SHE LED ME BACK TO THE ROOM THAT SHE'D POINTED OUT AS CARINE'S office. She paused outside the door for a second.
"Come in," Carine called from inside.
Edythe opened the door to a tall room with long windows that stretched the entire height of the walls. The room was lined by bookshelves reaching to the ceiling and holding more books than I'd ever seen outside a library.
Carine sat behind a huge desk; she was just placing a bookmark in the pages of the book she held. The room was how I'd always imagined a college dean's would look—only Carine looked too young to fit the part.
Knowing what she'd been through—having just watched it all in my imagination while knowing that my imagination wasn't up to the job and it was probably much worse than I'd pictured it—made me look at her differently.
"What can I do for you?" she asked with a smile, rising from her seat.
"I wanted to show Beau some of our history," Edythe said. "Well, your history, actually."
"We didn't mean to disturb you," I apologized.
"Not at all," she said to me, and then to Edythe, "Where are you going to start?"
"The Waggoner," Edythe said. She pulled me around in a circle, so that we were facing the door we'd just walked through.
This wall was different from the others. Instead of bookshelves, it was covered by dozens and dozens of framed paintings. They were all different sizes and styles, some dull, some blazing with color. I scanned quickly, looking for some kind of logic, something they all had in common, but I couldn't find any link.
Edythe pulled me to the far left side, then put both her hands on my arms and positioned me directly in front of one of the paintings. My heart reacted the way it always did when she touched me—even in the most casual way. It was more embarrassing knowing Carine would hear it, too.
The painting she wanted me to look at was a small square canvas in a plain wooden frame; it did not stand out among the bigger and brighter pieces. Painted in different shades of brown, it showed a miniature city full of steeply slanted roofs. A river filled the foreground, crossed by a bridge covered with structures that looked like tiny cathedrals.
"London in the sixteen-fifties," Edythe said.
"The London of my youth," Carine added from a few feet behind us. I jumped a little—I hadn't heard her approach. Edythe took my hand and squeezed it lightly.
Will you tell the story?" Edythe asked. I turned to see Carine's reaction.
She met my glance and smiled. "I would, but I'm actually running a bit late. The hospital called this morning—Dr. Snow is taking a sick day. But Beau won't miss anything." She smiled at Edythe now. "You know the stories as well as I do."
It was a strange combination to absorb—the everyday life of a small-town doctor mixed up with a discussion of her early days in seventeenth-century London.
It was also kind of unsettling to realize that she probably was only speaking out loud for my benefit.
With another warm smile, Carine left the room.
I stared at the picture of her hometown for a long minute.
"What came next?" I asked again. "When she knew what had happened to her?"
She nudged me over a half-step, her eyes on a bigger landscape. It was done in dull fall colors and showed an empty meadow in a gloomy forest, a black mountain peak in the distance.
"When she knew what she had become," Edythe said quietly, "she despaired… and then rebelled. She tried to destroy herself. But that's not easily done."
"How?" I didn't mean to say that out loud, but I was so shocked, it slipped out.
Edythe shrugged. "She jumped from great heights. She tried to drown herself in the ocean. But she was young to the new life, and very strong. It is amazing that she was able to resist… feeding… while she was still so new. The instinct is more powerful then, it takes over everything. But she was so repelled by herself that she had the strength to try to kill herself with starvation."
"Is that possible?" I asked quietly.
"No, there are very few ways we can be killed."
I opened my mouth to ask, but she spoke before I could.
"So she grew very hungry, and eventually weak. She strayed as far as she could from the human populace, recognizing that her willpower was weakening, too. For months she wandered by night, seeking the loneliest places, loathing herself.
"One night, a herd of deer passed beneath her hiding place. She was so wild with thirst that she attacked without a thought. Her strength returned and she realized there was an alternative to being the vile monster she feared. Had she not eaten venison in her former life? Over the next months, her new philosophy was born. She could exist without being a demon. She found herself again.
"She began to make better use of her time. She'd always been intelligent, eager to learn. Now she had unlimited time before her. She studied by night, planned by day. She swam to France and—"
"She swam to France?"
"People swim the Channel all the time, Beau," she reminded me patiently.
"That's true, I guess. It just sounded funny in that context. Go on."
"Swimming is easy for us—"
"Everything is easy for you," I muttered.
She waited with her eyebrows raised.
"Sorry. I won't interrupt again, I promise."
She smiled darkly and finished her sentence. "Because, technically, we don't need to breathe."
"You—"
"No, no, you promised," she laughed, placing her cold finger against my lips. "Do you want to hear the story or not?"
"You can't spring something like that on me, and then expect me not to say anything," I mumbled against her finger.
She lifted her hand, moving it to rest against my chest. The speed of my heart reacted to that, but I ignored it.
"You don't have to breathe?" I demanded.
"No, it's not necessary. Just a habit." She shrugged.
"How long can you go… without breathing?"
"Indefinitely, I suppose; I don't know. It gets a bit uncomfortable—being without a sense of smell."
"A bit uncomfortable," I echoed.
I wasn't paying attention to my own expression, but something in it made her suddenly serious. Her hand fell to her side and she stood very still, watching my face. The silence stretched out. Her features turned to stone.
"What is it?" I whispered, carefully touching her frozen face.
Her face came back to life, and she smiled a tiny, wan smile. "I know that at some point, something I tell you or something you see is going to be too much. And then you'll run away from me, screaming as you go." Her smile faded. "I won't stop you when that happens. I want it to happen, because I want you to be safe. And yet, I want to be with you. The two desires are impossible to reconcile.…" She trailed off, staring at my face.
"I'm not running anywhere," I promised.
"We'll see," she said, smiling again.
I frowned at her. "Back to the story—Carine was swimming to France."
She paused, settling into the story again. Reflexively, her eyes flickered to another picture—the most colorful of them all, the most ornately framed, and the largest; it was twice as wide as the door it hung next to. The canvas overflowed with bright figures in swirling robes, writhing around long pillars and off marbled balconies. I couldn't tell if it represented Greek mythology, or if the characters floating in the clouds above were meant to be biblical.
"Carine swam to France, and continued on through Europe, to the universities there. By night she studied music, science, medicine—and found her calling, her penance, in that, in saving human lives." Her expression became reverent. "I can't adequately describe the struggle; it took Carine two centuries of torturous effort to perfect her self-control. Now she is all but immune to the scent of human blood, and she is able to do the work she loves without agony. She finds a great deal of peace there, at the hospital.…" Edythe stared off into space for a long moment. Suddenly she seemed to remember the story. She tapped her finger against the huge painting in front of us.
She was studying in Italy when she discovered the others there. They were much more civilized and educated than the wraiths of the London sewers."
She pointed up to a comparatively dignified group of figures painted on the highest balcony, looking down calmly on the mayhem below them. I looked carefully at the little assembly and realized, with a startled laugh, that I recognized the golden-haired woman standing off to one side.
"Solimena was greatly inspired by Carine's friends. He often painted them as gods." Edythe laughed. "Sulpicia, Marcus, and Athenodora," she said, indicating the other three. "Nighttime patrons of the arts."
The first woman and man were black-haired, the second woman was pale blond. All wore richly colored gowns, while Carine was painted in white.
"What about that one?" I asked, pointing to a small, nondescript girl with light brown hair and clothes. She was on her knees clinging to the other woman's skirts—the woman with the elaborate black curls.
"Mele," she said. "A… servant, I suppose you could call her. Sulpicia's little thief."
"What happened to them?" I wondered aloud, my fingertip hovering a centimeter from the figures on the canvas.
"They're still there." She shrugged. "As they have been for millennia. Carine stayed with them only for a short time, just a few decades. She admired their civility, their refinement, but they persisted in trying to cure her aversion to her natural food source, as they called it. They tried to persuade her, and she tried to persuade them, to no avail. Eventually, Carine decided to try the New World. She dreamed of finding others like herself. She was very lonely, you see.
"She didn't find anyone for a long time. But as monsters became the stuff of fairy tales, she found she could interact with unsuspecting humans as if she were one of them. She began working as a nurse—though her learning and skill exceeded that of the surgeons of the day, as a woman, she couldn't be accepted in another role. She did what she could to save patients from less able doctors when no one was looking. But though she worked closely with humans, the companionship she craved evaded her; she couldn't risk familiarity.
"When the influenza epidemic hit, she was working nights in a hospital in Chicago. She'd been turning over an idea in her mind for several years, and she had almost decided to act—since she couldn't find a companion, she would create one. She wasn't sure which parts of her own transformation were actually necessary, and which were simply for the enjoyment of her sadistic creator, so she was hesitant. And she was loath to steal anyone's life the way hers had been stolen. It was in that frame of mind that she found me. There was no hope for me; I was left in a ward with the dying. She had nursed my parents, and knew I was alone. She decided to try.…"
Her voice, nearly a whisper now, trailed off. She stared unseeingly through the long windows. I wondered which images filled her mind now, Carine's memories or her own. I waited.
She turned back to me, smiling softly. "And now we've come full circle."
"So you've always been with Carine?"
"Almost always."
She took my hand again and pulled me back out into the hallway. I looked back toward the pictures I couldn't see anymore, wondering if I'd ever get to hear the other stories.
She didn't add anything as we walked down the hall, so I asked, "Almost?"
Edythe sighed, pursed her lips, and then looked up at me from the corner of her eye.
"You don't want to answer that, do you?" I said.
"It wasn't my finest hour."
We started up another flight of stairs.
"You can tell me anything."
She paused when we got to the top of the stairs and stared into my eyes for a few seconds.
"I suppose I owe you that. You should know who I am."
I got the feeling that what she was saying now was directly connected to what she'd said before, about me running away screaming. I carefully set my face and braced myself.
She took a deep breath. "I had a typical bout of rebellious adolescence—about ten years after I was… born… created, whatever you want to call it. I wasn't sold on Carine's life of abstinence, and I resented her for curbing my appetite. So… I went off on my own for a time."
"Really?" This didn't shock me the way she thought it would. It only made me more curious.
"That doesn't repulse you?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I guess… it sounds reasonable."
She laughed one sharp laugh and then started pulling me forward again, through a hall similar to the one downstairs, walking slowly. "From the time of my new birth, I had the advantage of knowing what everyone around me was thinking, both human and non-human alike. That's why it took me ten years to defy Carine—I could read her perfect sincerity, understand exactly why she lived the way she did.
"It took me only a few years to return to Carine and recommit to her vision. I thought I would be exempt from the… depression… that accompanies a conscience. Because I knew the thoughts of my prey, I could pass over the innocent and pursue only the evil. If I followed a murderer down a dark alley where he stalked a young girl—if I saved her, then surely I wasn't so terrible."
I tried to imagine what she was describing. What would she have looked like, coming silent and pale out of the shadows? What would the murderer have thought when he saw her—perfect, beautiful, more than human? Would he even have known to be afraid?
"But as time went on, I began to see the monster in my eyes. I couldn't escape the debt of so much human life taken, no matter how justified. And I went back to Carine and Earnest. They welcomed me back like the prodigal. It was more than I deserved."
We'd come to a stop in front of the last door in the hall.
"My room," she said, opening it and pulling me through.
Her room faced south, with a wall-sized window like the great room below. The whole back side of the house must be glass. Her view looked down on the wide, winding river, which I figured had to be the Sol Duc, and across the forest to the white peaks of the Olympic Mountain range. The mountains were much closer than I would have thought.
Her western wall was covered with shelf after shelf of CDs; the room was better stocked than a music store. In the corner was a sophisticated-looking sound system, the kind I was afraid to touch because I'd be sure to break something. There was no bed, only a deep black leather sofa. The floor was covered with a thick, gold-colored carpet, and the walls were upholstered with heavy fabric in a slightly darker shade.
"Good acoustics?" I guessed.
She laughed and nodded.
She picked up a remote and turned the stereo on. It was quiet, but the soft jazz number sounded like the band was in the room with us. I went to look at her mind-boggling music collection.
"How do you have these organized?" I asked, unable to find any rhyme or reason to the titles.
"Ummm, by year, and then by personal preference within that frame," she said absently.
I turned, and she was looking at me with an expression in her eyes that I couldn't read.
"What?"
"I was prepared to feel… relieved. Having you know about everything, not needing to keep secrets from you. But I didn't expect to feel more than that. I like it. It makes me… happy." She shrugged and smiled.
"I'm glad," I said, smiling back. I'd worried that she might regret telling me these things. It was good to know that wasn't the case.
But then, as her eyes dissected my expression, her smile faded and her eyebrows pulled together.
"You're still waiting for the running and the screaming, aren't you?" I asked.
She nodded, fighting a smile.
"I really hate to burst your bubble, but you're just not as scary as you think you are. I honestly can't imagine being afraid of you," I said casually.
She raised her eyebrows, and then a slow smile started spreading across her face.
"You probably shouldn't have said that," she told me.
And then she growled—a low sound that ripped up the back of her throat and didn't sound human at all. Her smile got wider until it changed from a smile into a display of teeth. Her body shifted, and she was half-crouched, her back stretched long and curved in, like a cat tensed to pounce.
"Um… Edythe?"
I didn't see her attack—it was much too fast. I couldn't even understand what was happening. For half a second I was airborne and the room rolled around me, upside down and then right side up again. I didn't feel the landing, but suddenly I was on my back on the black couch and Edythe was on top of me, her knees tight against my hips, her hands planted on either side of my head so that I couldn't move, and her bared teeth just inches from my face. She made another soft noise that was halfway between a growl and a purr.
"Wow," I breathed.
"You were saying?" she asked.
"Um, that you are a very, very terrifying monster?"
She grinned. "Much better."
"And that I am so completely in love with you."
Her face went soft, her eyes wide, all the walls down again.
"Beau," she whispered.
"Can we come in?" a low voice asked from the door.
I flinched and probably would have smacked my forehead against Edythe's if she hadn't been so much faster than I was. In another fraction of a second, she'd pulled me up so that I was sitting on the sofa and she was next to me, her legs draped over mine.
Archie stood in the doorway, Jessamine behind him in the hall. Red started creeping up my neck, but Edythe was totally relaxed.
"Please," she said to Archie.
Archie didn't seem to have noticed that we were doing anything unusual. He walked to the center of the room and folded himself onto the floor in a motion so graceful it was kind of surreal. Jessamine stayed by the door, and, unlike Archie, she looked a little shocked. She stared at Edythe's face, and I wondered what the room felt like to her.
"It sounded like you were having Beau for lunch," Archie said, "and we came to see if you would share."
I stiffened until I saw Edythe grin—whether because of Archie's comment or my reaction, I couldn't tell.
"Sorry," she replied, throwing a possessive arm around my neck. "I'm not in a mood to share."
Archie shrugged. "Fair enough."
"Actually," Jessamine said, taking a hesitant step into the room, "Archie says there's going to be a real storm tonight, and Eleanor wants to play ball. Are you game?"
The words were all normal, but I didn't quite understand the context. It sounded like Archie might be a little more reliable than the weatherman, though.
Edythe's eyes lit up, but she hesitated.
"Of course you should bring Beau," Archie said. I thought I saw Jessamine throw a quick glance at him.
"Do you want to go?" Edythe asked. Her expression was so eager that I would have agreed to anything.
"Sure. Um, where are we going?"
"We have to wait for thunder to play ball—you'll see why," she promised.
"Should I bring an umbrella?"
All three of them laughed out loud.
"Should he?" Jessamine asked Archie.
"No." Archie seemed positive. "The storm will hit over town. It'll be dry enough in the clearing."
"Good," Jessamine said, and the enthusiasm in her voice was—unsurprisingly—catching. I found myself getting excited about the idea, though I wasn't even sure what it was.
"Let's call Carine and see if she's in," Archie said, and he was on his feet in another liquid movement that made me stare.
"Like you don't already know," Jessamine teased, and then they were gone.
"So… what are we playing?" I asked.
"You will be watching," Edythe clarified. "We will be playing baseball."
I looked at her skeptically. "Vampires like baseball?"
She smiled up at me. "It's the American pastime."