RoseBlood(96)

Bouchard shrinks back and her foot slips free.

“Off to bed then. And sweet dreams, dear cousin.” Aunt Charlotte closes the door.

I stand there in awe of the energy-sucking aunt I’m only starting to know, too tense and confused to move.

“Sit.” She commands.

An ember of rebellion flashes to life, but she inferred she wants to give me answers. I’m not about to jinx that.

I take my seat. Diable has forgiven me for dropping him, and curls into my lap again. In all these weeks he’s been my companion, he hasn’t let me pet him, but he’s been more attentive tonight than ever. I’m guessing Etalon gave him very strict instructions. Testing my theory, I stroke his back. He arches his spine toward my palm, a request for more. Despite looking like an abrasive steel-wool cleaning pad, he’s plush, thick, and so warm.

As I continue to caress his fur, he purrs and squeezes his eyes to blissful slits, his peaceful energy soothing me enough that I find my voice again. “Dad’s violin,” I say to my aunt, massaging the downy skin between the cat’s bat-like ears. His front claws knead my thighs. “Everything is tied to it.”

“Who told you that?” Aunt Charlotte asks, frowning. She sets her e-cig aside, waiting.

I don’t answer. Etalon is my secret. One I’m not willing to expose. I have to keep him safe, just as he’s doing for me.

Aunt Charlotte makes a frustrated grunt before turning her back. She shoves aside e-cigs and disposable contacts to clear a space at the bottom of her armoire. There, she exposes a hidden compartment from which she drags a shoe box.

“I apologize for allowing Fran?oise such liberties the past few weeks.” Taking a seat next to me, she places the box between us. “When you began to show signs the music no longer controlled you, I had to let her test you to be sure. She took too much glee, tormenting you. But as you’re about to see, it was all in hopes of helping.”

I frown. “Right. Just like Grandma’s homicidal boat ride and the Valentine’s fire parade?”

Aunt Charlotte’s mouth tightens. “We each have different ideas of how to help, clairement.”

“Clearly,” I repeat, scoffing. “I need to see her. I want answers for what she did . . . and I want to know about Dad’s Strad.”

Aunt Charlotte opens the box between us, revealing old newspaper clippings, a folded stack of aging letters with the name “Christine” scrawled underneath a string holding them together, a playbill spotlighting the famous Swedish soprano, and a black journal with the words Livre Ancestrale de Sang embossed across the front in shimmery red text.

Ancestral Book of Blood. In spite of the morbid curiosity spurred by that title, I reach for the letters first, drawn by Etalon’s brief insight into the affair between the prima donna and her opera ghost. My aunt stops my hand.

“Patience, Rune. An opera is best viewed in the sequence the composer intended. And know this: your grand-mère has been paying for what she did while locked in prison. Now she will die there, alone. She is too weak to answer questions. So I will answer for her.”

Before I can respond, my aunt flips through the journal pages then brings it closer, brushing Diable’s tail with her wrist. He leaps down and settles on the other side of my feet to lick himself clean.

Aunt Charlotte moves her hand so I can see the diagram spanning both sides . . . a family tree, with names partitioned off on countless branches. Her fingertip trails to the line at the top, a script I can barely read for the faded ink.

“Comte Saint-Germain,” she reads the name aloud. “You were researching him yesterday at the library?”

I let my silence answer.

“I’m not sure how much information there is online . . .”

“The last thing I read was that he died, but there were rumors of sightings years after.”

Her finger taps the page. “It was his death that was the rumor. He faked dying, then took his leave of society to travel with a caravan of gypsies with whom he shared all things alchemy, herbs, magic, and holistic. He grew powerful feeding off their superstitions and lively music. He even bargained an instrument of his own from an artisan witch—a Stradivarius violin made of enchanted black heartwood. Saint-Germain became the Romani Roi of the group—their gypsy king. He took a wife, and had children. Some fifty-three years later, a masked boy stumbled upon that very gypsy camp after escaping his abusive mother. Saint pitied him, and took him in. He recognized that he was one of his kind. A young incubus, although disfigured and emaciated.”

The photograph Etalon showed me of the childhood Phantom surfaces in my mind’s eye. “So, Saint-Germain gave him the violin?”

Aunt Charlotte shuts the Book of Blood. “Not in the beginning. Our predecessor was growing old by then. He no longer wished to accrue any extra life. There is such a thing as outliving your soul. And he was wise enough to know he had. He wanted Erik—the mysterious incubus child—to take his place as Romani Roi, for he could see the genius in him, even at such a young age. Not only because he could play any instrument put before him, not only because he could sing and enrapture even the most cynical audience. But because he had the ability to absorb knowledge and talent at an unprecedented rate. Saint schooled him as his apprentice. Taught him all his tricks and wisdom. Told him all his secrets. Things he hadn’t told his own children, like where he’d hidden his jewels—here, in the bowels of the Liminaire, in a secret labyrinth of tunnels. When Saint died a few months later, he bequeathed his grown children and young grandchildren his beloved Stradivarius violin. But that wasn’t enough for them. They turned on Erik, locked him in a cage, stripped him of his clothes and dignity, and forced him to perform like an animal with that very instrument, because he refused to confess where Saint-Germain’s treasure was hidden. Erik at last escaped, and took Saint’s violin with him. He knew nothing of its rumored magic, but it was all that was left of the only father he’d ever known, and he deemed our ancestors unworthy of it.”