Page 27

III

The night splits around them, giving way like skin beneath a blade.

The other two walk several strides ahead, but now and then, Renata glances back, flashes Sabine the very corner of a smile, as if to say, Good, you are still there.

And she is.

For the first time in her life, she follows without protest, driven on by curiosity, and something else.

There is an echo of the widow to them, not just in their languid motion, but the current in the air, the same aura that caught María’s eye that day in Santo Domingo, the visceral pull she felt at the market in León.

She does not know where they are going, if they are friend or foe, if this is an enticement or a trap. She only knows that they are like her.

It is enough to hold Sabine in their wake, even when they turn away from the city instead of heading deeper in. Even when they pass through the outer gates and head toward the bay and the line of bobbing ships, boots sinking in the sand with every step.

Soon they reach a waiting boat, a wooden ramp, and there—for the first and only time—she hesitates.

It is an elegant vessel, the hull almost new, the sails crisp, hardly weather-worn. But she has never sailed, has always thought a ship a kind of house on water, the deck’s edge a doorway. And yet, when the two reach the ramp’s edge, they simply step aboard. As if it belongs to them. It must.

Sabine slows, waiting for an invitation, but the two strangers have already disappeared from sight, and so she follows, expecting any moment to feel that lurch, that backward pull she first discovered at the farmer’s house, the space gone solid—but it doesn’t come.

The air is simply air. The place where ramp meets deck nothing but wood beneath her feet.

She steps aboard. Up ahead, Hector strolls over to the wheel, and Renata twists her fingers through the rigging and twirls, skirts rippling around her calves.

“Isn’t it pretty?” she says, appearing suddenly beside Sabine. She moves like light, quick and silent.

Sabine looks around. Knows nothing of ships, but it strikes her as too large for only two people. Especially ones confined to night.

“Is there no one else here?” she asks.

“Not at the moment,” says Hector, abandoning the wheel. He strides across the deck, toward a set of stairs that pitch into the belly of the ship.

Renata loops an arm through hers, the gesture so casual, so intimate, Sabine does not even think to fight it, only lets herself be led down into the dark.

A lantern swings from the low ceiling, though Sabine’s eyes do not need the light to see that they have traded the world above for a narrow hall, one studded with alcoves, where hammocks stretch between posts, and belongings lie piled on the floor.

Sabine crinkles her nose at the closeness, the clutter, but Renata draws her on, to the end of the corridor, where a door gives way onto a larger cabin.

A proper room at the front of the ship, porthole windows facing out onto the open bay. A bed, piled high with blankets. A broad desk, and plush curtains, and a high-backed chair. A sofa, where Renata promptly sprawls like a cat.

Sabine’s attention lingers on her, her body small and curved, skin dark and delicate as window glass at night. Hector wanders toward the desk, and Sabine turns to shut the door behind them, only to find her reflection staring back from a polished glass mounted to the wood.

Ten years, and she is as striking as she ever was, her hazel eyes now lit by their own internal light. Her skin has lost none of its smoothness, her hair none of its luster. She hasn’t aged, not since the night María died, and she became—

“Sabine.”

Her head snaps round, startled by her name on Hector’s lips.

She is sure she never said it.

“Don’t look so alarmed,” he says, leaning back against the desk. “Some minds whisper. Others shout. Yours is loud. What amuses me, though, is that your name is louder still.”

“ Sabine, Sabine, it echoes through you like a bell,” adds Renata cheerfully, and she bristles, not just at the truth of it, or their intrusion, but the fact that no matter how carefully she listens, all she hears is the slap of water on the hull, the groan of wood around them.

Sabine tries harder to catch the current of their minds, only to find it is no use.

They are twin patches of deep shadow, the first her heightened senses have not been keen enough to pierce.

“I can’t hear you,” she says, trying and failing to hide her annoyance.

“You are young,” says Hector, lifting a decanter from the desk. “And we are not. But rest assured,” he adds, “I won’t go turning through your thoughts. That would be rude.”

He reaches for a goblet, and pours, a ribbon of red unfurling from the spout, too thick to be anything but blood. The metal scent of it fills the room, the air, her head.

“But your maker should have taught you this,” he says, frowning a little as he hands Sabine the cup.

Maker.

The widow.

Nothing but ash on an apothecary floor.

“She did not,” says Sabine, staring down into the cup.

She thinks briefly of that night, knows that it was wrong.

Can taste the taboo in the roots of her teeth, and so, before she can dwell, or they can hear, she lifts the goblet to her lips and drinks, knowing the blood will clear her mind, wash away everything.

It does—and it doesn’t.

It has never occurred to Sabine to drink from anything but the source, but now, as the liquid pools in her mouth, she knows why.

It tastes of blood, yes, her body soaks it up the same, but it is .

. . thinner. There is no moment of transfer, no point when the life goes from being someone else’s to being hers.

There is no stolen pulse, no borrowed heart inside her chest.

It feeds, but does not fill her.

Still, she drinks. Stops before the cup is empty, though she’d gladly drain the goblet and decanter both.

Looks up to find Hector sitting on the sofa, arms stretched along the back.

Renata melts into his side, and she wonders how long they have been together, to fit like that, wearing space into each other’s bodies.

Envy twinges between her ribs. “You are lucky to have each other,” she says, handing back the cup. “I have always been alone.”

Hector clicks his tongue. “But you are wrong,” he says, sitting forward, and she can see his eyes are not dark, as she first thought—the pupils have retreated, revealing a medley of gray and green, fringed with thick lashes. “Those grown in the midnight soil are never alone.”

“The midnight soil?” she echoes. It is an odd choice of words.

“Ah, you do not know . . . ?” Hector stands, arms spread like a player on a stage.

“Oh, dear,” murmurs Renata, resting her head on her hand. “He loves an audience.”

Hector pretends not to hear her as he pushes the curls from his face and clears his throat.

“Bury my bones in the midnight soil,” he begins, infusing the words with the air of theater.

“Plant them shallow and water them deep. And in my place will grow a feral rose.” He leans down to Renata and cups her face, running a thumb across her bottom lip.

“Soft red petals hiding sharp white teeth.”

He kisses her then, and Renata nips at his lip, drawing blood. He swipes his tongue across the cut, and smiles, before straightening, his attention sliding back toward Sabine.

“ We are the roses that grew in the midnight soil,” he says, eyes bright as candles now.

“Our thorns are sharp enough to prick. We are watered by life, and with its bounty, our roots grow deep, our blooms unmarred by age. In fact, for us, time fortifies, renders us more noble. We are no monster, no mean thing. We are nature’s finest flower. ”

Renata rolls her eyes, playful, but bored. This is a speech she has clearly heard a hundred times. But Sabine cannot hide the hold it has on her, the way she hangs on every word.

“There are other names for us, of course,” continues Hector. “Night walker. Blood drinker. Abomination. Vampire. But those are words crafted by mortal tongues. They are imperfect, incomplete. They lack the poetry, the brutality, the grace. No,” he says. “We are roses.”

With that, Hector sags onto the sofa once more, as if spent.

“A feral rose,” muses Sabine, rolling the words across her tongue. “You are a poet, Hector.”

He chuckles. “Time makes poets of us all,” he says, crossing his ankles, “but I am not so old as that. I did not write those words. I learned them from my maker, who learned them from his.” He strokes Renata’s cheek. “After all, it is a maker’s job, to teach the ones they’ve made.”

He tips his head to one side. “Tell me, Sabine. Did yours teach you anything ?”

An image sparks behind her eyes. The widow, in her shop, plucking the soft white flower from its vase, speaking of freedom, of laying claim, satisfying any want as she crushed the blossom in her hand. The widow, crumbling beneath her teeth.

“No,” she says. “She was already gone.”

“How sad,” murmurs Renata.

“Yes,” says Hector, “that is unfortunate.”

He kisses Renata’s temple, but his eyes hang on Sabine. And though he said he would not go pawing through her thoughts, she feels exposed. Not un dressed, but un raveled, shot through as well as seen.

No, she thinks, imagining the doors slamming shut, not around her body, but her mind.

Can he feel the rebuff, her refusal to let him in? She doesn’t know.

He doesn’t flinch back, or frown, show any signs of registering the rebuke. But the pressure of his gaze falls off. He eases himself out of Renata’s embrace and rises to his feet, turns his back on them both as he fills the goblet and drifts to the porthole.

“It’s time to go,” he says, and Sabine flinches at the dismissal, assuming he means her. Until he turns back, and flashes a rakish smile, showing teeth. “Seville is nice,” he says. “But I think we have had our fill of it.”

So they are the ones leaving, then.

But to Sabine’s surprise, she does not want them to go.

Or rather, she does not want to be left behind, not when there is so much she clearly does not know.

And if that is not the only reason, if there is a small piece of her that longs for company—well, it is nothing but a sliver, compared to her curiosity, her hunger to learn what they are, and how they live, and what they know.

She lets her thoughts ring through her mind, as loud as she can make them, hoping they will hear. And sure enough, Hector nods and says, “You’re welcome to join us.”

Renata sits up, suddenly buoyant. “We can teach you.”

Sabine smiles. There is no need to say yes. Renata is already on her feet, snaking her arms around Sabine’s waist, finding the space and way that she will fit.

“When do we leave?” she asks.

We —a word that feels strange on her tongue. It has been so long since her life was tethered to another’s. A wedding ring, a marriage bed, a ruby like a collar at her throat. But this is different. It does not feel like being bound so much as linked.

“Tonight,” says Hector, leading them back up onto the deck.

Sabine runs a hand along the ropes. “I know nothing of ships,” she admits.

Renata only laughs. “Neither do we.”

“I sailed, for a time,” says Hector. “But it’s been a century at least.”

Sabine frowns. “I thought this was your boat.”

“It is,” he says, unwinding a rope, “as of tonight.”

“We killed the crew,” adds Renata. Which would explain the size of the boat, the number of empty hammocks below. She leans over the rail. “We sunk the bodies with weights, but it’s shallow, and the tide is going out.”

“A good first lesson, dear Sabine,” says Hector, unfurling a sail. “You should always be found ahead of your corpses, and never in their wake.”