Jessica Rules the Dark Side Read online

  Emilio snapped to attention. "You wish ... something?"

  "Uh, no." I shut the door, happy that he was still there. Even if he was a vampire himself. I flipped the lock. "Thanks anyhow," I called.

  Then, just to be on the safe side, I went to the other side of the room to check if the windows were locked, too, even though my room was on, like, the fifth floor, looking out over the front of the castle, so I had a great view of the big valley that looked like it was gonna swallow up the whole place. I knew vampires didn't really fly like bats like in the movies—they surfed—but I wasn't taking any chances.

  When I got to the first window and looked outside, I saw it was snowing. Big fat flakes were falling past the window and all the way to the ground. I leaned my head against the glass, looking down at the little circle of light that marked the front door—right outside of where Claude had been "destroyed," which was the word vampires always used. Not killed, "destroyed."

  Then I thought I saw something move just outside that light, and I blinked twice.

  It was dark down there, but was that somebody walking in the snow?

  Was that...?

  No way!

  I blinked again, and the person—or vampire—was gone, and I moved real quick to check all the locks, twice, then jumped back in bed and pulled the covers up to my chin, thinking that maybe something in that place really did make you hallucinate, 'cause I was starting to see things, too.

  Chapter 36

  Antanasia

  I RESTED MY head against Lucius's chest, trying to enjoy the slow, rocking rhythm of the horse as it picked its way through the deep snow that had fallen overnight. But the still unanswered questions that had kept me awake all night kept ruining what should have been a peaceful dawn ride deep into the silent Carphathian forest.

  How did Claudius blood get on Lucius's stake? How will we explain it? Because we can't...

  "Lucius?" I started to fret again and heard echoes of Dorin in my voice. "What will we tell the Elders?"

  "Try not to worry now, Jessica." He wrapped his arm tighter around my waist.

  Of course I was a good enough rider to have my own horse, but Lucius had wanted to ride together that morning, not even bothering to saddle one of the few gentle mares in a stable that he preferred to stock with slightly wild rides. "We will tell them what little we know," he said. "Just as we've discussed." He nuzzled the back of my neck, whispering, "And so for now, because we cannot do more, let us just enjoy being together, all right?"

  "I'll try." But I didn't understand how he could enjoy anything right then, and I wriggled inside my down jacket, because I felt very cold. Not temperature cold or vampire cool, but scared cold.

  Maybe we can just keep riding into another country. Moldova is close, and nobody would look for us there.

  We rode quietly for about twenty minutes, until I started to hope that maybe we really were headed for the border, when suddenly the mare stepped out from under a thick canopy of trees into a gloomy gray clearing and I realized where we were. And just like I'd done the night before, when Lucius had shown me the room full of stakes, I pressed myself back—this time to steady myself against Lucius's body, because this spot...

  Finally seeing it made me recoil in a different way.

  Chapter 37

  Antanasia

  THE BLACK IRON gates to the cemetery where both our families were buried stood in stark relief against the snow, and I hung back, even when Lucius undid the latch and held out his hand, saying, "Please, Jessica. There's nothing to fear in here."

  Oh, but there is...

  What could I do, though, except take a reluctant step forward and join the prince who was beckoning me? And as soon as I passed through the gate, I saw that death mirrored life in the realm of vampires. I didn't even have to ask which of the two biggest mausoleums—obviously the tombs of the royals—belonged to the Vladescus and which belonged to the Dragomirs.

  The Vladescus—the kings and queens, at least—rested in a soaring, spiky black stone-and-marble structure that echoed the Gothic castle I could see looming over us in the distance.

  And my parents ... I knew without asking that their bodies were inside the shorter, more subdued white marble crypt I saw on the opposite side of the burial ground.

  I stopped in my tracks, and Lucius stopped, too.

  "Even in death, we have always been separate," he said with quiet reverence. "As vampires, we are segregated from humans, and forced to bury our corpses in this hidden place high in the mountains. But within this graveyard, we have divided ourselves, too. Your family is far from mine, as if we can never share the earth." He looked down at me. "That seemed natural to me, once—before I fell in love with you."

  I never got tired of hearing Lucius remind me that his love for me had wiped away hatred for my family that was probably embedded in his genes. But I didn't want to face this. Not now.

  "I don't want to go any farther," I told him, not moving when he started to advance again.

  He stopped, and I looked up at his face, and I thought he was going to protest and push me to walk closer to both families' tombs. He'd been pushing me toward those crypts—toward confronting the loss of my parents and our own possible futures—since the night back in Pennsylvania when he'd shown me his prized genealogy. And he'd stood at my back, one hand resting on my shoulder, as I'd signed my name at our wedding, taking another step closer to this spot.

  But right then, I dug in my heels. "No closer," I insisted. "Not today."

  I'm already facing too much. I can't face, head-on, my parents' destructions. Or what might happen to us, too, because although we have a chance for immortality, we may also end up here.

  Lucius seemed ready to protest for one more second; then he nodded. "Of course. In your own time."

  Maybe never. Maybe, like the trial I couldn't attend and the justice I couldn't hand out ... maybe never.

  "Why are we here?" I asked him, searching his face. I might have been avoiding looking at my family's mausoleum. "Why today?"

  Lucius's eyes didn't offer much comfort. They were as grave as ... the graves we stood among, and he took my hands in his, so I thought about my wedding again. We stood like a bride and groom. But I didn't want to think about that in a cemetery, either.

  "You know, Antanasia," he said, "that what we face, in the coming hours—and perhaps weeks—may be very bad indeed." He pressed my palms together and his gaze flicked past me to the crypts that he wasn't afraid to look at. "And until we discover who did destroy Claudiu, you will need to be as steady and strong as these stones around us, daughter of the formidable Mihaela Dragomir."

  I knew Lucius loved symbolism and similes, but I hated them right then. They sucked. And I felt almost ashamed to be compared to my powerful mother, because it was starting to be obvious that I wasn't like her.

  "Can't we take some time?" I suggested. "Postpone the meeting, at least? It wouldn't be like running away."

  Lucius shook his head, though. "No, Jessica. We are trying to create a new order among vampires. We have agreed that we need rule of law. How would it look if I try to evade the very structure we are establishing?"

  I hated, too, that I'd agreed—in theory—that our clans needed updating.

  "A ruler who defies his own laws is not a prince but a despot," Lucius added. "And we do not want to be despots, correct?"

  "I'm not sure, right now." Tears started pricking my eyes.

  Why did Lucius Vladescu have to choose now to embrace democratic rule of law? Back in Pennsylvania, he'd talked incessantly about royalty and autocracy and how "peasants" needed a "firm hand." But my family had changed him. We'd taught a prince to fold his own laundry and changed everything.

  Lucius smiled, like he knew what I was thinking. Then he drew me close and urged, "Cry now, Jessica, so it doesn't happen when I am led away, for there is no bail in our world. Of course I will be detained when the crime is destruction and the evidence so damning. That is our law, too." r />
  "Of course," I agreed, like he was making perfect sense. But in my head I kept hearing his words. Led away ... He's going to be led away from me...

  I was terrified for him. Would he stand, again, on that worn circle in the courtroom? Would it get that far? And a smaller part of me was scared for myself. Afraid to be alone, trying to rule without him. "What if we can't figure out who really did it?" I asked, barely able to get the words out.

  Lucius cupped my chin. "We will find the truth. The truth is always revealed in the end."

  My family had given him a television, too...

  "We aren't on Law & Order,; " I reminded him. "And I don't even know how to start searching for the truth, especially if you're not free to help me."

  Lucius smiled again. "Your intelligence was one of the first things that I loved about you, Jessica. That and your skill at mucking out stalls," he teased. His eyes clouded a little. "And as we both know, I have—for better or worse—vast experience in the area of diabolical plotting. I have complete faith that, together, we will determine who destroyed Claudiu. I may actually be well served by incarceration, for I will have nothing but time to think and unravel the scheme."

  "So much for the vote of confidence and our coronation, too," I managed to say, wiping at a tear that fell. "I guess that's really done for!"

  Lucius slid his hands up to hold my arms and stopped smiling. "Let us worry about proving my innocence first and coronation later. But I have not given up hope—for either."

  My chin started quivering, and I couldn't control my crying. "Oh, Lucius..." I buried my hands under his coat and started to sob in earnest, and when I ran out of tears, he took my arms again and for the first time since our marriage pushed me away, just a little, like he was already forcing me to stand on my own two feet, even though I was nowhere close to ready.

  "Antanasia," he said softly but firmly. "I know that it is difficult for you to face this place today. And I don't pretend to be wiser than you. But I know something of suffering, and I learned a long time ago—both by experiencing violence and by anticipating it—that fear is the worst kind of grave, because it buries one alive. I beg you, as your husband, don't place yourself in a tomb prematurely, for as all here would attest if they could, the time for that comes soon enough."

  I was too upset for wisdom right then, and his words didn't sink in. "Let's go now," I said, still not looking at the white crypt that rose above the whiter snow. Or the black one, for that matter. "I'd really like to leave."

  "Of course." He glanced at the sky. "It looks as if another storm is about to break loose, doesn't it?"

  "Yes, it does," I agreed, without bothering to look at the clouds, either. I didn't have to. There was always some kind of storm brewing in those mountains.

  We rode back in silence as the wind picked up and got home just as it started to snow even harder than usual, which was saying something in the Carpathians. Even the wildest of Lucius's horses seemed to huddle in their stalls, like they knew it was going to be bad.

  "Lucius. Princess."

  The low voice came from the shadows in the gloomy barn, startling me and the mare that Lucius was leading to her stall. She shied and nearly knocked me over as both Lucius and I turned to find a vampire I hadn't anticipated seeing—maybe ever again—and who must have arrived in the dead of night.

  Lucius, though ... he hardly seemed surprised at all.

  Chapter 38

  Antanasia

  "RANIERO." LUCIUS DROPPED the lead and extended his hand to the cousin he called brother. "It is good to see you—although I did not expect to find you here."

  The hippie-throwback surfer I hadn't seen since our wedding came closer, pulling his hands out of his pockets to accept Lucius's handshake. "I sleep in the stables last night," he said in his thick Italian accent, mixing up tenses like he always did. "I arrive very late and did not wish to trouble you." He looked at me. "I heard you come for the horse this morning, but was too lazy to get out from under my blanket and say hello."

  "I believe that you were lazy." Lucius grinned. "But I also think that you slept here because you prefer not to enter the castle. You wish to avoid that fate for as long as possible."

  Raniero smiled, but it wasn't exactly the placid, carefree expression he'd worn almost continually at our wedding. "I do not care much for opulence anymore."

  "No, you seem to have shed that, along with your taste for pants."

  Raniero's smile got a little warmer at that joke, although his body must have been freezing, because he was indeed wearing a pair of faded olive shorts and a brown T-shirt that advertised something called Terrible Taco. A Godzilla-like cartoon taco tromped across his chest, crushing a cityscape, lettuce flying everywhere.

  Vampires were cool by nature, but we weren't polar bears and needed more than a T-shirt in a blizzard. I looked at his bare arms. Those tattoos wouldn't keep him warm, either.

  What is it about those tattoos? And why didn't he want to come inside?

  I suddenly remembered something I hadn't thought about since being distracted by Claudiu's blood on Lucius's stake. And why is Raniero's weapon retired—and covered with gore?

  "Um, I don't mean to be rude," I said, interrupting what was obviously a conversation that only the two men fully understood. "But why, exactly, is Raniero here at all ? " I asked Lucius.

  He reached to take the mare's lead again. "I'm sorry that I failed to tell you that he would be joining us. I was somewhat worried that he might defy my order to come, which would have placed me in the difficult position—"

  "—of needing to destroy me for insubordination," Raniero finished the sentence. "And so I perform the favor of answering Prince Lucius's summons." He turned to me, and I honestly couldn't tell if he was joking when he added, "I much prefer not to force my best friends to kill me so directly. It is my wish to do no harm!"

  I was getting more confused. "So why...?"

  Lucius slapped the mare's rump, sending her into her stall. "Antanasia, we both know that the law is clear. I will be detained. And although you are growing into your role"— Yeah, right—"you will need protection," he said. "More than Emilian can offer." His gaze flicked to Raniero, who was slouching, hands in his pockets again. "I trust Raniero to watch over you."

  I was terrified at the thought that Lucius might actually be jailed. But as I looked at Raniero, I almost laughed. He was going to guard me? Because he was less terrible than the taco on his shirt.

  Then I thought of the retired stake, and my eyes tried to trace his strange tattoos in the gloom. There was something there ... and maybe some method to Lucius's madness.

  "Antanasia, do you mind if I speak to Raniero as we walk?" Lucius looked between the two of us. "There will be much opportunity for you to get to know one another, but this may be the only chance I have to bring him up to speed, to use the American expression. And at breakfast, we can all discuss what will most likely happen next."

  My heart almost broke at the mere mention of what would happen next, but I tried to be as stoic as Lucius. "Sure. You two talk."

  Then Lucius clapped one hand on Raniero's shoulder and began to guide him toward the castle he didn't want to enter, for some reason, both vampires conversing in a mix of what sounded like Romanian, Italian, and English, with maybe a little German thrown in for good measure.

  I followed in the tracks they left in the snow, my eyes traveling again and again from Lucius's straight back, long dark coat, and neat black hair to Raniero's slumped shoulders, completely inappropriate shorts, and messy, wavy, sun-kissed mane. The contrast was great, yet their heads were bent together, and they communicated easily in that mishmash of languages—and there was no doubt that they were equals physically. Raniero was just a shade shorter, maybe because of the way he carried himself, but he shared Lucius's lean, muscular build.

  Still, I couldn't imagine Raniero protecting me like Lucius did.

  I pulled my coat tighter against the increasing storm.


  I couldn't imagine Lucius not being there to protect me in the first place. I couldn't rule without him. I would be destroyed, if not literally, at least figuratively, as a princess.

  When we got close enough to the castle to see it clearly through the snow, I saw movement in one of the windows and looked up to see Mindy watching the three of us, and the expression her face...

  It was like one of us was already a ghost.

  Chapter 39

  Antanasia

  I SAT THROUGH most of breakfast in silence while Lucius and Raniero continued to confer in their jumble of languages.

  The servants came and went and set down the inky, sweet coffee that Lucius preferred and poured tea for me and Raniero. Out of habit I took a piece of the bread that was served almost every day, in the Romanian tradition. But I didn't really eat anything. It was like I'd gotten numb out there in the snow. Numb and hypnotized.

  Over and over again, I found myself studying that swirling mess of tattoos that reminded me of a game I used to play as a kid: Find the hidden objects in this picture.

  Raniero rested his hand on the table, not eating, either, and thanks to years of living with a hippie-throwback father, I was able to pick out "aum," written in Devanagari, and the Chinese characters for "peace," and the open hand of the Jains, who vowed, like Raniero, to do no harm.

  "Antanasia?"

  Lucius's voice brought me back to reality, and I realized that both vampires had been watching me intently as I stared at Raniero's arm. "Yes?"

  "Raniero—as always—has offered a very good suggestion," Lucius said.

  I looked at the guy in the taco shirt and didn't think I'd ask him for something as simple as directions if I saw him on the street. Unless I wanted to find a beach with public access or a good burrito.

  Then I looked more closely at his face. Or was there a new spark in his eyes?