Page 14 of Once Upon a Dark October

Chapter Fourteen

T he rest of the coven turned their heads toward me, eyes wide, mouths opening as though they needed a moment more to summon the right words.

“What?” The three of them spoke nearly as one, yet in differing tones of horror and incredulity.

“Her blood,” I repeated. “I’m still employed there, as far as I know. She’s hosting a Blood Moon ball, she’ll need someone to make the castle presentable if she’s invited the entire town. If I can get close enough—”

Morrigan sat up, taking my face between her hands. “If you think I’m going to send you straight into her den after everything—”

“Don’t go making death wishes already, Elspeth,” Gwen said. “You’ve had your immortality for a week.”

“We need her blood, Morrigan. It’s the only way,” I insisted. “And I’m—I’m the only one among us can still get it. She doesn’t know I’m here, she doesn’t know where I’ve been. She’ll believe any story I give her if she has someone to do the cleaning for her.”

“There’s the noticeable detail of your mortality that’s gone missing since she saw you last. That would raise her suspicions.” Morrigan let out a gusting sigh. “It won’t work.”

Josephine held up a finger. “ Unless .”

Gwen leaned over her knees, chin propped on her fist, interested. “Yes?”

“I don’t think I’ll like where this is going,” Morrigan said, a hand settled on my waist. “The thought of sending you back to her is—”

“Exactly what we need,” Josephine finished. “Mor, I know you’re going to hate it, but she’s right. You see it, don’t you? We’ve got the upper hand now. Ella’s the only one of us who can walk into that coven. The only one who can get close without getting herself killed or cursed.”

Josephine picked up her book from the chair. “All we’d need is a disguise. Something to cloak her and hide her nature, to make her appear human.” Excitement alighted in Josephine’s eyes, the vampiric grey of them sparkling. “This could work , Morrigan. We combine forces, we can come up with something.”

“Are we scheming, then?” Gwen asked brightly, eyes glimmering, too, in the low light. “Oh, I love it when our coven starts scheming! We haven’t had proper scheming or devious mischief or plotting in over a century.”

Morrigan swiped a hand down her face. “All right. Say we get her blood—we’d still be putting ourselves at risk consuming ichor.”

“Not if you extract it.” Josephine was already heading for the main staircase, the rest of us slowly getting to our feet.

Morrigan’s sigh was bone-weary. “Is that even—”

“Never doubt the possibility of anything,” Josephine yelled across the front entranceway, no longer in sight. “Come on, come on! We haven’t got all night!”

Gwen hurried after her, skirts flouncing in her wake. “We have to go to a dressmaker somewhere between all this plotting,” she continued as she trailed Josephine upstairs. “ What ? We’ve been invited to a ball, I want us to inspire envy while we obliterate Sonia.”

It was a long time after they left us before Morrigan spoke again. “You really want to do this.”

“I told you already.” I wrapped my arms about her waist. “I’ll do anything I can to help the coven. If this is what I must do to break curses, then I will.”

Morrigan nudged my nose with hers. “It’s going to be dangerous.”

“Which is why I have you to train me up.”

Up the spiral of the grand staircase, there was another clandestine archway that harbored the tight, narrow stairwell to Josephine’s tower. Her laboratory was her stream-of-consciousness laid out for everyone to see, the wake of her keen alchemist’s mind at work.

It mirrored the library in its size and circular design and high arched windows, lush velvet curtains pulled shut to dampen the sea. A bed was nestled in a recessed space a foot above the floor, the drapes around it partially drawn. But inside it, I spotted rows of bookshelves above the bed and a candle burnt halfway to its brass holder.

Gwen had been right about controlled chaos. More books in teetering piles, long wooden tables bearing an assortment of vials and glass bottles and jars, journals left open with loose pages strewn, Josephine’s precise handwriting like lace adorning parchment. Dirtied teacups lay scattered between jars of alchemical ingredients.

Sometimes the two had mixed precariously.

I noticed the wood grain had been scored with burn marks. The rug, too, had holes eaten through it and soot-black smears as if caught by some minor explosion of errant alchemy. Here and there I found burned pumpkin seeds underfoot, some of them ground to pieces, mashed into the floor.

In the sitting area, bat-shaped sconces guttered with soft purple flames. Beneath the windows sat a coffin, its lid made entirely of glass. The altar surrounding it had been absolutely covered with flowers and pumpkins of all shapes and sizes in muted autumnal colors. The mild scent of the flowers tempered the blood and acrid ingredients that saturated the tower.

Josephine stood at the foot of the altar, while Gwen had taken one of the armchairs beside it.

“You’re part of this coven, now,” Josephine said. “I want you to see Clarabella. Really see her—what Sonia’s wretched curses have done my wife.”

I placed my hand on the glass lid of the coffin. A static-like hum vibrated against my palm.

At my inquiring glance, Josephine said, “Alchemical wards. I’ve kept her safe…my work gets unpredictable.”

Softly glowing purple firelight painted moving shadows on Clarabella’s sleeping face. Dahlia flowers tucked into her hair made a crown in vibrant pink and berry-dark purples. She wore the same evening gown I had seen on her in the library, the fine silk still radiant like moonlight. Her embroidered bodice glittered with the movement of the torch flames.

“Bella calls it a sleeping death,” came Josephine’s softened voice from next to me. “Her body lies here, colder than a grave, and her ghost roams the estate as a banshee. There’s more alchemy in the silver lining her coffin, keeps her body intact while she’s been gone.”

She pinched a delicate golden dahlia flower between her fingers from where it hung on a chain around her neck. A deathbed memento for a love caught somewhere uncertain between living and dying. “Took some of her blood to carry with me before we laid her in here. At least it’s part of her that’s still warm, still living on somehow.”

I shook my head. “For a hundred and fifty years…”

Josephine’s breathy laugh was bitter. “I lost myself in my craft doing everything I could trying to bring her out of it. Then I look up one day and find a hundred years gone. You don’t know what it’s like yet, feeling a whole century pass. Feeling it in your soul.” She let out a tearful breath, then pressed a gentle kiss against the glass. “Haven’t felt warmth in her touch for half our lives together. I hate watching her suffering like this.”

“Neither of you deserve it.”

“She keeps drifting away from me,” Josephine said. “There’s moments when I think I’ve got her, and then…” Her forehead rested against the lid. “There’s so much distance, I don’t know if I’ll get her back.”

“The coven will get her home again. You’ve kept her body safe this long.”

Josephine’s spread palm left behind a smudge of warmth on the glass in the shape of her hand. “Her shrieking’ll crack your skull clean open. The ghosts can even feel it, they say. You haven’t even heard her yet. First time she started screaming, I swear the earth was going to split in half under my feet. Thought the whole house would collapse.”

She sniffled, wiping angrily at her tears. “The closer midnight approaches, the melancholy hits. Crying won’t do anything anymore, don’t know why I keep at it.”

Gwen rose from her chair, standing on her toes to wrap Josephine in an embrace from behind while I rubbed circles over the back of Josephine’s shoulder. Gwen leaned her head against Josephine’s. “Because you need to,” she reminded, then kissed her on the cheek. “Because it helps, sometimes, even if it feels like it doesn’t at first.”

Josephine reached back to hug us both about the waist briefly, then disentangled to leave another kiss on Clarabella’s coffin. She appeared serene in her cursed sleep—she reminded me of the fae from the childhood folktales I’d loved so much; ethereal, but perhaps prone to mischief, adorned with flowers, bathed in starlight.

“Whatever it takes,” I decided. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

Josephine led us back into the laboratory proper, where Morrigan had waited, solemn and uncharacteristically quiet, attempting to chisel the blood from her fingers with her nails. I made my way over, looping my arms through the crook of Morrigan’s elbow. She said nothing, pressing a kiss that lingered just above my ear.

“We’ll need a bit of your new vampire blood,” Josephine said. “To test against a concealment serum.” She considered me, a hand on her hip, brow furrowed. “Need to do something about the bite on your neck, too. That scarring will raise suspicion. Perhaps we can build that into the wards. Somehow…”

She rifled through a book. “Morrigan, I need Elspeth’s blood, if you’ll do the honors. Gwen, have you seen her apron? I put it somewhere—”

“Who knows where you put anything .”

Josephine huffed a sigh. “Well if you would just help me look…”

While they bustled about the tower room, Morrigan cleared a space at the corner of Josephine’s least crowded table. “Hold out your arm. I won’t take much, I don’t think Jo needs an entire vial just yet.” Aside, she called to Josephine across the room, “What would you like me to collect it with?”

“Anything clean will do,” Josephine yelled. “Stars damn me, where did I put that blasted thing?”

Gwen sent a teacup shattering to the floor with a tinny crash, porcelain flying out in all directions. She cursed up a storm, just as she backed into a pile of books. The whole stack swayed without toppling. “Josephine, are you sure—positively, beyond a doubt—that it’s in here? ”

I laid my arm across the tabletop, rolling the sleeve of my day dress past my wrist. Morrigan pushed it a little higher up my forearm. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”

Morrigan made a face, but she wouldn’t look me in the eye. I couldn’t read her so closed off like this, distanced and stubborn. She hesitated a moment before bending over my arm, then the familiar, sweet sting pierced my skin as her fangs bore down upon me. I gasped as the ache from earlier in the evening—before everything had changed—rushed to the fore. Morrigan took the first drops on her tongue, and in an instant, my blood warmed with desire. She held my arm over an empty jar, the two of us watching the steady drip.

“Tell me.” Ignoring the neglected desire, the throbbing of the blood that collected between my thighs, I stared at Morrigan’s blade-sharp profile. “Please, talk to me. Tell me what it is you’re thinking.”

My blood coated the bottom of the glass jar, thick and bright scarlet. Morrigan cradled my arm gently, bringing me to her mouth again to catch rivulets before they stained Josephine’s carpet. No sense in wasting a drop. She circled her tongue over the fresh bite, cleansing and maddeningly sensual, finally glancing at me from beneath her eyelashes.

“ Morrigan .” It wasn’t quite a moan, but almost.

She traced her thumb across the veins in my wrist. “I hate this plan. I know that’s not what anyone wants to hear, but it’s the truth. I don’t want to destroy the hopes of our coven.”

“You don’t believe I can do it?”

Morrigan kissed my wrist, the tender skin tingling at the caress of her mouth. “Much as I hate leaving you to return to their coven-house alone, it’s you I believe in. You, Josephine, Gwen—me, I’m…useless, unreliable. I cannot bear the thought of being the one who let our coven die a second death.”

“I believe in you,” I said, taking Morrigan by the chin so she’d be forced to look at me. Deep red swam with unshed tears. “If you cannot find the strength within yourself, you can find it within me.” I brought her hand to my chest, spreading her fingers there, trapping them under my own. Letting her feel the beating of my heart, the flow of our blood together.

Morrigan nodded, lifting her shoulder to brush away a few tears that had fallen. She was about to reach for me when the air in the tower plunged toward freezing. The wraithlike chill swept its cadaverous fingers through my hair and fluttered the pages on Josephine’s table. All four of us searched the room for its familiar source, finding nothing until Clarabella materialized by the windows.

Her starlit halo reflected in Morrigan’s pupils.

“Bella!” Gwen gushed. “You’ve made it after all. Just in time to help with the scheming.”

We were shivering, so preoccupied by Clarabella’s unexpected appearance that it took me several moments to notice my apron—the bloodied rag from the night of the attack—levitating above her upturned palms. I figured someone would have burned my clothes since they were unsalvageable, but perhaps Josephine’s foresight would aid us somehow.

Clarabella offered a soft, shy grin. You would lose your own fangs if they weren’t attached to your brilliant skull, Josephine, my dear heart. Her voice sang sweetly into my thoughts, pleasant as a calm sea lapping at the coast. Josephine moved across the room and grabbed my apron from the air, folding it to her middle. I was keeping it safe for you, knowing you might need it.

Josephine held out her hand, fingers splayed and bearing splotches of ink. Clarabella mirrored her, their hands hovering as close as they could yet never touching—the distance between them infinitesimal but caught somewhere in the abyss. Not exactly afterlife or undeath, an unkind purgatory built from blood and curses.

Clarabella was the lighthouse beacon, and Josephine was a ship doomed to never reach her shore. With any luck, that day would come soon.

“Thank you, love,” Josephine told her. “Right where I left it.”

Gwen clapped her hands together. “Look at us. Now we’re a proper coven.”

“A coven that’s running out of time,” Morrigan reminded. “About four hours until midnight takes us.”

“That’s plenty of time to get started, isn’t it?” I asked.

“If you’re ambitious, yes,” Josephine declared. She went to the other table, my apron tucked under her arm, knocking over a few things while she searched the mess. “Ah—found this afternoon’s luncheon.” The teacup was nearly to Josephine’s lips when it levitated from her grasp, coasting on spectral wind that sent another shiver through the tower.

Mind which glass you’re drinking from, my love , Clarabella said, letting the cup float down, delicate like a falling autumn leaf. That would have incinerated you from the inside after a single taste.

My stomach lurched at the mere suggestion. Gwen’s eyes widened with vicious interest, but Josephine shoved the cup away and began shooing the three of us from her laboratory.

“All right, out… all of you, out—not you, dearest—come on, come on.” She herded us like a pack of feral wharf cats into the cramped stairwell. “Can’t hear my own thoughts with all of you up here, the air is getting too thin. I’ll see you at dawn.”