CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Autumn

Necromancy. 1.a. n. The act of conjuring dead spirits in order to predict or influence the future.

Necromancers can roughly be divided into two categories: the passive and the active. The latter is generally considered the more common, particularly among dark beings who possess the ability to wield magic, as active conjuring of a phantom likeness was once a branch of study frequently pursued within universities. The practice, however, was outlawed with the signing of the Terra Treaties in 1812, and reports of likeness apparitions have declined as a result . . .

My fingers impatiently dragged across the hundredth page of a book that had largely proved to be useless. The lamp above me flickered, and with a jolt I was pulled back to the room and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner. It was past midnight but I was determined to stay awake. I took another sip of the bitter caffeine cocktail next to me and carried on reading, trying to ignore the surge of emotion from Violet, which was steadily driving me to delirium.

The passive necromancer is a rarer breed, and the last comprehensive study of the gift in 1950 suggested that upon becoming fully fledged (N.B. in line with human laws at the time, the fledging developmental stage was believed to continue until age 21), one in every ten thousand Sagean children was found to have the gift. Prior to the Great Cleansing of the Damned, a 1891 census revealed that as many as one in every thousand fledglings possessed the passive form of the gift upon reaching adulthood; by 1950, only two thousand children were tested, and just one (sterilized) child showed any ability to conjure. Among other dark beings, the gift is believed to be extinct.

Abilities of the passive necromancer vary. According to the 1950 study, constants include: the inability to voluntarily conjure likenesses, at least one experience with a likeness of the deceased that includes communication, and a subsequent noncoincidental altering of events.

“Among other dark beings, the gift is believed to be extinct,” I murmured to myself, tracing the line with my finger. But chri’dom definitely said she was a necromancer, and I definitely hadn’t imagined what happened when Violet arrived: that had been the late vamperic queen in her mind—in my mind, speaking to me! And the dreams. What on earth were her dreams about the cloaked figure to do with?

I shut the book after several more minutes of scanning the same paragraph, vainly hoping new information would appear from between the printed lines. But the curiosity burned, relentless, as my grandmother’s words bounced from one side of my skull to another: Time is your enemy.

I gathered the thick volume in my arms and quietly made my way out of the room so as not to wake Fallon, who was asleep in the bedroom. The hallway outside, white, airy, and well lit in the day, was now deserted and gloomy; the double-door entrance to the west wing was guarded, and nobody but those who slept here entered or left at this time of night.

I passed through the green drawing room, dressed floor to ceiling in paintings and crowded with green furniture, at the moment seating several of Kaspar Varn’s friends, before I got to the door of Violet’s huge apartment. The outer doors were unlocked, and I stepped into the small anteroom, where the next set of doors were ajar. My knuckles were already brushing the wood when a groan slipped through the crack.

It was a soft croon of “no.” My hand wouldn’t drop even though I suddenly felt the urge to run; instead my knees had locked and through the gap I had full view of Violet as a mass of limbs in Kaspar Varn’s arms, pressed up against the wall like her weight was supported by hooks.

The frightened squeal that escaped my lips was drowned out by the crash of something heavy hitting the floor, the accompanying frustrated groans and the steady thud, thud, thud of a body hitting the wall, over and over.

Neither wore any clothes; her head never left the pale walls but her back did in anticipation of every groan, as her eyes flickered open and shut . . . My torso withdrew but my feet were rooted as her eyes fixed for a brief second too long on the door. Her lips broke into a smile and then parted into an O, and then she sank, lowered to the floor, but Kaspar might as well have not existed because I saw through him—the connection between me and her turned him transparent, as I fell deep into her contentedness. It was the first gasp of fresh air after a week below ground, in the darkest depths of her mind and mine.

“Beautiful, isn’t it, duchess?”

I would have shrieked if it wasn’t for the force of a hand on my shoulder pushing me down. My first instinct was flight, but when my foot stepped back it hit a leg.

“Now, why is a sweet thing like you perving? Didn’t have you down as the type.”

“Get off me, Felix,” I snapped in an unforceful whisper with a shrug that did nothing to dislodge his arm. “And don’t call me ‘sweet.’ ”

The hand around my shoulder squeezed tighter and my stomach churned. Felix was one of Kaspar Varn’s friends, and had a reputation of being a lecherous noble in the court . . . and he was one of those who had been present at the London Bloodbath.

“Oh, I think you would taste very sweet. Maybe your prince would let me find out.”

He wouldn’t drink from me, would he? Surely not? But I didn’t like his sickly tone and the way I couldn’t turn so we were face-to-face. I reached up and tried to slide his fingers off my shoulder but they had sunk deep into my skin.

“We have a game, Lady He**ine, back at Varnley, which we all like to play. I wonder if you’ve heard of it? It’s called the cunning linguist.”

I shook my head while running through potential spells that would incapacitate him long enough for me to get one of the guards. There were hundreds, yet my mind was blank and all I could focus on was the gap in the door, and Violet collapsed on the far side of the room.

“No? We should really teach you. You would love it.”

The flash of green light bounced off the walls and dazzled me, but the satisfying thump of the vampire’s body hitting the ground told me my restraints had worked. Clutching the book to my chest as though it were a suit of armor, I jumped over his convulsing body and sprinted down the hall, turning to glance back only when I heard a shout of anger chasing me. It was a dressed Kaspar Varn, and when I turned around again, Fallon was standing at the other end of the drawing room in only a pair of pajama bottoms, looking ready to murder someone. He started forward, and when I went to grab his arm he repelled me with a small shield that sent me tumbling into a chair. I sprangback up again, book abandoned on the floor, and pursued him as he yanked Felix’s twitching body up off the floor and the culprit green strands around the fire-headed vampire limbs retreated. He slumped into Fallon’s arms, and the prince threw him against the wall by his collar.

“What did you do to her? What did you do?”

Felix’s lips moved, but the only sound that emerged was a blubber and then a squeal as Kaspar ripped Fallon off and began beating the paper-thin shield around his skin; both men grunted. Violet, covered only by a long T-shirt, rushed out and tugged at her boyfriend’s sides to no avail, and I could do nothing but clap my hands to my mouth in horror as more vampires appeared and tried to pull the two princes apart.

“Kaspar, Kaspar, get off!”

Screams of “Fallon!” were erupting from my mouth but they were falling on deaf ears, terrified soprano among a roaring river of sound, of groans, of grunts, of panicked voices and whines and the soft purr of Felix, who had folded into a laughing heap on the floor.

Violet’s tears soaked the carpet.

“Stop.”

Such a simple word, so sharply spoken, froze the scene. Catharsis smothered my emotions as two kings glided through the room we had tumbled into, melting those they passed so their faces warped into expressions of horror.

Kaspar, so strong, so tall, was thrown back onto the bed by his father as though he weighed no more than his younger sister, who had followed her king in. The other patriarch grabbed a fistful of Fallon’s hair and pulled him off his knees so he was stooping, head lowered in a warped imitation of a bow.

I could only stare, hands clamped to either side of my head, eyes wide.

“It might come as a surprise to you, Kaspar, given your lack of political understanding, but murdering your Sagean counterpart is a disadvantageous move.”

Kaspar sprayed spit across the duvet as he hissed in angry acknowledgment; Fallon didn’t even reply to his father. Everyone else maintained an eerie silence that needed filling to distract me from the tension in the air. Only Violet showed any composure. Her expression had returned to blank; irises the gray they had rarely ventured far from since she arrived.

“Words. Words are wonderful things. Words avert wars. Words make friends. Words prevent fights. Try using them.” Ll’iriad Athenea released his son and left, voice never raised but barely restrained, his limbs lightly shaking as he made his exit.

The vamperic king barked something in a language I couldn’t understand, totally ignored Violet, and indicated for Fallon and me to leave the room. As soon as he had shut the doors to the anteroom behind us, he sighed and ran a hand down his face.

“They’re violent,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Stay away from them.”

He turned on his heel as my lips parted slightly; heart beating wildly, still convinced we had been on the verge of a reprimand.

Fallon grabbed my wrist and we hurried back to my room, necromancy book abandoned on the floor of the drawing room. His grip was tight, muscles still tense, and I didn’t dare ask him if he was okay—he looked like he might set fire to something if I did.

He didn’t cut me loose in the sitting room but tugged me all the way into the bedroom, lying down on his side and pulling me with him, tucked safely away with my back to his chest.

We stayed like that, breathing in time together as he gradually calmed. It was at least five minutes before he spoke.

“Did he hurt you?”

“No,” I breathed. “He just said some odd things.”

His arm around me tightened and he slotted his knees in behind me, hugging me close. “What kinds of things?”

“He said I would taste sweet. And that he wanted me to play cunning linguist.”

I felt his head rise slightly. “Pardon?”

“Cunning linguist. Do you know what game it is?”

He propped himself up on his elbow. “It’s cunnilingus, Autumn.” His lips and chest trembled with silent laughter that slowly faded as he continued to examine my expression.

No, he definitely didn’t say that. “Why are you laughing? What is it? Tell me.”

He stroked my hair, still with slightly curled lips. “I’d do better to show you.”

My eyebrows knitted together. “Why? Just tell me.”

He placed the hand that was stroking my hair on my shoulder and rolled me fully onto my back, before placing it on the other side of my body. “Do you trust me?”

I could see his sky-blue eyes becoming tinged with red, and they scrutinized me while my skin heated up under the intensity. “Yes,” I managed to breathe.

Slowly, he rolled over so his knees were straddling my thighs, arms locked straight, hovering a few inches above me.

“Tell me if anybody, including me, ever says or does anything that makes you uncomfortable, okay?”

I nodded as he pressed his lips to mine. My heartbeat was speeding up, lips parting wider and wider as what had begun as an innocent peck became something more urgent, more ardent. My arms reached up and around his neck, my legs broke apart and one tucked itself up toward my torso; the gulf between his forefinger and thumb secured itself around the underside of my knee, and held me there.

“Autumn, your eyes are red.”

Suddenly, I felt fire creeping across the thread dangling between me and Violet, fizzing and hissing like a fuse. Her mind had opened up like a book that had flipped open and whose pages were flapping in a breeze. She was alive again, really alive, and in the second my eyelids closed to blink I had been assaulted with images of her in a half-unbuttoned shirt beneath Kaspar Varn. I felt like I was tumbling in her mind and wrapped in her desire, bathed in her warped love for this man and the security that their tied bond provided. Fallon’s weight above me grew heavier, and I was sure that if I opened my eyes it would not be a blond who was draped across me.

By the time my eyes had opened again to find Fallon there, it had become obvious that in that moment, there had been no partition between Violet and me. We were not separate entities; we had been one. But why? Fate, why give us gifts and no answers?

Hands fumbled with the buttons of my blouse, undoing them one by one. His warm fingers and the cool air raised goose bumps and I closed my eyes.

He kissed the plain above my breasts. He kissed me again, lower, and lower.

Far away came a whisper. “Sweet, Girly. So sweet.”