"You don't know what you're asking."

Vienna was running now, and Alex chased after her. She ran across the lawn and picked up speed, and he followed. She ran until she had stopped in the woods, her back turned to him. He saw her head wobbling, as if she was crying.

Alex stopped behind her, panting for breath. "I just need to know if you're one of them."

"I can't. It's not time, maybe someday it will be time, but it's not time."

He came around in front of her. "Just this once."

"Alex!" She seemed so vulnerable, and he kept his hands down.

He wasn't about to take the scarf from her by force. "Look, I can't make you," Alex said. "I won't make you. But I need you to show me. I need you to take off the scarf."

"It's not time."

"I saved your life!" he said. "I thought Elle was going to kill you."

"And what?" she said. "I owe you?"

This caught him like a slap in the face and he felt instantly ashamed. "They're good people," Alex said, looking down. "Sid and Paul and Minhi. I'm worried and I think this is the answer. Please."

Vienna put her hands to her eyes. After a long moment, she sighed and reached down. In one deft flick she pulled the scarf loose. It flowed like a streamer to the earth, green and s.h.i.+mmering.

And then her head fell off.

Chapter 21.

His first reaction was to scream, and that was something Alex Van Helsing didn't actually do very much. He had been grabbed at in the dark by zombies and nearly eaten by giant dogs from h.e.l.l, but screaming was not a part of the sequence. It was always, What's next, what do you have? But when Vienna's head popped off her body like the heaviest part of a china doll whose neck had gotten frayed, he actually did yelp and stagger back.

And then it kicked in, the same leveling in his blood, the same words his father had taught him when he found himself on a cliff and the branch he'd grabbed was starting to pull loose, when the rock he was on started to crumble, when he was faced with a test question he never prepared for. Breathe. That sudden rush of blood is your trigger to listen and look and breathe. The world will want you to be pulled along. You must breathe, and ask the questions.

What is happening?

The girl lay on the forest floor as though she had been knocked out, one arm underneath her and the other stretched out. As though she had simply dropped asleep.

Vienna's head, as cleanly excised as a pat of b.u.t.ter, had rolled to a stop against a tree. There was zero gore. Instead, an inch below Vienna's jaw, where the neck both began and ended, there s.h.i.+mmered a green field, almost like a violin bow resin.

On the body, the solid edge of Vienna's neck was the same, neatly ending in another s.h.i.+mmering green field. Alex gingerly reached out and took Vienna's wrist, feeling for a pulse.

Jiminy Cricket. The girl's heart was beating. Okay. What is happening?

What is happening is that this is magic.

Magic. Just one more thing that wasn't supposed to be, except now he knew that vampires used it all the time. They used it to hide the vast Scholomance under the lake, and used it to concoct worms of blood. His mother used magic, and there were others like her, apparently.

And Vienna, it appeared, used it to keep her head from rolling away from her body.

Alex reached over and delicately closed Vienna's staring eyes. That was tough. The urge to lose it began again for a second. Think. You didn't do this.

But you did! You made her- You made her take off the scarf.

A breeze blew through the woods, lifting leaves, and Alex's eyes darted to Vienna's scarf, which picked up and began to blow.

She pulled off the scarf. She needs it.

And it was blowing away. Alex went after the scarf as it began to lift into the air. It blew a few more feet and hung on a tree, threatening to disappear into the woods.

He stepped over to the tree and took the scarf. Did it somehow, what, hold her head on? It wasn't like tape or anything; it felt like a scarf, like something his twin sister would have picked up in Milan. Alex touched the scarf and it began to leap again, more deliberately this time, like a small animal. He barely closed his fingers around it when it broke free, shooting off onto the gra.s.s. The s.h.i.+mmering green scarf began to slide, snakelike, along the ground.

Alex had to jump this time to grab it before it disappeared under the leaves. It was headed deeper into the woods. He had the distinct impression it was heading for the lake.

Alex reemerged in the clearing with the scarf whipping about in his hands. It was strong, but still just cloth; it had no teeth to dig into his skin. It wanted to get away.

The scarf stopped struggling for a moment and it merely twisted, slowly, pulsing in his hands.

Who in the world was Vienna Cazorla? She had a beating heart, but was it even real? Was she some creature placed here by the vampires? Or maybe that thing Sid had mentioned-was she a thrall?

Don't get distracted. You won't know that unless you can help, and if her heart is beating you can help.

Alex felt something at his throat. He looked down to see that the scarf had almost inched its way out of his fingers and was tickling at his throat, trying to slide around it.

He clenched his fingers around the scarf and held it at a distance. It twitched in the air. He had a feeling that if he let it get to him, he'd be the one rocking a jaunty green scarf from then on out. Which might look swell, but there'd still be a headless girl with a beating heart in the woods, so- Time to give it back?

Absolutely.

Alex approached Vienna's body while he held the scarf away from him with one hand.

He was breaking all kinds of rules. Body in the woods, you call EMS, you don't go rearranging it. Except every rule was finished now. He could have moved the head more easily, but he just couldn't will himself to pick Vienna's head up by her hair.

And anyway, he had a feeling it wasn't a "body." It was a girl with some explaining to do.

Now or never. Either this would work or he was absolutely screwed.

She was fairly light, especially missing about nine pounds. He knelt down into the gra.s.s in his dress pants-c.r.a.p, I'm missing cla.s.s-reaching his arm under her shoulders and across her chest, and gingerly moved her lower six-sevenths, bringing it to rest just next to the head.

The scarf began to twitch again when he held it near her, reaching out. He released the scarf and stepped away. It wrapped instantly around Vienna's neck and head. Silence.

Double c.r.a.p.

Then, there was a faint static pop and Vienna blinked twice. She awoke as if she had dozed off and stared at Alex, before instantly scrambling back against the tree.

"What is going on?" Vienna demanded.

Alex dropped to his knees. I cannot believe that worked. "Oh, thank G.o.d. Oh my G.o.d."

Vienna's eyes widened with horror as she grasped for her throat.

"Say something," he said. "Are you . . . I mean, are you okay?"

"What did you do?" Vienna demanded. She was reaching around her neck, feeling at it when Alex saw her remember. When she looked back up Alex was expecting her to blaze with fury, but what he saw was tempered with misery.

"I'm sorry," Alex said. He helped her up, and Vienna brushed at her clothing. "I didn't know. I had no idea."

"Really?" Vienna asked, the r rolling with anger. She inspected the huge smudges on her elbows and heels. "All of that 'Take off your scarf' and you didn't know?"

"I thought you were a vampire."

"You can sense vampires," Vienna said.

"Or a thrall or something. Okay, I'm sorry," Alex said, but he was already past his relief. "Don't make this about me, Vienna. Right now there's something terrible going on, and it all started with a book that you put in Sid's hands."

Vienna stopped. "This shouldn't have happened."

Alex had to nod. "Yeah, I know. Vienna? Seriously. You have to tell me what's going on."

She said in frustration, "I didn't want anyone to get hurt."

"So tell me you're not working for the Scholomance."

"I'm not working for them," Vienna said at last. "But I guess you could say that I am in their thrall."

And then she told her story.

Chapter 22.

Vienna Cazorla was rowing at dusk in the pond at Retiro Park when she first saw the vampire. It was summer in Madrid, and the evening air was cool, the water dark and motionless as her rowboat slowly edged across it. It was strange to be rowing alone, but then she felt strange.

Rowing was the only thing she had thought to do, the only thing that made sense. Vienna had rushed out of the hospital, feeling sick herself. She had been to see her brother, and now she wanted to do something that he should be doing with her. She was aching and wanted to act out the ache with her arms, using oars he should be using.

Carlos was dying. He was a National Guardsman and that had always been such a glorious thing; she had loved to see him in his das.h.i.+ng uniform, loved the chocolates he brought back from wherever he went. But he had been caught in a blast when terrorists in the north blew up a car next to a small bodega where he had been getting a take-out order of paella. Carlos had not even been on duty. It was chance alone that had struck him with chunks of concrete and fire and bashed in his skull. He lingered in the hospital in Madrid, maybe aware of his parents, maybe aware of Vienna. Maybe.

She had run from the hospital and rented a boat and furiously swept herself to the center, in the shadow of the Prado Museum, surrounded by trees and dying light.

The sound of tourists and picnicking families, the chirping of birds, the quiet stroke of the oars, all of it mocked her, normal and everyday, obscenely oblivious to her pain. Nothing was normal anymore.

She barely noticed the girl on the sh.o.r.e; with her eyes she swept over the spiky blond hair and the white coat and didn't look again. Vienna may have been aware the girl was watching her, but maybe that was something she realized only later. Vienna swore angrily as she rowed. There was no one to talk to. Her parents were in their own world. Her friends at school-there really wasn't such a thing at the moment, because school was over, and when she returned she'd be at a new place, at LaLaurie School for Girls, and the cast would change.

She missed Steven, the American she had known at Vogler Academy, her primary school in Switzerland. Steven was quiet, and he had always listened, but recently she had sent letters and he hadn't failed to answer so much as failed to answer in any meaningful way. He was changing, and what had been silence in person had become a distant dryness on paper. No. There was no one left but her brother, and he was dying.

Vienna moored the boat as it grew dark and walked past the Prado, down thin Madrid streets, past restaurant owners beckoning tourists to dinner, the expensive menus del dia around the park, and farther back, where the locals gathered and drank and ate, better menus and better prices.

She found herself in a small, cramped museum that had been a favorite of Carlos's, one they had visited just before he headed north. She found herself wandering through the etchings of Goya, Los Caprichos, the capricious, the random, and evil. Garish faces and unhappy people, the accidents of life.

And then she found herself in front of The Resurrection of Lazarus. It was a painting in the style of El Greco, elongated figures and vibrant, garish color. Vienna had seen countless paintings on the subject, but it had been Carlos who had drawn her to this one: Jesus before the tomb, Lazarus the dead, standing barely inside behind the rolled-away stone. Lazarus was wrapped head to foot in white shrouds, and as he looked out, walking toward the beckoning Christ, his face was ghoulish and green, and full of horror. It was a painting that spoke of shock and blasphemy. Lazarus was risen, barely able to comprehend: Who has done this thing? You who are so powerful, why have you done this? Did the people who love me so know what they have done? What a curse it is to return to this world?

A minor Lazarus, but a shocking one.

"That is one unhappy dead man," the person behind her said, in perfect Spanish, and that was when she met Elle.

Elle, whose eyes shone brilliantly and huge in a face of chalky white skin. Vienna found herself listening to her. Elle said, "I want to talk to you about your brother."

It only took an hour. Elle led her to a quiet cafe where she told her what she had in mind. She did not hypnotize and yet she was hypnotic.

"We can save him," Elle said, "but of course it's forbidden, and all forbidden things have a price. There is a curse you must take on yourself in exchange for his."

Anything. She would do anything.

"And one day, some day, we will ask a favor of you," Elle said.

An inkling of the limits of her blasphemy flashed across Vienna's mind. "You're going to ask me to kill someone," she said.

"Doesn't have to be that," Elle said in her curious casual way. "No, it will be a simple favor."

"When can you help Carlos?" Vienna said.

"We can do it tonight," Elle said.

"He won't die?"

"He won't," Elle said, "not for a long time."

"When will your request come?"

Elle reached under the table and took out a silver box, which she slid across the table, next to Vienna's water gla.s.s. At her request, Vienna opened the box and saw inside, laid in black velvet, a s.h.i.+mmering green scarf. "The first one comes as soon as you say you're in," Elle said. "And that's as simple as putting this little present on. The next request-we'll let you know."

Carlos recovered. He recovered fast, with a voracious appet.i.te. He healed like no one the doctors had ever seen before. It was with joy that she bade him good-bye in the fall, he teasing her about her newfound accessory, which she never took off, ever.

And on the evening Vienna heard that the school across the lake had suffered a severe fire, she received her next instructions.

Elle provided Vienna with a target, always intended to be someone who could write and who could get in front of the students of LaLaurie. Elle had a handful of candidates-had even made sure Vienna roomed with one-but none of them was quite the perfect vessel for the Ultravox virus. Within hours of the fire, when it became clear that boys would be moving to LaLaurie, a stack of new dossiers landed in Elle's lap. And when she came across Sid's dossier Elle rejected all of the previous candidates. Sid studied vampires, had even read some vampire writing, and his head would already be seeded with keywords and phrases. He would be susceptible, even if only slightly more so, to the kind of subconscious suggestion that Ultravox planned to utilize. And he spent a great deal of time writing. Sid would be perfect. All that was left was for Vienna to watch for an opportunity.