Page 79 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

During these past few days, I had watched Arawn eat food and drink cup after cup of wine but not blood. Never blood. There was only one thing that could drive a vampire to this level ofinsanity, and that was not grief. It was not guilt. And it was not hatred.

It washunger.

Shakily, I reached up and closed his face between my palms. His skin was frail and clammy beneath my fingers, like an insect’s wings. Hector had been right. We’d been so absorbed in our own problems that we’d missed all the signs. And now it was too late. Now we had lost him.

“Arawn,” I panted, “please, listen to me for a moment. You’re not well. You don’t really want to do this. You’re just in pain.”

His crimson eyes shot up to mine. They were huge, unblinking in their fury. “I deserve it.”

“No,” I gasped. “No, you need to drink some blood. The hunger is making you like this.”

He pushed me off him hard enough that I was knocked breathless, pain humming across my collarbone. “Bloodis what made me like this!” he roared, his voice so resonant it seemed to spiral through me. “I will not drink another drop of that sickness. No more. Tonight we die. Tonight I free the world from the curse that is the vampire.”

He started for the door, but I latched myself onto him, forcing him to face me. “This won’t bring her back. Listen to me, she wouldn’t want you to destroy yourself like this. She loved you so much. She told me. She loved you.”

Suddenly, Arawn stopped resisting, and I stopped pulling. Everything in the room fell still. Even my thundering heartbeats crashed to a halt.

When his eyes found mine again, they were soft and tearful, shifting to their usual pale blue. He cupped my cheek softly. “Don’t make me do this,” he whispered. It was a tender whisper, but like a premonition, I felt the veiled threat in it.

My lips parted, my lungs gathering air, but before I could scream for help, his fist closed around my throat and silenced me.

The shock of his hands on me was worse than the pain, the sensation of breath being taken from my body. Even as I watched the stone of his face darkening over me, I could not believe that they werehishands that were killing me. I might have thrashed and kicked and clawed at his wrist. I might have tried to lie to save my life.I will sit here as you asked. I will do whatever you want.But I didn’t. I was too scorched with shame, too immobilized with guilt for not seeing what had been in front of me all along.

My vision blurred, shifted. An eerie, white light swooped down and dazzled over my head. I wanted to resist it, turn my face from it, and lean into the dark, but something deep inside me, a bright spark of magic, told me to surrender to it instead, and for the first time in my life, I listened. I bared myself to the strange light, dropping all my shields of ego and vanity and small mortal fears. It wrapped around me, pulling me like a pair of hands away from Arawn and into its opal embrace.

I felt cold and damp and weightless as air, moving through an indefinable passage of water. Then the light ceased.

Now I was in the dark. Now my only thought was:Hector.

32

Thea

Esperida Aventine was floating against the seamless backdrop of a celestial cavern, a place beyond sound and movement where all was stillness and clarity.

In the absolute darkness, it hurt to look at her, for she was a single star, brilliant and pure white from the strands of her hair to her billowy dress, undulating like a cloud around her bare feet.

For a long while, I could only squint at her, shading my eyes with my hands until I realized that I, too, had turned into a wisp of translucence, the shape of my fingertips traced with silver light.

An outcry of every emotion a body was capable of feeling escaped me and echoed around the bleak nothingness that enveloped us. I wanted to break down sobbing, only I didn’t think it was possible in my new incorporeal form.

“I… I missed you so much,” I stammered, and before I knew it, Esperida was surging forward, her phantom body embracing mine.

To my further astonishment, I felt her as though she were flesh and bone, our mutual intangibleness made solid upon contact. But there was strangeness to it too. She was cold as ice to the touch and didn’t smell like herself. She used to wear thisperfume, an unexpected scent, peppery and a little masculine. Now she was like a handful of stardust, her barely-there essence slipping between my fingers.

“Oh sweet child,” she sighed, dotting my forehead with kisses. “I missed you too. Both of you. More than you know.”

“Am I dead?” The question left me with a ragged sigh, my chest cracking open. I touched my fingers to my throat, where I should be feeling the throb of Arawn’s hands. But there was only the dull memory of his maddened face hovering over mine. In terms of physical agony, I was as unfeeling as a block of wood.

Esperida laughed. “Of course not, silly. This is not where your story ends. It is only where itchanges.”

I stared at her, too dazed to form complete judgments just yet. “But I see you… I feel you…”

“That is your magic, Thea. That is what you do. You see things. You feel things. Things that others cannot.” Her expression grew stern as she hooked two fingers under my chin. “And then you doubt your own eyes. Your own instincts.” She shook her head. “Not anymore.”

“Not anymore,” I promised, for I didn’t think it was wise to argue with a ghost.

A ghost.

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