But these lives. Leah knew them. They were the first she’d ever felt, some even before her own. They tasted the same, too: despair, grasping loneliness, the hard determination to never be forgotten, to never be ignored—with the underlying theme of look at me, look at me, LOOK AT ME! I am important, you CAN’T LEAVE ME.
She wasn’t just pregnant. She was pregnant with her mother.
Beside her, Archer growled out another snore, then muttered, “Leave me ’lone with all the fish.” Good. No point in both of them lying wakeful at oh-God-thirty in the morning. Nor was she ready to let him know she was going to give birth to his mother-in-law.
Let’s think about that again. Really think about it. I. Am. Pregnant. With my mother.
????????????
All right. Try it again. We deal with the unknown (and the severely strange) by making it known, we deal by learning about it. So. In the history of humanity, this can’t be the first time this has happened. There’s precedent. There will be case histories you can look up. And even if there aren’t, you aren’t alone. Archer and a dozen Drakes will help you.
Nope. Still no good. Because it didn’t matter if there was a precedent. It didn’t matter if this happened to someone else three hundred years ago. It was happening to her, right now, and she was the one who had to face it. She was destined to swell like a bullfrog, endure edema and hemorrhoids and morning sickness, the tedium of multiple doctor visits, the cravings, the restrictions, the hormonal shifts, the stress and pain of labor and delivery. And at the end of all of it, she would give birth to her worst enemy.
She put her hands on her belly and laid awake until the sun came back.
SEVENTEEN
AUGUST 1875
OSTERBRO, COPHENHAGEN, KINGDOM OF DENMARK
Death, the last guest, was coming, but he’d been the one to open the door. He wondered if they would carve the truth (here lies Hans Christian Andersen, who fell out of bed and never recovered)
on his tombstone.*
He decided they wouldn’t. Or, worse, they would carve their truth on his tombstone. People who read his stories thought they knew him. In the beginning, he had found it droll. But as time went on, it became less amusing and more depressing. And he had never been one to need any help succumbing to melancholy.
He imagined a conversation with the tombstone committee: “Let us keep things as simple as we can. Name and dates, I think.” Then he imagined the gentle arguing that would ensue.
They would say, “So humble, even though you’re of nobility,” to the son of an illiterate washerwoman.
They would describe him as “A weaver of tales!” though it was nothing so profound (though in his youth he had apprenticed to an actual weaver).
They would say “A born scholar!” about a man whose school years were the worst, most hateful years of his life.*
And “A national treasure!” to a man whose works sold poorly until they were translated into other languages.
And “You would have made a fine husband!” to a man who only ever fell in love with women he could never have.
And “But such a gift with children! What a wonderful father you would make!” to a celibate.
Nobody knows me. Nobody at all. This thought, this yearning to be known, remembered, had been with him as long as he could remember. But nothing he did made any difference. They read his stories and created their own vision of him in their minds, one that bore little resemblance to the actual man. Perhaps that was a blessing. Was it the worst thing in the world that he had been turned into a character in his own stories?
Well. Yes. Because he wasn’t a fairy-tale creature, damn it all, and he had no interest in disappearing into the pages of his own books.
The bright spot in the mess was that he made time to meet with the composer to discuss the music for his funeral. The composer had been surprised—usually people consulted him after the death—and a little taken aback at his calm practicality. “Most of the people who will walk after me will be children,” he’d told the bemused music teacher, “so make the beat keep time with little steps.”
It seemed the least he could do, a phrase he normally detested (Nothing is the least one could do.). A last thing to do for children who were never his, honoring a life he never had.
EIGHTEEN
“Could you repeat that? You did what with his head?”
“I stuffed his mouth with garlic. Pay attention.”
Jason checked his notes. Yes. He’d heard her correctly. His boss would scream, but his conscience demanded the next question: “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a lawyer present?” Because you need one. In five years on the job, I have never seen a suspect more in need of legal assistance. And I am including the guy who killed his accountant with a harpoon.
“No lawyer!” The witness/suspect sat bolt upright, though that might have been because the chairs in the interview room were designed by masochists who assumed everyone loved back cramps. “I’m guilty.”
It certainly looked that way. He’d come upon the scene and taken it all in before he even had his ID out. The victim, naked and in pieces. The witness, gloved and wearing old clothes she wouldn’t care were ruined. The grave she’d been digging in the salsa garden. The blooming pink roses behind her, as well as the bright yellow boots on her feet (grave digging = muddy) had been the perfect surreal touch.
The matter-of-fact neighbor who’d called 911 summed it up quite well: “Y’know how when people find out a killer lived in the neighborhood, they’re all ‘But they were so quiet and nice!’? Yeah, not these guys. They’re both fucking crazy. And loud. But mostly with the crazy.” Jason’d written it down verbatim. Too good to paraphrase.
She’d certainly been chatty on the way to the station, waiving Miranda and bitching about the traffic. She was a petite brunette with hair that had been slicked back with so much product, he could almost see his reflection in the top of her head when he handcuffed her. Old jeans, faded paint-spattered T-shirt, no jacket, and those cheerful yellow boots. Hazel eyes, freckles. Small and wiry and she looked adorable, which made sense. Most murderers didn’t look dangerous until they’d gone ahead and taken a life. Sometimes not even then. He’d learned that two weeks into the job.
“So there’s no point in calling a lawyer,” she finished.
“There is, because—”
“No lawyer, flatfoot!”
“What year do you think it is? That is not sarcasm, by the way. That’s a legitimate question because I’m not sure you’re, ah, cognizant.”
“I’m plenty cognizant. It’s 2017, which is just ridiculous given what I had to do this morning.”
“Early this morning, in fact.” He’d gotten the call at 6:37 a.m.
“Well, yeah. I couldn’t kill him at night, obviously.”
I can hear the italics when she talks. “Is that why you drove a stake through his torso?”
“No! I mean, I’m the one who staked him, but I was aiming for his heart. It wasn’t like in the movies,” she admitted.
He sympathized. “Few things are.”
“It was really hard to get it in there.”
“I hear that a lot.”
“I practiced on all those mannequins for nothing!”
“That’s a new one, though.” Jason wasn’t a doctor, but he was pretty sure her blade caught on a rib, which was great news since protecting the heart is their job. But in the end, it made no difference. Despite the miss, the victim had rapidly bled out.
“It was so fast! It was like his body was a garden hose and he was spraying his blood everywhere.”
He checked his notes again. “And you did these things because you thought he was a vampire.”
“Yes.”
“Despite the fact that he had never, not once, per your statement, tried to suck your blood or turn into a bat—”
“Oh, please, that one’s just pure myth.”
“—or burn in sunlight?”
“I said he was a vampire, not that he is one.” She was all irritability and wrath in sunshine yellow boots. “Don’t you know anything?”
“Clearly not.”
“He drank all my blood in a past life.”
“So this was payback?”
“Yes.” This with the expression of “someone’s finally catching up” on her face.