Anathema (Causal Enchantment, #1) (18 page)

“
Isn’t it terrible? Again,
Evangeline: we had no control over what she was doing,” Viggo
said.

A low, feral sound came from Sofie but with one
sharp glare from Mortimer, her face went expressionless again. “The
pendant rejected the venom. It’s protecting you in this other
world—masking your heartbeat, changing the taste of your
blood.”

“
And
how
are we supposed to
know how it’ll work?” I demanded, hearing the bitterness in my
voice.

“
Sofie is trying to—” Viggo
began.

“
I know what you need to do now,”
Sophie interjected.

“
Oh, really.” Mortimer’s voice was
hard, suspicious. “How convenient that you finally know
something.”

Sofie ignored him. “You need to bring one of
them back. The pendant will tell you how, exactly. It’s sentient.
It will communicate with you.”

I peered down at the pendant, muttering, “So
I’m going to start hearing voices?”

“
I’m not sure,” Sofie said, adding,
“You will know when it happens.”

Her candor didn’t ease my anxiety. I dropped my
gaze to the floor, focusing on a knot in the hardwood. The stabbing
pain of Sofie’s betrayal had begun to fade, replaced by an all too
familiar emptiness that slowly crept through my body. It was the
numbness of loss—loss of an illusion of friendship I had quickly
accepted as reality. I
was
delusional, after
all.

And humiliated. Here I was, unwittingly the
butt of a secret—a pawn, greedily accepting the gifts they showered
upon me, turning a blind eye to the fighting and
screaming.

The disturbing fact was, I now had an
explanation for the bites and the old sweat clothes—albeit an
insane one—and that brought me some small comfort.

“
Is there anything else I need to
know?” I wasn’t sure I could handle anymore.

“
No,” Mortimer answered
abruptly.

Another growl from Max.

I swallowed. “What if I want to go
home?”

“
This is your home for now,” Viggo
answered calmly. “It’s for the best. For your safety, until this is
all sorted out.”

The thought of leaving these walls—my elegantly
wallpapered and decorated prison walls—brought me back to the
attack. “Who were those people in the park?”

“
No one you need to worry about.”
Viggo smiled gently. “They won’t bother you anymore.”

No, of course not. They’ve been stuffed
into bags by now
. I shuddered.

“
You probably need some time to
yourself,” Sofie suggested.

I was glad for the dismissal, wanting to get as
far away from her as possible—as far as my prison bars would allow.
I left the library without glancing in her direction, picking up
speed until I was sprinting to my room.

Throwing open my bedroom door, I yelped in
surprise. Sofie stood in front of the fireplace, her back to me,
studying her painting.

“
How did you—” I didn’t bother
finishing.
Just further proof that she isn’t
human.

Max nudged me into the room as he barged
through the door behind me. Once in, he sauntered over to my
bedside and sat down, no longer the frothing, protective guard dog.
I guess he didn’t see Sofie as a threat to me. So much for canine
intuition.

“
We understand this is a lot to
absorb,” she said, turning to walk toward me, her face an emblem of
sadness. For a second a pang of sorrow pulled at my heart. But then
I remembered what she had done to me and that grief dissolved. It
was all a masquerade. None of it was genuine.

She reached up to place a hand on my shoulder.
I recoiled. Slowly dropping her arm, she sighed, her expression
going blank. “It’s best to keep some things to yourself for now,
until you know them more. Don’t tell them why you’re there or
anything about the necklace. And keep out of trouble. You could
easily have died last night, if that vampire hadn’t controlled
himself.”

“
He said my blood didn’t taste right
… or human … something like that,” I mumbled, remembering the
attacker’s words, suddenly finding them offensive. There was
nothing wrong with my blood. But something else dawned on me.
“Wait. What if he hadn’t? What if the vampire hadn’t tried to
convert me and kept draining me of all my blood? I’d be
dead—weren’t you worried that would happen?”

Sofie pursed her lips. “It didn’t happen so
there’s no use worrying about it. And anyway, the spell is
irreversible.”

“
Right.” I moved away until my back
hit the wall, trying to distance myself from her—the evil vampire
sorceress.

“
Well, alright then. Be safe
tonight.” She moved as if to head out the door. But in the next
instant she was beside me, gripping my arm tightly. “Don’t trust
any of our kind, including Viggo,” she whispered, the words coming
in a rush, “and don’t do what the pendant tells you to,
yet.”

And then she vanished, leaving me thinking I
may have imagined her words.

Was she trying to pit me against Viggo and
Mortimer now, too? Why? She was the one who had tricked me—cursed
me. I obviously knew not to trust her. But Viggo—who was as
blameless in all of this as I was—was asking for my
help.

Is this even happening?
I wondered as
I walked toward my bed. Maybe
this
was the dream that I’d
wake up from soon. I pinched my arm but only winced at the pain.
This is real. Vampires exist. Witches exist. Viggo and Mortimer
are vampires. Sofie is a vampire sorceress. The giant dog lying
down on the other side of the room is … I don’t know what he
is.

The three of them, fawning over me, a socially
awkward stranger with no friends, giving me gifts and kindness … I
should have known something was not right. I sighed. I wasn’t Nancy
Drew—not unless Nancy Drew was blind and deaf.

An awful numbness was taking over. I’m sure
anger was there, buried deep under a blanket of shock and
confusion, but it was all rolled up and somehow encapsulated within
the numbness. I never understood why anyone described it as a lack
of feeling when, to me, there was definitely a sensation with being
“numb”; not one I could describe, except to say it felt
wrong
.

A glance out the window showed night looming.
If I could force myself to stay awake for the night, maybe Sofie’s
curse wouldn’t work. But if not, if I did get pulled into this
dream world that I now knew wasn’t a dream world, I had to prepare
myself. They were vampires. They might bite me and drain me of my
blood. Except that they hadn’t done anything like that yet. They
had protected me. When I was lying in Caden’s arms, bleeding
profusely, he could easily have finished me off, but he didn’t.
None of them had. The more I tried, the harder it was to picture
Amelie, with her bouncy curls and childlike smile, being murderous.
Or Caden … perfect Caden. They couldn’t be bad. They had to be like
Viggo and Mortimer—good vampires.

It was pitch black this time. I couldn’t see
any shadows, any outlines, anything at all. I sucked in a deep
breath, trying to calm myself.

“
Hold on,” a male voice called out.
A light appeared to my left. I turned to see Caden anchoring a
burning torch into a wall bracket. Even with my spirit drained from
the day’s revelations, my heart still skipped a beat at the sight
of him, and I knew it wasn’t out of fear. The possibility that he
was a vampire was trivial. That he was no longer a figment of my
imagination, that I was standing in front of him …
that
made me jittery.

Oh my God
. I had all but professed my
undying love to him the last time I was here, when I thought it was
a dream
. Right before I insulted his taste in
women.

Blood rushed to my head along with my
mortification. The room began to spin. I reached out, searching for
a support, and my hand grazed something cool and smooth and hard. I
turned to see the statue. The conduit.

“
Is that—” I began, but my voice
ended in a croak when Caden appeared in front of me, gingerly
reaching for my bandaged hand.

“
What happened?” His face twisted
with worry.

“
Oh, nothing. It’s okay,” I
stammered, melting with the feel of my hand cradled in his. His
vampire hand. Without thinking, I yanked my hand away.

When I hazarded a look up, I found his jade
green eyes watching me. He nodded slightly, a strange expression on
his face, as if acknowledging something.
He knows … he knows
that I know.

We stared at each other for a long, silent
moment. Then he thrust a set of clothes into my uninjured hand.
“You should put these on, in case we have more visitors,” he said
quietly.

I glanced down to see the same type of
nondescript sweats I’d put on the other night. Heat crawled up my
neck as I recalled the last time Caden had handed me clothes. It
was right before he kissed me. I had made out with a vampire. And
enjoyed it, immensely.

“
Is this the same statue as in the
woods?” I asked hoarsely, turning to point at the statue, desperate
to change the topic. I looked back to find myself talking to an
empty cave.

I fumbled slowly with the clothes, my injured
hand awkward. I hadn’t bothered undressing earlier that evening,
opting to cuddle with Max until the blaze of the pendant and the
fatigue set in, the warning sign that Sofie’s curse was about to
take me. I had held onto Max tightly, begging him to come with me,
to protect me.

But it hadn’t worked and here I stood, alone.
Alone in a cave full of bloodthirsty vampires. Were they really
bloodthirsty, though?

Now wearing my disguise, I retrieved the torch
and followed the sound of distant voices. I found the group
circling a fire in the same giant cave as the previous night. Four
faces turned to smile at me. Four beautiful faces. I looked around;
Rachel was nowhere to be seen. Relief washed over me.

Okay, try to act normal. Small talk
.
“Is that my statue back there?”

Amelie nodded. “It was Caden’s idea to bring it
here so we wouldn’t have to sit down in the valley, waiting for
you. It worked! Clever.” Amelie’s springy curls bobbed as she
turned her head to smile proudly at her brother. “We replaced your
statue in the woods with an imitation that Fiona created, in case
someone wanders out there.”

“
It looks more like a fat, drunk
ogre, but it should work—from a distance,” Fiona said with a
nervous giggle.

Amelie walked over, reaching out to take my
hand, her brow furrowed in concern as Caden’s had been. “What
happened?”

“
Minor mishap,” I said, consciously
not pulling away this time.

“
So … do you still think you’re
dreaming?” Fiona asked.

By her tone, I could tell she knew the answer.
Caden had told them. There was no point lying. I gave them a small
smile and shook my head.

“
Come, sit,” Amelie said, taking my
other hand and pulling me to a bench.

I sat down, ever aware of Caden’s attentive
eyes studying me from across the fire. “Where’s Rachel?” I
asked.

“
Not here, thank God,” I heard
Amelie murmur under her breath, followed by, “She’s watching over
the fake statue. We all took shifts down there in case the switch
didn’t work and you showed up down there. She’ll be back soon.”
There was no mistaking the contempt in her voice.

I glanced at Caden to check the effect of his
sister’s tone but his face showed no emotion, his eyes still
intently focused on me.
Probably wondering what my blood tastes
like.

“
What happened, exactly, to make you
believe us?” Fiona asked.

“
You mean, besides these?” I reached
up and lightly touched the bite marks on my neck.

They all cringed. “Still hurt?” Bishop asked,
unusually serious.

I shook my head. “It would seem that I’m
surrounded by vampires, giant unkillable dogs, and a vampire–witch
who put a curse on me.” I suddenly began laughing, finding my
predicament comical now that I had said it out loud for the first
time.