I realized I was holding my breath again, and made myself exhale.
“Nothing happened. They waited a long time, and then left disappointed. The pastor was angry—there must have been other exits, and the vampires had obviously fled in fear. Of course, the men with their crude spears and axes weren’t any kind of danger to a vampire, but he didn’t know that. Now that they were warned, how would he ever find his monsters again?”
Her voice got lower. “It wasn’t hard. He must have annoyed them. Vampires can’t afford notoriety, or these probably would have simply massacred the entire mob. Instead, one of them followed him home.
“Carine remembers the night clearly—for a human memory. It was the kind of thing that would stick in your mind. Her father came home very late, or rather very early. Carine had waited up, worried. He was furious, ranting and raving about his loss. Carine tried to calm him, but he ignored her. And then there was a man in the middle of their small room.
“Carine says he was ragged, dressed like a beggar, but his face was beautiful and he spoke in Latin. Because of her father’s vocation and her own curiosity, Carine was unusually educated for a woman in those days—she understood what the man said. He told her father that he was a fool and he would pay for the damage he had caused. The preacher threw himself in front of his daughter to protect her.…
“I often wonder about that moment. If he hadn’t revealed what he loved most, would all our stories have changed?”
She was thoughtful for a few seconds, and then she continued. “The vampire smiled. He told the preacher, ‘Go to your hell knowing this—that what you love will become all that you hate.’
“He tossed the preacher to the side and grabbed Carine—”
She’d seemed lost in the story, but now she stopped short. Her eyes came back to the present, and she looked at me like she’d said something wrong. Or maybe she thought she’d upset me.
“What happened?” I whispered.
When she spoke, it was like she was choosing each word carefully. “He made sure that the preacher knew what would happen to Carine, and then he killed the preacher very slowly while Carine watched, writhing in pain and horror.”
I recoiled. She nodded in sympathy.
“The vampire left. Carine knew her fate if someone found her in this condition. Anything infected by the monster would have to be destroyed. She acted instinctively to save her own life. Despite the pain she was in, she crawled into the cellar and buried herself in a pile of rotting potatoes for three days. It’s a miracle she was able to keep silent, to stay undiscovered.
“It was over then, and she realized what she had become.”
I wasn’t sure what my face was doing, but she suddenly broke off again.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“I’m good—what happened next?”
She half-smiled at my intensity, then turned back down the hall, pulling me with her.
“Come on, then,” she said. “I’ll show you.”
16. CARINE
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.