Aria's head was bent over a book while her fingers slowly turned the pages. The ones she had already read, unlike Liza, she didn't put back on the shelves but stacked them one on top of the other in a trunk, so as to differentiate them from the ones still to be read.

  There were many missing; too many.

  During breaks, when she got tired of reading, she would get up to reach the window and look out until she got tired of standing. The windows were old and dirty and it was hard to even see a single inhabitant on the streets. Plus, it was raining that day, and the waterspout coming down from the clouds made it difficult to see a hand's breadth away.

  She returned her gaze to the pile of books, then sat down next to Liza to leaf through the first one she could get her hands on. After all those hours, her mind was tired, and she didn't even make an effort to read the descriptions anymore. Instead, she turned the pages quickly and without much attention.

  “What’s wrong?” Liza asked, closing the book in front of her and putting it back in its place.

  “Nothing.” Aria replied, turning another page.

  “You know, right, that when we women say nothing, there’s always something?”

  Aria nodded. She also slammed the book shut, dusting it out.

  “It’s because of my father. I didn’t think he could have so many secrets… I mean, I knew he was a member of the council and that he couldn’t tell me some political things, but yesterday something happened that scared me.”

  Liza raised her head to get a better look at the girl.

  “Like?”

  “Two men showed up. They were dressed like policemen, but not like the ones you might meet on the street. They were scary… there was something in their gaze…”

  “They could be part of the secret police.” Liza said, starting to play with her hair; she ran it through her fingers, jamming it into the ring on her index finger.

  “Secret police?”

  “Yes. They are the police who work directly for the King.”

  The huntress stood up to stretch her legs a bit and also went to the window to look outside.

  “There will be a meeting of the nobles,” Aria continued, “They said the council is meeting on Friday.”

  Liza sighed.

  “It was to be expected. These attacks are just the tip of the iceberg, I fear there will be more… something is moving, Aria, and it is not pleasant.”

  “But there must be something we hunters can do! We cannot leave the city at the mercy of the vampires.”

  “There is always something that can be done, but for now it is better to wait. Korotsk is entering a new phase and these are only the first moves.”

  Liza sounded cryptic to Aria’s ears, but she understood that for now it was best to ask no more questions, continuing to focus her attention on the book in front of her. She omitted the details of the letter, believing it to be a more personal matter.

  She came to read another book about vampires and from there she discovered that they loved to hide among the human society doing common tasks and feeding on the homeless during the night.

  The luckiest, or most powerful, as the book mentioned, were those who worked in hospitals or cemeteries as gravediggers. The former could have a large quantity of blood bags, while the latter, as macabre as it might seem, could feed themselves on still fresh corpses from which to draw those few drops of blood left in their bodies.

  “Do you know, Aria, that in the past we hunters and the secret police collaborated?” Liza asked, interrupting her reading, “When the city and its government still trusted us… and we trusted them. The police investigated the possible places where vampires lived, back then they had much more staff than today, while we intervened to go and kill them.”

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  The huntress returned to her seat, sitting down and taking out her sword to polish it with a cloth.

  “Everything has changed in the last few years and now we are the ones who have to hide from the police. Luckily, Sonia is quite influential in the city, so she can keep things under control.”

  “But… if we don’t act… if we are hunted by the humans too… how will the city defend itself?”

  Liza lowered her voice; her tone became more serious than ever.

  “Lately, there’s been a rumor going around about a new special unit that recruits high-ranking police officers or those who can take a fairly demanding physical and mental test. They arm them with silver bullets and swords that can hurt vampires.”

  “I didn’t know anything about that.” Aria began to fidget. The more power the police had, the harder it would be for her to hide from them and her father.

  “They’re literally cutting us off from the game, Aria, they don’t need us anymore, not even with a looming threat.”

  “This is terrible…”

  The Duchess felt a sharp pang in her stomach. She, who had been saved by a huntress, who trusted them and who was on the path to becoming one, could not understand how they were treated by their own people.

  “My father… lost his brother, my uncle, to a hunter. I have heard, because Sevastian and Yegveny have the habit of talking when they get drunk, other stories about similar events… but in my heart…”

  She put both hands on her chest and smiled.

  “In my heart I know that hunters are right. I owe you my life, Liza, and if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be here now.”

  “I know, Aria, I know.” she lowered her head so as not to maintain eye contact. “Hunters have done things… unsavory in the past, I don’t deny it. But we hunters are still essential. The police, no matter how much they want to train them, will never be able to match us. Plus, there’s a reason the city has had such a long period of peace.”

  He was referring to the many hunters who lived outside, in the villages or in the mountains, and who put their lives in danger every day by killing vampires and saving human lives.

  One might mistakenly think that the Korotsk Academy had no real use, but that was where all or almost all the hunters in the region came from.

  Liza went back to sifting through the books and Aria did the same. By now there were many volumes to check and their hopes began to run low. The symbol was nowhere to be found and the light of the torch alone did not help to check the images. It was dark outside, it was raining and snowing and the creaking of the wooden walls emitted an ominous sound.

  Winter would soon begin. Aria was already imagining herself in her evening dress dancing with the other nobles. She had had a similar experience last year, when she danced with a count who was slightly older than her. He had just eaten garlic and this annoyed her quite a bit, so she tried to leave as quickly as possible. Luckily, she wasn’t the only girl dancing that evening and she managed to spend the rest of the time alone, limiting herself to smiling and avoiding the glances of the suitors.

  As the memories of the past moments became more vivid and she almost fell asleep on the spot, she turned some pages until she came to a very specific one. Her attention was captured

  immediately after and the memory of the dance disappeared from her mind. Her eyes widened because she didn’t grow from what she was seeing.

  “I found it!” she shouted, “I found the symbol!”

  She invited Liza to look.

  “It says here that it is a coat of arms of the Volkov family, one of the oldest in Korotsk. There are some names.” she began to read the family tree of the members of the lineage who had lived more than three hundred years before. The last heir, however, a young boy in his early twenties, died in an epidemic and, having no children or siblings, was the last member of the house.

  “This means that…”

  “That the vampire at the cathedral was trying to bring us to the attention of this family… or that he was attracting their attention. Or,” Liza reasoned, “that he himself was a member of the house.”

  The huntress sat back down to begin to think. She had assumed a funny position in Aria’s eyes.

  “Volkov… volkov…” she continued to repeat the name several times, almost as if it had become an obsession, “It doesn’t mean anything to me, unfortunately. Maybe Sonia knows something.”

  “Three hundred years is a long time, does that mean that vampire could be all these years old?”

  “We don’t know, yet. The fact is that this family could be involved in the attack.”

  “What do we do?” Aria asked. She was so happy to have found the symbol that she didn’t realize that now came the hardest part. Investigating.

  “I think it’s best to gather more information about these Volkovs. See if there are still heirs not mentioned in the book, maybe bastard children or someone hidden from the community. We don’t know where they lived, so this is already a first search we can do.”

  “How?”

  “The town hall has a register of all the residents currently in possession of a house, so they could be Volkovs.”

  “Okay. But if we go to the town hall to see the documents… will they give them to us?”

  “Yes, if you have a collaborator inside.” she winked

  Liza stood up to hug Aria. It was an unusual gesture, given her coldness.

  “But tonight is the party! You found the symbol, so I suggest some Zimnik.”

  “I’ve never tasted it.”

  “Then the time has come. It’s a bit strong, so be prepared.”

  Everything happened so quickly. They found themselves celebrating in a deserted bar, where the innkeeper stood with one eye open and one closed between naps. It was a strange feeling for Aria, because in a few minutes she understood that in those years she had always been missing one thing: a friend.