“I’m sorry, Cousin Sage,” Thane said with a sweeping bow. “I was merely hoping to get her blood ready for the Hunt.”
Perfect words, mocking tone. My cheeks reddened. Damn human blood. Never obeyed when I needed it to. I tried to make my skin ivory pale, like that human woman who had just walked past.
“It would be good for all of us to stay focused on the Hunt,” Sage answered. She glanced at the sky, at the track of the moon, the position of the few stars brave enough to shine when the Queen of the Heavens reigned. “One human hour. And then we will have dinner.”
“Dinner?” Thane frowned.
“A ritual,” she said. “Ash’s human needs to eat and we may as well watch.” A devilish grin spread across her angelic features. “After all, he watches us eat often enough.”
Chapter 15
The Killing Room
Ash:
The moon crested the tree line until she hung, full and sweet, in black heavens. She called us to obeisance and the rest of my clan heeded. They gathered in the back garden for a brief ritual. Meanwhile, I prowled the halls, searching for my own version of redemption. I slid a key in the lock, turned the knob, then pushed my way through the door to the study. I thought about opening the louvered wooden shutters, letting in a sultry bank of moonlight, but changed my mind. I preferred the darkness. Besides, I didn’t want to see all the dead things hanging on the wall—all the bright winged creatures inside wooden frames and the animal heads with glass eyes.
The killing room.
Even after a hundred years, the stench of death never left this place: a peculiar odor of potassium cyanide, plaster of Paris and hydrogen cyanide hung in the air.
This was the room where Lily had died.
She came for a party, but got murdered instead.
I pulled open a desk drawer, fumbled with a false back panel, fastened my fingers around a small sphere, then clasped it in my fist. With my back to the wall, I placed the sphere in my mouth, bit and swallowed, ignoring the bitter taste and the foul odor. She would be here soon and that was all that mattered.
The dream melted in my mouth.
“Forgive me,” I whispered to the shadows that began to move and shift, as the room itself began to glow beneath the dream. “I wasn’t always like this.”
“I know, my love,” my wife answered.
She slid into the room, tall and beautiful and whole, her gown glimmering, casting its own light in the darkness. In a few steps, she was at my side, nestled in my arms.
“There was a time when I was invited to the best parties, when my smile charmed all the ladies, both young and old. When I told stories that kept the children up late at night, as we knelt before the Evenquest fires, beneath the stars of home.”
“I remember. Children would run to greet you,” she said, the curve of her smile dazzling, her neck a perfect arc of alabaster flesh. I leaned in to kiss her and she closed her eyes. “They would laugh and jump into your arms.” Her voice was a husky whisper now, a waterfall of words.
I didn’t want to speak. Didn’t want to break the spell.
“You’re not really here, are you?” I said.
“No.” But the smile remained and I could still taste her skin on my lips.
I remembered a dance we had attended in Germany once, long ago. She had worn a peacock green dress and pale human skin, her hair a tower of glistening gold. Everyone had watched her as we both waltzed together over gleaming floors. Then she had tripped, caught her slipper in her gown, and nearly fell. In the confusion, she forgot what skin she had been wearing, and as she came to her feet again, she was now a round-bellied merchant with a swollen red nose and a ragged frock. People around us shrieked in terror.
Monster, they had cried. Doppelganger! Lily and I had fled, laughing, bursting through the doors to the great hall and then sailing up into moonlit skies. For weeks afterward, we had laughed whenever one of us remembered the incident.
It had been her only flaw. Sometimes she forgot what skin to change into.
And now, in the dream, she put her head on my chest. My dear sweet dead wife. Even in the dreams she had no heartbeat. And she was so very pale.
“But the children didn’t always run to greet you.” She was gazing up into my eyes now. Why did the truth grow more brittle with age? She didn’t used to speak like this. Not when she was alive. “Remember? The Boy was frightened of you, the first time we met him.”
I stared into the darkness that surrounded us, wished the morning would come, that the bright sun would devour me whole and that this torment would be over.
“It took a long time for me to woo him,” she continued, “to get him to trust you. There was always a dangerous glimmer in your grin, my love, something hiding between your words. That is what attracted me to you in the first place.”