Page 38 of Blood & Ice

The desperate screaming and sobs would never leave my ears. I squeezed the sounds down into a tight knot of grief to be dealt with later. If I let myself feel the helplessness of that moment, I would freeze. We couldn’t afford that with Morgana’s dolls wandering around, laying in wait for us. Morgana wasn’t anidiot. She had to know Astrid had figured out at least part of her plan since she’d de-lusted Rook. That meant the dolls wouldn’t be trying to ambush two fornicating vampires. It had gone from a trap to a fair fight. We could make it out of here if we were strong enough.

That was abigif. Morgana had given more of herself to Knox than I had for power. She wanted to know every trick, no matter how vile or blasphemous. I’d never been convinced that anyone could be purely evil until I got a peek into her mindset. Honestly, Knox and Morgana deserved each other. It was why I had to kill Morgana, no matter how distasteful I found the thought.

Astrid shrank back from the thoughts flitting through my mind. The magic inside me was too dark for my white witch sister.

“I’m not a witch,”she mumbled.

“If Poppy is considered a witch—well, enough to be in a coven, so are you. He doesn’t get to steal that from you.”

“I can’t get that power back, Mav. It’s a nice sentiment. I could hug you for it but...”She heaved a heavy sigh.“I can’t go back. I have to embrace what I am, not what I lost. That means I learn what fae Astrid could have been like. If Mom had gone with Dad, we might have grown up in Autumn. You might actually like Uncle Reynard.”

I snorted.“Never. I don’t care what timeline we’re on, I will never like Dickhead Reynard.”

Astrid might have replied aloud, if Rook hadn’t slapped a hand over our mouths, pulling us into the deepening shadow beneath one of the rolling ladders. His grip on our shoulder was so tight, it was almost bruising. I sucked in a sharp breath through her nose and froze, going completely still against Rook. At that moment, I didn’t care he was manhandling Astrid. If I’d been there in person, I would have been doing the same. They were coming. If they heard or saw us, we were going to die.

Our eyes darted sideways in time to see the first doll stalk past, making soft clinking sounds as its porcelain joints scrubbed against each other. If Astrid had a heartbeat, it would have been in her throat. Instead, it wasmyheartbeat providing a drumming beat in our head. It felt like my heartbeat for both of us at that moment. She fought the urge to gasp like a swimmer breaking the surface. For just an instant, life flooded into her body. One beat. Two.

Rook froze in place, somehow going even more rigid than before, staring down at us. The blip didn’t last long. Her heart went silent once more, but ithadbeat. Which meant vampirism was potentially reversible with blood magic. Goddess. That shouldn’t have been possible. I knew exactly what Knox was doing. Dangling the ultimate carrot. He could give me the impossible.

He could make Astrid awitchagain.

The doll’s head turned with a whisper of sound. Its face looked much cruder than the Cici doll. The inked-on smiley face was somehow more chilling than the porcelain doll effect. This one had been a male doll, judging by the proportions. Blood had dried to a rusty color on its front. The dolls had fangs, which solved the mystery of what had beaten and killed Vivian. It was a bleak thought that she’d died like a slasher victim. Mauled by something soulless with large teeth.

The PA system crackled, and it took everything we had not to jerk in place. A single twitch might alert the doll that we were here. They were more primitive than the Cici doll. As long as a vampire stayed still, they wouldn’t be distinguishable from another doll. But we couldn’t stand still forever. They’d stumble on us, eventually.

“You have to give me credit,” Morgana’s voice crooned over the speakers. “Ididtry to get you laid before you died, Depraysie. It would have been a shame for you to die a virgin.”

It was Astrid’s embarrassment that glued our tongue to the roof of our mouth. It was just as well, in the end. I wanted to snarl obscenities at her. I’d been the one to foil her plans for world domination, not Astrid.

“I helped.”

“Maybe a little.”

If I’d been there in person, she would have thrown an elbow into my ribs. It worked better now that she was a vampire. More muscle behind those spaghetti arms. Her indignant squawk after I thought the words almost made me smile.

The bloodstained doll finally moved on. Rook waited a full minute in taut silence before he motioned for us to move. The moonlight from the windows above cast a gossamer spiderweb across the library. We were safe in the shadows of the stacks but had to constantly cross the light to get away from the dolls. I felt like a fly getting hopelessly tangled in a web. I couldn’t see Morgana, but I couldfeel her.

“I was planning to come for you two last, you know? I had bigger fish to fry. But you minnows can’t help but latch onto the hook, can you?”

I resisted Astrid’s urge to puff up at the ‘minnow’ comment. Giving Morgana a reaction would be deadly. I stayed right where I was, the edge of a clawfoot table digging into my ankles. The dolls were circling closer. We were running out of places to hide. I’d have to act soon.

“Do you like my dolls, Chesley?” Morgana simpered. “They were gifts from your daddy, you know? Or should I call himourdaddy, now? Isn’t that what your sire is? Your big blood daddy?”

The way her tone wrapped around the words was awful. I didn’t like vampires, but even I didn’t like the insinuation she was making. We couldn’t reply, of course. I could only inch toward the exit, praying we made it at least a few inches closer. If we could make it into the corridor, there was a chance we couldescape. I didn’t like our chances if we had to fight.

“How dangerous are they?”Astrid whispered, asking the question Rook couldn’t.

“Very. They’re basically homunculi. Artificial bodies she can project her magic into. She’s seeing through their eyes, hearing through their ears. It’s a power the really old vampires used to have.”

Astrid was silent for so long I was afraid she’d keeled over from sheer fright. When I pressed at the edge of her thoughts, I found her pensive instead.

“Aunt Celestine was right, then. That our magic—blood magic—was dangerous. That we should have been burned.”

I didn’t have an answer to that. On the one hand, I understood that Knox couldn’t make it back into the world. On the other... well, it was hard not to want tolive.There had to be an answer to the riddle that didn’t end in fire.“No. She’s still wrong.”

I inched forward, just a little, navigating a creaky floorboard on instinct after coming here so often last semester. The library had been one of my best resources while looking for my missing sister. So much of history just waiting to be discovered if you bothered to look. Unfortunately, Rook didn’t seem to share my adroit footwork.

He stepped on the floorboard. It let out a moan of protest that sounded like a death rattle in the confined space of the stacks. The bookshelf next to ours shuddered as something bounced into it from the other side and begin to scale the shelves. They were coming for us.

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