by Eva Alton
Francesca stood up, smoothing her dress. “As for you, caro mio,” Francesca said to Clarence, “have you shown her your paintings already?”
Chapter 18
Alba
The shock of my encounter with Mark didn’t really wear off as the days passed, but more the opposite. I ended up canceling my plans of playing in the park with the girls and made a habit of staying inside until dusk. I was tempted to read Jean-Pierre’s spell at least a dozen times, but I contained myself, remembering his warning not to try anything indoors.
After a while, I was already dying to read those mysterious magic words. One night, I took courage and told myself that the possibilities of meeting Mark in the darkest corner of Saint Anne’s park were next to nil. I rushed out of The Cloister, leaving the girls in the music room while Francesca played Chopin at the piano.
I sat on a bench near the gates of the cemetery and carefully unfolded the piece of paper Jean-Pierre had given me. It was written in the gothic script one would expect from a former monk, with neat square letters ended in the typical diamond-shaped points an old-fashioned nib would leave. The text was preceded by a larger, blue and red title decorated with adorable demons and cherubs:
Fulminatio
Four Queens Spell
To be performed beneath a waning moon
After that came two rows of ominous-looking skulls, all drawn in black ink: the first row had two of them and the second one ten. Then there was a poem in Latin, which must be the main text of the spell. I glanced through the words, trying not to read them too thoroughly just in case something exploded, or I killed a passerby by mistake.
At the end of the poem there was a footnote in tiny script, which explained that the power of the spell would be directly proportional to the number of queens participating, one being the minimum, with the Queen of Fire the most suitable candidate for this spell and the Queen of Water the least appropriate.
I had no idea who these queens might be and whether I was supposed to be any of them. If I was, no doubt I must be the Queen of Water, being the least suitable for magic as she seemed to be. It wasn’t very clear, either, what the spell was for―of course, the term Fulminatio didn’t leave much to the imagination, but it might have been a metaphor, or just a quirky title given by a bored medieval metaphysician with a sense of humor.
Looking upwards toward the night sky, I glimpsed the thin, D-shaped sliver of a waxing moon―the total opposite of what was recommended in the brief instructions. Should I try anyway? Probably not, said the maddening voice living inside my head. I folded back the thick sheet of paper and stood up, deliberating about the moon, the four queens and the purpose of the spell, as the inner voice kept reprimanding me for my ingenuity. Alba, please, you don’t believe in old wives’ tales, do you?
No, I didn’t believe in spells, but what was I supposed to think, when the text had come directly from the hands of a creature who should have only existed in my imagination?
I strolled in the deserted park, lost in my thoughts. Saint Anne was one of the largest parks in Emberbury, and it closed after nightfall, which meant I had the whole park to myself. The old cemetery, where the entrance to The Cloister was hidden, hadn’t been used for at least two centuries. It occupied one of the least busy areas of the park, and one where the gardeners didn’t really put much effort in keeping the greenery at bay. It lacked the manicured exquisiteness of the main area, but its leggy shrubs and irregular treetops conveyed the reckless gardens the allure of a wild animal or a cloud shredded by the wind.
“Do you know the difference between a garden in the French and the English manner?” I heard Clarence say, as he came out of the shadows.
“Is this a riddle? Because I hate riddles.”
He laughed, and I caught a glimpse of his fangs. “No, it’s not a riddle,” he answered, approaching me so silently that I had to check he wasn’t hovering over the dry leaves. “French gardens are regular and structured, like Versailles. Have you been there?”
I nodded slowly, remembering the lawns shaped like perfect circles and spirals and the trees so perfectly geometric that you had to touch the leaves to make sure they weren’t made of plastic.
“So have I,” he continued, “but French gardens upset me.”
“Of course they do. You are English. Isn’t that what your people do? Criticize the neighbors?” I really didn’t know why I was being so sharp with him, but I attributed it to my frustration with the phase of the moon and the enigmatic four queens. He didn’t seem offended by my comment, though.
“Oh, well. I just wanted to talk about gardening, but this is going to take longer than I expected.” He offered his elbow in his lovely gentlemanly fashion, and I gave up to the tiny sparkles his touch usually started at the base of my chest. I shook my head and quickly put them out with my mental fire-extinguisher.
“First of all,” he was saying, “I’m not interested in political labels anymore. I don’t consider myself a citizen of any country, as a matter of fact. At the moment, I hold an American passport―which happens to be forged, by the way―but who knows where I will be in two hundred years, and what flags and borders the humans will make up in the meantime? So please understand that my dislike for French landscaping has nothing to do with my birthplace.”
“Understood,” I agreed solemnly, as we paced side by side down the empty paths around the graveyard. A small, dark shadow passed by, brushing my legs, and a pair of blue-violet eyes looked directly into mine. Unlikely as it was, it seemed to be the same cat which had kept appearing in my house during the last months―once again.
“Miss Jilly!” I blurted, stupefied, and Clarence glared at me with an arched eyebrow.
“I beg your pardon?” he said in confusion.
“That black cat,” I explained, pointing at the animal, who sat by a tree trunk, staring at us. “It has purple eyes. I have seen it before, and I wonder what she’s doing here. Maybe she followed me.”
“I see no cats, nor can I sense any beasts nearby. They usually run away when they smell me.” Clarence’s nose moved funnily up and down as he sniffed the air. He paced toward the animal and nearly crashed into it.
“You are about to walk into―” I started to say; but the cat stood up, nudged Clarence in a weirdly loving way, then passed through the tree trunk, becoming see-through in the process. I blinked once, then twice. Then Miss Jilly was gone. “Never mind.” I shook my head. “I must have... imagined it.”
No, I hadn’t imagined it, but I decided to throw the vision into the junk room of my mind for a while.
Too much weirdness for one single day.
“You were saying... something about plants...” I encouraged him to continue, as I inspected the trunk of the tree where Miss Jilly had disappeared―partly to make sure it was real, and partly to steady my wobbly legs. The tree felt solid and rugged and basically just like any ordinary tree should be, but I spotted no paw prints around it.
“Oh, yes, as I was saying,” Clarence continued, seeming pleased that I still remembered after the interruption. “What I like about English gardens, my dear Isolde, is the same I admire about you: they are wild, obscure and irregular, and their beauty derives from a slightly unkempt, although completely irresistible, air of dishevelment.”
“I’d like to say thank you, but I’m not entirely sure that was a compliment,” I muttered with a frown, still dizzy after the brief glimpse of an apparition of a cat. He laughed out so loud that I worried someone might spot us and alert the police about the two trespassers strolling around Saint Anne’s park after closing time.
“Oh, but it was!” he exclaimed, stopping to study me with feigned innocence, which made him look exasperatingly handsome.
“Why do you keep hitting on me like that, Clarence?” I asked after a pause, remembering Francesca’s remarks in the library. “Did Elizabeth order you to charm me so I don’t escape The Cloister? Is that included in your duties as... my guardian?”
“Mos
t definitely not,” he answered in all seriousness, then added formally, “Please excuse me if I offended you in any way.”
“No, it’s not that.” I hesitated. It was difficult for Clarence to offend me when he always chose his words so carefully. Still, something... something seemed off, and I couldn’t pinpoint what it was. “But I have questions, Clarence, many of them. About your famous Five Rules. About Elizabeth. About Francesca and what she meant with your paintings. Would you enlighten me? Or will I be left in the dark forever?”
“Left in the dark, you say,” he artfully changed the subject and turned back to the main stone path. “This reminds me why I came here in the first place. I wanted to share an idea with you. My mission was to... enlighten you. But in the literal sense of the word.”
“Enlighten me,” I muttered, following his suddenly faster pace with a sigh of exasperation.
“Look at this, Andersson.” He pointed at a couple of power manholes and street lights near the old cemetery. “Do you think you could use these for your electrification project, with a bit of help from your favorite sticky-fingered vampire?”
I stood in the middle of the park, staring in confusion at the metallic trapdoor under the tips of my ballerina shoes. “You mean... connecting The Cloister to the electrical grid? Here? We would need a permit. A project. We would have to hire an engineer, and strangers would come, ask questions...”
“Oh, no, not that way. That would be too risky. I was thinking of something more... low-key. Nobody would have to know,” he said in a soft whisper. Then he wiggled his fingers, reminding me of his undeniable talent for snatching rings from unsuspecting ladies. “As for the engineers―can you believe it? We already have one!” he said, pointing at me. “She’s right here!” He faced me, placed his open palms on my head and smoothed back my hair, going all the way down to my shoulders and the top of my arms, where they remained, feeling heavy and pleasant.
“I’m a civil engineer, not an electrical engineer,” I grumbled, stepping away from his touch, which impaired my ability to think straight. “There’s a big difference. And please don’t tell me you are thinking about stealing power from the city. Because that’s not nice. Not nice at all.”
“Oh, paltry trifles,” he chuckled. “They don’t call me Robin Hood for nothing.”
“They call you what? Who calls you that, anyway?”
“I call myself that. From time to time.”
I let out a loud breath of exasperation, but I kneeled over the manhole, nonetheless. “We would have to find the main power lines and tap into a discreet, middle point from the subsoil, directly from the catacombs. It would be difficult. And possibly deadly, because we would have no way to turn off the power while the works were underway.”
I turned on the flashlight on my phone and checked the position of the lights and the manholes. They were aligned and easy to follow, and after a brief search I found exactly what I wanted: an invisible, but doubtlessly present underground power line which must be running just a few yards over the ceilings of the Cloister. It would be relatively easy to drill a small canal and connect our small network to it. In a way, Clarence was right: maybe the city wouldn’t notice the slightly higher power consumption, as long as we only used power-saving appliances and didn’t go overboard with the hot water. Cablemen usually checked manholes whenever they had to repair something or pull new cables in, but nobody fiddled with the middle sections of the power line trenches unless bigger works were underway. Tapping into an intermediate point would lessen our possibilities of being discovered. And if the city decided to start digging around, we would notice in advance and detach our cables swiftly before they caught us.
“Okay,” I said, as the plan started to unfold in my head. “Maybe, just maybe, your idea isn’t as far-fetched as I first thought.”
He grinned. “See? I told you I wouldn’t keep you in the dark. Now I just have to persuade Elizabeth, but I think it can be accomplished―as long as we keep this discreet and forget about official permits. Can you draw electrical plans?”
“I guess I could try. In the worst of scenarios, the whole Cloister will blow up in the air. I think it’s worth the risk in exchange for a toaster and a water heater, isn’t it?”
“Anything to keep our stinky-blooded assistant happy.” He gave me a lopsided smile, and his eyes glowered just slightly in the half-darkness.
“I’ll try to find suitable software for the electrical calculations, and a sample project from my college notes so I can see how wiring diagrams are done. We could rent some machinery for the drilling works, but we’ll probably need a diesel generator to operate it, and those can be noisy.”
“Maybe your delightful vampire roommates will be able to help with their superhuman strength and spare you some machinery,” he said smugly, leaning against one of the black iron street lights. “Reportedly, Lillian once bit off a stalagmite out of anger when she found Alonso in a cave with another woman.” I cocked an eyebrow with disbelief, and he gave me a naughty smile. “Alright, maybe it was a stalactite. In any case, strong teeth and hands happen to be a wonderful plus of vampirism.”
“Is creative storytelling also a common trait among vampires?” I asked, as I tried to dispel the ridiculous picture of long-legged Lillian biting off stalagmites which had just formed in my head.
“No, that’s more of a personal peculiarity.”
“The flying thing seems like a good plus, too,” I pointed out, as my brain went on an independent quest to calculate the data I would have to collect to make the electrification project happen. “I wish I could behold the city from above whenever I wanted.”
“If it didn’t render us so vulnerable and miserably easy to kill, I would have to agree about flying. Still, being airborne is useful to pinpoint the location of ladies in distress,” he agreed with a devilish smirk.
“You know, Clarence, you can be quite nice sometimes.”
“No, I meant in order to drink their blood. They are the easiest targets.”
I frowned and stood still as his words sank in, then put some safety distance between us.
“That’s simply awful,” I said, grimacing with disgust as I stepped away from him.
“You didn’t believe that, did you?” he laughed. “Of course I’m not such a monster. I have much stricter criteria to pick my lunch.” He followed me, grinning, “Please, come back here, Isolde! I won’t bite you!”
By then, I had run away and was about to sneak back into the cemetery.
“Alba!” he called me, as I fought the old, rusty bolts to get away from him. “I owe you a dinner, have you forgotten? It was you who paid the last round.”
“I’m not hungry,” I lied, unlocking the screeching doors without turning back to look at him. “Go find yourself a tastier morsel, Clarence.”
“Come on,” he said, appearing by my side in less than a second and putting a cautious hand over my shoulder. “You said you had questions. Come with me, and I’ll do my best to give you answers.”
Chapter 19
Alba
“I must confess, I really enjoyed the maggot line,” Clarence said, smiling as he lifted his eyes from the notebook he had been drawing in with a piece of charcoal. He blew away the charcoal dust, leaving tiny black speckles on the white tablecloth, which, in turn, formed a star shape on the table.
The Midnight Owl was busy that evening, and Fiadh the waitress hadn’t had the chance to throw food at me just yet. The wine was surprisingly good, though Clarence had refused to share it with me once again, mumbling something about Tristan and the witch and things ending badly. Now the bottle stood tall on the table like a challenge, too expensive to be left behind, but too large for me to seriously consider finishing it.
“Sorry to disappoint, but the maggot line wasn't my idea,” I said, stabbing a piece of mozzarella with my fork. “I read it in Julia's diary. She got angry and shouted a curse at a bothersome stranger in the street. It ignited her magic somehow. Sadly, it didn't
work for me.”
“The kick in the Netherlands was quite neat, too.” His eyes were gleaming. “We should ask Francesca to teach you some of her tricks. She’s so good at pulverizing her opponents. Better than one would expect for someone her size.”
Francesca. I couldn’t make up my mind about the tiny blonde vampire girl: she looked so frail, but the way she carried herself and downed scotch without a flinch told me otherwise.
“Francesca and you―” I stopped in the middle of the sentence, not wanting to sound too nosey.
“We are very old friends,” he finished it for me, pouring some more wine into my empty glass. He carefully filled just one-third of it, like a good sommelier. Something in his tone told me he considered the subject closed, at least for the moment.
“Why did she ask you to show me your paintings?” I asked, picking up the glass.
“You sure like to go straight to the point, don’t you?” He clicked his tongue. “Whatever became of good old small talk?”
“Not everyone has a whole eternity to beat around the bush, Clarence. And you promised to answer my questions, remember?”
He sighed. “Absolutely. I’ll show them to you. But be warned―” he looked up from behind his eyebrows and shook his head, “you won’t like them.”
I thought about his sketch, the one he had shown me while we were having dinner for the first time, and I wondered why on earth I should dislike any of Clarence’s paintings: he was obviously a talented artist, and his creativity spilled over into everything he said and did, in a peculiar, witty manner which was difficult to overlook.
“Next question?” he said, posing like a prisoner under interrogation.
I smiled into my glass. “The Five Rules. Everybody is talking about them, but nobody has bothered so far to explain them to me.”
“That, my dear, is because you are not a vampire, so they are mostly irrelevant to you,” Clarence said, leaning back in his chair and extending his long legs under the table. His feet pushed against my chair, dragging it toward the wall behind me. I held myself onto the edge of the table and kicked him softly with a scolding look.