FIVE
Violet
‘Here,’ said the girl who introduced herself as Lyla. She smiled as we stopped by an open door about halfway down the corridor. She stepped through. I hesitated but, after a moment, followed her.
The room was huge. The wooden floor gleamed, although a large black rug covered most of it; on that rug a mahogany four-poster bed stood, deep indigo drapes falling to the floor. Black and purple voiles hung around French doors, boxed in by iron railings on the outside. Beside them were several arched windows with ledges just large enough to sit on.
I soaked it all in as Lyla began bustling about, pointing out different things, although I was only half-listening. ‘That’s the wardrobe – walk-in – over there. We’ll get you some stuff, but until then, you can have some of my clothes. I mean, you can’t be that much bigger than me. The bathroom is just across the hall.’ She frowned. ‘We thought you probably shouldn’t have an en-suite, but there’s a washbasin if you need it in the wardrobe,’ she added, brightening. She smiled again, but it faded as she turned back to me. ‘Don’t say much, do you?’
I stared at her. If she thinks I’m going to start having a friendly chat, she has another thing coming. Especially as I was beginning to feel quite sick: I wasn’t sure I had coughed up all of the water I had swallowed in the lake.
She shifted. ‘Well, you should get out of that dress, so I’ll leave you.’ She began to back away and then stopped. ‘I’ll get the servants to bring some food up to you too. You’re a veggie, right?’ she asked. My eyes widened even more. How can she know that?
I didn’t reply and after a while of just standing there, she headed towards the door. But just before she left, I spoke.
‘You don’t seem like a murderer,’ I blurted.
She laughed, like an adult who laughs at a child asking a stupid question. ‘That’s because I’m not.’ With that, she closed the door and left.
As soon as she had gone I dashed towards the wardrobe, diving in and finding the basin in a small room within the wardrobe, which was as large as my bedroom at home. I leaned over it, gagging a few times and wishing I could just throw up so the horrible lurching in my stomach would go away. Eventually, I did.
Splashing my face with water, I sipped a few drops from my cupped hand, holding them beneath the cold tap. My eyes never left the mirror but all I could see was Claude Pierre falling to the paving, dead, over and over again.
You shouldn’t dwell on that, the voice in my head said. Focus on your own survival.
It had a point and I wrenched my gaze away from the mirror, walking back into the wardrobe. A full change of clothing had been laid out for me and I flung it on, glad to take off the soaking and torn dress. The jeans were a little tight around the hips, digging into my skin and it took some effort to pull the T-shirt down over my br**sts. But they were dry, so they would do.
When I went back out, a tray had been left on the bedside cabinet. On it was a plate of sandwiches cut into minute triangles, a rectangle of paper and a glass of water, which I drained in one swig. Picking up the paper, I left the sandwiches untouched. I unfolded it, revealing a note written in a sprawling and almost illegible script.
Violet,
You are free to roam the house whenever you please, but do not go into the grounds. If you come across my father, curtsey and address him as ‘Your Majesty’. I will do what I can if you need anything – just ask the servants to call me.
H.R.H Lyla
P.S. Murderers kill for pleasure. Vampires kill to survive.
I read it through twice more before crushing it into a ball and throwing it into the corner of the room. ‘Screw you,’ I muttered, walking over to the French doors. I tried the handle, fiddling about for a minute. It was locked. I guess they’re not taking any chances. Not that I would come out too healthy dropping from the first floor anyway.
I leaned my head against the cool window, smashing my palms against the glass, frustrated, feeling the huge barricades I had thrown up around myself beginning to crumble. I knew I could not be strong much longer and my eyes stung as tears started to prick them.
The hope I had maintained dissolved, replaced with an increasing sense of frustration as I realized I had no control of the situation.
I walked back and pulled the huge silken blanket from the bed, wrapping it around my shoulders as I curled up on the ledge of one of the windows, listening to the gentle tapping on the window as rain started to fall. It lulled me in my exhausted state. After a while, the drizzle became great sheets that battered the grounds, which in the sunlight had looked lavish, but just looked bleak and hostile now; or maybe that was because I now knew what stalked those grounds.
How cliché, I thought as the first claps of thunder sounded, shaking the window. A storm. I closed my eyes, holding the tears in as somewhere deep within the mansion a clock struck nine times.
I will not cry over a bunch of messed-up murderers. Never.
SIX
Violet
The rain still pummelled the glass when I woke up. It was dark outside and the blanket that I had pulled from the bed had slipped off my shoulders, piling in a heap on the floor. A few drops of water slid down my cheek as I prised it away from the window-pane, which I had steamed up with my breath. My hand wandered to my neck. Vampires. It was all completely crazy.
Yet you can’t deny it, the voice said and I shook my head, trying to mask it with other thoughts.
A few drops of rain plummeted from the top of the window outside. I blinked. Drip, drip, drip. Behind my closed eyelids, I could see a stained body lying on the pavement.
No, I can’t deny it. I don’t want to deny it. If I do, that would mean a human had done that to another human. Vampires are monsters. Monsters do horrible things. Humans don’t.
The clock beside me read 5 o’clock in the morning. I rubbed my eyes, realizing this was the earliest I had been up in years and that it must be the next day, August 1st. One day. One day would be long enough for the police to find witnesses, set up a search party and start to find me. There was so much evidence. The friends I was with. My heels. The man who worked for my father had even seen me. Yet he had done nothing.
An uneasy feeling crept through my chest. What if he had known about vampires? Had he kept away because he knew he would put his own life at risk? It wasn’t too far a stretch to assume that people within the government would know about vampires – someone must know about them. If he knew and he didn’t do anything, does that mean they won’t come after me? I didn’t want to think about it. My father would come find me. My father wouldn’t abandon me, not even to vampires.