Chapter 12

Vampires cannot dine on just any blood. Much like one develops a taste for certain foods, they can only partake from those whose lifeforce is appealing. Similarly, there seems to be a reciprocal condition inherent in their source of sustenance. The more attractive the vampire is to the bloodletter, the higher quality the meal. All data gathered regarding vampire feeding habits are anecdotal. Further study is required.

-A Witch's Guide to the Arcane

Rorick

The steady thump of Quiet's heart was loud in my ears. "I feel like I haven't had a drink in weeks," I confessed.

The organ in her chest raced, the pump of it as alluring as it was alarming. She stepped away from me, bumping into the bed at her back. "Damnit, Rorick—"

"You have nothing to fear from me. Absolutely nothing. Look. I'm not injured this time," I soothed, indicating my unharmed chest with a sweeping gesture where a gargoyle hadn't clawed down my front, baring bits of my ribs. I held up my unmarked wrists. "No one's drained me near dry of my magic. It's not like it was before."

Her gray eyes narrowed. "But you have a fever! What will happen to you?"

I shrugged. "I won't die, if that's what you're worried about. I'll start to feel weaker slowly. Worst-case scenario, I might slip unconscious."

"Unconscious!" She threw her hands up in the air.

"It'll be fine! It won't happen suddenly. We'll know it's coming. You'll get us out, and if you don't before I go under, you could always tuck me away in here and come back for me."

She hit me again. I barely felt it, but I grunted to make her feel better about the punishment. Quiet let out a string of colorful, blasphemous expletives right into my face. I probably deserved all of them.

Then she pointed her middle finger at me.

I probably deserved that too, though it made me cackle like I didn't.

"I hadn't planned to get trapped in a haunted castle that's slowly turning itself into . . . something else," I said, voice wobbling over the sheer bizarreness of our situation. "I would have stopped for a bite if I'd realized the ramifications."

Meals were complicated for me. I was highly selective about my diet and could only tolerate certain qualities in my donors: cleanliness, attractiveness, intelligence were top priorities. Sometimes I could dine on someone I didn't know well, as long as they didn't open their mouth too soon to reveal they were an absolute idiot. Connection seemed to make the meal more fulfilling and nourishing. I really didn't know what cleverness had to do with my stomach, but my body insisted upon it.

Which was exactly why it was so adamant that it needed Quiet's blood now. I'd never met a more capable woman, and there was no one else in my life I'd ever been more connected to.

She let out a long, pained exhale, pinching the bridge of her nose. "If I bleed into a glass—"

"It would be like giving me lumpy, spoiled milk. I can't drink dead blood. Not without losing my stomach contents afterward. There's no nourishment in it. Please keep your blood in your veins where it belongs."

Quiet flopped back against the bed and promptly slid down it, it was so high off the ground. "That settles it, then. You'll just have to bite me."

I shook my head. "That's not going to happen."

"I don't exactly love the idea either," she snapped, rolling her eyes, "but we're partners now."

"Are we?" It could have been my imagination, but for a second it seemed like my dead heart shifted behind the cage of my ribs.

"Oh, fuck you," she said affectionately, turning her nose up at me. "And yes. So stop being a melodramatic martyr and let's just get it over with already."

Her insistence squeezed the dead organ in my chest until it ached sweetly. I closed the distance between us in one long stride. She straightened until she was flush with me. Quiet was so tall we stood nearly nose to nose.

She swallowed, the delicate tissue at her throat bobbing, and her hands wrung anxiously in her skirts. "Well, go on, then. Should I start counting down, or do you want to clamp onto a vein impromptu, or . . . ?"

I dropped my brow against hers, capturing her focus. The length of her black lashes was magnified by my nearness. I could hear the swish of their movement when she blinked.

"Listen here, you bossy, cantankerous old woman . . ." I said firmly.

She chuckled, and her breath warmed my lips, a temptation I knew I could withstand because there was no way, not in my eternity, not if Death himself demanded it, that I would ever again take from her like I had before. Not like this. Not in panic and desperation. Not out of fear. Not when it might become her next nightmare.

I could still feel the hot splash of her blood when it hit my mouth one year ago, still hear her gasp of surprise against my ear, the way her body went stiff and still in my arms like she was too horrified to move. Almost immediately her shock had given way to a flood of fear. I tasted that fear all over again, choking on the vivid memory of it. Her sweet blood had spiked with an adrenaline that went instantly bitter in my stomach.

I was a monster then, but I wouldn't be one now.

"I can withstand a small fever just fine," I told her. "We'll get out of here, and I'll nourish myself on a willing vein then, but don't you dare ask me to take from you. I won't do it after all the trouble it caused the last time."

We stared each other down.

"Fine," she relented. "I'll agree that we can visit this matter again later when you start feeling weak." She put a hand on my chest, and her fingers fisted in my shirt, a threat in the death grip that turned her knuckles white. "If you do slip unconscious on me, know that I'll make you pay for that. I don't want to navigate this horrid castle all on my own. Given the alternatives, I'd much rather put up with a bite that hurts briefly over that fate."

"I'm thirsty, but I can handle it," I assured her.

"Abandon me to this castle alone, Rorick," she muttered, "and unconscious or not, I'll stab you with my wand again, some place much more deliberate this time."

"I hear you," I said, and I meant my words with every undead fiber of my body.

"Fine," she grunted.

"Fine," I repeated.

She was still so close to me, still nearly nose to nose. I'd planned to move away, but then her eyes dropped just for the briefest moment to my mouth. She licked her lips, and I found myself transfixed on that glossy pillow of silken skin. I didn't have to imagine what her soft flesh tasted like. I already knew.

Was she thinking about that kiss too?

She said something before she slipped away from me, dragging me from the fog in my brain.

"Gilbert," she repeated. "What is it?"

"He's found something," I said, catching up slowly. "What were you just thinking about? Perhaps it's inspired him?"

Color spiked in her cheeks. "Well," she stammered, "that bath is never far from my mind, but I was also thinking that I'd like to get out of this castle before you drop off and are no good to me anymore."

Gilbert left his perch on the padded blotter to fly circles in front of the door. Quiet opened it for him with the ward on her wrist. Gilbert dove out into the darkness, and we tailed him down the hall.

The scent in the air had changed drastically. My nose scrunched. "Ack, filthy mongrel."

"What's wrong?" Quiet's hand went to the pocket in her skirt.

"That dog pissed all over the place out here. Either to irritate me or to prevent me from being able to sniff him out. The smell is even worse than your bog spray." The were's urine stunk pungently of ammonia and stale hops.

"All I smell is rot," she said.

"Be glad that's all."

The smell wasn't the only thing that had changed. The paintings of my ancestors that hung along the wall had been tampered with. A repeating message was scrawled across the bottoms of each frame. The letters were written backward, a common indicator that the author was a ghost.

Save them, it said over and over again in reverse. But we didn't have time for a random demand from the odd spirit. We had our own problems to solve.

Gilbert returned us to the corridor near the master bedroom. The strange mirror was back, and it looked exactly like the sort of thing one would find at the circus in a hall of mysteries. I could make nothing of the glass. I had no reflection, but Quiet's body appeared distorted inside it.

"Another Trial of Arising." She twisted this way and that. When she stepped back, her reflection moved forward, smiling eerily wide. The Quiet in the glass wasn't my Quiet—not a true reflection. When she raised her arm, her double dropped it.

"What's that there?" I pointed to a round bit of brass in the corner of the frame.

Quiet touched it, and a doorknob sprang from the wood. Her reflection began to cry silently, mouth open wide, tears streaming in a river down her distorted face. "Now what?"

I stroked my chin. "Your reflection does the opposite of what you do. That seems important."

She reached for the door, tried to open it, and immediately her double pulled away. "That isn't right," she said, releasing the knob.

"What's the opposite of opening a door?" I asked.

"Closing one?" she suggested.

I strode to the bedroom. As I pulled the door shut, something small and rodent-like scurried across the chamber, diving under the bed. It looked a bit like a rat but could have been some lesser shifter. A scuttering sound emanated from the walls, more vermin shuffling about.

"Did that do anything?" I asked. We didn't have time for lesser shifters any more than we had time for ghosts.

"Nothing," Quiet said, shaking her head. She twisted the knob. "It's unlocked, but it won't open."

She felt around the edges of the mirror, but the search turned up nothing useful.

The solution came to me then. "The opposite of unlocking a door."

"Locking it," she answered.

I removed my uncle's signet ring from my finger, and I pushed down on the silver face until it clicked. A small, notched key sprung from between the initials J and R. I gave it to Quiet. The key fit perfectly in the brass knob. She locked it.

Her reflection followed her, unlocking the knob from her side of the glass.

The door creaked as it parted, and the strange mirror dematerialized into black mist that floated toward the ribbed vaults on the ceiling. I reclaimed the signet ring, pushing the key back into the silver face before sliding the band down my finger. The door opened onto an office nook.

A lesser shifter scampered out, and Quiet stepped in front of me, wand at the ready. The creature looked like a bald ferret.

"What's—"

"Don't move, don't speak, don't breathe," she hissed. Quiet reached behind her, touching my stomach like she needed to make sure I was still there.

I held my breath.

The shifter raced down the hall. Quiet didn't move again until it rounded the bend.

"Troll rat," she said. "They're harmless at that size, but with a predator like you nearby, I was worried it might feel threatened."

"And turn into a troll?" I'd heard of the creatures, just hadn't seen one before. They were usually active during the day.

"It's all right now," she said.

Quiet and I ducked inside the compact archway. More scratching and scurrying sounded behind the walls, and my imagination ran away with me. I pictured a dozen troll rats suddenly transforming and crushing us both. The hair on the back of my neck rose.

A pine desk sat before a short hutch that housed books of a size Alex preferred for accounting. Gilbert sailed in behind us, landing on a large volume that reminded me of the sort of oversized books people used to decorate tables in their sitting rooms.

Quiet pulled it out of its dusty slot and wiped it clean with her skirts. She dropped it onto the pine desk. Something hissed at us from the center drawer. She raised her wand and opened it. An eel-like coffin-dweller burst out at her, round mouth full of teeth, ready to latch onto her face. With a tap of her wand, she cursed the hissing shifter into a honeybee. The bee droned angrily for a minute, turning circles in the air. It righted and buzzed its way out of the office.

"What is this?" she asked. The book was illustrated with the image of an elaborate tree with no leaves.

"Family records." I flipped through a few pages to show her the listings of names and dates. Alex had added newspaper clippings, photos, and sketches of certain family members.

"You're not in this," she said. "Oh wait. Here you are. Liam Rorick."

My name was written in fine print at the bottom of the lined page. A newspaper clipping was included. Lord Pronounced Dead in Carriage Accident.

On the next page was another newspaper clipping of one of my first high-profile cases. Private Detective Trumps Magician Art Thief. The pleasure it gave me to know that Alex had taken the time to keep something like that surprised me. Sometimes I wanted to hate Alex, but then I remembered what he'd done for me and what he'd been to me, especially in the beginning, and it made loathing him complicated.

After my transformation, I'd required lots of rest, even at night. My sleep was haunted by the worst sorts of monsters—monsters my cousin had saved me from. He'd taken on three of them with nothing but a torch in his hand. Then he'd sheltered me and cleaned me up.

Consuming blood hadn't come naturally to me. He was patient when I struggled. I'd always had very picky tastes. He mentored me, answered all of my strange questions.

And he'd done all of it because he wanted to use me.

He'd probably made sure I'd found all those detective novels on purpose—I only thought I knew what I wanted. Master manipulator, Alex was. I was just a puppet, and he held the strings. I knew this was true about him, watched as he manipulated others, all the while stupidly assuming that I was exempt.

What a fool I was.

Quiet reached over and patted my arm, bringing me back to the present. The warmth in the gesture made my heart do that strange sluggish squeeze.

She glanced over several more pages before stopping on another. "Oh, who's this?" Quiet lifted the book up for closer inspection.

Bastion Rorick, the header said. Quiet ran a finger over the article.

"I've only ever heard of him in passing," I told her. "I've never taken notice before because, like you said, Rorick is a rather common last name."

Quiet read the article title aloud. "‘Necromancer Opens Castleway's First Circus.' So this Bastion is family, but he's not a vampire. Why is Alex keeping newspaper clippings of him?"

"There's only two reasons why Alex ever cared about anyone. Either he was a rival—a threat to his ambitions—or he had something Alex wanted. Is there anything in there about how he's related? Siblings? Cousins?"

"There's nothing about that on his pages . . . Gilbert," Quiet said to the moth as he alighted onto her shoulder, "I'm afraid I'm not understanding why you showed us this."

She started to close the heavy book, but another news clipping slipped out the back end, one that wasn't tacked down to a page. The article was dated six months ago.

Four Children Still Missing,it read, and my stomach plummeted. I felt that haunting sense of doom return, like the ichors who chased me in my dreams were still breathing down my neck and peeking over my shoulder.

"I remember this," Quiet said. "The coven was devastated. Those children went missing from our Home for Foundlings. Young people run away sometimes, but the ones that went, they weren't even friendly with each other. It didn't make sense to any of us that they'd take off together. If Alex's ambitions had anything to do with this . . ." She shook her head.

"If he had anything to do with hurting children, then he deserved what he got," I finished for her.

"Oh no." Her lips turned down.

I waited for her to complete her thought as her face paled further.

"We all believed at first that someone had taken them, but the house is protected by wards, so we deduced they had to have left on their own." Her gaze rimmed red. "With her specialty, it was a warding only Penance could have penetrated."

Penance's many apologies during her Last Breath took on a completely different meaning now.

I knew what Quiet would say if I offered her comfort, so I patted her arm silently the same way she'd warmly touched mine earlier. The betrayal on her face mirrored what I felt when I thought of my cousin saving me from monsters one moment and stealing my blood the next.

I knew in my gut Alex had done something terrible to those children. The people we'd loved had both been wicked. The darkness haunting the house was proof enough of that.