Chapter 17
I’ve always loved winter in Amsterdam. There’s something deliberate about the deep cold.
Every decision has to be made with care and thought.
A simple trip outside must be planned and prepared for.
Which made this winter the most annoying of my life, since I had to spend as much time outside the house as possible.
I may have steeped too long in the tales of the supernatural since Dávid and Berend died, because Mama feels like nothing so much as a spirit, vengefully haunting me.
She does this by existing cheerfully in whatever space I seek to lurk in.
When I’m in the kitchen, she’s there humming and singing.
When I read in the sitting room, she chatters happily about how many ducklings she expects her ducks to have this spring.
When I retreat into my bedroom—I can no longer stand to be in the study—she makes excuses to come in there and clean.
The bathtub has become my only sanctuary, and one can only soak so long before self-loathing overtakes any comfort.
I know what she’s doing. She means to force me back out into the world.
And the world wants me back, too. De Haas has sent over several case inquiries, all of which I ignored.
Joren stops by like clockwork every Sunday afternoon.
I spend the whole time hiding in my bedroom while my mother serves him cake.
At least Inge and Maher have given up on me. Inge no longer tries to visit, and Maher is back in Budapest. I cannot bring myself to open his letters. It hurts too much even looking at them.
I wander the Jordaan market, grateful for a reprieve.
It’s only a twenty-minute walk from where I live, but it’s nice having even that much distance from Mama.
And since it’s Saturday, I can’t prowl every library and archive and university that will allow me in, trying to find new information on vampires hidden in old ghost stories, fairy tales, and history.
I’m stuck with nowhere to turn to find a new lead, and it’s driving me mad.
The market is smaller during the winter months, but it’s still bustling with all the life Mama claims I’m missing out on.
Families and couples, sampling and haggling and laughing.
I’ve nearly settled on buying a wheel of cheese so large I’m not certain how I’ll get it home when I glance to the side to see de Lange, my old foe.
He’s walking my direction with a woman on his arm.
If he spots me, I’ll have to speak with him.
Doubtless he’ll bring up Berend, and I cannot speak of that poor young man without weeping. I will never cry in front of de Lange.
I duck behind the cheese stall and into one selling olive oil.
“What can I get for you?” says an old man with a neat mustache, bushy eyebrows, and kind brown eyes. His skin is as tanned and lined as a saddlebag. I recognize him. He comes by and chats with Mama on the doorstep, hand-delivering her orders. I smile.
“I believe you know my mother,” I say, pretending like even thinking about my mother doesn’t make me angry right now. “Maud Van Helsing?”
“Oh, my friend! How is Maud? Does she need more olive oil already? I just visited last week.”
I’ve never actually spoken to him, and something about his voice is giving me pause. I can’t place what, though. I need to keep talking to him. Both to figure out what’s bothering me, and to avoid de Lange. I stick out my hand. “No, she has enough. I’m Anneke.”
He shakes it heartily. “Georgios Papadelis.”
“Mister Papadelis, I’m avoiding a man I desperately don’t want to run into. Could you keep talking?”
He raises one bushy eyebrow. “I can talk all day. Or so my wife tells me. What would you like me to talk about?”
The accent. That’s it. He’s speaking Dutch, but with an accent I know. I hear it every night in my dreams. I’ve never heard it from anyone other than Diavola before, though. “Where are you from?”
He gestures at the bottles of amber olive oil, luminous in the midmorning light. “I’m from where the best olives on earth are grown. Lesvos.”
“Lesvos? I don’t know it.”
“It’s an island in the Aegean Sea. Greek and Ottoman. Ottoman rule, Greek heritage. I claim whichever makes people more inclined to buy my oil.”
I smile, my cheeks shaking with the effort.
“I’ll buy as much oil as I can carry if you tell me—” I pause, reaching.
I haven’t been able to remember the word Diavola used in München.
I thought surely it would show up in my father’s notes, but it never did.
She didn’t call the creature a vampire, or a nachzehrer like Goldstein. She called it a…
“I’m trying to find a word,” I say, feeling foolish.
He looks amused. “There are a lot of words.”
“It’s a word for a monster. One who dies but doesn’t stay dead, who comes back to terrorize the living.”
His expression darkens, like a burial shroud being pulled down. “Why would you want a word for that?”
“Because I heard a story about one, and I can’t remember what it was called. I was in a very bad state at the time. Bump on the head.” I knock my fist against the back of my head. A thin scar is all I have to show for the night Berend died and I discovered monsters are real.
“The word you’re looking for,” he says, choosing his largest and most expensive bottle of olive oil and wrapping it in neat brown paper, “is vrykolakas.”
“Yes!” I want to kiss him, but I don’t think his wife would appreciate it. He probably wouldn’t, either, given the aura of discomfort that has descended on his booth. “That’s it!”
Lesvos. Diavola is from Lesvos. I would bet anything on it.
I know what Greek accents sound like speaking Dutch, and there’s a subtle difference in this regional dialect.
It’s why I could never place her before.
I don’t need those pages of my father’s journal.
Mama should have taken away all the journals, not just the most important pages. I’m a detective, after all.
Now that I know where Diavola is from, I can find where she was buried. I can end her, permanently.
Georgios, unaware that he’s solved eight years of torturous sleuthing, keeps talking.
“It’s a word you shouldn’t go looking for.
I don’t believe the stories, of course.” He pauses and puts his fingers to a cross around his neck, contradicting his words.
“But stories exist for a reason. They’re warnings.
Maybe the dead can’t come back, but that doesn’t mean you should go looking for them, either. ”
I grab another bottle, the second-most expensive, and put it next to the first. The more information I can get from him, the better. “I love scary stories, though. Could you tell me some of them?”
He sighs, his distaste for the topic warring with a natural inclination as a storyteller.
“There was one we were told, when I was a child. Lots, actually. You shouldn’t walk alone at night.
If someone calls to you from off the path, recite scripture until you’re safely home.
Never answer the door at the first knock, always wait for a second. Common sense like that.”
I nod encouragingly.
“But this story was different. This story was older, woven into the lives of everyone from my village. It was the story of the lost town in the mountains.”
“They lost a whole town?” I prod.
“Well, obviously we all knew where it was. But no one went there. Ever.”
I find that hard to believe. “Not even teenagers, wanting to rebel against their parents?”
He scoffs. “For that, we stole horses and rode to Sigri to swim naked in the sea. We had more sense than to go into the mountains and risk finding out what killed everyone in—” He stops. His eyes narrow as he takes in my intense expression.
I try to school my features into something more suitable to a woman who merely likes scary stories. But it’s too late.
“Stories from far away and long ago.” He smiles brightly and adds one last bottle. “This is your mother’s favorite. Do you need to hire a donkey to carry this all home?”
I hand over everything I have in my purse, meant to cover the shopping for the entire week, and shove all three bottles into my basket. “I’m donkey enough. Thank you for the oil, and for the conversation.”
His smile fades a bit and he puts one gnarled hand on my arm.
“I know that expression. My aunt had it, too. She saw one, when she was young, and she never forgot it. It drove her mad, eventually. Your mother understands. I could tell the first day we met that she knows how to stay safe once you’ve encountered the unholy things of the world.
Listen to her. She’s a wise woman. Don’t go looking for them,” he says, his voice low. “You won’t find them.”
“No?” I try to sound teasing, but he shakes his head.
“No. They’ll find you.”
I certainly hope so, I think as I wave and walk away.