Myrnin knew she was referring to Samuel Glass, the man she had asked him countless times to bring back from the grave. And he had a faint idea of just how she had done it on her own, but he expelled the thought quickly from his mind as he began taking care of the more urgent matter in front of him.

"Amelie," he said in a hushed tone, shaking her small shoulder gently. She did not respond. The smile upon her lips was haunting. "Amelie," Myrnin repeated, shaking her harder now.

He looked down at her wrists, remembering she had been bleeding. His face wrinkled in disdain and empathy at two silver coins that had been so crudely keeping open the self-inflicted wounds in her arms. Myrnin pulled his sleeve over his hand and tore the coins from her arm, throwing them across the lab with a hiss.

This was not Amelie.

Her poise was gone, lost, perhaps, in the wind that was raging outside this very moment. Lost in the cemetery she came from. It had been someone else who had opened the portal, someone else who had no idea what control was. Amelie was blinded by her love for Samuel; she didn't know what she was getting herself into.

Amelie was strong, held together by time and ice, and would never resort to such desperate measures. She understood that Samuel was long gone. Surely, it had been so long that she didn't remember how to—

Suddenly, she stirred. Her eyes shot open and her irises were no longer a cool gray, but crimson. Her lips twisted up in a menacing grin, showing off her sharp fangs.

For a split second, she was frozen in that state. But then, she saw Myrnin sitting next to her; Amelie sat up in a smooth motion too fast for even Myrnin to see and took his wrist in her hands and brought it to her mouth. He didn't resist her when she bit into his; he would not deny her blood when she so obviously needed it.

Once Amelie had drunk her fill, she laid back down on the floor and closed her eyes while she inhaled deliberately, her abdomen rising and falling slowly as she did so.

Tears slipped between her closed lids and fell into her hair that already had several dead leaves tangled in the locks and matted in places with dried blood. She pressed the back of her hand on her forehead and sighed deeply.

"You kept it from me," she said, her words hardly more than a whisper. "You, my oldest friend, hid this away when I could have used it the moment his eyes closed on me."

Myrnin blinked, but his face remained expressionless. He knew what she was talking about and there was no use keeping it a secret. Amelie knew of his betrayal.

"It was for your own good."

Her eyes flashed open and suddenly she was standing. "'For my own good?'" she hissed down at him. "I was dead inside!" she screamed, her voice beginning to shake with emotion. "I asked you to bring him back. I asked you to do what you did best—your science—and bring back my Samuel. And you disobeyed my wishes by hiding those instructions from me!"

Amelie reached into a pocket in her dress and took out a folded piece of yellowed paper and threw it onto his lap. Myrnin didn't need to look at it to know that it was the instructions she had been referring to.

Myrnin kept his composure and said to her calmly, "It's not science, Amelie. What you have done is far beyond the realms of science," he said quietly. "And I refused you for a reason: reanimation comes with dire consequences; it's never a good idea to resurrect the dead."

"I need to see him," she breathed, listening to her thoughts rather than Myrnin's warning. "I left him," she said, realization flashing in her eyes. "He'll be in the cemetery."

A portal opened—and this one Myrnin knew had been opened by Amelie, not because she had done it standing before him, but because he could sense that tangible flare of icy power that always accompanied Amelie's conjuring of portals—and the wind picked up in Myrnin's laboratory again. The leaves that had hidden themselves in between furniture were torn away from their habitation and forced to twirl about in the breeze. Loose papers joined them in their frenzy and spun about in the lab.

Before Amelie could step through the portal, Myrnin shut it with a snap. "No," he said. "You can't."

She spun around, her composure having returned somewhat, she raised her brows at him and glared menacingly. "Excuse me?" she snarled, her voice dangerously quiet. "First you refuse me my Samuel and now my access to my portals?"

"Amelie," Myrnin said seriously, "raising the dead is not a natural thing. I implore you, my friend, see reason. Please, do not return to him tonight." He was still sitting on the floor with his legs folded underneath him, blood trickling out of his arm where Amelie had bitten him. She must have noticed too, for next, she frowned and knelt down next to him and kissed the wound gently, an apologetic look in her eyes. The flesh closed, and the blood stopped flowing.

"Wounds inflicted by an Elder's fangs must be healed by their touch, you recall," she said to him absently, seeming to have forgotten Samuel momentarily. "Something I have found very trying as time progressed." She rose, looking graceful as ever despite her assaulted appearance. "Fetch me some blood, Myrnin. I will require some human nutrient if I am to proceed."

It was strange. As if she did not recall what had happened so recently. Amelie was back to being Founder, not a lovesick woman, broken by heartache.

And then, her eyes went wide and her irises swirled with black. Her head was thrown back by an invisible force and her voice came out distorted, a mix of voices—all demonic and filled with anger: "Those who play in my court shall perish. Be warned, my foolish children. One who touches the Underworld will be forever cursed."

It was as if the Devil himself was speaking through Amelie and all Myrnin could do was stare.

But it left her as soon as it had come. Amelie's eyes were cool gray and when she spoke again, her voice was as it had always been.

"Well? Will you not serve me? I desire human supplement."