Page 46

Chapter Forty-Three

Dimitri’s Tale

Whatever I expected to find in Dimitri’s room—bodies, perhaps, or bloody manacles and jars of teeth—it isn’t the bright, colorful chamber that awaits me. Indeed, when I first step through the door, I retreat almost immediately, convinced I stumbled into the wrong room. A large fireplace illuminates the entire scene. Scarves of aquamarine, magenta, and citron drape from the ceiling and shutters, while an assortment of hats perch upon his bedposts and stack precariously on his bedside table.

Out in the corridor, I shake my head to clear it and count the doors more carefully.

One. Two. Three.

I open the door to the same strange tentlike menagerie, which means Dimitri must be—well, some sort of hoarder . Taking a deep breath, I step over the threshold and click the door shut behind me.

Keys glitter upon the curved stone walls, along with baskets and baskets of books. Odd books. Warily, I creep closer and pick up the topmost one: a pocket-sized edition of the Holy Bible. Beneath it lies Fashionable Cats and the People Who Sew Them . I return both books with a grimace.

It’ll take a miracle to find anything of Filippa’s in this mess.

I move to the desk next—because if there was one letter, there must be more, and if Dimitri is the one who penned them, he surely would’ve kept them. Or , says a hopeful little voice in my head, he didn’t know Filippa at all.

That would be the best case, of course.

And also the worst.

Without a connection between Dimitri and Filippa—and therefore Babette—I have exactly zero paths forward to finding the Necromancer.

The desk, as it turns out, rivals even the clutter of the walls: perfume bottles, buttons, and rolls of mismatched coins litter its top, and inside its drawers lie matchboxes and pocket watches, a fountain pen and even a tattered old doll. Ordinary things. Mundane things.

Hundreds of them, and not a single letter in sight.

Slamming the drawer shut in both frustration and relief, I sigh heavily and turn to face the room at large. Beyond Filippa and her secret lover—beyond Dimitri and Babette and even the Necromancer—this room makes no sense. This is what Odessa and Mila feared I’d see? Dimitri’s collection of rubbish?

“What are you doing here?”

With a squeak, I leap away from the desk and whirl to face the door, where Dimitri stands with his arms crossed, his lips pressed flat in suspicion. “Dimitri! You’re back!”

“And you’re snooping in my room.”

“I wasn’t—if you must know, I wasn’t snooping anywhere. I was simply waiting for you . The last we spoke, you wanted to have a conversation, and now—well, I’m ready to have it.”

He pushes himself from the doorjamb and into the room, closing the door with a soft click . I try not to flinch at the sound. “No, you aren’t,” he says.

“What are you talking about?”

“You aren’t ready to have a conversation. Just now, you were rifling through my desk, and I can smell you all over my books too.” His eyes narrow as he studies me. “You’ve been looking for something.”

We stare at each other for several seconds. Wariness seems to creep into his expression as the silence between us deepens, or rather, a sort of tautness , and I wonder just how poorly his very long discussion with Michal went. At last, I gesture to the bric-a-brac all around us. “What is all this?”

His eyes dart to the row of shoes beneath his footboard. “I didn’t kill Mila, Célie.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“And you don’t really think I killed her either, or you wouldn’t have risked coming in here alone. I’m not the Necromancer. I don’t”—he hesitates, swallowing hard—“want your blood for some dark rite.”

Something in his voice shifts with the words, however, and the hair lifts on my neck as I once again remember Michal’s warning. Dimitri is an addict. He has thought of nothing but your blood since he made your acquaintance yesterday .

Suddenly, I feel incredibly foolish for coming here, and suddenly, I have nothing else to lose. Seizing the knife from my boot, I thrust it between us and snarl, “Did you know my sister?”

He doesn’t recoil from the silver, doesn’t acknowledge it at all, instead blinking at me like I’ve spoken in a foreign language. “Who?”

“My sister ,” I repeat through clenched teeth. “Filippa Tremblay. Morgane murdered her last year, but I want to know—I need to—you will tell me if you knew her.”

His eyes widen slightly at whatever he sees in my expression, and he lifts conciliatory hands. “Célie, I’ve never seen your sister before in my life.”

“You aren’t exactly alive, though, are you? And I didn’t ask if you’d seen her. I asked if you knew her.”

“Is there a difference?” he asks helplessly.

My knuckles clench white around the knife as I study his face, as I search for anything— anything —that might reveal potential subterfuge. “You can know a person without ever seeing them—letters, for example.”

“I never knew or wrote to your sister. The only person to whom I’ve ever written a letter is La Dame des Sorcières.” He shrugs weakly and drops his arms. “She’s a friend of yours, isn’t she? Louise le Blanc? I wrote to her last month.”

Now it’s my turn to blink. “You wrote a letter to Lou?”

Shoulders slumping, he edges around me—I lift the knife higher as he passes—and collapses into a leather chair near his bed. A golden necklace dangles from its arm. He takes care not to disturb it as he scrubs a weary hand down his face. “You have to listen to me, Célie. I know you—you think the worst, but you couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m not the Necromancer,” he repeats, more forceful this time. “I’m not in league with him—I didn’t kill any of those creatures—and the only thing I want from Babette is the grimoire. I need that grimoire.”

“You’ve made that exceptionally clear.”

“You still don’t understand.” With a groan of frustration, he tips his head backward, staring at the bundles of flowers near the ceiling and searching for the right words. “Michal told you about bloodlust,” he says at last. Though it isn’t a question, I still nod, and his mouth sets in a grim line. “Then you know I’m an addict. I may not kill in cold blood like the Necromancer, but my hands are equally stained—no, my hands are worse .” He closes his eyes as if the words have cost him something, as if they’ve caused him incredible pain. “I deserve your suspicion, your hatred. Though I haven’t always been this way—the affliction grows harder to control with each passing year—I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve killed. I can still see their faces, though,” he adds miserably, motioning around the room. My mouth goes dry. “I can still taste their fear the instant they realize I won’t stop, I can’t stop, and that— that is the true addiction.”

When his eyes snap open, I stumble back a step, knocking over several bottles of perfume. They shatter upon the floor. “Do you mean— Are you saying—?” I glance wildly at the clutter all around us, my stomach rising in realization. But this cannot be true. It cannot be happening. “Dimitri”—my voice drops to a horrified whisper as I lift the tattered doll—“are these keepsakes ?”

“To remember them.” A disturbing gleam enters his eyes as he stares fixedly at the doll. “Every single one.”

“But there are hundreds —”

“You’re right to fear me,” he says darkly. “If not for Michal, I would’ve killed you the moment I walked into your room. I wouldn’t have been able to help myself. You smell... delicious.”

Something in his expression reminds me forcefully of Yannick, and I retreat another step, remembering the rest of Michal’s warning.

When Dimitri feeds, he loses consciousness. Many vampires forget themselves in the hunt, but a vampire affected by bloodlust goes beyond that—he remembers nothing, feels nothing, and inevitably kills his prey in gruesome and horrific ways. Left too long, he becomes an animal like Yannick.

“Stay away from me.” My voice trembles slightly as my gaze darts to the door, and Dimitri rises slowly to his feet. “Don’t come any closer.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Célie.” His voice breaks on the last, and just as swiftly as the shadow crossed his features, it vanishes, leaving him small and alone and miserable. “I won’t hurt you. I promise I won’t.”

“That doesn’t sound like a promise you can make.”

“But don’t you see?” Though he wrings his hands desperately, he makes no move to close the distance between us, and I relax infinitesimally. “That’s why I need the grimoire. That spell is the only thing that can cure bloodlust—without it, I’ll kill again and again and again until Michal is forced to rip out my heart. And I’ll deserve it. Célie, I’ll deserve it for all the pain I’ve caused. When you first met me, I—the blood in the corridor—I’d just—”

“Stop.” I shake my head frantically, backing into the door now. “Please, I don’t want to know—”

“Mila tried to keep me in check. She was the only one who sympathized. Even Odessa never understood why I couldn’t just control myself. She pored over her books searching for an explanation, a cure, but in the end, Mila is the one who suggested we visit La Dame des Sorcières.”

My hand freezes on the doorknob. I don’t know what to say, what to think , as my mind struggles to comprehend vampires seeking out Louise le Blanc for help—the same woman who totters around as the Crone, cackling and pinching Reid’s backside. But perhaps it makes sense. Lou is the most powerful witch in the kingdom, and she did defeat the most evil woman in history. “She would’ve helped you,” I whisper despite myself.

“I wrote to her about my affliction.” Dimitri shakes his head in disgust, still carefully motionless otherwise. “Or at least, I wrote to Saint-Cécile.”

“You what ?”

“I didn’t know where else to reach her, and even on Requiem, we heard of her marriage to the Chasseur.”

“Michal collected every detail of my entire life in a single night. Surely he could’ve found her address? Why would you ever send a letter to Chasseur Tower asking for magic? They might’ve evolved since the Battle of Cesarine, but they aren’t that evolved.”

Dimitri sets his chin, a trace of stubbornness returning to his gaze. “I didn’t want to involve Michal. He wouldn’t have allowed us to go—and when La Dame des Sorcières wrote back with a time and place for our meeting, Mila insisted on coming along.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Frowning, I gradually loosen my grip on the doorknob. “Lou moved out of Saint-Cécile last year. She wouldn’t have received any letter delivered there.”

“No.” Cautiously, as if appeasing a wild animal, he reaches into his coat and pulls forth a folded piece of parchment. He extends it with a single hand, forcing me to cross the room to take it. “She didn’t.”

I snatch it hastily before retreating back to his desk.

The words themselves don’t penetrate as I unfold the parchment. No. It’s the handwriting. My eyes seize upon it, and my heart drops like a stone at the familiar pen strokes, masculine and altogether chilling. Because I’ve only seen it once before—in the love letter folded within my sister’s locket. “It wasn’t Louise le Blanc who met us outside Saint-Cécile that night,” Dimitri continues. “A man in a hooded cloak attacked from the shadows, and I—I lost control.” His eyes grow distant with the words, and I know they now see a different scene than his macabre bedroom. “I should’ve smelled the magic in his veins, should’ve recognized the man as a blood witch, but instead I just... reacted.”

“What happened?” I whisper.

“I bit him.” He cringes slightly as if reliving the exact moment, the exact taste of the Necromancer’s blood. “And as you know from Les Abysses, the blood of a Dame Rouge—or in his case, a Seigneur Rouge—acts as poison to their enemies. Even vampires. I barely escaped with my life.”

“And Mila?”

He shakes his head. “Babette joined the hooded man with some sort of injection. It must’ve been more of their blood because she dropped instantly. I couldn’t do anything but watch as they worked a spell from the grimoire and drained Mila dry.” His voice cracks at the last, and horrid pressure builds in my throat as I too imagine the scene—it would not have been painless or quick. “When they finished with her, they swept the alley, baiting me with their grimoire. Promising me they could bring her back, could give me the spell I needed to cure the bloodlust. I had to just—I had to leave her there, Célie. I had to leave Mila, or I would’ve died. They would’ve killed me too. The three of us fled just as the Chasseurs arrived.”

My throat grows too tight to speak.

It just isn’t fair.

Even in death, Mila hadn’t wanted to speak the truth. And it isn’t fair—she endured a horrible execution while seeking a cure for her cousin, and Dimitri escaped unscathed. He left her corpse in the garbage behind Saint-Cécile—he has murdered hundreds of innocents—yet he survives to mourn her. To mourn himself. If I had anything at all in my stomach, I would’ve lost it in this moment.

Carefully, I hand back his letter and murmur, “I’m sorry.”

I cannot look at him. I cannot think of anything else to say.

“I loved my cousin.” In the blink of an eye, Dimitri stands before me, fire blazing in his brown eyes. I jerk the knife upward instinctively. “I loved her, Célie, and I’ll do whatever is necessary to avenge her death. I’ll rip out the Necromancer’s heart myself. I’ll light the pyre for Babette.” Knocking the knife aside and clutching my shoulders, he forces me to look directly into those burning eyes. To truly see him. “But first I need their grimoire. I need to regain control, and I need to ensure Saint-Cécile never happens again.”

And his face looks so sincere, so fierce —the perfect marriage of the Dimitri I knew and the Dimitri I met in Les Abysses—that I know it’s his true one. I know it deep in my bones. He’s done awful things, yes—unforgivable things—but then again, so has everyone.

Even Filippa.

If someone doesn’t help him, truly help him, he’ll continue to kill, and his gruesome collection will continue to grow until it crushes him beneath its weight.

“I’ll help you find the grimoire,” I tell him.

I pray I’ll live long enough to regret it.