She turned to the next page and got to the first entry. It was in French. She’d never studied French longer than a few years at school, so she didn’t have a clue what was written there. Like she had with her mother’s words, she traced her finger over the letters. As she did, Daisy was hit with a myriad of images and sounds, confusing and coming all at once.

A marketplace, a blond-haired young woman, blood dripping from a knife, a scream, and sobbing. Daisy closed the diary quickly, and the sounds and images stopped. She tried to catch her breath. Her heart was hammering like she’d done a ten-mile run.

“What is going on?”

No one else could open the notebook, apparently, but Daisy could, and she’d been assaulted by sounds and images she couldn’t understand.

Daisy felt a breeze across the back of her neck, as she had in her bedroom, and then a whisper in her ear said, “Look at her through my eyes. Save her.”

“Save her? Victorija? Victorija doesn’t need saving. People need to be saved from her,” Daisy said to the apparently empty room.

The breeze returned and flipped open the notebook to the first entry. Was Daisy brave enough to pick it up again?

She turned her eyes back to the open pages, and what she saw shocked her. The once-unreadable French was now in English. Daisy’s stomach dropped to her toes. The notebook must be enchanted. She could read the title of the first entry in the notebook: Monsters are made, not born.

Surely Angele couldn’t be talking about Victorija? From what she’d heard about her from the Debreks and others, Victorija was a cruel vampire who revelled in terror. Angele clearly wanted her to read this notebook, but she had to think.

She heard her granny shout from downstairs, “Are you okay? I heard talking.”

“I’m just coming down, Granny.”

Daisy put the notebook back in the chest with the other letters and carried it from the room. She might be hesitating now, but Daisy knew she had to read that notebook.

Later.

* * *

Victorija strode into her castle apartment and pulled her jacket off. That wasn’t enough, so she ripped open the buttons of her white shirt. She felt hot all over and like ants were crawling under her skin.

She caught sight of herself in the mirror across the room. What had happened to her? Victorija always prided herself on her dapper appearance, but now she looked like an unkempt wild animal. Eyes red, clothes ripped open, her blond hair wild and messy.

Victorija walked over to the mirror and looked at herself silently. She was disgusted at the state she had let herself get into.

“All you had to do was take her blood.”