Daylight Rules

You don't remember falling asleep. You remember the phone glowing in your hand, her words arriving one careful sentence at a time, the rain easing against the window. You remember thinking, somewhere near four in the morning, that the conversation hadn't gone at all the way you expected a conversation with a vampire queen to go.

Then nothing, until someone knocks.

"Morning," says a voice through the door. "Or afternoon, technically. I brought coffee. If you're climbing out the window, at least take the coffee."

The window is closed. You're in the four-poster, still in yesterday's shirt and trousers, your jaw rough with stubble. Gray daylight leaks around the curtains.

You open the door. A man about your age stands in the corridor holding a tray. Rumpled shirt, rolled sleeves, a lanyard full of keys around his neck, the deep under-eye shadows of someone who hasn't slept properly since college.

"Jonah Thornton," he says. "Day-steward. Which means I run this place while everybody who matters is dead to the world." He hands you a mug. "You're the Favorite."

"Apparently."

"Congratulations. My condolences. Both." He looks at the black garnet ring on the nightstand, then at you. "You'll want to wear that today. The day staff take it seriously. Without it, you're just a stranger in the house, and strangers get escorted off the hill."

You pick up the ring. It's cold and heavier than it looks. You think about last night, about her messages, and slide it onto your finger. It fits. Of course it fits. You decide not to wonder how she knew your size.

"Okay," you say. "Rules?"

Jonah grins. "Oh, there are rules."

There are seven.

One: never open the doors to the east wing between sunrise and sunset. "That's where Her Majesty sleeps. And Bram. And about half the senior court. You open those doors, a lot of very old people wake up in a very bad mood."

Two: never wake a sleeper, anywhere, for anything short of fire.

Three: curtains stay drawn in every hallway, even on cloudy days. "It's Halden. It's always cloudy. Doesn't matter."

Four: no garlic in the kitchens. "It doesn't hurt them. They just think it's rude."

Five: the ballroom mirrors are covered by day, and you don't uncover them.

Six: don't go into the Chancellor's office without an invitation. "Aurelian's the only one old enough to be up during the day, a little. Underground, mostly. He's sweet. He's also four hundred years old, so knock."

Seven: if a vampire offers you a drink, check who poured it.

"That last one sounds specific," you say.

Jonah shrugs. "This is a court. Specific things happen."

He walks you through the house while the court sleeps. It's eerie in daylight. Long dim corridors. Drawn velvet curtains. Paintings everywhere, and you keep stopping in front of them like a kid in a candy store. A Flemish tavern scene. A pair of Chinese export vases. A small dark seascape you'd swear is a Ruysdael.

"Her Majesty says you start in the library," Jonah says. "Letters and documents first. She thinks paper's easier to fake than paint."

"She's right."

"She usually is. It's very annoying."

The library is the one Aurelian sat you down in last night, but by daylight you see the scale of it. Three stories of shelves. Rolling ladders. Glass cases full of manuscripts and letters, each with a little handwritten card in faded ink.

You set up at a long table by the window with your loupe, a borrowed lamp and a notebook. Jonah brings you gloves without being asked.

It takes you two hours to find the first one.

A letter in a glass case. The card says it was written to Isolde in 1802 by a French painter, thanking her for sitting for a portrait. The handwriting is beautiful. The ink is the right brown. The paper has the right chain lines when you hold it up to the window.

But the ink sits on top of the fibers instead of biting into them.

Real iron gall ink, two hundred years old, eats into paper. It corrodes. It leaves a halo. This ink just lies there, flat and polite, like it's been painted on with a fine brush.

Because it was.

"Jonah," you say quietly. "Can you come here?"

He leans over your shoulder. You show him through the loupe.

"Huh," he says. "I've dusted that case a hundred times."

"Whoever did this is good." You set the letter down very carefully. "Really good."

Better than good. There's something about the strokes, the rhythm of the hand, that makes the back of your neck prickle. You've seen hands like this before. In a cramped studio over a laundromat, a long time ago.

You shake it off.

"I need to go home," you say. "Get clothes. My laptop. Talk to my roommate before she calls the police."

"Take a car. Bram's orders. A day driver's waiting out front." He hesitates. "And come back before dark, okay, Ethan? First night as Favorite and you're not in the house when Her Majesty wakes up? That's going to cause talk."

Meera opens the door before you've finished turning your key.

She's in scrubs with her hair half out of its clip, and she grabs you by the shoulders and looks you over like you've come in on a stretcher.

"You're alive."

"I'm alive."

"You're wearing a ring." She grabs your hand. "That's a big ring. Is that a real ring? Did you join a cult? Did you get married to a cult?"

"It's a work ring."

"That's not a thing."

You sit her down on your secondhand couch and tell her. Most of it. The auction, the alley, the house on the hill. You leave out the mirror because you don't know how to say it without sounding unwell.

When you're done, Meera stares at you for a full ten seconds.

"So she's rich, she's weird, she's very pale, and she's paying you a fortune to catch art thieves in her creepy mansion."

"Basically."

"And she doesn't eat."

"I haven't seen her eat."

"Ethan." Meera rubs her face. "Babe. I've worked nights for six years. Everybody's pale. That's not a red flag, it's a schedule." She points at you. "The red flag is she sent goons after you."

"Lysander sent goons. She stopped them."

"Ooh. So she's the hot dangerous one, not the ugly dangerous one. Great. Love that for you."

You laugh, and it surprises you how much you needed to.

You pack a bag. Clothes, chargers, your good loupe, your father's old sable brush that you never use and never leave behind. Meera makes you promise to text every three hours. You promise.

When you go to the door, there's an envelope on the mat.

It wasn't there when you came in. You'd have stepped on it.

Plain cream paper. No stamp. Your name on the front in neat black capitals.

Meera is in the kitchen. You open it.

One line, same black capitals.

FAVORITES DON'T LAST. ASK ABOUT FLORIAN.