“Is anyone familiar with that piece?” the professor asks, cutting through the silence in class. Despite the deep anguished notes he was playing a minute ago, the professor’s voice is surprisingly warm.
Only one student lifts their arm in our full classroom. The professor glances in our direction, and after a brief nod, Ife answers.
“If I’m not mistaken, that was the third movement of ConcertoNumber Seven,The Final Dawn.” She clears her throat, before adding: “It’s one of your own compositions, sir.”
A somewhat bashful smile appears on the professor’s features, and he nods. “You’re not mistaken.” The students around us scribble what Ife said, while he continues. “You all might find it quite vain of me to start the semester with one of my own pieces—though our kind are not particularly known for our humility, are we?”
A few chuckles travel across the candlelit hall. I stare down at my own notebook, the scribbles of what I’ve drawn so far staring back at me like an unravelling spiderweb. I feel like tearing out the page, crumpling it up, and throwing it away, but instead, I move to another sheet.
“Regardless, I thought it would be an ideal piece to introduce our semester. During your first four months we’ll be looking at how conversion affects composition. What you just listened to was the first thing I composed as a vampire, just three days after I was sired.” He brushes his pale blond hair away from his eyes. He has high cheekbones and full lips, though he’s maybe a little too thin. In an odd way, he reminds me of Julia.
I glance down at my schedule. The Vampire Tradition in Music is taught by Dr Sven Gustavsson.
He proceeds to narrate the story of how he was sired. He was a well-established cellist in Stockholm at the age of twenty. Gustavsson began playing for aristocrats and was invited one night to play for a mysterious countess, who wouldn’t share her name and hid in the shadows. He expected she’d offer her patronage and sponsor him, like many other aristocrats did, but instead she simply followed him. Every concert, every salon, he’d see her lurking at the back. Sometimes he’d even dream of her. But she always kept her distance.
“It was the most frightening and exhilarating year of my life,” he says. “Finally, one night I received a letter. She asked me to compose something inspired by her, and promised that if it pleased her, she would give me a gift that no other patron would ever be able to match.” He sits down, carefully lifting his cello. “This next piece is the one that convinced her to gift me with immortality.”
His story creeps under my skin. I’m far too tense, and I can’t help fearing that the woman who sired him is lurking somewhere behind us, waiting to strike again. There are too many vampires, and I appear to be the only human in the room. Gustavsson’s music doesn’t alleviate the feeling. It’s raw, awful, as though he knew his end was coming when he first wrote it. Once it finishes, the room is too quiet. Professor Gustavsson remains seated, eyes shut as if he’s praying.
And then he’s up again, striding across his platform to tell us about another composer, Caroline Campbell. “Only three of her compositions survived,” he says. “She was famous for not writing anything down, and her melodies were so complex that even if you tried to memorise them, you could never capture the original sound. Campbell played for royalty, human and vampire alike, though most of her repertoire is now as lost asThe Book of Blood and Roses.”
I’m rummaging through my bag for another pen, too caught up in the movement to fully react to the name of the book. Gustavsson drops his gramophone’s needle onto a record, a crackling piano filling the lecture hall. I grasp my pen, tight, and stare down at the blank paper. I didn’t imagine that.
He saidit.
The Book of Blood and Roses.
I bite down a smile.Finally.I watch those around me. No one appears to be confused by the title.
“What’sThe Book of Blood and Roses?” I whisper to Ife, as Professor Gustavsson bobs his head to the piano piece.
“You’ve never heard of it?” she asks, disbelief widening her eyes.
“I don’t think so.”
“A compendium of lost knowledge,” Ife says, leaning closer. “Though it’s been missing for centuries. No one knows who the author is, but people say it took them until their last breath to write the last word.”
“What sort of knowledge?” I ask. I need to know everything, yet I have a feeling I’m about to hit a wall, like another dead end in the meandering tunnels that run beneath this godforsaken campus.
“Methods,” Ife says slowly, “to kill vampires.”
A thrill runs through me. It is just as Penny said.
“And where is it?” I ask, trying to keep excitement out of my voice.
Ife frowns at me for a split second, with what I think is suspicion, but then shakes her head. “It’s lost,” she says. “And let’s hope it stays that way.”
I focus on the professor as he moves between one piece and the next, occasionally picking up his cello. The lecture drags on, two whole hours that feel like ten, before giving us three topics to choose from for our first essay.
“Human,” someone whispers in front of us as I pack my satchel. I glance ahead, surprised to find an unfamiliar vampire staring right at me. “Professor Gustavsson wants a word,” he says.
Ife furrows her brows, first at the vampire, and then at me. “She has a name,” Ife hisses.
“Well, I don’t know it,” the vampire counters. I shrug and tell her to leave withoutme.
The stench of incense grows stronger as I walk down the aisle between the tables, my boots echoing on the ancient tiles. Gustavsson is erasing his blackboard, filled with names of several obscure vampire composers. He then sets about fixing his tie before finally looking down atme.
“Ah, you must be”—he glances over at a list on his desk, and then at me again, with a frown—“Cassie Smith?”
