Page 14 of Sore Throat, Slight Fever

Like turning off a light in an empty room, internal organs are deactivated, heartbeats are silenced, breathing is halted. The body only derives nutrition from blood, be it human or otherwise. His brother once told him that vampires are alchemized humans—that the thirst for gold has been replaced with blood—and their vampiric nature should be celebrated.Indulged.

He even went as far as to say vampires represent the most efficient form of existence. On the surface, it’s a reasonable assumption. In many ways, vampires don’t suffer the same physical limitations as humans. They are fast, heal quickly, see in the dark. They can slip into the mind of another and compel them to do their bidding.

Rory once agreed, before he saw it for what it is: thievery. They survive off stolen life. The magic that created them plagiarizes traits from creatures Nature has already sought to encourage like speed and heightened senses. He supposes that the magic did do one thing right: accelerated healing, which has saved him many times over.

But for every benefit, there is, of course, a downside. With accelerated healing, for instance, comes theinability to grow and change. To age. Frozen forever in time. Immortal. A little overweight?Too bad.You forgot to shave that morning.Oh well.

And of course, the ennui is inevitable. It’s true that nothing is permanent, but when eternity is within reach, things seem to move agonizingly slow in comparison. Boredom sets in every few centuries or so. Some vampires even have a name for it: theUnlust.

Calliope seems to contradict so many vampire traits already and it’s only been twenty-four hours. The more he thinks about it, he doesn’t agree with Kane. She should be much further along in her transformation than this. She shouldn’t be sleeping. She shouldn’t have a fever. And she should be thirsty, so overwhelmed with bloodlust that she becomes a snarling mess of fangs and violence. She awoke, alert and able to form full sentences, and he isn’t sure if that’s a good thing yet. She even challenged him on the use of the cuffs. He must admit, she had been convincing. Just not enough to actually convince him, of course.

Maybe he’s consigned her to a fate worse than death. Not quite a vampire, not quite a mortal, with nothing but the downsides of both. But if that is the case, and Calliope’s transition went awry, what else may she be lacking when it comes to the vampiric side of her? And what mortal parts have stuck around instead? She healed from the gunshot, so he supposes he can put a tick in the healing column, at least.

The bell over the door dings and a customer walksinto the Go-Go. Rory barely looks up from the clipboard, hearing the slurred request for “ten on pump two” and absentmindedly taking the proffered cash.

“Oh,” says the voice, “and I can get one of those papers, too?”

Rory hands him the day’s issue of the local paper, along with his change, and begins to turn back to his clipboard when his mind registers, belatedly, that he recognizes the picture on the front page. As the door swings shut, he ignores the puff of hot, petrol-laced air that hits his face and reaches for a copy of the paper. A sinking feeling swoops through his gut as Calliope’s face smiles back at him in grainy black-and-white, ink already bleeding through the thin paper. It sits innocently under the headline:Missing Woman Wanted for Questioning after the Death of Her Husband.

“Fuck.”

9

The Library of Graeme House

Calliope

Calliope hears someone calling her. She opens her mouth to answer but finds nothing but cold water rushing into her lungs, pain splintering behind her eyes, heaviness in her chest. She is on the cold floor, gritty from years of use, and her body is ice. She can’t feel her legs, her throat is on fire—

Help.

She sits up in a rush, hand clutching her throat.

A dream. Just a dream.

The room is dark, and she fumbles with the small lamp until it clicks on. Brushing her hair away from her face, she looks around confusedly at the bookshelves with their leather spines and metal contraptions.Witch’s tools, she thinks. The same kind that dotted her grandma’s kitchen, though she barelyknows what they do. She presses the back of her hand to forehead, finding it too warm and clammy. She tries to piece together the moments before she fainted, and a flush of embarrassment creeps up her neck when she remembers.

Calliope knows enough about vampires to know that they shouldn’t faint at the sight of blood. Then again, she hadn’t been a very good witch, despite her birthright, so it would be fitting if she made an even poorer vampire.

Not quite a witch. Not yet a vampire.

She teases the point of her canine tooth with her tongue as she stretches, her fingers ghosting over the scar on her arm as she rubs the stiffness from her muscles. She takes stock of her body, catalogs her limbs one-by-one in the way her grandma taught her to do before beginning a spell.

She hates to admit it, even to herself, that Rory could be right, but she does feel the empty gnawing in her gut. She ishungry. Deeply starving. And the memory of the glass of blood comes back to her, a crimson apparition at the forefront of her mind that makes her gums ache.

Slightly panicked, she finds herself in the Ether, and in the cold, still darkness, she sees her hunger in front of her: a snarling, wolf-like beast with fire dripping from its fangs. She can see herself reflected in its many eyes. Its fur is raised up around its neck. Two ivory horns protrude from either side of its head.

She reaches out hesitantly, touching the tip of its ear. It bares its teeth further, but she doesn’t heed the warning; she is safe in the Ether and, anyway, this creature is a part of her. She isn’t afraid. She takes a step closer, trailing her hand to its neck, burying her fingers in its coarse, thick fur. It quiets, leaning into her touch. The snarl becomes a purr.

“Soon,” she promises. “I’ll drink soon. Rest for just a bit longer.” She presses a kiss to the top of its head, and it blinks again, before settling low on its haunches, tail swiping back and forth.

She lets the Ether slide away and finds herself back in her room, her feverish skin burning away the ice crystals that formed along her eyelashes.That’s new, she thinks, wiping away the gentle dusting of frost along her arms.

Soon, she tells her Hunger again, hand pressed to her chest. She makes her way to the door and tentatively leans out into the hallway, glancing right to left for signs of Rory. She isn’t sure if she’s relieved or worried when he isn’t immediately present. She steps out into the hallway, listening intently for signs of someone—anyone—moving about the place.

Again, she takes stock of her body. Her grandma always said that the best cure for anything is gin and a good nap. Calliope isn’t sure if the house has gin, but after her nap, she feels oddly buoyant, even with her Hunger lying in wait behind the curtain of her mind. Feeling along the wall, she finds a light switchand the wall sconce retrofitted with a lightbulb flickers into life. The manacles are still on her wrists, the iron warming against her skin. In the light, she inspects the symbols further, chain rattling ominously in the silent hallway.

Rory asked her about a coven earlier, but she hasn’t belonged to one in years—hasn’t practiced magic in just as long. Then again, there were times when it felt that the only thing that made her a witch was her ability to slip into the Ether. No matter how many times she practiced, her elixirs were gloopy, her rituals awkward, and her scrying abysmal. Her language skills were even worse. She never understood how her grandma, who could lose her glasses on top of her head, could remember the Latin, Arabic, and French words twisted together to form the Common Tongue of Witches. And if a spell called for German or Welsh? Calliope was utterly lost.

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