I barely getany sleep during my first night at Tynahine. I try to keep my eyes open, waiting for the leech to arrive, but soon, the usual nightmares start to invademe.
I’ve had this dream before: I’m at my parents’ funeral, but instead of the closed-casket service my aunt organised in real life, in my dream their coffins are wide open, revealing their mangled bodies. My extended family don’t show any horror at the sight. Instead, they ask me when the reception is starting, and if blood will be available.
Someone, a cousin, asks me what happened to my parents, and I try my best to explain, all while my cousin sharpens their fangs, not too interested in what I say. Instead, they point at the coffins, where my parents have started to stir, their skin knitting back together as fangs stretch out between their lips.
“It’s your turn, Rebecca,” my father says, before the nightmare ends.
Even when I wake, the images are stuck in my mind. My parents weren’t attacked byordinaryvampires. They weren’t compelled to offer their veins, nor were they taken to a blood party. Instead, they were killed byparchedvampires. A vampire becomes parched if they spend seven days without drinking blood. They transform into monsters stripped of all human features, with bloated bodies, elongated limbs, and razor-sharp teeth.
And even though the monsters that killed my parents were completely feral, their death wasn’t a random accident. Someone hadcalculated it: My parents had won a trip down to London, to dine in a nice restaurant and stay in a fancy hotel. At threea.m., their corpses were found in a car without a license plate, drained of blood and torn to shreds.
I went down to London to identify the bodies. It was my first time in the city, my first time out of Scotland. And in the mortuary, instead of a police officer, I found Penny. She was the one who lifted the sheet covering their faces. She told me what kind of monster did it. Then, after the funeral in Saint Ignatius, she offered me a train ticket and a chance at revenge, and I seized it as if it was my last breath.
I should sleep,I think, turning. If I don’t, I’ll be far too tired come tomorrow. I pull the sheets up to my neck, closing my eyes, just before a soft beeping sound comes from the front door. Instinctively, I reach for the stake hidden under my pillow. The warm wood slows my racing heart, and I remain still as the front door clicks open.
They’re finally here.
The footsteps that follow are quiet, careful, as though my roommate doesn’t want to wake me. My throat tightens. Maybe they’ve got a syringe with them, and will steal some of my blood that way, thinking I won’t notice. I’ll let them. The garlic in my blood won’t kill them quite as fast as a stake to the heart will, but that kind of death will be far more painful.
I breathe as quietly as I can, waiting for them to open the canopy. Instead, their steps turn to our shared bathroom. Seconds later, I hear the shower. My heart is racing, and they can probably hear it, can’t they? I hold the stake so tight my palm aches. I know I can’t kill them, but the weapon still calms my nerves.
Minutes pass and the shower stops. I hear the rustling of clothes, and I sit, waiting. I glance at my watch.
Just when I was wondering if threea.m.is a bit early for a vampire to go to bed, I hear the front door open once again, then slam shut. My breath slips through the gap between my front teeth, and I lift the curtains. The room is empty. The vampire’s side of the room is exactly as it was before I went to bed. Messy but deserted. The onlydifference is the bathroom, steam-filled, with a damp towel hanging from the heated towel rack.
I go back to bed, every muscle in my body tense. Adrenaline still rushes through my veins and, beneath that, the frustration of an unfinished mission, an enemy escaping unscathed.
Unsurprisingly, the nextmorning I am exhausted. The black curtains that separate the room are shut, just as they were when I arrived. Red hair dye runs down the drain as I shower, and when I get back out, I realise the vampire’s toothbrush has moved. Yesterday it was at a ninety-degree angle over the mouthwash. Now it’s at an eighty-degree angle. They must have come in here again after I fell asleep. Their towel is gone, the floor is clean, and there are no traces of blood.
I open the curtains that separate our room. On the right wall is a false window with a picture of the Highlands drenched in sunlight. Above it is a shelf full of books, thick tomes on different painters, some I’ve heard of, like Frida Kahlo, Gentileschi, and Van Gogh, followed by a dozen more with names that, based on the books’ opulent bindings, I imagine are vampire artists.
Just as I pick up one of these books, I picture the leech doing what I’m doing now. What if it has already rummaged through all my things? Before my thoughts spiral, I tug the curtains shut.
I really can’t do this.
I can’t stay here. Now that I’ve calmed down, now that I’m thinking clearly, I know there’s no way I can share a room with a vampire. I won’t be able to sleep, I won’t be able to focus. I skim over the campus map, looking for the registration office. Surely, if I ask for a new room, they’ll say yes?
Regardless of what I think is the best course of action, I have to tell Penny first. I leave the room and head to the end of the hallway, where there’s a small common area. A bunch of bookcases and three green velvet armchairs. I stand next to a small and blacked-out window, from where I have a perfect view of the hallway.
I dial her number, and she picks up after a minute. Even before she speaks, I can sense her bad mood. “I told youIwould contactyou,” she says, and I force myself to ignore her, clearing my throat. I look up, studying the cross vaults of the ceiling, and wait. “What is it?”
“I have a roommate,” I say, stepping over to the window. The shutters don’t budge when I try to open them. I thought Penny would have snapped at me immediately, told me thatof courseI have a roommate, and that I shouldn’t be complaining. But instead, she hesitates.
“You’re not supposed to have one,” she says. I try to picture her in her office, in the run-down convent, scribbling this conversation into her black notebook.
“And it’s a vampire,” I add. A heartbeat later, I say: “I’m going to ask for a new room.”
“No,” she says. “Any other student would be glad to have a vampire roommate. Jealous, even. Who are they?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
I hear a familiar sigh, somewhere between irritation and exhaustion. “As soon as you know who they are, tell me. But be careful,” Penny says. “Some vampires can be deceivinglyfriendly.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Frustration builds up inside me. But once she hangs up, I force myself to calm down. If Penny says I can’t ask for a new room, I won’t. I won’t disappoint her.
According to Penny,the hidden library is somewhere in the depths of the campus’s underbelly. A web of tunnels, centuries old, built for vampires to cross the campus during the summer. I can imagine the new human arrivals are not welcome down there.
I pull out Penny’s compass as I eat breakfast. It’s a clunky thing from the 1850s that’s supposed to help me make my way through the tunnels. While I’d been hoping for something a little more modern, Penny said it was all I’d need.
