The Vampire's Doll (The Heiress and the Vampire Book 1)

by Jaclyn Dolamore

  The Vampire’s Doll

  Jaclyn Dolamore

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Don’t miss…

  Also in the Hidden Lands Series

  About the Author

  Also by Jaclyn Dolamore

  Copyright © 2017 by Jaclyn Dolamore

  Photo © NemesisINC/Bigstock.com

  Cover Layout © 2017 Jaclyn Dolamore and Dade Bell

  http://bang-doll-ssi.deviantart.com/

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Chapter One

  382nd Year EW (Establishment of the Wodrenarune)

  May 1905

  Parsons Belvray was eight years old when her parents told her they were taking her to the realm inside the mirror.

  The Fallen Lands, it was called. A strange name for a place that was whispered of in such reverent tones. It didn’t sound “fallen” at all. Everyone wanted to go there.

  “It’s only called that,” Parsons’ mother told her, “because a long time ago, the people there were not at all nice to us. And their culture is very different from ours, sometimes in upsetting ways, but they have evolved to make things of great beauty. Still you must remember, while you’re there—they aren’t like us. Some of them are ugly and brutish and violent, and they must never know what we really are. Before we go, you must promise me you’ll follow all the rules.”

  It was a tremendous honor that the High Sorcerer would allow a child through the passage. Normally, permission to travel to the Fallen Lands was only given to adults who went there for research. Her parents were, indeed, doing research on some boring thing that had to do with city planning, but they were making a vacation of it, too.

  Parsons had special clothes for the trip: a checked dress and a white one with lace, both with an uncomfortable high neck. Her mother brushed a spell into her hair to grow it out a little, and then she tied bows in it. And when they were in the Fallen Lands, she had to use a different name, Polly Bisbee.

  “If anyone asks you questions, don’t answer. Just pretend to be shy,” Mama said. “You might say something wrong.”

  Parsons wasn’t supposed to speak to anyone in the Fallen Lands, but she already knew the language. A telepath had taught her when she was a little girl, just after she learned to read in her own language, so she could read storybooks Papa and Mama brought back from their travels.

  When the day came, the family were all dressed up in their strange clothes, Mama looking rather hilarious in her long dress and fussy hat, so different from the shirts with rolled up sleeves and stained trousers she wore on normal days. Papa, who was usually hunched over books, squinting and absent, seemed like someone else’s father, with more swagger and authority.

  It reminded Parsons of being in a play, and Parsons adored the theater. She was trembling with such anticipation as they walked up to the mirror that she worried she might be sick. It felt like a million years had passed since Papa and Mama first told her about the trip, and every hour of those million years had been spent in torturous anticipation.

  She would always remember that moment. The itchiness of her collar and lace, Mama and Papa holding hands, the dark bulk of their trunk, the dim room tucked away in some secret corner of the High Sorcerer’s Palace. The mirror was the size of a doorway, with circular dials around the frame.

  Papa’s brother, Uncle Nihem, worked the mirror. He was a little younger than Papa and much more dashing, his tunics cut stylishly. Parsons liked him even though she heard adults whispering about him sometimes; he had done something with a lady who wasn’t his wife. He always had little presents for her, and today was no exception: he slipped her a locket with a picture of Lord Jherin, the High Sorcerer, inside. “So you don’t forget where you belong,” he said with a wink.

  And then, “Parsons in Paris. Well, well. You will be the first little Daramon girl to see it. The first of many trips for you, I’m sure.”

  She remembered those words forever, because they ended up being very, very wrong.

  A few months later, the trip to Paris had faded into a memory from another life. A dream of ladies in huge hats, the mournful song of a musician on a glowing street at twilight, a tower made of iron.

  A few months later was when Parsons’ life came to an end.

  This event, too, she could never remember after the fact. She pieced it together from other people’s words.

  Parsons had accompanied her mother to work in the railroad shop. Her mother and the workers were putting finishing touches on one of the first full-size locomotives that would enter service between the capital city of Nalim Ima and the military base town to the northeast. A number of men were working on getting the locomotive up and running, but the sorcerer who usually supervised the pressure of the steam had injured his foot early that morning and gone home. No one worried about it especially. They didn’t have sorcerers to supervise the pressures in the Fallen Lands, after all. And yet the humans operated countless steam engines.

  No one had been sufficiently trained in safety, they said later. It was a tragedy that could have been prevented, but at least they had learned from it, and it would never happen again.

  Parsons hated people who spoke of that day as if it were just an accident, as if their souls were not wrenched down to their core by the thought of it.

  The locomotive boiler had torn apart at the seams, killing every man in the shop—and the one woman: Parsons’ mother.

  They had not all died immediately, because they were Daramons. A little over a hundred years ago, Lord Jherin had cast a great spell, the Ten Thousand Man Sacrifice, to alter the blood of his people, and from that day on, the blood of a Daramon had special qualities that kept them alive for several hours after suffering injuries that could have been fatal, and their bodies had accelerated healing abilities.

  Parsons’ body, although damaged beyond hope, clung to a shred of life, just long enough for someone to fish her burnt flesh and broken bones from the debris.

  She woke up in the hospital with her father clutching her hand tight, his fingers laced around hers, tears staining his glasses with smudges.

  Parsons felt small and strange, like she was detached from her body. She didn’t understand this numbness. She tried to speak. Her mouth was dry.

  “Papa?” she managed. Her voice felt like it ought to be a croak, but it still sounded like her normal voice.

  “Parsons?” He clutched her. “You’re awake, you’re alive—fates—thank the fates—”

  Her father was choking back tears, crushing her. She struggled to breathe and then realized that breathing felt a little odd. Everything felt odd, like she wasn’t actually rea
l. His grasp pressing on her ribs bothered her less than it should. She felt sort of fuzzy inside where her heart and lungs and stomach ought to be.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “We lost your mother. I’m so sorry. I’m so—the locomotive exploded, and— I tried to save them all, everyone we could save, but it was too late. I didn’t think I’d save you either. It’s—only that you’re young enough, that’s all, you’ll manage…” He cut off his own ramblings, straightening up, finally wiping off his glasses. “We had to turn you into a Fanarlem.”

  “A Fanarlem? Like—the servants?” Parsons looked at her hands, for the first time.

  Her two hands were formed of perfect smooth skin with no wrinkles, with hardly anything resembling knuckles, just straight fingers over neat little bones, with small nails made from carved pieces of something hard and semi-translucent, maybe shell or bone. Not exactly like the servants. Not exactly like anything she had seen before.

  “Not like the servants,” he said, shaking his head. “No expense will ever be spared on you. I tried to make you look just like yourself, but we can change things if you don’t think we’ve gotten it right. We can change anything, as many times as we need to.”

  Parsons’ eight-year-old brain raced to understand. Fanarlem were servants, the lowliest of servants, people made from wood and cloth and magic. They were scary to look at, with their yarn hair and staring glass eyes, but luckily it was rare that she had to see them. They did their housecleaning at night, or when the family was out. If she woke early in the morning and heard the Fanarlem maid cleaning her room, she pretended to be asleep.

  She touched her hair. It still felt real.

  She didn’t even know where to begin to talk about this, so she just started to cry. She cried, but she didn’t have any tears, so crying itself felt strange. She wailed like a baby, all sense of shame gone. “Mamaaaa…I want Mamaaa…”

  Papa held her, but seemed very lost.

  The door opened, and her grandmother walked in, her mother’s mother who was generally more stern than Parsons’ parents. She sat at Parsons’ side and gripped her other hand and said, “Parsons, look at me.”

  Parsons did, easing off on her tears like a soldier lowering his rifle from an enemy just an inch.

  “We almost lost you,” Grandmother said. “And if you were to die, you would never get to be Parsons again, which I think would be a tragedy, because you are such a clever girl, just like your mother. I know your sweet mother would want you to hang on.”

  Grandmother had in her arms Parsons’ doll, Bleuette, which she had gotten in France. Now she handed her to Parsons. “In Paris, you know, only wealthy little girls have such fine dolls. You might be a Fanarlem, but you are not like the servants. You will still be our beautiful girl.”

  Parsons took the doll, who was wearing a fancy plaid dress, a hat and gloves, and had bright glass eyes and a smiling mouth. Parsons had been so proud to have a real French doll.

  But suddenly, she was disturbed by Bleuette’s perfect, fixed expression. Her semblance of reality. Her smooth hard skin and neat painted face. She had no soul.

  Parsons thrust the doll back at Grandmother.

  “Oh dear,” Grandmother said. “Don’t make her sad, now.”

  Parsons had an immediate pang of remorse and took the doll back. When Grandmother left, she smoothed Bleuette’s clothes and whispered, “I’m sorry. Maybe you do have a soul.”

  Mama had told Parsons that trees had souls. Maybe dolls did too, for all she knew.

  Everyone said the souls of the Fanarlem servants were damaged, so they didn’t really count as people. They didn’t hurt the same way flesh and blood people did. They had been bad, in their past lives, but if they were good and worked hard, they would heal their souls and become good flesh and blood people again in their next life, so you didn’t have to be nice to them. It was better for their karma if they weren’t treated too well. Of course, Mama and Papa were nice to the servants, just not too nice.

  Parsons wondered how people would know the difference between her and the people with bad souls. She looked better than the servants, but she had a vague idea that some Fanarlem were made to be very pretty, and they were the worst ones of all. Bad women who belonged to rich men like pets.

  When a nurse came in, a little later, Parsons was quite worked up.

  “Where’s Papa?” she cried.

  “He’ll be here soon,” the nurse said. “How do you feel? Do you want to go home? I think your papa will take you home when he comes back.”

  “Is my soul damaged now?” Parsons asked. She sort of thought the answer would be no, but she had to hear an adult say so.

  “Oh, no, no. Poor little thing.” The nurse came over to her and smiled at her kindly. “Is this your dolly?”

  Parsons was shaking all over and didn’t answer.

  “She’s very pretty, and so are you.” She tucked Parsons’ covers a little more closely around her, and glanced at the flowers crowding her nightstand, saying she would go get Papa so Parsons didn’t have to be alone.

  People didn’t usually call Parsons ‘pretty’. It was very important to most people in Nalim Ima to be beautiful, but Parsons’ mother had a striking lack of interest in it. She had a little shapeshifting when she was younger to correct a strong nose, like anyone would, but that was it. Her hair usually looked like she had crawled under several fences on her way to and from work, and sometimes she got so wrapped up in a project that she forgot to bathe or change her clothes for days. She hated putting on dresses or jewelry. And she had what people called “beggar eyes”, always with dark circles underneath even when she got enough sleep, enhanced by her thin, angular face. Parsons took after her.

  She finally dared to crawl out of bed and look at herself in the mirror over the washstand—noticing, with every step, how strange she felt. Like her body was not entirely her own; it was a little clumsy and didn’t quite want to obey her.

  She was no longer her mother in miniature, with her mother’s thin face and shadowed eyes. It was hard to capture quirks and imperfections in a Fanarlem body. She was a more perfect version of herself. Everything that made her Parsons was smoothed over. The face gazing back at her in the mirror looked almost real, actually almost more real than real. It was not just the face of a doll, it was the face of a portrait painting, it was the face of an actress wearing makeup, it was the face of reality perfected and exaggerated.

  Parsons flung herself onto the bed, turning away from the image, but this time she didn’t cry. She couldn’t seem to cry. She was numb.

  Mama was dead, and so was Parsons.

  It certainly seemed true, when the funeral occurred at the end of the week, and her remains were buried alongside her mother. Papa didn’t tell her that little detail, but she heard people whispering about it. Women gazed at her with soft, sympathetic eyes and they whispered “poor little girl” and Parsons felt intruded upon. People came up to her and told her how much they loved her mother, how tragic it all was and how sorry they felt, and she didn’t respond. The numbness hadn’t left her.

  It was very cold and damp that morning. Flurries dusted the shoulders of coats. The people wore red and black, the colors of the High Sorcerer, as a gesture of respect that her mother was in his favor. Parsons no longer felt the cold the same way. It permeated her wooden bones and wool stuffing. Sometimes, before all this, she would run home from school in cold weather and overheat so that she tossed her favorite sweater on the porch, and in the morning, she had to pick it up again, kissed with cold dew until her skin warmed it again. Now she felt like she was stuffed with cold sweaters. But like an inanimate thing, she didn’t shiver.

  The finest guest at the funeral was Calban, the Peacock General, one of the famous Four Generals who had been honored in the War of the Crystals. He was so named because he was a dandy, always decked in velvet and shimmering fabrics. At festivals, he was often the first person to catch one’s eye, even out of hundreds of
people. He wore plumes in his hair or in his hats; his boots had buttons of gold; she had never seen him wear the same cloak twice, and he had cloaks of every variety: capelets, half capes, long cloaks, hooded cloaks, cloaks with collars, cloaks with pockets, bedecked with fringe or jewels or tassels or embroidery. And that was just the cloaks—to say nothing of the rest.

  At her mother’s funeral, he wore somber black, cut plainly, with red trim on his tunic and red heels on his shoes. As the gravediggers shoveled dirt on the plain wooden box, he turned away and dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief. For Parsons, it was easier to watch him, the general crying for her mother, than all the rest.

  After the funeral itself came an awful dinner, where a sea of pity flowed over her like a tide. “You still look like your mother,” their neighbor told her, while the wife of one of the workers who had also died told Parsons, “Don’t you look so precious. Poor sweet.”

  Parsons knew she didn’t look like her mother anymore, and she wasn’t precious either. She wanted to be spoken to the way she was before, like an ordinary girl who was often frowned at for being too loud, too blunt, or too curious.

  She didn’t eat a single bite. She didn’t have to eat anymore, although she could—her throat had a spell inside that made the food vanish. It was no longer enjoyable, in any case. The food seemed too dry in her mouth and lacked any sense of satisfaction.

  Chapter Two

  After the funeral, Papa took Parsons back to a home that had been hollowed out. All of her things were the same; her room which was covered in blue floral wallpaper that was the height of fashion, her bed and the little bed Papa made for Bleuette and her stuffed “teddy” bear, her shelf full of storybooks in three different languages. But the halls seemed quiet. All the servants were somber. Whenever they came to her room, their footsteps whispered, as if she was sleeping.

  She took to her bed. Her new body was, of course, perfectly unscathed by injury, so she had no concrete reason to take to bed. She just had no motivation to leave her room. Especially now. She didn’t have to eat or bathe or use the toilet or get any fresh air or sunshine. She didn’t want to get dressed and no one forced her. She spent all day in her nightdress, sleeping time away.