Chapter 12 – Dahlia
Dahlia
“Finally!” Livia says loudly as I move the phone away from my ear, her voice too much for this time of morning.
“Sorry, I fell asleep just as my phone was charging,” I tell her, gathering my jean jacket closer as I make my way over the Rio Madonna dell’Orto. It’s misty this morning and damp and though I’m glad I’m wearing Docs, I immediately regret wearing a dress. Summer really is gone.
“Thank you for everything you did,” I quickly add so she doesn’t think I’m ungrateful. “I was fully expecting to come home and find that demon waiting for me.”
“So there was a demon,” she muses coldly. “I sensed as much. When you weren’t answering, I feared the worst. That you got found out, that you had to leave or…they killed you. But then I saw you with Valtu and you looked fine, but I couldn’t be sure. I went to your apartment and let myself in—”
“How?”
A pause. “I didn’t use magic. I have an extra set of keys.”
“You have an extra set of keys to my apartment?” I ask.
Nope, I don’t like that.
“It’s not your apartment, Dahlia. It belongs to the guild. And right now, you belong to the guild too.”
I frown, lowering my voice as I walk through a crowd of tourists. “What does that mean?”
“It means that you are here under their control, until they deem you worthy enough to come back fully.”
I stop, stepping out of the way of the pedestrians, leaning against a shadowed wall. “What? That’s not what we agreed on, me and Bellamy. He said that I could come back to the guild if I did this one thing.”
She chuckles dryly. “You never leave the guild once you enter it. You’re in it for life.
You know this. After your, you know, after your last mission, Bellamy thought it best if you were retired.
You had your sabbatical, sure, but you were still bound to your duty to us.
You knew what you were getting into when you decided to be one. ”
“I was thirteen years old!” I yell into the phone. “I didn’t know what I was agreeing to do! My parents had been murdered and Bellamy told me if I wanted revenge, then I would have to join!”
“And you did get your revenge, didn’t you?” she says, her voice aggravatingly calm. “How many vampires have you killed over the years, Dahlia? How many?”
I don’t want to answer that. “I never killed the ones that killed my parents.”
“How do you know? You don’t. All you know is that you are doing what you were born and bred to do—”
“I wasn’t bred to do this,” I cry out. “I wasn’t born to do this either.”
“That’s not what the guild has decided. You know what they believe with natural born killers.
You were chosen, Dahlia. And with every vampire you take out, you are preventing another child out there, another kid like yourself, from losing their own parents to vampires.
Or their spouses. Or their own children.
You’re saving people by doing what you do, and that’s why you need to keep on doing it.
” She sighs heavily and I’m clutching the phone so hard I’m afraid I might break it.
“You made an oath. You’re back on the job.
Finish the job or the next time there will be something worse than that demon in your room. ”
“Are you threatening me?”
Her sigh deepens. “ No . I mean, the longer you take, the more time that Saara and Aleksi have to keep opening the portals or doing whatever the hell they are doing. You need to find that book, and fast. The last thing you want is for Bellamy to go there and finish your job for you. Believe me. You don’t want that. ”
Then she hangs up.
Fuck. This is not the conversation I wanted to have this morning, not when my first class is the exam that I didn’t have a chance to study for last night because I fell asleep. Not to mention that my brain had been absolutely stewing over the events from last night.
Everything that happened between me and Valtu.
I mean, really, what the fuck was going on with my head yesterday? What made me think that I could just open myself up to him, when I’ve never been able to do that with anyone? As Livia reminded me, I am a slayer. My purpose is to kill vampires like him, and kill him specifically.
And yet I wanted to lay my soul bare to him and I don’t know why.
Is it because I knew, on some level, that he would understand me?
Is it because I feel I understand him?
He is a killer, sure. But so am I. How are we any different?
That darkness inside of me is the result of taking life after life.
Perhaps that darkness inside of him is the same.
Both of us are bad fucking people. At least he has the excuse that he’s just trying to feed, trying to survive.
What’s my excuse?
I try to push that out of my head. I need to stay focused.
I step back onto the street and hurry along to class, running late now.
The funny thing is, it doesn’t even matter if I fail my exam or not because this is all a ruse anyway.
None of this matters, and yet I’m making it matter.
I’m making it important because a large part of me wishes this was all real.
I want to be just a music student falling for her professor. I want the simplicity of it all.
And you’re not falling for him , I tell myself as I enter the school. You’re not falling for your target. You’re not going to compromise your mission yet again.
But the last time was different. I befriended a vampire, Ottilie. There was nothing sexual about it. I just got too close to her. She was able to use that to manipulate me before I could manipulate her.
I learned my lesson. I almost lost my life doing so.
I enter the classroom, the last one in. Valtu looks up from his desk and his hardened expression softens with relief when he sees me. I can tell that he probably thought I wouldn’t show because I was avoiding him after everything he told me last night.
After the way he touched me.
After the way he kissed me.
Even now, with his dark gaze locked on mine, I feel my body starting to come alive again, a fire building deep inside.
There he is.
So damn beautiful.
I sit down at my desk, averting my eyes now because I think if we keep staring at each other, the other students are going to suspect something.
And Valtu swiftly turns into Professor Aminoff, a man with charm and authority that has everyone hanging on his every word as he preps us for how the exam is going to take place.
My whole life I’ve left things to the last minute.
Tomorrow has always been a preferable day to do something.
Though I didn’t study as much as I would have liked, I’m glad I at least got some done at the library the other night, because as I’m doing the exam, I realize I know most of the answers.
I suppose I could have used a memorization spell to help me through, but honestly that astral projection completely wrecked me and I’m too afraid to use any magic now for fear of losing my grip on my glamor.
When the exam is over, class is dismissed and even though I want to approach Valtu at his desk, another teacher walks into the room to talk to him.
For a moment I fear that maybe someone saw us kissing on the bridge last night and he’s about to be reprimanded, but that doesn’t seem to be the vibe since they’re joking around.
So I leave the room and decide to head out into the city for a bit, grab an early lunch somewhere. I pick a taverna across the Ponte dell’Accademia that I heard Valtu mention once, hoping that maybe he’ll show up here when he’s done.
But he doesn’t. I have some bruschetta since the food is fairly expensive and a couple of Aperol Spritzes, taking my time to linger like the locals do since my next class isn’t for a while.
Then it’s time to head back into the school for my music theory class, then my composition class—I take both with a bit of a buzz going.
Finally I have the chance to see Valtu again in the concert hall for my practical, last class of the day.
He is different with me this time. When he meets my eyes, he smiles, but he doesn’t let his gaze linger on me for too long. He addresses everyone else in the class more than he does me, even this British chick with the coke-bottle glasses that he normally seems to dislike.
I have to wonder if he’s doing this on purpose, maybe the teacher he was talking to earlier really was warning him. Or maybe he came on too strong last night and he spooked himself. Could easily be either one. I mean, he was coming on strong, it’s just that I happened to like it.
So I keep my expression as sweet as possible (which is a challenge when you have resting bitch face), I smile at him when I can.
But when it comes time for me to play some pieces on the organ, even his compliments come up short.
Instead he thinks I need some work with my ankles to play on the inside of my feet, which is the first time I’ve heard that.
But maybe it’s not that he was coming on strong. Maybe I’m the one who scared him off. I’m the one who basically told him I was a loner child with dead parents and no friends and no dates and I’m inherently unlikeable.
Yeah, that’s what it was all right.
I’m the fucking problem.
As usual.
When class ends, everyone goes and it’s just me and Professor Aminoff left.
I go up to him, feeling extremely awkward.
“Hey,” I say to him, just as new students are filling the room, dragging their instrument cases with them.
“Hey,” he says back, giving me a quick smile. As if we’re just teacher and student. And maybe that’s all we are. Maybe I’m an idiot.
“Listen,” I say. “I thought about what you said, with my ankles and all that and well, you did say I needed permission to use the concert hall after hours to practice. So…can I?”
He clears his throat and frowns, folding his arms across his chest and I do what I can not to stare at the way his biceps look under his black shirt. “When?”
“Tonight,” I say. I gesture to the students taking out their clarinets. “When they’re done.”