I turned around the cot’s frame, since the only thing worse than being caught running away was to be caught running away and falling on the floor. What if this ridiculous tunic shifted up?

My father, immaculate as ever in his cobalt blue robe, stood at the door with Master Roux and Headmaster Prideux, all in matching robes. Prideux, while the eldest of the three in both age and appearance, waited just a little behind my father, as if waiting on hand for his next order. With his peppered grey hair and black suit underneath his blue sorcerer’s robe, he looked like a butler. Master Roux apparently possessed a higher sense of self-worth, standing side by side with my father, even though Vespasian had easily bribed him to do his bidding.

“Good morning, Father,” I said, guessing the time of day. “Good morning, Headmaster, Master Roux.”

“It’s afternoon,” Vespasian said.

Before my apology passed my lips, Master Roux said, “Perhaps you’d be more comfortable in your bed?”

No, not really, but it would cover my state of dishabille. Prideux summoned the nurse to help me settle back in and offered Vespasian the spartan wooden chair to sit in.

“How are you feeling?” Prideux asked after I’d covered myself up again.

Honestly, not so well. “The chirurgeon was talented.”

“Don’t worry yourself about submitting your thesis for approval,” Master Roux said. “I will give you a two-day extension.”

Vespasian sighed at that pronouncement. I hadn’t been worried — I’d been attacked on the very first day, and it wasn’t like Valere had been jumping up and down to start on our project anyway. Why did Roux have to make such a comment in front of my father?

“Can you tell us what happened, Monsieur Travere?” Prideux asked.

“Happened when?” I caught Vespasian’s wince at my stupidity. But really, a lot of things had happened in the entire history of the world. Would they mind being a little more specific?

Then again, it should be quite obvious by now they meant the vampire attack.

“My apologies,” I said. “Did Valere not tell you what happened?”

The headmaster looked to Roux. “We would like to hear your side of the story.”

My eyes widened. “Side?”

“Your perspective, I mean.”

They hadn’t believed Valere. Why wouldn’t they believe him? Had… had Valere lied?

Silver-hair glowing in the moonlight. Like Valere, but not.

Seraphin.

A vampire. He was a vampire. Good gods, what had I got myself involved with? But I hadn’t been afraid of him. Even looking back, scar on my neck and no other memory, I should fear and loathe that vampire. But I didn’t, because… He hadn’t attacked me.

Two vampires? There were two vampires in L’Oeil?

Under my lids, I looked at Vespasian, waiting not very patiently for my reply. If I told him about Seraphin, Vespasian would have no choice but to believe Valere a vampire sycophant. They were suspicious already.

Le Chasseur had told us himself. A human was either pure and good, or an evil vampire sycophant. Even if all Valere had done was speak with a vampire… That was enough to make him a sycophant. And a vampire sycophant deserved to die.

And Valere would be consigned to the pyre, the very fate I worked so hard against. He’d burn in the shadow of Le Savant’s temple, at the centre of town, for public amusement. His beautiful pale skin would blacken and crackle, his silver hair doing the same before it burnt. My beautiful, beautiful Valere…

Valere would be executed, and for what? A barely remembered memory? I’d be left without a partner for my thesis project. As much as I hated to admit it, I needed Valere.

“Monsieur Travere?” Prideux prompted.

I jumped out of my skin, my heart pounding, until I reassured myself they could not actually read my thoughts.

“I don’t really remember.” I didn’t sound convincing to my own ear, even though it was the truth. “The… apparently, a vampire attacked me. I must have… Been knocked unconscious?”

Prideux and Roux exchanged looks. Vespasian rolled his eyes, tapping his finger against his arm.

“Where did this vampire attack you?” Prideux asked.

“In town?”

“Where in town?”

“I… I don’t really remember.” I had the impression of books, of a feather duster. Violet hair. Oh! A hunter apprentice named Thierry. “A book shoppe?”

“The alley you were found in was a way off from your expected route,” Roux said. “What were you doing there?”

“Was it?” I slowly nodded. “Yes, an alley, I think. That would make sense.”

“Perhaps,” Vespasian said, “I may speak with my son alone.”

“Of course, my lord,” Prideux said, for what else could he say? Vespasian outranked him, socially and in the guild, and Prideux was always eager for a good connection. “Whatever you need.”

Roux started, “Headmaster, we haven’t—”

“Of course we can accommodate this small request.”

“Only—”

“Talbert,” Prideux said, as if remonstrating a student. Roux snapped his mouth shut, his cheeks going pale in embarrassment for being redressed like that, in front of a student, no less.

“Er, Headmaster…” I looked between the servile man and my father, who gestured his dismissal of the two. Prideux didn’t acknowledge I’d called him, his attention on Vespasian. But, was I to suffer a punishment?

“I think you’ve already taken enough of the headmaster’s time,” Vespasian said.

I looked down at my clasped hands. If the headmaster had forgotten to assign me a flogging, all the better for me. “Thank you, Headmaster, Master Roux.”

The two, along with the nurse, left while whispering about me. I only caught the nurse’s words assuring them that memory loss was usual and expected in such cases, even with a chirurgeon’s intervention. Oh good, for once I was normal.

Vespasian tapped out his impatience on top of the bed side cabinet.

“Is Mother here?” I asked.

“Your mother has taken a turn for the worse.”

I flinched.

“I spent the better part of two hours convincing her you’d be better off here. There’s no need for her to suffer the sight of you.”

“Father, I’m sorry—”

“You better be sorry,” Vespasian said. “How dare you blemish my name.”

“Blemish? I was attacked—”

“Don’t be so thick. What in Le Savant’s name were you really doing in that alley?”

My jaw dropped. “I — I told you, I can’t remember. The nurse just said—”

Vespasian crossed his arms. “Are you a Travere or not?”

“I… We were walking home from the book shoppe—”

“A book shoppe? As if you have ever been to a book shoppe without me dragging you by the cheek the entire way.”

I kept my eyes pinned to my lap, wishing we were outside, so I’d at least have some hope of digging a hole to hide in. “I was only doing what you asked me.”

“Did I ask you to be perverted? Obscene? Profane?”

I drew my eyebrows together. What was profane? Buying novels wasn’t profane, only highly questionable.

“It will end here,” Vespasian declared.

Shocked, I looked up to him, accidentally meeting his eyes. His fury drilled into me, and I quickly looked away before he responded with a beating. “No.”

“Yes,” Vespasian said. “Your trysts.”

Say what? “Tryst? You mean, going into L’Oeil with Valere?”

“Mingling with vampires,” Vespasian said, “and common prostitutes.”

Where had any of this come from? “No trysts!”

“Yes, no more trysts.”

“That wasn’t what we were doing.” I was pretty sure, with my memory or not, I would never associate with a vampire or a female prostitute.

But wasn’t this what everyone else would think? I’d been attacked because I had been spiritually weak, I’d failed Le Chasseur. I had let myself get close enough to a vampire to be bitten, and hadn’t been pious enough to be killed outright rather than suffer to live profaned with its mark upon my neck.

“I thought you didn’t remember.”

“I wouldn’t do such a thing, whether I remember it or not. You told me to learn about Valere. I’m sure that was what I was doing.”

We’d gone for tea, hadn’t we? Valere, Dominic and I — or rather, Dominic had attempted to buy off a pair of suffragettes, been spurned, and then Valere had traded them our time in exchange for tea with Dominic. But whatever the papers said about suffragettes being loose and fast, these two certainly were not. Even if they wore skirts above the ankle.

Vespasian straightened in his chair, as if he’d somehow lost his perfect posture. “That does not require debauching yourself.”

“We weren’t!” Unless one counted having unchaperoned tea with suffragettes and buying novels. “We did have tea with a pair of ladies—” Vespasian snorted, “—but they fit every description of a lady. And we were in public, and it was daylight. Nothing untoward happened at all. And then — and then, I think we must have gone to a book shoppe, because Valere wanted to.”

“You think?”

I opened my lips to stammer a reply, but caught myself in time. I swallowed, and said more evenly, “I know.”

Vespasian continued to regard me, searching for the lie. Good, moral boys did not get bitten by vampires. I must have done something.

He wouldn’t suspect, would he? The terrible urges I’d had, seeing Valere in the shower. Vespasian had said nothing since the time when I’d stumbled home to Auvergne House, frenzied after my first — that kiss. Screaming at Vespasian I could never be the son he wanted. If Vespasian had known, he would not have stayed silent.

“What have you discovered?” he finally asked.

A passion for novels, some semblance of a friendship with Dominic, a vampire that possessed Valere’s image…

I licked my lips, seeking an answer that would please him. “It will take more time.”

“You went so far as to be bitten by a vampire, but you have nothing to report?” Vespasian asked. “That scar will mark you forever, Daniel, I hope you understand that. If it was a difficult task for you to ascend into the guild before, it will now be near impossible. They will always suspect you are a vampire sycophant.”

I squeezed my hands together, fingers entwined. “Our project will be good enough.”

“It better be,” Vespasian said. “I will not have you dragging that man down with you.”

I swallowed down the bitterness.

“I expect you to send me regular reports,” Vespasian said. “Include everything. I also expect you to start on your thesis. It will be the most important work you will ever do.”

As if he needed to remind me.

“Any moment you’re not in class, you must be working on both of these tasks.”

I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Vespasian rose, removed one of his many rings and held it out for me. I stared at the silver, simply adorned by an obsidian rock that hid Vespasian’s spell work from sight. He jerked the ring up, and I extended my hand for him to drop it into. “Wear this.”

“Yes, sir.” I duly slid it onto my middle finger. The fit was perfect. “What is it for?”

“It’s a defensive spell,” he said. “By all means, stay away from vampires. But if you are somehow attacked again — and you better not be — press the obsidian against the vampire. Skin or cloth shall do. It will only work once, after which it’ll burn up, but it should prove useful in such a crisis.”

I stared down at it. “And if it touches a human?”

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s meant to protect its wearers from vampires, not for you to pick fights with.”

As if I’d ever picked a fight before. “Thank you.”

My father left without another word. He’d said all he meant to say.