Midnight Harvest (73 page)

There is one cloud on the horizon, and that is news I have had from home. I have very few relatives left, as you know. The Great War demanded a high price of my family. And now I learn that my second cousin, Corel, who was studying in Berlin, is missing, and no one seems to know where he is. I wrote to his landlord, who has informed me that Corel went out one evening and never returned. For some reason, the landlord is reluctant to report him missing, though he has been a tenant for more than six years and has always been reliable. Had I not been strenuously advised against it, I might go to Berlin to look for him, but from what I have learned from newly arrived Europeans, asking such questions can be very dangerous. I have decided to insert an advertisement in the papers of Berlin asking for information about my second cousin, and see what I can learn that way. If I discover nothing, then I may have to reassess my plans. I have been promised that there is a place for me with this company if I wish to take a leave of absence to look for Corel, and that strengthens me.

I am so looking forward to seeing you again. I will pick you up at the station, of course. I have an automobile of my own, and I anticipate entertaining you to the limits you will allow. I cannot tell you how touched I am that you will allow me to do this for you, and I once again extend my regards to you.

Most truly,

Druze Sviny

chapter nine

Rowena tossed the last of the Holland covers over her dining table, fussed with it enough to square it; she tugged on the securing cord, tied it in a bow-knot, then turned away. “That’s it, then, at least for now,” she said a bit distractedly and hugged her arms, holding the sleeves of her jacket tightly enough to crush the heavy silk fabric. Her elegant ensemble—a narrow-skirted suit with a nip-waisted jacket in a clear cobalt blue over a blouse of amber lace—seemed out of place amid the covered furniture, as if she were an interloper. At three-fifteen it was still warm, but the first snout of fog was poking through the Golden Gate, all but obliterating the splendid bridge and sapping the warmth from the setting sun.

Around them, the house was chilly, a reminder from mercurial October that winter was coming. With all the furniture shrouded, it made the place appear haunted by objects. In the fading light the vacant walls where pictures had hung looked like blank windows

“Is there anything else to do? What chores are left? I’m almost done here, so what would you like me to do?” Saint-Germain asked from the entry-hall, where he was completing the task of removing all the chalk marks the police had left behind; most of it was gone, but little bits remained in the grain of the wood on the stairs, and he worked at these with a soft cloth soaked in linseed oil, removing every trace of it. He finished this pursuit and tossed the rag into a woven waste-paper basket near the telephone.

“I have to make sure all the windows are closed, and that the back door is securely locked,” she said, a bit of tension coming into her voice. “The Realtor is coming tomorrow, and I want it to be ready to sell.”

“You might find a tenant more readily than a buyer, especially now, with the country in such economic straits,” he pointed out. His charcoal suit and black roll-top pullover were elegant but subtly disquieting, making him one with the deepening shadows, his features seeming paler by contrast, the injury from his dreadful accident still apparent on the left side of his face, like a malign shadow; his small, beautiful hands as disembodied as a magician’s. “That way, you wouldn’t have to give it up entirely.”

“But I want to be rid of it,” she said with sudden intensity. “How can I ever feel safe here again?”

“You might, in time,” he said, concern softening his tone. “Or you may decide that you want to deal with what happened here, after a while. If you still have the house, you’ll find it easier to return to it.”

“I can see the advantage,” she conceded. “But not enough to make me want to hang on to this house. It might as well be haunted, with a ghost that can’t be exorcized.” She looked up at the ceiling. “It served me quite well, but no more.”

Saint-Germain came up to her in the dining room and rested his hands on her shoulders. “Are you truly certain you want to sell it?”

“I’m certain,” she said firmly. “I would want to in any case, but since you’re letting me have your house, I’m anxious to move. I don’t need the reminder of that night—I remember well enough without the house.” Turning around, she looked directly into his eyes. “I meant it: I won’t feel safe here.”

“Do you think that may change? not now, but in the future?” he ventured, thinking of the many places he had given up in the past, convinced he would never want them again, and now would have liked to own.

“It might, but I doubt it. I don’t want any reminders,” she repeated, more emphatically than before. “It’s hard enough being here.”

“Rowena,” he said, with such sadness that she could not bring herself to speak for several seconds.

“Don’t do that,” she said, turning away from him.

“Do what?” There was no challenge in the question, only concern.

“Soften the blow,” she accused.

“I hadn’t intended to; that would not be true consideration of you,” he told her.

“But you think I’m wrong,” she pursued.

He shook his head. “No, not wrong; I know what seems certain now will change over time, and you will see it in another light.”

“When I have lived four thousand years as you have, perhaps. For now, and for the decades to come that I am here, in this city, I want no part of this house. It’s too fresh, the attack. It’s salt in a wound.” She shook her head. “Try to understand—I’m not able to step back from the assault and I may never be. I’m not as resilient as I thought I was, and that’s as hard to accept as anything.” Her voice was small and tight and she pulled a short bit away from him, enough to put a little distance between them, but not out of reach. “You are philosophical, and that’s admirable, but I haven’t achieved your perspective.”

“It took me centuries to come to it,” Saint-Germain said in a voice that caressed her as surely as his hands touched her neck.

“So you can understand why I am not ready to keep this house,” she said.

“Of course,” he responded. “I wish it were otherwise, for your sake; it would mean that you had begun to heal.”

“There is something else,” she admitted. “With you gone, I’d like to have a link with you. Living in your house would provide that.”

“You have it already,” he promised her as he turned her toward him. “And it is more than wood and plaster.” His dark eyes held her gaze for a short while.

“The Blood Bond?” she asked just above a whisper.

“That will endure as long as you are alive in your life or mine.” He traced the line of her jaw with a single finger. “Only the True Death will end it.”

“Sustained on memories,” she said, not quite mordantly.

“On intimacy,” he corrected her, as conciliating as possible.

“Yes; on intimacy.”

She frowned. “Is that enough?”

“It is all I have, my dear,” he said, thinking back to Berlin, a decade ago, and Madelaine de Montalia. “I have found that it suffices.” His wry smile came and went quickly.

“Say what you will,” she murmured. “You’re leaving.”

“Not just at once,” he reminded her.

“No, but in a week or a month, you’ll be gone.”

“As you knew I would,” he said, his tone musical and plaintive.

“All right, I knew. And I don’t want to harp on things. From the first, I understood this was only a brief stopover in your travels, and I know there’s no point in arguing about it. According to you, all stopovers are brief, whether they last two days or two decades,” she said, and put her arms around his waist. “But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Or that I comprehend it all yet.”

“No; it doesn’t mean either of those things,” he told her as he smoothed one strand of her wayward hair back into place; his touch was as kind as his voice.

“So,” she said, the word catching a bit in her throat.

He held her close, his dark eyes on her golden ones. “We’ve parted before.”

“And it took us a quarter century to reunite, in case you had forgot,” she said brusquely, going on less peremptorily. “And a war kept us apart for much longer than either of us had anticipated. That could happen again.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “I doubt I have another twenty-five years to spare.”

“That needn’t concern you if you decide to come to my life; you’ll have an opportunity for many, many things, if you want it,” he said as he stroked her back through the soft crepe jacket of burnt sienna that draped her shoulders.

“I may do that, and I may decide against it. Or I may try it and discover it doesn’t suit me.” She pressed her lips together, then asked, “Would it bother you very much if I decided against your life?”

“Yes,” he said. “But it would bother me even more if you felt you had to remain a vampire for my sake when you would rather not be undead. Not everyone who comes to this life is willing to embrace it, and if you cannot embrace it, you will come to abhor it, and with it, me. I’d prefer that not happen.” He recalled Nicoris and Demetrice, Avasa Dani and Tulsi Kil, Heugenet and Gynethe Mehaut, and experienced a pang of grief for all of them. “If vampiric existence is what you want, then make the most of it; it will delight me to have you among those of my blood. If it turns out not to be a life you can abide, then deal with it as you must. I will not fault you for any choice you make: believe this.”

“Would you miss me then?” The question perplexed her as she heard herself ask. “If I chose to die the True Death?”

Out in the bay the first foghorn moaned, its forlorn notes sounding a mournful clarion to the bank of thickening mist that was beginning to roll over the city.

“I will miss you when I am driving to Canada. I will miss you when I return to Europe. I will miss you every day we are not together.” His embrace tightened a little, reassuring her.

“Then why must you go? Doesn’t it make more sense to remain here? I can’t go with you, not now, but you could remain here; not in the city, but somewhere—at the winery, or Ponderosa Lodge, or someplace not too far away. That’s possible, isn’t it?” Abruptly she stepped back out of his arms. “No, of course it isn’t,” she said, answering her own question before he could speak. “I’m being unreasonable. I know it.”

“I wish it were otherwise,” he said. “I must go because my being here puts you into danger. I must go because I cannot be sure who next will come after me, or what he might do to you to get to me, and that is unbearable. I must go because I’ve garnered too much attention, which will soon lead to the kinds of investigations that I cannot easily endure. And there is trouble brewing, and not the trouble of the White Legion: no, it is their aims carried out on a grand scale.”

“You can’t mean that you think war will start again, so soon?” She was appalled.

“In a year, or two at the most, yes, the war will resume.” He reached out and took her hands in his. “It will not be contained in Spain. War is in the air as surely as rain. The Germans are too eager for it, smarting under their defeat in the Great War, and the French are daring them to attempt it, certain they will easily prevail. The Italians are already harrying Ethiopia, and they will not be content with that. Mussolini may be a popinjay, but his generals are determined men, resolved to re-establish Italy as a power in the world. Germany is worse, with their supposed alliances. Hitler is being cordial with Mussolini so that he need not fear that the South will come against him, and he will have unchallenged access to the Balkans and Greece.”

“Are you certain of this?” Rowena paled.

“Not as certain as I would be if it were writ in stone, but given what has been happening, I believe that everything points that way,” he responded.

For a long moment, both were silent. “This isn’t a good subject for parting,” Rowena said at last, and shivered. “Wasn’t that all settled before? Didn’t enough men die?”

“Enough men died to stop the fighting, but there are more now, and the same issues still rankle.” He looked at her somberly. “That was the trouble. The war never reached resolution. Everyone ran out of men to fight, and materiel to fight with, and so the war halted. But it didn’t end.”

“You say that there is more of the Great War to be fought?” Even as she asked, she could feel the answer within her, and she had a terrible vision of her nephews going over the top onto no-man’s-land.

“It seems so,” said Saint-Germain gravely. “Everything points to it.”

“You’re not very comforting,” she charged him.

“If that’s what you want, I’ll say it will be avoided, that the national leaders learned their lessons back in 1918, and it truly was the war to end all wars.” He held her gaze with his own, and spoke to her in a low, steady voice. “But such condescension would insult your intelligence, and it would peeve you.”

She pulled free of him again, turning on her heel to put more distance between them. “Oh, why are we talking about this? It’s horrid.” She rounded on him once more. “Can’t we talk about something pleasant?”

“Certainly; whatever you wish,” he said, remaining still as she began to pace from the dining room, through the entry-hall, then into the studio and back again. “What would you like to talk about?”

“Do you think that you can put all that behind you?” she exclaimed. “If the situation is as bad as you say, can you ignore it?”

“No, I can’t, not for long.” He held his hand out to her, which she ignored.

“You’re vexing, Saint-Germain.” She clicked her tongue in exasperation, then gave a brittle little titter, her golden eyes sharp with misery. “There are times I wish you weren’t quite so understanding, Comte.”

“Do you want to argue?” He was acutely aware that she did not, that she was dejected and hoped to relieve her despondency with anger. “If this would make parting easier for you, then I am willing to wrangle for as long as you like.”

“I want
something
, but not your indulgence,” she challenged. She began another circuit of the three rooms.