"You are Kalika's father," I whisper, stunned.
Everything makes sense in an instant. Vampires are sterile, with one another, with human partners. But Arturo was neither a vampire nor a human. He was a hybrid, forged in the Middle Ages, a combination of the two, and I slept with him in a Las Vegas hotel room just before he betrayed me to the government. I was pregnant from before the transformation. In other words, I was still a vampire when Kalika was conceived. Yet she is partially human, and that no doubt explains her lack of sensitivity to the sun. She is the result of a queer toss of the genetic dice, and perhaps that's what it took for a soul of her dark origin to incarnate on earth.
And I assumed Ray was her father.
I'm aware of him at my back even before he speaks.
"I'm surprised you didn't guess earlier," he says.
I turn, still holding the photograph. Ray remains hidden in the shadows, appropriately enough. It is not just Kalika's birth that I suddenly understand. But my new insights, which are not entirely clear to me yet, are ill-defined ghosts that refuse to enter the living body of logical reason. Despair and denial engulf me.
I feel as if I stand in a steaming graveyard with a tombstone at my back. The death date of the corpse is carved in the future, the name scribbled in blood that will never dry. I know the truth but refuse to look at it.
And there is a mirror on this tombstone.
Covered with a faint film of black dust.
"You could have told me," I say.
"I could only tell you what you wanted to hear."
The weakness of grief spreads through my limbs. Ray has become a travesty to me, someone I cannot bear to look at, yet I don't want him to go away. He is all I have left. The graveyard in my mind is littered with hidden mines. I fear that if I move or speak to him, one might explode and toss a skeleton in my lap.
"How did you get here?" I ask.
"You brought me here."
"Does Kalika know I'm here?"
"I don't think so. But shemight."
"You didn't tell her?"
"No."
Putting down the photograph, I take a moment to collect myself. My imagined graveyard falls away beneath me as the tombstone collapses. Yet I am forced to remain standing in this house where Arturo once lived.
"Can I ask you a question?" I say finally.
He remains in the shadows. "Don't ask anything you don't want answered."
"But I do want answers."
He shakes his head. "Few really want the complete truth. It doesn't matter if you're a vampire or a human. The truth is overrated, and too often painful." He adds, "Let it be, Sita."
There is emotion in my voice. "I need to know just one thing."
"No," he warns me. "Don't do this to yourself."
"Just one little thing. I understand how you found me in Las Vegas. You explained that and it made sense to me, but you never explained how you picked up my trail again in Los Angeles. While I was driving here, you should have been in the basement in this house, changing back into a human."
"It was dark that night," he says.
His answer confuses me. "It's dark every night."
"It would have been dark in the basement."
The confusion passes. "You need the sun to power the alchemy."
"Yes."
"You must still be a vampire?"
"No."
"You must have followed us to L.A.?"
"No."
"Who are you? What did Eddie's blood do to you?"
"Nothing. Eddie's blood never touched me."
"But you said"
"I lied," he interrupts. "You asked me to lie to you. You do not want the truth. You swear to yourself that you do but you swear at the altar of false gods. Let it be, Sita. We can leave this place together. It can be as it once was between us, if you will just let it. It is all up to you."
"You are not ready to hear."
"When will I be ready to hear?'
"Soon."
"You know this?"
"I know many things, Mother."
"Why is it all up to me?" I ask. "You're as responsible for what happened to us as I am."
"No."
"Stop saying no! Stop saying yes! Explain yourself!"
He is a long time answering. "What do you want me to say?"
I place my hands on the sides of my head. "Just tell me who you are. Why you are not like the old Ray. How you found me in the coffee shop." I feel so weak. "Why you knocked at my door."
"When did I knock at your door?"
"Here." I point. "You knocked at that door right there. You said it was you."
"When did I knock at your door?" he repeats.
Of course I have not answered his question. He is asking about time, and I am talking about place. I have to force my next words into the air where they can be heard and understood.
"You appeared right after I changed into a human," I say.
"Yes."
"You're saying that's a remarkable coincidence."
"I am saying you should stop now."
I nod to myself, speak to myself. "You are saying the two events are related; the transformation and your reappearance. That you only reentered my life because I had become human."
"Close."
I pause. "What am I missing?"
"Everything."
"But you just said I was close!"
"When you roll the dice, close does not count. You either win or you lose."
"What did I lose when you returned?"
"Whatis not important. Why is all that matters."
"Now listen to my song. It dispels all illusions... When you feel lost remember me, and you will see that the things you desire most are the very things that bring you the greatest sorrow."
"I have always desired two things," I say, remembering the Lord's words. "For five thousand years I have desired them. They were the two things that were taken from me the night Yaksha came for me and made me a vampire. The night he stole my daughter and husband. I never saw either of them again."
Ray is sympathetic. "I know."
I hang my head and it is now me who stands in shadows. "But when you came into my life I felt as if Rama had been returned to me. And when I became human and thought I was pregnant with your baby, I felt as if Krishna had returned Lalita to me." There is a tear on my face, maybe two, and I have to stop and take a deep breath. "But it didn't work that way. The things I craved so long were my greatest illusions. And they have brought me the greatest sorrow."