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S ebastian triple checked that the door was locked before straightening the ceremonial cloak he’d donned and headed down the hallway to Victor’s chambers.

It billowed behind him as he walked, black and ominous.

At least, that was how it felt. He hadn’t worn the cloak since the night he fled the coven.

Putting it back on made this whole thing seem real: he was here to beg forgiveness.

To admit he should have listened to his master.

But most of all, to save Isabel.

Memories came flooding back as he stalked the familiar halls. So many times he had followed Victor along this path, listening to the master vampire’s plans for the future. Discussing the magic each new member of the coven awakened when they were Turned. Learning about his vampire heritage.

Where he thought the memories would plant a seed of anger, he felt sadness growing instead. His heart ached, heavy with lost time. The perspective of four hundred years and what seemed like consequences of his actions made him realize that he had been headstrong and rebellious.

He paused in front of Victor’s living area door and took a deep breath. Was he really ready for this? Yes. He had to be. His knuckles rapped the wood three times and he took a step back to wait.

While he felt an eternity pass, only seconds later the door opened.

Victor’s eyebrows were lowered into a scowl and he held a half-finished goblet of blood in his right hand.

“Who is bothering me at this time of night!” he growled, then his eyebrows raised in surprise.

“Sebastian? And you’ve put your cloak back on? Well, well, well. This is a surprise.”

Victor moved to the side and gestured into the room.

“Come in, my son. This must be important.” Sebastian nodded silently and entered the large room.

It was lavishly furnished; a sofa upholstered in deep red velvet stood before a roaring fireplace, flanked by matching wing-backed chairs.

Burnished wood bookshelves stood on either side of the flames and took up the entire wall.

Leather bound tomes lined every shelf, uniform in height but varying in thickness.

A plush rug covered most of the stone floor, a blooming rose in the center and fleur-de-lis along the edges making up the pattern.

The room was dim, light coming only from the fireplace.

While there were torches lining the walls, Victor rarely lit them.

Paintings and other works of art decorated the rest of the walls, many being priceless pieces forgotten by the passage of time.

Some were entirely unknown, commissioned by the master vampire in centuries past.

Each and every piece had been burned into Sebastian’s memory.

He found himself walking the room and examining them, as if reintroducing himself to old friends.

These paintings had watched him learn to use his magic.

They had heard the lessons Victor had given him.

They had witnessed the fights, and seen him throw his cloak to the ground.

Victor stood and watched, yet said nothing.

His face was impossible to read, though Sebastian thought he felt a small amount of pleasure from his master.

Finally, Sebastian tore himself away from his surroundings and sat in the right-hand chair.

Victor sat in the other, his gaze remaining locked on Sebastian.

The sound of the crackling fire kept silence at bay, until Sebastian realized that Victor was waiting for him to start the conversation.

A mixture of pride and fear stilled his tongue and caused his breath to catch in his throat.

“Master,” he croaked, then cleared his throat and tried again.

He pulled the sleeve of his cloak up and exposed his wrist, an expression of fealty.

“Master, I’ve arrogantly avoided righting the wrong I committed for far too long. I’ve returned to apologize and learn everything I can about my magic. You spoke of consequences, and I refused to listen.”

Victor nodded, his face remaining neutral.

“You did, indeed. And I suppose you’re now experiencing those consequences, and they have brought you home.

” The master vampire’s gaze felt like white-hot knives piercing his face and chest. Sebastian hung his head.

“I knew the day would come. Fetch the tome on magic, volume 10. Perhaps now you’re finally ready to learn of your own magic. ”

Sebastian hurried out of his chair and walked directly to the magic section. On the shelf just above eye-level, he scanned the numbered spines until he reached volume 10. He ran his pointer finger down the leather spine until it reached the center, then carefully pulled the book from the shelf.

It was heavy, with hundreds of thick pages and a sturdy cover.

He brought it back to the fire and held it out to Victor.

The master vampire took it and began thumbing through the pages.

The sound of paper waltzed with the crackling of the fire until Victor found the desired page and stopped.

His long, bony finger swept down the page and landed somewhere near the bottom.

Sebastian’s heart raced. Last time his master had requested this book, Sebastian had been excited to learn more about his power. It’s dangerous to know too much until you are ready, Victor had told him. You must only use your magic within the guides I set, and follow the rules with exactness.

But he had not. That was the root of their fight: Sebastian refused to destroy the paintings created by his magic.

The rule had never made any sense. What was the point of creating such beautiful, masterful pieces of art, only to burn them afterwards?

The paintings with magic always turned out more lifelike than anything he painted without it.

The excitement had been replaced with fear this time.

Victor turned the book and offered it to Sebastian.

His hands trembled as he accepted the tome and returned to his chair.

The script inside was hard to decipher at first. But as he struggled through the first few lines, the skills he’d gained studying his master’s collection returned.

The Artist is the rarest iteration of vampiric magic.

These vampires are able to capture a portion of the subject’s soul within the piece, allowing the vampire a glimpse into the subject’s life.

Sculptors are able to communicate with their pieces as if speaking to the subject, but are limited to the information the subject knows about their surroundings.

Painters may enter the painting and experience the scene, though cannot interact with anything inside.

When gathering information on a subject, a combination of the two is suggested.

The subject’s soul remains bound within the piece as long as it survives. If the sculpture or painting is not destroyed before the subject dies, they will be reincarnated repeatedly until the piece containing their soul is burned.

Sebastian looked up, his face and heart full of horror. “Capture a portion of their soul?” he asked. “Is that why…”

“Yes,” Victor confirmed. “That is why you were ordered to burn your paintings each time you or I finished with them. I was foolish to believe that you would be obedient, I suppose. I was also foolish not to realize you would misuse your power to locate that poor human girl repeatedly.” The master vampire scowled, his fangs extending with irritation.

Sebastian turned the page, expecting to see more.

However, the next page moved on to the next type of magic.

“That’s all we know?” Surely that was impossible!

Most magics he had studied under Victor’s tutelage contained page upon page of detailed information gathered over thousands of years.

Yet his consisted of two small paragraphs? !

“Yes, that is all we know. I’ve only encountered three painters and one sculptor in my three thousand years. A master vampire in Asia once claimed to have two more sculptors in his coven, but his entire family was wiped out by Ghengis Khan in the 12th century.”

It seemed that ‘rare’ was an understatement. Sebastian carefully closed the book and lay it on the intricately-carved table that stood beside his chair. “But what of the shadow figure? Is there really no information available about it?”

Victor perked up, his scarlet eyes hungry. “Shadow figure? What is this of which you speak?”

“It began when I located my Muse in her current life. I took her for a Walk as we had thousands of times in previous lives, and she was attacked by a shadow figure. It somewhat resembled her in shape, but has no detail. Now the shadow is appearing in all of my previous paintings, despite no new paint being added to the canvas.”

“I see.” Victor held up a hand and rose from his chair.

He passed through a doorway and returned with a scroll of parchment and a quill pen.

If he hadn’t been so shocked about the lack of information available from his master, Sebastian might have laughed at the ancient vampire’s insistence on using such outdated supplies.

But instead he watched as Victor settled back into his chair and began writing notes in his loose, delicate script. Sebastian waited until the nib stopped scratching the paper and Victor looked up. “How many times have you painted the woman?”

As tempting as it was to lie, Sebastian recognized when his master was in studying mode.

To lie now would corrupt the information available on his magic forever.

“Hundreds,” he admitted. “Definitely over two hundred, but fewer than five. Perhaps a third of them contain blood paint to see the future. The other two thirds contain magic, but no blood. They depict scenes as they happened rather than as they are to be.”

“And you are able to Walk, as you call it, in both types?” Sebastian nodded; Victor recorded.

The air in the room felt oppressive and Sebastian longed for this to be over.

He should have expected to get more than he bargained for by going to his master for information.

Yet he felt like he’d learned very little.

“What of the girl? Have you noticed any changes through her lifetimes and your increasing number of illegal paintings?”

“Her lives get shorter each cycle. I had thought that was a natural part of her mystery reincarnation, but now I have other theories.” His mind spun a mile a minute as Sebastian processed the thought fragments into complete ones he could share.

“If each painting contains a portion of her soul, then perhaps that’s weakening her physical body and decreasing her lifespan?

She’s barely in her twenties this cycle and already has cancer of the blood. ”

Victor stared into space for a moment while he processed the theory.

His head tilted and his lip twitched thoughtfully.

“It’s a good theory. It would be unethical to attempt to recreate your situation on purpose,” he said, narrowing his eyes at Sebastian, “but nevertheless, the information is interesting. Perhaps, then, you have stolen enough soul fragments that they have come together to form this shadow being. As she grows weaker, it grows stronger?”

Sebastian felt his body go cold. It was a horrifying theory, but it was entirely logical.

“Strong enough to come out of the world behind the paintings, and to begin affecting this world,” he whispered, feeling the hair on his arms stand up.

“I have to figure out a way to stop it. The shadow has started showing up anywhere Isabel can see her own face, like mirrors. And every time she sees the shadow, she falls unconscious. I’m afraid one of these times, she won’t wake up.

The doctor in Genova blamed it on a lack of blood. ”

“That sounds like it has found another way to gain strength. This is vampiric magic, after all. Instead of feeding on the blood from your paintings…it’s now taking it directly from the girl.

You already know how to stop it. You must burn the paintings.

Every single one.” Victor’s quill stopped abruptly and his face grew grim.

Sebastian buried his face in his hands, his entire body trembling. What had he done? How had his love gone so wrong? And why was the only solution to burn his own soul to save hers? “Is there no other way?” he growled, looking up with reddened eyes.

“Not that anyone friendly to us knows. You held the entirety of our knowledge in your hands, between those covers. The Transylvanian covens may know more, but you’re well aware of the dangers if you are stupid enough to try to contact them.

And there’s no guarantee they have any more information than us. ”

A cold shiver lingered in Sebastian’s chest at the mention of their rivals.

Contact with the original vampire coven in Transylvania was said to end in death, and rarely of the enemy.

Victor’s words carried more than just a warning: it was a threat.

Breaking the fragile armistice reached by centuries of no contact would affect far more people than Sebastian’s painting problem.

And if that happened? Well, he certainly wouldn’t have the coven behind him.

“I have a lot to think about,” Sebastian muttered.

“As do I. I suppose you’ve brought the girl here?

I thought so. Just keep her away from Remus.

He’s always insufferable for the next century when he sees her.

” Victor rose from his chair and gestured toward the door.

“You’ll either burn the paintings, or find a way to remove the girl’s soul from them by the next full moon.

Otherwise, I’ll be forced to burn the paintings myself. ”