campus whenever we wished. I was afforded almost unlimited freedom. The only caveat was that we use a makeup paste to cover the outlined crescent moons in the center of our foreheads, and to dress modestly as to draw as little attention to ourselves as possible.
My dress had been modest. Though it was elegantly made of fine linen, it was dove gray in color, high- necked, and unadorned. Without touching me, one would not know how expensive it was—and no one was going to be allowed to touch me.
My hooded cloak easily concealed the only immodest part of my ensemble—Alice Wheiler’s pearls. My choice to restrand and wear them that night had been premeditated. The idea to do so had come to me as I sat in my new garden and waited for my body to repair itself.
The House of Night is a school, but it is an unusual one. Classes are held only at night. Students and our professors and mentors, priestesses and warriors, sleep during the day, safe behind thick marble walls, which have been heavily enforced with an otherworldly magick that draws strength from the night, the moon, and the goddess who reigns over us all.
Cordelia had explained to me that I would be excused from classes until my body was fully healed, but then I would join the other fledglings and be immersed in a fascinating curriculum, which would grow and continue over the next four years, culminating in one of two things: my Change to full vampyre or my death.
The only death that concerned me was his.
As I gained strength and wellness, I explored the palatial House of Night and the grounds that were encircled by a white marble wall. I’d thought the gardens of Wheiler House beautiful, and though I would never forget my willow, my fountain, and the comfort I found within the shadows there, after seeing the vampyres’ gardens all others would pale in comparison.
The House of Night gardens had been created to be fully enjoyed only after the sun set. Night blooming jasmine, moon flowers, evening primrose, and lilies opened to the moon and released a fragrance that was sweet and satisfying, and stretched on for acres and acres. Dozens of fountains and statuary were situated throughout the grounds, each of them illustrating a different version of the Goddess, Nyx.
I’d searched and easily found a willow tree that curtained an area not far from a particularly beautiful marble statue of the Goddess, arms raised, lush body unashamedly naked. Under my new willow, I also found the familiar darkness and the shadows that soothed my battered body and spirit.
It was there that I sat, cross-legged on a carpet of moss, and poured the pearls from Alice Wheiler’s broken necklace onto a dark cloth. Then, surrounded by concealing, comforting shadows, I took a wire, thin as a hair, and built a new necklace from the remains of the old one. This one was not to be triple-stranded and elegant. This one was going to be one long circle of pearls—very much like a noose.
Cordelia had been confused when I’d asked for the wire, the stringing needle, the crimpers and scissors. When I explained I wanted to make my old mother’s necklace anew, just as I was making my life anew, she had given me the supplies I needed, but I could tell by her countenance that she did not approve.
I didn’t need her approval.
The night I finished the necklace, I had been cutting the wire to crimp around the emerald clasp and I’d pricked my finger with the raw, sharp edge of the wire. I’d watched, fascinated, as my blood had followed the slim thread to disappear within the pearls. It had seemed right that my blood had sealed the remaking of the necklace.
The long, single strand had been a comforting weight against my bosom as I left the House of Night and began the three-mile walk to South Prairie Avenue. The waning moon was high in the sky, but shielded by clouds it afforded little light. I’d been glad of the cloud cover. I’d felt comforted by the darkness and as one with the shadows, so much so that by the time I reached the Wheiler House it seemed as if I had become a shadow myself.
It was well past midnight when I unlatched the garden gate and, moving in silence, retraced the path that just one week ago I had left splattered with my blood.
The servants’ entrance was, as usual, unbarred.
The house slept. Except for two gaslights at the base of the staircase, it was dark. I snuffed the lights as I reached the stairs. In shadow, I moved up one landing and another. I felt as if I floated with the darkness.
His door was unbarred. The only light in his room came from the cloud-shrouded moon shining through his long beveled windows.
It was light enough for me.
His room stank of him. The noxious scent of alcohol and sweat and foulness had my lip curling, but it didn’t deter me.
Silently, I moved to his bedside and stood over him, just as he had stood over me one week ago.
I lifted the pearls from around my neck and held them, taut and ready in my hands.
Then I gathered phlegm in my mouth and spit in his face.
He woke, blinking in confusion, and wiping my spittle from his face.
“Awake, are you? Good. You need to be. We have things to settle between us.” I’d repeated his words to him.
He’d shaken his head, as if coming inside from a rainstorm. Then, his eyes opened wide in shocked recognition. “Emily! It is you! I knew you’d come back to me. I knew what that Simpton boy had said about a vampyre Marking you and taking you away had been a lie.”
As he struggled to sit up I struck. With speed and strength no human girl could have commanded, I wrapped the pearls stranded on wire around his fat throat. Then I closed the noose. As I squeezed and squeezed I locked my gaze with his and in a voice that held no hint of human softness I spoke.
“I didn’t come back
His eyes had bulged in his scarlet face until it looked as if he wept tears of blood. Just before he choked on his last breath I told him, “And I am not Emily. I am Neferet.”
Afterward, I unwrapped the pearls from around his neck. They had cut deeply into his flaccid flesh and were covered in his blood. I carried them carefully as I retraced my path through the dark streets of Chicago. When I reached the metal State Street Bridge, which spanned the fetid depths of the Chicago River, I paused and dropped the necklace into the water. It seemed that it floated on the dark water for quite a long time and then black, oily tendrils lapped over it, pulling the pearls under the surface like a sacrifice accepted.
“That ends it,” I vowed aloud to the darkness of the night. “With his death my new life as Neferet begins.”
When I reentered the gates of the House of Night, Cordelia was, again, awaiting me. As I went to her I began to weep. My mentor opened her arms to me and, with a mother’s kindness, she comforted me.
It was agreed that I should leave Chicago while the local police were bribed and the bank board was silenced. It was a happy coincidence that a House of Night train was leaving the very next night and heading southwest, to the Oklahoma Territory, as they scouted a location for a future House of Night. I would join their party.
And thus I have. At this moment I sit in a lavishly furnished railcar, and complete my journal.
Cordelia tells me that Oklahoma is Native-American land—sacred and rich in ancient traditions as well as earth magic. I have decided that I will bury my journal there, deep in the land, and with it I will bury Emily Wheiler, her past, and her secrets. I will truly begin anew and accept the power and privilege and magick of my Goddess, Nyx.
No one will ever know my secrets for they will be entombed in the land, safely hidden, silent as death. I regret none of my actions and if that curses me, then my final prayer is to let that curse be entombed with this journal, to be imprisoned eternally in sacred ground.
