How to Kiss a Vampire novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Sun Test

"The hall has asked," said the elder. "The Count will sit until the first light of day."

Nobody objected.

Ragnar stood with his hands folded and his pale eyes on me, and he did not blink once in nine hours.

Berit slept sitting up against the wall with her hammer across her knees.

Torsten stood at my shoulder all night and did not sit.

At 7:20, the elder rose from her chair.

"The iron over the glass opens from the roof," she said. "No one of the House can touch the cranks once the sun is near. It has always been a human hand."

Every head turned to me.

"I'll go," I said.

Torsten took my wrist.

"The roof will be iced."

"It's copper, and I've done worse."

"Hanne."

"You taught me to ring the bell," I said. "Let me do the one thing I know how to do."

He let go.

I climbed the attic ladder in the dark with a flashlight in my teeth and came out through the broken lantern into the cold.

The sky over the lake was going from black to grey to the color of a pearl.

There was a skin of ice on the copper.

I crawled along the ridge on my hands and knees to the iron cresting I had tied off to four days before.

At each corner of the roof there was a wheel the size of a dinner plate, rusted red, with a hand-lettered tag.

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