9. The Library of Graeme House
9
The Library of Graeme House
Calliope
C alliope hears someone calling her. She opens her mouth to answer but finds nothing but cold water rushing into her lungs, pain splintering behind her eyes, heaviness in her chest. She is on the cold floor, gritty from years of use, and her body is ice. She can’t feel her legs, her throat is on fire—
Help .
She sits up in a rush, hand clutching her throat.
A dream. Just a dream.
The room is dark, and she fumbles with the small lamp until it clicks on. Brushing her hair away from her face, she looks around confusedly at the bookshelves with their leather spines and metal contraptions. Witch’s tools , she thinks. The same kind that dotted her grandma’s kitchen, though she barely knows what they do. She presses the back of her hand to forehead, finding it too warm and clammy. She tries to piece together the moments before she fainted, and a flush of embarrassment creeps up her neck when she remembers.
Calliope knows enough about vampires to know that they shouldn’t faint at the sight of blood. Then again, she hadn’t been a very good witch, despite her birthright, so it would be fitting if she made an even poorer vampire.
Not quite a witch. Not yet a vampire.
She teases the point of her canine tooth with her tongue as she stretches, her fingers ghosting over the scar on her arm as she rubs the stiffness from her muscles. She takes stock of her body, catalogs her limbs one-by-one in the way her grandma taught her to do before beginning a spell.
She hates to admit it, even to herself, that Rory could be right, but she does feel the empty gnawing in her gut. She is hungry . Deeply starving. And the memory of the glass of blood comes back to her, a crimson apparition at the forefront of her mind that makes her gums ache.
Slightly panicked, she finds herself in the Ether, and in the cold, still darkness, she sees her hunger in front of her: a snarling, wolf-like beast with fire dripping from its fangs. She can see herself reflected in its many eyes. Its fur is raised up around its neck. Two ivory horns protrude from either side of its head .
She reaches out hesitantly, touching the tip of its ear. It bares its teeth further, but she doesn’t heed the warning; she is safe in the Ether and, anyway, this creature is a part of her. She isn’t afraid. She takes a step closer, trailing her hand to its neck, burying her fingers in its coarse, thick fur. It quiets, leaning into her touch. The snarl becomes a purr.
“Soon,” she promises. “I’ll drink soon. Rest for just a bit longer.” She presses a kiss to the top of its head, and it blinks again, before settling low on its haunches, tail swiping back and forth.
She lets the Ether slide away and finds herself back in her room, her feverish skin burning away the ice crystals that formed along her eyelashes. That’s new , she thinks, wiping away the gentle dusting of frost along her arms.
Soon , she tells her Hunger again, hand pressed to her chest. She makes her way to the door and tentatively leans out into the hallway, glancing right to left for signs of Rory. She isn’t sure if she’s relieved or worried when he isn’t immediately present. She steps out into the hallway, listening intently for signs of someone—anyone—moving about the place.
Again, she takes stock of her body. Her grandma always said that the best cure for anything is gin and a good nap. Calliope isn’t sure if the house has gin, but after her nap, she feels oddly buoyant, even with her Hunger lying in wait behind the curtain of her mind. Feeling along the wall, she finds a light switch and the wall sconce retrofitted with a lightbulb flickers into life. The manacles are still on her wrists, the iron warming against her skin. In the light, she inspects the symbols further, chain rattling ominously in the silent hallway.
Rory asked her about a coven earlier, but she hasn’t belonged to one in years—hasn’t practiced magic in just as long. Then again, there were times when it felt that the only thing that made her a witch was her ability to slip into the Ether. No matter how many times she practiced, her elixirs were gloopy, her rituals awkward, and her scrying abysmal. Her language skills were even worse. She never understood how her grandma, who could lose her glasses on top of her head, could remember the Latin, Arabic, and French words twisted together to form the Common Tongue of Witches. And if a spell called for German or Welsh? Calliope was utterly lost.
However, there was one aspect of being a witch that she excelled at: drawing. She could draw a perfect circle in salt on the floor. Her line work on her symbols was impeccable. Her visual memory was flawless, and appears to still be, because she recognizes the symbols now that she’s seeing them in the light with well-rested eyes.
The spell construction is simple, but heavy-handed. Two tiers of supportive symbols—a pattern of two different lesser symbols repeating—linked with a master binding mark, rata . They’ve been carved deeply into the iron, the edges rough and pockmarked. She brings them closer to her face and sniffs, noting the unmistakable remnant of ox bile, vinegar, and the light lily-like scent of Soloman’s Seal. The chain that links them is ordinary, just metal against metal; the strength of the cuffs themselves is enough to contain whomever (or whatever) wears them.
And yet there’s nothing in them that prevents her from walking away.
She could just leave. The house feels empty, the air undisturbed and heavy. What’s stopping her from walking down the stairs and out the front door? She could leave the taciturn, burly vampire and his bird friend, and make her own way. She’s sure Rory has a car. She could steal it and hit the road, just like she planned to do before she was shot. Just her, on her own, finally living however she wants—
A low growl echoes in her head as her Hunger sits up, teeth bared. Oh, right. Sorry, Hun. Drink first, plan later.
There are four doors off the hallway, including her own, two on each side. At one end of the hallway, she sees the stairs leading down to the kitchen and a small living room. The opposite end of the hallway is adorned with a large landscape painting in an ornate frame that reaches nearly floor to ceiling. She frowns at it. The ratio is all wrong for a landscape. Too narrow. The trees look like they are trying to break out of the frame. Of the four doors in the hallways, only two are open: the one in which she is standing and the one directly across from her, which is half-open allowing a cone of warm light to pour across the floor. She glances between the door and the stairs to her left.
Hun’s tail thwacks back and forth. Drink first, then leave.
She steps forward intent upon the stairs, her pointy black boots sinking into the plush rug that runs down the middle of the hallway. The house creaks and for a second, the floor shifts, a slight change that happens so suddenly, she isn’t quite sure what’s happened. She blinks, finding herself much closer to the half-open door in front of her than she should be. She takes a sideways step in the direction of the stairs, but the floor… slides …and she hasn’t moved.
But really what did she expect from a house that created a new room just for her? She relents, shouldering her way into the room, only to let out a tiny gasp a second later as she is faced with the full expanse of the library in front of her. The library of Graeme House spans the entire width of the upper level and yet, seems to extend beyond even that at times. The wall-to-ceiling shelves are the same style as the ones in her own room, but packed to the brim with books, spines gleaming in the low light of the room, some whispering promises and requests to be read even as she walks by, fingers brushing lightly against the leather and cotton covers. Near the center of the room, the shelves curve inward around a spiral staircase that reaches up to a small mezzanine level.
Beyond the staircase, Calliope just glimpses a large round window which looks out onto the inky black sky. She almost hears her grandma’s voice in her head, admonishing her—lovingly—for sleeping the day away. Don’t be a lazy lout, Cal . Go out and get your bare feet against some soil.
She can’t remember the last time she went about barefoot, let alone dug her toes in the grass and soft dirt. Is it true that vampires can’t go out in the sun? She hopes not. Rory didn’t seem worried about it earlier, as he stood in the kitchen with the morning light streaming in through the open window—but did he avoid direct sunlight? Did the sun touch his skin? Did the sun touch her skin when she opened the window? As she sat in the kitchen? She hadn’t really been paying attention.
In the center of the library, beside the spiral staircase is a cluster of reading tables, each with their own small lamp. Kane is standing on the table closest to the stairs, the lamp producing a puddle of light aimed at an open book. As she watches, he turns a page with his beak and then continues reading.
“Are you going to stand there all night?” he asks, without looking up. “The house is most obliging. I’m sure you could request whatever title may pique your interest.”
“Where’s Rory?” she asks, wandering over to the window. She looks down, noting the dirt driveway that leads to the house, the oak trees on either side standing sentry over the entrance. There’s a rectangle of scattered gravel where Calliope feels a car usually goes. It’s empty.
A flutter of wings, a shuffle of paper. “He’s at work.”
The Go-Go Gas. A rush of embarrassment steals through her as the memory of warm slick blood pooling around her comes back. The evidence is still on her clothes, and she can only imagine how much more ended up on the floor. She feels a strange compunction to apologize for what was surely an awful mess. She half laughs, wildly, at the realization that getting shot and bleeding out on a gas station floor has somehow become equivalent to having dinner at a friend’s house and not offering to clean the dishes. So rude.
She turns back to Kane. “Does he always work at night?”
“Except for Wednesday and Thursday. Those are his days off.”
“Does he ever work during the day?”
Kane looks up at her, head twisted to the side. “Ask what you really want to ask.”
“Can vampires go out in the sun?”
Kane seems disappointed with such a mundane question. His tail fans out as he returns his focus to the book in front of him. “Why would they ever need to?”
“I don’t know.” She lets her fingers trail against the spines of the books as she walks back to the center of the room. “To go to the post office. Dentist appointments. Grocery shopping?”
Kane’s squawk is as close to a laugh as a bird’s syrinx can produce. “You’re a funny one, Little Witch.”
“I thought I wasn’t a witch anymore.”
“That remains to be seen.” Kane looks up at her. “I’m supposed to get you to drink.”
“I’ll be okay a bit longer.”
He cocks his head to the side. “What did you do?”
She shrugs. “I asked her to sit and stay.” She turns her attention back to the shelves. “Anything you recommend?”
The question is meant for Kane, but the library seems content to answer for the bird, who has since returned his attention to his own reading. A book falls from the shelf in front of her, and she picks it up, fingers ghosting over the soft worn red leather cover as she reads the title out loud. “ Carpe Noctum: An Account of the First and Second Blood Wars. ” She looks up at Kane, who is surreptitiously watching her as she examines the book. “Vampire wars? Is this something I should learn? Because of…because I’m one of them now?”
Kane returns his attention back to his own book, but his feathers look a little more ruffled than normal. “I suggest beginning with Chapter Five. ”
Excerpt from Carpe Noctum: An Account of the First and Second Blood Wars, Chapter Five: Youngblood by Colette Sabine
[M]otivated by an insatiable thirst for vengeance, Aodhán Mac Eoin, then the Right Hand of the Fíor, endeavored to elevate a new figurehead in the conflict: his biological brother, Ruairidh “Rory” Youngblood.
Born as Artur Mac Eoin, Ruairidh Youngblood’s Turn occurred in the mid-fifteenth century under the Fang of Irina Dobrev, who typically favored lean, aesthetically pleasing individuals for Turning. Youngblood, however, deviated from this norm, with his dark, brooding features, aquiline nose, graying hair, and burly physique.
Speculation regarding Dobrev’s motives are many, with rumors circulating about a possible romantic entanglement and the existence of an immortal progeny, although such claims remain largely unsubstantiated. At the very least, Youngblood’s famed skills in alchemy were surely a benefit, even if they were not original motivation. Coupled with his strength and ruthlessness in battle, Youngblood’s alchemical experiments made him a formidable foe in the throes of war.
He is credited, in fact, with the creation a tonic that causes unimaginable pain to the drinker, a weapon that was employed often in the torture tactics of both sides of the war. Uniquely, the tonic, given the somewhat simplistic and yet hyperbolic name of quiritatio tonicus , led to a number of witch casualties as well. While the full implications of the First and Second Blood Wars in relation to the witch community is discussed in more detail in later chapters, suffice it to say that Youngblood has more than vampire blood on his hands.
Indeed, renowned for his ferocity, it didn’t take Youngblood long to emerge as a formidable combatant. Accounts depict him as a merciless adversary, purportedly engaging in acts of brutality such as the extraction and consumption of his victims’ still-beating hearts. But what lies beneath the seemingly unscrupulous persona of Youngblood, is, by some accounts, a soft and gentle man, whose devotion to Dobrev guided him through the first round of the First Blood War. Youngblood parted ways with Dobrev when the vampiress purportedly turned her favor to a new youngling, Edward Vale, who quickly became somewhat of a rival for Youngblood, at least where Dobrev’s affection was concerned.
What’s more important to note, however, is that the dissolution of Youngblood’s affiliation with Dobrev coincided with the Nicu Rebellion in 1452, preceding the orders sent by his brother, who had just ascended to throne of the Fíor, to suppress the uprising and execute its instigators.
This confrontation escalated into one of the bloodiest clashes among vampires to date, marking a notable chapter in the annals of vampiric warfare. Furthermore, Youngblood evaded prosecution for his actions aligned with the Fíor and in particular what occurred as a result of the Nicu Rebellion. It wasn’t until both Wars had ceased that Youngblood’s full role was unveiled. Unbeknownst to many, Youngblood acted as informant and spy for the Unaligned, passing along information that categorically saved hundreds of lives.
Youngblood, of course, went even further during the Second Blood War when he ultimately turned on his brother, who at the time was mad with bloodlust. Aodhán Mac Eoin was dispatched with a wooden stake, effectively quelling the conflict and dismantling the Fíor once and for all.
Following the conclusion of the Second Blood War, Youngblood receded from public view, save for a solitary sighting at the funeral of his slain brother, wherein he tendered a ring bearing their familial crest to his former sister-in-law, who cried one single tear and promptly struck him.
Public opinion of Youngblood’s actions varies greatly. To some, he is a hero. To others, he is a traitor.