"Yes."
I lift my head and stare at him.
"They are not real," I say.
"Yes."
"As a vampire, I could see through my illusions, and that kept me going all these years, but as a human I couldn't see what was real and what wasn't. I was too weak."
"You create what you want. You always have. If you don't like it, you can always leave."
He speaks with gentle passion. "Don't say it, Sita."
But I have to. I feel as if I can see through him. Now I understand why he never went out. Why he never met my friends or spoke to anyone besides Kalika and me. Why I had to do everything with my own hands. Between us, they were the only pair of hands we had.
"You're not real," I say.
He steps out of the shadows. His face is so beautiful.
"It doesn't matter, Sita. We can pretend it doesn't matter. I don't want to leave you."
My body is a chalice of misery. "But you're dead," I moan.
He comes close enough to touch me. "It doesn't matter."
No tears fall from my face. Dry sobs rack my body. They are worse than moist tears, worse because they are the evidence of evaporated grief, and I have only these to show to this silhouette of a boyfriend who stands before me now. This lover who can only love me as I deem myself worthy. No wonder he turned against me when I turned against him. He is a mirror on the tombstone. The film of black dust clears, and I see in the mirror that I have slowly been burying myself since I first came up the stairs of this house and heard the knock at the front door.
Who is it? Your darling. Open the door.
"I can't keep this door open," I whisper.
He touches my lower lip. "Sita."
I turn my head away from his hand. "No. You must go back."
"To where?"
"To where you came from."
'That is the abyss. There is nothing there. I am not there."
A note of quiet hysteria enters my voice. "You're not here. You're worse than a ghost. No one can see you! How can I possibly love you?"
He grabs my hand. "But you feel me. You know I'm here."
I fight to shake free of his hand but I just end up gripping it tighter. Yet I do not press it to my heart, as I used to. His hand is cold.
"No," I say. "I know you're not here."
He lightly kisses my finger. "Do you feel that?"
"No."
"You lie."
"You are the lie! You don't exist! How can I make you cease to exist!"
My words wound him, finallythey seem to tear the very fabric of his existence. For a moment his face shimmers, then goes out of focus. Yet he draws in a sudden breath and his warm brown eyes lock on to my eyes. He is not merely a mirror, but a hologram from a dimension where there are more choices than time and space. He is the ultimate maya, the complete illusion. The perfect love dressed in my own grief. No wonder when I met him in the coffee shop he was wearing the clothes he died in. He is nothing but a memory shouted back down the tunnel all mortals pass through when they leave this world. Yes, Ray is dead but I have let him become my own death as well.
He seems to read my thoughts.
His hope fades. He answers my last question.
"I died a vampire," he says. "You must kill me the way you would kill a vampire." He grabs a knife from the nearby table and presses it into my hand. "My heart beats only for you."
He wants me to cut his heart out. I try to push him away, but he holds me close. I can feel his breath on my face, like the brush of a winter wind. Yet now, here at the end, his eyes burn with a strange red light, the same light I have occasionally glimpsed in my daughter's eyes. He nods again as he reads my mind.
"If I return to the abyss," he says, "I'll see Kali there." He squeezes the handle of the knife into my palm. "Do it quick. You're right, the love is gone. I do want to die."
"I should never have been born," I whisper, addressing his last remark.
He manages a faint smile "Goodbye, Sita."
I stab him in the heart. I cut his flesh and his bones, and the blood gushes over my hands, onto my clothes, and over the floor. The black blood of the abyss, the empty space of Kali. But I scream as I kill him, scream to God for mercy, and the knife mysteriously falls from my hand and bounces on the dry floor. The blood evaporates.
His heart no longer beats and I'm no longer bloody.
He is gone, my ancient love is gone.
Out the window, the sun rises.
Taking Yaksha's blood, I pour it into the vial that once held Seymour's blood, the clear vial that I place above the copper and the crystals, between the cross-shaped magnets and the shiny mirror that reflects the rays of the sun directly into Arturo's hidden basement. I recline on the copper and the alchemy begins to work its dark magic on my trembling body. I have to wonder exactly what I will be when the sun finally sets and the process is complete. On impulse I have added to the vial a few drops of blood from Paula's child. The blood of the infant that Kalika covets above all else. I can only hope it does me good.
19
Eighto'clock that evening I sit in the living room of Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins, in the very house Eric longed to return to until his throat was cut. Eric's parents are younger than I would have guessed. Mr. Hawkins can be no more than forty-two and I doubt his wife has reached forty. They must have married young and had Eric when they were barely out of their teens. He is stern faced, but it is a practiced expression, one he wears for his patients. But I see his intelligence and natural curiosity beneath it. She is plump and kindly, fussing with her hands as she constantly thinks of her son. She wears her heart on her face, her eyes are red from constant crying. Their address was in the phone book.
I just knocked at their door and told them I have information concerning their missing son. They invited me in because I am young and pretty and look as if I could harm no one. They sit across from me and wait for me to speak. There is no easy way to say it.
"Your son is dead," I say. "He was murdered last night. I thought you would want to know rather than to be left wondering. Before I leave here, Ill give you the address where his body can be found. He's in a house not far from here." I pause. "I'm truly sorry to have to bring you this information. It must be a great shock to both of you."