Page 21 of Once Upon a Dark October
Chapter Twenty-One
G wen was despondent about Estella’s fate despite our attempts to soothe her worst fears. It was her cursed heart that she blamed, even though her lips hadn’t touched Estella. She’d become so restless that she hadn’t had more than a few hours of sleep in the days following the attack, keeping herself busy with crafts and pumpkin carving and pruning the estate’s plentiful flower arrangements.
Word about the incident at The Scarlet Veil had spread quickly overnight, and between her work in Josephine’s laboratory, Morrigan had been called upon by the High Council. From her sour moods every time she returned home, talks with the councilors weren’t going the way she’d hoped for. And Morrigan had confessed to me that she had suspicions of their allegiance, that some had likely turned traitor under Sonia’s influence.
The sooner I infiltrated their coven, the better.
Two days after our harrowing clash with Sonia’s coven, Josephine and Morrigan had finished the cloaking serum. Dawn had broken a mere half hour ago, and we were already in the laboratory tower readying for the long day ahead. My nerves were determined to strike me down. With no more time to waste, I had to make my appearance at their coven-house by mid-morning in the desperate hopes of securing my job back.
I’d never been an especially convincing liar.
The possibilities of failure ripped at my confidence, thread by thread, moment by moment. If she turned me away at the door, if the serum didn’t work, if anyone from her coven had seen me fleeing the brothel—
“You’re shaking, darling.” Morrigan tied the new apron Gwen had let me borrow as she stood at my back in the tower’s sitting room. She had also made a clandestine trip to the wharf—a favor to Morrigan, another errand to preoccupy her mind—to get some of my clothes before the boarding house cleared the room for a new tenant. Morrigan had paid out the rest of the month when she’d gone into town to pick up my chatelaine. “And you haven’t touched your breakfast.”
It was certainly strange to be wearing my old clothes again. Though I could see each imperfection better—the frayed hem and cuffs on the sleeves, every loose dusty blue thread in the skirts—it was a small comfort. The fabric smelled strongly of the wharf, of seawater and the briny fish scent that had nearly soaked the dress in spite of Gwen’s efforts to launder it. But perhaps that would help maintain my lies, if I carried the scents of the coast on me.
“I’m not hungry.”
Morrigan’s lips brushed my cheek. “Of course you’re hungry. There hasn’t been a waking moment since your Turning where you haven’t been.”
“Well, I’m not.” I smoothed down the front of my apron and winced at the curt tone I’d taken. “I’m sorry, I’m just—”
“I know.” She rested a palm against the small of my back. “But you must have something , Elspeth. In order for this to work, it requires that you go without until you return home. There isn’t any way to cloak the scent of my blood. Jo and I tried without success.” Morrigan reached around me to the untouched teacup on the table. “You’ll be weak by midday if you don’t.”
With a small whine of defeated protest, I took it from her and carried it into the laboratory, stealing a few languid sips as I went. Josephine was bustling around the tables trying to find a spare glass while Gwen watered and pruned the flowers around Clarabella’s coffin.
Josephine’s laboratory hadn’t changed much except for the last burn marks from the pumpkin seeds. The cloaking serum sat in a large vial in its copper holder, the liquid inside shimmering like bloodstained stardust. There was something else under a dark kerchief, which I lifted the edge, curious as ever. I didn’t need to have a look; the demon’s blood clawed at its glass prison. The apple had been mushed to a bloody pulp, its demonic poison contained under domed glass and metal Josephine had imbued with alchemical wards.
“Any progress with the ichor?”
“Nothing in my books about how to handle it or destroy it,” Josephine said. “Not one stars-damned clean thing in this…Gwen, can you—never you mind. Can’t set the ichor loose or else it’ll find something else to poison. Sonia had to temper it with her blood to make the ichor useful to her. All I know is, I want it out of the tower.”
“You can keep it in the crypt. It should be safe down there. I can help you transfer it later,” Morrigan suggested.
“Perhaps we should clean in here first,” Gwen said, making her way over, small metal watering can and a pair of pruning shears in hand. She stuffed the latter into her apron. “I’m missing half the teacups from the cupboard, you know. Now they’re all mismatched.”
I drank down most of the cup, though my appetite—the craving I could barely resist most days—was nonexistent. “I’d like to stay here and clean Jo’s lab instead.”
Gwen frowned in apology. “Sorry, lovely… ”
“Even if we break the curses with her death,” Morrigan continued, thinking aloud, “the ichor might still cling to its hosts. I can’t handle so many at once, even if Elspeth tries to help, I’d rather she didn’t.”
“Just another headache.” Josephine groaned, abandoning her search. “The entire fate of Dreadmist might be in doubt if you don’t get us that blood, for starters.”
“Let us hope none of Sonia’s surviving coven have seen you,” Morrigan said. “The ambush was quite a risk. The High Council’s still trying to control the damage, though they’ve dragged their feet too much for my liking.”
The teacup quivered in my hand. “Stars above, I’ll faint…”
“You’ve got to drink this serum first. Finish that cup, I’ll use it once we clean out the dregs, can’t have anything interfering with the alchemical mixture. We’ll wait for it to set in and send you on your way. Not much time now, so you’d best convince Sonia she needs you.”
Morrigan grinned. “I believe in you.”
Gwen brightened, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “We all do, don’t we?”
“I wish I never had this foolish idea.” I drained the rest of Morrigan’s blood knowing she was right. I’d need every drop to get me through the day ahead, and the taste of her was intoxicating enough that it slid down easily. My queasy stomach began to abate.
Josephine cleaned the teacup until she’d made absolutely sure not a speck of Morrigan’s blood remained behind on the porcelain. All of us watched, likely holding our breath, as she poured the cloaking serum into the cup. Two fingers, if it could be measured like whiskey. I stared down into the glittery swirl that collected on the surface just as clear nighttime sky over the harbor revealed the celestial sphere.
Unsure about the taste, I felt the trickle of sorcery and the scent of the blood that colored it. An alchemical mixture, Josephine had said. I sniffed at it, hesitant.
“You must drink it all at once,” Morrigan advised. “Just pretend it’s no different from what you had before.”
After a deep, centering breath, I drank the serum down, tipping my head back until everything in the cup hit the back of my throat. I nearly choked on it—I did , perhaps, choke on it—and the intense urge to split it clear across the tower overwhelmed me in an instant.
“No—no, don’t spit it out!” Josephine clamped her hands over my mouth. “Can’t waste a drop, that mixture is difficult enough to get just right. Swallow.”
I did, but my eyes watered something furious. My throat burned as though I’d taken a shot of strong tavern whiskey. The serum was no better than the medicines healers shoved into you to stave off illness, a step above the briny rot that collected in the gutters along the wharf or the chum the fishermen tossed into the waves to bait their daily catch. Whatever face I’d made caused my coven-mates to collapse into infectious giggling.
I managed to catch my breath once it was over. “Disgusting.”
“Didn’t say it would taste like pomegranates, now did I?” Josephine laughed. “How do you feel? Give it a moment.”
I didn’t feel anything, not at first. Then it was a little like Morrigan’s sorcery warming me from the inside. It swallowed me, buzzing and sparking within my veins, a sea squall washing over me without the ice and snow. Perhaps it was more like those sparkling firecrackers children tossed around during harbor festivals.
Gwen gasped, clapping a hand to her mouth. “I’d say it’s worked. She’s got human teeth.”
Poking my tongue around my mouth, I recoiled with a sharp inhale when I nicked the tip of it on the point of my vampiric blood-teeth. “I can still feel my fangs. ”
“But we can’t see them,” Josephine said. “That’s what’s important. What do you think, Mor? Strong enough to fool Sonia?”
“It should be.”
“Good as turning back the clock.” Gwen beamed, a fist settled on her hip with the shears clutched in them. “As close as we’ll get, anyway.”
“How long will it last?” Feeling the side of my neck with my fingertips, I found the skin still jagged, raised by the bite I’d suffered. Morrigan grabbed my hand, and seeing the knot between my brows, worked her fingers between mine.
That’s vanished from sight, too , she assured, speaking into my thoughts. You won’t have to worry.
“Until midnight,” Josephine said to answer my question. She poured the rest of the serum into an unused decanter Gwen had found somewhere. “That should give you enough time, shouldn’t it?”
“ Should , you said?”
Josephine stored the remaining serum on a shelf. “More or less.”
Not returning home until after the midnight curse fell upon them seemed an altogether unpleasant notion, but Sonia had kept me working sometimes into the early hours of the morning. If she accepted my help, I knew she would likely set a strict and unending schedule. I’d have to find any way out before midnight that I could. Even then, it was quite a walk to return home from that far inland. I’d get here past midnight no matter how I planned it. Morrigan would have already shifted well before I reached the bottom of the hill.
A cruel fate, but a necessary risk. If all went to plan, if this worked and I didn’t fail, we would never have to fret about another midnight again.
“Wait… When will I know if it’s beginning to fade?”
“You’ll feel it,” she said. “Same as you did just now.”
Morrigan moved in front of me, my arms clasped in her hands, the toes of my worn boots shuffling into hers. “I believe we’re ready to send you off. Do you have your story accounted for?
I nodded. “I hope I’m a convincing liar.”
Gwen made a nervous sound. “Your confidence could use a bit of work.”
Morrigan wrapped me in a tight embrace, stooping a little to tuck her chin into the crook of my shoulder. “You’d better see yourself out, Ella,” she said into the side of my neck, her mouth lingering there, “because I do not trust myself not to stop you.”
Be safe , she whispered to me alone. And come home to us.
A clear and brisk autumn morning accompanied me on the long walk inland. It was the kind of morning Sonia and her coven would despise, for the rays of sunlight that were but a minor obstacle to my vision—flaring to a vampire’s eyes, so much brighter—would render them to ash in minutes. Whatever restraint I needed to quell my bloodlust for the day’s work would be nothing compared to the urges I had to fling the curtains open wide and let her coven burn.
While we were in bed last night, I asked Morrigan if I could obliterate their coven in such a fashion if the harbor ever saw a sunny afternoon. She did not want me rattling their nest, so to speak, while I was alone in their coven house. And she was fairly certain that the daylight curse’s effects on Sonia weren’t enough to kill her sorcerer’s blood. Perhaps she kept herself from the reach of sunlight—even filtered through the clouds, veiled by the fog—because the constant healing it would require was an intolerable annoyance.
And if anything, she hated an inconvenience .
Golden sunlight fell between the tree branches in dreamy, perfect slants. The roads that curved out of the town center and through the rural homes and estates and farmlands were flanked by close-locked trees. Their branches kissed in the middle above the road, swaying in a gentle breeze, scattering their leaves over mud-caked cobblestones. Burnished copper and blood red, yellow as a finch’s plume, orange as a harbor sunset. Autumn colors blazing their last days of life until the cold bite of winter drained them.
Crisp, decaying leaves swirled around my boots, giving a cadence to my every step. I dreaded each one. My thoughts drifted back to that night when I’d last made this walk the longer I stared down at my feet. My mortal blood on the dying leaves. Rainwater pooling on the cobblestones of that miserable alley. The water running red…
And now I had to return, act as if nothing at all had happened.
As if I didn’t want to take a candle flame to the curtains and watch everything burn to cinders and smoke.
Perhaps I finally understood Gwen and her penchant for violence.
Not much remained of the castle where our royals used to sit on their thrones, but there was still enough standing for the coven to find a home. It was an artifact of the past that should’ve been left to decay. Had any of the ancient vampire monarchs, like Clarabella, had their souls ripped from them, shrieking their misery into the night? This place unnerved me so deeply—a specter unto itself, a crumbling patchwork of rot and ruin. Little wonder why Sonia had sunken her bloody roots into it.
The surrounding trees had shed most of their leaves, the branches twisted and barren as I walked the front drive. Fragments of coastal stone and windowless walls hunched in the tall grass and autumnal shrubs. A collapsed wing of the house scattered like an archipelago to the west, ivy and moss burying the remnants, a red-leafed tree sprouting from the middle .
Gone were the arched windows and doorways, the spires and turrets, the ominous splendor that the ancient vampiric style had been known for. A gargoyle with a crumbing face lay on its side along the path, missing its wings. The stone house was still expansive—fit for the monarchs who once walked its halls—but it was a thundercloud, shuttered and dark in the brightness of the late morning.
No one would have realized it had been occupied again, especially if all anyone happened to see were hundreds of bats circling the chimneys at odd hours.
The walk up the circular drive felt longer with my feet dragging. I poked at my fangs absently, stomach still churning with dread despite the cloaking serum having worked. I trusted the alchemy, even though the trust in myself had vanished.
The black and white marble tiles on the portico were webbed with cracks, the torches unlit. Why would anyone want to attend a ball here?
I pounded the heavy, black iron door knocker against the cobweb-laced wood, wincing at the sound. A spider skittered out of its home and narrowly missed my fingers.
I waited in silence for at least five minutes, then knocked again, more urgent, more forceful. The coven would’ve been sleeping already, and Sonia— Lady Tremaine ; I had to remember to address her properly again—never opened her own front doors.
Footsteps from within answered my knocking at last. Twisting a chain from my chatelaine around my finger, Morrigan’s words resonated in my thoughts. Words she’d given back to me. I believe in you.
I’d been an utter fool to suggest this.
One of the towering doors creaked open and the cold from within—more brisk than the air outside—chained itself around my ankles. The shadows parted, revealing an unhappy yet familiar face. Sallow skin and an upturned nose and a sneering glare. The disgust was a mutual feeling.
She squinted at the sunlight that fell behind me, never straying from the threshold. Shadows gathered in her mousy-brown hair, curled into a bun adorned with feathers. “You,” she snarled. “What do you want, then?”
Like the rest of the coven, I doubted she remembered my name. The only time they bothered with it was when I could be made useful for them.
“Good morning, Anastasia,” I greeted, bright and sincere as I could manage. “I’m here to call upon Lady Tremaine. Is she at home?”
Anastasia folded her arms. She wore silk riding gloves, which caught my mild curiosity. “You know she doesn’t like to be disturbed. Especially by wharf rats like you.”
“I thought she might need help.” It was quite a task to keep my tone placating. “With the ball—”
“Dru and I are making arrangements,” she dismissed. “It’s handled.”
I swore inwardly, then tried a different tact. “Oh,” I answered, breezy and light. “Then you’ve taken care of the dusting and scrubbed the floors? Because if memory serves me right, I don’t think that ballroom has seen a mop in a thousand years. Well, give or take a decade. And,” I continued, stepping forward, hand splayed on the open door, “I don’t remember you and Drusilla being awfully fond of washing floors. Have you learned how to dust since I’ve been away?”
Anastasia’s vampire-grey eyes were nearly glowing with her hatred. She ran her palm over her plum purple day dress, a confection of ruffles and lace. “This silk is too fine for such work. You’ll never know the difference, little urchin. You wear dust and cinders like they’re jewelry.” She gestured with a tilt of her head, though her glare lingered on the chatelaine pinned to my apron. “Go on, then. You know the house well enough. If you wake the coven, no one will heed your screaming when they come for you.”
An empty threat, perhaps, but Anastasia had been seeking out any excuse to rid me from the house since I’d been employed here last. She and Drusilla—the coven’s vampire elders—would be the least welcoming upon my return. Not that I had expected to be met with warm embraces and a hot cup of tea.
Once the doors locked us in, the house settled around me, icy as a wraith waiting at Death’s side. “Where would I find Lady—”
Whirling around, I found myself alone in the darkened entranceway, the question disappearing as swiftly as Anastasia.
“I suppose I’ll find her on my own,” I muttered.
The vast ceilings swallowed each word.
All at once, it was striking how this place differed from Morrigan’s coven— my coven. Neither one employed cooks or scullery maids or the usual staff for a household of their size, but the emptiness of Sonia’s house was disquieting, isolating. As if locking the door would keep me sealed inside this rotting castle forever.
I had once wondered if the estate on the hill had been haunted—and it was, in its own tragic way—but whatever lurked beyond these rooms cast a dark pall over them that couldn’t be blamed on the lack of daylight. The demon’s blood that had coalesced in the veins of the dhampir had found a comfortable home here as well. Perhaps it was only now that I could feel it, something once out of reach for my mortal senses. Solitary work inside these halls had always held an unease, the shadows deep enough to drown in. But now, as I moved up one of the branches of the grand staircase, I stole glances over my shoulder.
An evil was imprisoned within these walls.
“Looks like I haven’t been replaced after all.”
My fingers carved clean lines through the dust on the banister. I grimaced at the dusky grey stain left across my skin, resisting the temptation to swipe it on the hem of my apron. The chalky itch tickled my nose, a choking undercurrent of stale grime and fireplace soot thick in the air. Somewhere—and I was so sure this time that I wouldn’t have scented it if I’d still been human—the smell of old blood lingered, smothering in its heaviness.
“Looks like they couldn’t be bothered to clean for themselves, either,” I remarked into the silence of the stairwell.
I remembered myself before I made the mistake of speaking aloud. They would have heard my frantic heart already, and I’d risk too much if their keen vampire hearing picked up my annoyed mutterings. Maintaining oblivious innocence was of the utmost importance.
Not everyone was asleep. My vampiric senses were still as sharp, and I intended to make use of them while I could move about unnoticed. An alcove on the second floor hid a pair of lovers behind a tapestry, their panting breaths and moaning buried in each other’s clothes. They stopped when they heard my footsteps pass.
I’d become used to ignoring secret affairs. What went on in the high-born houses hadn’t been any of my business.
But this decrepit castle of vampires was an exception.
“Promise you won’t let her near me with that rubbish,” one of the lovers pleaded. “The smell is enough to make me sick. I’m coven now.”
Another voice answered with a stifled moan. “You’re not coven to her.”
“My father promised…”
I flattened myself against the wall, the gust of air extinguishing a nearby candle. My nostrils flared at the tang of sweat and arousal.
There was a groan from beyond the tapestry. “Right now? You want to bring up your father while you’ve got—”
“Dru,” the first voice begged. I held in my shock, not uttering a sound, standing quiet as a gargoyle. Drusilla ?
“I’ll make her see you’re more useful than that.”
The other woman swore. “Someone’s out there.”
“Don’t care,” Anastasia whined. Her breaths matched her furious rhythm. “I’m com—”
“Someone mortal.”
I’d stayed too long, forgotten myself. The hasty rustling of clothes sent me running in the opposite direction before Drusilla poked her head out from behind their makeshift curtain. I exhaled in relief once I’d escaped the reach of their sight and hearing—the cloaking serum had passed its first test.
These halls were more confounding than the estate’s rambling corridors. No one seemed to bother lighting the old torches or replacing melted tapers in the candelabras. I stole one that still had most of its wax, capturing the flame of another candle as I moved deeper into the castle. I could see without it even though whatever candles they bothered to keep burning only managed weak, flickering, orange flames.
Mortal Elspeth wouldn’t have been able to see in this gloom, so I held the candelabra in front me, occasionally hissing at the hot wax that dripped onto my skin.
The house’s cold made my breath mist. Built upon the bones of ghosts, the walls seemed to shiver, the past too heavy to hold. Certain rooms took ages to rekindle fires or get them started no matter how agreeable the firewood happened to be. The draftiness was a perpetual reminder of its decay, hollow and unforgiving. This place was a ruin, not a home.
And somewhere within it, an ancient vampire’s ichorous heart awaited me.
A steadying breath rushed out of my lungs. With my eyes closed, I listened as Morrigan had taught me, quieting other intrusive sounds. An open tap somewhere below, drip, drip, dripping. The scurrying of mice inside the walls. The distant whistle of high wind through the glass panes. A conversation, muffled but urgent, one floor above and several paces down the hall .
There . A heart, beating. Then another. And another, on and on, filling the rooms, a discordant symphony of blood ebbing and flowing.
And dying. There was still another almost too weak to grasp, slow and fading quickly. I couldn’t tell which belonged to Lady Tremaine.
So I followed the dying heart instead.