The warm desert air gently enveloped the room.
Gisel took another breath, deep, slow, and for the first time in her life that Delia knew, the girl who was always restless looked relaxed.
At five minutes to four, Robin knocked on the door.
“The meeting’s over.
How’s the progress?” Delia opened the door.
Robin looked inside, the tidy research table, Hassan’s Jar standing with its wax seal no longer at its mouth, Gisel sitting in the corner chair with her notebook on her lap and an expression Robin was not sure he had ever seen on any researcher’s face who had ever worked in this museum.
Gisel’s expression was like someone who had just found the answer to a question she had never spoken out loud.
Robin stared at the opened seal.
Then at Delia.
“The seal…” “Opened on its own, Mr.
Robin,” Delia said.
“I can explain it later in the report.” Robin observed the situation inside the room for quite a while.
The old man who had spent decades working among objects that held more history than what was written on museum placards, old enough and wise enough to know when something happened outside the scientific path and when it was better not to ask too many questions.
He finally nodded slowly.
“A written report on my desk Monday morning,” Robin finally said, then closed the door again.
* Delia went home an hour later, leaving Gisel behind, who had asked permission to stay a little longer for thesis documentation, she said in a convincing tone, with eyes that were not entirely talking about her thesis.
Robin allowed it.
Of course!
On the way home, Delia walked with her hands in her pockets and her thoughts moving in two directions at once, toward the fifth scroll and the name Aleksander waiting to be confronted, and toward the research room she had left behind with its warm presence learning how to exist in a world that was not its own.
The evening wind moved from an inconsistent direction, carrying a scent Delia now knew well, hot sand, warm copper, and beneath it, very softly, something new.
Not hunger, not loneliness, not waiting without knowing what for.
Something closer to HOPE.
Delia smiled faintly without fully knowing why.
Then quickened her pace, because there was a blood-red-eyed vampire in her apartment who had a lot to explain, and tonight Delia had no plans to sleep before all those explanations were done.
* “She’s home…” Alexander smelled the change even before Delia opened the door.
Not the desert sand scent that had clung to the outer layer of Delia’s aroma for the past few days when she returned from the museum.
This was more complex, the desert scent was still there, but beneath it was something different.
Warmer.
More alive.
Like a desert that had been dry for a long time suddenly finding rain and not knowing how to respond.
And in its deepest layer, on a frequency only Alexander could detect through the blood contract connecting them, there was something that had never been there before.
Relief…
Not Delia’s relief.
Not a frequency Alexander knew as belonging to that girl.
Something far older, resonating through Delia like a signal passing through an antenna that was not its own.
Alexander put down his novel before the door opened.
Delia entered in the manner of someone carrying too many things in her head and not sure which should come out first.
She removed her shoes with movements slightly harsher than necessary.
She placed her bag on a chair, not on its usual hook.
Her hair was slightly messy from the wind on the way home.
She opened her mouth.
“Shower first,” Alexander said before a single word came out.
Delia closed her mouth.
“Then eat.” Alexander was already standing, walking toward the kitchen with his usual silent steps.
“Then talk.” Delia stared at his back.
“I want to talk first.” “I know.” Alexander opened the refrigerator without turning around.
“Shower first, Delia.” That tone was not loud.
Not commanding in a way that provoked resistance.
More like, a statement that had considered all possible responses and decided this was the most reasonable for everyone involved.
Delia stared at his back for three more seconds.
Then took her change of clothes and went into the bathroom without saying anything, because there were times when resisting produced nothing more productive than following, and her stomach had indeed been growling for a while.
Twenty minutes later, Delia came out with wet hair and pajamas, finding two portions already on the dining table, pasta again, with a sauce whose aroma made her stomach protest why she had not come out of the bathroom faster.
Alexander was already sitting in his chair with a glass of warmed cow’s blood, a habit Delia had come to accept as normal with a speed that, if she thought about it further, might indicate something about her adaptability as a human.
They ate.
The first few minutes in silence, not awkward silence, but silence both actively chose because there was a conversation waiting and both knew enough to know that conversation required them to be in better condition than hungry, tired, and still full of emotion from a long day.
“Hassan’s Jar opened today,” Delia finally said, scooping up her pasta.
“I know.” “You know?” “I felt it through the resonance.” Alexander put down his glass.
“Around three in the afternoon.
There was a shift in the frequency that had been clinging to your aura when you returned from the museum these past few days.” Delia nodded slowly.
“A college friend came to the museum.
Gisel.
She’s the one who…” she paused, considering how to describe it.
“It seems the seal opened because of her.” Alexander did not look surprised.
“Tell me.” Delia told him everything.
Gisel appearing in the lobby, Robin’s permission, the research room, the blue gemstone glowing in a different direction, the seal cracking and opening, Gisel not stepping back, Gisel saying hello to the jar, Gisel not wanting to go home.
Alexander listened without interrupting.
His red eyes were calm, but his hand wrapped around his glass stopped moving at some point and did not move again until Delia finished.
“And you?” Alexander asked.
“How were you in there?
Did you touch the jar?” “No.” Delia lifted her chin slightly.
“I kept my promise.” Something in Alexander’s face moved, very slowly, very controlled, but Delia had been reading this not-very-expressive face long enough to catch it.
Something resembling relief.
“Good,” he said.
Delia put down her fork.
“Now…
it’s my turn.”