I nodded slowly, feeling bereft. There it was, then. I’d always hoped that there was some connection between us, that somehow he noticed me, saw me. And he did, but it was nothing to do with me personally. I was a reminder to him for him. And I could be anyone. He hadn’t noticed me as a woman at all. The weight of loss crushed me, the energy seeping out of me. I wanted to slump my shoulders and trudge home, climb into bed and emerge…maybe never. “I suppose Hetty would be relieved to know you won’t kill me. I’m restraint incarnate. Fabulous.” I laughed miserably, because I meant to be a joke. It wasn’t funny. He didn’t laugh. I wish I hadn’t laughed.
He drew in a breath and released it slowly. His voice was quiet. “Desire is a curious thing, Miss Finner. The hardest thing to learn is restraint. And for my kind, who are used to having anything we want, used to knowing, intrinsically, how superior we are, it’s a hard thing to master. Don’t play with this. With me. Be grateful and move on. Do you understand me?”
I wasn’t sure I did.
12
He led me up the steps and to the balcony, undoing the rope and replacing it. He didn’t follow me in, but went around, showing up in the ballroom several minutes later. Katrina was with her friends, giggling, but I thought I could see the strain the night was having on her, her smile a little forced and not reaching her eyes, her skin pale. And on her arm was a bandage from where Lord Marchant had, drunk from her. The pain of seeing that bandage on her arm was physical, a cramp in my stomach. It was possible someone else had sampled her but I just knew in my heart that he’d done it. She had a handkerchief clutched in her hand and kept dabbing at her forehead.
And then Lord Marchant appeared at her side, gave her hand a kiss, and with practiced ease said something that made Katrina’s friends laugh and giggle at once. She turned up her beautiful face to him, he smiled at her, and he pulled her gently away from her friends and towards the dance floor.
Of course they were beautiful together. I wanted to leave. I hated her. I hated him. I hated my life, and that I was standing here watching this when I so desperately wanted to be her. The dance ended, and he bowed to her. She blushed, of course and fumbled in her bag to get her blade.
Again.
The attendant appeared from the crowd, towel and cup at the ready.
I felt a sympathetic pang in my arm when she pressed the blade to her skin. Blood welled out instantly, and the attendant caught it in the cup, everyone in the room watching with smiles plastered on their faces as if it were the most romantic thing they’d ever seen. Lord Marchant so taken with his soon-to-be Prime that he was drinking from her twice in one night.
I couldn’t look any longer and scanned the ballroom looking for someone to talk to. Mr. Latimer was standing off to the side, next to Lord Dalmaine, who was leaning against a pillar, arms crossed, gaze intent as he watched Lord Marchant drink a cup of Katrina’s blood. He was so intent on watching his friend drink Katrina’s blood that for a moment I wondered if he wanted Katrina for himself, which would really be quite satisfying. Him wanting someone he couldn’t have.
We could start a club. What a miserable idea.
And then Lord Marchant lifted the cup to his mouth, and I didn’t care about Lord Dalmaine or Latimer who’d ruined me. All that mattered was the tragedy of watching him drink her blood and knowing that it would never be mine. Swallow after swallow, and I wanted to throw up. I hated him. I hated this. I hated her and the fact that I wanted to be her despite knowing how deadly it was.
Applause broke out, and the music stopped for the final time. Selections had been made, girls tasted. Some of them, like Katrina, more than once, a mark of favor from their patron. Tomorrow night there would be a confirmation ceremony. The girls would wear white gowns, like brides, the Infinite dressed up as well.
Lord Marchant bowed to Katrina and watched her leave. Lord Dalmaine approached Lord Marchant and clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man. The Council will be pleased with that little display. I told you, drink twice and they’ll know you’re sincere.”
Lord Marchant’s lips were pressed tight together, his expression unreadable. I followed the other girls out, trailing a bit behind as they chatted excitedly with each other.
It was official now.
Katrina and Lord Marchant.
And me? I was ruined goods.
No Infinite would ever drink from me. It was a gift, really. Despite the fact that I felt conflicting feelings of anger and shame. I was a healer. My destiny confirmed. Just a simple healer, I thought, as I left the crowded ballroom and walked back to the Cloisters with the other girls, smiling as they chattered on and on about how wonderful it was and how much fun they’d had. Cutting myself was painful. I should be relieved that I had nothing to contribute to these conversations. And yet I wanted Lord Marchant to drink my blood. I was appalled, disgusted with myself at how badly I wanted that. For him to have a part of me inside him and know that I was keeping him alive. A perverse desire.
Like he’d said. Desire is a curious thing.
Whatever that meant.
I couldn’t wait to take off my dress and go to sleep. Tomorrow I could pack my bag and go home. Back to the infirmary and the next person who needed my help.
Jessica saw me and dropped back so we could walk together. I mustered a smile.
“How did it go?” I asked her, pulling my shawl tighter across my shoulders.
“Well, actually. I was an extra. Sort of an alternate. You know, in case it didn’t work out with….oh.”
My smile was wobbly as I looked at her. “In case someone was rejected? Like me?”
“I’m sorry!” She gave me a one-armed hug as we walked. I sniffed loudly and looked around to make sure we weren’t overheard.
“I didn’t even like him. And yet I’m sad. Isn’t that sick?”
She bit her lip, thinking for a moment. “No one wants to be rejected. I think that’s normal. Don’t worry about it. Tomorrow you’ll feel better. It’s a big night. Maybe some of it’s relief?” she asked, slanting a glance at me.
“Maybe. Thank you,” I said, and smiled at her. “You’re always so nice to me. I appreciate it. Most of the girls avoid me…” I wished I hadn’t said anything. Didn’t want to give her ideas, after all.
“Rebecca, I have to tell you…Latimer chose me.”
“Oh! Congratulations?” Could it be any more uncomfortable?
“It’s fine,” she says, smiling. “My family is happy to have the money. And I’m sure he’ll be good to me.”
Maybe he would, I thought, as we walked back in silence.
Or maybe he’d kill her.
13
Hetty barely said two words to me the next day. Maybe it was stupid of me to hope that she’d apologize or want to talk about the situation, but she didn’t. I’d come home late after the ball, determined to spend the night in my own bed. Before we’d had a chance to talk the next morning, she’d already ordered me back to the Cloisters with headache powders.
In total I saw twelve girls who had headaches after drinking too much alcohol. I looked at the room that had briefly been mine, and all I felt was a sense of relief. I didn’t want to belong to Mr. Latimer. To give my blood to him. And it still didn’t make any sense why he wanted me in the first place. After I gave out headache powders and instructed the girls to stay hydrated, I went back to the infirmary for lunch.
It was oddly quiet when I got there, no sounds of Hetty humming, no smells of medicines brewing or lunch cooking. Her cloak was gone, so I knew she was out, but something just seemed off.
I stepped on glass in the hallway, the crunch of it making me jump. The door to the stillroom was open, jars of herbs and medicines tossed on the floor, the smell a strange mixture of greenery and alcohol. Books were on the floor too, as if someone had come in and pulled every single thing off the shelves.
Fear pumped through me as I rang the bell for a message boy and waited outside, the warm sun doing nothing to warm me. I felt violated.
I spent more time here than anywhere else. I knew that storeroom and those herbs better than anyone except Hetty. Some of them were incredibly rare. How would we replace them? Did we even have a list of what all they were? Surely Hetty would know, and I suppose Lord Marchant could, too, since he supplied us with things from the mainland. But where was Hetty?
The message boy arrived and I hesitated. Obviously the inspector would need to be told; he’d have to come out and look around to see if there was evidence. But Lord Marchant would want to know too. “Go to the Marchant estate and see if Lord Marchant is home. Tell him…tell him it’s urgent,” I said, wanting to keep it vague. The servants gossiped like mad, and news of the break-in would be all over by sundown if we weren’t careful.
The boy’s eyes widened, and I reached out, grabbing him by his shirt before he dashed away. I leaned down to his level. “You are the only person who knows about this. If you tell anyone I requested his presence, Lord Marchant himself will deal with you. Do you understand?”
He jerked his head in response and darted away, leaving me time to think. All that broken glass would have to be swept up. I didn’t want to go back inside yet. I felt like I should wait, let him see the room first before I started putting it to rights. I made a mental list of all the things I would need to do, the most important of which was keeping people out for the time being.
We had a special flag that got hung up if we were treating a contagious disease so that people know to either go home and wait—or if it was really urgent, to go to the house out back instead of coming inside. I put it up now to dissuade people from coming until I knew what Lord Marchant wanted me to do.
It felt like an eternity had passed before Lord Marchant came striding up the path. The wind had picked up, blowing his hair around like a gothic hero. I watched him come closer, hypnotized by the sight of him. Surely he didn’t want me. Whatever he’d meant by his comment about desire, it wasn’t directed at me. Of course not. And I’d seen him drink another girl’s blood last night. I sighed. Couldn’t forget about that.
“What’s going on?” he asked, looking me over for injuries. He carried a brown paper package under his right arm.
“The storeroom has been destroyed. Someone came in and made a mess of it.”
“Why is the flag up?” he asked.
“Oh. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do. I just didn’t want anyone coming in before you had a chance to see it,” I said, and blushed like a fool.
A smile flashed across his lips. “Good thinking. Leave it for a bit.” I nodded, then brushed the hair out of my face. “Do you have any idea what was taken?”
“Taken?” I repeat, still reeling from him smiling at me. He walked into the infirmary, the strength of him instantly putting me at ease. Nothing could hurt me with him here.
I turned on the lights, wanting to keep the darkness away, and then I went to gather the broom and dustpan. He was waiting for me in the doorway to the stillroom, surveying the damage.
“This is where the medicines are kept, correct? And your books.” His tone conveyed how much he disapproved of them. “Hmm. As you clean, write down every herb you identify or anything you discover is missing.”
“You’re so sure things were taken?”
He’s standing too close to me, and I can see the lashes surrounding his dark eyes, feel the heat of his large body.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. Take something and then destroy the place so you can’t tell what it was.” He looked at me, waiting for confirmation, I suppose. I couldn’t think of anything else, so I nodded in agreement. I bent down and picked up a book, scanning the titles that were there.
“Oh. Cromwell’s Guide to Poisons is missing,” I said.
He studied me closely. “How do you know?”
I scooted some broken glass with my foot. “It’s where I found the recipe for avoiding an Infinite’s will.”
“A worthwhile book indeed,” he said, drily. And then he made a hmming noise and asked, “Were there recipes in there for poisons that would work on my kind?”
“I…don’t know. There were poisons and a section on antidotes, but the Infinite were never mentioned.”
“What about vampires? Or creatures of the night? Any title with blood in it…or perhaps Satan? Monster? Do you remember seeing any of those words?”
I shook my head in negation, my mind reeling with the words. They were so negative!
“Damn,” he said quietly.
“Maybe your sister actually was poisoned.”
A short laugh. “I’m not unaware of my sister’s flaws. Poison making her act out seems too convenient an excuse for her mania.”
“Were there other symptoms?”
He scrubbed his hand across his jaw. “She said she didn’t feel well, that she had paranoia and heightened emotions…” His look was inscrutable. “Secrets and more secrets. Miss Finner, you’ll be the most knowledgeable human the island has had in decades. Alistair fed her. And she drank from the vein. The transfusion of that much power certainly would have helped counteract any poison. The only true way to kill one of our kind is decapitation or burning. And if a head wound is severe enough…we need our brains. That doesn’t regrow. Anything else just slows us down.”
“I’d heard rumors of the Infinite sharing blood.”
He shrugged. “It’s unusual. Our blood binds us to each other. I made my sister; my blood is inside her. That’s a tie I cannot bring myself to sever. And as much as she tires Alistair, he is in the same predicament. How do you kill someone you love because they are a part of you? It’s another reason I doubt that it was poison. She doesn’t want Alistair’s attention diverted. She wants it to stay on her. A fresh round of his blood ensures his devotion.”
“Lord Dalmaine is bound to your sister by blood?”
A nod. “As am I.” His expression was forbidding. He turned, giving me his full attention. The effect was immediate, as if there were butterflies in my stomach, just because he was looking at me. “It’s been my sister and me for centuries. Just the two of us. The reason we moved here was for her. At least, that was my motivation. She was going to get herself killed, expose us through her recklessness. There were conversations about ending her life, and that wasn’t an acceptable solution. And so we came here.”
“You did all this for your sister? An island filled with people, hundreds of years of isolation, just to keep your sister alive?”
A slow nod.
“That is devotion.”
“There is very little motivation for the Infinite to reveal our secrets to the humans here. But that’s what our blood does. It makes us care, love even, those we make. I never imagined it turning out this way. All of us here for centuries, cut off from the world. The success of our island is really Alistair’s doing. His charisma brought the others here. They could have stayed behind. There was another of our kind, Stephen, who was organizing a refuge for our kind in the Alps. We could see the writing on the wall, so to speak, that the world was changing and that the only way to survive was safety in numbers…and seclusion.” He looked around the room, but I don’t know what he actually saw. “All these people trapped here…I must have been a naïve fool.” He dropped his head to his hand, rubbing his forehead as though he has a headache.
I was barely breathing, waiting, wanting him to continue talking to me like a confidante, like an equal. But he was quiet for a long moment. And then he reached out, picked up a lock of my hair between two fingers, and rubbed the strands as though examining a costly fabric. “We are unlovable creatures. Why else would we set up a kingdom so far away from the rest of the world? I thought it was to keep my people safe…and then I thought maybe it was to keep humans safe, to subject only a select few to the terrors of our kind,” he said, meeting my gaze. I blinked, but didn’t look away. I felt my body responding to him. Just him talking to me, looking at me, and it was all I could do to stand still. “And the worst of us would be trapped here. Confined and unable t
o rampage and slaughter. But we can’t be alone. We’re parasites. We need humans to survive. And the truth is that no person in their right mind would choose to be with one of us. The monster inside the pretty shell. If you knew, Rebecca. If you had grown up in the world, you wouldn’t look at me like you do.”
“I don’t mean to,” I said. Why deny it when he knows? When we both know how I feel and have always felt.
“I know. It’s not your fault. I should go. The sooner we solve this, the sooner I can leave.”
Something terrible occurred to me. Maybe the hint is in his compassion, his absolution of blame. “Does it work for humans, too?” And the question was hard to ask. I didn’t want to expose myself to rejection. “If you give us your blood, do you feel affection for us?” Because of course what I was asking was, did he have feelings for me?
He dropped my hair, his expression stern. “You don’t see the endgame, girl. You’re the frog that stays in the pot of water, unable to escape your own fate.”
He’s infuriating. “I thought I was the frog that was going to be stung by the scorpion?”
“No. The answer is no.”
Suddenly, there was a knock at the front door. The door opened, but I didn’t see anyone, and they didn’t come inside. And then I remembered the flag.
“Hello?” a woman said, staying outside. I went to the door, my stomach clenching as I realized it was Katrina. Her blue eyes widened at the sight of Lord Marchant standing behind me. The breathiness of the greeting she gave him, the grace of her curtsy…how could I ever have thought to compete with that?
It was so ridiculous I almost laughed.
“How can I help you?” I asked, but I already knew the answer.
“I was wondering if you had anything to make me feel better? I think I drank too much last night. I have the ball tonight and I want to be my best,” She blushed prettily. “I saw the flag, but I thought if I stayed outside…I came all this way, you see,” she said, her voice trailing off. Truly, she looked quite unwell. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon, my Lord.”
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