I don’t react. Aliz’s hand is on my wrist, tugging me upwards, towards the stone stairs we first descended.Did she hear that?I look back at the ghost, and she smiles at me, showing me her horrible fangs. Then at the library, at rows upon rows of empty bookshelves.
Elia runs up behind us, and before I can get my breath back, the wooden doors of Ada’s secret library are slamming shut behind us. Elia takes the candle and the rose, and ever so slowly, as we walk along the wide hallway, the campus begins to shift back. Ancient engravings turn to simple bricks. The high ceiling lowers, and we pass through the doors. Then the nook is before us, dark until Elia positions the candle and the rose within. Aliz still hasn’t said a word since her sister’s instructions defined our joint fate. I seek out her gaze through the dimly lit tunnel, and she doesn’t meet mine.
Now I know how to get rid of the mark. How to set myself free, before every word Aliz says becomes my will.
Killing, taking a vampire’s life, is second nature forme.
But not for Aliz.
Chapter
Thirty-Three
Aliz cannot kill.
She’s innocent. She’s never wavered in her resolve to get rid of the Familiar’s mark, and that innate compassion of hers is the very reason why she can’t take someone else’s life.
She lies beside me, still and silent, and I run my fingers through her hair.
“We’ll find a way,” I whisper.
She clasps her hand over mine and closes her eyes.
Tynarrich’s dining hallis quiet but for the violent rain battering the windows, shutters raised now that night has fallen. “You knew there was no library,” I say once Elia shows her face.
“Where’s Aliz?” she asks.
“Studying,” I say. Staying apart from her is becoming more and more uncomfortable. The dull itch in my neck burns. I swear I can almost feel them, as though there are actual vines, actual thornspressed to my skin. I scratch at the lines through my tartan scarf, and Elia pulls my hand down.
“When Ada was alive, she had the most vivid memory you could imagine. It went beyond photographic. She could remember the day we met in colourful detail. She could remember the scents, the fabric of my dress, and each insult I spat in her direction. Everything.”
I stare at Elia, taking in the bitterness with which she speaks.
“Sheisthe library. Even as a ghost, she knows each and every book she’s ever read by heart. So I knew she would have the answers you were looking for. Consider it a miracle that she decided to tell you. She is fickle, even in death.”
“How exactly did she become a ghost?” I ask. “Did she die in the library?” I’ve never seen a human ghost, never mind a vampire one.
“She died in Budapest,” Elia says. “And I’m not entirely surehowher spirit managed to cling to our world. I found her ghost after her father burnt her books. She’d been dead for four years when Ares got through her labyrinth. Probably compelled a witch to show him the way. And when I came down to look at the wreck, she climbed out from the ashes, with no memory of her death or the bitch who killed her.”
“Catherine,” I say carefully, and Elia’s jaw tightens.
She clearly doesn’t want to talk about Callisto’s founder, so she continues. “I’d left my alchemy days behind by then, but I figured Ada must have left traces of her soul inThe Book of Blood and Roses.Whether this was intentional or not, I’m not sure. But she’s been haunting her library ever since.”
“Do you visit her every month?” I ask, and Elia offers me a sad smile.
“I would be a fool to do that,” she says. “Break my heart, again and again? I feel as though my life has been a drawn-out epilogue since the day she died. And seeing her frozen in time is just salt in the wound, Rebecca.”
“Be careful with my name,” I say. “That day, when I first saw you in the tunnels, you’d come from the library, right?”
“My wounds don’t heal as fast as Aliz’s do,” she admits. She thendirects me back to the matter at hand. “If you’re going to undo the contract, I think the Halloween Ball is the ideal place. A disguise, loud music—and that little palace has more hidden rooms than you would expect. Ada wasn’t just hunting animals, you see.”
I shiver, trying to get the ghost’s face out of my head. What did Elia ever see in Ada? “Right.” I look out the window, shutters open to reveal a foggy night.
“Come check it out tomorrow,” she says, getting up. “And I’ll try to get more dirt on your professor. If he is a Vassal, then he would be the best target for this so-calledeternal fountain.”
“No.” I grit my teeth. “If he is a Vassal, he might know more about my parents’ deaths than Callisto ever told me.” I look across the quiet hall, ensuring no one heard us. Elia frowns at my words. I can’t kill him until I know the truth. He might even be able to tell me, outright, if he was working for them—and if Penny knew I was going to be recruited before my parents died.
There must besomeone I can kill. I snap the pencil between my fingers, staring down at an essay I’m writing for Integration on the fall of the Old Council. Centuries ago, the bloodthirsty family heads were murdered one after the other by their heirs in a bizarre yet calculated massacre known as the Coup of the Heirs.Ares Astra only escaped being a victim of patricide because his daughter was set alight by his old bodyguards a year prior to the coup and fall of the Old Council.
