Page 13 of Thirst
Eyes widening, I nearly spat it out. Yet the taste evolved on my tongue, becoming berries with a hint of lavender that soothed its path down my throat. Either she was lying, or my own taste buds were.
“It’s delicious.” I put the cup down. “So, what you’re saying is that your magic is powerful. But temporary.”
“Astute. And as you’ve said, you’ve brought me a body. Those have the pesky habit of decomposing.”
“Even with your magic?”
“Terrigana will have her due. Like the reaper, she always receives it. Eventually.”
My fingertips traced the lines of the teacup she’d given me, finding tiny flaws in the ceramic that I worried with the edge of my index finger. When her expectant gaze sharpened with a raised brow, I took another drink of the eyeball tea. Still strangely tasty.
“If you give me the body, I will make you a disguise that looks, sounds, and smells like she used to be,” she continued.
“What happens to my magic when I’m wearing this disguise?”
“You’ll still have access to it. Also, you will return to me in one week’s time to refresh the spell, else it’ll fade. In the meantime, her soul will remain here.”
I made a mental note of that with a dry swallow. Thelast thing I needed was to lose track of the date and accidentally reveal myself in front of the whole court of vampires.
“From the power we’re borrowing from her soul, you will have use of her face for three weeks. If we successfully keep the magic from fading, after the…” she tilted her teacup back and forth as she hummed. “…two or so weeks that I can keep her body intact, her soul will go straight to Terrigana. Who’s to say what will happen from there?”
Nothing good, or so it was said. Terrigana’s punishments beyond the grave were the subjects of stories told to keep children in line. I took another sip of my tea and nodded. “That’s acceptable. My plans require her identity, and if her soul experiences a fraction of the pain she’s inflicted, all the better.”
“How swift the young are to condemn.” The witch’s judgment was delivered under her breath. She probably didn’t expect me to have hearing enhanced to dhampir levels, somewhere between human and vampire. She said in a louder tone, “Well, all I require from here for this spell and its upkeep is your story. Stay a while; tell me of your many plans. I wouldloveto hear if Nemea Redgrove squealed like a pig when you stuck her.”
Any of my lingering irritation dissolved as the witch made for an attentive audience, her keen eyes gleaming over the rim of her cup. I recounted my tale between slow sips of tea, and with each revelation, she leaned in, savoring every detail of my revenge like a fine brew. And at last, she gifted me something else: a name.
“Call me Adelaide,” she said, a satisfied smile curling at the edges of her lips. “Go bring me Ilyana Krudelbach’s corpse. It’s time that we worked some magic.”
A chill breeze smacked me in the face as soon as I left the sanctuary under the willow tree. I shivered from thesudden change in temperature, a reminder of reality after a surreal couple hours talking over my revenge with an immortal witch and drinking her favorite eyeball tea. Her plants clung to every inch of my exposed skin, their dampness turned icy.
The coachman hadn’t abandoned me. I retrieved Ilyana’s body from the carriage and went back to Adelaide with it thrown over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I hadn’t been gone long, yet I returned to find the witch standing before an open grave. She was marked with viridian lines over her temple, cheeks, and lower lip, which transformed her face into one big occult rune.
She held a chipped earthenware bowl in one hand. In the other, a ritualistic knife made of ivory and carved with more runes.
“Lay her in the grass.” She pointed with the knife’s tip to a patch of rucked-up ground. The greenery was fluffed into an inviting bed.
“I’m going to need her dress, like we discussed.”
“Of course. It’s not like she cares about it anymore. Take the jewelry too.” She eyed me for a moment before adding, “My magic won’t hide your engagement ring. You’ll want to take that off.”
I adjusted it with my thumb. It was the last thing I had of Zane, before he was…
I’m going to save him. Then we’ll get married in the temple, just like we planned.
Slipping it off my ring finger felt like a betrayal. Like he was truly dead to me, not just temporarily one ofthem. It left behind a pale circle of skin. I hadn’t taken it off since the moment he’d slid it on my finger. The embedded gemstones in the gold band winked as I rested it on my palm, giving it one last, reverent glance.
“Vampires don’t get married, after all,” I said mostly to myself before I slipped it into my breast band.
I began the grim work of removing Ilyana’s last possessions. We traded: her dress and finery for the plain leather armor I was wearing.
Hopefully the witch’s magic would give me slimmer shoulders and a smaller waistline. Ilyana and I were mostly the same size, but she’d had the trim figure of someone who only drank blood to survive. Once I was clothed as the vampiress, I nodded to Adelaide and stepped back.
“Bring the puppet,” she ordered Cris. The upright hare wobbled as it dragged another overstuffed woodland creature over to Ilyana’s side and dropped it in the grass. “Her soul is going into my favorite puppet, the raccoon. Look at its little hands!”
“Great,” I said through my teeth. “Will it be able to talk?”
She didn’t answer as she knelt in the grass by the corpse. After dipping her fingers in the earthenware bowl, Adelaide’s fingertips came away with a green paste that she used to paint Ilyana’s forehead and the backs of her arms. She outlined the fatal wound through her chest. The paste turned brown as it mixed with the gore already caking the vampiress’s skin.
