Page 21

Chapter Twenty

A Warning

Golden light dances behind my eyelids when I wake... which I do slowly. Gently. Wherever I am, it is lovely and warm and smells of my sister—like beeswax candles and summer honey. Unwilling to open my eyes, I burrow deeper beneath the blanket, rubbing my cheek against what feels like silk. A strand of hair tickles my nose, and I sigh in deep contentment.

Then I remember the theater, the ghosts, Michal , and my eyes snap open.

Thousands of candles litter every surface of my room. They trail the grand staircase, line the silk screens, circle the floor around the squashy armchairs. A fire crackles cheerily in the hearth, and branches upon branches of brass candelabras twine together on the mezzanine, their tapers illuminating a gilt-framed gallery. Though the darkness previously hid them, portraits cover every inch of the wall around the windows. Each face regal and exquisite.

I sit up in awe, and black sheets—once coated with dust—slide to my hips. They smell of jasmine now. I , however, still smell of rainwater and must. Nose wrinkling, I lift the sheet to examine my damp gown; speckles of mud stain the hem, and the wrinkled lace is probably forever ruined. Spectacular. Throwing myself back upon the pillow, I mutter, “Odessa is going to kill me.”

I lie there for several more minutes, counting each tick of the clock on the mantel. Dreading the inevitable—that I must rise, that I must continue, that I must eventually face Michal and his isle of vampires again. All Hallows’ Eve creeps ever closer, and all I’ve learned is vampires might have an aversion to silver.

Groaning, I roll over to face the insurmountable wall of books.

Without Dimitri and Odessa at my disposal, I have only one option left, and I really shouldn’t waste the candlelight. The thought of poring over onionskin pages until my eyes bleed, however, makes me want to scream. I push the blanket away regardless, grimacing, and force myself to slide from the bed. The carpet has been freshly scrubbed too. It feels slightly damp under my bare toes as I trudge to the bookshelves, as I trail my fingers along their infinite books.

And still on How to Commune with the Dead .

A chill skitters down my back as I stare at the ancient, peeling letters.

Don’t be stupid. The logical part of my mind instantly rejects the idea, and my hand falls from the spine. The ghosts in the theater made their position quite clear—that I need to leave, to flee, or suffer the consequences. Surely they wouldn’t help me now, even if I asked. However...

I wrench the book from the shelf, throwing myself into one of the squashy armchairs and studying the cover. It would be stupider not to ask, right? I need information about vampires, and they could give it to me. Besides, it isn’t as if they can scamper off and tell Michal. He can’t see them. No one can see them except me, which means ghosts would be the perfect allies. True, I passed out the last time I communicated with them, but I hadn’t been prepared to meet them in the theater. I hadn’t even thought they were real .

This time could be different.

With that thought comes another startling revelation—in both of our encounters, the ghosts haven’t tried to harm me. Not truly. They’ve tried to intimidate, to frighten, but they haven’t lifted a single finger against me. My hand lingers upon the peeling letters, tracing the D in Dead .

Can they lift a finger against me? Can they even touch me?

I flick my gaze around the room—hardly daring to hope—but there is no ache in my head, no spectral light or eerie presence or voices of any kind. “Hello?” I call softly. No one answers. Of course no one answers—and why would they? I’ve made my position quite clear too.

Is it your emotions that attract them, I wonder? Could it be any emotion strongly felt?

But how does one force strong emotion?

Dismissing the idea, I flip open How to Commune with the Dead and skim the pages, landing on one in the middle.

The theory of realms, of course, is one long debated by scholars of the occult. Most agree that realms coexist in tandem, or rather, folded together like the flesh of an onion—layered, identical, impossible to isolate yet separate in identity. As such, the realms of the living and the dead prevail one on top of the other. Rarely do denizens of either realm cross between the two—despite sharing the same physical space—and those who do cross never recover.

I slam the book shut without reading another word. Not that I understood most of them. Those who do cross never recover , though—that part seems clear enough. Gingerly, I place the book on the side table, wiping my palms on my skirt for good measure, and comfort myself that it’s all conjecture, anyway. Even vampires do not know how this strange new ability of mine works. These scholars probably grasp even less.

Perhaps I can simply ask the ghosts to appear.

Clearing my throat, feeling ridiculous, I adopt a tone of polite inquiry. “If anyone is there, could you, er—could you please show yourself? I’d like to speak with you.”

When still no one speaks, I clasp my hands together and try again. “I understand your... reluctance to appear, but I think we all want the same thing. With your help, I’ll be able to leave this isle much sooner—tonight, in fact, if we’re very clever. We just need to work together.”

Silence.

Irritation begins to prick at my patience. “I need to know about silver on Requiem. Everyone here turns rather evasive when I mention it, but I assume ghosts are no friends to the vampires.” Repressing a shudder, I add, “Michal himself probably put that axe in your neck, after all, when he tricked you and your family here.” More silence. “Perhaps silver could be a weapon against him? Monsieur Marc mentioned poisoning his brother—I assume that means vampires can die. Unless the poison just weakened D’Artagnan somehow? How does one trap a soul in the body of a cat?”

When still no one answers, I straighten my shoulders, lift my chin, and scowl at the empty room. If the ghosts are here, listening out of sight, they certainly don’t care to participate in their half of the conversation. “There’s no reason to be difficult, you know,” I tell them irritably. “All you’ve done since I’ve arrived is terrorize me—blathering on about how I need to listen and how I need to leave —yet here I present an actual opportunity to do those things, and you choose to ignore me. It’s perfectly asinine behavior.”

Only the clock chimes from the mantel in answer. When it finishes, plunging the room into quiet once more, my temperature rises with each steady tick, tick, tick of its second hand.

Losing patience completely, I pick up How to Commune with the Dead and hurl it across the room.

It doesn’t thud against the bedpost as expected. Indeed, it doesn’t thud at all, and I watch incredulously as the corner of the cover seems to pierce thin air, ripping through the ether of the room and vanishing into an outstretched hand. “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” a light, feminine voice asks, and a familiar head stoops to appear in the impromptu gash between my bedroom and—somewhere else.

With a squeak, I scramble backward, but it’s too late.

The strange gash near my bed continues to spread, stretching into a gaping maw, and with it, the temperature in the room plummets. The air thins and sharpens until I can scarcely breathe, until my lungs threaten to collapse, until reality blurs into dreamlike delirium with its muted colors and flickering eerie light. Indeed—instead of smoke—ash seems to drift from the candle flame. It lands like snow in my hair.

A ghost perches against the iron whorls of my footboard, her legs crossed as she peers at me intently.

“It’s you,” I whisper, my eyes widening in recognition before darting around the room once more. Because it worked. It must’ve worked, yet I feel no building pressure in my ears, no splitting pain in my head. “You’re the one who—who looked through my keyhole on the first night. You spoke to me.”

The woman’s laughter is bright and infectious, like chimes in the wind, and her dark eyes gleam with mischief. “You make looking through keyholes sound indecent. Have you ever tried it? It’s quite my favorite thing to do.”

“What? Er—no. No, I haven’t.” My breath comes easier now, along with the sneaking suspicion that I need not breathe here at all. Wherever here is. “Apologies, but... where am I?”

“You’re through the veil, of course.”

“Through the what?”

“Do you really not know?” She sets the book aside, tilting her head curiously to consider me. Though youth radiates from her smooth skin and shining hair—long and thick and opaque, probably rich brown in life—there is something distinctly elegant about her too. Something wise. She could be my age, yes, or perhaps a few years older. No. A few years younger? I frown at her while trying to decide. “How is that possible after the theater?” she asks. “Did no one explain?”

“Forgive me for asking, but who—er, who are you? Were you at the theater too?”

She scoffs. “Absolutely not—and you shouldn’t have been either. L’Ange de la Mort is raucous at the best of times, suffused with all manner of rude and unsavory creatures. And my name is Mila.” She pauses with an air of great importance, sweeping the hair back from her face. “Mila Vasiliev.”

Mila Vasiliev.

The name is clearly supposed to mean something to me, but as I have no idea what, I curtsy to hide my ignorance. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mila Vasiliev.”

“And to meet you, Célie Tremblay.”

She flashes a radiant smile before sweeping upward into a flawless curtsy. Though I open my mouth to ask how , exactly, she knows me, I change tactics abruptly, plunging straight to the heart of the issue instead. Who knows how long I have before Dimitri or Odessa or even—God forbid—someone else returns? “Michal said L’Ange de le Mort is a rip in the fabric between realms. He took me to—to summon the ghosts there, somehow.”

Mila’s smile vanishes into a scowl, and when she rolls her eyes, I know I’ve calculated correctly—this ghost, at least, is no friend of Michal. “You cannot summon us anywhere,” she says in distaste. “We are not dogs. We do not answer to any master, and we do not come when called. That you can see us at all is because you have approached us , not the other way around.”

When she arches a brow at my rigid stance, I force myself to bend at the knee, to sit on the edge of the squashy chair as ash continues to drift around us. “But I haven’t approached you. As a matter of fact, I’ve been doing my very best not to—”

“Of course you haven’t meant to tear through the veil.” She waves a curt hand before settling back upon the bed. Or rather, hovering several inches above it. “Really, though, what do you expect when you repress your emotions? They have to go somewhere eventually, you know, and this realm is rather convenient—”

“Wait, wait .” I grip my fingers in my lap, knuckles turning white, and lean forward in my seat. Though my head remains miraculously without pain, it does start to spin at the ease with which she discusses the veil and—and—everything else. “Slow down. What do you mean this realm? How many realms are there? The book just mentioned the realms of the living and the dead—”

“The authors of said book were presumably alive at the time of its writing. How could they possibly claim authority on the complexities of the afterlife?” Another bright, infectious laugh as she weighs the enormous book in her palm. When it falls open to a page at random, an illustration of a skull with a wide, gaping mouth leers back at us. I look away quickly. “Even I do not understand the whole of it, and I am quite thoroughly dead. What I do know”—she speaks louder when I open my mouth to interrupt, incredulous—“is this realm, my realm, acts as an intermediary of sorts. It exists between the realms of the living and the dead, and as such, we spirits can see glimpses into both your realm and... beyond.”

“Beyond,” I repeat blankly.

She nods and examines the skull as if we aren’t discussing the whole of eternity , as if she didn’t just throw my entire creed and covenant into question with two simple sentences. “Your realm is much clearer, of course, as we’ve already lived there, and the two are near identical.” She snaps the book shut. “But you didn’t come here to talk about life, did you? Rather the opposite, I think.”

Death.

Of course, death is the reason I sought an audience with ghosts in the first place. Focus, Célie. I force myself to unclench my fingers from my skirt, to dust the strange ash from my knees and square my shoulders. Despite all of this—this distraction , Coco must remain my first priority, and to protect her, I must first find a way to protect myself.

Before I can find a clever way to begin the interrogation, however, she tosses How to Commune with the Dead aside and says, “I don’t blame you for seeking violence, but you must first allow me to apologize for my coven’s wretched behavior. Vampires always have been beastly creatures.”

My brow furrows at the word. Coven. “But does that mean— Are you a witch?”

“A witch?” She flashes another smile, this one with teeth, revealing two sharp points. I recoil slightly. “Of course not. I’m a vampire—or at least, I was . Do try to keep up, won’t you, darling? As previously discussed, I am now dead.”

I am now dead.

Despite her rebuke, the words are everything I wanted to hear.

I force my features to remain carefully blank, nonchalant, as I settle back into the squashy armchair. On the shelf across from me, the teapot begins to hiss and steam of its own accord, but I hardly hear it. Hardly see it.

If Mila was once a vampire, that means... Les éternels can die.

Despite the claims of Michal, Odessa, and even Dimitri, it seems they aren’t quite as eternal as they want me to believe. The proof of their deception sits only three feet away, fluffing her hair and awaiting my response. I study her innocently as the teapot starts to rattle. No blood or gore marks her skin, and—unlike the ghosts at the theater—no axe protrudes from her head, which remains firmly in place on her neck. Indeed, nothing whatsoever hints at the manner of her death. If not for her silvery, incorporeal form, she would look perfectly healthy. Perfectly alive .

I clear my throat, adopting— I hope —just the right amount of sincerity. “I am very sorry to hear that, Mademoiselle Vasiliev. If you don’t mind me asking... how did it happen?”

Her grin stretches wider, like the cat that got the cream. “You are clever. I’ll give you that.”

My heart sinks. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“A horrid liar, though. You should stop immediately.” She points a finger toward my eyes. “One needn’t hear your heartbeat or scent your emotions to know exactly what you’re thinking. They are the loveliest shade of green, though.” With a sly glance at the candles around us, she adds, “His Majesty must agree.”

I smooth my skirt as the teapot pours pitch-black tea into a chipped cup. “What does that mean?”

“It means you mentioned silver earlier,” she says, her voice a bit too innocent, “which seems an unusual request. Tell me, is that truly what you wish to discuss? If so, I could summon the others. They’re all quite anxious to speak with you, and they’ll just love to describe how foolish you’ve been in painstaking detail.”

“The others?” Unbidden, my gaze flicks to the shelves, where iridescent faces have started to flicker, hiding among the books and bric-a-brac. The chipped cup no longer sits between them, however. No—it now stands on the table beside my chair, glittering innocently. “I—I don’t understand. I was under the distinct impression they wanted me to leave. Why does it now seem like you want to help me?”

“Do you consider pride a fault or a virtue, Célie Tremblay?”

Startling at the question, I tear my gaze from the cup, which almost touches my hand now. I snatch my fingers away from the armrest, and the soft scent of orange blossoms wafts from the tea in its wake. “Neither, I suppose.”

“And what of yourself? Do you consider yourself prideful?”

“What? N- No . Not at all.”

Though I’d never admit it, I actually consider myself quite the opposite. How could I otherwise? Only three-year-olds fear the dark, and even then, they don’t descend into fits of hysteria when the candles go out. They don’t speak to ghosts .

“Well, then,” Mila says, “it should take little imagination to realize even the departed have loved ones to protect.”

“Of course you do, but what does that”—I resist the urge to gesture wildly toward the floating ash, the icicles along the mantel, the muted gray light—“what does any of this have to do with me?”

“Come now, Célie. Every tongue in our realm has been wagging about a bride for weeks—and I wouldn’t drink that tea if I were you,” she adds sharply.

I blink, startled, and realize my hand has reached instinctively for the strange little cup. “Why?”

“Because it’s poison.” She shrugs delicately as I push the cup away with a strangled sound, spilling its black liquid across the tabletop. Upon contact, it quite literally eats through the wood with tiny, razor-sharp teeth. “Did you think yours was the only realm affected by this blight?” Mila asks.

“But I thought—apologies, of course, but as everyone here is already dead —”

Mila flings How to Commune with the Dead across the room, where it lands with a painful blow upon my legs. Heavy and real and alarming. “While you are in this realm,” she says seriously, “you are of this realm, which means you need to be very careful. The ash, the teapot, the poison—none of this is as it should be, which means our realm is no longer safe. Not even for a Bride.”

The teapot still whistles from the shelf, punctuating her words and growing louder—screaming now—with each turn of its porcelain feet. I stare at her incredulously, trying and failing to keep my voice even. “What are you talking about? And why do you all keep calling me bride? I am still very much unmarried—”

“Not that kind of bride.” Mila shakes her head, and ash settles around her in a macabre sort of bridal veil. “You’re a bride, as in a Bride of Death .” When I blink at her, nonplussed, she heaves a long-suffering sigh. “Death and the Maiden? Filles à la cassette? Oh, come now, Célie, did you merely skim that wretched book?”

My mouth parts indignantly. “You said I couldn’t learn about the afterlife from a book! You said the authors—”

“—can of course postulate correctly on occasion!” She flips the book open to a section near the end, turning it around to reveal another ghastly illustration of a woman with a serpent in her mouth. “Look, they penned a whole section on Brides at the end. I won’t pretend to know what happened to you, but clearly, you’ve been touched by Death. He does that sometimes,” she explains, “on very rare occasions with beautiful young women. Instead of snuffing out her life, he lets her go—he lets her live —except she’s never quite the same after Death visits her. She becomes his Bride.”

His Bride.

Touched by Death.

Do you have a death wish, mademoiselle? Or is it the dead themselves who call to you?

I rise hastily to my feet.

This is not the direction I wanted this conversation to take.

“Do you not wonder why you can cross between realms and no one else can?” Mila throws her hands in the air before I can answer. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Well, it does —you should really read more—but the details aren’t relevant to this particular conversation. What is relevant is that you find a way off this island before he comes for you.”

“Before who comes for me?” Losing my temper completely, I throw up my own hands because I am tired and damp and hungry again. Because every time I turn a corner in this god-awful place, I find more questions than answers. Because I wanted to learn about silver, and now I shall dream about snakes for the rest of my fleeting life. “And I want a real explanation this time,” I add angrily, “or you and the rest of these filthy eavesdroppers”—I raise my voice, addressing the bookshelves—“can float right back through those walls and out of my life. I’m serious. I don’t yet know how to purify a space, but I’ll find sage if I must. I’ll—I’ll sew up these rips , so none of you can ever bother me again!”

Mila regards me shrewdly for several seconds. “The rips generally heal on their own.”

“I’m warning you, Mila—”

“Yes, all right, fine ,” she says at last. “If I must say it... we don’t truly know what approaches. Spirits aren’t omniscient, but we—we do often see things, sense them, in ways you cannot.” She floats from the bed, drawing closer, and her next words lift the hair at my neck. “Darkness is coming for us, Célie. It is coming for us all, and at its heart is a figure—a man,” she clarifies.

“Who is he?” I ask a bit breathlessly. “Death?”

“Of course not. I told you—Death rarely interferes.” She sighs again, frustration filling her voice, as she brushes the ash from her shoulders. “The man of whom I speak... we cannot see him clearly through the veil. Grief seems to shroud his face.”

I exhale a shaky laugh, a relieved one. “Then how do you know he’s looking for me? This is probably a complete misundersta—”

“He needs your blood, Célie.”

The words fall brutally simple between us, like the blade of a guillotine. They sever every thought in my head, every question, leaving me to stare at her in stunned silence. Perhaps I misheard her. Because this man, this—this dark figure who even ghosts fear—cannot possibly want my blood. Perhaps she’d meant to say Lou’s blood, or Reid’s blood, or even the all-powerful Michal’s blood. Perhaps then I’d believe her. But mine ? A snort of laughter escapes me in the silence. “There has been a terrible mistake.”

Mila’s eyebrows pull together.

Before she can argue, however, a knock sounds at the door, and Michal’s dry voice echoes through the quiet room. “Are you alive?”

All desire to laugh shrivels into an angry knot in my chest.

As always, Michal has impeccable timing.

Instantly, the ghosts in the shelves scatter out of sight, but Mila remains, her eyes darting toward the door. Something akin to fear flashes through them, there and gone too quickly to identify. She swallows hard as if deliberating. After several more seconds, her shoulders slump, and—decision made—she bolts toward the ceiling.

It isn’t fair, however— none of this is fair—and why should she get to flee when I cannot? Gesturing furiously toward the door, I mouth, He wants to speak with a ghost.

A small, mournful smile touches her lips. “I know.”

And I can do nothing but watch as she rises higher and higher, beyond my reach in more ways than one. Once again, I am left with more questions than answers, and the gore of that guillotine has left a mess behind. He needs your blood, Célie.

Ridiculous.

“Célie?” Michal asks again.

“I promise to return. To explain.” Mila hesitates beneath the gilded ceiling, right next to the chandelier, just as my doorknob begins to turn. Her last words reach me in a forlorn whisper before she slips out of sight. “But I cannot give him what he wants.”