The Vampire's Maid

Part 33. The Vampire's Maid

I held my breath in the silence but the petrified sobs I’d expected from the new girl did not come. Eventually, mine did. They shook my bed and burned my throat, making my thoughts hazy and dull. Mingled with my tears of sadness were the faint stirrings of relief that I tried desperately to rid myself of; after Olive’s disappearance I shouldn’t be thinking of myself and the fact that for tonight at least, I wouldn’t die.

Then the anger came. How dare Goliath and Dane kill such a fragile, defenceless girl? This rage made me sit up and light a candle with unsteady fingers. For even with a clouded mind, I knew what I had to do.

The light from my single candle illuminated the room. She was eyeing me with large, guarded eyes- Olive’s replacement. Her face was pale, but not as scared as it should have been, and she was biting worriedly at the corner of her lip. I wiped my eyes on my sheet and without introducing myself I hissed June and Abriella’s names. Slowly their shadowy faces appeared from under their sheets, gazing at me blearily.

“What?” yawned June, not noticing our new roommate.

Abriella saw her though. Her reaction would have been laughable in any other situation, but not this one. Her fragile hands fluttered to her chest and faint words, whispered in Italian, crossed her lips. She had understood immediately what the appearance of the blonde girl meant. June’s eyes eventually followed Abriella’s. Olive’s replacement was cradling her head in her manicured hands, as if she was trying to keep herself together.

“Oh hello,” June said, still too tired to register much.

“June! Olive is gone!” Abriella cried, jumping out of bed with uncharacteristic suddenness. “They’ve murdered her.”

June’s strangled sob of realisation coincided with our new roommate’s gasp.

“We don’t know that for sure though. Maybe they let her go.” June said quickly, holding on to her last shred of hope.

“No.” I said, thinking of Ashley’s reaction every time I broached the subject. “They don’t.”

June closed her eyes tightly, her tough and confident exterior threatening to crack. Abriella’s expression, on the contrary, was one of remarkable acceptance to the situation and it made me realise just how brave she actually was. Her hands steady, Abriella lit the candles in the room so that it was plunged into light and I could see Olive’s replacement properly for the first time. Her pretty face had adopted a haughty, unemotional look. She was what one would call beautiful, I noticed irrelevantly, even with smudged mascara and her long hair a static mess. But there was no time to be analysing her look, I had to take control of the situation.

“What’s your name?” Abriella asked before I could speak.

She held out both of her tanned hands and grasped the other girl’s comfortingly. The girl stared warily at Abriella but didn’t snatch her hands away. Perhaps this was her way of dealing with the shock, I thought.                                                                                                            

“Victoria.” Her voice had a controlled, hard edge to it. “Tori.”

“I’m sorry for what happened to you, Tori.” I told her truthfully, although she didn’t look me in the eyes. “And I know you probably just want to cry for the people you’ve lost tonight. But we don’t have time to mourn.”

With these words I fixed June with a hard look too. We couldn’t afford to mourn Olive at the moment. Not if we were to succeed with the plan that was forming in my head. The logical side of my brain was telling me only one thing: We had to escape. But I was beginning to wonder whether I should rely on my logic anymore; my logical thinking hadn’t done much for me so far. It hadn’t helped to explain the mystery of Dane, or the mystery of Elizabeth Sancruor’s portrait....