‘Why do you have a sword?’ she asked.
‘Passed down through my family,’ I replied. We really do have to get out of here, I thought.
‘What is this? Ita fert . . .’
‘Ita fert corde voluntas. It’s Latin,’ I said. ‘It means the heart wills it.’
‘The heart wills it,’ echoed Tracy after a moment. ‘I like that.’
Together, we looked at the longsword I had got so used to. I supposed, standing there next to someone who had never seen it before, it was quite magnificent.
‘What’s all over your balcony?’ Claudia asked, and I turned. She had her hands pressed against the glass of the balcony door. She lifted her chin to get a better view.
And there, still stubbornly sticking to the tiles, were my vampire remains. Most had washed away in summer rainstorms, but a few glimmers shone under the midday sun.
‘Were you doing an art project?’ Claudia asked.
‘I’m not sure what they are.’ I decided that playing dumb was my best bet. ‘Let’s go, shall we?’
Before I knew it, we were on our way. I opened the window of Claudia’s BMW, feeling the late summer air whip through the back seat and toss my hair about my face.
‘Happy. Happy. Happy. Not thinking about Ms Tate. I am haaaaappy,’ Claudia said, and turned up the music. A loud explosion of guitars, pianos and multiple voices echoed near my ears. The singer crooned about love and bubblegum. This was definitely not Mozart. Tracy, I noticed, was exceptionally quiet, looking out of the passenger window.
After a few moments Claudia said, ‘What about the mall? We can walk around or whatever.’
Yes. Smart. Bright. Loads of people.
As silly as it may have seemed in the moment, it was good to get off campus in September, while I still could go to the mall like a normal teenager. Before Nuit Rouge began.
Claudia ripped around a corner and the engine revved as we climbed on to the highway. I had to hold on to the armrest or I would have slammed against the door of the car.
‘So,’ Claudia said, ‘tell me about Vicken.’ I gripped the armrest as hard as I could as she peeled around another corner.
‘Nice black eye,’ Tracy said sarcastically. It was the first time she had spoken the whole car ride.
‘He kept wanting to touch it,’ Claudia said, but the tone in her voice was not disgust. It was, dare I say it, excitement.
‘We’re talking about Vicken?’ I said, surprised. Murderer. Excellent swordsman. You would have made a lovely meal for him.
‘He’s from Scotland?’ Claudia asked.
‘Girvan, in Scotland, near the coast,’ I clarified.
‘Isn’t he your first cousin or something?’
‘Right. He’s my mother’s brother’s son,’ I lied.
‘Just ask her already,’ Tracy interjected, and flipped her hair. ‘Is he seeing anyone?’
‘I . . . don’t think so,’ I said, slightly horrified at the thought of Claudia and Vicken dating. We pulled into the mall parking lot. Claudia whipped the car into an empty spot so fast I was sure we were going to have an accident. But miraculously we didn’t smash into the wall. In fact, the girls were getting out of the car before I even exhaled.
They seemed to be speaking another language. They were talking about types of trends I clearly knew nothing about.
Cardigans. Peplums.
Platform shoes, are they in?
What about a wooden heel?
Rhode had provided most of my clothing last year. I just wore it, accepted it. I hadn’t paid attention to fashion since the Victorian era. I was a bit more knowledgeable now, but still kind of useless when it came to making choices.
‘Lenah!’ Claudia said, and pulled me by the arm into a store. ‘You have to try this. That colour would be gorgeous on you.’
She pointed at a mannequin in the window. On it, a tangerine blouse flowed out over a pair of blue jeans. The material was gauzy and soft; the colour brought a memory to my mind. A night in an opera house, a glorious orange gown. As vampire queen, the easiest way to draw victims in had been to taunt them with exquisite things. When they approached to compliment me on my clothing or my jewels – well . . .
Claudia snatched an orange blouse from the racks and thrust it at me. Soon after, laden with clothes, we each stepped into our own private dressing room. Claudia and Tracy ran through items, stepping out and modelling their ensembles. I had never displayed myself to anyone in modern clothes. Asking for approval seemed silly but apparently this was the thing to do.
‘Lenah! I want to see that top!’ Claudia called.
Feeling foolish, I stepped out wearing the blouse and turned to show the girls.
‘Oh!’ Claudia’s jaw dropped. ‘You look amazing,’ she said. ‘You should so get that!’
‘Colour looks good on you,’ Tracy agreed.
There, in the mall, I could almost forget Odette’s note. Ms Tate’s death and Kate’s too. I could be distracted with the possibility of wearing these clothes. I even considered going back to school and wearing them in front of Rhode.
Next, I slipped on a pink skintight dress, which was contemporary and revealing, with thin shoulder straps. I loved it. I hoped the girls did too. I wished the ladies of the nineteenth century, with their corsets and bustles, could see me now. I stepped out and looked down the dressing-room aisle. The girls were admiring black dresses similar to the pink one I wore. Justin would like this dress because it was tight. He would notice I was wearing a colour that wasn’t black and say you’re beautiful. He reminded me it was important that I was participating in this modern world, just like Suleen had told me to.
Rhode hadn’t seen me in contemporary clothes before. I wondered if he even noticed my body, now that it wasn’t hugged tight by a corset or pushed out by a bustle.
A tall woman was admiring her reflection in the three-way mirror at the end of the hall. Long blonde hair tumbled perfectly down her back. She smirked at herself and ran a hand down her abdomen to smooth the material of the dress.
Oh no.
The skin was perfect. Too perfect. That blonde hair. Red fingernails. Sharpened to dangerous, horrific points.
Odette.
Immediately I stepped back into my dressing room.
I held a hand over my mouth to stifle my scream. I trembled, unsure how to stop my body from shaking so badly. How was it possible? How could she stand the bright lights of the middle of the day? I looked down and took an involuntary step back towards the mirror on the wall. One long leg slid beneath the separating panel. Cat-like, she flattened herself and crawled from the next dressing room into mine. In a shot, she stood up in front of me. My back pressed against the mirror, I could hear myself breathing rapid, shallow breaths.
Her mouth curled into a red, lipstick-stained sneer.
‘Come out, Lenah!’ Claudia called from the aisle.
My friends . . .
‘In a minute,’ I called back.
Odette took two steps towards me. I could see the marble-like sheen of her skin under the fluorescent lights. She looked like a moving statue. She cocked her head to one side.
‘Surprised to see me, Lenah?’ she hissed. ‘Thought you’d be safe in the middle of the day? Thought you’d be with lots of people? Daylight doesn’t frighten me. Not even a little.’
She slammed a hand against the wall just next to the mirror.
‘What was that?’ Tracy called.
‘Do you think this makes my butt look weird?’ Claudia asked.
‘No way,’ Tracy replied.
I continued to keep my back against the wall. The only way to escape would be to get the dressing-room door open and run. But then Odette could kill both Tracy and Claudia instantly.
‘I’m not afraid of you,’ I lied, keeping my voice low.
Odette smiled, but the smile quickly turned. Her white teeth flashed under the light, her fangs sliding down, pointed and sharp. The vampire hunger that made the fangs descend was overta
king her. She pretended to lunge at me and then laughed quietly, pulling back. Her laugh was stifled by the dressing-room music and Tracy and Claudia cooing over a blouse.
‘The great Lenah Beaudonte. How I have waited. How I hoped it would be me to bleed you first. Did you know I danced with Heath? That big Latin-speaking member of your coven? Yes . . . in the 1920s.’ She leaned forward so her mouth was next to my ear. ‘While you slept six feet under the ground,’ she hissed.
I shivered.
Like an animal she lunged at me again, this time slamming her palms on either side of my head. She took a deep breath, running her nose across the base of my throat. ‘You smell like your blood would light me up.’
I took a short breath. Light her up?
‘Don’t play dumb. The ritual endows you with the weapon of sunlight. It’s how you killed your coven.’
‘That’s not true,’ I said. ‘That’s not what happened.’
‘Shhh,’ Odette said, so I could see the pointed tips of her fangs again. ‘Your lies are not welcome here. But you were once a powerful vampire, weren’t you?’ she whispered. She raised one pointed fingernail towards the sky. ‘Guess who is now?’
She left her razor-like nail pointed at the ceiling and looked at me out of the corner of her eye.
‘Of course, I didn’t go by Odette when I was human. Do you remember me? You killed my mother, my father and my love.’
Images of the mass of victims hovering behind the Aeris bombarded me. Her mother, her father and her lover were in that mass. I wanted to tell her they were safe and would be forever – never again victims, never again subjected to fear and terror. They had white souls now.
She slammed her hands against the wall again just as Claudia laughed loudly on the other side of the door. I loved her laugh. I had to protect her.
I had to make a plan. I focused on the knifelike fingernail. If I screamed for help, I would risk Claudia and Tracy being hurt by Odette. If I kicked out the dressing-room door, I could run, but she was faster.
‘Lenah!’ Claudia said. ‘Seriously, you’re taking forever in there!’
Odette gave a flick of her wrist and I heard a ripping sound. My flesh. Odette had cut me so the blood seeped down my shoulder. It was not a deep cut, but the skin split open cleanly. It burned and the blood trickled down my arm. She leaned forward to whisper in my ear, so close that I could feel her cold lips on my skin.
‘The blonde idiot. Then the teacher. You know what I want,’ she sneered again. She gripped me around the neck and lifted me from the floor, holding me against the mirror. I could barely breathe. I coughed and she loosened her grip a little.
‘I want that ritual,’ she said through clenched teeth. The flesh over my collarbone burned as it bled.
‘It won’t make you human,’ I croaked.
A sneer spread across her face, making her look like a strange circus clown. Her nostrils flared and she whispered, ‘Is that what you think I want? Didn’t you hear me? I’m your replacement.’ Her eyes hardened. At that moment I could see the truth deep within them.
It was a kind of familiarity that I could not describe, a view I knew well: an ocean view or a field I once knew. I saw a terrified young woman who had been ripped from her life too soon.
I spluttered out the words as I dared to meet her unnatural green eyes.
‘It’s the torment, isn’t it? The endless torment.’
She flinched. ‘What?’
‘If you pour your intentions into that spell, you will bring ruin. Release black magic you never intended. I see your heart. I see your need for power. Power relieves the pain, doesn’t it?’
Claudia’s voice echoed from over the door.
‘Let’s see if they have it in your size, Lenah. What size are you?’
‘Answer them,’ Odette ordered, and with one hand she held me to the mirror. With the other, she scooped a tiny river of blood off my shoulder and licked it away.
‘Medium,’ I called with a lurch of my stomach as I watched Odette swallow my blood.
‘I’ll get you one,’ Claudia said, and two pairs of feet travelled away out of the dressing room. Odette threw me against the mirror again. My head smacked against the glass and white spots of light exploded before my eyes.
‘Give it to me now, or by the time your friends walk into this room you will be dead.’
I tried to swallow but hacked a cough. I was going to die. I had died before.
As another white pop of light exploded before my eyes, an image came to me. Rhode and me on my parents’ orchard. Not as we were but as we appeared now, in the modern world. Hand in hand, walking towards the house. The chimney was smoking. An apple in Rhode’s other hand. Was this possible? Was this the future?
My breath rattled in my ears and I tried to breathe, but an eerie hush began to drown out the rest of the world.
‘OK!’ I croaked. She released me immediately and I fell to the ground in a heap. My hands hit the carpeted floor of the dressing room and sound whooshed into my ears. Just then, as though choreographed, I heard Tracy and Claudia come back into the dressing-room area.
‘Write it down,’ Odette commanded. I found a scrap of paper in my wallet and started writing. I am giving you the ritual. I am giving it to you. I kept repeating it to myself so she would read my intentions. This is the ritual. I don’t want to give it to you, but I am anyway.
I tried to hide the lie deep beneath my heart as I wrote. Ingredients. Method. She had to be convinced.
‘Lenah, here,’ Claudia called, and a blue top came over the dressing-room door. Odette caught it and held it against herself, admiringly.
I finished and handed over the piece of paper.
This is real, real, real. Real. I wouldn’t think anything else.
Before she slid back to her dressing room under the separating wall, she threw me a knowing, haunting smile.
‘I can see why he likes you,’ she said with an animalistic cock of her head. ‘So fragile.’
With that, Odette returned to her dressing room. I watched her feet move as she gathered her things. Listened to her light footsteps as she opened the door and walked away down the aisle. Exhausted, I slid my back down the mirror and sat on the floor.
‘Did you die in there?’ Claudia joked.
‘No,’ I barely said. ‘Just getting back into my clothes.’
My reflection was a sad sight. My hair stuck to my forehead from sweat and the horizontal cut that ran over my collarbone was raw and red. It had stopped bleeding, but the blood was sticky at the opening. However, it would be easy to cover with my shirt.
She was bloody brilliant, as Vicken would say. I had to admire her style. Truly Odette would have been decent competition, had I still been a vampire. I had to get up. Had to get dressed. The girls couldn’t see me like this. My hands shook as I pressed against the carpet to stand up.
I didn’t know how long I would have until she figured out that I’d given her a fake ritual. Weeks? Days?
I got dressed, smoothed my hair as best I could and shakily stepped out of the dressing room. I avoided the three-way mirror. But there was no need to look – Odette was gone.
‘I’m hungry,’ Claudia said.
‘Let’s eat here,’ Tracy replied. ‘I don’t want to go back yet.’
We paid for our items and I followed them out of the store silently. I tried not to move my right arm because the cut throbbed. Once we were back in the brightly lit mall my trembling subsided, but only slightly.
I went through the motions of ordering my lunch but I kept reliving that moment in the dressing room. Odette could be out in the sunlight, which meant she was powerful. But how? How could she have gained power so quickly when it took me one hundred and eighty years to withstand full midday sunlight? How did she acquire the strength so fast? Odette said I had killed her family, but I had killed many people. Technically I had even killed her, breaking the contract of her human life. The Aeris had reminded me of that.
We sat and ate our lunch, but I kept looking at every face that passed. Anyone with blonde hair. This vampire would not be alone. She was powerful. She fancied herself my replacement.
‘What happened to Rhode?’ Claudia said. At Rhode’s name, I slammed to attention, back into my seat. I refocused on my lunch and nibbled a piece of lettuce. ‘Whose fault was the car accident? His face looks awful.’
‘He must be the most secretive person alive,’ Tracy said. ‘I tried talking to him about it in maths, but he brushed me off.’
‘He wouldn’t tell me either,’ I said, hating how true this was. I was used to knowing everything about Rhode, but not now. ‘Rhode and I aren’t as close as Vicken and me.’
‘Bet he told Vicken,’ Claudia said. ‘They’re always sitting together at dinner.’
‘I’m surprised he survived it,’ Tracy said, still talking about Rhode’s accident. She delicately ate a forkful of her Greek salad. ‘He’s still got bruises.’
‘His eyes are amazing,’ Claudia said.
I stared at a girl with her blonde hair in a ponytail for a moment but then relaxed. She was just a girl shopping.
Tracy nudged me.
‘Sorry,’ I said, and took another bite of my sandwich. ‘Yes, they’re quite blue.’ It felt ridiculous as I said it.
‘. . . you’re very quiet,’ Tracy said.
‘Sorry,’ I said again. ‘I’m just a bit tired.’
‘So what’s going on with you and Justin?’ Tracy asked.
I opened my mouth to join the conversation and . . .
There she was.
Odette walked the long length of the mall running parallel to the food court. My hand holding the sandwich hung at my eyeline. I stared, unable to help myself. Though she wore a man’s baseball hat over her eyes, her long blonde hair fell down her back. She was stunning. Her beauty would sway most humans, but I knew why she shielded her face from the fluorescent lighting. It would highlight the unnatural hue of her skin and the dilated pupils.
She turned her face towards me.
Her eyes slid over the people in the food court directly, purposefully – to mine. Her jaw dropped, her eyes fell to my sandwich filled with lettuce, chicken and tomato. And then, with a horrible curl of her mouth, Odette smirked. And . . .
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