Page 4

Meghan

The next day, I went down with the other captive girls to do our daily rounds in the kitchens. While the rest of the girls worked together to peel vegetables, I preferred to do the dishes alone. It gave me a chance to get away from the others and have a bit of privacy to myself, as the sink area was at the far end of the kitchen. My hands were elbow-deep in a sink of dishwater when I heard a hissing sound.

“Psst!”

I ignored it. It was probably one of the girls trying to play a prank on me. They made it no secret that I didn’t fit in with their little clique. Ever since Leo singled me out to bring me up to Amanda’s room, they’ve been even more hostile in singling me out.

“Psst!”

This time, something hard hit my back and bounced off. I turned around and looked for the source, but I only found a dinner roll lying on the ground. I glared at the other girls, but they were too engrossed in their gossip to pay attention to me. Plus, there was no way they could have thrown the piece of bread from across the room. I glanced around the room. There was only one place where a flying piece of bread could have come from. The half-open door leading to the hallway was empty, but I spotted a brief flash of golden blonde hair peeking out before it disappeared.

Could I escape without being spotted?

I glanced around the kitchen again, but the girls paid no attention to me. Wiping my hands down on a dishrag, I casually picked up a stack of dishes and carried them over to the shelf next to the door. With a final glance out of the corner of my eyes to confirm the girls were too busy to notice me, I slipped out of the kitchen.

There was usually a vampire guard posted outside to keep an eye on us, but today we were unguarded. Something had happened among the vampires recently. Of course, we were never told anything, but the vampires seemed stressed and overworked. Their forces were too thin to have someone watch over us twenty-four hours a day. I didn’t realize how much I needed it, but this little reprieve made it seem like life was almost normal. Our daily shift in the kitchen was the only time when we had a bit of freedom outside our little room.

“Psst! Over here, hurry.” I followed the sound of the whisper around the corner at the end of the hallway. My heart thudded in my chest. Was this a trap or test to see if I was going to escape? I took a cautious step and peeked around the corner. To my surprise, it was Rose.

“What’s the matter? Did something happen to Amanda?” My friend was so pregnant that it looked like she was going to pop at any moment. Something important must have happened for Rose to come find me and sneak me out of the kitchen.

Here eyes widened as she shook her head. “Oh gosh, no, nothing like that. My sister’s fine, though she’s about to serve the baby an eviction notice with the way it keeps kicking her in the bladder.”

I let out a breath of relief. “Then what’s going on?”

“Lizzy’s finished brewing the cloaking potion.”

“Oh? I thought we weren’t doing that anymore, what with Leo being assigned to be my constant guardian.”

Rose scrunched her nose. “I know the men mean well, but the chaperone situation is so old-fashioned, like we’re in a Jane Austen novel or something. The only reason Dante doesn’t shadow me all day long is because he’s too busy being Alex’s muscle.” Her eyes softened. “I know this situation must be unbearable for you. If you had the potion, you could visit us without a guardian. Just promise me you won’t do anything rash again.”

She was referring to the escape attempt I made earlier in my captivity. I didn’t need to be convinced not to do that again. The hunger in the vampire grunts’ eyes when they grabbed me and almost sank their fangs into my neck was forever burned into my mind. I made a cross motion over my chest with my finger. “I promise. There’s nothing left out there worth escaping to.”

Rose’s face softened, and her lips lifted into a smile. “Come on, Lizzy’s in the library.” She turned and started walking away from me. I guess that was my cue to follow along.

“Wait a minute, does Amanda know about this?” After Amanda’s excitement at appointing Leo as my guardian, it seemed strange to me that she would agree to the original plan involving the cloaking potion.

“She’s with Elspeth, one of the vampire healers. Elspeth used to be a midwife before she was turned. I still think it’s weird to have a midwife whose birthing experience dates from when leeches were the latest medical discovery, but whatever, it’s her baby.”

“So she doesn’t know,” I interrupted Rose’s rambling.

She glanced over her shoulder at me and pursed her lips before speaking. “She’s too busy preparing for the baby to keep an eye on us all the time. It would be best if she didn’t find out about what we were doing, the stress isn’t good for the baby.”

I caught what she was implying. Amanda couldn’t know about any of this. As the consort of the master vampire of this clan, Amanda would have no choice but to tell Alex what was going on if our sneaking around could endanger the clan.

“All right, then. We should keep this between the three of us, for the sake of the baby, of course.”

Rose gave a terse nod.

I memorized the way to the library as we made our way down the twisting hallways. We arrived to Lizzy leaning over a steaming cauldron as she decanted a syrupy pink liquid into what looked like little perfume sample bottles lined up in a row in a wooden rack.

To say the library was huge was an understatement. It was like something out of a movie scene. Rows and rows of leather covered books liked the walls from floor to ceiling. A grand arched window overlooked what must have been the grounds around the compound, but it was impossible to tell what was outside since there was no light from the sun or moon. On the large wooden table where Lizzy was working, there was a plate of grapes and cheddar cheese cubes. I grabbed a bit of each and shoved them in my mouth. Even after weeks of living here and finally eating fresh food again, I still couldn’t forget what it felt like to live off of scavenged scraps.

Rose grabbed a piece of cheese and walked over to a metal wire cage. She tore the piece of cheese in half and fed it through the bars of the cage. The gray rat inside ran over and twitched its nose, sniffing the morsel before it reached for the cheese.

Lizzy noticed the confused look on my face. “That’s Mica. He used to be a wizard before he was turned into a vampire and then somehow turned himself into a rat with a spell. Nobody here knows how to turn him back, but apparently he’s still immortal in rat form.”

I leaned down and peered into the cage. “Huh. Now I think I’ve heard of everything.” I tapped on the bars of the cage with a finger, and Mica stood up on his hind legs in response. His nose and whiskers twitched as he followed my scent. He was really cute, like any other pet rat. I wondered if he liked to be pet. I wiggled my finger, but before I could get to reach inside, Rose grabbed my wrist.

“He may look furry and cute, but he still has some vampire tendencies.” She snapped her mouth close with a toothy biting motion. “Even as a rat, Mica has trouble resisting the lure of warm human blood, something you don’t want to find out the hard way.” It was then that I noticed some small red puncture wounds on the side of Rose’s hand.

I shook my head. “If that rat mistook me for a walking filet mignon, the last thing I would be doing is feeding it cheesy nibbles.”

Rose shrugged. “It’s his nature, I mean, it’s not like he can understand right and wrong with that little rodent brain of his.” She dropped the last bit of cheese on the floor of the cage and wiped her hands on her jeans.

“He only bites when one of us tries to feed him. He ignores Grant and the other vampires,” Lizzy added.

Lizzy poured out the last of the potion and screwed the cap on. I picked up one of the tiny glass bottles. It fit neatly in the palm of my hand, and it was even small enough to sneak in my bra.

“I thought small separate phials would be easier for you to hide instead of one giant bottle,” said Lizzy. It was like she knew what I was thinking.

I held one of the glass phials up in the light. “I thought I was going to have to drink this. It looks like a bottle of perfume.”

LIzzy smiled. “That’s because it is, or rather, it’s an anti-perfume. Spray the potion onto yourself to mask your human smells from the other vampires. It makes you scentless, like the undead. Of course, they’ll still be able to hear your breath and your heartbeat, so you’ll need to remain calm and keep your distance from them. I’m going to research how to hide your other signs of being alive, but for now this potion should be enough to let you move around the compound undetected.”

I spritzed a bit on my wrist and, seeing that I didn’t turn purple or grow any spots, sprayed it all over myself.

I stood there for a bit, waiting for some tingling or something to happen, but nothing changed. It was all a bit anti-climactic. I held my arms out to the side and let them fall. “I don’t feel any different? How will we know it’s working?”

“We’ll need to test it with a vampire,” Lizzy said.

“The only vampires we can trust are Dante, Grant, and Leo, but we can’t let them know, or they’ll rat us out to Alex,” Rose added.

“Well, that makes the plan a bust.” My shoulders slumped.

I looked over at Mica, who was walking back and forth along the length of his cage. An idea popped into my head. It was stupid, but worth a try. “Wait a minute. Mica still craves blood like a vampire whenever he smells a human, right?”

“Yeah, what does that have to do with anything?” Rose replied.

I leaned over the cage and ran my hand along the bars. “If the potion works to mask my human scent, then I should be able to stick my hand in there without Mica sinking his little fangs into me.”

“That sounds completely insane enough to work,” said Lizzy.

“Here goes nothing.” I took a deep breath and tapped on the bars of the cage to get the rat’s attention. He ran over and sniffed at my finger, his nose and whiskers twitching. “Baited. Now, let’s see if he bites.” I slipped my pinky past the bars of the cage and teased Mica with it. He scurried around and under my finger, sniffing me closely, but in the end, decided that his water bottle was more interesting.

“I can’t believe it worked!”

I shot Lizzy a look in surprise.

She shrugged. “I mean, it’s not a complicated potion, but this is my first time brewing this type of potion.”

Jeez. I made a mental note not to ingest or take part in any more of Lizzy’s spells or potions. The last thing I needed was a clueless witch turning me into a gerbil or worse.

“Well, I’m going to put this potion through one final test.”

Rose startled. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

Despite her bringing me here all cloak and dagger, she was suddenly getting cold feet.

“I’ll be careful. Cross my heart. I’m not going to sneak out or whatever. I only want to test the potion’s effectiveness. Hopefully I make it back to the kitchen in one piece.”

“Do you remember the way back?” Rose asked.

I nodded. “Yep. Two lefts, skip a hallway, take a right, go downstairs to the servants’ quarters, and then another right. Wish me luck.” I infused my voice with more confidence than I felt.

The journey back to the kitchens was disappointingly uneventful. Not that I wanted to run into a bloodsucker by any means, but a part of me wanted to see if I really did lack my usual delicious walking-burger aroma to the vamps.

As I turned around the last corner before reaching the servants’ quarters, I ran right into two young guys who looked to be my age at the end of the hall. No, not guys, vampires. Nowadays, without the sun, it wasn’t possible to tell humans and vampires apart by the pallor of their skin. A more reliable indicator was the absolute stillness that surrounded them due to them not breathing or having a heartbeat.

Tweedledee and Tweedledum gave me a quick glance up and down before moving to walk past me. I took a step and continued walking down the hall. One of them turned and took another look at me and paused.

“What are you doing here?” he asked me.

I stopped, but kept a distance between us. Somehow, I had a feeling that retreating or showing any sign of fear would give away my status. So far, it didn’t seem like they knew I was alive. I schooled my face into a cold and empty expression before I turned around to face them. “Emergency meeting. The Master is expecting us upstairs.”

Tweedledum scratched the back of his neck. “I didn’t know there was a meeting today.”

I had to think quickly. “Dante found some new information about the covens.” My heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. I slowed my breathing and hoped the lies that rolled off my tongue sounded believable.

“Hmm,” Twedledee paused and looked at me again. He narrowed his eyes. “I haven’t seen you around before.”

“Uh, I just got here, from Paris.” I prayed they wouldn’t notice the sweat that was breaking out on my forehead.

“You’re lying to us.” He cocked his head to the side and gazed at my chest, which was rising and falling despite my best efforts.

I immediately stopped breathing and held my breath.

“Ticktock. Ticktock. I hear the beating heart of a lying mouse.” His lips curled back into a sneer. Letting out a feral snarl, his fangs dropped.

His hand shot out quicker than I could blink and wrapped around my throat. I reached up to grab at his hand by reflex, but it was like trying to pry apart a steel cuff. My eyes bulged out as I clawed at his hand. I had to get free before I passed out.

“Wait a minute,” said the other one, “the Master said we’re not allowed to drink from the humans.”

My captor snarled at his partner. “The Master spouts a lot of shit. He may have a fetish for the human cows, but as far as I’m concerned, they’re only good for one thing. It would have been better if a real vampire like Georgjie was our master.” He grabbed my hair with his other hand and wrenched my head to the side.

A whimper escaped my lips as searing pain exploded from my head. He leaned in until I could see the golden flecks in his demonic eyes. With one last snarl, he lunged for my exposed neck.

I squeezed my eyes shut. My last thought was that at least my death was going to be quick.