Chapter 9 Diantha
Diantha
My apartment’s heating went out twelve hours ago, and I haven’t stopped shivering since. And if there’s one thing that’s not going to help several hours of marrow-deep chill, it’s walking a mile in frigid January weather.
Luckily, Orfeo has picked up the slack, asking questions and gently probing Bowen into another one of his rants.
Orfeo, whose only protection against the cold is a bomber jacket. Orfeo, in his perfectly tailored designer jeans and paint-splattered sweater. Orfeo, with his earring and his lopsided smile and square jaw that tenses every time I look his way.
Orfeo, and his damned vampire-ass self.
After days of avoiding him—only physically, since it seems the Italian vampire has latched on to my brain like a parasite—last night I gave in to my own worst impulses.
My tomes were only going to get me so far.
I found a single passage in a book titled CVSTOMS OF YE DAMNéD about Mediterranean vampires and their differences from Nordic vampires, baobhan-siths, and strigoi, which was nothing I hadn’t experienced firsthand.
I mean, he’d made me pasta with garlic. I hadn’t even asked him to cook for me!
In another tome titled MYTHICAL HOLES, I found only slightly more information on portals—how they’re created by tears in the fibers that join our living world with the beyond.
Tears can be created by high concentrations of supernatural beings, who occupy a place in both worlds, or a high concentration of magical objects, which pull heavily from the beyond’s energy.
I think back to what that guy said in the library, about the haunted bones. It makes sense now: they most likely created the portal.
I need more information about his world. About my mom’s world. Ideally about portals, about Echidna, about demons (half-demons?), and one million other things I can barely keep track of.
But I now know, at least, where I can start.
Hades House, as far as I can tell, is a supernatural hangout. Filled with creatures and beings who have the exact information I need. If I was too afraid of Orfeo to talk to him again, and if I couldn’t physically go to Hades House and find out more information, why not decouple there?
If I could picture the beautiful half-demon and the wooden front door and even conjure up Orfeo’s voice, was it so crazy to think I could land right in the middle of Hades House?
So, I did it.
I completed my nightly ritual of locking the windows and doors.
I purified the air with rose incense. I lit a candle, and I let my senses roam, reaching and stretching my mind toward Hades House, retracing the path from my apartment to Devil’s Row.
I replayed the night I decoupled under the portico, over and over.
I let the memory of Orfeo’s voice—deep and smooth—fill my mind.
The way he said my name. The way he had warned me. The way he’d said, You’re special.
It took a lot of energy, but somehow I’d pulled it off.
As my limbs grew heavy and numb, my skin became slick and cold. For a moment, the world went dark around me. Then, my spirit snapped to, in the middle of a dark, humid room under a flickering disco ball. Smoke hung heavy in the air along with the smell of cleaning chemicals and spilled booze.
Leo, the gorgeous half-demon, sat laughing like a middle-school bully as Orfeo dove over the bar.
Their supernatural energy pressed on me from every angle. The world warbled, their words distant and muffled like I was listening from beneath the surface of a pool.
I struggled to get my bearings, little more than an unfurled ball of energy, surging left and right as I panicked. A wave of my energy blew out a light behind the bar before ricocheting back against the mirrored shelves of liquor bottles, sending one crashing to the floor.
None of that mattered, because I’d heard what Orfeo said as he lifted the squirrelly, curly-haired kid off his feet.
His words blaze through my memory.
I don’t kill anyone.
Am I an idiot to trust a vampire?
Better question: am I an idiot to trust my mom’s apparition?
Orfeo isn’t my only option, but he’s my best option. And if he’s a flop, I’ll try Evie—though, shamefully, I have doubts about her abilities.
Or, if Orfeo is to be believed, maybe I have some powerful shit kicking around inside me too.
Bowen slips a key into the front door of Paquet Manor and unlocks it with a satisfying click.
“Ahhhh.” He turns to grin at us. “Still toasty!”
Orfeo and I trade a wide-eyed look, and I have to fold my lips over my teeth to keep from laughing out loud.
Orfeo props the door open with one of his designer sneaker–clad feet and sweeps an arm forward.
I practically dive inside, biting back a sigh as the definitively toasty air caresses my face.
I yank my scarf and beanie off and ruffle a hand through my flattened waves and curls, my ears stinging from the sudden temperature change.
“Your color’s coming back.” Orfeo’s voice is deep and smooth.
“Is it?”
His eyes track over me. Up and down, drinking me in like he can see through every layer of fabric wrapped around my body. “Mmm.” This noise comes like a growl from the back of his throat. “Yes.”
I don’t want to, but I find myself drawn to him, like a sunflower to the sun.
The inside of the manor is even grander than the outside, and the luxury of central heating immediately makes me feel drunk and sleepy.
Bowen begins another unceasing monologue, guiding us from one ornate room to another—brocade wallpaper in shades of green; plush leather Chesterfield couches; oil painting after oil painting mounted in heavy gold frames mostly displaying train moguls, founding fathers, and other super villains.
Eventually, I do warm up. I peel off my coat and hold it close to my chest, in utter terror that I might knock over a glass display case of Russian monarchical jewels or a curio of Etruscan vases.
When we pass a terracotta urn, Orfeo pauses for a moment. Bowen keeps walking and talking, but I hang back.
“It’s Roman,” he whispers.
A small noise escapes me. A hum of appreciation, of sympathy. “Reminds you of home?”
He nods, then before I can ask anything else, he walks away.
The Paquets weren’t just rich—they were greedy.
They collected priceless treasures from almost every continent, only to hide them away in the shipping magnate’s rural Pennsylvania summer home.
It took many generations and one courageous Countess Margot Paquet for the entire residence to finally be sold to the university.
I scan every room for occult objects. Maybe an ancient rabbit’s foot from England or a Japanese ofuda. It feels completely plausible that a manor home as grand as this one could be a portal to the beyond. Why not?
Bowen tosses a hand in the direction of a small door tucked under a wide, winding staircase as we pass from one wing of the house to another. “The servant’s entrance to the kitchen, that is. Undoubtedly where one of my countrymen was made to toil over a hearth.”
Orfeo lets out a soft belly laugh, and I can’t resist following the sound with my eyes.
I’ve never heard him laugh before. It’s a gentle, velvet sound.
Our eyes connect. Orfeo has been keeping his distance, hands tucked into his front pockets.
I don’t blame him. Now, his eyes flicker with warmth and affection. He holds my gaze until I look away.
“Finally, we’ve reached our destination!” Bowen pushes open a set of French doors. “This is Captain Paquet’s office and chambers.”
Calling this space—this grand, money-scented space—a room feels somehow like both an insult and a curse.
This isn’t a room, it’s heaven. Every square inch of the long, narrow space is covered in bookshelves stuffed with leather-bound volumes.
Behind the captain’s desk, floor-to-ceiling windows reflect the soft, diffused light coming from sconces on either side of the fireplace to our right and the enormous, dazzling crystal chandelier over our heads.
I turn in a circle, my mouth hanging open, half expecting an anthropomorphized candlestick to come out of the woodwork and insult my sensible footwear.
“It looks like the Beast’s library,” I say. They turn blank stares on me. My neck immediately starts to heat. “Like, uh, in Beauty and the Beast.”
“Not a baseless observation, Miss Moro. I believe Captain Paquet and the Beast would have been contemporaries.” He settles into a leather chair that I had personally assumed was for display purposes only. “Right, so you’ll see we have two tapestries hanging at either side of the room.”
Bowen gestures to two different, angled display pedestals.
“Choose whichever one you like best, and you’ll spend the remainder of class documenting any elements of these saintly scenes that seem to pull from non-Christian idolatry.
Your essays will be due on my desk by nine-fifteen p.m.” He hefts himself up from the chair with a grunt.
“Off to the pub for old Cormac! Toodles.”
“Wait, what?” Before I can stop myself, I lurch into Bowen’s path. “You’re leaving us?”
He gives me a look of total exhaustion. “What do you want me to do, Miss Moro? Stand over your shoulder while you write?”
“W-well, no, but…”
“Okay then.” He steps around me. “Be sure to pull all the doors shut behind you! They’ll lock on their own!”
And then he leaves us. Actually leaves us.
I spin around, back toward the seating area and ceiling-high bookshelves. “Can you fucking believe—what the hell are you doing?”
Orfeo leans back against the fireplace, popping an elbow up onto the mantel, a smoldering look of self-importance painted all over his face. “Notice anything?”
I frown, dragging my eyes around the room. “Uh, no…”
He snaps his fingers and the fireplace leaps to life, yellow flame exploding in a controlled outburst behind the hearth. What I realize, after letting out a humiliating yelp, is that the existing flames grew at Orfeo’s command.