Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter
Thirty-Two
Aliz stumbles back, face losing all colour as she takes in the sight of the sister she never met. Only Elia, who clearly comes here often, given the immaculate state of the library, doesn’t seem surprised by her presence.
“I don’t understand,” I say, and my words echo back at me. Ada Astra’s head snaps in my direction, her blue eyes seizing my gaze. Her whole body, I notice, glows with a faint blue shimmer. She vanishes into a cloud of blue smoke, reappearing right behind me.
“Dinner?” she asks, her incorporeal hands resting on my shoulders. Her touch is like frost against my skin. I stagger forward, trying to shake her off me.
“No, not dinner,” Elia says, in a chiding voice.
“Ghost,” Aliz chokes the word out by mistake, her voice shaking.
And upon hearing her, her long-dead sister saunters towards her, causing Aliz to back away until she hits a statue.
They’re both the exact same height, but where Aliz’s frame is boyish, Ada is all curves, an hourglass figure that is visible even beneath her tattered nightgown.
She has sharp and angular features, a jaw and cheekbones that could cut glass, and sunken eyes with thick white lashes.
And I’m not sure if she’s as beautiful as she is terrifying.
“Ghost?” Ada echoes the word with an almost mocking tone. She steps closer to Aliz, cocking her head to one side. “I am the heir to the Astra empire, the most powerful vampire to have graced the earth, the Dreamwalker of Rome, the—”
“Ada, dear,” Elia interrupts, her airy voice making the ghost turn. “How many times are you going to forget the fact that you are dead?”
“Oh.” The truth of her predicament doesn’t seem to faze the old heir too much; she suddenly looks down at her shimmering body and holds up her hands, seeing Aliz through them. “Who would think that bastard would dare to procreate again?” Ada asks, knowing, somehow, who Aliz is.
My knees are about to give way. My head spins, because only now do I realise that I’ve been holding my breath the entire time.
When I inhale, I try to do it as quietly as possible, to keep her from noticing me again.
A ghost. My stomach burns, and I am certain that I’m going to be sick—certain enough that I cover my mouth as I try to calm down.
Aliz’s hands tremble, one hand gripping the bookcase behind her as she tries to believe what her eyes are seeing. Finally, she squeezes out the word: “N?vér?”
Ada Astra’s expression shifts, softening just a little. The ghost’s ethereal voice switches into another language, and Aliz nods her head. She still looks like she’s about to faint, but slowly, she lets go of the bookcase behind her and focuses on her sister.
The pair speak for a minute, and Ada slowly turns to look at me as Aliz explains our situation.
“Ah,” Ada finally says, vanishing and reappearing straight in front of me, her face inches from mine, her dead spirit clinging to my skin like condensation.
“Why wouldn’t you want her as your Familiar, sister?
She has the eyes of a soldier. When war comes, wouldn’t you want her to fight for you?
I know I would,” says the dead heir, her blue eyes not losing their unnatural hue.
Does she know I’m a hunter? Has Elia told her?
I think of Ada’s own Familiar. Callisto’s founder.
“I don’t want a slave,” Aliz hisses.
“Slave?” Ada turns from me, aghast. “Oh, but she would be so much more. A Familiar is a part of your soul. And you would be a part of hers. Being able to compel her with words alone simply makes the transition easier. After a few months, she will no longer distinguish between her will and yours.”
“No,” Aliz says, all the more disturbed by the prospect.
“Well, then,” the ghost says with a sigh.
“I presume you’re looking for The Book of Blood and Roses.
” She floats off, sinking through Elia, who coughs and tries to swat her away.
“I won’t stop you from looking. What is mine is yours, dear sister.
And this simple librarian will assist you however you need her to.
” Ada’s ghost makes her way to a green sofa, and when she lies upon it, half of her body sinks through the cushions, disappearing.
Elia sits beside her and looks up at Aliz and me. “Go,” she says.
A ghost. I still can’t quite believe it. “Your sister,” I whisper, and Aliz still looks shaken. “Are you all right?” I ask her.
“Well, I used to think my father was exaggerating when he talked about her. But she really is unhinged. I don’t know how Elia can bear to be around her.”
“Me neither,” I mutter.
We split up, Aliz heading to the top floor, while I start with the first.
Half of the titles are in Latin and Greek, a couple in Italian, and just a few in Hungarian.
I trail my gaze along the spines, feeling my pulse in my ears as I skip all the A’s.
The Book of Blood and Roses. I keep picturing a medieval sort of tome, with handwritten text and well ornamented paintings and vibrant miniatures.
But perhaps the book will be tiny, instead. Unassuming.
And I’m caught up in my theories when at last I see it.
Book of Blood—A, Volume I.
It’s incredibly thick, but the spine itself isn’t too tall.
Plain black leather, with the words embossed in gold.
I don’t touch it, not fully registering the title until I see the book next to it.
Book of Blood—A, Volume II. I crouch down, not saying a word yet, until I realise that the three bookcases nearest to me all have that same title, Book of Blood—A.
Penny said book, singular. But this—I keep walking, feeling my throat tighten. How was I supposed to smuggle all of these out? I start running, following the order, until my frustration reaches a boiling point, and I grab one at random, just to get an idea of its weight.
As soon as I lift it from the shelf, the book crumbles.
I stumble back, hitting the wooden balcony, while the dust that seconds ago was a full book continues to scatter around me. I don’t breathe, waiting for it to rewind. It must be an illusion, I think, my heart thudding.
“Fuck!” Aliz shouts from the top floor. I lean out, just in time to see her lean down. “It just vanished!” she shouts.
“Keep it down,” the ghost of Ada Astra says. “You’re in a library.”
I rush back to the books before B and lift one off the shelf at random. The exact same thing happens, pages crumbling between my fingers. “What is going on?” I ask.
“Those books are as ghostly as I am,” Ada cackles. And when the lights flicker, the endless shelves are suddenly empty, cobwebs replacing their pages.
No.
“Father had them all burnt. He did not like my research.”
“But…” I start, looking down the balcony, a sudden wave of vertigo almost knocking me off my feet. “We need it.”
“Silence,” Ada says.
“Please.” Aliz rushes down the spiralling stairs, her face pale. “Sister. We need that book. We have to undo the contract!”
“Well, that’s easy enough,” Ada says, sitting back up, smiling at her blood kin. “Fortunately for you, I once had to sever the tie with a would-be Familiar, and it was a simple matter.”
I tighten my grip on the wooden balcony, trying my best to hide my reaction to that. Could she be referring to Catherine Lovelace? But why would she have her painted, if she severed her contract?
“Simple?” Aliz asks, disbelief colouring her voice. “You know the cure?”
“What do you think can undo a blood contract, sister?” The ghost utters the word blood mockingly. I wonder if this is what Ada Astra really was like, or if this sour-mouthed creature is just an amalgamation of her worst qualities.
“I don’t know,” Aliz says, her voice trembling. But I notice a change in her expression, something sobering.
Ada waves her ghostly hand, and a book appears before her, with the same spectral glow as her skin.
The words Book of Roses—F, Volume IX, are written on the front.
She flicks through it, stopping halfway.
“ ‘To undo a Familiar’s blood contract, both the recipient and the vampire must drink the blood of an enemy, straight from an eternal fountain, beneath the light of a full moon.’ ”
“An eternal fountain?” I ask as Ada clasps the book shut, and it vanishes.
“A vampire’s disembodied heart, free of ribs and skin!” she says. “If you both eat a heart beneath the light of a full moon, the Familiar’s contract will be erased.”
Elia sits unmoving on the green sofa, looking up at the now empty bookcases. Are they always like this when she comes? Empty? I can’t understand why such a place, an empty library, would be so well protected.
Slowly, I let the cure fall into place. If I was the only person involved, it would be easy enough. I could hijack any blood party, find any scumbag, and grab their heart straight out of their chest.
But Aliz is not like me. I wait to hear her protest, ask for a different solution, but she’s gone terribly quiet.
“You’ve found your answer,” Elia says, the warmth with which she spoke minutes ago missing. She sounds much older for once, two thousand years slipping from her tongue.
“There is no Book of Blood and Roses?” I ask, just one last time. “No real library?”
“Oh, it’s very real,” says Ada Astra, appearing before me in a cloud of blue smoke. “But it’s all in my head.” She steps close, lowering until I feel her ice against my ear. Her voice drops to a whisper. “So you cannot ransack my collection, Blood of Callisto.”
I don’t react. Aliz’s hand is on my wrist, tugging me upwards, towards the stone stairs we first descended. Did she hear that? I look back at the ghost, and she smiles at me, showing me her horrible fangs. Then at the library, at rows upon rows of empty bookshelves.
Elia runs up behind us, and before I can get my breath back, the wooden doors of Ada’s secret library are slamming shut behind us.
Elia takes the candle and the rose, and ever so slowly, as we walk along the wide hallway, the campus begins to shift back.
Ancient engravings turn to simple bricks.
The high ceiling lowers, and we pass through the doors.
Then the nook is before us, dark until Elia positions the candle and the rose within.
Aliz still hasn’t said a word since her sister’s instructions defined our joint fate.
I seek out her gaze through the dimly lit tunnel, and she doesn’t meet mine.
Now I know how to get rid of the mark. How to set myself free, before every word Aliz says becomes my will.
Killing, taking a vampire’s life, is second nature for me.
But not for Aliz.