Page 58

He nodded, soddenly. “Et elle m’aime de trop, aussi . . . ma pauvre Rebecca.”

Realizing that we had apparently reached the French-speaking portion of the evening, I rose.

“I should go—”

But before I could get any further, either by word or deed, I found that Ivan’s hand had already knitted itself deep into my hair, yanking downward. I hissed with pain, as the rest of me was quickly forced to follow.

“Release me,” I spat, fighting to keep my legs from buckling.

“Oh, I think not,” Ivan returned, almost civil—yet the pressure, as he lowered himself into my former seat, only increased. “On this particular occasion, I believe that you will rather stay and play the good host for my sake, angelic Mikela—always remembering who first gave you that position, and why. Stay, and be . . . gracious.”

So, realizing that cool reason would be manifestly useless in the face of such foolishness, I sank to my knees—unbuttoned him—

—and was.

* * *

And that was where I found myself: Lurking out in the darkness behind the window, as though I had no home to go to. For indeed, this pane of glass seemed to represent all that separated me from the rest of the human world—so easily shattered, so impossible to mend. With Ivan sprawled in your chair and you at prayer before him, his legs spread wide as your bright head rose and fell in his lap, panting as he thrust himself down your throat, eyes screwed shut.

The image rocked me back, like a knife-thrust to the stomach. That he would do this to Rebecca, given my feelings for him (and her), surprised me not at all. But that you would participate . . .

“And with him,” I whispered. “Him!”

Watching you nurse him, however diffidently, I wanted to knock him aside—and feed myself to you in his place, an inch at a time, until you choked.

To know would surely kill her.

But even as I formed this thought, I saw the study door swing open—at Dovya’s touch—to reveal Rebecca’s stricken face.

After which came the details, unrolling like some sordid farce: Dovya shrieking, hands over her mouth. Ivan, recoiling in mid-throe to spray your hair as you fell to one side, coughing up the rest of his spend onto the expensive Parisian rug. Rebecca, jack-knifing to spit a stream of solid crimson into one hand. And as she swayed toward the window, white and gagging, I saw in one awful rush just how unwittingly right my last prediction had been.

She fell. I stepped to meet her, arms outstretched.

A wave of broken glass bound us together at last as I folded her to me, her blank, burst-blood-vessel red gaze assuring me she had—at least—been spared the horror of my tears as her last sight.

* * *

Ivan I left in the study, drinking himself into a stupor, but it was only after a lengthy search that I discovered Grendel’s latest hiding-place. The closer I drew to the fabled old wing, the more I noticed a ceaseless muffled whine emanating from somewhere beyond the wall . . . the wall behind which, I knew, lay the abandoned ruins of my former laboratory.

I unbarred the door and opened it, darkness swallowing my light like a giant’s open mouth. But as my eyes grew sharper, I heard the sound I’d followed peak and change into muffled sobs. And a stench grew, something I hadn’t smelled since my nights in the local churchyard, collecting scraps from which to fashion my wretched “child.”

Grendel sat there, cradling Rebecca’s corpse and rocking in mourning, his back to the far wall. Setting my candle carefully down near the door, I knelt beside him.

“Give her to me, Grendel,” I told him, quietly. “Let me bury her, for

God’s sake. Why did you take her, in the first place? She’s dead; tuberculosis would have soon seen to that, if the shock hadn’t.”

He stared at me, then whispered: “How can you be so heartless?”

“I think,” I replied, slowly, “that I may well have been born that way.”

We sat in silence, then, while he spent some long time studying the eerie way Rebecca’s slack mouth seemed to smile, as though in sleep.

“I tried,” he murmured to himself. “I am my father’s son, and that must surely count for something. But I cannot, cannot—”

“Cannot what?”

Tears coursed from his mismatched eyes. “I cannot . . . make her breathe. Again.”