“It seems I have your full attention. Good. Now, tell me, have you ever heard of upyr? Vampir? Shrtriga?” The words rolled and hissed in his mouth. They reminded me, for no clear reason, of the trip I’d taken with Mr. Locke to Vienna when I was twelve. It’d been February and the city was shadowed, wind-scoured, old. “Well, the name hardly matters. I’m sure you’ve heard of them in general outline: things that creep out of the black forests of the north and feast on the lifeblood of the living.”
He was removing the glove from his left hand as he spoke, tugging on each white fingertip. “Lies spread by superstitious peasants, in the main, repeated in story papers and sold to Victorian urchins.” Now his hand was entirely free, fingers so pale I could see blue veins threading them. “Stoker should’ve been summarily executed, if you ask me.”
And he reached toward me. There was perhaps half a second before his fingertip touched me when all the fine hairs on my arm stood straight and my heart seized and I knew, in a scrabbling, animalish way, that I shouldn’t let him touch me, that I should scream for help—but it was too late.
His finger was cold against my skin. Beyond cold. An aching, burning, tooth-hurting absence of heat. My body warmth drained desperately toward it, but the cold was ravenous. My lips tried to form words but they felt numbed and clumsy, as if I’d been out walking in freezing wind.
Havemeyer made a soft sighing sound of deepest contentment, like a man warming his hands by the fireplace or taking his first sip of hot coffee. He pulled his finger reluctantly away from my skin.
“Stories always have a grain of truth, don’t you find? I believe that was the principle that kept your father trotting around the globe, digging up scraps for his master.” His cheeks were flushed an unhealthy consumptionish crimson. His black eyes danced. “So tell me, my dear: How did you find out about the fractures?”
My lips were still numb, my blood sluggish and congealed-feeling in my veins. “I don’t understand what—why—”
“Why we’re so concerned? Cornelius would give you a speech about order, prosperity, peace, et cetera—but I confess my own purposes are not so lofty. I merely wish to preserve this world as it is: so accommodating, so obligingly full of undefended, unmissed people. My interest is therefore personal and passionate. It would be wise to tell me everything you know.”
I looked at him—still confidently smiling, running his bare thumb across his fingernails—and was more afraid than I’d ever been in my life. Afraid I would drown in a sea of madness and magic, afraid I would betray someone or something without really knowing how, but mostly afraid he would touch me again with those cold, cold hands.
A sharp rap at the door. Neither of us made a sound.
Mrs. Reynolds entered anyway, her shoes tapping officiously across the tile. “It’s time for her bath, I’m afraid, sir. Family are asked to return later.”
Barely contained rage curled Havemeyer’s lips away from his teeth. “We’re busy,” he hissed. In Locke House, it would’ve been enough to send nearby staff scurrying for cover.
But this was not Locke House. Mrs. Reynolds’s eyes narrowed, lips pursed. “I’m sorry, sir, but regular schedules are very important for our patients here at Brattleboro. They’re easily agitated and require a sober, predictable life to keep them calm—”
“Fine.” Havemeyer breathed deeply through his nose. He shook out his glove and pulled it over his bare hand. Something about the showy slowness of the gesture made it obscene.
He leaned toward me, hands crossed atop his cane. “We’ll talk more soon, my dear. Are you free tomorrow night? I’d hate to be interrupted again.”
I licked my slowly warming lips, tried to sound braver than I felt. “Don’t—don’t you have to be invited in?”
He laughed. “Oh, my dear, don’t believe everything you read in the story papers. You people are always trying to invent reasons for things. Monsters only come for bad children, for loose women, for impious men. The truth is that the powerful come for the weak, whenever and wherever they like. Always have, always will.”
“Sir.” The nurse stepped toward us.
“Yes, yes.” Havemeyer flapped a hand at her, smiled a hungry smile at me, and left.
I listened to the merry tapping of his cane down the halls.
Halfway through my bath I started to shake and couldn’t stop. The nurses fussed and rubbed warm towels down my arms and legs, but the shaking only intensified and then I was crouched naked on the tile floor, holding my own shoulders to keep them from shattering. They took me back to my room.
Mrs. Reynolds lingered to fasten the cuffs around my goose-fleshed arms. I seized her hand with both of mine before she could finish.
“Could I—do you think I could have my book back? Just for tonight? I’ll be good. P-please.” I wished I’d had to feign that stutter, wished it were all some clever ruse designed to lull them into trusting me before I made my daring escape—but I was precisely as terrified and hopeless as I seemed, and I just wanted to hide from the howling thoughts in my head. Thoughts like: Havemeyer is a monster and The Society is full of monsters and What does that make Mr. Locke? And: Bad is dead.
I didn’t really think she would say yes. The nurses had treated us so far like bulky, poorly behaved furniture that needed regular feeding and grooming. They spoke to us, but in the light, chattering way a farmer’s wife might speak to her chickens. They fed and bathed us, but their hands were rough stones against our flesh.
But Mrs. Reynolds paused and looked down at me. It almost seemed accidental, that looking, as if she’d forgotten for a half second that I was an inmate and saw instead a young girl asking for a book.
Her eyes skittered away from mine like startled mice. She tightened the cuffs until I could feel my pulse thumping in my fingertips and left without looking at me again.
I wept then, unable even to wipe the glistening snot-trail away from my lip, unable to press my face into the pillow or curl my head into my knees. I kept crying anyway, listening to the shuffling sounds of women in the halls until the pillowcase was damp beneath my head and the hallways went silent. The electric lights buzzed and crackled as they clicked off.
It was harder, in the darkness, not to think about Mr. Havemeyer. His white fingers spidering toward me out of the gloom, his blue-tinged flesh glowing in the moonlight.
And then a key scraped and thunked and my door eased open. I spasmed against my restraints, heart seizing, already seeing his black-suited form edge into the room, his cane tap-tapping nearer—
But it wasn’t Havemeyer; it was Mrs. Reynolds. With The Ten Thousand Doors tucked beneath her arm.
She scurried to my bedside, a furtive white smear in the darkness. She tucked the book beneath my sheets and unfastened my cuffs with fumbling fingers. I opened my mouth but she shook her head without looking at me, and left. The lock snicked behind her.
I just held it, at first; rubbed my thumb against the worn lettering, inhaled the faraway, free scent of it.
And then I edged into the slanting moonlight, opened the book, and ran away.
Chapter Four
On Love
Love takes root—Love takes to the sea—The simultaneously predictable and miraculous results of love