Vampyre Bride ✔️

X⎮Vampyris

Only the faint sound of ticking seemed to penetrate Emma's conscious the while she sat by the bay window watching the carriages in the street and the interminable procession of caps, hats, and bonnets passing below as the liveried servants, smart-looking merchants, and the general proletariat footslogged from one end of their businesses to the next.

Not the rambling of the carriage wheels amplifying the ruts in the road nor the steady clarion of hooves striking the cobbles beneath her prospect were effectual enough to distract her from the dissevered filament still cleaving to the iron clasp. It was only the familiar tick-tock of her pocket watch that anchored her to this physical plane as nothing else could.

She could deceive herself no longer: either a servant had opened her window in the night — which was extremely unlikely — or she was being haunted. Emma was a light sleeper and the hinges of her bedroom door produced not a little noise whenever it was opened, so she would have awoken had someone thought to enter by that way.

No, it was an almost certain conclusion that her bedchamber had been benighted by a visitant of an unnatural sort. It was as impossible as it was incontrovertible, but what other practicable deduction could she draw?

Without glancing from the view outside, she ran her hand from the watch chain hooked at her bodice down to the silver, enameled face of her pocket watch, stroking the glass with a trembling thumb as the minute hand kept its faithful pace.

When at last she did draw her eyes away from the window, she noted it was exactly eleven o' clock, and by the time she had wound the springs, with the watch key attached to her chatelaine, she heard the door bell announce Anna's arrival.

"My dear!" cried Anna, upon first seeing Emma as she met her in the drawing room, "you look so very pale!" The lady hurried over and pressed her cheek to Emma's briefly before steering her to the settle. "Are you ill?"

"No indeed, I beg you do not trouble yourself over my health, I am well," Emma assured her with a tremulous smile, quite unable to conceal her disquiet.

"But where is your aunt and sister?"

"They left directly after breakfast, I believe Milli was in want of some new ribands for her hair." Emma's attention had been halfhearted at best this morning, considering the thoughts that were brooding like a storm in her head. It had been no wonder she had spared few words in response to Milli's excited fussing.

"Yes, of course, for the ball tonight." Her eyes narrowed briefly before she went on. "And have you decided on what to wear?"

"Ay, and my choice shall likely not bear up to Milli's expectations." They both chuckled, Emma's only a little more strained than Anna's as she rang the bell for tea. "However, she must suffer me to do as I please; and wear whatever I like."

"I have no doubt your ensemble will be as delightful as you yourself are." Anna smiled kindly and then reached for the parcel beside her that Emma had failed to notice till then. "I have brought you something upon which you might feast your mind; in the unlikely event that Winterly Castle's library fails to meet your tastes or expectations," she said, laying the gift across Emma's lap.

It was quite obviously a very thick volume wrapped in layers of brown paper and tied with a plain piece of twine which Emma began unfastening almost directly. Upon removing the last of the paper, she was surprised to see not one but two books; it was the title of the large tome that instantly drew her eye, for only one word stood out in stark and ominous relief: Vampyris.

Emma transferred her gaze warily to note her friend's strangely calm demeanor. Anna watched her with keen eyes, as of an entomologist surveying a moth under her hand glass. The corner of her mouth, however, quirked the moment Emma hastily concealed the books under a cushion as Reid brought the tea tray and cakes into the drawing room.