Chapter 10: The Petition

A suspended member may petition the Chair once, in open session, and she cannot refuse to hear it.

Emlyn found that out in a book.

On Thursday night he put on his best suit and walked up the Hall's shoveled path with me beside him.

I wore my good black work pants and my mother's gold hoops.

Inside, the candles had been lit down both sides, and thirty or so people sat in the pews.

They were pale, well dressed and very still.

A woman by the aisle looked about nineteen and was holding a cane with an ivory handle.

A heavy man with a tidy grey beard watched me with an expression I couldn't read.

Ole sat at the back with his big hands around a mug, and he gave me a small nod.

Ingeborg stood behind the long table, hands folded, in the black wool dress and the cameo.

"Emlyn," she said warmly. "My boy. I hardly expected you."

"Chair." He bowed. "I petition the Hall."

"You are heard."

He walked down the aisle alone and stopped in front of her.

I stayed where I stood, in the aisle.

"I ask for an exception to the Third Bite Law," he said. His voice carried to the back wall. "For one donor. Lavinia Doyle."

"I ask that I be permitted to keep her."

A ripple went down the pews.

"I love her," Emlyn said. "I have told no one that in a hundred and seventy-six years. I'm telling this room."

Ingeborg looked at him for a long moment.

Her face did something tender and awful.

"Oh, Emlyn," she said. "We have done this before."

"We have."

"You came to me for Ruth. On your knees, if I remember it."

His shoulders went tight.

"I told you then what I tell you now. The law is the law because a fourth bite kills. I have seen it."

She spoke gently, to him alone, and to the whole Hall. "I will not give you leave to kill the woman you love."

"Show me one," Emlyn said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"One human who died of a fourth bite. Name her. Show me a grave."

The room went quiet.

"The girl in 1894," said Ingeborg. "Her name was not recorded."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Vampire Won't Bite Without My Yes, and I Keep Giving It from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.