Chapter Seven #2
‘I already found it. It’s a hundred years old and hardly has enough words to work with.’
‘Can you not make do?’
‘I can’t speak English!’ I cried. ‘I can slowly translate it, but this is barely a dictionary. If you want me to read these, you can either hire a real translator or find me a proper dictionary.’
‘All right, fine,’ Raleigh said. ‘I’ll find one. What else?’ His eyes fell upon the stack of books he’d picked out for me, still untouched after all these weeks. ‘Did you already read all those?’
I’d never returned to that first book nor the rest of the stack he’d chosen.
Growing up in Orlfen had prepared me well enough.
No matter what else I read, I never felt like I was missing context from having pressed ahead.
I had no intention of wasting my limited time reading what Raleigh and Moira already knew. ‘Yes,’ I lied.
I could tell Raleigh expected something more. ‘And you … don’t have any questions for me?’
I blinked, unsure what exactly he was asking. ‘About what?’
‘Anything interesting you may have read?’ The corner of his mouth twitched. ‘I do know a thing or two about vampirism, you know.’
I wondered if he really meant to help me, or if this was another empty promise to placate me.
Still, I had to ask something. I racked my brain for a question without an obvious answer that wouldn’t hamper my research if he lied to mislead me.
Raleigh began to tap his foot – I’m not sure he knew he was doing it – and every tap felt like it was hammering home the fact that I was letting this chance slip through my fingers.
I glanced back to my notes. Did Raleigh keep company with other vampires? I couldn’t remember him speaking of them before. Clearly there were others, and not so far from here. If there was an entire coven on the other side of the mountains, perhaps one of them already knew of a cure.
‘Do you know anything about this queen in Bavaria?’ I asked finally, gesturing to the book in front of me.
Raleigh stood suddenly, his chair grinding loudly against the stone floor. ‘I’ve just remembered I have somewhere to be.’
What? I knew he didn’t have anywhere else to be or he wouldn’t have come to the library looking for a novel.
I felt my anger rise again. He was sabotaging me, wasn’t he?
Of course they would know about a cure, I was more certain now.
And even if they didn’t, we could learn so much more from a short visit than I ever could from books written by humans.
The fact that he refused to speak to me about it was maddening.
But that was it. Our deal was his way of making me feel like I had a choice. If he’d wanted me to be his research partner, he would have led with that, but he wanted a bride. I didn’t know why, but I did know he had no intention of helping me.
‘Of course,’ I found myself saying, inwardly screaming at myself as I did so.
He bowed stiffly as he left, all elegance and formality without a scrap of familiarity. I waited a moment after he closed the door, long enough to be sure he had put some distance between us, then hurled the dictionary to the floor and screamed.
I couldn’t stand it. This was the life I’d signed myself up to: an eternity of the two of us tiptoeing around each other, eating meals in awkward silence while barely even being able to argue properly.
It felt like he was trying to be difficult to hate, which only made him that much more vexing.
He wasn’t as kind or patient as he clearly wanted me to think he was, no matter how much he tried to act like my anger with him was unfounded.
I almost wished he would treat me cruelly so that I didn’t have to contend with this strange guilty feeling I didn’t know how to explain.
He killed your mother, I reminded myself. You are allowed to hate him.
I wondered what in the world he was getting out of this. Was this some warped, cruel means of seduction? I couldn’t imagine anyone who looked like him struggling to find someone to warm his bed if that was his aim. Why did we have to play at marriage? And why did it have to be me of all people?
I refused to eat with Raleigh the next evening – partly out of spite, partly embarrassment – and when he didn’t appear the following evening I assumed that was it; he was sick of me.
Which was fine, because I couldn’t stand him.
Our relationship would remain purely transactional until our time was up.
And there was no way in hell that it affected me.
I didn’t care. I didn’t care. It was nothing to me that he would tear me from my life and then become tired of me in a matter of weeks.
What did it matter if he hated me? I hated him.
Now we were equal, and I was completely and utterly cut off from the world.
So it came as a surprise when I received my first letter a week later.
I was in the library as usual, irritable having spent all morning chasing a dead end.
I’d reached a passage in an English volume I’d been struggling to translate that seemed to cover something more complex than simply killing a vampire, but my limited dictionary prohibited me from translating it properly.
I kept stumbling on a word it insisted was either an honorific for a king or something to do with horse lineages but if either were true I had to have been translating the rest incorrectly, because the passage became nonsensical.
At least I now knew that if we found ourselves in Britain people would call Raleigh ‘sire’.
Not that I had any intention of ever holidaying with him.
I gave up, cast the book and the dictionary aside for another day, and went back to the pile in search of something German to clear my head.
A particularly mouldy-looking edition of Beasties and Faeries of Europa by one A.P.
Waltersheim looked promising at first but quickly proved useless.
The old charlatan couldn’t distinguish fact from fiction and clearly favoured the latter.
When I at last found the entry on vampires, it was painfully brief.
Of the vampyre much is commonly known among all sensical folk that bears no need repeating.
I slammed the book shut and rubbed my bleary eyes. When this year was through, no matter the outcome, I’d make a point of writing a book of everything I thought was common knowledge specifically to spite this A.P. Waltersheim, no matter how dead he already was.
‘When was the last time you went outside?’
I hadn’t heard Moira arrive. She was up earlier than usual; it was barely afternoon. She had a heavy, cloth-wrapped package tucked under one arm, and balanced a tray in her other hand.
‘I don’t exactly have the luxury of time to waste it outside,’ I snapped. ‘Unless you’re volunteering to help me?’
‘By all means tell me more about how you have less free time than me.’ She set the tray down, which was laden with tea and a sliced peach, then tossed something else onto the desk in front of me. ‘Letter for you.’
My heart skipped. A letter? I barely dared touch it in case it woke me from the dream. Moira didn’t seem to notice my reaction. She heaved the package down beside me, causing the whole desk to shake.
‘What’s this?’ I asked.
‘Letter first.’ She was out of breath.
I turned over the letter and felt all my joy wash away. The Rostenburg crest winked up at me from its wax encasing. I fought the urge to throw it away. ‘Is he mocking me?’
‘I think he just likes having someone else to write to,’ Moira said. She set a steaming teacup down in front of me. I thanked her, then broke the seal.
My dearest Clara, it read. I know this isn’t the letter you’ve been awaiting, but I hope this eases your grief, if only for a moment.
I threw the letter down. He was mocking me.
‘That was fast,’ Moira observed.
‘If he has something to say to me, he can say it in person.’
Moira raised her brows, her face warped into an expression of such incredulity it could belong to no one but her. ‘Did he not …’
‘Did he not what?’
‘Nothing.’ Moria sighed. ‘Just open the present.’
It didn’t look like much of a present. The package was suspiciously book-shaped, and while I would have been overjoyed to receive books two months ago, the idea of having more to work through now set my teeth on edge.
And I had no doubt that whatever it was it’d been sent from only as far as Raleigh’s tower, where I imagined he was feeling rather pleased with himself.
I tugged open the cloth without enthusiasm, but any protest stuck in my throat when I saw the contents: two volumes of an English dictionary.
Johnson’s – the same one my mother owned – only this edition was far newer and far grander.
Raleigh must have paid a small fortune to commission the binding.
The pages were wafer thin, the script set in the neat, uniform style of modern typeface.
I ran my hand over the smooth leather cover. It was magnificent.
My head felt light. I dug my fingers into the volume, willing the feeling away. The bastard had actually listened to me.
‘Please thank him for me,’ I said bitterly.
‘I can’t write back, I don’t know where he is,’ Moira said. ‘You’ll have to thank him yourself when he returns.’
I stilled, her words circling through my head again, then again. ‘Moira,’ I said slowly, ‘What do you mean, “when he returns”?’
‘Honestly, you two …’ She sounded exasperated. ‘When was the last time you actually saw Raleigh?’
I didn’t know. Time had started to lose all meaning. The longer I spent in the library the more the days blended together. ‘The day before yesterday,’ I said, suddenly less sure of myself. I’d seen him since I’d yelled at him about the letters. Hadn’t I?
‘Try last week. He’s been travelling since Tuesday.’
I didn’t know how long ago Tuesday was; I’d long since lost track of the days. ‘He’s not here?’
‘He didn’t tell you?’