Mellie Rose's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Mellie sat at Raven's table until the cold tea grew a skin. She had promised to answer any question. She had not promised herself she knew all the answers. Somewhere between the second cup and the third, a thought landed hard: she had never seen a turning done right. She had only survived her own, done wrong. If Raven ever asked, Mellie would say yes with a mouth full of ignorance. That was a way to kill her. She kissed Raven's temple, said she needed a book from home, and left before Raven could ask which one. Her cottage sat dark at the end of the lane, purple boards under a black shingled roof, the porch lamps burning low. Inside, she went straight to the tall red cabinet where she kept the things she did not look at. The iron latches were cold. She had to force the left door. She pulled out a leather journal she had taken off a dead vampire in 1974. He had kept records the way a doctor keeps records. Names. Dates. What went wrong. She had read the first page once and shut the book for fifty years. She opened it at the kitchen counter and made herself read. A girl in Marseille, 1902. Turned too fast. Her heart stopped before the blood took. Buried her. A boy in Prague, 1930. Fed too little. Woke starving and tore out his own throat trying to reach the vein. A woman in Chicago, 1958. Turned during fever. The sickness went with her into the change and never left. She could not hold a note of music in her head after. Forgot her own son's name inside a week. Mellie set the book down. Her hands were shaking. She thought of Raven's voice, low and exact, saying the same thing twice for emphasis. She thought of that voice going flat. Forgetting the shape of a stitch. Forgetting her cat. Forgetting the song Mellie had written for her last spring. She read for two hours. She learned the timing. She learned the fast, the slow, the fed, the starved. She learned that the maker had to stay through the first three nights or the new one broke. She learned six ways it went wrong and one way it went right. On the porch after, a dark butterfly landed on the rail, wings marked in red like something bled through lace. She watched it breathe. Alive. Whole. Made once, correctly. She closed the book and locked it in the red cabinet. She had what she needed now. If Raven ever asked, Mellie could answer without lying, and she could do the thing without breaking her. But she knew something new, and worse. The maker had to stay three nights. The vampire who had made her had stayed none. He had known, and left anyway. She would have to find him before Raven ever asked.