“Three pinches Rosemary; two pinches dill; one spoonful of crush lavender. Boil in one cup of water with black licorice for one hour, at a high boil. Leave it to cool overnight, then force the vampire in question to drink it in its entirety. Of course, this is useless without the ceremony that accompanies it. One must chant the ancient Latin script, used by the church used for thousands of years—”
Caitlin’s heart stopped. As she turned the page, she saw that the next page in the book, the one with the ceremony on it, was torn in half. She could not believe it. Half of the page sat loose in the book, between the pages, displaying only part of the Latin ceremony. The other half of the page was missing.
Caitlin turned all of the pages in the book frantically; she hung the book hung upside down, shaking it. But, to her dismay, the other half was just not there.
No, she thought. Not now. Not when she was this close. It wasn’t fair.
Caitlin sat there, her heart pounding, wondering what to do. She immediately pulled out her keyboard, went online, typed in the name of the volume, and searched for any other copies of it.
Of course, there were none. It said this was a rare book, on loan, from England. As she searched the internet, it confirmed her worst fears: this was the only copy of the book in existence.
How could it be? Why was the page torn in half? Who had torn it? When? And why? Was it centuries ago? Was it a vampire, or some dark force, that didn’t want this ritual to get out?
Caitlin felt struck with the urgency of time. The ritual only worked before the vampire’s first kill.
Had Scarlet killed anyone yet? How much time did Caitlin have before she did? Was it already too late?
Caitlin extracted the loose, torn page from the book, and held it in her hands. She stared at it, knowing that she couldn’t let this go. She had to find the other half. She felt guilty, holding it there like that, with both her hands, out in the open, when every instinct in her, a rare book scholar, told her that the page should be protected, inserted back into the book it came from. But she couldn’t help it. Scarlet’s life was at stake here.
As she held the page, she realized she could not let it go. She had to steal this page, take it with her, out of the library, and then do whatever she could to find the other half.
“Caitlin?” came a voice.
Caitlin jumped in her chair, quickly hiding the page, and spun around. Over her stood Mrs.
Gardiner, the old woman who oversaw the library, short, with gray puffy hair and glasses. She looked down at her, expressionless, as she held a bunch of books in her arm.
“I didn’t know you had come in today,” she said, disapprovingly.
As Caitlin looked up at her, she could have sworn she saw her glancing at the books on her desk, at all the titles—and even, possibly, at the loose page on her desk. Her heart pounded. She felt like a criminal.
“Um…yes…I…um…came in early,” she said, thinking quickly. “I wanted to catch up on work.” Mrs. Gardiner was definitely looking at the titles on her desk, and she saw her eyes widen in surprise.
“Is that one of our display window titles?” she asked, surprised.
Caitlin quickly turned and picked up the book, flustered, not knowing what to say. She had to think quick.
“Um…yes it is,” she said. “There were some occult titles I had to catalog, and I…um…wanted context in knowing how best to classify them...so I thought I’d take a look at everything we had on the subject.”
It was a lame excuse, and she hoped Mrs. Gardiner bought it.
Mrs. Gardiner stood there, pausing for a moment, and Caitlin felt a cold sweat break out on the back of her neck. She had never been in this position before, feeling like a criminal. Of course, she’d never thought about stealing a book, not in her entire career.
“Well, I trust you will put it all back when you’re through,” Ms. Gardner said, then nodded curtly and walked on.
Caitlin breathed a sigh of relief. It was a close call.
Caitlin turned, grabbed the loose page from her desk, looked both ways, and made sure no one was looking. She looked up at the ceiling, at the hidden cameras. She knew she was being recorded, so she conspicuously put the loose page back in the book she found it in.
She walked the book down the hall, back towards the stack, went to a place where she knew there was a blind spot from the cameras, then quickly slipped the page out of the book and into a manila folder she had brought with her. She then put the book away, and slid the manila folder into her bag.
Without waiting another second, Caitlin marched down the corridor, down the sleek-white steps, and across the lobby. She looked straight ahead as she went for the front doors, not daring to look at her colleagues, her heart pounding as she felt like she was walking out of a bank with a rare jewel.
She stepped outside with a breath of relief. She hurried to her car, and sat there, breathing deeply. She thought about her next move. She knew who she needed to talk to. Aiden. If there was anyone in the world who would know where to find the missing page, it would be him.
But she still couldn’t bring herself to call him. She thought again of his words, of stopping Scarlet, and something inside her would not allow her to speak to him.
Instead, she had an idea. If vampires were real, if her journal was real, then all those places she mentioned in her journal had to be real, too. And some of those were in New York. Like the Cloisters. If everything she had written was true, then she should find something there, some evidence, some validation, some trace of her being there. Some trace that vampires had existed.
Maybe even a clue, or a lead. Maybe it would even show her where to go next.
Without another thought, Caitlin tore out of the parking lot, heading for New York City. She was determined not to return home until she found the proof she needed.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Scarlet walked with Blake and his three buddies, Vivian and her two friends, across the acres of fields belonging to their high school. She trailed behind. The small group was heading down to the woods, and as they walked, all laughing, jostling each other, as if the closest of friends, Scarlet couldn’t help but feel left out. She was beginning to think this was a bad idea.
Vivian clutched hard to Blake, practically sticking to him like a magnet as they walked, and her two friends constantly giggled and whispered in her ear, clearly trying to make Scarlet feel left out.
Blake’s buddies weren’t doing much better, jostling amongst themselves, or trying to talk to Vivian’s friends.