Page 73 of The Scarlet Veil

Hishumanparents.

A sense of wrongness pricks my scalp as I stare at them. I cannot picture Michal as human. The image simply doesn’t make sense—like an ugly Coco or a bashful Beauregard. Without his preternatural strength, his stillness, his intensity, the Michal I know doesn’t exist, yet here is proof that he did. Michal was born human. My fingers trace his mother’s eyes as I envision his compelled soldiers on the ship, his teeth in Arielle’s neck. The shadows in his gaze and the blood on his lips. Was he always this twisted up inside? This sadistic? How does onebecomea vampire?

How does a man become a monster?

Shaking the strangely mournful thoughts away, I note the names written in the lower right-hand corner of the portrait:Tomik Vasiliev and Adelina Volkov.

My gaze narrows.

Vasiliev.

My stomach pitches like I’ve missed a step. It cannot be coincidence.

With trembling hands, I flip to the next portrait, exhaling slowly at the familiar faces gazing back at me, at the matching names scrawled in the corner.Michal and Mila Vasiliev.He stands behind her, his pale hand resting upon her shoulder, while she sits regally in a velvet chair. Rendered in full, vibrant color, her eyes are no longer translucent, but instead gleam the most perfect shade of brown. Her hair—dark brown, just as I imagined—flows long and thick down her seafoam gown, and her cheeks flush dusky rose. She is breathtakingly beautiful.

My chest contracts painfully.

She is Michal’s sister.

Her eyes are larger, softer, than his—her skin darker—but there is no mistaking the bold angle of her brows, the straight line of her nose, the strong shape of her jaw. They belong to Michal too. They belong to their father. And suddenly, Michal’s obsessive quest to speak to her makes sense. His sister died. He is... grieving.

I replace the cloth hastily, feeling sick. Unless he hid my silver cross beneath his mattress, it isn’t in this room, which means I shouldn’t stay here any longer. Rifling through his desk is one thing; creeping into his bedroom, learning his family’s faces, isquite another. Instinctively, I know that if Michal finds me in this place, he won’t simply lock me away until All Hallows’ Eve. He will kill me, and I cannot say that I’d blame him.

With one last perfunctory sweep of my candelabra, I leave his secrets in darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The Celestials

My parents hired a specialist when I returned from the catacombs. My mother quickly realized she wasn’t equipped to help me, and my father tired of waking each night from my screams.My little fits, he called them, and the specialist—a healer of the mind called Father Algernon—dutifully confirmed my condition, diagnosing me with hysteria. “A uniquely female complaint,” he told my parents, who in turn dutifully paid him for prescribing a tonic instead of an asylum—or worse, an exorcism.

I still heard them whispering in my father’s study, however, about demonic possession.

“It is not uncommon,” Father Algernon said gravely, “among those touched by witchcraft. We see it often in their victims—a corruption of the soul. A black seed planted in the weak and immoral. You must know it is not your fault, my lord, as rotten fruit grows in even the halest and heartiest of families.”

My mother shooed Father Algernon from our house after that, but nearly a year later, I still haven’t forgotten his words.Weak.Immoral.

They seem to swirl with the leaves as Odessa and I approach Boutique de vêtements de M. Marc later that night.

Overhead, paper bats hang from the silver birch tree in honor of All Hallows’ Eve, their tiny wings fluttering in the crisp wind.Below, pumpkins and gourds litter the doorstep. Someone has carved wide, leering mouths into the fruit, along with eyes that flicker from the tea lights within. Live spiders skitter across the window—which now displays a breathtaking gown of aubergine crepe—and garlands of black roses wind around the lamppost across the street. Above the door, a human skull dangles from rosary beads.

Odessa, who notices me staring up at it, offers, “The skull is an All Hallows’ Eve tradition in Requiem—and the rosary.”

“Why?”

Why doesn’t Mila want to see Michal? Why will she not speak to him?

And—more important—why won’t she speak with me now?

I tried reaching back through the veil. After returning from Michal’s study empty-handed, I focused on every single emotion welling inside me: confusion and anger, even hope and expectation.

Fear.

No matter how I entreated her to appear—or the dozens of ghosts who peeked through my shelves to watch the spectacle—she refused to answer, leaving me to stew and pore throughHow to Commune with the Deaduntil Odessa arrived.Leaving me, I think bitterly,one step closer to my demise.

My plan doesn’t work without a weapon.

“I suppose you could say vampires have a dark sense of humor.” Odessa’s eyes linger too long on my face. If I didn’t know better, I might think she seems concerned. Perhaps I look too pale, too drawn, since discovering Michal’s secret. Perhaps I’m not asking enough questions. When I still cannot bring myself to answer, however, she plunges onward with an air of determination. “Theearly Church attempted to absorb the ancient pagan rite of Samhain by choosing October thirty-first and November first for All Hallows’ Eve and All Saints’ Day—for ease of conversion, they explained. Quite a nasty little habit they developed. Of course, they never expected the undead to participate as well.” She smirks and raises her brows at that, but when I merely nod, she heaves a sigh. Then, like she’d rather pluck out her own eyes and nail them to the door— “Do you want to talk about it? Whatever is bothering you?”

---