Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

Sabine wakes near dusk. She surveys her chosen room and sees it once belonged to a woman. She puts on one of the dresses from the closet and before going to find Alessandro painting in his workshop. He looks wan, as he lets Matteo drink from him to aid his creative process. He tells Sabine that the dress and room belonged to his sister, who died three years ago. Alessandro paints Sabine from memory, though he refines the portrait as she sits for him. She asks him why Matteo hasn’t turned him, and Alessandro tells her that Matteo, or Mateusz as he was once known, has offered, but Alessandro wants to remain human, because he thinks life doesn’t have real value without death.

Matteo takes Sabine out into town, and the sunlight makes her feel ill. Matteo tells her it’s important to be seen, as strangers are usually accused when bodies start piling up. Matteo is less affected by sunlight, which he claims stems from his age and ability to learn his limits. Sabine asks how vampires age, and he says that though physically they remain the same, they rot from the inside, their humanity eroding over the centuries. They become cocky, convinced they are unkillable, which leads to their downfall. Sabine thinks back to Hector and his death. The sun sets, and Matteo tells Sabine she needs to learn to control her hunger, and he promises to show her how.

Venice at night during Carnevale is a crowded cacophony of sensations for Sabine. She accompanies Matteo to an exclusive party, and Matteo challenges her to a game. He tells her to select a partygoer to stalk, but she cannot kill the person until the start of Lent. Sabine is hesitant to avoid feeding for another 10 days, as she’s never gone more than 48 hours without blood before. Matteo assures her that it takes longer than 10 days to starve and promises to teach her how to claim places, like he’s claimed Venice, if she wins. Sabine agrees.

Matteo chooses a man as his mark, and Sabine chooses a woman wearing a mask with a lily on it. Sabine watches but does not approach. Three days later, Sabine sees the lily again, and Sabine watches her before following her into an alley, though she resists the urge to bite. The fourth night, Sabine follows the lily again and feigns a broken shoe to get her attention. The lily touches Sabine’s hair, but Sabine refrains from biting her, returning to Matteo’s villa.

On the fifth night, Sabine sees the lily with a gluttonous rich man. On the sixth night, the lily is alone again, and when Sabine approaches, the lily takes her arm and walks through Carnevale alongside her, taking in the sights. On the seventh night, Sabine learns the lily’s name: Bianca. Bianca is set to wed the rich man Sabine saw, and she’s visiting Venice from Modena. By the eighth day, Sabine is ravenous. On the ninth day, Bianca makes Sabine promise to attend a menagerie of animals with her the next day. The sun is intense, but Sabine goes anyway. On the 10th day, Sabine walks Bianca home, pulling her into an alley, pulling her close, and finally biting her neck and drinking her blood. Sabine is more satisfied than ever, and Bianca’s pulse rings in her chest until she reaches Matteo’s house.

Matteo returns home as Sabine sits and fiddles with the petal she took from Bianca’s mask as a token. He looks disheveled and covered in blood, but he reappears later looking his usual put-together self. Sabine tells him that she wants her prize now, so he begins to teach her how to use intent to mark areas as her own. Sabine manages to resist Matteo’s power and mark a square of the room as her own. She resolves to practice, and Matteo tells her that he claimed Venice “stone by stone, and step-by-step” (229). Sabine considers leaving Venice, but she decides to stay, and she and Matteo play the hunting game again and again. Sabine finds knowing her victims makes the killing more satisfying.

Alice takes the train back toward campus. She thinks about Lottie and imagines her stepping onto the train by chance, just like Lottie entered her life by chance. Alice’s hunger becomes overwhelming, so she gets off the train early. When she reaches her suite, Rachel is crying as her other suitemates comfort her. Lizbeth tells Alice that a student, Colin, has been found dead, presumably from a drug overdose. Rachel was seeing Colin, so she’s upset. Alice fights the urge to tell Rachel that she did her a favor before going to her room and sleeping.

When Alice wakes, her suitemates are at a vigil for Colin. She begins to research potential places other vampires might gather and finds two places that seem like possible vampiric hotspot. She takes a cab to the first club, but it’s closed. She decides to walk to the second. As she walks, she has a flashback to her father and Eloise’s wedding, when Eloise gave Alice and Catty each a necklace with dirt from their mother’s grave as a gift. Catty was furious, but Alice felt bad for Eloise, and thanked her for the gift. Catty didn’t leave the wedding, but her eyes looked empty in the photos.

Alice reaches the second club and shows the bouncer the photo of Lottie, but he doesn’t recognize her. He asks for Alice’s ID, but she manages to use the force of her intent to convince him to let her in with no ID. He warns her that everyone in the club is prey, wearing a white wristband, or predator, wearing a red wristband. He gives Alice a white band.

The club is called Chalice, and it seems like it’s from a paranormal romance novel. She sees two men kissing, and she thinks she catches a glimpse of fangs. She goes to the bar and orders a drink, but it’s not blood and her body rejects it. A girl approaches her, and for a second Alice thinks it’s Lottie, but it’s not. The girl asks Alice to bite her, and Alice does, drinking until people pull her off the girl. A man tells Alice she needs to leave, and that he was told to tell anyone like Alice who showed up to follow the music, which means there are others like her out there.

Years pass, and Sabine feels at home in Venice and with Matteo and Alessandro. Sabine occasionally leaves Venice to hunt with impunity, but she always returns home to Venice. Alessandro ages, and Matteo remains in love with him anyway. Alessandro becomes ill. He still refuses to be buried in the midnight soil, and though Sabine fantasizes about turning him against his will, she doesn’t. She’s not at home the night Alessandro dies, but she knows about it the second she returns. The air is different, and Matteo doesn’t leave his room for two days, when Sabine finally sends the physician to collect Alessandro’s corpse. He is buried in his family’s plot. Matteo’s grief is thick and heavy, and he refuses to eat, hunt, or play games with Sabine.

Sabine goes to Verona to escape Matteo’s grief, and when she returns in the spring, she finds Matteo with a vampire who looks strikingly similar to Alessandro, a man named Giovanni. Sabine dislikes Giovanni immediately, as he is not Alessandro. Giovanni is petulant and hates Matteo’s rules. He hopes Sabine will be more fun.

Sabine tells Matteo she is happy to see him recovered. The people of Venice greet Matteo and Sabine as they walk through town, though Matteo has to keep his eyes on Giovanni to prevent him carelessly attacking people. Matteo will soon have to leave Venice, as he isn’t aging and it will garner suspicion. Matteo and Giovanni argue about which people they can eat—Giovanni thinks Matteo is elitist for insisting they refrain from eating wealthy or high-profile people, but Matteo says it’s simply a strategy for avoiding detection. Sabine and Matteo watch as snow falls, but when they turn around, Giovanni is gone. They find him blocks away, drinking from a man.

Giovanni continues to be reckless in his hunting. He’s caught in the act and killed, and Matteo decides it’s time to leave. He books passage on a ship to the Americas and invites Sabine, but she declines.

Sabine travels throughout the world as a widow, feeling pieces of her humanity slough away. She enjoys the thrill of solitude, the excitement of the hunt, but she begins to wonder what it would be like to keep one of her marks, to make someone like her and keep them as a companion. She continues on alone.

Sabine walks down the street and sees most shops are already closed, with the exception of a dress shop. She enters the dress shop and asks the woman about the honey-colored gown in the window. The modiste tells her that all the dresses are spoken for, as it is the start of the “season”—the period of time in London society in which young women make their debuts as debutantes in order to seek a good marriage match—and the women refuse to wear the same gown twice. Sabine kills the modiste and takes the honey-colored gown.

Sabine takes the house of a dead baroness and establishes herself in London society, claiming to be the widow of a Spanish viscount. Sabine has many influential women over, and they promise to help introduce her to important people. On the opening night of the season, Sabine watches the debutantes be presented to court. She decides to play the game again year after year, to choose a target to slowly stalk and eventually kill. The fourth year, she wants to up the danger and choose a debutante. She almost chooses a woman who resembles Alessandro, but then she sees a beautiful girl. She asks another lady about the girl, and she explains that she’s a “rough around the edges” ward of Lady Amelia Hastings (272). Sabine sets her sites on the girl, without knowing that she will change everything.

Alice doesn’t understand what it means to follow the music. She hears singing and follows it to church, where she briefly listens to the choir. She leaves and walks into the graveyard, nearly collapsing from her contact with the graveyard dirt. She nearly succumbs to the illness until she hears Catty’s voice in her mind, pushing her forward. She manages to use the last of her strength to crawl to the curb of the street. Recovered, she hears a song again and decides to follow.

Alice follows the music to a coffee shop called White Thorn Black Roast. She goes to the counter, and the barista asks her to order. She remembers always drinking tea to feel better at home, so she orders a tea. She takes a sip but spits it out. A man named Ezra approaches her, and he offers her a sip from his cup. It’s blood mixed with black coffee, which Ezra calls a black and red, and Alice drinks deeply. Ezra owns the shop, which he claims caters to all types. She asks Ezra about Lottie, and he recognizes her, though he expresses doubt that the Lottie he knew would turn anyone without their consent.

Alice tells him about her night with Lottie and everything that’s come after, and he agrees to help her find Lottie. Ezra calls over a woman named Melody and asks for her help. Melody is a psychic, so she asks Alice to think about Lottie as she holds Alice’s hands, and Melody and Alice have a vision of Lottie in a hotel room (number 139) with blue stairs and runners. They describe it, and Ezra recognizes it as the Taj. Ezra tells Alice he’ll go with her.

Ezra puts on a scarf, and Alice asks why. Ezra tells her it’s important to appear normal to avoid suspicion. Ezra also tells her the story of the midnight soil, taking her arm as they walk. Alice has a memory of Halloween the year that she was 13 years old. Catty was supposed to take Alice to a supervised party at their school, but instead Catty brought Alice to Catty’s friend Derrick’s party. Catty ditched her matching costume with Alice in favor of matching with Derrick, who offered Alice liquor. Alice drank even though Catty tried to wave Derrick off. Intoxicated, Alice confessed that she didn’t know who she was. Catty promised she knew who Alice was, but when she leaned in to tell Alice, a firecracker went off, muffling the sound. Catty left with Derrick, and Alice was alone.

Alice comes back to the present and asks Ezra questions about their shared condition. Ezra explains the hunger will never fade, but it takes years and years to starve, and most go mad before dying of starvation. He opened his coffee shop as a gathering place to their kind, though he changes the type of business every so often to avoid detection. Ezra tells her that as vampires age, they lose pieces of their humanity, rotting from the inside; Ezra claims he’s rotting slower than most. Before Alice can ask more, they reach the Taj.

Ezra tells the front desk they’re visiting a friend, and he and Alice go toward Room 139. When they reach the door, they hear sounds of people being intimate inside. Alice knocks firmly, but the noises don’t stop. Ezra calls out for Lottie, and Lottie answers the door, shocked to see Ezra and Alice. Lottie is confused, and her intimate partner appears, so Lottie uses her powers to compel her to go shower. Lottie looks hurt by Alice’s anger. She’s confused, because she claims she didn’t turn Alice. According to Lottie, they had consensual fun, then Lottie left. Alice asks who turned her, and Ezra and Lottie both say the name Sabine.