Chapter Six #2
My blood was so close to boiling it was a wonder that steam wasn’t rising through my skin. ‘This isn’t something you can apologise for.’
‘No. It isn’t.’
‘Then leave me alone.’ Fury burning through me, I tried to trudge away from him down the unending corridor. I should have been able to put distance between us, but when Raleigh next spoke he was as close to me as when I started.
‘Do you want to marry me?’
I whirled around, red-faced and breathless. ‘Of course not.’
‘Then I’d ask you to shelve your hatred for a moment. I’ll show you to the library if you can bear to tolerate my presence for that long.’
I didn’t reply, but the fact that I didn’t turn and walk the other way was enough of an acceptance for both of us.
Raleigh practically bounded down the hall when he realised I’d follow.
I started to wonder what lengths I’d have to go to in order to wipe that damned smirk off his face permanently when suddenly he was little more than a speck at the end of what was far too long to be a normal corridor.
‘Wait!’
The second I cried out he was back at my side, brows raised. ‘Do try to go twelve seconds without plotting my demise, would you? Do we need to hold hands?’ He offered one to me, and my imagination conjured the horrible sensation of how it would feel for his claws to cut into my hand.
I batted it away. ‘I can manage.’
With Raleigh leading the way, the library was around the next bend. Yesterday my room had been in the same place. I tried to engrave the door’s image into my mind so that I could find it again.
Raleigh pulled open the door and stood aside with a decidedly unnecessary flourish to let me enter. The candles inside sprang to light as Raleigh followed me in, flooding the room with their glow.
My curiosity finally overwhelmed me. ‘Do most vampires live in magic castles?’
‘Only some of them. The Qu— someone showed me how to place hypnotic triggers on the castle for defence, but these things spiral out of control if you leave them in place for two long. After three hundred years … well, you’ve seen it.
That’s why it won’t let you traverse the halls alone.
’ He pointed an accusatory finger at me. ‘You want to kill me.’
‘Don’t be dramatic,’ I said. ‘I’d be perfectly happy for you to drop dead of your own accord.’
‘Hopefully we can find another way to make you happy.’ Raleigh opened his arms, spinning to face the shelves. ‘Like this. What do you think?’
I looked at the shelves, trying not to let my emotions show. ‘It’s bigger than my library,’ I said.
‘You’re not very romantic, are you?’
It was bigger than my library. Ancient books were crammed into every inch of shelf space, with more stacks piled around the furniture.
The combined scent of thousands of dusty books contaminated the stale air, and cobwebs smothered the chandeliers.
I shuddered to think of what condition the books would be in if they had been rotting here for centuries.
Half of them must have been worm-eaten and covered in mildew.
The other half likely had spiders nesting in the binding. I sniffled, trying not to sneeze.
‘It’s very nice,’ I managed.
‘You hate it.’ He seemed surprised.
‘No, it’s very nice.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Nothing. It’s very nice.’ He was clearly proud of his library and I didn’t much fancy finding out what would happen if I insulted it. Not when his over-protective magic castle surrounded me on all sides. The candles flickered, as if confirming my suspicions.
‘I had a few books set aside for you.’ Raleigh picked his way through the loose piles on the floor to a nearby desk that creaked under the weight of another indistinguishable stack. ‘Mostly contextual works to get you started.’
‘Started with what?’
‘Research,’ he said as if it was obvious. ‘To break the curse.’
I was taken aback. I hadn’t thought much on how I would try to cure him, but I certainly hadn’t thought he would help me.
‘You want me to research your affliction using the books you already own?’
‘Well, I obviously haven’t read them all,’ he said.
‘No one really knew about my kind before I went to court, and you can’t expect me to have read three hundred years of academia in one decade.
’ He gestured to one of the heaving stacks on the far wall.
‘I haven’t sorted half of them. I tend to buy full collections and hope for the best. You wouldn’t believe how many occult books are out there that never mention my kind.
But these ones’—he waved his hands over the shelf nearest to him, the only one, as far as I could tell, that wasn’t caked in dust—‘came from Moira’s family.
So I find them to be actually reliable.’
‘Moira’s family?’ Why was Moira a housekeeper for a hermit vampire when her family was wealthy enough to host a library of their own? Just one of these books could have paid a housekeeper’s salary for a year.
‘Don’t worry, no one will be demanding their return. They’re all quite dead.’
That was far from reassuring.
‘Which languages can you read?’ Raleigh asked suddenly.
‘What?’ I hadn’t expected the question. Raleigh began to repeat himself, but I cut him off. ‘No, I heard you. Why would you assume I can read in other languages?’
‘Oh.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘Your father … There’s a Hungarian count I correspond with sometimes.
I met him in Vienna. I have to go every few years to hypnotise the Emperor into forgetting I’m three hundred years old.
He thinks I’m my own great-great-grandnephew or some nonsense.
’ He paused. ‘What was I talking about?’
‘Languages.’
‘Right. He sent me a copy of the letter your father sent to every eligible bachelor in Europe. Nearly every eligible bachelor. He really emphasised your languages in it, more than any of your other talents.’
I tried not to dwell on the reminder that nobility all across the continent were so blatantly laughing at my family. ‘I don’t have any other talents.’
‘Don’t sell yourself short. You showed a natural aptitude for woodwork the other night.’
Was that a joke? Was Raleigh von Rostenburg really trying to make me laugh?
I must have stared at him a moment too long, because he dropped his eyes and began straightening the stacks with deliberate care.
The silence drew on until it was too late for me to react in any appropriate way. Instead I met him halfway.
‘I mostly read German and Latin,’ I said. ‘I can read English well enough if you have a dictionary, but I don’t think I could speak it.’
Raleigh lit up. ‘Perfect. I was practically raised in Latin, and we mostly spoke French at court, but I barely know two words in English and these’—he gestured to one of the tables where there were so many tomes stacked that the wood sagged in the centre—‘are all in English.’
‘Court?’ I asked. It was the second time he’d mentioned it. The first time I’d assumed he meant Vienna, but from the way he spoke of visiting the Emperor he must have meant somewhere else.
He could have lied. He could have named any court in the world to dowse my interest. Instead he went still. So terribly still that no living being could hope to emulate him. Then he jerked, as if suddenly realising where he was, and turned away. ‘I lived abroad for quite some time.’
‘Were you in France?’ I asked, interest building.
Even our secluded corner of the world had heard about the revolution.
The king had been overthrown several years after Raleigh returned to the Orlfen Valley, but I imagined someone who’d lived as long as he had would know to read the signs and escape before the aristocracy started losing their heads.
I had always liked that theory because it was a rational explanation for his absence and return.
Better than Yann’s story that Raleigh had spent centuries hibernating in a grave, or his friend Kay’s idea that he was touring Hell.
‘No.’ Raleigh remained focused on straightening and restraightening the same stack of books. ‘I’ve never had the opportunity to visit. I’m not sure I will for a while now.’
‘Then which court was it?’
‘It’s irrelevant,’ he snapped. ‘You don’t need to know about that.’ His hands were shaking. ‘Just focus on’—he waved at the books—‘this.’
I knew better than to question him further. ‘Where should I start?’ I asked instead, changing the topic.
Raleigh looked relieved. He pushed his hair from his eyes, sighing to himself. ‘That stack there.’ He pointed to a pile on my right.
I moved towards it. ‘This one?’
‘No, the one next to it. Not that one. Yes, there. There’s nothing groundbreaking in them, but they’ll give you an overview of my kind. That book on the top is where you should start.’
I put my hand over a volume in desperate need of rebinding, to confirm, and Raleigh nodded.
‘Nearly everything you need to get started is in there. More than legends, that is. Then …’ He peeled off, moving books around one of the desks until he found what he was looking for.
‘These are my research notes – everything Moira and I have tried already.’ He handed me a single notebook, then stepped over a stack of books to reach the one clear surface in the room.
‘This can be your desk. Any books you keep on here I’ll assume you’re working on and won’t touch.
Everything you need to take notes should be inside. ’
I walked to the nearest shelf and ran my hand along the row of medieval spines. A thick layer of dust came away, twisting into my lungs and choking me. Clearly no one had touched them in years, perhaps not in living memory. Present company excluded.
‘Now, I ought to be getting to bed before I accidentally walk past a window.’ He said this as though I was supposed to laugh. I did not. I had no interest in putting him at ease and prolonging the conversation. ‘Do you have everything you need?’
‘I have quite enough, thank you,’ I said, trying to rub the dust off my fingers.