Juliet

In the morning I can barely contain myself. Well rested or not, it doesn’t matter, I need to get downstairs right away. I jump out of Lazarus’ oversized pajama that kept me really comfortable during the night, and bend to pick up my dirty silk dress from the floor. I just hold it out in front of me, and look at it like it’s cursed. Incredible, how much emotion it stirs inside. I won’t be able to wear it, I’ll have to go downstairs and meet the mysterious bookseller still in the baggy blue shirt and pants, both covered in pictures of happy smiling racecars.

Thuds up the stairs make me stand to attention. There are muffled voices, men’s voices, reminding me of Radek’s guards at the castle. My brain is quick enough to realize it is them.

Fuck. They found me!

I look around desperately for a place to hide. I should have seen this coming! What did I expect, that he’d simply let me go, that he wouldn’t turn the entire town upside down looking for me? He knows I couldn’t have gotten far in only a few hours. And if his men only come in here looking for me now, it’s because Radek has either found out late about my escape, or they’ve been busy looking elsewhere.

My eyes dart around for hiding options, find no viable ones, so I drop and slide under the bed. I cover myself up with a mess of backpacks and a big plush dog that’s half my size, knowing they’ll surely look here. It’s the most obvious hideout, second only to the wardrobe. I try hard to control my breathing.

The door opens, booted feet stomping inside the room. They have made enough noise to announce they’re coming, but even so, I wouldn’t have been able to get out of the room, they were too fast.

I keep controlling my breathing, but the beating of my heart is so loud I’m afraid they’ll hear it. It’s three of them, talking to each other in their native language. It sounds aggressive, like bullets flying at my ears. Everything about them sounds dangerous, sure as hell more dangerous than thugs I’ve seen in movies. Everything about their movement and presence around me smells of blood and sounds of gritted teeth ready to tear into man flesh.

One of the guards drops to one knee right by the bed, and my heart stills inside my chest. I petrify from head to toe, my eyes wide as I watch a hand lift the rim of the duvet, preparing to look under it. I clutch the big dog to my chest as the tip of a reddish, bristly beard appears, lowering itself. Time has slowed down for me to an impossible level, my eardrums pounding to explode as I watch this happen in slow motion. I recognize the man even without seeing his full face. He’s the guard who stopped me from following Radek down to the basement three months ago, the last time I saw the light of day before he took me to his castle, keeping me high on his dark powers.

This is it. The man will discover me, and it will feel like the world came to an end. They will brutally punish Lazarus and the bookseller for hiding a fugitive from the prince’s castle. Shit. Victoria! An image of her in a dungeon, wearing rags and heavy chains hits me. I should just come out and give myself over. I should come out now.

“Gentlemen,” a female voice says. My eyes dart over to where the voice is coming, and I glimpse pink slippers with pointy tips in the doorway. The calves emerging from them are thick, making me think of an older woman. She speaks in Romanian, but her voice is musical and clear enough that I understand something about refreshments.

But it’s the smell of the medieval drink mead that fills the room—I know the scent from the castle, guards used to have it there all the time. One of the men growls something at her, but she giggles and answers something as pleasant as before, which eventually gets the men out of the room. Only the red-bearded guard is still on one knee by the bed. He picks and raises the hanging duvet again, but then one of his peers calls from the hallway, where they followed the woman.

“Gruia!”

Gruia. I don’t know if he’s the leader, but he’s sure tough as a devil. Mead couldn’t bait him out of here, so he’s more than a base beast. But, from the vibe I get from him, he’s crueler than one. I decide I must watch out for him particularly. 

Long after their steps died down the stairs, I’m still clutching the big plush dog to my chest. I’m shivering, thinking I might as well stay put for... why not forever. Not because I’m afraid of the prince. No matter how much dirt I discover about him, I’m not exactly opposed to the idea of going back to him.

I have to get out of here. If they decide to use medieval ways on the bookseller or Lazarus to extract information about me, I have to be close enough to give myself in.

The hallway and stairs are all made of wood, shelves overfilled with books everywhere. Everything about this place looks and smells like a bookseller’s place, but for all its picturesque charm, it’s as creaky as the old doors at the Prince’s castle.

Holding lightly to the wooden rail I tiptoe barefoot down the stairs, my ears perked up for sounds. Downstairs there’s a big living area with cozy couches and armchairs laid with fluffy duvets, and an open kitchen with full wooden cupboards. It’s a cluttered place, but beautifully, cozily so, making me think of a scholar’s library-home.

Through the window above the sink I make out a guard’s shape. The woman must have taken them outside in the garden to serve them mead, so the weather must be pleasant.

There’s noise at the front door. I manage to hide under the stairs an instant before it opens. I make myself small, not peeking around to see who’s entered the house. I don’t need to know, I just need to be safe for now.

The visitor hurries up the stairs to the first floor.

A muffled “Fuck, Juliet,” reaches my ears. My eyes widen, and my back straightens so fast that I hit my head against the back of the stairs.

“Lazarus.” I put enough voice in my whisper for him to hear it, and he immediately hurries back down the stairs. Relief washes over his face when he sees me, his entire body sagging in relief. He wraps his long arms around me as if it’s the most natural thing, his warmth enwrapping me like a soothing bath. I stiffen in his hold at first, but then I relax, hugging him back. God, I needed this.

“Come,” he says, taking my hand and leading me away. “Magda won’t be able to keep them out for long. The guy with the red beard is eyeing the place impatiently already, he’ll want to resume the search soon.”

“Where are we going?” I stumble over small piles of books that Lazarus steps widely over with his long, tall-man strides.

“We’ll hide you in plain sight.”

He leads me out through the narrow back door behind the storeroom, into the adjacent bookstore.

My jaw drops. I saw it from the outside last night when we arrived, but I was too scared and too cold, not to mention still mentally dizzy from Radek’s power. I only acknowledged its pretty wooden façade with the gothic style name sign, a vampire head with bloody fangs over it. Now, in broad daylight, the place seems taken out of a fairy tale.

Lazarus hurries to give me a random jacket to cover the conspicuous pajamas, and a cap. Every brochure and marketing material in here seems to have a vampire, a bat, a zombie, a werewolf, or some sort of supernatural creature on it, and so do my cap and my jacket.

There’s a lot of Dracula-related merchandise, like pens and agendas, mugs, postcards, you name it.

“Duck,” Lazarus prompts. I spot three shadows walking briskly outside the bookstore window, and bend quickly with my back at the door, pretending to arrange stuff inside a box.

The bells at the door clink as the men enter, and Lazarus starts barking at me in Romanian. He sounds like an angry boss. He doesn’t stop ranting at me for a few good moments, then he turns to face the guards. His tall shape casts a shadow on the bookcase in front of me. This way he must have blocked me from the guards’ sight as if he’s just sweeping some ugly business under the carpet.

He tells them something in Romanian, which I imagine is along the lines of, “I’m sorry, she’s new,” I think he says something about incompetence as well. Whatever it is that he says, it’s working.

Lazarus remains by my side and pretends to be working while the guards search the place. I can tell he’s as tense as I am, but his proximity is reassuring.

The guards groan and curse in their language, as aggressively as upstairs. My skin creases when I think what they’d do if they laid hands on me. The relief I feel the moment the door falls shut behind them is one of the best things I ever experienced, second only to Radek’s intoxicating love.

Pain rushes through my heart as I realize that I’ll never feel his love again.

“Jesus Christ,” Lazarus breathes out in relief, closing his arms around me again, letting me feel the contrast between a creature of the light and the dark prince that I fell for. We both hug tightly in relief for a few moments, before he releases me and goes to the door, spying on them.

“They’re going back to the house.”

He keeps watching the house door intently, while I brace myself by the counter.

“Looks like they’re leaving,” he eventually says.

“Lazarus, I’m scared,” I whisper. “What if they turn this whole village upside down to find me?”

“I think they came directly here. Someone must have tipped them off, because they’re not searching any other houses.”

I frown. “But there’s no way they could have known. Victoria would never tell, that would put her in serious trouble.”

Lazarus looks at me puzzled. “Why? No one can prove she helped you escape, it would be your word against hers.”

I press my lips together and swallow hard. I can’t tell him. He’s a kind person, Lazarus, but he’s also hotheaded and a daredevil—In the end, he’s an investigative reporter undercover, stealthily digging dirty stuff on one of the shadiest personalities ever. That takes a serious pair of balls. What if the truth enrages him so much that it drives him to confront Radek about it? Victoria would be exposed, and it would be my fault. 

“Doesn’t matter,” I say, and prepare to get back to my feet. As Lazarus and I walk toward each other, the door opens, bells clinking. Lazarus turns swiftly, and I jump back to the counter, gripping to it, ready to hide on the seller’s side. But then Lazarus’ shoulders lose tension, and he moves out of the way to reveal the visitor.

The first thing I recognize is the pink slippers with pointy tips. The owner is a small, stocky woman with short white hair and friendly glimmering eyes. The more she approaches, the better I can tell they’re bright hazel. She must be around sixty, has a round face with soft wrinkles, and she’s the archetype of the story-telling grandma. Her face is open, luminous, full with wisdom. She holds out a small hand.

“Hello, dear. Finally we meet properly. I’m Smaragda Cantemir, but people call me Magda the Book Master.” A giggle crowns her almost musically-spoken words. Indeed, it must be a pleasure to hear this woman tell stories.

“The Book Master.” I look around at the shelves over shelves of books, also at the cases knocked down by those savages. “Yes, you must be. You have so many books that I wouldn’t be bored if I had to spend two lifetimes locked in here.”

Magda laughs pleasantly. “A young lady who reads is more valuable than her weight in gold.”

She walks behind me, and heads towards the lying bookcases. She seems relaxed, as if the ravaging guards didn’t bother or worry her in the least. There’s a kind of power about her, as if a few angry boys got nothing on her.

I start toward her to help, pulling Lazarus after me, but he resists my pull. I glance from him to Magda only to have my jaw drop, and my ears go boom with blood pressure.

Magda raises the first bookcase off the floor only by the energy of her hands, moving them smoothly like the arms of a ballerina in the air.

“What in the world,” I breathe, right before I feel the room tilt with me, and fall into Lazarus’ supporting arms.

“I got you,” he says in my ear, and lets me watch Magda the Book Master wave her arms in the air, basically witching the bookcases back up, and the books onto the shelves.

“Jesus,” I manage, “I’d say she’s a witch, but she doesn’t have a magic wand.”

Magda laughs. “Nor does she ride a broom, but she is a witch nonetheless.”

What world is this? “I suppose another one of the Carpathians’ eccentricities.”

“I told you from the start, Juliet,” Lazarus says, his body firm behind me until I find balance on my own two feet again. “Had you been a normal tourist, the Carpathians would only a be a wild, backward region to visit. But you came here as a guest of Prince Radek.”

“Which means,” Magda takes over as she walks behind the counter to arrange books, “that you came here with a passage ticket to the Hidden World.”

“Not a very creative name,” Lazarus picks up. “But it describes exactly what it is.”

“You probably already learned a few new things about reality not being what it seems at the castle,” Magda says.

“She has,” Lazarus replies in my place, surely referring to what we discussed last night in the room before he left me to grab some sleep. “She knows he is the Prince of Midnight.”

Magda stops moving, her eyes shooting up at me from behind the counter. She places the books down.

“Come. Let us start the morning right and have some coffee.”

Once inside the house again, the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafts over to me. I don’t know if this beloved scent has been here before, while I was hiding under the stairs, dead scared of the guards, but it awakens a long-forgotten joy in my heart. For some reason I don’t remember the scent of fresh coffee at the castle.

“You must be something special to the Prince,” Magda says, pouring us all coffee in Dracula cups. “For him to disclose his real identity to you.”

“He didn’t actually tell me. I put two and two together.”

“The Prince doesn’t usually allow his women to put two and two together. He keeps them in a drugged state, uses them and then ditches them.” There’s resentment in Magda’s voice. I narrow my eyes over the coffee cup, trying to ignore the pang in my chest at the mention of other women.

“Has he hurt you personally?”

“God, no, not that personally.” She takes a seat across from me. Lazarus leans against the sink, blocking the view from outside, with his cup of coffee in his hand. “He’s had his wing girl Victoria Dunham select girls for him from the village. We never saw them again. They were nice girls, I liked them, but too ambitious and frivolous for their own good. Fell easy prey to looks and money. Must say they weren’t exactly avid readers either. Education matters, you know.”

It’s so strange, hearing words such as ‘ditch’ and ‘wing girl’ coming out of Magda’s erudite storyteller mouth.

“You’re a particularly resilient person, Juliet,” Magda says, searching my face with ancient wisdom. “Any other person would have probably lost their mind by now.”

I shrug. “Yes, I’m pretty sure I would have lost it too if, I don’t know, things had simply started to happen out of the blue. Back in Germany I lived a normal life, very, you know, real in the sense of bank accounts and deadlines and people getting cancer, and insurances not paying for treatments in full, and—” I take a deep breath, “all that. But I was softly eased into all of—” I motion around with my hand. “This. The first weird thing that happened was that some pictures I took of the prince transformed into pictures of a monster on my phone, but even for that I had a viable explanation at first.”

“You did?” Lazarus says.

“Hackers. It’s amazing all the ways people can manipulate technology these days. But then, after I came here...” It hits. My eyes shoot at Lazarus, narrowing. “Actually, I should have known you were part of this Hidden World. Back on that first night, you drove straight into Radek, disappeared as if nothing when he took over and led me to the castle, and yet when we met again in the courtyard you didn’t seem stricken by any of it. You didn’t even mention it.”

He smiles. “I was surprised you didn’t notice that right away.” His expression turns a bit grim at the next thought. “But you were too taken with the prince, his secrets, his charms.”

Do I sense jealousy?

“To be honest,” Magda takes over, “Lazarus and I were hoping to start working with you. For years we’ve been looking for someone on the inside, someone in the prince’s confidence, but willing to see and probe into his dark side. Lazarus really had high hopes for you, and he told me great things about you when he came home that night.”

“What things?”

“That, unlike all the other women, he had the feeling you were not easily impressed by beauty, money, power. That Radek would not be able to buy you over. He could tell by the way you talked.” Her eyes probe my face. “I can tell by only looking at you that he was right.”

“Thank you. But what are you, Magda? You’re clearly a supernatural being, too, but....”

“You said it before, in the bookstore, and you were right. I’m a witch.”

I scan this woman up and down, with her white hair and bright hazel eyes, the softness and wisdom of a scholar, and something else that I just can’t pin down. “Wow. You could easily pass for....” But then, on a second thought. “No, actually no. You couldn’t really pass for a normal person. If I met you in Germany, I’d feel compelled to look at you over and over again. Something about you screams that you’re special, but I can’t put my finger on what.”

“Well, something about you screams that you’re not a normal person either, and yet you passed for one in the Western world.”

“Yes, well, in Germany people tend not to notice other people anyway.” Wait a minute. “What do you mean I’m not a normal person?”

She smiles. “You have a special talent. The Prince’s closeness activated it. I don’t know what it is exactly either, but I feel it. And I see it developing in your face.”

I instinctively take my hand to my cheek, looking around for a mirror. How long has it been since I’ve last seen myself reflected in one? “Is it changing the way I look?”

“Every change in the heart is marked on the face. There’s a piece of old Chinese wisdom that says: when you change your heart, you change your face; when you change your face you change your fate.”

I remember the way I touched the prince, his corpse-like hair turning into the chestnut gloss of Prince Radek.

“When I touched him.... I felt a string of power simmer to my fingertips, but I didn’t know... I don’t know what happened.”

Powers, curses.

“Do you know what the curse of the Prince of Midnight is, Magda?” I say. “I mean, he says there is no one alive today who knows that, but I imagine you—”

“There is indeed no one alive today who knows what curse befalls people who look into his real face,” she interrupts. “Prince Radek was right. Even though I’m very old, and I’ve been there when many dreadful things happened, I wasn’t there when that took place.”

“What took place?”

It’s Lazarus who answers from the background. “When Radek has been turned into the Prince of Midnight.”

It hits me. “Yes, the rituals. Please, Magda, help me understand. Help me understand him.”

Magda measures me up and down. “Are you in love with him?”

Silence. I can tell Lazarus is tense for the answer, too.

“I don’t know,” I manage. “We did share something special. He allowed me to touch him, which he said he hadn’t allowed anyone before. He even kissed me on the lips, he—”

Magda gets up and heads to the kitchen counter, by Lazarus’ side. She keeps her back at me as she talks.

“It’s remarkable,” she begins, “How nowadays there is so much information out there about things with no substance—taxes, economy, entertainment. But not a bit of information on things that would really turn the human existence around—like ancient rituals that can transform humans into superior beings without the hassle and strain of conventional medicine.”

She keeps herself busy, but not seeing her face and only listening to her voice is a unique experience. Lazarus slowly walks over and sits down at the table with me, listening, too.

“Back in the day,” Magda continues, “it was easier to trust information. Paper and pen—at first parchment and quill—were not easy to come about, and the knowledge of writing even less. So when people put something to parchment or paper, you could be certain it was something worthwhile.

“Back in my youth, I was a translator, you see.” She glances at us over her shoulder, rolling up her sleeves to start kneading dough. “I was one of the first women with higher education in this country, and that was because my father was a powerful man—Dimitrie Cantemir, you might have heard of him.”

I sit up straight, like a soldier who’s just spotted the General. “Dimitrie Cantemir? The scholar Prince of Moldavia? The man was an internationally renowned language genius! And a freaking prince!”

“That he was.” There is pride and respect in her voice. “He taught me many languages, he gave me the love of reading, and books were my entire life. When the Tsar asked my father to help him with the translation of ancient texts, my father did me the honor of asking for my help. To put it plainly, the texts contained magic rituals that could turn humans into, well, superhumans. They were very powerful, and it was of great importance for the Tsar not to share that power with anybody. So the translation had to take place in utmost secrecy.

“I was ecstatic to work with my father, but he was an old man at the time already, and he needed his rest. I, on the other hand, would stay awake for entire nights at the candlelight, deciphering texts.”

She turns with a tray, heading for the oven. “I knew the texts were original when the first magic formula worked on me.”

“Whattt??”

“Yes,” she says as she casually pushes the tray inside the oven, and goes back to work at the kitchen counter. “I used to read some texts out loud when I finished the translation, the ones that sounded particularly interesting. You can imagine my panic when a white fog started creeping up from the ground and winding around me. It turned me into—” she gestures at herself. “This.”

“Magda has incantation power,” Lazarus explains. “That’s what she was imbued with that night. To make the long story short, she can enhance certain talents in people by putting them in a trance and chanting magic formulas from those rituals.”

The room tilts with me again. I blink to get my head steady. “And I thought I’ve seen enough to put up with all kinds of news.”

“Well I hope you can put up with this news,” Magda says, turning to look at me. “I would like to put you in a trance, and enhance the talent that the prince activated in you. We know it has something to do with touching. So your power must be focused in your hands. After I put you in a trance, your subconscious is going to guide me.”

“Why would you want to enhance my talents? This is, in the end, the Hidden World, so I doubt—”

“You’re right,” answers Magda, “I wouldn’t do it for just anybody, and I rarely ever do it at all.” She motions gently towards Lazarus, whom she’s obviously very fond of. “I would do it for him, but I’ve sworn to only ever enhance people when it’s absolutely necessary.” Her voice and gaze deepen. “When it’s a matter of life and death. We never open the treasure trove of the Hidden World otherwise. But I think you’re the only one who can turn the Prince of Midnight from evil to good. I think you can reverse what has been done to him.”

“But what exactly has been done to him? And to his brother, Dracula?”

Magda tilts her head to the side, thinking. “Come with me.”

And she leads us to a dark basement. When she hits the lights, my eyes widen at a bookcase in the form of a circle, full of leather-bound books and parchments. The room smells funny, and Magda is quick to close the door.

“Here’s where I keep the oldest books I inherited from my father. It was quite a struggle to save these jewels from the Tsar’s hands, and it was even harder to keep them away from his successors.” She glances at us with deeper meaning. “Sorry for the odor, but old paper and ink need special conditions.”

She heads to the center of the round bookcase right in front of us, and climbs the ladder to the highest bookshelf, picking up a leather-bound and obviously very old book. It looks medieval.

“This is a selection of ancient rituals that have been copied from different sources,” she says as she returns to us. “Keep in mind, it might be only a copy of a copy. I could try to determine how old the book really is, but that would mean exposing it in some way.”

She hands me the book.

“Careful,” she pleads. Books seem to be her one and only weakness, as if they’re parts of her spiritual body. “It’s very old, you must be extra gentle with it.”

While I open the book with careful fingers, fascination swelling in my chest, she adds, “Turn the pages gingerly. Here.” She puts a finger under the chapter name. “This is the ritual they used on the little Vlad and Radek.”

All it takes is Magda translating the first a few lines for my eyes to widen in horror.