We need to trust each other, or there’s no point to any of this.
But was it truly trust if you had to tell someone everything? And Sam found she didn’twantto ask Hel’s permission. She didn’t want to give her the chance to say no.
“Fine,” Sam said, ostensibly answering Van Helsing, but nodding to the ghost. “I’m just tired.”
“Go to bed,” Van Helsing said. “You shouldn’t be up, anyway.”
Praying she wasn’t about to make her last mistake, Sam took her lantern and padded over to the tea set, selecting a cup thorny with roses. She drew the small silver-and-iron knife from where she’d taken to keeping it, on a ribbon around her neck. Flicking out the silver blade, she held it over her wrist.
The ghost’s eyes gleamed, her lips parting, as she flowed almost involuntarily toward her.
Sam’s hand trembled, the teacup suddenly seeming capable of holding an ocean of blood. What if she cut too deep? What if she couldn’t stop the flow? Then she’d have to confess everything.
It didn’t have to be much, Sam told herself. Hel had cut herself on the inside of her ring finger to assuage the phantom in the Palais Garnier?—a few drops was all it had taken?—and if M. Voland was to be believed, channel blood was potent.
Footsteps and muddled conversation drew her attention to the door. The changing of the guard. Perfect. Hel would not be expecting her to say anything, and so wouldn’t be listening for whatever might come.
Biting her lip, Sam looked away and pressed the knife to the inside of her ring finger, only to realize that wasn’t going to work. Resisting the urge to look away, she swiped the knife down quickly, hissing as a line of fire opened down her finger. Blood welled.
Sam held her fist out over the teacup, but before the first drops hit the teacup, the ghost flew at her. She flinched, closing her eyes, peeking through her lashes to find the ghost had stopped right in front of her, her pupils swollen with hunger, her mouth parted to reveal her fangs.
Sam still held the silver-and-iron knife, the edge wet with her blood. So close, the ghost wouldn’t even see her coming. She could disperse her if she wanted to. But she found she didn’t want to.
Slowly, achingly slowly, keeping her eyes on Sam’s the whole time, giving her time to pull away if she wanted, the ghost latched her mouth onto Sam’s finger. Sam gasped, her breath catching like ice in her chest. The ghost stopped, looking up, her brow furrowed with concern. But Sam nodded, shuddering.
“It’s all right,” she said softly.
The ghost required no further encouragement.
Her mother had said that when a vampire drank your blood, it was horrifically sensual. Butsensualwasn’t quite the right word for this. It wasn’t like her kiss with Hel, which had consumed her. It wasn’tphysical.
No, this was the seduction of the dark, of letting go. Of embracing her power, whatever others might think of her, and of not asking permission. She felt heady with rebellion and blood loss, and let out a shuddering breath. Startled at the sound, the ghost unlatched, licking blood from her phantom fangs like a cat.
It was as if the veil between worlds had parted, spilling color into the ghost’s features. Her blonde hair was burnished like gold, her skin pinked, a delicate bloom on her cheeks. And this time, when she moved those ruby-red lips, Sam could hear her voice.
“It has been so long since I’ve been warm,” the ghost said in a throaty whisper. Her accent was English, and somehow sounded like home. Like her father, she realized. “Thank you, Samantha.”
Sam startled. “You know my name.”
“You don’t recognize me, do you?” The ghost laughed, tilting her head to her reflection in the mirror on the wall, its frame so ornate that it made everyone look as if they’d stepped out of a Greek play. Sam followed her gaze to her reflection and swallowed a scream. In the ghost’s reflection, a gory line drew itself across her throat, her cheeks puffed with whole heads of garlic. A sawed-off wooden stake embedded itself in her chest, drenching her white nightgown bloody, as if she’d just given birth. “How about now?”
Vampires had no reflections?—but ghosts... In a mirror, ghosts appeared the way they had when they’d died, which usually meant murdered. The severed head, the garlic, the stake?—these were the usual treatments for vampires. It could be any vampire.
Except it wasn’t. Sam recalled one of her father’s rare stories, told in the quiet of the night, not with the bombast of her grandfather, but with a stillness that reminded you it was true.
Before Sam was born, there had been a vampire the children of Hampstead Hill called the bloofer lady, described as a lady in white. A vampire who had been slain by those who loved her best, led in the act by Professor Van Helsing.
“Lucy?” Sam whispered. “Lucy Westerna?”
“Is that how you refer to your elders?” Lucy tutted. It sounded ridiculous coming out of her mouth. She’d been only nineteen when Dracula had turned her?—younger than Sam was now. Then, before Sam could protest, “No, please, I do prefer it. Your mother was like a sister to me?—which means that you’re practically my niece. Besides, we’ve known each other far too long to stand on formality.”
Aunt Lucy, then.
“How long have you been watching me?” Sam asked.
“Oh, love,” Aunt Lucy said fondly. “I’ve watched you grow up, since you were ten years old. Your guardian angel. Thoughguardian ghostwould be more accurate, I suppose. Or should it beguardian vampire? Oh, whatever you want to call me is fine, truly. I was never the one who was good with words?—that was Mina, and now you, it seems.”
“That long?” Sam said. Before she’d arrived in Ireland then, before the Wild Hunt. And it occurred to her how strange it was that, of all the ghosts in the world, she should be haunted by the ghost of her mother’s dearest friend.
