8. Valtu #2
“What makes you say that?” he says mildly, following me.
I give him a tepid look. “Just a hunch. You weren’t exactly pleased with me when we last spoke.”
He grumbles though his eyes light up a little when I show him the bottle of 1965 Bordeaux that I’m about to open for us. “No, I suppose I wasn’t. And that’s partly the reason I’m here. To see if you’d had a change of heart.”
“Ah,” I say, uncorking the bottle with aplomb. I sniff the bottle lightly and can almost see the terroir and fields being worked decades ago, feel the waning sun on the day the grapes were picked. “I see. And I thought you just wanted my wine and company.”
“Well that too,” he says as I pour him a glass of the burgundy elixir before I pour my own. “We have a lot to catch up on, old friend.”
I raise my glass. “ Salude , anyway.”
We cheers and I take a sip, savoring the explosion of grapes, then swallow and take a seat at the kitchen island across from him. “Let’s get it out of the way then. What do you want? The book?”
He shakes his head. “Not particularly. I need you to use the book.”
“For what?” I ask but I already know the answer from his weary expression. It’s the same as before.
“To find Leif and Bellamy,” he says.
I sigh. “Believe it or not, I’m not opposed to helping you.
I want to help get Leif back as much as anyone.
I may not really know Amethyst, and Wolf and I have had our differences, of course, but any vampire stolen by witches deserves revenge.
But I have been over that book in detail for the last few years now and there is nothing in there that would help with tracking or locating him or any of the witches. ”
He studies me for a moment. “And you’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” I snap, annoyed that he’d even suggest I wasn’t thorough. “Don’t forget the book was made by witches. Sure, they say a vampire was involved in it as well, but in the end the magic came from a witch and I’m sure they’ll do anything to protect their own.”
“Actually, no one really knows where the book came from,” Solon muses. “Not even the witches. We only assume it favors them.”
“Well it doesn’t matter because what you’re looking for doesn’t exist. Not yet, anyway.”
“Not yet?”
“It doesn’t show its hand all at once. It slowly reveals itself to me. Most of the pages in there are blank. It’s impossible to predict when a spell might finally appear.”
He has a taste of his wine, still studying me closely. “Back when we asked you to help, you didn’t even know that about the book. And yet you didn’t even try. You know this isn’t just about getting Leif back. It’s about vengeance. Justice for Dahlia.”
I swallow hard, hating the sickly pit of dread that forms in my stomach whenever I think of what I did to her. Thank god that will all be gone soon.
“There is no justice,” I say quietly.
“You know you have to forgive yourself,” he says.
I give him a sad smile. “I can’t forgive myself.”
“But you can’t live like this forever. Shut away here. We’ve called so many times over the years. You never answer. I know that you barely have anything to do with the Red Room these days, that you’re turning into a recluse, that you don’t have time for your friends anymore.”
“I’m not living like this forever,” I tell him. “Actually, today was my last day at the school. Tomorrow I’m leaving Venice for good.”
He blinks at me in surprise, straightening up. “What? Where?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I tell him. “Somewhere cold and dark and hidden, so I suppose I’ll still be a recluse after all.
Anyway, if you know anyone who wants a villa in Venice,” I gesture around me, “it’s available.
Well, Bitrus is moving in but I’m sure he’ll share.
He’s taking over the Red Room for me.” Outside of vampires, Bitrus has always kept to himself, so it will be much longer before the human population of Venice thinks anything is amiss with his lack of aging.
“Why?”
I give him a hard look. “Because I want a new life, Absolon. Surely you can understand that.”
“I do. And I know firsthand you can’t run away from your problems. Surely you know that too,” he points out.
A sly smirk tugs across my lips, a feeling of elation at having found a loophole.
“Ah, but you see, I can run away from my problems. I can make them never exist in the first place.”
His brows come together into a hard black line. “What do you mean?”
“Come with me,” I say and take my wine around the corner to the living room.
The room is mostly dark except for the roaring fire and the narrow shaft of light coming in through the closed velvet curtains.
I take a seat on the sofa, facing the book on the coffee table, and gesture for Solon to do the same.
But he is frozen in the doorway, staring with wide eyes into the shadows of the room. “What the hell is that?” he whispers.
I don’t need to turn my head to know what he’s referring to. “I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure it’s here so that others like yourself don’t try and take off with the book.”
He swallows thickly and tears his gaze away from the demon, and then sits down beside me. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
But when he looks at the book, I can see he’s thinking of it a little. His eyes get this glow to it, the same glow I noticed in Poveglia. It’s a look I’m sure I have in my eyes when I’m flipping through its storied pages late at night. Total enrapturement.
I reach for the book and it meets me halfway, lifting out of the air and flipping through the pages by itself, the pages flashing blank and full of ink alternatively, clearly showing Solon what I meant about the way it reveals itself.
Then it settles back down on the table, page flipped open to Tabula Rasa . Lots of detailed text, ingredients, and then a picture of a crudely drawn vial of liquid.
“What is this?” Solon says, attempting to read it. “It’s Latin but…it’s jumbled. Tabula Rasa is all I can understand. A blank slate…”
The book suddenly shuts itself, the show over.
“It’s a recipe and a spell for a potion, one that I will drink tonight to make all my problems go away.”
“I still don’t understand,” he says, displaying his hands in a show of confusion. “Why not get black-out drunk?”
I get to my feet and walk over to a music box that sits on top of the piano in the corner.
I open up the music box and the ballerina on top does a little twirl, followed by a few haunting notes.
A sad tune for a lonely ballerina. I reach in and take out a black vial that feels shockingly cold in my hands.
I turn and display it to him carefully, sure that it stays far out of his reach, even if he were to move fast. “A spell of erasure. A spell for forgetting. A way for me to live again without any memory of Dahlia.”
His mouth drops open for a moment. “You’re going to erase her from your memory?”
He looks so horrified that it’s almost comical.
“Yes,” I say simply. “It’s the only way to make the pain go away. It’s the only way to be free of her and what I did to her.”
He shakes his head, getting to his feet, and the demon suddenly growls, low, raspy, and menacing. I hold the vial close to me just in case, even though Solon stays where he is.
“Valtu. Listen to me. We all go through shit in life. Some of us more than others, but believe me when I say that what I went through wasn’t a walk through the park either. I was a monster.”
“And so am I,” I seethe. “We all have our battles. I know yours but this is mine and you can’t possibly know what it’s like to have had a love like Mina’s and Lucy’s and Dahlia’s and have that love ripped from you each and every time. You can’t know what it’s like to have killed—”
“But I do know!” Solon yells. “I killed my first love and then countless others after, and I had to live with it. We all have to live with our choices, whether we meant to do it or not. That’s how the world works. That’s how we learn. That’s how we stay human.”
“Human?!” I scoff. “Are you kidding me? We aren’t human, Solon, and it’s a mistake to aspire to be one. We are vampires. We are killers.”
“Then we should be making peace with that fact,” he counters. “Not erasing it. Don’t do this, Valtu. Dahlia doesn’t deserve that.”
“Does it matter what she deserves!?” I cry out, rage and grief crawling out of my chest. “What about what I deserve? She’s dead.
She’s dead and I’m here and I have to live with it.
More than that, I have to live with it forever!
I’m tired of living with this grief. I’m so fucking tired, Solon.
It’s either this or I’m walking straight into a fire, because I can’t go through this pain any longer. I just can’t.”
“It’s a coward’s way out,” he says grimly, eyes burning.
“Then I’m a coward,” I say. And I know it’s true. I know I am. But the idea of being free from this weight, from these shackles, means I will gladly accept that title. “But at least I will be free.”
“You’ll lose all your humanity,” he warns.
“I know you just said it doesn’t matter, that we shouldn’t be like the humans, but we need to be, at least a little bit.
If Dahlia and Mina and Lucy cease to exist in your life and in your memory, you will lose every part of you that has made you what you are.
Every good part. She gave you goodness, Valtu.
She gave you love. She made you care, she exercised your heart.
If you erase all of that then you’ll be… ”
“Soulless?” I venture. “Nothing but a monster? I’m already those things, Solon. The difference is this time I won’t be suffering any longer.”
He shakes his head. “No. No, this is a mistake. This is a big mistake.”
I give him a wan smile. “If it is, will it make a difference to me? No. She’s dead and I need her to let me go. This is the only way I can let her go.”
And even though I was planning to do it tonight alone, even though I planned to think about it a little more, I pop open the vial.
“ Hoc carmine te deleo, amorem deleo et incipio ,” I say, reciting the spell I had memorized by heart. “ Tersus. Tersus. Aeternum .”
“Valtu, no!” Solon yells and he’s coming toward me.
But I’ve already tipped the contents of the vial down my throat.