Chapter 8

8

EVANGELINE

I didn't think I could deal with the vampires right now, so I slipped upstairs to find some peace and quiet in Gabriel's room. As soon as I opened the door to his suite, I realized how wrong I was. The sitting room had been left exactly as it was on the night I'd run away. A blanket was crumpled on the floor by one of the chairs. Half-empty cups of water gathered dust. A mug sat on the coffee table, the dried-out teabag inside crusted to the ceramic.

Last time I was in this room, I'd…

The corner of the fireplace was still covered in dried blood. I squeezed my eyes shut, which turned out to be another mistake. Behind my eyelids, the memory of Theo's skull meeting that corner began to play on a loop. The way their eyes had widened with shock, that horrible sickening crack, and then how still and small they had looked when they crumpled to the floor. I scrubbed my fingers over my eyes hard enough that the image disappeared into firework bursts, then swallowed hard, trying to keep my composure. God, it had been such a bad idea to come up here when I'd only just gotten the curse out of my system. But now that I'd started revisiting that horrible night, I had to see it through to the end. So, I forced myself to keep looking around the room.

There were black spots on the floor where the ooze from the curse had landed. I crouched down to inspect it, running my fingers over the scattered markings. The gunk had etched into the wood, leaving little divots all the way to the bedroom door. With heavy steps, I followed the path I'd taken that night. Here was where I'd crushed Marcus's hands. Here was where I'd killed Theo. Here was where I'd made a break for the bedroom, leaving the people who were trying to help me behind. I braced myself and pushed the door open.

Gabriel's bedroom was opulent and bordering on cluttered. You could tell the space had been filled by someone who'd had centuries of good but dramatic tastes and wasn't great at throwing stuff out. Paintings from across the centuries crowded the walls, and knickknacks covered shelves and ledges all over the place. The bed was huge and soft, and I'd slept well in it. I'd been fucked well in it, too. Was fucked the right word? What we'd done was, well, sweeter than that. Tender, although definitely not soft. All the other terms I could think of were too soppy for my tastes, though. Gabriel would probably have some old-fashioned word for it. I would have to ask him.

I wished we'd had the chance to spend more time in that bed. We'd only gotten to relax in it a few times, and it stung that I hadn't had the chance to get used to it. With Gabriel's arms wrapped around me, I felt like we were the only two people in the world. I wished we could've stayed like that, but the world kept intruding, pulling us into a mess that kept getting bigger and bigger.

I wanted a chance to be with Gabriel long enough for us to get used to each other. It was a strange fantasy, but I wanted to find out what predictability would look like. Our mornings, our evenings. Days where we'd be able to laze around together, and days where we'd be busy but still make time for each other. Gabriel was the type who'd leave notes around the house. I wanted a chance to find out. I wanted a chance to see if I was the sort of person who would save every note and to see how fast the collection would grow.

I hadn't spent all that long in Gabriel's room, but it had always struck me as safe and deeply personal, like he trusted me enough to show me a part of his mind. Now, the room was a wreck. One wall was eviscerated, blasted away by my uncontrolled magic. A thick layer of rubble and dust coated the floor, along with a few dried leaves that had blown in past the mismatched collection of tarps someone had tried to cover the hole with. The bed was still unmade, and chunks of charred wallpaper and brick dust littered the sheets.

I sank onto the edge of the bed, staring at the gaping hole. This was my doing. My stomach lurched, and tears fell from my eyes. I swiped at them angrily. I had done this, and moping about it wouldn't help anyone. I took a deep breath, stood up, and went to go find Theo.

Theo was in one of the half dozen rooms with sofas and squashy chairs. I was pretty sure some of them were sitting rooms and some were parlors, but I had absolutely no idea what the difference was between the two. This one was the one I privately thought of as the Ugly Statue Room, for reasons that anyone who had ever been in the room would've been able to figure out instantly.

Theo was sprawled in an armchair, one leg up over the armrest, the other stretched out on the floor. They were playing a video game on their handheld console, and I heard a tinny ‘yahaha!' come from its speakers as I hovered in the doorway. I rapped my knuckles on the doorframe, and Theo pressed a button and looked up at me.

"Hey," I said awkwardly. "Can we talk?"

Theo considered me for a moment, then nodded. They set aside the console and waved a hand at the chair across from them. Of all the vampires who lived with Gabriel, Theo was most comfortably adapted to modern clothing. They were wearing a Henley and jeans, with colorful socks beneath the neatly folded cuffs. It might have been easy to forget exactly how old they were, but the confidence of their posture and the coldness of their expression made it clear. This was someone who had seen kingdoms rise and fall. Being allowed to forget that was a privilege I was no longer allowed.

The leather creaked under me as I sat down, and I fidgeted with the cuff of my sweater.

"You said you wanted to talk," Theo said. "So, talk."

"I'm so sorry," I blurted. "It was an accident, but I know that doesn't make it better. The curse was going wild, but I still need to take responsibility for what I did, and, and, I don't expect you to forgive me for it, but I thought I should clear the air and?—"

Theo held up a hand. "Whoa, okay. You also need to breathe. Humans need to breathe, so you should probably… do that."

Behind them, the Ugly Statue Room's titular Ugly Statue leered at me. It was a horrible bust of either a very ugly old man or a very well-dressed, shaved orangutan. It wasn't helping with my composure.

I sucked in a breath and blew it out again too quickly. At Theo's prompting glare, I did it again, slower. It did help a bit.

"So, you killed me," Theo said. Their tone was usually harsh, and I hadn't gotten to know them well enough to tell when it was or wasn't playful. Now, though, they were speaking surprisingly gently, especially given their words. "It's not like it stuck."

I blinked at them.

"I've died a bunch of times," Theo told me with a one-shouldered shrug. "That one wasn't so bad. I mean, it did suck, but it wasn't as bad as being hanged. Or burned at the stake. Or… You get the idea."

"You're…" I felt severely off-balance. I didn't know how I'd thought this conversation would go, but I hadn't pictured anything like this. "I figured you'd be furious."

Theo scoffed. "Are you gonna do it again?" they asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I—What? No!" I sputtered.

"Then, we're fine," they said. "You apologized, and you're not gonna do it again. It was a quick, clean death, and I didn't even scar."

I shook my head, baffled.

Theo's face shifted, showing their age again. "Was it your first time?" Their raspy voice was somber. I got the sense they'd asked that question before.

I shook my head, locking eyes with the Ugly Statue. It was easier than meeting Theo's gaze. "It's always been in self-defense before," I murmured. "Or, you know, setting a ghost free. Ending a curse."

"Not the same," Theo said.

"No," I agreed. "Not the same." I cleared my throat. "You've…?" I asked, and they nodded. "How many?"

Theo sighed and shook their head. Gabriel had mentioned once that Theo had been a soldier, and it was all too easy to picture them having that talk with the new recruits. They were brash in a way I could see being comforting. "There's a point," they said quietly, "where you stop counting."

We sat in silence for a moment. It wasn't uncomfortable, which surprised me.

"Wait, hang on. You were burned at the stake?" I asked.

Theo grinned. "Oh, yeah. Officially, it was for ‘dressing in the cloths of a lord', but unofficially, it was for having a threesome with the lord's wife and her lady's maid. Oh, and also for stealing a bunch of stuff. Like, a ton of stuff. Lotta gold."

"Huh." I blinked. "Worth it?" I asked after a beat.

Theo's grin widened. "Oh, absolutely worth it," they said with relish. Their smile faded, and they looked me in the eye. "Look, a couple of the times I died, it was for some dumb war, or because of some stupid shit I did. Most of the time it was because of, you know…" They waved a hand at themselves, a gesture that brought my eye to their short hair, their flat chest, their chipped nail polish, the pride stickers on the back of their game console. "You killed me because you were scared and cornered. I'm not gonna hold a grudge. I've survived worse than you, Evangeline."

"You shouldn't forgive me just because you've been through worse," I said.

Theo smiled again, tired and small. "Probably not," they agreed. "But I'm going to, and you can't stop me. So, you're gonna have to find a way to live with that."

The only way to shake myself out of the uncomfortable, pensive mood the talk with Theo had left me in was to find something else to throw myself at. Time was flying by, too, and I wanted to get to Gabriel as soon as I possibly could. I figured the best way to start was by finding the self-appointed brains of the operation. It didn't take long to track her down.

"Ah, Evangeline," said Iskra. She was perched in a black rattan chair in a small, sunny room filled with plants. On the matching side table next to her was a delicate porcelain teacup, complete with saucer, filled with blood. Nestled halfway into a massive fern in the corner was another chair, where Marcus sat with the little roll of tools he used to clean his vape spread across his knees. The vape itself, an awful thing shaped like a long-stemmed wooden pipe, was disassembled in his hands.

"Do come in," Iskra said, even though I had already stepped through the open door. "We have much to discuss."

I perched on the only remaining seat in the room, a bench that matched the big chairs but was way less imposing. It made me feel a little like I'd been called into the principal's office—at least from what I'd seen in the movies since I'd never really gotten in trouble at school.

"As you have already been made aware, I was visiting the citadel to retrieve items from my collection," Iskra said. She took a sip of blood, then set the cup back on its saucer so smoothly, the porcelain didn't even clink. "Most of the pieces I reclaimed were taken with the desire to keep them out of the wrong hands, or purely because of their sentimental value," she continued. "However, I believe that one of the sentimental items could be of some use to you in our current predicament."

"Maybe you should just show her," Marcus suggested.

Iskra handed me a small wooden box, round, and maybe the diameter of a ping pong ball. It opened a little stiffly—the hinges were old and a bit battered—to reveal a ring nestled inside. The ring was a gold band with a clear, flat disc of stone set into it. Small patterns were stamped into the metal around the edge of the stone, and when I held it up to get a closer look, the stone glinted with barely there shimmers of pink, blue, and green. It looked old, like a well-preserved archaeological find still weighed down by time after it had been cleaned off and made museum ready.

"It's beautiful," I said. "What, uh… what is it, exactly?"

Iskra gave Marcus a sharp look, as if to say ‘what have you been teaching your apprentice? She should be able to recognize this extremely rare magical artifact right away.' He seemed unbothered, though, as he screwed his pipe back together.

"This ring was crafted by Aurelia Ursa," Iskra said, and I jumped like I'd been electrocuted.

"Holy fuck," I said. "What? No. Holy shit, you can't give me this. Jesus Christ!" Every witch knew of Aurelia Ursa. Every vampire, too, probably. She had been one of the witches, thousands of years ago, who had worked to create eternal life, and had instead created vampires. That entire coven was legendary, and according to the stories, Aurelia had been the strongest of them. The right collector would snap up anything she'd owned for eye-watering amounts of money. Something she'd made? It'd be enough to retire on. It would be enough for your grandkids to retire on. I was instantly hyperaware of how sweaty my palms were.

Iskra watched me with a delicately amused twist of her lips, and Marcus looked like he was trying not to laugh.

"Aurelia's interest in eternal life was really more of a diversion," Iskra said, taking another calm sip of blood. "Her true passion was for ley lines. You know about ley lines, I assume?"

"The natural flow of wild magic," I said. "With more power where the lines intersect."

Marcus nodded at me proudly.

"Just so," Iskra agreed. "Aurelia discovered that if a witch is powerful enough, they can slip into the stream of magic and let themselves be taken to an intersection of the ley lines. Assuming, of course, they have something to help them navigate."

I twisted the ring. The light glinting off the stone changed color. At one angle, bright white. At another, the flecks of color were back.

"The ring is a compass," I said.

Iskra tilted her head to the side. "Well, no, but if that's the analogy that works for you, it's good enough."

"And you think I'm powerful enough to use this?" I put the ring back in its box extremely carefully and wiped my hands on my jeans in a way I hoped was subtle.

"I had the chance to meet Aurelia," Iskra told me. "She was older then, and had only gotten more powerful with age. I could see her power, child, and it was comparable to yours. Perhaps a little stronger, but you're young yet."

Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. "I need a minute," I blurted, thrusting the box back into her hands and standing up. I tangled my fingers into my hair and paced the length of the little room a couple times.

"Does she do this often?" I heard Iskra ask Marcus. "When I met her before, she didn't seem terribly prone to histrionics."

"You just told her she's as powerful as a witch who helped to create an entirely new species," Marcus pointed out.

"Nearly as strong," Iskra said.

"Even so. It's a lot to take in."

Iskra sniffed in disapproval. "Still, there is such a thing as decorum. A girl of her age should be more poised." There was a pause. I stared at a ficus. "How old is she, exactly? I can never tell with humans. Eighty? Ninety?"

"Twenty-five, I believe," Marcus told her.

"Twenty-six," I muttered.

"Ye gods," Iskra said. "Practically a babe in arms. I suppose I can tolerate some light histrionics, in that case."

I took a deep breath and sat back down on the bench. "Okay," I said. "Okay, okay. So, um. Teleportation?"

"More or less," Marcus said. "To specific locations. It isn't an all-access pass to the world."

"But," Iskra said, "some of Aurelia's interest in ley lines managed to become part of the vampires she created. Even now, my kind are attuned to the ley lines. We tend to be drawn to their intersections. That's part of the reason why there are so many of us in this city. Eldoria is practically a spiderweb of the things. Most of us who have the means have settled directly on top of the intersections. And naturally, the most important buildings in the city are constructed with the ley lines in mind."

"Like the citadel," I said.

She flashed a small, quick smile. "Like the citadel, yes."

"So, if Gabriel's being held there, I can get in and find him," I said, leaning forward eagerly on the bench. "I can get him out."

"And I am willing to bet that my son is indeed being held there," Iskra said. "Unfortunately, I know Roland extremely well. I know what he's likely subjecting Gabriel to. I've taken the liberty of compiling a short list of the most likely locations where he might be held." She raised a pale hand and began to count off the options on her fingers. "First, the portrait hall. It's filled with paintings of the family over the years, including depictions of Roland's self-proclaimed noble conquests. Second, the blood cellar. If he is doing what I suspect he's doing, the easy access might appeal to him. Roland is deeply lazy, you understand. The third and final option is Gabriel's room."

"How close are they to the intersections?" I asked.

"The first two are practically on top of them," Iskra told me. "And the third isn't far. If we can teach you, you could inspect all three locations fairly quickly."

"That's a big if," I muttered.

"It is," Marcus said on a sigh. "But between myself and Iskra, I believe we can pull it off."

There was a discreet cough from the doorway, and Marcus and I startled. Iskra didn't. Damien stood in the hallway.

"Hey," he said. "They told me you guys were up here. Room for one more?" He was looking at me weirdly again. It was a hungry, searching look, like he was trying to memorize me as quickly as he could. It wasn't lecherous, though, which put me even more on edge. If he'd just been horny, I would've known how to deal with it.

"I'm glad you got out okay," Damien told me. "Xarek told me you two made it out, but…" He gave me an odd, strained smile. "Anyway. I would've come sooner, but?—"

"You had to keep up your cover," I snapped, and he winced.

Iskra was watching him with a cold, assessing expression I was glad wasn't turned in my direction. Marcus seemed content to observe all of this from his spot halfway inside the fern.

"They were getting rid of your stuff," Damien told me. "I didn't want to risk sneaking anything out, not with the magic detectors in place, but I found your portal stone necklace."

My necklace. I hadn't taken it off since Marcus had given it to me. It was my emergency escape—a portal out of danger when I needed it. Most of the time, I just smoothed my thumb over the dip in the center of the pendant to soothe myself. It was a reminder that I could get out of damn near any situation if it went really bad, which gave me that extra bit of bravery to stay and try to fix it. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed the thing, but suddenly it was impossible to ignore.

"I thought I could try to grab it for you before it's destroyed," Damien said. "Seems like it could be useful."

"I don't think I'm gonna need it anymore," I said. "But there's someone who does. You should take it to Gabriel."

"The pendant won't get him out," Marcus said. "The citadel is warded against that sort of magic, but it's a good thought."

"I know it won't," I muttered, suddenly embarrassed. "It's not for that." There was no way the wards would let a charm like that through, and without witch training, Gabriel wouldn't be able to activate the stone. But when I was locked up, it would've helped me to have something of Gabriel's with me.

"You should take it to him anyway," Iskra said, unfreezing enough to speak. "My son is sentimental. He feels deeply. A reminder of Evangeline might be exactly what he needs."

My cheeks flushed. The fact Iskra thought I meant that much to him reassured me, and the fact she didn't seem to actively disapprove was a nice bonus.

"I'd have to find him first," Damien said.

"You don't know where he is?" I asked. "Aren't you supposed to be Roland's right-hand man?"

Damien shook his head, frowning. "Roland's being cagey about it. I think he's starting to get suspicious of me. Or, hell, maybe he's just getting paranoid about everybody these days."

"Iskra has a list of places he might be," I said sweetly, gesturing at the stone-faced vampire queen. "You two should chat."

The corner of Damien's eye twitched, and I bit back a grin. It was nice to know Iskra's terrifying stare could get to him, too.

But something bugged me. "If the citadel is warded against spells like the portal, how do we know I'll be able to get in?" I asked. I didn't want to go into detail about what we were planning with Damien in earshot.

"Because what we're planning is old enough that they won't have bothered to ward against it," Iskra said.

"Like how there aren't traffic laws in major metropolitan areas concerning horse-drawn carts," Marcus added helpfully.

"I feel like there are definitely laws about those," I said. "But okay." I turned to Damien, who perked up when I gave him my attention. "Get that stone to Gabriel," I told him. "As soon as possible, okay?" I hoped Gabriel would recognize it for what it was—a piece of me, and a promise. A reminder that he wasn't truly alone.

Damien nodded, and I looked at him expectantly. After a moment, I cleared my throat. "Like, now," I prompted.

He practically sprinted out of the room.

"What an odd man," Iskra said, steepling her fingers. "I've never liked him very much."

"Yeah, he's pretty…" I made a vague gesture, which she understood, even though I wasn't totally sure what I'd been going for. "Okay, so, we have a way in. We have a morale boost for Gabriel. Level with me, guys. Once we get him out, will it be safe to come back here? I mean, Lord De Montclair for sure knows about this place, and the wards aren't gonna be enough to stop him."

"It seems as though you've answered your own question," Iskra said, taking a sip from her little teacup of blood.

"But it was a worthwhile one," Marcus said. I could feel the good cop-bad cop dynamic falling into place. "We shouldn't bring him here, no. But I have a safe house of my own that I can offer up for the cause. It's not a mansion, but it should suit our needs."

I nodded. "All right. So, now I just need to learn how to fucking teleport. No problem."