Chapter 5
Two things are immediately clear as I step into the room and close the door behind myself.
The first, she’s not here.
But the second, she has been here. The space is suffused with her icy scent.
I don’t understand how a smell can be that cold when the room itself is a pleasant temperature.
Even the décor is warm, with satin wall treatments shining in gold and cream to complement the spring-green velvet curtains over the windows and the bed.
The bed is made up, but a robe hangs from a hook by the bathroom. There’s a bag on the bench at the foot of the bed. After a quick check to make certain she’s not hiding in the bathroom, I open the bag.
It’s empty. But a check of the wardrobe reveals her belongings.
There are three pristine white dresses hanging there.
Not a drop of blood on any of them. Not fashionable, but somehow beyond fashion.
Like she exists above corsets and waistlines and absurd top hats.
Trying not to feel embarrassed, I take my hat off and set it down, telling myself it’s so I don’t impede my vision.
But really, it’s so I don’t face my father’s killer wearing something both stylish and silly.
I’m mindful of how I look, just as I am for the men I need to take me seriously.
Then my attention returns to the dresses.
She’d stand out everywhere she went in those.
How do people not see her and immediately sense something is wrong?
European women’s fashion is blouses, skirts, and structured jackets with voluminous upper sleeves.
None of this diaphanous, delicate femininity.
I run my fingers along the material, stopping short of pressing my face against them and breathing in. She’s here. She’s real. And all I have to do now is wait.
I don’t know what to do with myself, though. Pacing feels too loud. Sitting on the plush sofa won’t work, as it faces the bed rather than the door. But after an interminable period standing, gun in hand, I let myself perch on the edge of the bench next to her bag.
I hadn’t thought finding her at last would involve so much tedium. My nerves keep spiking and then fading, leaving me feeling jittery and exhausted. And surrounded by her scent, I can’t help but wander back to that night.
I hold the memory like a burning brand. As always, I want to flinch from the pain of it, but I deserve that pain. I deserve to be scarred with my shame. I can never forgive myself for the terrible truth that the first thing I noticed upon entering my father’s study was her.
She was wearing all white, framed by the open French doors leading to the garden.
Though I felt no wind, her hair and dress fluttered as though tugged on by unseen hands.
She was a painting I’d have stopped in front of and stared at for hours: luminously beautiful, glowing from within, her near-translucent skin contrasted by midnight curls cascading down her shoulders to her waist. Eyes so large and dark they didn’t seem human, framed by thick black lashes and bold eyebrows drawn in sorrow.
I wanted to know why she was so sad. I wanted to know who she was.
I…wanted. In a desperate, near-animal urgency I’d never experienced before, I wanted to take her in my arms and press my lips to hers.
To run my fingers along her body and prove she was real.
I thought her a vision, a dream, an angel, and I stewed in my desire for an eternity of seconds before I noticed that she stood over the prone body of my father.
“Forgive me,” he gasped.
I rushed to his side, but it wasn’t me he looked at. It never was, in all my years of trying to deserve his attention and love. He was looking up at her.
Her eyes were hooded as if by an executioner’s veil. “Why?” she commanded, her voice like the depths of winter, icy and crystalline and beautifully devoid of life.
“He said—he said I could get him back. My Pieter. He promised, and he was so beautiful, and I thought—I wanted my boy back.” My father’s deeply lined face slackened, his ruddy cheeks hollowing out even as I watched.
It was then that I noticed he was not, in fact, wearing a dark vest over his white shirt.
His white shirt was sliced through and stained deep red with his blood.
The blade, a large bowie knife he’d never explained the origin of, was still clutched in his hand.
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” he whispered.
“Men always do.” With that, she turned.
“Stop!” I shouted, grasping for her skirts. I left red prints on the pristine white. She glanced down, surprised, as though she hadn’t realized that all that snowy material could attract stains. “Who are you? What happened? Help me!”
The woman stopped and considered me for the first time. She bent at the waist and tilted her head, an elegant movement more bird than human. It brought us face-to-face over the broken body of my father.
She smiled at me, a smile as lovely and elegant as a black widow, and traced a finger just shy of my cheek. Almost touching me, but not quite. “He thought himself cleverer than the devil. Now he understands fear in the way every woman always has.”
“He promised,” my father gasped, a wet and terrible sound as he dragged breath into his lungs. “He promised me Pieter. He said I’d have answers, at last.”
“And you promised me help,” she said. “Trust has made fools of us both. There are no answers for you. Only the final question.” She leaned closer to his ear and whispered. “What happens when you die?”
A single tear fell from her eye and landed on his cheek. And then she was gone, stepping soundlessly away on bare feet.
“Papa?” I squeezed his hand in mine. “Papa, what happened? Don’t leave me, please, stay with me.” But I didn’t get so much as a goodbye. He was gone. Taken from me before I could claim some portion of the heart he closed forever when my brother died.
My exquisite devil left me with my father’s empty body and the end of my lifelong quest to earn his love.
If I could not have his love, though, I will have his vengeance. Tonight.
“Where are you?” I hiss between my teeth.
Outside night is falling, deepest blue pressing against the windows.
I should light a lamp, or close the curtains, but I can’t bring myself to move.
If I move, it will break the spell. As long as I stay here, waiting, she has to come.
I let her disappear once, and no one ever believed me that she was real.
And, here in the growing dark with nothing but my own thoughts, I have to admit that sometimes I don’t believe it myself.
I can remember the scene clearly enough to see details that made the detectives dismiss my claims of a mysterious woman.
That would have made me dismiss them, too, had I not seen her with my own eyes.
My father’s wounds were consistent with being self-inflicted.
His grip on the knife, the angle of the stabbing.
No sign of a struggle. And then there was my account of the woman.
Impossibly beautiful, wearing a strange white dress, barefoot.
As Joren patiently put it, how could she have wrapped her hands around my father’s hands and made him stab himself without getting a drop of blood on her hands or dress?
Because I can’t put blood there in my memory, no matter how hard I try.
I saw her hands as she reached out and nearly touched me.
They were clean. Her dress was spotless until I dirtied it.
And I, fool that I am, chased after her once my father died.
The only bloody footprints they found in the garden were my own.
There was no exit for her outside, either, our garden bordered on all sides by hedges and walls separating it from our neighbors’ properties.
Adding all my strange details to the fact that my mother hasn’t left the house in nearly twenty years and my father was slowly spiraling into madness, I understand why they couldn’t believe my account. It’s why I’ve worked so hard to prove myself emotionless, stable, and competent.
I also know that I’m right. She killed my father.
And she’s still out there, killing. I toy briefly with the idea that she lured me here on purpose.
That she somehow knew of my connection to Dávid and staged the Budapest scene so he would send me photos.
But a darker, more likely explanation exists: She’s been murdering innocents this whole time, and was finally unlucky enough to draw the attention of the one person looking for her.
I shift the pistol to my left hand and shake out my cramping right. I used to think I would ask her questions. Demand answers. But I’ve seen what she can do, and I can’t risk it. However she drugs or manipulates her victims, I won’t let it happen to me.
When my devil comes through that door, I’m going to shoot her straight through the heart. No answers for me, but vengeance will suffice.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” I whisper. I don’t think she’ll survive losing me, too. But better to risk a murderer’s prison cell in Budapest than a lifetime of freedom knowing that devil is still out there, taking lives with no consequences.
A knock startles me so badly I nearly pull the trigger. I stand, and the knock comes again. It’s not on wood. It’s on glass. I freeze, aware of how exposed my back is. But all that’s behind me is a window on the third floor of the hotel. Who could be knocking on it?
My father’s madness whispers in my ear. Monsters in the dark, vampires walking among us, nightmares stalking the innocent with only him to stop them. An image comes of my devil there, floating, hair and dress riding a current no mortal can feel. Watching me. Mocking.
I whirl, gun raised.
Instead of my devil, proving my father’s journals weren’t the paranoid scribblings of a madman, it’s a crow. It taps its beak against the window three times in quick succession.
“Wretched creature,” I whisper, trying to calm my heart. I step toward the window and gesture with the gun, trying to shoo it away. It tilts its head and for a moment I can’t breathe because it’s the same gesture. It’s her gesture.
“Go away!” I slap my free hand against the glass.
It caws, a sound like harsh laughter, then at last flaps off into the night.
I glance down at the street, but there’s no one there.
A bird is just a bird. I am not my father, possessed by delusions of the supernatural.
I am Anneke Van Helsing, and I accomplish every task I set my mind to. Which means tonight I kill my devil.
Determination renewed, I turn. But all is not as it was. Someone has slid an envelope beneath the door.
I throw the door open, peering into the hallway. It’s empty. Trying to calm my trembling hands, I lift the envelope and break the seal. The creamy stationery has a texture and weight to it I’d appreciate were I not on the verge of hyperventilating.
Little Fox,
Have you been hunting me all this time? That makes me sad. He doesn’t deserve your devotion.
Thank you for the information. You’ve been helpful. I’m sorry I can’t stay for a visit, but I have my own hunt to pursue.
Kind Regards,
Diavola
“No,” I moan, racing down the hallway and stairs. What information could I possibly have given her? If she broke into my room…she would have found the photographs and my notebook.
My door is still locked. I open it with trembling hands. And I’m right to suspect, because inside her chill hangs like a hint of perfume left in someone’s wake. My notebook has been moved. And there, in the center of my pillow, is the photograph Maher took of my devil—Diavola.
She knows how I found her. Not only have I failed to kill her, I’ve put Dávid and Maher in grave danger. If they die, it’s my fault.