Chapter Two The Seventh Chair
Chapter Two
The Seventh Chair
They set the table for seven, just as they’ve done every night.
I plaster a brittle smile on my face as we enter the open space that serves as kitchen and living room, and I ignore that seventh bowl. Just as I do every night. Because it doesn’t matter—it doesn’t —and Jean Luc’s continued absence cannot make me feel worse than I already do.
I cling to that conviction like a raft at sea as Mila drifts to Odessa.
“Célie!” Like clockwork, Beau moves first, bounding across the settee to fold me in a tight embrace. Coco follows at his heels. Soon both have wrapped their arms around me, and my throat constricts again as I stand rigid between them, locking my jaw and leaning away despite wanting to crush them against my chest and never let go. More laughter echoes through my head at the thought. Because I love them , I tell my sister fiercely.
Hmm. I’m sure that’s the reason.
Heart plummeting, I turn my cheek away from the line of Coco’s throat.
If either of them notices, they don’t say, but their eyes do dilate slightly as they pull away to grin at me. I affix my own in place, feeling slightly sick. I don’t need a reflection to realize my appearance has also changed. Though my skin has always been fair, it now gleams ethereal white, and my dark hair falls longer, thicker, heavier as it waves down my back, shining like glass in the candlelight. My friends’ lingering glances and sharp intakes of breath confirm what I already know: my face has become a weapon.
“We needed to step out for a couple of hours,” Coco says, slightly breathless, “but everything is handled now. How are you, Célie? Did you sleep well?”
Her words sound ominous, and though I want to ask her what has been handled, I don’t trust myself to speak. Instead I smile brighter and squeeze her hands without a word.
In truth, I haven’t slept in a week.
Filippa sounds almost bored in my head. The eternal victim.
“Well, I certainly didn’t.” Beau sweeps a chair from the table for me to sit, and I force myself to focus on him. On him , not my sister. The real and the tangible of this room. Above us, copper pots glint merrily, winking down at the chipped and mismatched bowls of stew. The entire apartment reeks of cheer, and it should be my favorite place in the entire world. Once upon a time, it might’ve been.
Now it feels like a prison.
“If this arrangement continues much longer,” Beau says without missing a beat, “I’m going to insist one of the witches in this household conjures a proper bed for the living room. I’ve had a crick in my neck for days .” He jerks his chin toward the folded blankets and stacked pillows on the settee, where he and Coco have been sleeping since we returned from Requiem a week ago.
“You’re the one who demanded we stay here—not that I’m complaining,” she adds hastily to me. “I’d rather be here than at the castle, especially with Chasseurs poking around.”
Still smiling, I nod and keep my mouth firmly closed. Though Lou’s enchantment remains, the scent of this much blood in a room is overwhelming. Especially Lou’s and Coco’s. Michal once told me the blood of magical creatures tastes more potent than human blood, and now I believe him. As particularly powerful magical creatures, my two friends smell delectable .
“You mean the lovely Brigitte?” Beau scoots my chair to the table as Reid takes my empty bowl and fills it with—not stew. Bile rises at the sight of it. Thicker and darker and altogether more repulsive than broth, meat, and vegetables, my dinner stains the white porcelain crimson.
Seventh time is the charm, you think?
Pressure builds in my ears at the sound of that voice, and I clamp my teeth to keep from snapping at it.
“Technically, Brigitte isn’t yet a Chasseur, but I don’t blame her for acting a bit”—Beau searches for the right word, heedless of my internal struggle—“ perturbed tonight. There was another disturbance at Saint-Cécile earlier this evening. Grave robbers,” he adds to me in explanation. “An inconvenience, usually—a couple of bodies missing every few months—but they’re getting out of hand. They’ve dug up half the cemetery at this point.”
I frown at that, but no one else reacts much; they seem to have already heard the news. To my surprise, the voice in my head remains silent as well—but of course she does. I shake myself mentally, nearly cracking my teeth in frustration now. She doesn’t exist .
Odessa chooses this moment to scoff and rise from her chair, equally disgusted by the blood in my bowl, before disappearing down the hallway to her room. Mila follows. They never stay for dinner. Instead, Odessa will slip into East End to dine elsewhere, and Mila—unbeknownst to her cousin—will accompany her.
Beau frowns after them. “Such a warm, empathetic creature, that Odessa. Such keen emotional intelligence—she puts even Brigitte to shame.”
“That warm, empathetic creature can still hear you.” Reid drops into the seat next to Lou, leaving the chair between us open for our seventh dinner guest. I ignore that chair. I refuse to look at it. “So I’d be careful if I were you.”
“Nonsense.” Beau claims the seat on the other side of me, immediately tipping it back on its hind legs and lacing his fingers behind his dark hair. “If the lady vampire fancies a nip now, Célie can kick her ass for me.” He smirks in my direction. “Isn’t that right?”
“What?” Distracted, I speak without thinking, and I instantly pay the price; fire rips up my throat, and my eyes water at the sheer pain of it, at the potent taste of my friends on my tongue. I can’t simply ignore Beau this time, however, and I don’t think a simple nod or shake of my head will effectively communicate the scope of his stupidity. “Odessa is very old,” I gasp. “Very strong. I—I watched her rip out a vampire’s tongue with her bare hands.”
Odessa’s voice echoes down the hallway. “And never forget it, darling.”
Beau snorts and lands back on all fours with a plunk before tucking into his stew. “Don’t underestimate yourself, Célie. You’ve trained with the Chasseurs. I’m sure you could rip out a tongue or two—preferably hers if she keeps pontificating about the best ways to enact a trade embargo.”
“Better than hearing her describe—in lavish detail—how all of your ancestors died,” Lou says wryly.
“Oh, no, she gifted me with that happy knowledge too,” Beau says. “Apparently, a stag gored my great-great-great-grandfather to death while he answered nature’s call on the royal hunt—”
I interrupt before either of them can gather steam, my head starting to pound once more. The blood in their veins smells delectable, yes, but the blood in my bowl smells foul . “That is disgusting, and I have no desire to touch a tongue.”
Liar.
“Perhaps you just haven’t found the right one yet,” Coco says judiciously.
“Speaking of which—” Beau turns to Reid before I can answer, and my hands fist in my skirt as his scent washes over me anew, as Filippa laughs and urges me closer. He points his spoon at the empty chair beside me. “Where is your insufferable little friend? He wasn’t at the castle this evening.”
Though I’ve been refusing to think of Jean Luc, the question still catches me by surprise—or perhaps it isn’t the question at all but the wording. Because he called Jean Luc Reid’s insufferable friend, not mine, and I—I suppose that’s true now. The realization acts as a cudgel. It breaks the thrall of Beau’s blood.
Reid sends me a furtive look, but I pretend not to see it as he says, “He couldn’t get away from the Tower. He sends his regrets.”
Despite my best intentions, my eyes flash to his. “No, he doesn’t.”
We stare at each other for a single, startled heartbeat.
“Célie, he—” Reid hesitates, clearly torn. Though he’d rather swallow his kitchen knife than have this conversation, Reid is still Reid, and he has never lied to me before. “Give him space,” he says at last. “He’ll come around eventually. He’s just... he’s having a hard time with all of this.”
The words—spoken so earnestly, so innocently—slip below the molten heat that simmers inside my chest, filling the yawning emptiness that I’ve felt since waking up as a vampire. Since waking up dead. He’s having a hard time with all of this.
“Is he?” I ask softly.
Kill them , Filippa says, softer still.
The table seems to draw a collective breath at my expression, and the cobwebs of Lou’s magic brush my skin. They cloak the raw edges of my anger, and I hate them—I hate them—and resist the urge to claw at my flesh, to peel away each bloody layer until I’m me again, until I’m Célie . Not someone who hallucinates about her dead sister. Not someone who inadvertently inches her chair closer to the human beside her, who calculates the exact seconds it would take to debilitate first Beau, then Coco and Reid. Lou sits directly across the table, so she’d take longest to reach. She’d be hardest to subdue too, but her blood —
My gums split open at the thought, and my fangs descend—saliva bursting, pooling, spreading until my gorge rises and I choke on it.
Oh God.
Flinging myself backward, I topple my chair, and white spots burst in my vision. Oh God oh God oh God. My chest heaves as I struggle to hold my breath, and they’re all staring at me now, wide-eyed with alarm. Both Reid and Coco have half risen from the table, and Beau sits absolutely still, like I’m a wild animal—a predator—and he dare not move for fear of drawing my attention. You’re halfway there, Célie.
Only Lou gazes calmly back at me. “You should probably eat now.”
In my periphery, Odessa and Mila appear in the hallway, silent and watching.
“I’m s-sorry.” I clutch the kitchen wall with one hand, covering my mouth with the other and hiding my teeth from the room. Fresh tears of humiliation burn beneath my lids. All I seem able to do these days is apologize, yet Jean Luc is having a hard time? “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean— I should—”
With the flick of her wrist, Lou straightens my chair and pushes my bowl to the edge of the table. With another, steam curls from the blood once more. Though she doesn’t appear frightened like the others, the twinkle in her turquoise eyes has gone out, and her face seems paler than usual. I am endangering her family, after all. Her home. The molten heat in my chest turns to ice.
“Eat, Célie,” she says.
I feel myself nod, taking a tentative step forward. Then another. The silence weighs heavy over the room as I resume my place at the table, careful to move slowly for Beau’s sake. He sits straighter than before, his fingers tight upon his spoon. I pick up my own without a word, dipping it beneath the crimson surface of my bowl and lifting it to my lips.
The blood tastes as foul as it smells.
I do not grimace, however, or give any other indication of my discomfort, even as my sister whispers, How long can you survive like this, ma belle? How long before your body takes control?
I ignore the hallucination, just like I ignore my churning stomach as deer blood enters my system. “I apologize,” I say again, calmer this time, lifting my chin and meeting each of my friends’ gazes. They smile tentatively back at me, and I’m already forgiven. Even Beau relaxes in his seat, and Odessa vanishes to her bedroom once more. Mila lingers for just another second—her eyes a bit too understanding—before she follows.
The silence remains a touch tense, however. Lou still looks vaguely sick.
“Was that— Did my mother come to the door this morning?” I ask Reid after another moment.
“Yes.” He pushes his empty bowl away. “She came from the Tower. She’s been, ah—harassing the huntsmen about your whereabouts.”
“Harassing Jean Luc, you mean.”
He casts me a wary glance. “She said the time has come for desperate measures.”
“What did he tell her?”
“Nothing. He agreed not to disclose anything until you’re ready. For now, the kingdom assumes you’re still with Michal—though Jean hasn’t been particularly quiet on that front.” Reid hesitates. “He debriefed the Chasseurs on Les éternels before we sailed to Requiem on All Hallows’ Eve, and they... well, they haven’t exactly been discreet since we returned. Rumors of vampires have swept the city—probably the entire kingdom by now.”
“The price of silver has soared,” Beau confirms. “I’m friendly with a local silversmith, and I think he’d like to marry you.”
I almost laugh at that. Almost. Instead I choke down another mouthful of blood. It tastes gamey and wrong, tainted, like rancid meat on a hot day. My stomach rolls. “I never expected Jean Luc to keep vampires’ existence a secret. Still, though, it’s very... kind of him to have kept mine.”
Reid gathers the empty bowls on the table to avoid looking at me. “I told you he doesn’t hate you, Célie.”
Another uncomfortable silence descends. His second lie.
Clutching my hands in my lap, I stare down at my knotted fingers—sleek and pale and elegant. Completely foreign. “Of course not.”
The first night I woke as a vampire, Jean Luc attended dinner. The first and only meal he took with me. When I walked into the kitchen, pale and strange, his eyes tightened. When I lifted the bowl of broth to my lips— broth , not blood, in a hopeless attempt to maintain normalcy—I spewed it violently across the table, my body unable to consume it. Lou and Reid produced a cup of blood without hesitation, but the look on Jean Luc’s face...
Though I refused the blood—knocking it to the floor in a fit of panic—Jean Luc still left.
He left, and he hasn’t come back.
As if remembering that night, my abdomen contracts painfully, and I clamp my jaws together, determined to keep the blood down this time. “My mother won’t—” But my hand flies to my mouth, abrupt, as my body starts to heave involuntarily. No. Through sheer force of will, I swallow and lay down my spoon. I will not lose my stomach tonight. I will not .
Beau pats a sympathetic hand against my back. “Your mother still thinks you’re gallivanting across the countryside with a handsome stranger. She cares very little about his vampirism, one way or the other. Truly, I think she’s angrier about your broken engagement than his taste for blood. You’re good and thoroughly ruined in the aristocracy now.”
With a violent shudder, I choke at his pronouncement, losing the battle before it even started. The hateful liquid burns all the way up until I expel it across the table in a desperate heave, just like every other night this week. Just like my sister predicted.
A second of silence follows. Beau’s hand stills on my back. Then—before I can do anything more than cringe away, horrified—my friends move in practiced unison. Lou waves her arm, and the bloody sick on her peonies vanishes instantly. Reid gathers my bowl almost as quickly, marching it out the front door, while Beau pulls my hair aside and Coco hands me a cloth to wipe my face. “It’ll be all right, Célie,” she says earnestly. “We’ll figure this out.”
“This is nothing, really.” Though Lou smiles in reassurance, she looks even paler than before. And the peonies—they remain pink instead of white. I cannot focus on that, however, as another bout of sickness wracks my body, and Reid plunks a small wash pail in front of me.
It’s all so kind.
So humiliating.
“Perhaps, er—bear next time,” Beau says in a horribly light voice.
I nod without a word. Because this is my life now.
When my sister speaks again, I can almost feel her presence at my back, like she stands directly behind me. Like she has stood there all along. Her fingers seem to caress my hair, and for just an instant, Beau’s eyes flick to the strands, narrowing slightly as they rustle in the too-still air. You’re going to kill them, you know. You never really stood a chance.
And abruptly, it’s all too much—my sister’s voice, her touch, the overly sincere expressions of my dearest friends. “ No. ” I snarl the word, slamming my palms on the table and whirling to scream at my sister, to tell her I will not be killing anyone —
But she isn’t there. Of course she isn’t. No one is there, and the table cracks ominously beneath my hands as Beau lurches away with a startled cry, as Reid and Coco shoot to their feet in alarm. “Célie?” Lou rises slower than the others, frowning at the empty air behind my chair. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Beau shudders as he too inspects the space around me. “Is there another ghost here? That—that Mila woman?”
“Mila left with Odessa,” I say through my teeth.
“Someone else, then?”
“There is no one else.” The words land like knives between us—too sharp, even to my own ears—and he blinks, flinching away from them. Shame cracks open my chest in response, and instantly, I move to—I don’t know, console him. He keeps his distance, however. “I’m sorry.” I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. The words seem to bleed from every part of me until I’m drowning in blood—mine, yes, but also theirs. My teeth ache at the scent of it, and my ears ring as Filippa’s laughter echoes in a disorienting wave through the room. “Something is happening to me—”
“ What is happening to you?” Lou leans forward on the table, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. “If no one is here, why did you shout? What is going on ?”
I shake my head reflexively. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean to—”
“What aren’t you telling us, Célie?”
“N- Nothing —”
“You’re lying.”
“No, I’m—I’m not—” My teeth descend at that moment, however, and Filippa’s laughter reaches a fever pitch. It deafens me, and I clench my hands against the building pressure in my head, still shaking, still trying and failing to convince myself this isn’t real. This isn’t real. None of this is real—
I hear the knife before I see it.
Spinning again, I catch the silver blade a split second before it pierces the back of my skull, and in the corridor beyond, something shifts in the darkness. Something... ripples. “The veil,” I breathe incredulously, and before my very eyes, its shorn edges mend themselves; Filippa’s laughter dies instantly. Silence descends, and with it, a sickening sense of relief. Unbidden, I glance down at my fingers, not noticing how they burn until Coco wrenches the knife away.
The very real knife.
I’m not imagining things this time. Though I don’t know what happened to Filippa on All Hallows’ Eve, this pain in my hand is real. That tear in the veil was real, which means the person who opened it must be real too... if they’re a person at all.
Meeting Lou’s incredulous gaze, I say, “I think my sister is haunting me.”