A Vial of Life (A Shade of Vampire #21)(46)

Jeramiah reached for the sealant and brushed a generous coating over the wooden letters. Then he stood up and gazed down at the stone with brows furrowed and a thoughtful expression on his face.

“Add a few flourishes around the edges, will you?” he asked the witch after a pause. “Even with the letters, it still looks rather bare.”

Amaya heaved a sigh and bent down over the slab, holding the same knife that she had used to cut my parents’ chairs. She angled the blade against the stone, and again, as though the slab was made of butter, she began etching a pattern of ivy leaves around the edges.

“Good,” Jeramiah breathed after she’d finished. His sharp blue eyes glistened slightly, and there was an odd warmth to them—warmth that I hadn’t witnessed in my cousin before.

A span of silence fell about the room as Jeramiah continued to admire the slab, now turned into a memorial stone. Still gazing at the two of them in disbelief, I found myself holding my breath—as though I even had any to hold—like I was afraid they might hear me. It was Amaya who finally disturbed the quiet.

“Do you think that one last call will be enough?” she asked.

Jeramiah took in a breath, his eyes darting toward the wind instrument that rested near the front door. “It will have to be enough,” he replied. “Nuriya’s favor only stretches so far.”

Amaya’s expression was doubtful. “And what if it doesn’t happen?”

Agitation played across Jeramiah’s face. He shot a sharp glare at the witch. “Don’t consider it.”

He dipped down to the stone again and trailed his fingers over its now uneven surface. “It’s perfectly dry now. It’s time we head for the Great Dome. The ceremony is still going on, and we ought to do this before the funeral is finished.”

“Wait,” Amaya said, alarmed. “Now? During the day? I thought the plan was to do it at night. What if somebody enters the Dome?”

“You’ll have cast an invisibility spell over the two of us. Worst comes to worst, someone enters the chamber and is unable to see us, but notices the stone. But I doubt it will come to that—not if we’re done before the funeral ends.”

Amaya still looked worried, but she didn’t argue. She swallowed and sealed her lips.

Jeramiah headed out of the living room and crossed the hallway. He stopped at the woodwind instrument and, picking it up, stowed it in his belt, beneath his robe. Then he returned to the living room. He placed his hands either side of the memorial stone and stood up with it.

“Cast the spell now,” he ordered Amaya.

As the witch’s palms twitched, I was certain that she had cast the spell—yet I could still see both of them as clear as day. Apparently the vision of ghosts was not susceptible to being impaired by invisibility spells.

“Now vanish us to the Dome,” Jeramiah said.

Amaya planted a hand on Jeramiah’s shoulder, and both of them disappeared from the spot.

If I’d had a heart, it would’ve been hammering in my chest by now, blood pounding in my ears.

I need to reach the Dome.

I hurtled toward the nearest wall of the living room, and, passing through it, I emerged from the dilapidated farmhouse, reappearing in the dark field outside. The crowd of ghosts was still gathered round the building. They looked like they had hardly budged an inch since I had left them. Some looked after me as I whizzed across the fields, shooting toward the direction of the woods, while others even called out to me, but I ignored them all. I had tunnel vision as I urged myself faster and faster.

It was only a matter of minutes before I arrived at the Great Dome—but these were minutes when Jeramiah and Amaya could have been doing God knew what. When I entered the meeting chamber, it was empty, except for Jeramiah and Amaya standing right at the front, near the raised platform where my parents’ chairs had been. In their place now rested the memorial stone Jeramiah had created for his father.

Two clusters of incense had been lit on either side of the slab—the thin sticks had been stuck into the cracks in the floor to keep them upright. Jeramiah, standing a few feet back from the memorial slab, his eyes calm and steady, appeared to be waiting for something. He was watching the two incense clusters intently, and it was only now that I looked at them more closely that I realized how quickly they were burning and how much smoke they were emitting. Clearly, these were no ordinary incense sticks. They were burning at the speed of a match, and as the sticks disintegrated, the room was choked with a thick smoke. I could only guess the kind of aroma that emanated from them, but as Amaya strangled a cough, I imagined that it would be overbearing. The smoke was so thick that I had to move closer to the couple to see what they were doing.

Jeramiah reached inside his robe and drew out the wind instrument. Raising the mouthpiece to his lips, he blew into it, and it sounded out louder than ever. So loud that I staggered back. This was the loudest I’d ever heard the melody, and certainly the closest that I’d been to it. I stared at the vampire as he played, his fingers moving skillfully over the keys, as if he’d played the instrument his whole life. From far away, the sound was breathtaking—more beautiful a tune than I could ever play.

According to the clock hanging from the wall, he played for only five minutes before he replaced the instrument within the folds of his robe. Silence overtook the Dome.

It was more than clear to me by now that this instrument was like a kind of dog whistle for ghosts. Nobody else could hear it—not even Jeramiah.