Page 22 of Once Upon a Dark October

Chapter Twenty-Two

T he heart belonged to a vampire woman bleeding out on a chaise in one of the upstairs drawing rooms. Her blood colored my senses—vicious, deep red—the moment I arrived at the landing.

Her heart had ceased beating mere seconds before I appeared in the doorway. I reined in my heightened awareness so I could perform a role I’d once lived well. I had to be the Elspeth that she remembered. Meek and wilting, afraid to confront the horrors she’d cleaned without question day after day for fear of losing her wages. Much too eager and quick to please.

An impossible task, given that my first glimpse of Sonia after hurting Morrigan was her fangs sunk into the woman’s dead heart. My stomach recoiled. The vampire’s chest had been torn open, a mess of bone and viscera. The squelching of Sonia’s fangs ripping through bloody tissue and muscle made the room spin. I held my nose, tried not flinch or let the emotions slip out. But the dead vampire’s eyes bored into my immortal soul. Her motionless hand dangled off the edge of the chaise.

A gold pin flashed on the lacy collar of her blouse that crept up her neck. This woman, this vampire, was a member of the High Council. And Sonia was seated primly on the end of the chaise, feasting on her heart.

I pushed aside my fear, holding onto just enough of it to help me lie. “I’m—I’m sorry to interrupt, Lady Tremaine.”

“Elspeth.” If she found it surprising that I was still alive, she didn’t let it darken her expression. “Where have you been, child? I thought you had run off or gotten lost at sea. What’s kept you? I’ve had five housekeepers since you decided to disappear.”

I bobbed a curtsy as I entered with hesitant footsteps. “Not everyone is fit to work in a vampire household this auspicious.”

“No, indeed.” Blood dribbled from Sonia’s chin while she ate. “Though we found other ways for them to prove their worth.” She flashed her blood-teeth with a dark grin, then stuffed what remained of the heart back into the vampire’s broken chest cavity. “You were among my favorite, you know. I thought you would grant me the courtesy of explaining your unexpected absence…at the very least.”

I cleared my throat, trying to ignore how strongly vampire’s blood had overtaken the room, trying not to shake too badly under Sonia’s glowing red eyes. Unlike Morrigan, I couldn’t find the cadence of her pulse, couldn’t scent the blood in her veins, even if it had been poisoned with a demon’s.

“I’m sorry for that, truly,” I pleaded. “It’s a long way home and I’d started to feel ill on my walk, so I went to see a healer. And I took a turn quickly…they wouldn’t let me go home, even though I protested. I found myself bed-bound in the ward for over a week.”

I swallowed against my parched throat. Sonia slid, graceful and almost predatory, from the chaise, moving toward me. “I’d—I’d wanted to send a letter—especially once your invitations went out—but I was too weak. I’ve just now felt my strength returning to me, so I thought it best if I came here personally instead. I thought… Well, I thought perhaps you’d be needing someone to ready the castle for the ball. ”

“Poor wretch, you do look pale,” she cooed, turning my chin, but it felt as much a lie as I’d told. Her eyes narrowed as they locked onto mine. Her nostrils flared, her hair loose and somewhat unkempt at her shoulders. The silvered grey of a practiced sorcerer. “Mortality is so needless and fragile.”

Another test passed. My chest felt lighter.

“It is, most certainly,” I agreed. “I lost my father to illness. I think the healers might have worried I’d have the same vulnerability within me. I came very close.”

Sonia released me, but her nails had left crescents on my jaw. Her charity and tone of empty compassion had run its course. I’d expected nothing less.

“These rooms have suffered without you. You will start at once—it will take long hours to get everything in order again, but I need every last corner and curtain spotless in half the time. If you cannot manage that, I am quite sure I can find someone else.”

“I can do it.”

“Fine, then. You may pick up your wages once I’m satisfied, and only when I say so,” she declared. “I am not interested in being stolen from, should you decide to fly away without notice again.”

“I won’t—”

“Every breath you spend on useless talk is another breath wasted. Spare them—and me , wont you? You have a lot of work ahead,” she said, gesturing vaguely with her bloodstained fingers. “You will start in the throne room and its surrounding wing after you clean this. I trust you remember where everything is? And which doors are to be kept locked. And mind the—”

“Curtains,” I finished. “Yes, I remember.”

My gaze slipped to the cold, lifeless body between us.

She laughed, and something about it turned my stomach. Its uncaring, slightly feral quality signaled alarm somewhere within me. “Don’t worry about her, she isn’t part of your mess.”

Sonia stepped around me, and the candles sputtered in her wake. A tingling prickle alighted on the back of my neck, and suddenly the tangy scent of blood hovered right beneath my nose.

Sorcery.

I blinked. Sonia’s drawing room sat shadowy and cold as it had ever been, the candles and the hearth burning so low they hardly mattered at all. Dust silvered the curtains and upholstered furniture, cast a film over gloomy seascape paintings and the heavy gilded mirror above the hearth. Her voice rang in my head, but she had vanished from sight.

And so had the vampire woman’s body.

There was nothing left of her except a pool of blood that had drenched the upholstery of the chaise and the rug beneath. The stain had soaked into the wood floors, pooling thick at the edges of the carpet. Flecks of red-brown spattered the upholstered sofa. A bloody handprint had smeared over the edge of the table across from it.

She’d simply evaporated, her gold councilor’s pin sitting there in the mess of her blood like a deathbed memento.

“All in a day’s work,” I mused through a sigh of exhausted defeat.

It was hardly my first time scrubbing out bloodstains, though I wished I could practice pulling them out with sorcery, a skill I had yet to master. Another charwoman who’d worked across the harbor—and since retired, after helping me find my way into the profession—had shared a mixture that left behind no trace. She’d said it was important to memorize, should I come to work for vampire households. My stilled hands itched to begin the long, arduous task in front of me, yet I couldn’t shake the sight of the vampire’s gory chest, her heart in Sonia’s palm, the sounds as she ate greedily—

“Elspeth,” Sonia’s voice drawled behind me. I startled, spinning around. Her voice was as good as an unexpected thunderclap .

I found her leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed in front of her, fangs bared in disapproval. “The longer you let that lie, the more difficult it will be to lift the stains. I do not pay you to be idle—remember that, child. If I have to purchase new furnishings, it will come out of your wages.”

I nodded. “Understood.”

Sonia’s crimson eyes narrowed again. For a breathless moment, I was left worrying that she’d discovered my true nature, that the serum’s protections hadn’t been strong enough to shield me. Sonia looked down her nose with thinly-concealed scorn, nodding before she and her parting words disappeared into the corridor again. “Off you go, then. Get to work.”

After finding the neglected cleaning supplies in a closet off the kitchen, I had to contend with squealing pipes, where the water finally spilled out and drenched the front of my apron. Ropy cobwebs wrapped around broom and mop handles and spiders had made their homes in buckets. The rags were moth-eaten, unraveling. I’d returned without my own supplies, so I was forced to work with the dismal cleaning arsenal the coven had lying around.

It took me two hours to get a drawing room spotless again, washing out the bloodstains by hand. When I had finally made it to the ballroom—what Sonia called the throne room—with clean rags and buckets of soapy water, a voice summoned me from down the hall.

And so it began.

It seemed the coven had no need for sleep when they had an endless list of chores and word had spread throughout the castle ruins that I was too polite and too fearful to decline anything they ordered me to do. Their quivering, gutless, malleable human servant girl. To them, I was nothing more than a street urchin, a low-born peasant who lived to answer to their every demand.

The scent of blood wafting through the halls often led me astray, though. It seemed to be everywhere—human, mortal, sometimes dhampir. With an entire coven that needed to be sated, and the fledglings restless in the throes of a new hunger, I had difficulty concealing my own. I tried not to follow whatever traces I picked up no matter how they made my fangs ache and my mouth water.

Until one such occasion came with a plea for help.

My heart pounded into my temples. If I found Estella safe…

Carrying a bucket of fresh water and clean rags, I’d been stopped in my tracks. The crying would’ve gone unnoticed by mortal ears. Faint, scratching their throat raw with the effort. No more than a mewling of a weak kitten.

I dropped my bucket and rags where I stood and followed the strains of the young woman’s begging to the room Anastasia and Drusilla shared. The door had been left open; either they had been careless or one of them had left in a rush. I stuck my head around the doorframe first, the rest of me trailing slowly, slinking into the bedchamber on light steps once I discovered neither of them were inside.

They hadn’t let me touch this room yet. And it certainly showed, because it looked as though their chest of drawers and wardrobes had spewed their contents into every inch of the space. I stumbled over mismatched pairs of shoes, muddy boots. A chemise dangled from a bedpost, another draped over a mirror. Day dresses and evening gowns, skirts, petticoats, blouses and bustles—all of it carpeted the floor, blanketed their beds.

A few wax tapers burned to the quick, but I was afraid something would catch fire in here if they were left unattended .

“Help me,” the woman begged, a wheezing rasp. “I need…please…”

Not Estella, but a young mortal woman.

She lay in a cocoon of mussed, bloody linens, her arm dangling limp off the side of Anastasia’s bed. Her skin was so fragile, translucent as a portrait rendered in oil paint after death. Candlelight found strands of red in her dark hair, though I couldn’t tell whether it was her natural color or wounds that were still weeping what was left. She had been drained. Her lips had a bluish cast, pallid from the vampire bites that had torn her open. The threadbare chemise—stains rusting around the neckline, the rest of it a garish, bloody pink—had been ripped at one shoulder. A fresh bite there left her skin raw.

I flew to the bedside, touching her wrist. Her pulse was imperceptible to my senses. I had to dig my fingertips into her a little to feel the barest of fluttering. How she was still hanging on, I didn’t know. She stared at me, though I wasn’t certain she saw much of anything.

“It’s all right now,” I whispered. Already I was sorting through the map in my mind. Which of the hidden passageways within the ruins would be our nearest path of escape. “I’ll get you out of here somehow. Just hang on a little longer for me.” It would be a struggle to lift her without causing more pain, but perhaps the shock would finally overcome her, a blessing to us both.

Her forehead was cold as carrion under my palm. “This will hurt, but I need to get—”

Voices crowded the hallway outside. I stood corpse-still, listening, waiting for them to meander off down another corridor. But they were only clamoring louder, moving closer. I recognized Anastasia’s haughty affect above the others. Muttering a string of curses, I dropped to the floor and wriggled myself underneath the bed. It wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had. I knew they would hear my racing pulse, but there were so many of them tittering and vying for attention in Anastasia’s orbit, I might’ve been able to sneak away once they were preoccupied amid their vapid, prattling gossip.

“Took them long enough. We should have gone for our measurements once we settled in—I told Dru they’d fill up soon as the invitations went out,” Anastasia was saying as her gaggle of underlings trailed behind into the room.

There was a crescendo of silk and satin, petticoats being fluffed and flounced about. From my cramped viewpoint—shrouded by bloodied linens and the sleeve of a ruffled blouse—I saw shoes and bare feet, scarlet skirts and a bustle, trimmings of burgundy lace, crimson silk gathered into ruffles and pleats. I pushed the wayward sleeve aside in an attempt to see.

“Look at these sloppy seams,” someone groaned. A younger vampire, perhaps; not a fledgling but I’d guessed she hadn’t left behind mortality too long ago. “You think anyone will notice?”

“I’m not sure about this color—”

“… Sonia picked it,” another replied.

“Ana, I’m starved,” one of the fledglings complained. “You promised we’d get to eat when they left.”

“Should’ve let them stay for luncheon,” someone else, another fledgling, joked with nasally laugh. “This pleating is shoddy.”

“Well, I like it…”

“…more lace…”

Their frivolous conversation while a mortal woman struggled to cling to life right beside them sent my stomach into a pitching wave of nausea.

One of their gigantic petticoats grazed my fingers, so I retreated further. The bed frame creaked, the mattress sagging with new weight and bumping the crown of my head. I flattened myself to the floor, my breath held in my lungs as my cheek rubbed the musty carpet.

“I’m so hungry it’s miserable,” the same fledgling griped.

“She’s still got some blood in her.” More weight rattled the bed, another ravenous new vampire mouth to feed. “Still got a bit of a heartbeat, too.”

“…been lying around a while, but we can’t afford to be picky.”

“Let me—”

“Move over, I got here first —”

Anastasia hissed. “Will you all shut up ? I cannot possibly take another moment of your whining.”

I followed her bare feet as she moved toward the bed and, by instinct, shrank away, trying to curl inward. “I forgot how bloody annoying you new ones are.”

A thump like a blow landing, and a tang of fresh but dying blood filled my senses. There was a burst of sniveling laughter then, but the scent was mortal. Fading, thin. I’d thought at first that Anastasia had struck one of her greedy fledglings. But the mortal woman’s heart went silent.

I did not envy them being born into this coven.

“Besides,” Anastasia drawled, “if it’s fresh blood you’re after, there’s more to be spilled yet.”

Oh, no. No—

My stomach lurched into my throat. Fingers wrapped around my ankle and dragged me out from under the bed with one swift tug. Anastasia flipped me onto my back more harshly than the movement warranted. I landed on stray pairs of shoes that poked at my spine. A handful of faces loomed over me, snarling, growling, swiping their tongues across their aching fangs.

“There you are, my grubby little urchin.” Anastasia glowered down at me, her insult carried on a melodic lilt. “Happy to be back, are you? Bloody reeking with filth, as usual.”

She met me on the floor, moving with an unsettling slowness. Her knee wedged between my thighs, she straddled my leg to lean across me. The closer she came, the more I tensed up, breath ebbing and flowing from me in shallow bursts. Anastasia brandished her long nails, polished in the current style—dark, dark red—and filed into blade points .

I flinched. Not playing the part of a cowardly mortal, but real fear, intense and gripping. If she bled me, would the cloaking serum hold? Would my sorcery rear up at the attack and give me away?

“Your little heart’s just pattering away, isn’t it?” Anastasia teased. “I love the scent of fear when it hits their veins.”

Her nail scraped along my cheek, breaking the skin. I breathed out a little whimper and squeezed my eyes closed as the fresh blood beaded up from the scratch. Please don’t scent me. Let the serum hold. Please, please…

One of the fledglings moaned in hunger-delirious impatience. “I bet she tastes so sweet…”

“I want her first,” another fussed.

“You’ll get a taste once I’m done.” Anastasia’s breath fanned across my cheek, still carrying a hint of the mortal woman’s blood. Though her chest was crushing mine, I wiggled my fingers enough to get them around the embroidery scissors Morrigan had bought for me. “Nothing but prey, like all the others…”

That’s what you think.

I curled my fist around the scissors until the cold silver bit my palm.

“Anastasia,” came a new voice, beckoning her to retreat. I felt her shift and opened my eyes after a cautious blink to find she’d sat upright. “Stop tormenting the girl and do something useful.”

Drusilla.

“Can’t you see I’m busy?”

I craned my neck to see her leaning against the threshold of the bedchamber. “Lady Tremaine wants you.”

“When I’m finished.”

“ Now ,” Drusilla snapped. “She won’t be kept waiting.”

Anastasia glared at me with an exaggerated pout. She patted my cheek while her flock of new vampires looked on in obvious disappointment. “Until we meet again, you miserable guttersnipe. ”

I scrambled up from the floor before her fledglings could sink their fangs into me and didn’t stop moving—not even when I grabbed my abandoned bucket and rags—until I’d made it downstairs again.

Every ten minutes I heard someone calling out my name if they cared enough to use it. “Elspeth, come here!” or “Elspeth, I need this…” or simply, “ You , girl—” And I was wrenched away from my appointed task to launder clothes or gather firewood and rekindle flames in a drawing room or bedchamber.

Suddenly the coven needed me for everything , or rather the things that were beneath them. New bed linens, bloodstained carpets and chemise and bloomers that needed cleaning, drawing a bath and warming the water with fire, as the old, crumbling ruins did not have alchemy in its pipes. I suspected the last charwoman or housekeeper had not been seen for some time, and the coven was quick to take advantage of me.

I tried to keep count of them all, but I couldn’t tell who was coven and who wasn’t. I’d seen a few mortal women among them, fresh bites glistening on their exposed skin. And, more curiously, there seemed to be dhampir living in the castle. Were they coven, too, or did they not know of Sonia’s malicious intentions? To my anxious dismay, there wasn’t a sign of Estella anywhere.

“You,” I heard a familiar voice call from one of the parlor rooms. I’d been on my way back toward the ballroom wing, my arms full of linens and clothing that needed washing. “Get in here.”

“Yes, Drusilla?”

I dropped the soiled laundry onto a chair to stoke the dying fire. Drusilla had sounded breathless, and I’d mostly learned to look past the feedings and the intimacy that accompanied them. But the scent of blood drew my attention. My mouth salivating, I brushed the hearth ash from my dress and stood. The fangs they couldn’t see prickled with hunger.

Drusilla, wearing a satin dressing gown, knelt between the legs of a dhampir woman perhaps a little younger than myself. She arched into the chaise, her dark brown hair unkempt, her pale skin rosy-pink, while Drusilla held her thighs apart, her mouth red with the dhampir woman’s blood. I noticed it smeared on her inner thighs.

The dhampir woman fisted Drusilla’s disheveled auburn hair. “Dru,” she begged, palming the breast that had slipped from the low neckline of her chemise, “don’t stop.”

“You—You…needed something, Drusilla?”

Drusilla moaned, one of her hands disappearing between her legs while her tongue sought dripping blood. She ignored me for another minute at least, halfway lost to pleasure. Her golden-olive skin shimmered with a film of sweat.

“Those clothes,” she said, another moan breaking around it. “I’ll need the blouse and skirts by the evening. Anastasia and I have errands in town for the ball once this bloody sun finally sets.”

I lowered into another curtsy. “Right away, Drusilla.”

“Ah.” She craned her neck to find me, a smear of red from her mouth to the shallow dip between her breasts. “The fire first.”

“I just stoked the—”

“Needs fresh wood,” she managed, but only after a broken sigh.

“Of course.”

Fortunately for me, this room wasn’t so unused that I had to fetch dry firewood from another parlor down the hall. Just as I’d tossed another split log to the embers, something in the room shifted, abrupt, tense. I was seized by the back of my collar like a misbehaved kitten, the lace pulling tight around my neck, choking me.

Not again —

Drusilla lifted me from the floor with ease and threw me into the wall beside the hearth, her nails digging in as she held my shoulders to the drooping wallpaper.

My feet were several inches from the floor. I kicked uselessly, turning away from Drusilla’s bloody mouth.

“Dru,” the dhampir woman whined. “Leave the girl be.”

“I caught your scent at the wharf.” Her nostrils flared as she breathed me in. “And again, that night at the blood brothel. You’re lucky it wasn’t Ana she sent after Effie ran off. Don’t know how you’ve managed this mortal disguise, but you won’t fool me.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I wasn’t—”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t waste your lies on me,” she warned. Her grip on my shoulders tightened. “I know you’ve been with Morrigan. Your blood’s changed, fledgling .” Drusilla peered at me, a fang slipping out from her curled lip. She held me pinned with her arm across my middle and pushed up my lip to peer at the human teeth protruding from my gums, the fangs hidden from her gaze even though I felt them. “Must be starving from whatever she’s done to you.”

“ Drusilla ,” her lover called again, stretching out the syllables of her name.

“One moment, Rosie.”

There wasn’t use in denial anymore. She’d had me trapped before I’d walked into the room. “The hunger’s not so bad when you never have a moment’s peace.”

Drusilla hummed—nearly a laugh—while she considered. “If you breathe a single word of what you’ve seen in this room, I’ll reveal you to Lady Tremaine.” Her nails bit my throat now. “Do we understand each other?”

I wrenched my head from her vise-like grasp. “Y-Yes. We do. Very well. ”

“Good.” She smiled with too much teeth, strands of saliva woven around her bloodstained fangs. “Now if you’ll add more wood to the fire and be on your way, I’ll lock the door.”

Without warning, she released me, and I crumpled onto my knees. Glaring at the swish of her dressing gown, I hurried to my feet and grabbed the poker from its stand. My fingers squeezed the black iron, considering. For a moment, I imagined myself striking, splitting Drusilla’s head open, lapping up the blood that splattered the room.

I eased my grip, stooping a little to prod at the embers. Where had that twisted bloodlust come from? Am I that famished?

Drusilla was perhaps my only ally in this miserable ruin. After all, she’d rescued me before her coven-mate and their fledglings could drink me dry.

“You should be careful of the noise,” I suggested instead. “It travels far.”

“Mm, you heard the girl,” her lover, Rosie, teased. “We need to keep you quiet. Never know where the monster might be lurking.”

“That monster,” Drusilla was saying, “isn’t going to make you coven with that attitude.”

Rosie scoffed. “You’ve called her worse.” I heard the rustle of Drusilla’s dressing gown as I gathered up the discarded clothing strewn across the floor. “I think we should move down the coast.”

“Too much sun,” Drusilla groused.

“We’ll get you an expensive parasol. A whole closet full of them—”

“Your father would never …”

I added their soiled laundry to the pile and went on my way, dashing out into the hallway again before Drusilla had another chance to yell at me. I was terrified that my cravings would take root, breaking through the serum’s wards to give away my ravaging hunger to anyone else.

I wanted nothing more in that moment than to flee .

I want to go home and drink from Morrigan until my body aches from her. Please just let me get through this day without devouring someone.

The autumn sun was a reprieve when I stepped outside to hang up the laundry, warming my skin, forcing out the dark and drafty melancholy of the coven house. Every glance at the empty vial on my chatelaine was a grim reminder of time running short. Morrigan was with me at every moment of the day, her blood jangling silver at my side. And if I failed, it would be the last of her I’d have.

I hadn’t seen Sonia since the morning. As I rushed through the halls and hidden servant’s corridors, I kept my senses alert for her. But as always, she’d made herself a ghost. With each stray chore took me further from my task of readying the ballroom, I thought she might hunt me down herself to ask why I hadn’t made visible progress. But she hadn’t emerged from the dark as I’d expected.

Had I still been mortal, I would’ve been utterly and completely exhausted by sunset. I nearly forgot myself and had to sneak away into the kitchens, pretending to scavenge for something to eat in the afternoon and early evening. There wasn’t much, if I had actually been in a dire hunt for anything edible. A full wine cellar and raw meat in the icebox; a bowl of orchard-plucked apples left on one of the countertops…

I couldn’t be sure whether or not those had been poisoned with demon’s blood. I hadn’t wanted to touch them at first. A cursory inspection, a sniff—I was careful not to stir the monstrous power inside—assured me that they were fine, and so I fed it to the birds and squirrels in the overgrown gardens to maintain my ruse.

It was well into the evening when I returned to my mop and scrub brushes.

Time had forgotten the throne room, and it seemed wiser to leave it that way. I was doubtful a proper cleaning would free it from its own despair. Once the seat of the monarchs’ reign, nothing could scrub the blood they’d shed, the lives they’d stolen whose cries still echoed after death.

The ceilings weren’t open to the sky, but a painted imitation of it; harbor fog and silky moonlight dancing together over the sea. It was rather stunning despite the cloak of spider silk and dust tangled across the high chandeliers, the fragments of plaster that had fallen away, taking the scenery with it.

The thrones were long gone, broken and looted for their jewels and gold, destroyed in fire by our ancestors who forced the royals to kneel. Sorcerers craven with bloodlust and power, bowing their heads for the last time to mortals and dhampir and vampires alike. Struck down by the sword, aided—Morrigan had said—by lesser sorcerers who silenced their hearts and vowed to abandon the craft. Their blood was still in this forbidding chamber somewhere. Ancient and deep with malice, a stain I could never wash out. If I got close enough to touch, would it whisper its secrets or scream into my soul?

Sonia wanted to take their place in the grand room where they had fallen. Where the red marble shimmered with veins of gold, perhaps in their honor, unknowing of their atrocities. I stood under the arches of the pillars trying to imagine what they’d seen, the sounds this room had magnified. A clash of bloodied steel. The last rattling breath stolen from eternity. A song of victory rising.

A phantom chill wracked my bones. The room would taste sorcerer’s blood again soon, and with any luck, it wouldn’t be Morrigan’s. Or my own.

I settled a hand on my hip. “I don’t suppose the coven would know if they have a ladder tall enough to reach those chandeliers.”

The lofty red marble and gold clock chimed another hour’s beginning.

It was not exactly uncommon for me to block out significant portions of time while working in the past. Sometimes I’d become so focused in a task that I moved without thinking, my mind floating endlessly elsewhere just for a respite. With such a large workload in front of me, the days would likely become muddled the longer they wore on while trapped in this dark maze.

Yet the clock continued its ringing. I counted, and counted some more, then threw down my scrub brush. I lifted my head toward its marbled face, but I didn’t need to see both hands pointing upward to know. My veins prickled with that sparkling sensation, a wave drifting over me all at once.

Midnight had come for me first. My mortal scent was gone.

“Stars damn me.” I scrambled up from the wet floor, wiping my hands on my apron. “It’s midnight already.”

I had to run. Without my wages, work left unfinished, brushes and mops dropped careless and abandoned. I had to get out or my sorcerer’s blood would be my death sentence.

Picking up the bucket of dirty water as I ran, I made for the side door, moving through shadowy halls to find the nearest servant’s staircase. So late into the night, the darkness of this place was more suffocating. Water sloshed onto the floors in my wake, a trail of dingy puddles. The clocks continued to chime, counting the midnight hour while I wound a serpentine path through the castle. My heart pounded. I felt sure that Sonia would hear it. That she would melt from the shadows and see me for what I really was.

A sharp turn, and I slammed into something—no, someone , and a small brownish-grey wave splashed over the sides of bucket, spraying us both.

A hiss that I knew had bared fangs. “Look what you’ve done!”

I clamped my mouth shut. I was dead. Again.

“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

Beads of sweat rolled down the small of my back. I ducked behind the bucket I was still holding between us and prayed to lost gods that my wilting, scared-out-of-her-wits ploy would hold out a little longer. If I cowered just enough, perhaps she’d still believe I was another pathetic mortal. Her ire wouldn’t give her a chance to scent me.

“Clumsy wretch…useless girl…you’d better mop this up.” It wasn’t Drusilla or Anastasia, but likely one of their cursed underlings who’d waste no time complaining to either of them. I was hopeful it wouldn’t be enough to lose my job, not so close to the Blood Moon.

With the tips of her fingers, she lifted the edge of her skirt as if it was a pair of soiled bloomers. “The stench is worse than the dockside.”

The bucket slipped in my clammy, trembling palms. If I stayed a moment longer, she’d scent my blood beyond the filthy water. She’d drag me to Sonia and they’d feast upon me, deliver my still heart to Morrigan as recompense.

The clocks finished ringing out midnight. The twelfth strike echoed like a banshee’s scream. And I had no choice but to keep running. I pushed past her, yelled an apology, and escaped into the quiet haven of the servant’s stairwell. The shadows made me one of their own, saved me. Down the pitch-black stairs I went, squinting until my sight caught up, moving as quick as I dared with vampiric speed. Halfway down, I remembered I’d forgotten my cloak in the drawing room.

“No time now,” I muttered to myself.

Voices reverberated from around me, slithering through cracks in the walls. They weren’t close, but I stopped anyway, breathing slow through my nose while I pressed my spine into freezing stone. I counted a heartbeat or two above. When at last they wandered off, leaving me drenched in sweat and dirty water, I allowed myself a noisy sigh of relief.

Other sounds answered from the castle’s underbelly. Scratching claws, like rats or mice scurrying between those drafty places. Fluttering, as spider’s silk moved on a gust of wind, or…bat’s wings. I listened, waiting half in infuriating curiosity, half in anguish, for the darkness to whisper its secrets like blood. Wild power inside my veins wanted to touch it. I wouldn’t.

A feral, screeching moan called out from the ruins, and before I knew it, I was fleeing toward the night’s clear air with the stale misery of rot far behind.