Chapter 9 Komal
Mamma: Rishi says that he had a lovely time on your date. He wants to see you again after your meeting. He’ll be waiting for you outside the village hall. Did you know that he has his own segway? Doesn’t your papa know how to find the best men?
THIS IS A LITERAL NIGHTMARE.
I’m trapped in a tiny closet filled with pencils, and Augustin Durant is taking up all the damn air, and now it’s dark.
I don’t do well with the dark.
I suck in a breath, but the air is too thick, too warm, too breathy, like the printer cartridges have decided to start inhaling, too. Darkness brushes my skin like ghostly spider webs.
I rub the spider webs away and bang my fist on the door. It hurts, but not as much as the panic tightening across my chest. “Mrs Ellis! Put down the crochet willy and come let us out! Help, is anyone there?”
“The Naughty Knitting Club won’t be able to hear us with the charm,” Augustin says.
Why doesn’t he sound more upset?
Oh, that’s right, he’s a vampire. He lives for hanging out in the gloom. This cupboard probably reminds him of his coffin, only his coffin has more satin and fewer Post-its.
Actually, Augustin probably has Post-its all over his coffin. No snacks in coffin. Practice looking mysterious, not constipated. Being undead doesn’t mean being unkempt.
Don’t think about coffins.
“So un-charm the door, then,” I hiss through gritted teeth.
“I can’t. You snapped my connection to it when you slammed the door shut.”
“This cannot be happening.” I slump against the shelves, upsetting a stack of Post-its that rain down over my shoulders. The tightening grows worse, and is joined by sharp needles digging into the left side of my heart. I rub and rub at the bare skin of my arms, but the spiders won’t go away.
“Why don’t you message one of your annoying mystery-solving friends to come over and set us free?”
“I left my phone in my purse, in the hall. I don’t suppose you have yours? You probably don’t even use a phone. You handwrite letters in blood ink or blow smoke signals out of your—”
“I have a phone.” Augustin shifts a little to the side, his hip brushing against mine in a way that briefly makes my chest loosen before it pings tight again. “It’s in the drawer of my desk at home. I don’t believe in bringing it to meetings. Phones distract councillors from important work.”
Since I spend council meetings texting a running commentary of Augustin’s crimes to the Nevermore Coven group chat, I can concede he has a point.
“I suppose now is a good time to tell you that I’m afraid of the dark.”
“You’re inventing that,” he scoffs. “What human is afraid of the sun moving below the horizon?”
“This human.” I press my palm into my chest, wishing I could reach inside and give my heart a hug. “I’m dangerously close to a panic attack in a closet with my least-favourite vampire.”
“There’s nothing in this closet that can hurt you, unless you’re allergic to Tipp-Ex.”
“You are not being funny right now.”
I bang my fists against the door again. The action gives me a few moments of relief, a few seconds where doing something keeps the panic from rising inside me, before I remember that no one can hear me, and the needles jab jab jab between my ribs, into my lungs, right up through my throat until I’m gasping for breath.
I scramble back because Augustin is too close. I gasp and gasp and gasp, but I can’t seem to suck down the wet, woolly air.
My hand brushes something on the shelf behind me, something fluffy and warm.
I scream and leap forward, knocking Augustin against the door. Cool vampire skin presses against me, and his arms go around me because there is literally nowhere else in this poxy cupboard for them to go.
For a moment – just a moment – I’m able to suck in a breath.
“Ms Ahuja, this is highly unprofessional—” His voice has gone all low and strange. And his lips are too close to my ear. My animosity for him briefly overcomes the rising panic, giving me enough space to take another deep breath.
“There’s something furry in here with us,” I whimper.
“Don’t panic,” he murmurs into my hair. “You are safe.”
“It’s furry, and it moved.”
“Where?”
“On the shelf behind me. It’s gone now.”
Augustin presses his body against mine so he can reach the shelf. His breath huffs against my cheek as he runs his hands around the pens and staplers. “Ah,” he says. “I see the problem. It’s not alive. It’s my scarf.”
“A fuzzy scarf…”
“Yes.”
“Are you making a bold new fashion statement, Durant?”
“It was… a gift. From a friend.”
“I didn’t know you had friends.”
“Not many,” he says evasively. “Does knowing the identity of the fuzzy interloper help with your fear?”
“No.”
“I suspected as much. You’re trembling.”
I am trembling. Despite how surprisingly pleasant it is being pressed up against him, my body is seizing up.
My heart is mid-audition as the drummer for a black metal band.
The beat pulses behind my knees, in my fingertips, on my tongue.
I’m no doctor, but I assume being able to taste my heartbeat is bad, right?
Augustin’s arms tighten around me.
“Ms Ahuja, I know it’s difficult, but you need to calm down.”
“Oh yes, that helps so much. Thank you for that wonderful advice. Just calm down. I’ll get right on that,” I gasp out. “I need to think about something else. Tell me a story.”
“A story? As in, a fairytale? I don’t know any.”
“I don’t know. Something. Anything.”
He sighs with exasperation. “Fine. The year was 1888. Jack the Ripper had been terrorising London’s East End—”
“N-n-not helping.”
“I apologise. I shouldn’t use a notorious serial killer as scene setting for my real story.”
“I h-h-hate you,” I mutter, because I need to say something to remind myself that cuddling with Augustin Durant is not normal.
His cool hands moving circles over my back are absolutely not taming the drum solo thrumming through my body.
The deep tone of his voice isn’t loosening the vice around my chest. His breath on my cheek shouldn’t send the spiders running.
How does he know exactly what to do?
“The year was 1888,” Augustin continues, as if he hadn’t heard me.
His fingers draw slow circles over my spine.
“Absolutely nothing untoward happened in Whitechapel that year.
John and Dulcina Durant ran a luxurious occult society in Belgravia, London, and petitioned the Dusk Court for the right to sire a son.
That permission was granted, so the Durants went immediately to a local orphanage to inquire about the children.
“The Durants always chose staff for their society from this particular orphanage – children who had no one, so they had no one to gossip with about the things they saw. It was the orphanage where I grew up.”
Okay, now I’m interested.
“There were rumours about the kids who went to work at the occult society – that they never returned quite the same. That sometimes they were never seen again. I should have been afraid of them, but I was curious. There’s something about locked doors and whispered warnings that makes you yearn to know the truth.
When they kneeled in front of me with their fancy clothes and kind smiles and asked if I wanted a job in their kitchen, all I could think was, ‘They’ve come to rescue me. ’ ”
This is his orphanage. He’s telling me about turning into a vampire.
I don’t understand why. Vampires are incredibly secretive about their lives. I’d been friends with Arabella for five years before she revealed that she was fanged and fabulous. So why is he telling me this?
“All the children who’d been awful to me for years waved solemnly goodbye, certain they’d never see me again.
The hours were long, the kitchen hot and filled with danger.
But the rare times when I left the staff quarters for the main house, I was enchanted by the world the Durants inhabited.
Once, I delivered pastries to the drawing room for Mrs Durant, and I stepped inside just as she made Mrs Harvey’s hair turn bright purple.
I caught Mr Durant dabbing a bloody handkerchief upon his friend Archibald’s neck.
There were too many strange and wonderful encounters to list. I preferred their company – however strange – to children my age. I never had a friend in the orphanage—”
“Oh yes?” My jaw and tongue fight to push out the insult. “Social problems? Made the other kids feel stupid?”
He ignores me. “As months turned into years, and the burns on my hands calloused over, the Durants learned to trust me. Mr Durant snuck me pieces of candy, and Mrs Durant invited me to sit with her ladies while they drank blood tea and performed tricks to amuse each other. On the eve of my eighteenth birthday, they invited me to one of their rituals. The things I saw are forever etched into my memory. I’ll never forget the night I learned of the existence of vampires, and of vampire magic. ”
Magic. Just the word makes my skin tingle with something other than spiders.
“To be an Upyr is parasitical – we can’t survive without blood,” Augustin continues. “We can’t continue our own race without taking from another. But Dusk Court vampires have powers of creation, although we must give something of our own – our blood – to bring that creation about.”
I want him to tell me more about the magic, about exactly what Dusk Court vampires can do. But questions are beyond me right now, and I don’t want to be invested in Augustin Durant’s villain origin story.
“I was thirty-six when their application was approved and the court was satisfied I’d given my full consent. In the beautiful gardens Dulcina made at court, John and Dulcina granted me the Kiss in my Bloodeve ceremony, and I became their son.”
He speaks of them with such affection. After learning about how Alaric, Gideon and Arabella were sired in violent acts without their consent, I like knowing that vampires have created a way to make the Kiss a gift, instead of a curse.