Chapter 30: The Dark Grimoire
WINTER TERM - January 18th
I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but Aries's room is kind of a lot. This morning, I woke to the ice-blue eyes of a heavyweight champion cage fighter Aries had tacked to his wall. It's not the only thing on his wall. He's got Fel's flag - blue stripes, gold moons, a wolf. And more posters - a few more shirtless fighters from Caburh hanging over his desk along with a few ads for singers in Mesym with upcoming shows. Most, unsurprisingly, were too-pretty men who sing love songs, but some weren't. One especially large one was for a girl-led, rebel-rock group that actually looked like it'd be a good show.
Aries started the day pulling feathers out of my hair. My horns had torn through a pillow - from a nightmare actually, a normal one that I could hardly remember now.
"Has it always been this bad?" he asked. "The nightmares?"
I hadn't meant to wake him up. Especially since this time it really had been just a dream. I didn't want to talk about it. I was just reliving the same night over and over again. I hadn't always been afraid of Ianthe, but then again, I was pretty sure she wasn't going to kill me. At some point, after leaving, that had changed. Or maybe she hadn't changed at all and I'd changed. The thought of going back to my old life in any capacity was giving me heart palpitations.
"It hasn't been like this," I said. I tried to focus on collecting the rest of the feathers scattered around the bed. I could get one of the pillows from my room later to replace it. Aries didn't seem to mind that I was avoiding my room. I'd shadow step back there before class to grab things, of course. My clothes, my toothbrush, a replacement pillow. Though I'd taken to stealing his socks. His were softer than mine, better made. Even then, I was met with a row of toy soldiers atop his dresser staring me down as I nabbed them. I'm dating a man-child... I know.
"Do you think she wants to turn you?" Aries asked.
He was doing what he could for the most part to avoid talking about Ianthe directly, but sometimes there was no getting around it. I didn't want him to have to think of her at all if I could help it. Just now, it was hard to help.
"No," I said automatically. It was kind of a common misconception. It wasn't the first time I'd gotten that question. I was with Ianthe for a while, even by vampire standards. I was getting older, even as she wasn't. But that didn't mean anything. New vampires were rare. From what I knew of the Stag's Court, Ianthe was one of the youngest, and even then she was turned a few years before I was born. The Stag's Court didn't get to be the way it was bringing new vampires into the fold. It was old and unchanging for a reason. "That's not really something that happens at The Stag's Court."
In the scheme of things, I wasn't even all that special, even to her. She'd had other boyfriends. There was only one - Fletch - that she never shut up about. Another one that got away and stayed away, lucky bastard.
"I still think you need to tell Marblebrook about it," Aries said. "If I'm sick of her harassing you all the way from Caburh, I can only imagine how it is for you." He'd said this yesterday too. I knew he was right, but it didn't mean I had to like it. It just sounds so pathetic going to a professor to say I needed help to get my ex-girlfriend to stop bothering me. Even if she was a blood-thirsty vampire...