His lips pursed. “What do you mean when you call it that?”
Jareth wouldn’t try to trick me so I took the question at face value. “It’s a magic book. Like, a book ofspells.”
He nodded but not because he agreed. “This is not a book of spells,” he replied. “There’s magic here — dark magic — but it’s not a spell book. It’s called a codex.”
“Okay.” I stretched out my response.
He smirked at my confusion. “It’s an old word. It refers to a manuscript, or scripture. Old stories.”
“So it’s a story?” Lilac asked as she sat on the settee. Booker sat next to her.
“A story, or a retelling,” Jareth replied. He still hadn’t opened the book.
“Is it a story about Declan?” I asked.
“No.”
“How can you be sure? Declan was old.”
“Not this old.” He smiled.
“It’s in Romanian, isn’t it?” Galen asked.
“It is. I know this book. My people have been looking for it for a very long time. It is a cherished tale of death and life.”
He always had a flowery way of speaking. This was going above and beyond his usual. “How about you start from the beginning, tell us what it is, and then explain why Declan might have had it?” I suggested.
On a sigh, he opened the book. “Romania is an important location for vampire lore. How much do you know about it?”
“Treat us like newbies,” I suggested.
Jareth’s lips quirked before he looked to Lilac.
“We know some of the lore,” she replied.
He leaned back in his chair, leaving the codex on the first page. “American vampires are very different from European vampires. Think of it like how the Americans split from the British. They still had things in common, but they were no longer the same people. European vampires were tied to history and believed they were supposed to act a certain way. American vampires did their own thing. They created their own rules.”
He leaned forward and took his goblet from the table to sip. Itlooked as if it was filled with red wine. If it wasn’t, I didn’t want to know about it.
“Romanian lore revolves around the strigoi. They can either be living or dead and are believed to rise from their graves with the sole purpose of stalking the living. The reason the people of the time believed that is because bitten vampires often were buried and did rise from their graves. Born vampires didn’t, but they had no idea there were two types to worry about.”
I sat on the settee with Booker and Lilac, leaving the three remaining chairs for Aurora, Brody, and Galen. Everybody settled in.
“The living strigoi were the sort who could turn into vampires. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they would. They also were often minions of the dead strigoi.
“Some believed the strigoi could shapeshift,” he continued. “A strong strigoi could control the minds of humans and make them see things. The strigoi were vulnerable to holy water and could be killed with a stake in the heart. There are other methods to kill vampires but that method was the first learned.”
“Obviously you weren’t spreading around your weaknesses,” Galen guessed.
“Definitely not.” Jareth shook his head. “The Romanians got some things right but other things wrong. The living strigoi weren’t born being vessels. The strigoi population in Romania was high, especially after a few plagues wiped out much of the human population.”
I was ahead of him. “The living strigoi were dhampirs.”
He nodded. “There were many in Romania but most of them were wiped out after about fifty years.”
“The vampires killed their own offspring?” Booker asked. “Wouldn’t they want to protect them?”
Jareth shrugged. “When my people learned they could mate with humans, they were excited, but not for the reasons you may think. First, it’s important to note that only born vampires can create children with humans. Bitten vampires can’t procreate at all. Born onescan create other vampires with vampire mates … and children with humans.”
