Heirs.
Ares Astra only escaped being a victim of patricide because his daughter was set alight by his old bodyguards a year prior to the coup and fall of the Old Council.
I need to find someone. We’re running out of time. But how do I convince Aliz to go along with this? She’s not bloodthirsty like Ada. I can hear her behind me, shifting in front of the microwave as she heats up a cup of blood. We haven’t kissed—we’ve barely even spoken since leaving the library.
The words on the page blur together, and just as I rummage through my drawers for a new pencil, my phone vibrates.
Under ordinary she-hasn’t-been-playing-dead-for-days circumstances, I would have declined the call and told her to call back later.
Now, when I see Penny’s face appear on my screen, I’m too taken aback to think.
My fingers move on their own, and I squeeze out, “Penny?” holding the phone to my ear.
“Are you with the leech?”
I look over at Aliz, remembering that her senses are far greater than mine, and she’s staring right back at me, eyes wide. She definitely heard that. Oh fuck.
I rush out of our room without saying a word and sit down on the top step of the staircase, under the gaze of a dozen ancient portraits. “You’re alive?” I ask, my heart slowing. Why haven’t you answered my texts?
“No thanks to you,” she says. Strangely enough, Penny doesn’t sound angry. In fact, Penny’s tone is exactly as it was when she last called me, before sending me to the blood party in Inverness. I’m still trying to gather my thoughts when she asks: “Have you found the book?”
The book is a ghost. I almost say this aloud. But then I remember my promise to Elia.
“I haven’t,” I say, and the lie comes so easy, because I’ve spent the last month and a half doing nothing but lying. “But—how did you get out? Did you fight the Council?”
There’s a pause. Something I could mistake for a sigh.
“No, Rebecca. I did not fight the Council.”
I cross my legs, peering back along the hallway to ensure Aliz is not eavesdropping.
“But I’m glad to tell you that you have officially been ranked as a Stake of Callisto. Once you return to London, you’ll receive your new uniform and quarters. Oh, and a raise, of course.”
I’m still staring down the hallway, her words not fully hitting me. They make absolutely no sense.
“I’m—what?”
“Finding The Book of Blood and Roses is still an important mission, but I have not been entirely forthcoming with you, Rebecca.”
“What do you mean?”
“Crosses, as you already know, work alone. You are expected to see vampires, all vampires, as your natural enemy.” My eyes are locked on my boots, trying to figure out where this is going.
“The main purpose of sending you to Tynahine was to see if you would be able to integrate—meaning work alongside them without losing sight of your mission. Sometimes—and I don’t like it—we have to work with the Council.
You proved to me in Inverness that you can distinguish between evil and—I don’t like calling vampires good, so let’s say, tolerable vampires. ”
I stare ahead, not blinking. Elia said Callisto is working with the Vassals.
But what if she’s wrong? Nocth had mentioned that if Callisto sent a hunter, it would be to oversee Integration.
That my supposedly real mission would be a cover, and he was right.
The only reason I’m here is to prove I could blend in.
“So, you’re not angry with me?” I whisper. My head hurts. Penny sent me here as a test? Was she just acting when she tried to shoot me in Inverness?
“Quite the opposite. You went above and beyond what I expected of you,” she says. “You uncovered the Red Ribbons and dismantled that party in Inverness.”
“I…” For some reason, I don’t buy it. Penny has never been impressed by anyone in the four years that I’ve known her. There’s no way I’d ever be the subject of her admiration. I swallow hard and focus. “So I’ve finished? I can come home?”
“Not yet,” she says. “I still want you to find The Book of Blood and Roses. And once you hand it over, I’ll tell you who killed your parents.”
There is no book. I almost say it. But Penny hangs up. Afterwards I feel as though I’ve just survived an earthquake. What the actual fuck was that?
A test?
Sometimes we work with the Council. I want to scream.
I think of Elia, of Gustavsson and his secrets, but somehow, I can already feel myself being roped back in by Penny.
She finally gave me the promotion I wanted.
I’ll finally learn what happened to my parents.
Maybe Elia is wrong about Gustavsson, maybe it’s a coincidence.
Penny wouldn’t betray me. She wouldn’t use me.
And now she’s finally realised my true worth.
Suddenly, I feel the thorns digging inwards, slicing through my skin. I choke, and when I press my hand to my skin, I’m sure I’ll find it soaked with blood. But it’s dry. The last time I felt this sort of pain was the night Aliz’s memories returned.
When I get back to the room, I can barely breathe. But Aliz is all right. She closes the book she was reading and turns towards me. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” she says as I close the door. “I can’t control—” Her expression changes suddenly as she looks at me. “What’s wrong?”
“The mark,” I say through gritted teeth. She rushes towards me, pressing her hand against it, the scalding sensation slowly receding. I breathe out. “Thanks.”
Aliz’s hand trembles on my neck, and as soon as I place my own hand over hers, she asks:
“Who was that?”
I swallow hard, not letting go of her hand. What if I just tell her everything now? No. I can’t.