“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.