Chapter 2 – Dahlia #2
I head out of my tiny apartment, locking it behind me, and head down the narrow winding staircase and out of the building, the soles of my sandals echoing on the tile.
The guild found this place for me, in the Cannaregio district, the north section of the city.
The building is a little run down and very basic, but it fits the profile of what a music student would be able to afford in this city.
I bring out the map in my phone and plot course for the coffee house that I’m meeting Livia at.
I’m the type that doesn’t like directions and usually just uses instinct to find my way, but Venice is a strange beast. I’ve been here for two days and I’ve gotten lost every time I’ve gone for a walk.
Alleyways and streets converge and circle, leading to dead ends of buildings and canals.
Even when you swear you’ve been down a street before, it ends up being another street and you’re in the opposite direction you hoped to go in.
There’s a vibe here, an energy that is dark and light and mercurial.
The sun is just starting to peek over the buildings now and though the streets are sleepy, the canals are alive with motors, boats heading every which way.
Every now and then I get a glimpse of the Grand Canal between the buildings and see boats loaded with fish or vegetables, bringing their wares to the shops, markets and restaurants, and of course the ever-present vaporettos coasting through the water.
I’d never been to Venice before, so I’m still getting used to the fact that I’m in such an infamous city.
It feels a little like a dream and if I wasn’t so worried about my glamor or the mission, I’d be able to enjoy it a lot more.
As far as I know, I’ll be masquerading as a student at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory of Music until my job is done, so I might not even have enough time to properly enjoy being here before I have to go.
Get in and get out is the essence of the job.
The coffee shop is tiny, with a few tables and chairs crammed between the shop and a canal. I spot Livia sitting down outside with a macchiato and she waves me over.
“I hardly recognized you,” she says as she gets up, grabbing me lightly by the shoulders and giving me a kiss on each cheek.
“So it works?” I ask, feeling anxious.
She looks me over again and nods.
“It works,” she says, sounding impressed. “Sit, have a coffee. I can get you an espresso? What would you like?”
“The biggest coffee they have,” I tell her, taking a seat.
She gives me a wry look, her brow quirking up. “You Americans never learn, do you.”
“Hey, at least I know I can’t take it to go.”
That’s something that will take some getting used to.
I drink coffee like a fish and I’m so used to grabbing a Starbucks and nursing it for a good hour.
To-go coffee is relatively unheard of in Italy, and most drinks, even lattes, fit in a teacup.
You slam back your coffee and then you go on with your day, which is insane to me.
Livia comes back with the coffee, carrying the cup and saucer with ease.
“Grazie,” I tell her, carefully taking it from her.
“Prego,” she says, sitting down. Livia’s background is Lebanese but she’s part of the Italian guild of witches having lived in Italy for most of her life, and though I’ve only met her once, I really like her—and that’s coming from someone who starts off disliking people as a default.
She’s probably in her late thirties, with long dark hair and lush eyelashes and has this graceful way about her that I know comes from a deep understanding of witchcraft.
When you really become immersed in it, wizened like a mage, you start to become one with the earth and all the realms above and below—or so they say.
My craft has primarily been about killing.
I’m good with a blade, I know how to attack, but any of that etherealness and grace I seem to sorely lack.
I take a sip of my espresso, eyes widening at the strength of it. I quickly plop in a sugar cube to mellow it.
Livia chuckles at my reaction, then her expression turns serious. “How are you feeling?”
“A bit jet-lagged still,” I tell her. “But I’ll be okay.”
“And with the magic? How are you feeling with the glamor on?”
I think about that for a moment, taking stock of my body. “It feels a little effervescent. Like I have tiny champagne bubbles dancing on my skin.”
“But this isn’t the first time you’ve used glamor to hide yourself, is it?”
I shake my head and have another sip, the espresso already cooled and slightly sweet. “No. It just feels different this time.”
I don’t want to tell her about the last time I used glamor to disguise the fact that I was a witch from a vampire. To talk about that would be to talk about the very reason I was kicked out of the guild for two years. Why this is my one and only shot to make my way back in.
“Well, it’s working,” she says. Her dark eyes narrow, looking over me with scrutiny now. “You seem like a normal human, a student. And your power is strong, I’ll give you that.” She pauses. “But I do worry a little. How long will you be able to keep it up without it waning?”
“Long enough to do the job.”
“But your job is going to take you a lot longer than you originally thought.”
I sit up straighter and frown. “How do you know? I’m to get close enough to Dracula to kill him somewhere private. That shouldn’t take more than a few days, a week? Maybe a couple of weeks if it’s hard to get him alone.”
“Bellamy rang me last night,” she says gravely.
“You can—and should—call him to hear for yourself. But Dracula, Professor Aminoff, he’s now just part of a much bigger picture.
A much more deadly picture. In the last couple of days, the vampires Saara and Aleksi have taken up shop here in Venice.
Where, I don’t know. And they reportedly have a book that they recently stole from Lisbeth, a witch from Wales.
The book went missing after Lisbeth was found dead. ”
“She was found dead? Did they kill her?” I don’t know Lisbeth—I don’t know most witches to be honest—but the death of a fellow witch is a hard pill to swallow. There are only so many of us left.
“Saara and Aleksi did,” she says, her tone sharp.
“Professor Aminoff has an alibi, he was here. And it’s possible he had nothing to do with it.
But we won’t know that until you get close.
What Bellamy wants you to focus on now is using the professor to get close to Saara and Aleksi.
Find out where they are staying. Find the book. Then kill them all.”
I blink, trying to take the new information in. In my job, being adaptable is an asset but this new plan is throwing me off. “I’m going to need more time to process this,” I admit, hoping I don’t sound weak. The last thing I need is for her to report me to Bellamy and pull me from the mission.
“It shouldn’t change anything,” she says.
“You’ll just be at the school for longer.
You’ll need your glamor for longer. When you feel it weakening, take your time to do another spell.
You’ll want it strong enough to not only pass Dracula’s inspection, but Saara and Aleksi too.
And anyone else. Who knows how many vampires truly live in this city. Sometimes it feels like hundreds.”
I swallow the rest of my coffee, the caffeine mixing with the adrenaline. “What’s so special about the book?”
“It’s a spell book.”
“So? I know plenty of vampires who have their hands on one.” There’s one in particular, Absolon Stavig of San Francisco, who has a whole library of them, but he is a little different from the rest of the vampires.
He’s not loyal to his kind, or really anyone except himself, and he does a lot of deals with witches.
As far as I know, the magic he gets from the books doesn’t really leave the house he lives in.
“This isn’t an ordinary spell book,” she says, her eyes looking grim. “It can open portals to other worlds.”
Okay. Now she has my attention.
“I’m sorry… portals ?”
Livia nods. “The witch was in charge of it for safekeeping, so really no one should have been able to find it. But perhaps curiosity got the better of her. Either way, Saara and Aleksi learned about the book, journeyed there, killed her, and took it. Now they have the ability to open portals themselves.”
The skin on my scalp prickles uneasily. “And do what with them?”
Livia gives a slow shrug, looking around her as a flock of pigeons land nearby. “I don’t know. Bellamy fears they may be opening a portal to the Red World, where their king resided.”
“But Skarde is dead.”
“He is. But there may be other vampires or creatures that live in that realm that they can pull out.” She pauses, shifting uneasily in her seat before she fixes her eyes on me. “Even monsters.”
Suddenly the flock of pigeons take to the air, as if hearing her. They probably did.
“Why?” I whisper.
“I don’t know,” she says. Then she gets to her feet and smooths out her sundress. “But your job is to find out. I will help you in whatever way I can as your guide and fellow witch on the ground, but this is your mission, Dahlia. Bellamy entrusted you with it.”
I open my mouth to protest. To tell her that originally my mission was just to come to Venice, enroll in the music school, get close to Dracula, who happened to be a professor there, then kill him.
He was a vampire who had killed many over the years and the job of a slayer is to seek out the vampires that kill humans and deliver them justice.
After a job well done, I would go back to the Pacific Northwest and resume life in the guild again as a slayer.
But now I have three targets, not one, I have to get close to my professor in order to access the other two, and then there’s this magic book that opens portals to vampire worlds that I have to find, then kill all the vampires, and then bring the book back to Bellamy.
I didn’t sign up for this.
Yet you did , the voice inside my head says. You signed up for this when you were thirteen years old, the moment Bellamy became your guardian and you pledged to avenge your parents.
“You’re going to do great,” Livia tells me, tapping the table. “Trust me. Just give me a text when you’re done with school and keep me updated, okay?”
I nod then yell, “Thank you for the coffee!” as she walks away. She gives me a little wave with her hands and then disappears down an alleyway.
I sigh and spend a few moments sitting in the chair, watching a few boats go past down the narrow canal, listen to the melodic sounds of spoken Italian fill the air. The longer I sit here, the safer I am. The longer I sit here, the less I have to pretend.
I can sit here all day, just avoiding my job.
I don’t even have to do this job, I can back out, tell Bellamy that this wasn’t what we had agreed upon.
But part of me knows that this is a test. It’s possible that he knew all of this for a while and wanted to spring it on me at the last minute, when I was already here.
He may have been my guardian growing up, but I didn’t trust Bellamy most of the time. There was always some lesson for me, some ulterior motive.
A pigeon suddenly lands on the end of the chair across from me and tilts its head.
“Hey,” I whisper to it, taking some of the sugar and sprinkling it on the table. “You can have this if you do me a favor.”
The pigeon tilts its head again and then jumps onto the table with clean pink feet.
What’s the favor? It seems to ask me.
“Just watch over me,” I tell it. “I think I’m in over my head.”
The pigeon seems to think that over then it takes a grain of sugar before flying away. Hmmphf. No answer.
I take that as a sign to get going. In all my life I have never backed away from a fight. I’ve always done what was expected of me. This is no exception.