The vampire-of-the-opera-by-morgan-de-guerre

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TheSkylarkandtheEagle

MRGANDEGUERRE
Copyright © 2021 Morgan De Guerre
All rights reserved.

BLFNN
Chapter 1 - Marcus - The Skylark
Chapter 2 Kay - My Audition
Chapter 3 Kay - History by Lyra
Chapter 4 Marcus - Goi to See the Wizard
Chapter 5 Marcus - The Wizard of Awz
Chapter 6 Kay - My First Day
Chapter 7 Marcus - A Visit from Lucian
Chapter 8 Kay - Orientation Tour
Chapter 9 The Private Audition
Chapter 10 The First Lesson
Chapter 11 Kay - Lunch with Cecile
Chapter 12 Marcus - Who Is Kay Leonis?
Chapter 13 Marcus - The Hound of Bakirville
Chapter 14 Kay – Missing
Chapter 15 Kay Saves a Cat
Chapter 16 Kay Meets Mike
Chapter 17 Marcus - Vampires
Chapter 18 Missing People
Chapter 19 A Music Lesson
Chapter 20 Kay - The Break-In
Chapter 21 Marcus - The Barbershop of Dorian Gray
Chapter 22 The Tosca Lesson
Chapter 23 Kay - Dress-Up
Chapter 24 Marcus - Social Butterfly
Chapter 25 The Rehearsal
Chapter 26 Marcus - The Morgue
Chapter 27 Marcus - Her Debut
Chapter 28 Marcus - The Skylark Sings
Chapter 29 Kay - Mirage

Chapter 30 Kay Meets Peter Kensington
Chapter 31 Kay - Escape from Mirage
Chapter 32 Kay of House Onyris
Chapter 33 Kay - Ghost Story
Chapter 34 Kay - Storming the Fort
Chapter 35 Revelations
Chapter 36 Kay - The Truth about Peter
Chapter 37 Kay - Palazzo Orlov
Chapter 38 Marcus - The Last Lesson
About the Author

KNWLDGMN
Edited by Hot Tree Editing
Cover design by Covers by Christian

uthor’sNote
Greetings, Outerworlder,
If you are reading these words, a version of the manuscript has been approved by the auditors of the
Ministry for the Relation with the Outerworld.
The story you are about to read contains a depiction of events inventively edited them to meet
security requirements. You will not find Talinia or the vast expanse of the Welcoming Sea on any map.
Technology can’t yet see what tethers the Innerworld to the Above and binds it to the Below. Many
details had to be changed.
Do not think badly of my country for the harsh censorship policy. The safety of our world depends
on your world never finding out that we exist.
Fiction is a wonderful cloak for speaking the truth straight to the heart.
Morgan De Guerre
Bakirville, 2021

haptr1arcu
klark

Monday, March 16
The peony petals on the silk tapestry fluttered in a wind that could not exist. I
was facing the wall of box number five, lounging in a chair, as I did for every
audition.
Had the flowers really moved?
Down in the auditorium, Lucian Forsyth, the current director of the
National Opera, called out the name of the next candidate.
“Kay Leonis.”
The painted flowers pulsated in the rhythm of the steps coming to the front
of the stage. A ripple went through the entire tapestry at the sound of a young
female voice.
“Good morning.”
The ruffled thick blooms opened a fraction as if they wanted to peek at the
girl. The luscious flowers blushed from maidenly pink to royal purple. I
suppressed the urge to turn around. The Opera was reacting to the girl’s
essence, not to her physical appearance.
In a hundred years, I never cared how singers looked, only how they sang.
More than once, I had to stand up for promoting beautiful voices over pretty
faces.
“What did you prepare?” Lucian asked her.
“A folk song.”
Her clear and strong voice reached into box number five as if she were there
with me.
A folk song was an odd choice. Fifty years ago, it would’ve been the choice
of a peasant girl or someone with no formal training. However, Kay Leonis
had the educated tilt of the high aristocracy. I sat up straighter as my mind
sifted through centuries of information to find an explanation.
We were a music-loving people, none more so than the aristocrats. All the
old families, and even some of the new rich, included classical music as part of
their offspring’s proper education. A highborn child who showed talent and
enthusiasm for singing would be allowed to take bel canto lessons, but it would
be scandalous for them to perform on stage, as I knew all too well.
I shook my head to dispel any swirling hypotheses and preconceptions.
With my eyes closed, I slid back into the chair and opened myself to the
unknown.
“Did you give the score to the orchestra?” Lucian said. She must have
nodded, because Lucian went on. “All right. You can start.”

The first notes of “The Skylark” floated from the orchestra pit. I despised
the flourishes of this song because singers used them to get cheap thrills from
the crowd. In the smoke-filled environment of nightclubs or the open air of
rural celebrations, they could get away with flaws in the intricacies of this song.
Of course, Leonis would not have that luxury in the perfect acoustics of my
opera house.
My muscles tensed in anticipation.
The young voice went boldly into the song. No hesitations, no trace of fear,
but no embellishments either. She started slowly, building up the tension,
making me yearn for the very flourishes that usually annoyed me.
My cold black heart convulsed when her voice soared like the mythical
skylark flying into the sun. She went with impressive control into the trills that
set the human voice against the skylark in the story of the musical duel.
I gripped the armrests without realizing, and at the end of the song, I was
on my feet, in the darkness of box five, with two pieces of carved wood in my
hands. That armchair was going to need fixing.
I let the armrests fall onto the thick carpet and took a step farther into the
box, merging into the velvet curtains like a shadow among other shadows. I
pressed my forehead to the wall, keeping my eyes tightly shut.
The girl’s voice had shaken me. I reined in the burning impulse to turn to
see her. This was an audition, and its purpose was to decide if we kept her or
not. I sharpened my hearing to check in on the deliberations.
All committee members were down in the auditorium except for me.
Opera people passionately loved traditions and gleefully obeyed
superstitions. Even now, in the twenty-first century, they embraced the
apparently ridiculous tradition which demanded that someone had to attend
the auditions from box five. With a light mental suggestion, they were happy
to see their star tenor relegated here.
They were murmuring into each other’s ears. I ignored the stirrings of my
blood to pay attention to what they were saying. Giselle Mallory, our
undisputed prima donna, was influencing her pretentious patron, Madame
D’Armitage, against hiring this girl.
After raising herself from the slums of Bakirville East, Giselle’s insecurity
was understandable but unfounded. Yes, this girl had the potential to dethrone
her, but not for many years.
Lucian was talking to the venerable conductor Benedict Ogden-Greenwood.
There was a note of embarrassment in Lucian’s voice as he argued the case for
Leonis.

Ogden-Greenwood was an esthete. His love of refinery prevented him from
enjoying more robust pleasures. I had known the old man since he was a child,
and I worried that his inability to enjoy natural beauty would deafen him to the
girl’s talent.
This placed Lucian in a delicate position. As general manager of the
Bakirville Opera, he was expected to act like a snob. He did his best, but
common sense and the ability to perceive quality made the pretense difficult.
If we voted now, Lucian would not argue against all three of them. I had no
desire to go there in person to change their minds.
Ask her to sing something else, I texted Lucian urgently.
As soon as I pressed Send, the phone vibrated in Lucian’s pocket.
“Do you have anything else prepared?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “‘Vissi d’arte.’”
Good. I had no doubts that Leonis would do a good job. Her undeniable
talent would shine through in the aria. It was going to appease Benedict’s
refined ear and would move Elena D’Armitage to tears. Even Giselle would
relent.
It was always interesting to hear a soprano’s take on this aria. Some tackled
it with grace, others with passion. A few even managed to sound sincere. The
older a soprano was, the clearer and deeper the honesty in her performance of
this particular showstopper about a doomed woman who sang about living for
art and beauty.
When the orchestra started playing, I turned another chair to face away
from the stage, determined not to give in to my curiosity. Her physical
appearance wouldn’t remain a mystery for long. I’d do better to listen to her
voice free from any other considerations. I sat down in the new chair, staring
at the tapestry through half-closed eyes.
Leonis did justice to the aria within the limits of her life experience. She had
outstanding raw talent and solid basic training. Yes, with proper guidance, she
could become a strong prima donna in a couple of years. I remained seated
when she finished, unaccountably sad to feel the vast gap in our ages.
This time, the murmurs from the committee were positive. The screen of
my phone lit up. Lucian was asking for a vote with a text composed of a single
question mark.
I typed Yes, but a random thought stopped my hand before pressing Send.
She had chosen to sing “The Skylark.”
Skylark.
It shouldn’t have meant anything, but the word lit a spark of recognition in
the dusty recesses of my memory palace. I deleted the Yes and typed

something else on an impulse I didn’t understand.
Ask her to sing the national anthem.
We were going to hire her, but I couldn’t shake the profound impression her
interpretation of the folk song had made on me. It went beyond the girl’s
talent. The song had made me feel proud to be Talinian. It made me feel
connected to my country more intimately than the everyday careless patriotism
that lingered in most Talinians.
The orchestra started playing the intro to the anthem, and I was about to
send Lucian a second text when the girl said the words as if she read them off
my phone.
“Without orchestra.”
The hair on the nape of my neck stood on end. The auditorium was
plunged into perfect silence for a few moments. I stood up, concealed into the
deep shadows of the box.
She brought the anthem to life with more pathos than she put in the folk
song or in the classic aria. Her voice transported me back in time. I smelled
the blood and death on the battlefield. I felt the rain on my face and the mud
in my boots. Felt the rough fabric of the bullet-ridden tunic I wore in a war
that ended long ago.
When the girl stopped singing, a tear rolled down the side of my face. My
heart beat loudly, consuming my reserves like a ravenous wolf. Someone like
me, who lived off stolen energy, had to be careful how he spent what he stole.
At that moment, it didn’t matter. To feel my heart beat again was worth the
risk of fading.
I took a breath I didn’t need, steadying myself, and turned around to see her
for the first time.
In the middle of the stage stood a young woman with dark blond hair
flowing a few inches past her shoulders and copper brown eyes that sparkled
like the sun on the roofs of Bakirville. She wore jeans, dark blue and tight, and
a cashmere top, sage green and loose. She looked no different than any girl in
the Capital. I might have passed by her a million times and not recognized her
for what she was. For all I knew, we had crossed paths before. If she loved
opera, she must have come to the shows.
Her tense posture betrayed her anxiety. The rapid rhythm of her breath
betrayed her exhaustion. Nothing betrayed the fact that in front of us stood
the incarnation of the Seraphic prophecy.
The Skylark was alive.
I tried to figure out if she knew what she was. I blocked all other sounds in
the auditorium. All that existed was her breathing, which was slowly returning

to normal, and the thumping of her heart, which grew louder with each
second.
I, Marcus Aemilius Konstantin Orlov, master vampire of Bakirville, was
three hundred and forty-three years old, and, as I listened to the strong beating
of a young girl’s heart, I could feel each and every one of those years.
The phone screen lit up again. Lucian’s new text message had two question
marks. My fingers hovered over the screen.
As an opera lover, I wanted the voice but not all the trouble the Skylark
would bring into my beloved Opera. If she was a child of prophecy, her life did
not belong to music. Her life didn’t even belong to her.

haptr2a
yudtn

Monday, March 16
If they didn’t say anything soon, I was going to faint.
How very operatic, I scoffed inwardly. Get a grip, Kalliope!
Using my given name had a sobering effect whenever I was on the brink of
doing something stupid. Well, most of the time, anyway. Sometimes, like now,
it did nothing to calm me down.
For the first time in my life, I was on the verge of a panic attack. How was
that possible? Here of all places? How many times had I been in the building?
Dozens, no doubt. I always felt at home here, as if this temple of music
welcomed me.
The first time I set foot in the opera house, I was thirteen years old. It was
my birthday gift, and I had been on my best behavior that day.
The air smelled of marble and music. I named the unearthly fragrance of the
Opera “the smell of eternity.” If I closed my eyes, I could recreate it wherever
I was.
Now, six years later, I experienced the building in a whole different way. The
stage smelled different—wood, cloth, and emotions. The bright lights blinded
and broiled me at the same time. The swishing of curtains, the way the floor
squeaked when some stagehands moved the décor in the back, the
disembodied coughs, and the twangs of instruments from the orchestra pit.
This was “the smell of the present.” “The smell and sound and feel of the
present” was more accurate, but it was simply too long.
Technically, this was my second time on stage. A few months after that first
night of the opera, my parents gave in to my incessant begging, and we went
backstage to congratulate the artists.
We showered the cast with flowers and gifts. Elisa Bellacourt took me on
the stage. The set hadn’t been dismantled. That evening, I stepped from my
mundane life into the mythical Parisian loft where Mimi had died a few
minutes earlier.
That bright memory shone like a beacon in my sould because, that night, I
met Marcus Orlov. My idol had smiled distractedly. He shook my hand with
the same formality with which he had shaken my father’s. I liked that he hadn’t
treated me like I was a little lady and done a mock bow or pretended to kiss
my hand as other men did.
But Marcus Orlov was not a man.
He hadn’t changed in the following years, as he probably hadn’t changed in
hundreds of years before. Other singers grew old and retired. New ones

debuted and matured. Only he was unchanged. They changed his stage name
once every twenty years or so, because the Opera wasn’t hidden from the
Outerworld, but his true nature was not kept secret from Talinians. Any
Talinian who loved music revered his real name.
Whenever he was on stage, I listened to him with my eyes closed. With
every new performance, his voice became a part of my mind and my soul.
Before the audition, Lyra had snuck in to find out who was attending the
audition. I’d been disappointed when she said he wasn’t there. Now, I was
grateful. If I knew he was there in the dark, deciding my fate, I would’ve
already fainted.
Why was it taking them so long?
I should’ve followed Lyra’s advice to start with an aria. Why did I always
have to be so stubborn? Who cared about a stupid old folk song? They hadn’t
turned me away after “The Skylark,” and I thought I did a good job with
“Vissi d’arte,” but the anthem…. They probably wanted to make fun of me.
Why else would they ask me to sing the national anthem?
I took a deep breath, then another. This sometimes helped to calm me
down from enthusiasm or anger. I had never before had to calm myself down
from fear. What was I really afraid of? That they would say no? Or that they
would say yes?
The male voice that had spoken before addressed me again from the
darkness.
“Congratulations, Miss Leonis,” the man said. “You start tomorrow
morning. We will send you an email with the details in a few hours.”
My knees almost gave out. I bowed my head a fraction, then trudged off the
stage in a daze.
I stood like a fence post while Lyra wrapped me in an enthusiastic hug. My
best friend had grown up in a more huggy family, and she had no trouble
physically showing her affection without embarrassment.
“You did it! You crazy, wonderful person, you actually did it. You’re in!”
This new reality sank in slowly. I was not dreaming. I was inside the Opera. I
had just auditioned for them. And they had accepted me.
“My parents are going to flip.”
Lyra arched her neatly trimmed eyebrow in that Little Miss Perfect
disappointed schoolteacher expression so familiar in our interactions.
“Well, duh.”
I vaguely remembered that she had pointed out this very thing a couple of
times while she helped me prepare for the audition.
I flopped into a chair.

“I’ll have to drop out of the university.”
Lyra nudged me to make room for her skinny butt and sat down on the
same chair.
“Kay, are you having second thoughts? It’s okay if you don’t want to go
through with it. Now you know you’re good enough to be here, and that’s all
that matters.”
“No,” I answered instantly. “I want this.”
Lyra elbowed me gently in the ribs. If Sebastian tried that, we’d get into a
hair-pulling, eye-poking, severe tickling match in a matter of seconds, but
Lyra’s display of affection had a way of soothing my warrior nature. The exact
opposite to the inflaming effect that my brother had on me. Since we were
kids, Sebastian taught me how to fight, and Lyra tried to teach me how to
avoid fights.
“Let’s celebrate,” she said, standing up.
I stared at her outstretched hand, counting the dark red nails as if the result
could be something other than five.
“Kaaaay, we have to leave. It’s weird to hang around after you auditioned.”
She bent over and lowered her voice. “There are other people waiting. We have
to let them get ready.”
It was just like Lyra to think of what other people were feeling. We nearly
bumped heads when I jumped to my feet.
“You said something about celebrating. That better not be a ploy to get me
into a tea salon.”
She linked her arm through mine as we walked toward the exit between fake
tree trunks of the décor being prepared for the evening performance.
“Swan Lake,” she said before I asked what was on the program.
It made sense that it would be a ballet. I knew all the opera décors, but wild
horses couldn’t drag me to a ballet.
It bothered me when Lyra read my thoughts like that. Not that she could.
After all, she was only a first-year apprentice witch. I took a deep breath and
failed to hold back my thought.
“That’s annoying.”
“Sure it is,” she said with fake repentance. “But what can I do? I’ve known
you since we were seven.”
The tips of my ears started to burn. She was right, of course. We’d been best
friends since the first grade. We had no secrets from each other. Lyra knew me
well enough to guess that if she hadn’t said anything, I would’ve taken out my
phone to check the program and possibly twisted an ankle because I wasn’t
looking where I was going.

“Do you have tickets?” I asked, trying to paper over the awkward moment.
“No. I have to be back at the uni tonight.”
I stopped abruptly and looked at my friend. Now that the fumes of stage
shock were clearing from my mind, I remembered Lyra’s schedule.
“You have a history test tomorrow!”
“For which I’m well prepared,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “Let’s
go.”
Lyra was a conscientious student in all subjects, but Talinian history was her
passion. And yet, she was here, as moral support instead of revising. Not to
mention spending the night fighting crime by my side.
Tears of gratitude welled up in my eyes. I blinked rapidly to hold them back.
Lyra carefully didn’t look my way as we walked toward the exit, giving me time
to get my emotions under control.
We turned a corner onto the narrow corridor that led out through the
artists’ entrance. At the door, I looked over my shoulder to take a mental
snapshot of the moment. The paint on the ceiling was peeling in a corner. The
glue had dried behind the yellow newspaper cuttings pasted on the walls,
reviews for old performances by some long-dead foreign singers. A corner of
the crinkled paper fluttered in the draft.
The backstage smelled strikingly different than what I had always associated
with the Opera. I had to name it. Lyra’s presence inspired me to call it “the
smell of history.”
Raindrops hit us in the face as soon as we stepped outside. I shivered and
tightened my flimsy coat around my shoulders. The fickle spring weather had
changed from lovely-sunny in the morning to rainy-stormy at noon.
Lyra’s car was at the far end of the parking lot. She opened her umbrella,
and I pulled up the collar of my coat. I lengthened my stride toward the car.
Lyra’s pencil skirt worked well with her librarian look, but it hindered her
movements, forcing her to take three steps for each one of mine.
The doors unlocked when I got close, and I climbed in, waiting for her to
tiptoe around puddles, careful not to ruin her expensive stilettos. I was the
jeans and T-shirt type, but Lyra, the heiress to the Sandoval fashion empire,
loved haute couture. A sudden gust of wind pushed Lyra’s umbrella to the side
and changed the direction of the rain. Her mascara didn’t run, but her hairstyle
went from chic to freak.
Lyra switched on the engine as soon as she got into the driver’s seat, then
pulled down the mirror. The leather seats became pleasantly warm while my
friend pouted in the mirror to check her lipstick.

“You said tea salon, right?” she asked, dexterously combing her fingers
through her hair to fix the errant curls.
“Yeah. As in not a chance you’ll get me into one.”
Lyra sighed as if she had actually believed that I’d fall for that mind game. It
wasn’t that I didn’t like tea. What I objected to was the whole frilly atmosphere
of those places. The cups were too dainty, the music was too low, the chairs
were too small, and the other customers sat too close. Simply put, it was the
stuff of nightmares.
“It’s your celebration. Where do you want to go?”
My first thought was home since my parents were away, but the guilt would
start gnawing at me. I had a few days left to think of a way to explain to them
why giving up a Westbridge education to become an opera singer was a good
idea.
They were going to be livid. Or worse, disappointed.
“Somewhere close. I’m hungry and tired and hungry.”
“You said hungry twice.”
“I’m very hungry. Choose any place you want, as long as they let me in
dressed like this.”
“You’re wearing jeans and a leather jacket, not a clown outfit. Honestly, I
don’t know how fancy you think I am. What sort of places do you imagine I
go to when we’re not hanging out together?”
“I saw photos, Lyra. You were wearing a freaking tiara.”
“It was a benefit gala! It was not lunch on a Thursday afternoon!”
I raised my hands in surrender.
“Okay, okay, you’re not uber fancy. Whatever you choose is fine. Even a tea
salon, if you want to see me eat at least an entire tray of those tiny things they
pretend are cakes.”
Lyra laughed and turned right onto a narrow street in the old district. This
part of the city retained the quaint atmosphere of prewar Bakirville. On sunny
days, the pubs and coffeehouses littered the sidewalks with tables for the
tourists. On rainy days, like today, tourists and locals would be crammed inside,
waiting for the rain to stop.
The days were getting longer in spring, but I couldn’t help worrying that
something bad might happen to Lyra if she was in the city after sunset. A few
days before I left for Westbridge, I overheard my parents talking about a
government initiative to restore the Curfew Law. It was getting pretty bad at
night. I never feared for my own safety, but I feared for Lyra’s and even for
Sebastian’s, despite their powers. Or maybe because of them.

“Are you sure you don’t want to drive back to Westbridge now? You love
history. You’ll be devastated if you’re too tired to do great at the test.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Lyra said. “Speaking of history, there are some things you
should know. About Marcus Orlov.”

haptr3a
trbra

Monday, March 16
The bistro’s suspiciously long list of teas was offset by a decent selection of
more serious options. I sighed in relief, reading the names of traditional foods
like meatball soup in a bread bowl next to delicious imports like “cream of
mushroom soup with croutons.”
Lyra never failed to choose the perfect place.
The waitress masked her surprise as best she could while she took down my
order. After all, Lyra and I were the student type who ordered fancy teas or
special coffee roasts and sat there talking for hours. I was not supposed to add
coffee as an afterthought after ordering Felician cheese pie, winter salad,
Awzian stew, and crepes with sour cherries confiture.
“This place is amazing,” I said. “Why aren’t hordes of tourists here? Why
haven’t we been here before?”
“I never found it,” Lyra said. “I walked past it until DellaTorre sent me for
takeaway. He had to give me written directions and a counterspell. The spells
of confusion over this place are complex.”
“Oh, it’s one of those.”
An unfindable.
I was the only one in my family without magical powers. Lyra was the only
one in hers who had them. Life in Talinia was funny that way. If not for the
fact that we weren’t born at the same time or even in the same city, I would’ve
seriously wondered if—
“You’re wondering again if we were switched at birth?” Lyra interrupted my
thought.
“Stop doing that,” I exclaimed, shooting sparkling water through my nose.
Lyra straightened the fork and knife and made sure they were at the right
distance from the plate.
“I can’t help it. You’ve been mentioning it every time we talk about magic,
so now it’s the first thing that pops into my mind when we get on the subject.”
That was true. I didn’t obsess over my lack of talent in the magical arts, just
like Lyra didn’t mind that she couldn’t sing to save her life. Our friendship
worked because of our differences. Without my best friend, I would’ve gotten
into lots more trouble. Without me, Lyra would’ve never had any fun.
“How’s that app of yours coming along?” I asked. “Without you in the city,
I’ll need help finding this place again.”
She gave a little frustrated huff.

“Still working on it. The counterspell from DellaTorre helped me with some
of the intricacies. I’ll get it to work.”
For several months, Lyra had been working on a phone app that would
show unfindables on a map of Bakirville. She came up with the idea as a way
to help me. Her initiative was crazy ambitious because it aimed to work for
nonmagical beings. Not that there were many people around the Welcoming
Sea who scored a big fat zero on the Test, like me.
This was a charming little bistro. If the food here was any good, I was going
to follow up with her about the app. I took a gulp of water and picked up a
breadstick. It wasn’t the rustic Felician bread I loved, but it was yummy. It
would do until the food arrived.
“Now that I’m sitting down and I’m reasonably sure I won’t starve to death,
I’m ready to know more about the bomb you just dropped.”
I was hoping for a smile, not the deepening crease on Lyra’s forehead.
“Yes. About that. I have a few things to tell you about Orlov.”
“That’s going to make for a nice change. For the past six years, I’ve been the
one talking about him.”
“This is different. You talked about him as a singer. I want to talk to you
about him as a vampire.”
Lyra’s tone was too serious. My bestie often treated me like I was a child
despite both of us being the same age. This didn’t look like one of her usual
attempts to prevent me from doing something crazy. This looked more like
Lyra giving up on talking me out of the crazy and resigning herself to helping
me the best she could.
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a crush on him,” I said to release the tension. “I
can totally introduce you to him. I bet he’s wearing Sandoval clothes when he’s
not on stage.”
The twinkle of mischief in Lyra’s big green eyes failed to appear. Her cheeks
didn’t seem to get any redder. Not that she was a blusher like me, but not even
a drop of color appeared on her ivory complexion.
“No,” Lyra said in a measured tone. “Marcus Aemilius Konstantin Orlov is
not the kind of person anyone should get a crush on.”
A chill ran through me when she said his full name. When she spoke like
that, she wasn’t my childhood friend. She was a young witch who poured
magic into the sound of someone’s true name. I knew this because protection
against subjugation was a required subject since the first grade for nonmagical
folks like me. Wherever he was, Marcus Orlov must have felt like someone
walked over his grave.
“If you’re trying to freak me out, you’re on the right track.”

Lyra scowled. “I wish. I’d feel better if I knew you could be freaked out.”
“Yeah, well, you know better.”
She nodded somberly. No one knew better than Lyra just how unfreakable I
really was.
“Let’s start with a history lesson. After the Cataclysm, magic from beneath
and from above remained concentrated around the Welcoming Sea. The old
ones raised the Unbroken Barrier to separate us from the rest of the world.”
“Lyra, I like history as much as the next person unless that person is you, of
course, but this is going back two thousand years. He can’t be that old… can
he?”
“You know this would go faster if you don’t interrupt me, right?”
That tone was new. Lyra never got snippy when I made fun of her
professorial manner of speaking. My friend knew that I loved to hear her talk
about our history.
“I’m sorry,” she said, then took a deep breath. “I’m pushing the limits of my
apprenticeship bond as it is. What I’m trying to tell you are things I found out
while doing research for DellaTorre, and as such, they’d be covered by the
compulsion spells and the extra confidentiality oaths I had to swear for this
particular project.”
My hand flew to my mouth. The apprenticeship bond was not something
mages took lightly. On top of that, DellaTorre made her swear an extra oath to
strengthen the compulsion? My father was a lawyer who specialized in magical
contracts, and I had interned at his firm long enough to know things could get
really gnarly with breaches in magic contracts.
“Maybe you shouldn’t tell me.”
“Don’t worry, lawyer girl,” Lyra said with a thin smile. “I’m not telling you
anything that’s not public.”
I grinned back at my friend. The venerable DellaTorre was in for a world of
shock if he ever tried to compel Lyra to do something she didn’t want. My
friend was a resourceful little witch under that nice girl exterior.
“Former lawyer girl,” I muttered so quietly that she didn’t even hear me.
“I had to make official requests to get documents for everything that’s not
already common knowledge. It should be fine.”
The phrase “should be fine” didn’t fill me with confidence, but if the
cautious Lyra risked it, it had to be uber important.
“After the Barrier went up, the countries around the Welcoming Sea evolved
differently. Mora used the pretext of our interbreeding to start the war.”
“Pretext?” I couldn’t stop my exclamation.

“I thought you knew our history,” Lyra said dryly. “War is rarely about only
one thing. Yes, the Morans despise us for interbreeding freely, but I’m sure
they hated the fact that Talinia grew so much even more. We became the large
federation we are today by incorporating small dukedoms and city-states,
removing them from Mora’s sphere of influence. Three hundred years ago, we
became a threat to their absolute dominance of the Welcoming Sea.”
That made sense. Talinia and Mora would always be at odds, but three
hundred years ago, the two countries had their greatest open war.
The changes in the Caste Codex allowed people to marry, have children, and
hold rank with no regard to their species or state of existence. Mora took that
as an invitation to try to wipe out Talinia and its heresy.
“One of the most powerful supporters of the abolition was a new vampire,
the head of House Orlov. Three hundred years ago, Marcus Orlov was a run-
of-the-mill knight. At thirty-three, when he was turned, he was immensely
wealthy, unmarried, with no children, and no relatives closer than the fourth
rank.”
Lyra paused, giving me time to think through her words. According to
Talinian law, relatives over the third rank couldn’t inherit. All those summers I
had spent at my father’s law firm hadn’t been wasted after all.
My father dealt mostly with contracts, but since we descended from one of
the oldest families in the country, aristocrats and supernaturals came to him
with complex issues of inheritance. The complications stemmed mainly from
the fact that during their unnaturally long lives, laws changed many times.
There were usually vast sums of money at stake.
Before the abolition, many civil rights stopped at the moment of death.
Becoming a vampire had civil and commercial consequences, not only
biological ones.
“So, the vast wealth of the Orlovs would go to the state when he died,” I
shared my conclusion aloud. “He could only marry another vampire, and basic
xenology says that two vampires can’t have children. According to the Caste
Codex, any child he might have had with a mortal could not inherit.”
Lyra nodded approvingly. She was about to continue but stopped when the
food arrived.
I breathed in the heavenly aroma of Felician cheese pie, forgetting for a
moment about Lyra’s story. The food tasted every bit as good as it smelled.
After a few minutes, my curiosity overtook my hunger.
“How come I didn’t know he was involved in the abolition? You said this is
a matter of public record. Why isn’t it taught in school? Everyone knows that
King Aleksei II reformed the Codex.”

“It’s not in history books, but the records exist. Orlov’s petition to the king.
His speeches in the Upper House. I imagine even his donations to the League
exist in the archives of the Ministry of Finance.”
“When you started this conversation with such foreboding, I expected
something worse.”
“I’m getting to that. After we changed the Caste Codex, the war with Mora
started. Orlov fulfilled his duty as a knight. He financed a small company of
mercenaries, but he also fought in the war. He was given his first Red Wings
by King Aleksei II.”
“Red?” I asked in a horrified whisper.
The White Wings were a medal for bravery in combat. The Gray Wings
were also for bravery but were awarded posthumously. My great-grandmother
had received Blue Wings for healing in the First World War.
Rumor spoke of the Black Wings, for covert operations. But the Red
Wings…. One received Red Wings for a hundred confirmed kills in combat.
Then it struck me. Lyra had said his first Red Wings.
“He got the Red Wings more than once?”
“Marcus Orlov has been awarded the Red Wings twice by King Aleksei II.”
Two hundred people killed. I couldn’t connect the enchanting voice of
Marcus Orlov with so much death, but Lyra hadn’t finished.
“Once by King Mikhail in the Civil War,” Lyra said. “Once by King Aleksei
IV. And three times by King Semyon during the Second World War.”
The plate of pasta cooled in front of me. Its delicious aroma didn’t break
through the numbness.
Seven hundred confirmed kills in battle. How many others had there been?
How many unconfirmed kills? How many kills not under battle conditions?
“Anything else since then?”
“Nothing on record,” Lyra said with a small nod of her head.
So there was more, but she couldn’t share.
I pushed aside the plate and didn’t even look at the winter salad the waitress
brought.
“Why did you tell me this, Lyra?”
“Not telling you, after I found out, felt like I was lying to you. I know I’m
getting my hopes up, but if you know, it might keep you out of trouble. You
have a way of rubbing people the wrong way.”
Yep, that was my best friend talking.
“Thank you so very much for the confidence. I admire the guy! I’ll do my
damn best to rub him the right way.”

As a career blusher, my cheeks burst into flames when I heard myself. Lyra
relaxed and smiled while I blushed and blushed.
“It’s precisely because you admire him,” Lyra said, turning serious again.
“You’re going to work with him. You’ll be so pissed off when he disappoints
you. He’s not going to live up to the idealized image you have of him. The first
time he’s rude to someone, you’re going to jump to the rescue and stand up to
him.”
I wanted to argue, but when Lyra arched her eyebrow, I gave up. Since the
first grade, she had witnessed me get involved time and again whenever I saw
anyone being mistreated. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut when a teacher was
mean to a student or when a bully picked on someone weaker.
“You don’t pick your battles,” Lyra said. “I’ve always been worried that one
day you’ll get into a fight you can’t win.”
“Are you seriously worried I might annoy him to the point of making him
want to drain me of blood?”
Lyra sighed and rubbed her temples.
“No. I just wish you could be more cautious. I used him as an example that
people are sometimes very far from what they seem. And that good intentions
can have grave consequences. Orlov did something great bringing forth the
abolition. Considering the fact that he never married or fathered children to
inherit his wealth, I don’t think he fought to change the law out of selfishness.
He wanted to do what was right, but the direct consequence of his great deed
was the war with Mora.”
“Which was unavoidable. You just said so!”
“I doubt that made him feel any better,” Lyra said. “And if your good
intentions cause harm to someone, you won’t feel any less guilty.”
“You’re right.” I sighed. “Thank you. For today. And for all the other times
you got me out of trouble.”
Lyra shrugged off the compliment delicately.
“Please be careful. And remember, I’m only a phone call away.”

ngtthezard

Monday, March 16
Her rendition of our republican anthem took me back to some of my darkest
times. Our monarchy had ended in the blood of the Second World War, but
that didn’t make me love my country any less.
When Lucian had followed up on his previous message with two question
marks, I texted back, Hell yes. “Hell” being the operative word.
The Skylark was a girl. A pure soul with a destiny written in the stars. And
she was going to turn my peaceful life into a living hell.
The rest of the auditions didn’t bring any surprises. We rejected most
applicants, but none of the ones we kept had much potential. Except her.
The Skylark.
My memory of the prophecy was unclear. A century earlier, I had cloistered
myself in the Opera to avoid being dragged into the wars of the mortals or the
politics of the immortals. I had not been entirely successful.
In 1938, the prime minister had sounded me out confidentially about a part
of the Seraphic prophecies because, in Talinia’s secret history, the Orlov
bloodline was referred to as the Eagle.
The details of that meeting faded after the carnage of the Second World
War. The only words I remembered were Skylark, Eagle, and War.
The passage of time crowded my mind palace with too many memories. I
decided I shouldn’t force open the door to that particular vault. I had other
options. Vincent would be the most reliable font of information.
Wanderlust kept the wizard of Awz out of the Capital for decades at a time,
but he always returned. Vincent liked to keep connected with events. Anything
I needed to know, from ancient history to current gossip, my friend could tell
me. If I dared to ask, he could sneak a peek into the future to calculate lines of
probability.
The wizard was my last living friend, and, on the strength of our friendship
alone, he would share the wording of the prophecy without demanding to
know why I was asking. He would accept other currency for the help. Vincent
treasured information like dragons hoarded gold, and I had the right gold in
my vaults.
I left the opera house through the steppingstone, the door that linked the
second basement to the city’s catacombs. I changed into an eagle and flew all
the way home. These two had to be the most frequently used steppingstones
of the Bakirvillian catacombs. Since Bakirville, bowing to the pressure of
increasing population, was forced to build a subway system, the authorities had

gently and not-so-gently discouraged the use of the catacombs. They made no
secret of the fact that they monitored them. But there were ways of getting
past that. Like most remnants of another era, few people used them, and the
task of tracking movement through the catacombs fell into obsolescence.
In front of the reinforced steel door that guarded the underside of Palazzo
Orlov, I changed back into human form. The door closed behind me, sealing
me off safely from the rest of the world. I grabbed a bottle of old wine from
the rack and climbed the stairs two at the time.
The main hall of Palazzo Orlov was resplendent. At the center of the round
table in the middle of the hall, my staff had placed a vase with pink and white
peonies. The delicate flowers quivered softly when I set the bottle next to
them, reminding me of the incident in box five. I clenched my jaw. I wished
DuChat would stop it with the fresh flowers, but I didn’t have the heart to tell
her. The most important job my butler had left was to oversee the cleaning of
this glorified crypt. She did it to perfection. The only grains of dust in the
whole house were the ones on the wine bottle I got from the cellar.
In my parents’ time, the butler of Palazzo Orlov had to coordinate every
detail for opulent parties or themed masquerade balls. Any butler of the
Orlovs could take over the logistics duty for an entire army and organize
everything from ammunition supplies to the laundry rota.
In my bedroom, a single rose greeted me from the windowsill. A dark red
rose in bloom. No, I would not tell DuChat to stop with the flowers.
I opened the door to my walk-in closet and stared at my clothes. What did
one wear to a casual meeting with a friend one hadn’t seen in several years? I
picked a dark suit, a green Sandoval shirt, and a pair of fine leather gloves. The
gloves were a necessity whenever I ventured outside. Since my ascension, the
sun didn’t bother me at all, but I needed to keep my hands safe. I couldn’t
stand touching anyone or anything, and I preferred to expose myself to
potential ridicule for wearing gloves than take the chance of an occasional
contact.
On the ride to Vincent’s home, my mind returned obsessively to that girl’s
audition. Selfishly, I regretted not turning her away. She had done a good job
of screwing up her audition. I shouldn’t have asked for another song.
What was she thinking coming with a folk song to audition for the National
Opera of Bakirville?
She wasn’t thinking, and I knew it. She was already caught in the
momentum of the prophecy.
Maybe I could get her fired in the next few days. The girl could go fulfill her
destiny away from me, ruining someone else’s peace.

Peace.
If she were the Skylark, not only my peace would be shattered. All of Talinia
would be engulfed in a war important enough to be part of the Seraphic
prophecies.

zardfz

Monday, March 16
Vincent’s current home was in one of the new residential districts. The taxi
took me all the way to the front door of a small villa that looked exactly like
the other dozen villas we had passed from the gate. The same boring sharp
angles. The same square of grass on the front lawn. No actual yard
surrounding the house. That was a nice surprise. Depending on how long a
person had lived in one place, the threshold of the yard could be as strong as
that of the house. If a family went back a few generations, the threshold at the
fence would make it as impenetrable for me as a brick wall for a living being.
Inside the glove, my finger tingled from the mere touch of a button placed
on the perimeter of the house. The hair at the nape of my neck was standing
up in the proximity of the strong threshold.
What would happen if I forced my way through it? I wondered. Would I survive?
Back in my blood age, I would only “lose my fangs”, but I’d have my full
human strength.
He opened the door as soon as I rang the bell.
“Come in,” he said immediately, and I felt the energy of the threshold relax
with the invitation.
“Good evening, Vincent.” I handed him the wine. “It was a fine vintage,” I
assured him, knowing the label wouldn’t tell him anything.
“Look who crawled out of the coffin,” he said, looking me up and down.
He hadn’t seen me outside the Opera since the war.
“That’s a very speciesist thing to say.”
His smile grew wider. “Are you getting a sense of humor in your old age?”
“No,” I said. “You’re finally mature enough to get it.”
I appreciated the fact that he led me to his home office rather than his living
room. He knew this couldn’t be a simple courtesy visit.
“Now who’s being a speciesist?” he said, sitting in one of the ridiculously
modern armchairs.
Modern but not uncomfortable, I noticed when I sat in the other one.
“I’m allowed to have an opinion about humans. I used to be one.”
“You have to tell me about it sometime,” Vincent said. “I’ve known you
since you entombed yourself in that mausoleum, and you never told me about
your human life.”
This could be as good a time as any to pay the price. I didn’t talk about my
old life to anyone who hadn’t been alive then. Which meant that I never talked

about it since the only people still alive from back then were not my friends.
Not by a country mile.
“It was quite boring. The only thing about me that wasn’t ordinary was my
voice. Much like today, being an opera singer was not a profession befitting a
knight. To be honest, it’s the boredom I miss more than anything else.”
The wizard laughed good-naturedly. “We always want what we can’t have. I
traveled all over this Earth in my mere one hundred and twenty years, and I
never got into trouble. You never left Talinia, and you got into so much
trouble; there are chapters about you in our history.”
I didn’t get in trouble. Other people pushed me, dragged me, or suckered
me into getting in trouble.
“Not many people know they are about me,” I said sulkily.
I didn’t need reminding that my life had been a long string of adventures in
which I was involved by the people around me.
My friend chuckled. “Oh, yes. How could I forget your fondness for
wearing masks?”
“Masks are useful,” I said.
He raised his hands in a sign of surrender. “I’m not denying that. The anti-
glam spell I designed for you is one of my most helpful creations. I used many
nifty variations to save my skin.”
“Didn’t you say you never got in trouble?”
“I didn’t get in trouble. The spell didn’t have to get me out of trouble. It kept
me out of trouble. The world beyond our borders is a barren desert in terms of
magic, but I am one of those lucky people who can tap ley lines deep
underground, as well as the ethereal matrix.”
The Outerworld lived in blissful ignorance of the hell under their feet and in
fearless unbelief in the heavens above.
“It’s strange,” Vincent said. “We can slide Below or rise Above if we choose,
but we have less faith than them. No angels or demons walk their streets. They
are pure humans who have only life and death. In Talinia, even if you happen
to be born fully human, you can become a vampire, werewolf, ghost, or
zombie.”
“We are a colorful mélange,” I said. “When I was young, the laws against
interbreeding were fully enforced.”
It had been fascinating to observe the new generations of Talinians in the
centuries since we repealed the segregation articles in the Codex. My people
had grown strong and beautiful in their variety.
“I watch the Outerworlders on TV sometimes, and I’m in awe,” I confessed.
“They have religions and faith, without any proof since the Barrier went up…

what was it, a thousand years ago?”
“Almost two,” Vincent said. “Didn’t he ever tell you about it?”
I shook my head. I had a few chapters in Talinia’s history, but my sire had a
few chapters in the old history, which included the raising of the Unbroken
Barrier. Jacob had walked the Earth when magic was not concentrated on the
shores of our very own sea.
“My life was completely uninteresting. I’m not one of those people who got
turned because a master vampire fell in love with an exceptional human being.
I got turned when I was a peaceful middle-aged gentleman taking care of my
family’s country estate.”
“Middle-aged?” Vincent asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Thirty was the old fifty. I was thirty-three, Talinia was at peace, and the
rank of knight was just another title. My parents decided to enjoy their twilight
years in the comfort of Bakirville, so I went home to take care of our lands. I
planted crops, raised sheep, collected taxes, built schools.”
“You never got around to marrying,” Vincent said with a trace of curiosity.
“No. There were… perks to being the lord of the manor.”
Women found their way into my bed before I had a chance to want anything
more from them. Some were milkmaids with dreams of moving up in the
world. Some were high society ladies, with old names and no money.
“Droit du seigneur?” Vincent asked.
I shuddered in revulsion. Demanding a woman’s virginity appalled me. I
believed in freedom of choice even before I was made Destiny’s bitch. I
abhorred any form of constraint out of principle. Maybe that was why She
liked to play with me so much, like a curious cat with a rebellious mouse.
“No. Never that. But I’m not proud of the way I lived my life. I took what
was offered to me without realizing or caring that it wasn’t offered freely. I
never looked for the strings attached. Even if I made no promises, I never
fulfilled anyone’s dreams either.”
“Why not?”
His question had an uncomfortable answer. I had decided to pay Vincent in
truths, so I told him.
“When I was alive? Because I was selfish. After my death, because I was
angry.”
“Angry?” Vincent seemed surprised.
I tried to explain. “I never wanted to live forever. I never asked to be turned.
I couldn’t stop Destiny from using me, but at least I could prevent people
from taking advantage of me.”

The old anger bubbled to the surface. Women got close to me because they
wanted something. Money. Status. Immortality. Sometimes all they wanted was
a night with me because they unwittingly fell under the power of my vampiric
allure. I should’ve been kinder to them.
“You’ve never talked about yourself before,” Vincent said. “Why do I have
the feeling that you did because you need information tonight?”
“Because you’re perceptive.”
“I appreciate you fed my curiosity, and I will do my best to reciprocate.”
He leaned back into his armchair, waiting for my question. I paid him the
courtesy of being direct.
“What do you know about the Seraphic prophecies?”
He winced. That meant he remembered them. It also meant that it was
probably bad.
“Do I want to know why you’re interested?” he asked.
“Let’s say I want to know if it’s possible they are inaccurate.”
“Of course it’s possible,” Vincent said, going to his desk and booting up his
computer.
“What are you doing?”
“Don’t you want to know the exact wording?” he asked, typing in his
password.
“You have them on your computer?”
“Yes, old man. Of course I have them properly transcribed. I’m so annoyed
that whoever was present at the uttering didn’t have a recording device.”
“In my time,” I said in a theatrically shaky voice, “prophecies were written
on parchment.”
Vincent laughed. “No, they weren’t. Besides, parchment was hard to get in
the 1920s. Anything, in particular, you want to know?”
“Let’s start with the ones that might be about me.”
He nodded. “The Eagle. It’s your family crest, isn’t it?”
I took out a handkerchief with our coat of arms embroidered in a corner—
an eagle combatant.
“There it is,” Vincent said. “The Seraphic prophecy, 1925, October. I had a
commission to research a bunch of prophecies. This was one of them.”
“What did your research find?”
“That it might have fizzled out.”
My hopes rose. When the prime minister had told me the prophecy, Talinia
was about to be swept up in the madness which had been the Second World
War with the rest of Europe.

“When I was alive, I used to think it was funny we were knights. No Orlov
had been in a war since the Crusades.”
“You more than made up for that,” Vincent said. “Maybe the history books
don’t record your name, but you’d be surprised how many people know the
truth.”
I had to hope that wasn’t the case.
“Paranoid conspiracy theorists.”
“Scholars,” Vincent corrected.
“That’s what I said.”
“Another joke? Should I be worried about you?”
“No. I’ve always been funny.”
“Right,” Vincent said. “So, do you want to hear it?”
Want? No. Need? Probably.
A printer in the corner came alive. I stalked over and took the page. The
words of the prophecy stared at me from the warm paper.
Darkness and Light will come together, and peace will reign in
Talinia during the long night.
The Skylark will come to Earth from the Kingdom of Dreams to
herald the Dawn.
One hundred nights after the Eagle will draw blood from the heart of
the Skylark the final War will start.
I looked up from the paper. Vincent was watching me.
“What do you think it means?” I asked.
“The current theory is that Darkness and Light coming together refers to
our peace with Mora. The long night of peace was the period until the Second
World War. The Luftwaffe’s emblem was the eagle.”
Not bloody likely. There hadn’t been an “eagle” in any Talinian prophecy
that didn’t refer to someone in my family.
“What would explain the Skylark? How did the Luftwaffe draw blood from
the heart of the Skylark a hundred days before the war started?”
“First of all, who knows when the prophet saw the beginning of the war?
We can’t be sure she saw the timeline as we codified it in our records.”
Great. Not only did we not know what the Skylark might have been, but we
also didn’t know when the incident might have occurred.
“Second?” I asked, not allowing my irritation to show in my tone.
“Second, it’s also possible that the duration in the prophecy is
metaphorical.”
The skylark had been the Talinian symbol for freedom, courage, and unity
for as long as I could remember. As a country gentleman, I enjoyed the song

of the skylarks in the woods. As a vampire who could turn into an eagle, I
enjoyed listening to its song. A free bird that sang during its flight.
“All right,” I said patiently. “Taking all that into account, what was the
metaphor of the Skylark back then?”
“There was a group operating on the outer border of Talinia. They called
themselves skylarks. They were massacred in a Luftwaffe air raid on
September 22, 1940.”
“A year after the war officially started,” I pointed out.
“And three months before Talinia officially joined.”
“Less than three months,” I corrected him again.
On the evening of December 19, 1940, I was in my dressing room,
preparing to go on stage for the third act of Siegfried. King Semyon’s voice
came on the radio and announced that Talinia had joined the war.
The director had decided on modern costumes for that staging of Wagner’s
Ring of the Nibelung. As Siegfried, I wore a camouflage uniform fashioned after
the Royal Special Forces. The very uniform I wore for the following four
bloody years.
“What about the Kingdom of Dreams?” I said, shaking off the memories.
“More metaphors?”
Vincent shrugged. “Why not? You know how prophecies are. Even after
they come true, we still can’t be sure if they were real or we interpreted reality
in such a way to make them seem true.”
A muscle in my jaw twitched. Yes, I knew about prophecies. I knew all too
well how it was to stand in front of one and be smashed into the ground trying
to prevent it from coming true.
“Do you think that’s the case here?”
“I’m afraid so,” Vincent said. “No one wants another war. Especially not the
final war.”
“You remember the Second World War, don’t you?” I said, getting annoyed.
“The deadliest war in human history? How could that not be the last one?”
“Human history,” Vincent said.
A chill went down my spine. I hadn’t realized that I could still feel fear. I had
forgotten the taste of it in my heart long before I forgot the taste of blood on
my tongue.
“What are you saying?”
Vincent drew in a deep breath. I sensed the magic field around us tingling.
The wizard had just reinforced the wards around the room.
“Officially, I think the Second World War was the final war,” he started in a
measured tone. “Unofficially, I think the final war will be vertical.”

“Fuck.”
I rarely cursed, but the idea of a war involving the three worlds horrified me.
The Above versus the Below, and us, the Innerworld, caught in the middle.
We’d be the battlefield for the ultimate battle.
“I may be wrong,” Vincent said.
“When were you wrong last time?”
“About an hour ago, when I wholeheartedly believed that you have no sense
of humor.”
I opened my mouth to tell him it wasn’t funny but clamped it shut just as
quickly. What good would it serve to take it as a tragedy? If war had to come, it
would come, whether we worried or joked about it.
“Of course, the wording might be off. That’s why I said I hate not having an
objective recording. This is a translation from a sound-by-sound memory of
the people who witnessed the prophet’s words. The prophecy was in Ancient
Talinian.”
“What could be different?”
“There might be some conditionals in there.”
Vincent looked at the computer and read aloud.
“If Darkness and Light come together, peace will reign in Talinia
during the long night, and the Skylark will come to the Earth from the
Kingdom of Dreams to herald the Dawn.
“If the Eagle draws blood from the heart of the Skylark, in one
hundred nights, the final War will start.”
“You’re grasping at straws, Vincent.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “Maybe I’m no different than those who want it to
be about the Second World War.”
I wanted to believe the second version. As long as the prophet saw a chance
—infinitesimal though it was—for the final war to be avoided, I was going to
grasp at it. I hadn’t drawn blood from a human being in so long, I had almost
forgotten the taste.
“Marcus,” Vincent said, interrupting my thoughts. “There is another one.”
“Another what?”
“The prophet had another vision, but the witness was unreliable, and the
royal seer didn’t include it in the canon.”
“Do you know what it said?”
Vincent tilted his head from side to side. “Not with any serious degree of
certainty. The witness didn’t hear it well. The prophet was thrashing in her
sleep, and her speech was garbled. The transcription of his memory leaves a
lot of room to interpretation.”

“What is your interpretation?”
“I narrowed it down to two versions. ‘When the Skylark falls from grace,
Talinia will fall,’ or ‘if the Skylark falls in grace, Talinia will fall.’”
I threw up my hands. “What the hell does that mean? Falling from grace? Is
the Skylark an angel? How does one fall in grace?”
“I don’t know. There’s a connection between the Skylark and the fall of
Talinia. It could be when or it could be if. It could be grace, or it could be literally
anything. I went for grace because it sounded mildly similar, and it makes
syntactic sense.”
“Of course, if the original prophecy was about the Second World War, this
corollary is meaningless.”
Vincent smiled. “Let’s drink to that.”

o
On the way home, I weighed my options. As much as I wished to believe
that the prophecy was about the Second World War, I couldn’t afford to count
on it. From the first time I heard about it, all those years ago, I believed that
someone in the Orlov bloodline was the Eagle. I had stupidly fooled myself
that it wasn’t going to be me. Not again. There were other Orlovs in the world.
I was only one branch of the tree.
But what if I was the Eagle again? And young, innocent Kay the Skylark?
If I stayed away from her, I could be sure not to draw blood. I would never
intentionally harm the girl in any case, but Destiny could be quite a scheming
bitch when it came to arranging accidents and misunderstandings. The more
one tried to avoid them, the more horrendous the consequences.
No wonder I felt at home in the convoluted and often implausible plots of
operas. I had enough experience of being Destiny’s choiceless pawn. I had
always fulfilled the role She assigned to me even when I took every precaution
imaginable to prevent it.
Would I end up hurting the Skylark? Since I started my life in the Opera, I
hurt a lot of feelings, leaving bodies intact for the most part. Many people
hated me instead of counting their blessings. Tears were a long way from
blood.
Staying away from Kay would save her from me, but if the second prophecy
was true and anything happened to her before we figured out its meaning,
Talinia would fall. I had not fought in all those wars and spilled the blood of
so many people for my country to let it down now. I had to find a way to
become part of Kay’s life and keep her safe for as long as necessary.

“Damn,” I muttered, throwing my shoes across the room. “Damn, damn,
triple damn! Is it too much to ask for a quiet retirement?”
If Destiny heard me, She was probably laughing her ass off.

haptr6a
MFrt a

Tuesday, March 17
Lyra dropped me off at home before returning to Westbridge. My best friend
was going back and I… I wasn’t. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I wiped them
off with the back of my sleeve before looking up into the iris scanner at the
gate.
With Sebastian in the military academy until the summer and our parents
traveling abroad, I had the house all to myself for two months. For the first
time ever, I was selfishly grateful that my mother’s charity work took her out
of the country for long periods of time, and, for once, my father had gone
with her. I could use the time to prepare for their reaction. And live rent-free
at home. Unless I counted lying to my parents whenever they called me as the
price.
I dragged my feet up the stairs, ready to collapse in my bed. My bedroom
door opened with a creak. The room was a mess. I had left it messy when I
packed up for Westbridge a few months earlier, and during this past week, I
had focused on preparing for the audition and playing the neighborhood
vigilante. Batman had no time for straightening up his room. He had Alfred
for that.
In the Spring District, where I lived all my life, people had the magic or the
money to protect themselves. Usually, they had both. That didn’t stop me from
taking matters into my own hands when I noticed something was wrong. I
didn’t have magic powers. I noticed things. By nature and by education, I was
observant. The result? I ended up on various adventures. It could be
something as “fun” as getting a cat down from a tree or as strange as finding
out why the children’s shadows were fading. Not that cat-related adventures
were ever fun. Cats didn’t like me, and I couldn’t blame them. They could see
magic, so for them, I must have been as creepy as a giant walking doll.
A chill ran through me when I remembered how close I’d been to getting in
serious trouble last night. The night before my audition, I’d been running
around like I was Zorro, Batman, and all four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
rolled into one.
Firstly, my intuition had led Lyra and me straight to the illegal dungeon of
the dark warlock who was drawing power from the children in the
neighborhood.
Secondly, with my magic-blindness, I had triggered his defenses, and a
legion of his imps had chased Lyra and me until we jumped into a private yard.

Thirdly, the yard in question belonged to a family of trolls who would’ve
been in their right to kill us on sight if they caught us there.
Fourthly, if it hadn’t been for Lyra activating the magical security system of
the house, the imps could’ve killed us.
And… zerothly, if it hadn’t been for Sebastian’s precaution of imprinting me
on every security system in the neighborhood, the house’s own familiar spirits
would’ve roughed me up. If not worse. The domovoi took their job of
guarding someone’s home very seriously. The safety of the house was the
domovoi’s only reason for existing.
Once again, my intuition had led me straight to a cluster of evil that no one
had discovered, and my luck had helped me get out of danger unscathed. My
luck and my posse.
How would my luck fare now with Sebastian in the academy and Lyra in
Westbridge?
Westbridge. The place where most of my clothes were, in the wardrobe I
shared with Lyra. I should ask her to bring a few essentials next time she came
over. Until then, I’d have to get by with a couple of pairs of old jeans and the
clothes that were in the laundry basket when I left, which I’d been wearing
around the clock for a week.
I sat cross-legged in front of my wardrobe, staring at the five shoeboxes
huddled together under the empty coat hangers. Three of the boxes contained
fancy evening shoes, completely inappropriate for any day job.
The thought seared through me. I had a day job. This was actually
happening. I had given up the best education in Talinia to become an opera
singer with no formal training, except the lessons with Mrs. Sorelli, my high
school music teacher. Was I insane?
Maybe I should call Lyra and ask her to get me back to Westbridge. What
sane person gave up on Westbridge to sing in the chorus?
It wasn’t even that I hated the idea of being a lawyer. During my internship,
I found out that I loved hunting for the truth, and I had a deep personal
satisfaction when I helped untangle complicated inheritance issues. And my
dad… my dad was amazing. The way he dealt with people, with sternness and
kindness at the same time. How patiently he explained things to me. How
proud he was of my little successes.
Westbridge had been fun, too. I enjoyed studying. I loved learning new
things, meeting new people, expanding my mind. Having Lyra there, life in
Westbridge felt like an extended playdate.
But I loved music more.
Lyra understood that. My parents would understand, too. Eventually.

I checked my inbox every five minutes until the message from the Opera
showed up. I blinked a few times to clear the blurriness. The words kept
jumbling in front of my eyes, and I nearly deleted the email in my agitation. A
few details managed to stick in my mind.
Tuesday.
9:00 a.m.
Practice room 2.
It wasn’t a dream. That was the confirmation that they accepted me.

o
The night passed in a flurry of anxiety and bad dreams. I walked all the way
to the Opera in a futile attempt not to be the first one to show up. I arrived an
hour early and sat down on a bench in the small park outside the majestic
building.
Staring at the caryatids on the side of the opera house kept me busy for
about two minutes. The fluttering in my stomach intensified until I couldn’t
stand it any longer. I jumped to my feet, unable to sit for a moment more. So
what if I was the first one?
Brimming with anticipation was my normal state when it came to this place.
I never felt so alive as in those wonderful hours when I sat in our usual box
with my eyes closed and my heart beating for the loves and losses of imaginary
people. I was twenty years old and only knew love from operas.
The force of habit took me up the pebbled path toward the main entrance.
Unsurprisingly, on Friday morning, it was closed. I went around the building
to the artists’ entrance, passing by the posters for the next performances.
Seeing them made my heart ache. Our box would probably be empty for the
rest of the season. Sebastian was at the academy, not that my brother was
much of an opera fan, and my parents… they would most likely avoid the
Opera after they found out what I had done.
The smell of freshly cut grass pulled me out of my gloomy thoughts just
before reaching the artists’ entrance. With my hand on the door handle, I
craned my neck to see the lawn on the far end of the backyard. I caught a
glimpse of a tall man with a scythe on his shoulder disappearing around the
corner.
A scythe? In this day and age?
The clock on my cell phone informed me that I was three-quarters of an
hour early. I pondered for two whole seconds the wisdom of following a guy

with a scythe. Lyra would be proud that it even occurred to me to wonder if,
maybe, rushing after him wasn’t a great idea.
I turned the corner, but there was no trace of him. After taking a few steps,
I discovered a door I didn’t know about.
I thought I knew everything there was to know about the exterior of the
opera house. In all the times I had walked around the building waiting for
them to open the doors for the show, I had never noticed the ten stone steps
leading down to a battered wooden door. The terracotta bricks peeked
through the flaking plaster. The opera house had been extensively renovated
some twenty years earlier, and it probably looked better than when it was first
built. Why would this part look so decrepit?
I climbed down the steps cautiously, grateful that my comfortable shoes
didn’t make any sound. When I got close to the door, I saw the very modern
and very serious-looking lock.
Curiouser and curiouser.
Quoting from Alice in Wonderland was a good indicator that I was doing
something I probably shouldn’t. Even so, I reached for the doorknob and tried
to turn it without making a sound. That part was a complete success. The door
didn’t squeak. It didn’t open either.
The phone vibrating in my pocket startled me. I let go of the door and ran
up the steps and back to the artists’ entrance.
Lyra’s text made me wrinkle my nose.
It’s your first day. Behave.
That witch knew me too well.
Despite the early hour, the artists’ entrance was unlocked. I walked in
through the same narrow hallway as the day before, with its peeling ceiling and
crinkled newspaper cuttings.
In the eerie silence, I retraced my steps from the day of the audition. Going
in, I’d been so anxious about the audition, I had relied on Lyra to guide me,
but on the way out, despite floating on clouds, my well-trained sense of
orientation didn’t disappoint. Too bad the only thing I knew about the
backstage was the way to the waiting room and to the stage.
I pricked up my ears to catch any noises that might tell me where to find
someone I could ask for directions to practice room 2. The sound of a chair
scraping across the floor came from somewhere to my left. I homed in on it
and arrived in what looked like a common room.
A man in a dark gray suit sat in an armchair, reading a newspaper, with a
cup of coffee steaming on the small table. There were drag marks in the thin
layer of dust. He had probably pulled the table closer to the armchair.

He lowered the paper, and I instantly recognized the director of the
Bakirville National Opera.
“Good morning, Miss Leonis,” he said, standing up. “I’m Lucian Forsyth.”
Yesterday, without seeing him, I hadn’t realized who the man was who
spoke from the darkness of the auditorium. Now I put the voice and the face
together and realized I knew that face. Could I hope that he didn’t know mine?
I wondered if he knew who I was and was making fun of me by using my
made-up name.
What if today he recognized me, too? Lucian Forsyth knew my father and
was a regular guest at my mother’s charity events.
For a moment, I was tempted to come clean and plead with him not to tell
my parents. The idea of pleading didn’t sit well with me. No, as long as he
didn’t call me out, I was going to pretend nothing was wrong. Pretending
things were going to be fine had always worked for me in the past.
“Good morning, sir,” I said in a slightly strangled voice, shaking the hand he
offered. “Thank you for the opportunity.”
He cut me off immediately.
“Nonsense. You deserve to be here. We were very impressed with your
voice. If you’re not afraid of hard work, you will have a bright future here.”
A swarm of drunken butterflies invaded my chest. “I’m not afraid.” Much
to my surprise, my voice sounded calm. It was probably what I’d sound like if I
had my life together.
Forsyth made an elegant movement of his wrist toward the corridor on the
left.
“Good, good,” he said, sounding like my old headmaster for a moment.
“You can go into the practice room. It should be open. When the others
arrive, Madame Bellacourt will assess each of you.”
He returned to his paper, dismissing me from his sphere of attention.
Nothing could please me more.
“Thank you,” I said as I turned to go in the direction he had indicated.
Whereas the common room where I left Lucian Forsyth was in keeping with
the majestic turn-of-the-century architecture of the building, the corridor
leading to the practice room seemed grafted from the new building of my
college, down to the lemony scent of the floor cleaner. Its newness jarred just
as it always did when I went from the medieval palace, which was the
Hyperion library, to the study rooms in the new building of the law school. At
least my college had the excuse that a murky incident with an explosion some
twenty years earlier had required a new building. What could be the reason

behind the bare walls and fluorescent lighting in the opera house? Had they
run out of fancy wallpaper and antique sconces?
Each door had a plaque that clearly stated the name of the room. I
should’ve been glad that they made it easy to find the right one, but I couldn’t
help feeling disappointed not to have the perfect alibi for some snooping.
When I opened the door to practice room 2, the sliver of light from the
hallway revealed the same laminate flooring. When I patted the wall in search
of the light switch, I could feel the spongy texture of a high-tech material.
The windowless room with its gray soundproofing reminded me of a
professional recording studio if I replaced the large wall mirror with a screen
that separated it from the control room. For all my love of opera, I had
indulged in a fantasy or two about being a pop star who released platinum
singles one after another.
I barely resisted the temptation to pretend I was recording a song. Instead, I
went to the piano at the other end of the small room, which undoubtedly
served as a teacher’s aide.
A stack of music sheets caught my attention. I was browsing through them
when the door opened. I jumped guiltily and scattered them on the floor.
The tiny woman with short hair, which had more white than brown, looked
disapprovingly at me. Elisa Bellacourt looked a lot thinner than I remembered
her, and her sickly pale skin seemed almost transparent. I had only seen her on
stage a handful of times before illness had cut her singing career short.
“You’re early,” Madame Bellacourt said.
“Good morning,” I said, standing up with the music sheets haphazardly
clutched in my hands. “Yes, Madame, I’m sorry.”
She pursed her thin lips, causing deep lines to appear all around them. I
hadn’t meant to impress her by getting there early, but her apparent
disapproval of my eagerness riled me up. When had it become a crime to be
keen?
“Since you’re here,” she said, sitting down at the piano, “we might as well
start.”

tfrmucan

Tuesday, March 17
The basement of the Opera was split between a room as large as a warehouse
in which we kept old costumes and props and an immense storeroom in
which, once upon a time, we had to stock wood for the furnace. In the fall, a
dozen carts would come down from the mountain, and they’d fill the pit in the
storeroom with tree logs.
Few people used the first, and most didn’t know about the second.
No one ever found out about the second underground level, with the
notable exception of the current director.
The Opera stored underground every bit of décor, props, and costumes that
wasn’t perishable.
At first, we had been thrifty out of necessity. It was hard to manage the
heavy costs of running an opera. Back then, everything that could be reused
was reused. My country gentleman skills came into play when it came to
finding people who miraculously transformed the Parisian loft from La Bohème
into the Chinese palace interior in Turandot. As the years went by, I learned all
those skills.
There, two levels underneath the Opera, in my exclusive realm, I had built
myself a lair that served as music room, museum, and strong room. In a way, it
was an extension of Palazzo Orlov, to which it connected via the catacombs.
My favorite pieces decorated a spacious chamber with excellent acoustics. A
gilded chair on a dais gave me the perfect vantage point from which I could
survey my treasures. The rest were neatly stored in the other rooms of the
secret level. Once every ten years or so, I went through everything and got rid
of pieces that had rotted away.
A massive cabinet in the corner of my throne room kept safe a treasure
trove of tools that belonged in a crafts museum.
In the first drawer, the kit of lace needles pined for the nimble fingers of the
Vernet sisters. Marlene and Stephanie Vernet created delicate wonders with the
same tenacity with which they darned woolen socks and mended tears in the
costumes.
At the time, the matronly ladies were the oldest employees of the Bakirville
Royal Opera, as it was called a hundred years ago when I joined the company.
They were also the first to make me feel at home here.
I had spent countless hours in their sewing room, hiding from my all-too-
enthusiastic fans. They laughed good-naturedly at my first clumsy attempts of
lace-making and crocheting and told me stories of their own apprenticeship.

They let me observe them at work, and they patiently taught me to sew, to
embroider, and to create lace. If they thought someone wealthy and immortal
was crazy for doing it, they kept it to themselves.
When I came back from the First World War, they were both dead.
Consumption had taken Marlene. Stephanie had followed her, from old age or
a broken heart. A big part of what was left of my humanity had died with
them.
The stitching awls that came with Alfio Gualtieri rested peacefully in the
second drawer. I had brought the cobbler from the Orlov country estate, and
he lived the rest of his life in Bakirville. Alfio’s oldest son had opened a shop
on Canal Street. Another took a job as a clerk at the palace, and his own son
became a respected politician. Back home, the Gualtieri family died out, but
the branch the cobbler started in the Capital flourished. Now, even his
grandchildren had children of their own.
The scythe that still cut the grass around the Opera was the one Rickard
Voose used to harvest wheat. He brought it with him all the way from the
mountains and carried it on his back across the city. Seventeen-year-old
Rickard was still clutching it when I welcomed him at the Opera. In the forty
years since his death, I had to change the handle a couple of times and went
through a dozen blades, but to me, it was the same scythe that harvested the
wheat from which the best bread in the world was made.
Paying the wages of people like Alfio and Rickard had been a way to repay
the Opera for sheltering me.
Now, in the twenty-first century, I was probably the only artisan in Talinia
who could use each and every one of these archaic tools.
The click of the basement door warned me that this was one of the rare
occasions when someone entered the old props room. The pervasive scent of
the catacombs interfered with my ability to smell who it was.
The sound of their footsteps could help me identify who the intruder was,
but my only regular visitor had the courtesy of humming whenever he came
by. Lucian Forsyth usually picked an annoying modern song and hummed it
cheerfully out of tune. Although the man loved opera with all his heart, he had
no musical inclinations of his own. I was fond of Lucian’s honest manner of
embracing his shortcoming.
Today, however, he didn’t regale me with a pop song. He was whistling “The
Skylark” under his breath, which forewarned me about the reason for this
visit.
I stood up from the throne and went to the icebox. As Lucian was the only
visitor to this realm, I made sure to have a few bottles of his favorite beer. I

put two on the table and sat down in one of the chairs. As a matter of
politeness, I wouldn’t let my guest drink alone.
“I take it you were impressed with the girl,” I said when we sat down.
Lucian opened his beer and raised it. “Cheers.”
We clinked bottles, and I took a sip. I didn’t love or hate the taste of beer.
Black tea had been my solace when I was alive. When I renounced blood,
black tea had been the greatest help in the transition. Now, drinking tea served
to remind me of fighting my cravings. Beer was bland and safe.
“You were impressed, too, weren’t you?” Lucian asked.
I nodded morosely. That didn’t seem to be the reaction he expected. Truth
be told, if not for the prophecy, I would be delighted to welcome such a voice
in our company. I would be chomping at the bit to sing with her. I would be
sketching the costume for her first Tosca. I would certainly not be gloomily
waiting for the end of the world.
“What’s wrong?” he asked in the face of my complete lack of enthusiasm.
Telling him the truth was complicated and unhelpful. I leaned back and
took another sip of beer before speaking. Lying to people was a precision tool,
like a laser or a surgeon’s blade. I preferred not to use it unnecessarily. I chose
to clothe the truth in a thick blanket of apparent egocentrism.
“I get the feeling you’re here to ask me something,” I said. It was true, but
not the true answer to his question.
“Oh good,” Lucian said. “I don’t have to find a smooth segue.”
I refused to be amused by Lucian’s obviously exaggerated relief.
“What do you need?”
“We need to cultivate new talents,” he said more seriously. “Giselle is doing
a great job, but contrary to her opinion, she can’t and shouldn’t sing the lead
role in every opera.”
Lucian was right. He was also tactfully not mentioning that having a
vampire on stage was the main reason we couldn’t use singers from the
Outerworld. The people who lived beyond the Unbroken Barrier could be
fooled into not noticing magic when they were in Talinia, but they couldn’t fail
to sense a vampire’s presence if they shared the stage with one.
I nodded and took another sip of beer. Cold and vaguely bitter. Just like me.
“The Leonis girl has raw talent, but she’s too old for the conservatory, even
if we pay for a scholarship.”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty,” Lucian said. “I know that’s not old,” he added immediately, “but
taking classes with fourteen-year-olds won’t help her improve.”

Too old at twenty. No, in the twenty-first century, she wasn’t too old. Now,
when even the average natural human lifespan had increased, she was little
more than a child. But a couple of centuries ago, she would’ve been too old
for many things.
There was no Conservatory to train singers back then.
At the height of my blood age, I used to attend opera regularly as a patron. I
knew about the orphans collected and trained. Some of the most famous
singers had come from the gutters of the big Talinian cities.
Melissandre herself, the most magnificent soprano to ever grace the stage of
the Bakirville Opera, had been found on the streets of Felice, a starving seven-
year-old who sang for money in the Plaza San Mario.
“You’re probably right,” I said, dragging myself out of old memories. “Her
voice sounded good. Almost mature. Elisa Bellacourt will smooth the rough
edges in a few years.”
Lucian huffed. “Years. That’s the point. It will take Bellacourt years to get
Leonis to the point of solo singing. She has to work with all the girls, and I
don’t want to ask her to give private lessons to one of them.”
Oh, the inner workings of the Opera. The fundamental requirement for a
director was the ability to deal with the easily bruised egos of the singers.
Without it, I was forced to intervene and use my powers to soothe the spirits.
Good directors could put on shows without any dramatic walk-offs or threats
of burning down the building. The best ones, like Lucian, avoided the very
creation of such explosive situations.
“You’re probably right. Giselle has an excellent range, and she could have a
long career if she takes care of her voice. Are you worried she overestimates
her ability to recover?”
Lucian nodded. “She might want to start a family, too. I’m not sure she’ll
come back with the same willingness to sing every night.”
Pregnancy. Sometimes I forgot that prima donnas were women. Ballerinas
and choir girls took time off to have children. Some came back, and some
didn’t. It didn’t affect me personally.
“We’ve been looking for another soprano for years. What makes you so sure
this girl could be it?”
A smile glinted in Lucian’s eyes when he met my gaze over his bottle of
beer. We never played games when it came to the running of the Opera.
However, there was more to Leonis than any misgivings I might have about
her talent. Lucian didn’t have clearance to know the Seraphic prophecies
existed, let alone have a clue about their content.

“You mean other than your reaction?” Lucian said, then shrugged. “I have
ears. She’s special.”
The mirth vanished from his eyes, and a deep vertical line appeared between
his brows.
“Actually, I’m a little worried about her,” he admitted. “Something doesn’t
feel right. Her résumé was pretty sketchy. Not that it matters with that voice,
but whatever it is, something niggles at me.”
“Like her accent. She’s highborn.”
The director’s eyes lit up in relief as if he’d been worried until he got the
confirmation.
“The way she talks, yes. And the way she moves. I can’t help feeling that I
should know her.” He shook his head as if trying to dislodge a memory.
“Something about her is… almost familiar. I just can’t tell what.”
“I’ll make some discreet inquiries,” I said, fully intending to do that already.
“Good,” he said. “Good.”
The second “good” sounded almost disappointed. I tilted my head. “Was
there something else?”
“Yes,” Lucian said. He took a short breath and blurted out, “I’d like you to
work with her.”
“What?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but with intensive training, she can be ready in a
few months, not a few years.”
“Lucian, I’ve never taught anyone bel canto.”
He opened his mouth to retort, but I cut him off. “Even if I tried, I’d have
to do it without the shield. I know you didn’t have the chance to see for
yourself just how bad it gets, but you can take my word. It’s not pretty.”
Lucian shifted in his seat and glanced over the clown costumes in the
Pagliacci display. He had never seen me in that role and probably never would.
We made a point of allowing young singers to get stage experience in the
shorter operas.
“This is for the good of the Opera, so I urge you to consider it.”
He turned to look me in the eye, and I sensed his very real discomfort. He
rarely insisted when I made it clear that I didn’t want to do something.
“If the girl is highborn, she was taught to resist influencing. Besides, in a
few months or in a few years, she will be on stage with you. Sooner or later,
she’ll have to learn to resist your aura.”
Those were both very good points.
“I’d rather it’s in a few years,” I muttered.
“Why?”

Maybe she wouldn’t be affected by my involuntary magnetism. Maybe the
strength of my aura had decreased in the decades since I hadn’t drunk blood. I
didn’t know with any certainty if that was the case. My ascension wasn’t a
common xenological phenomenon. I handled the challenges of my “life” as
they came along. For many years I took care not to be around other singers,
with the notable exception of the night of a performance. Thanks to this
precaution, there hadn’t been any more major incidents. The sad and simple
truth was I didn’t want to get involved. I had grown old and selfish. I didn’t
want to give up my safe solitude.
Above all, I did not want to test my craving. I survived on emotions, but in
the deepest darkness of my mind, I had not forgotten the deep satisfaction of
blood, nor the power that came with it.
Lucian finished his beer and stood up.
“At least talk to her. Test her. Go to music room 1, and I’ll send her there.
Listen to her voice again, and we’ll talk after that.”
I swept my eyes over the room. My gaze settled on the piano. The music
sheets piled up on it had gathered dust since I last touched them. How long
had it been since I’d made any progress on my opera? And now Destiny
threatened to upset my life all over again.
“If I accept, the lessons will have to be here.”
I would sacrifice my solitude for the good of the Opera, but I didn’t have to
embarrass myself explaining to Lucian how the proximity of living beings
affected me. Being on stage, opening myself to the tidal wave of emotions, was
profoundly different than the intimacy of an individual connection.

haptr8a
rntatnur

Tuesday, March 17
Everything started off fine, but people kept coming in, and by 9:00 a.m., I
counted twenty-four people in the small windowless room. As time passed, the
room became smaller and smaller until I began to lose focus on the music. Did
the soundproofing also seal the room hermetically? The headline “twenty-four
people found dead in the National Opera of Bakirville” was floating in front
of my eyes when Elisa Bellacourt announced the end of the practice.
“Lunch break, two hours.”
The hands of the clock on the wall stood straight up as if time itself was
surrendering to Madame’s voice. So, the first practice was from nine to noon.
Where could I go to have lunch and be back in time?
The tiny woman peered over her glasses into the crowd.
“The new girls, come here.”
I followed two other girls toward Madame while everyone else filed out of
the room.
“Mr. Richards will take you on an orientation tour of the backstage. Pay
attention to what he’s telling you. I don’t ever want to hear that you got lost.”
“Yes, Madame,” we all said with various degrees of enthusiasm.
“And there he is,” Madame Bellacourt said.
A man with white hair covering only about half of his head walked in the
doorway. He had what my brother called a very tall forehead.
“Come on, girls,” he said in a gruff tone.
If orientation were a martial art, I would have a black belt. If it were an
Olympic sport, I’d be a multiple gold medalist. Born and raised in a city where
people built pretty much haphazardly for centuries, creating a spiderweb of
streets, passages, alleyways, and unexpected dead ends, the layout of the wings
presented no challenge. Not that Richards showed us any more than the
absolute basic things we needed to get to the stage, changing room,
bathrooms, and practice rooms.
I half-listened to him, paying more attention to all the hallways and doors he
warned us not to go through.
“You keep your eyes peeled, girls,” Richards said when we arrived for the
fourth and hopefully last time in the common room. “People died around here
because they took a wrong turn down the corridor.”
He hobbled down a hallway that hadn’t been part of the tour. I took a few
steps after him and followed him with my gaze until he turned a corner. The

old sound of the man’s steps was growing fainter, and I hadn’t heard a door
opening or closing. That must have been a pretty long corridor.
“I wonder what’s that way,” I said… to no one.
Behind me, the other girls were scurrying toward the exit.
How can they not be curious? I wandered down the corridor where Mr. Richards
had disappeared.
Twenty steps later, the hallway split into two. Which one to explore first?
The one on the right seemed better lit, so I went that way.
The light grew brighter once I turned the corner, but I didn’t speed up. This
part of the Opera didn’t have the opulent feel of the auditorium or the
pleasant coziness of the common room. It certainly had nothing to do with
the modernism of the practice rooms. The yellowish wallpaper looked to be at
least fifty years old. The designs had faded with age. I peered closely, trying to
figure out the pattern.
Either peacocks or giraffes.
I moved on, and a few steps later, I saw a big metal door at the end of the
corridor. A lightning bolt was barely visible on the faded warning label. I
tiptoed close enough to hear two men talking about the football match from
the night before. One of the voices was Mr. Richards’s. The other man seemed
younger, but the only thing I could say about him was that he wasn’t Lucian
Forsyth.
I retraced my steps and went down the left side at the cleft. A fluorescent
light flickered annoyingly, giving the narrow corridor a certain spookiness.
That was just the sort of light that preceded a jump scare in horror movies.
I’m not going to scream. I’m not going to scream.
I ran my fingers over the walls. I couldn’t even tell the color in that blasted
flickering light. My fingers bumped the wooden frame of a door before I even
noticed the door. I squinted, but despite my best efforts, I couldn’t make out
any letters on it.
There was no noise coming from the room, and I was tempted to try the
knob.
I decided to go ahead exploring. Maybe later.
My eyes got used to the flickering light, and I almost missed it when the
corridor made a turn. Spots danced behind my eyelids in the near-complete
darkness. I fumbled for my phone, and when I turned on the flashlight, I saw
that this new hallway ended in another junction. When I got to it, all three
corridors unfolding from there were completely dark. I shone the flashlight on
each of them, but there was nothing special.
Let’s be methodical.

I chose the right one again. The door on the far end was boarded up with
pieces of plywood. I put my ear to it and thought I heard the same voices as
before. Depending on how big the workshop was, this could be another
entrance to the room where I had heard Mr. Richards earlier.
I went back to the nearest junction and walked down the middle corridor.
This was longer than all the others. I counted fifty-six steps until I found a
door at the other end.
The door was made of real wood. No metal or plywood here. The color was
a brown so dark it might as well have been black. It was clearly old but well
maintained. The wood paneling had marks of use but not decay. I shone the
flashlight around and noticed that the walls around here had fewer cobwebs
and less dust than any of the others. The carpet was worn-out but clean.
Someone was using this part of the maze regularly.
Interesting.
The big brass doorknob stared up at me invitingly.
I didn’t get all the way here to walk back without trying to open the door.
To my disappointment, this door didn’t open any more than the one
through which the guy with a scythe disappeared. I turned off the phone’s
flashlight and, unnecessarily, also closed my eyes as I tried to piece together a
tridimensional model of the building. I turned the model around in my head
and decided that the scythe door was on this side of the building, though I
couldn’t estimate how far or how close that door was to whatever lay beyond
this locked one.
Heavy, thudding steps were approaching from the other side. I broke into a
run back up the corridor toward the very dim light at the other end and
skidded to a halt at the junction. For a moment, I considered going through
the last hallway but changed my mind. If that were another dead end, I’d have
to come back and run into whoever was coming from behind that door.
Besides, I could always explore it tomorrow.
Going back down the first corridor would take me back to the common
room. I heard Mr. Richards’s voice just in time to stop.
“Wait, wait,” he said. “You know how bad the signal is down here.”
I sighed, relieved. He was on the phone and was probably going back
toward the common room. He wouldn’t come this way.
I heard footsteps from the long dark corridor. Whoever it was, they might
not look kindly on a trespasser. Mr. Richards was still mumbling into his
phone, which meant he was still close and would see me if I tried to get to the
common room. How slow was he moving?
The door I’d been tempted to open earlier was my only option.

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