Immortal with a Kiss

by Jacqueline Lepore

  I could see that making this concession galled her. She could not hide it, nor did she much bother. I had to content myself with the secret knowledge that my fortune could buy and sell this school, and my family pedigree dwarf whatever accolades she could boast for hers. I smiled inwardly at the irony: when Alyssa spoke of such things, I thought her a snob. Yet here I was, doing the same thing to soothe my bruised pride.

  Miss Sloane-Smith narrowed her eyes at me. “I trust you will dress appropriately. You no doubt have something suitable.”

  Consideration of my many fine gowns almost cracked a smile on my tightly controlled features, but I caught myself. “I am sure I can find something. May I know the date?”

  “Thursday next. I will let you know what time to be ready.” When her eyes flashed, I realized she was more than merely upset about keeping the social hierarchy of power here at the school intact. She was jealous. Was she in love with Suddington?

  “That is all,” she said, and I all but dashed through the doorway, pulling it closed behind me. Just before it latched, I paused. Perhaps I was making a mistake. Pride aside, I should not accept the invitation to Suddington’s party. I was not at Blackbriar to engage in diversions such as dinner parties. My pleasure at Suddington’s having remembered me in the invitation had clouded my better judgment. Yes, attending was definitely a poor move. I pushed the door I had almost closed and stepped inside, my mouth open to beg Miss Sloane-Smith’s pardon.

  But she was bent to pull a slender volume from beneath a large bookcase. I waited, suddenly unsure. She might be angry at my intrusion. I hesitated, then stepped quietly back so that I could knock on the door. But before I could fully retreat, she straightened and found me standing there.

  I expected her to be angry. In fact, I did not blame her. But her startlement went far beyond the annoyance my intrusion deserved. She gasped and fell back, whipping the book she had just retrieved behind her back in a transparent, almost childish effort to conceal it.

  “What are you still doing here?” she demanded. Her voice rang with indignation.

  I opened my mouth. This was a terrible mess. “I think it best to decline the dinner invitation,” I said. “I would not wish an exception to be made just for me.”

  “It is not important what you wish,” she snapped sharply. “Lord Suddington has made his request and you will honor it. You will not disgrace this school or me.” Narrowing her eyes, she said, “Make certain, however, that there is no cause for him to seek to include you in future gatherings.”

  I nodded and backed out, rather like a slave leaving the presence of a barbarian queen, grateful to have escaped with her head. Then I turned, and while my pride forbade me to rush unduly, I confess I did not tarry as I hurried to my room.

  I was halfway up the stairs when the first, subtle brush whispered in my mind. My head came up sharply, and my first thought was: Marius! I had felt that lurid touch before, a disgusting blend of hateful pleasure and torment. A terrible dread filled me.

  After a minute I realized that this, however, was not his presence. This was more subtle, the touch of a glance, the kind one feels when finding a stranger’s gaze on you. Not quite the claxon alarm of true danger, although the discomfiture of unseen eyes was enough to rattle my nerves, but a sensation so deeply and thoroughly unsettling . . .

  My flesh began to prick. My breathing was coming heavily, and I turned sharply down the hallway toward my room, arrowing into it without closing the door behind me. I reached out a trembling hand to open the window. My fingers fumbled, and a voice called my name. I spun to see a shadow in the hall.

  “Emma.” It was Ann Easterly coming toward me. Her room was next to mine. “Are you headed to luncheon?”

  I closed my eyes briefly, gathering my strength. Whatever had been present was gone. Clearing my throat, I said, “Yes. Of course. I just wanted to freshen up.” I wanted just a little time to myself. After patting my face dry and smoothing my hair, I joined Ann, who was waiting for me in the hallway.

  “Sunday is our day off,” she said as we descended the stairs I had climbed only moments before. “Some of us teachers spend the afternoon in the village browsing the shops and taking tea at Mrs. Brixton’s tea and coffee room. Do you think you would like to join us?”

  “Thank you,” I said, thinking that my preference would be to enjoy Mrs. Danby’s cooking and perhaps catch a glimpse of Lord Suddington. But I knew I could not take the time for either indulgence when there was so much upon which to concentrate here at the school. “I will let you know by the end of the week,” I assured her.

  When we entered the dining hall, we were immediately met with confusion. The students were out of their tables, appearing agitated and talking too loudly. The teachers were not at their place at the large staff table by the French doors.

  “What . . . ?” Ann murmured beside me.

  But I was in motion, having noticed plump Mrs. Boniface standing among a group of girls. She was openly weeping as she comforted a young student in a similar state of distress.

  “My God,” I muttered. “Something terrible has happened.”

  Agatha Thompson was dead. Mrs. Brown had found her lying on the floor of the conservatory when she’d arrived to water her plants after morning classes. The doctor had been called to determine the cause of death.

  The news tore through the school like a blast of fire, igniting a flurry of tears and fainting spells among the girls. Though I suspected the majority of these were histrionics, done with the flourish to which only an adolescent girl can do justice, the place was in chaos. We teachers were required to be a calming force and it fell to us to funnel pots of tea and barrelfuls of sympathy to the student population to keep them consoled.

  Dorothea Brown was in shock. I pressed a cup of tea into her hands. “It must have been terrible for you, being the one to find her,” I said with deep sympathy.

  She looked at me searchingly. “It was her heart,” she murmured. “I saw how pale she’d been of late. And she said she’d not been sleeping well. The other morning she was not herself. I should have insisted—”

  She broke off, and I put a comforting hand on her arm. My gaze caught the group of coven girls watching us. There were five of them now: the four from my class—Margaret, Vanessa, Lilliana, and Therese—had been joined by another, Marion Tilman. They were standing apart from the others and they remained placid, unmoved. Their remarkable composure sent a chill through my veins.

  I moved to the headmistress, who was poised in the center hallway in readiness for the arrival of the doctor. “I can wait here for the doctor if you like,” I told her kindly. “You must be needed elsewhere.” In truth, I was desperate to see Agatha’s body and thought I might get a glimpse of the corpse if I were to be permitted to take the doctor to where it lay upstairs in Miss Thompson’s bedchamber.

  Miss Sloane-Smith shook her head in that definitive way of hers. “There is nothing any one of us can do.”

  When the ruddy-faced doctor arrived, Miss Sloane-Smith rushed him toward the stairs. “Thank you for coming, Dr. Kellum,” I heard her say. “She has been laid in her bed.”

  He hesitated, his heavy-lidded eyes watery in the light spilling through the windows. “Have her brought down here,” he said in a hard, gravelly voice. “My gout is bad enough. I cannot climb all those stairs.”

  The headmistress was caught off guard. “But we cannot move her out into the open, not with the girls . . .”

  He sighed. “Very well.” With his blue-veined face betraying his irritation, he mounted the steps with a ponderous gait, leaning heavily on the banister. I watched his laborious progress, taking silent exception to his coldness and weariness that seemed to border on boredom.

  Kellum’s pronouncement of Miss Thompson’s death took only a few moments. I heard his heavy tread slowly proceeding back down the stairs and through the hall. He exited without making any formal farewell to anyone. I could observe him climbing into his carriage where, hardl
y settled in his seat, he produced a flask and tipped back his head to take a deep draught. The carriage lurched forward, taking him away and leaving us to the dead.

  No, not “us.” It was up to me alone to do what I must as only I was equipped to.

  The knowledge sat heavily on me. That day was monstrously long. That night, as I waited for the great house to fall asleep, I sat on the edge of my bed and weighed my options. While I knew it was rare that a vampire would transform its victim—contrary to how the legends had every victim rising itself from the dead—I had been surprised before. It was my job to be sure—for Agatha Thompson’s sake, for all our sakes.

  From my mother’s portmanteau, I retrieved the items I needed. The timing was wrong. The night was, of course, the vampire’s time. But I could not wait until dawn and risk being seen. I gingerly drew out the rough stake hewn to a sharp point by my own hand, the flat-headed mallet, the cross, the vial of water blessed by a confessed saint, all of which I had used before. I inspected the tools of my craft, arranged them in my sack, and blew out the lamp. For this task, I required darkness.

  The corpse had been properly cleaned and dressed, brought down from the staff dormitories, and laid out after the girls had had their supper. It lay arranged on a table draped in black crepe in the good parlor. The lamps had been left burning, and I could see that flowers had been brought in. No doubt Mrs. Brown’s conservatory had been denuded for the purpose of honoring one of our own. No one else would do so. Miss Thompson was a woman alone in the world—very like myself—without husband or children to mourn her.

  But she had me to shrive her, and that was an act of love.

  “Hello, Agatha,” I said softly. I needed to hear the sound of a voice, even my own. As I stood at the body, my nostrils flared, catching the sour tang of the revenant’s blood. Yes. I sensed it now. This was what my blood knew and what I was made for.

  My fingers caught the high, starched collar furling at her neck and bent it back on both sides. I found the marks, very neat and barely visible: two small punctures behind the ear piercing the skin to sever the carotid artery. The blood had been let neatly, so that not a trace of it had betrayed the violent end. A vampire who wants to hide his kill will refrain from draining the victim, so that the death will appear natural. Sometimes, the wounds could even be charmed and disappear, but this time the fiend hadn’t bothered. He hadn’t needed to expend the effort. His ploy had certainly fooled that ridiculous excuse for a doctor.

  At least she had not suffered the slow agony of being bled over time. This was the usual way a vampire fed. This one had glutted himself, not wishing to waste any time in ending Agatha Thompson’s life. He had wanted her dead and quickly. Knowing this reinforced my conviction that Agatha had known something—something about the coven girls.

  I made the mistake of looking at her face. Her skin was cast bluish gray, her lips gunmetal, her eyes smudged circles of charcoal. I had not known her well, but I felt close to her in that moment, a slice of time so intimate it stung my eyes. If I were to be honest with myself, I saw my own fate before me. Dying alone. A person well liked, but not loved, not in the way that makes one really immortal, the kind of immortality that matters.

  I had to turn away, suddenly overwhelmed with—as much as I detest admitting it—a wave of self-pity. My footsteps were sharp as I went to the window. The rich tasseled velvet felt like a barrier, keeping me trapped with the dead. I pushed aside the heavy draperies and opened the window, lifting my gaze to the fullness of the moon shining like a silver sun. Outside, the air was crisp. The bare landscape below was still.

  My voice was barely a whisper. I spoke to the window, not ready to face the body. “I think you saw something, Agatha, didn’t you? I think that is why you are dead. How it must have frightened you. Not only because it was unholy—for I wager it was—but also because you feared you’d lost your mind. That you’d be thought mad if you told anyone, as mad as Victoria Markam. I wish I had been given the chance to persuade you to tell me what happened. I would have believed you.”

  I turned back to the body and opened my sack. “I hope you will forgive me,” I said. “I think you understand, though. I know your death was terrible, but there are worse things. I am here to keep you safe.”

  The stake I drew out was slender, made from the branch of an ordinary hawthorn. The tip was cut to a point as thin as a needle. It was my own handiwork; I’d gotten skilled with a carving knife.

  I approached the body. Opening the buttons of her shirtwaist, I arranged the fabric carefully out of the way. “I’ve done this before,” I said to reassure her—and also, if I were to be honest, myself—as I set the stake in position.

  A chill crawled through me, and from outside the window I heard the high, mournful wail of a wild creature. A wolf ?

  Miss Thompson’s eyes remained closed. I hesitated, suddenly imagining them flying open, her pale hands reaching for me and her mouth opening to reveal grotesque incisors, razor-sharp and hungry for my flesh. Around me, the smell of flowers was cloying. The wolf howled again, and I bared my teeth in a bracing grimace. I raised my hand to draw the mallet high into the air. My knuckles showed white on the stake, and I cried out a little as I swung the mallet down, using all my force to drive the stake into her heart.

  It slipped into her chest bloodlessly, spearing her heart. The body jerked from my strike. I jumped back, startled, and let out a scream, then clamped my mouth shut to stifle it. I paused, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment before I drew in a bracing breath and forced myself back up to the table.

  My hands shook and tears silently coursed down my cheeks as I finished my work. Snapping off the end of the stake, I covered her body carefully so that no one would know what I had done. Lovingly, I smoothed the lines of her skirt and touched her hand. “Rest in peace,” I whispered.

  The light shifted as if something had passed outside the window, blocking the silvery moon for a moment. I swung around to peer intently into the night. Nothing was there.

  I went to the window and closed the drapes, letting the velvet fall back into place. And then suddenly I froze. It was as if the air had rushed out of the room, soundlessly vacating the space. A voice echoed in the vacuum that had been created, pronouncing crisp and rhythmic words that coiled around me like a constrictor suffocating its prey.

  Who are you?

  I struggled against the feeling of it crawling inside my skull—the same feeling I’d had on the stairs earlier today. The feeling from my dream.

  Emma? My name hissed around me. I spun, desperate to find the source of the voice. Emma. You are Emma.

  I rushed to Agatha Thompson’s corpse. It had not moved. I stood my ground, turning a full circle to peer into the tight shadows where the lamplight dared not venture.

  Sister? Yes. Yes! I feel you, I feel the blood of my father . . .

  “Marius?” I called softly.

  I felt something twist, a hesitation, then: You speak the name of our enemy.

  Before I could respond, the presence receded, pulling away from me like a fast-moving tide. I could breathe again. I sat for a long time, just Miss Agatha Thompson and I. Then I gathered up my implements and packed them away in my bag, sneaking through the shadowy halls to my room, dogged by the sinister implications that crawled over me, through me, in my mind—echoing in that single, terrible word.

  Sister.

  Chapter Seven

  After a somber and uneasy week, Miss Sloane-Smith all but ordered the students out of the school, granting rare permission for them to go into the village. No doubt it was her plan that such a diversion would restore the equilibrium after the school’s tragic loss. And I had to admit that the girls were excited at the prospect of the outing. Grief was a fleeting thing for the young, I observed, as they were packed off into carriages and traps for transport. Most of the teachers agreed to go as chaperones, but I elected to stay behind. I had some spying to do.

  I felt uneasy in the empty hallways. A few t
imes in recent days I had felt again that alien presence, that sense that something was reaching out to me, hovering just behind me, about to tap me on the shoulder. I was acutely aware of my disadvantage: it knew something about me, although it was clearly unsure of what possible threat I might pose. I, however, was woefully without so much as a clue to its identity or whereabouts. Or intention.

  As I made my way to the third floor, a prickle of apprehension raised gooseflesh along my arms as I became keenly aware of my solitude. The girls’ dormitory room for the sixth form students was located in the back of the oldest part of the house. I entered the dormitory and began my examination without so much as a hiccough of conscience. All was fair, as they say, in love and war. I rather thought that when one was dealing with the cursed undead, it was always the latter.

  I paused at each one of the bedsteads lined against the inside wall, then traversed to those positioned opposite, situated between tall windows. Each girl possessed a standing chest of drawers, the small flat surfaces on top the only opportunity for personalization in this severely regimented environment. Upon some of these were Bibles and miniature paintings, schoolbooks, papers, paste beads, pen nubs, hairpins, and the like. A few were neatly arranged. Most were a heaping mess.

  At Vanessa’s bed, flowers wilted in a chipped vase among the usual hodgepodge of items. I bent low so that my head almost touched her pillow and breathed in. I felt the tremor of my blood vibrating in my veins, a sign I had come to know meant the presence of the vampire was here in some detached form. That was nothing I did not already know, however. The oily smudge wrapped around her had told me that upon first meeting. I rifled through the jumbled contents of her belongings, in her drawers and under her bed, but learned nothing more.

  Margaret’s area, predictably directly next to Vanessa’s, was extremely orderly. Her quilt was neatly folded at the foot of the bed, her sheets crisply tucked and her pillow fluffed and poised at the head. On the table a candle and a book were placed at precise angles.