The vial lay in its little stone box, and it was as though an invisible ray had sprung from it, pierced Charlotte’s spirit, and demanded every ounce of her attention. The red liquid within gleamed like the richest tomato and the deepest garnet, like the Sun in its first and final moments of the day, like blood at the instant of its welling, before, drying and waning, it became brownish-black.

Could the liquid be anything other than blood, a vampire’s blood? What other reason could the Memories have to put it under here and put Grandfather to guard it? Surely that was the true reason he had retired to this place. In his final madness, Grandfather must have tried to take hold of the thing which he had been set to guard, though thankfully whatever magic lay in the circle surrounding the vial’s raised bed had warded him away.

Even to Charlotte, the blood was enthralling. She longed to touch it, to feel the vial’s chain slip between her fingers, to see the small thimbleful of liquid within splash and swirl in the tiny portion of space given to it. She yearned to hold the thing up to the light, to imagine herself on the edge of a wine-red sea, bathing in an ocean of blood.

Charlotte’s mouth watered. Her eyes dampened. Nothing existed but her and the blood.

She reached for the vial, hand brushing the uncanny text carved on the raised stone block--

A shock spasmed her body, and the lamp went crashing to the floor. Charlotte gasped, disoriented, and took a step backward. What happened? It was as though she had brushed hot metal with bare skin. But…

Out of the corner of Charlotte’s eye, the vial gave off a soft glow, one that flickered rapidly. The glow was only visible now that her lamp lay on its side on the ground, its much stronger light no longer drowning out that of the vial.

The flicker of the vial made Charlotte’s eye twitch. It was somehow irritating. She glanced more fully at it, and the flicker seemed to vanish. Yet, she felt some sort of strain now when she looked at it. Her immediate, rapturous sensation had vanished. Adrenaline still quivered through Charlotte’s body from the shock she had sustained… when touching the stone block?

Catching hold of herself, Charlotte stooped and retrieved her lantern. It scored shining lines in the dusty ground where it fell and rolled, letting its light reflect off the stone below. Some of this dust stuck to the metal of the lantern, and Charlotte brushed this to the ground as she raised the lantern up to better inspect the stone block.

Her first instinct was that the block was some manner of relic, the devices used by Memories to fight vampires, but didn’t those need metal and glass to work? They sent out a kind of special light that wasn’t visible but could hurt vampires, Grandfather had said. He had never mentioned that stone could give off this kind of light also.

Perhaps that described the painful sensation Charlotte felt when she looked at the vial, however. It was similar to the sensation of looking at a bright light, the pain and aversion, though without the visible evidence of that light.

Yes, surely this was Grandfather’s own relic that he had used during his career as a Memory. He must have known he would fall to madness eventually, and had sealed this relic away so that he could not take it up again when that happened. Perhaps that was the very reason he had taken up life on Lighthouse Island, knowing that this underground construction existed and that it could ward him away once he was consumed by madness.

Charlotte’s hand still tingled where it had touched the stone block. She flexed it, then shook out her fingers. It hadn’t been terribly painful, just startling. Tentatively, she reached out and poked the carved words with the tip of her index finger.

A singing tremor went through her flesh, but nothing more. It was more like when she had stepped over the ring than that jolt she had felt a moment ago.

Very strange. The science and power of the Memories were far beyond Charlotte’s understanding. Perhaps the block needed time to gather its power again.

For a moment, Charlotte stood with lantern in hand and felt lost. This was the first time in her life when she was not trapped by Grandfather’s commands, or at least his pitiable weakness. She had the whole world before her, and yet she had no idea what to do or where to go. She could now live among the Rook Tribe, or on the mainland, as she had always wanted.

But was this, this secret under the sea, this ancient handiwork of the Memories, not a matter Charlotte needed to see put right? Here lay a relic of the Memories, likely a powerful one. Before Charlotte chose a new life for herself, she could pay honor to her father, her mother, her grandfather, by returning this relic to the Memories.

Charlotte determined to do this. She reached out and took up the vial on its shining chain. The delicate links spilled between her fingers, and infinitesimal bubbles twirled in the red liquid within the glass. The vial brushed Charlotte’s skin, and she wondered at the way it was warm to the touch.

She closed her fingers over the vial, and at once the subtle discomfort it had caused her vision ceased. In fact, a different and stranger sensation grew in its place. A subtle warmth spread through Charlotte’s body, replacing small aches and pains. The gentle circle of lantern light around her expanded, and faint shades of purple-blue appeared in the stone columns around her which she had not noticed before. The figures carved into those columns stood out to her at distances which had previously rendered them into patches of obscure noise, and the stench of burnt seal oil mixed with putrefied sea-muck on her boots became sweet as roast pork.

A tremor went through Charlotte’s body. Her stomach fluttered. This vial was making her more alive. How had she lived without it for so long? No wonder Grandfather had always been so sour. Having once known this feeling, it must have tormented his memory every waking moment upon giving it up.

She raised the vial to her lips, longing on a whim to taste it. The glass was hot, and smooth, and her mouth and nose bloated with the scent and taste of honey—

A whine filled the air, and then a snap like ball lightning, and Charlotte yelped as a sharp pain seared her lower back. She leaped away from the stone block, startled, and then cried out as she passed through the carved ring on the floor and her whole body convulsed in a seizure.

Charlotte fell forward and to the ground, striking her elbow and her forehead against the floor. She needed to cough, but the wind had left her, and she only gurgled in agony for a moment. She turned and curled to her side, and blood trickled down into her eye from the cut she must have sustained in her fall.

The vial lay on the ground, perhaps an arm’s length away. It had neither shattered nor even cracked.

Charlotte lay there for a long time, catching her breath and waiting for the roiling, pricking waves of sensation to pass from her body. The block and the ring together had hurt her. She was beginning to understand. They did not simply discharge on a timer. They reacted to the power of the relic in her body. It had touched her mind when she had first laid eyes on it, and that had caused the block to react with a startling shock. Then she had touched it and let its power fill her body, too, and the carvings had nearly killed her.

This was a dangerous tool. Grandfather had been no fool when he had locked it up down here.

Charlotte stood, wincing at the pain of a bruised side. She righted the poor lantern that had once more fallen to its side, making sure it leaked no fuel. At least its design protected it from spilling fuel everywhere if it fell over, or Charlotte would have set herself ablaze twice over.

Then she removed the cloth fully from around her face, which she had already pulled out of the way to raise the vial to her lips. The idea of that felt so strange to her now. Charlotte used this cloth to pick up the vial from where it had fallen, then tied up this bundle on her belt.

With no further ado, Charlotte turned her back to the carvings which had warded away Grandfather and nearly killed her, then ascended once more to sea level, fleeing the grim severity of an ancient craftsman’s handiwork.

Then Charlotte did what she had not done in years. She walked up the spiral stairs which took one from one level of the lighthouse to another, past the low-ceilinged supply floor, past her own floor. But rather than continuing to the top, she pushed open a worn, black-painted door and let out years of stale air. She stepped inside and looked around at the room in which Grandfather had once slept, in which those belongings of his which he had not regularly needed still lay. A bed stood opposite the door, some paces away, and it seemed insects had chewed great holes in the quilt covering it. Charlotte paid no attention to this, but shone her lantern on the desk which stood just inside the door on the left.

It was the pattern for Charlotte’s own, smaller desk which she had built many years ago with Grandfather using wood purchased from the mainland. Its varnish peeled, revealing gray grain beneath, but it still stood solid and proud as the day Grandfather had built it, long before Charlotte was ever born.

Upon this desk lay the latest volume of Grandfather’s journal, the fourth such volume, if she remembered what he had occasionally told her. Grandfather had once written in this cloth-bound tome every night before sleeping. That had stopped some time after Charlotte became an adult.

Charlotte’s hand hovered over this latest volume. What had he been thinking, truly, in those last days in which he had seemed to enjoy life? Should she read them? She longed to. Yet, it didn’t feel right.

Perhaps another time. Instead, she opened Grandfather’s desk, where, among rough but well-used writing and book-binding supplies, the first three volumes of the journal lay in oilskin wrappings sealed by wax.

Charlotte unwrapped each volume and looked upon the first pages of each until she identified the oldest one. She smiled, heart suddenly heavy, as she saw how much stronger the pen-strokes had been all those years ago, at the firmer letters of a young man. Yet… was there a careful thoughtfulness in his later pen-strokes which were missing from his younger years, or was that only her imagination?

Well, he wasn’t quite a youth when he had begun these journals, anyway. They seemed to stretch back about thirty years, which would have put Grandfather at middle age when he had begun them. They seemed to begin while he lay in hospital for some injury.

She flipped through the first dozen or so pages. Quite a lot of complaining. Boredom. Foul medicine. Sadistic doctors.

At length, she found what she looked for. “I’ll be out in two days, they say. But not back to Nodinium. No more Memory life for me. They say I’ll need to retire…”

Nodinium. That was where the Memories must be.

Not far past this portion, a handful of pages seemed to have been torn from the journal. They skipped nearly a month of entries. Charlotte wondered at this. By the time the entries started back up, Grandfather seemed to have been fully situated at Lighthouse Island. He made no mention of secrets, nor of his vial relic.

More secrets he had taken with him to the grave.

But Charlotte put her hand to her belt, where the vial lay, and knew that this one, at least, was a secret with which she could be trusted.