The Reckoning

by Alma Katsu

  “And did he explain where Adair has been all this time and why he’s looking for me now? Did he tell you that I’m responsible for Adair’s disappearance?” It was harder to admit this to her than to Alejandro, maybe because I expected her to react badly, even violently. I suddenly felt very small and childlike sitting across from Tilde, waiting for an explosion of temper. In Adair’s house, she’d been like a bullying older sister, relishing every opportunity to torment me.

  But again, her reply was calm. “Alejandro told me something of that,” she murmured.

  “I’m so sorry if you were hurt by what I did, Tilde,” I continued hurriedly to assure her. “Alejandro told me how difficult life was after Adair vanished, and I’m truly sorry for any hardship I may have caused you. I suppose it was selfish to do what I did, to take Adair away from all of you, but you must understand: Adair was going to take Jonathan away from me permanently and I couldn’t let him do that. . . .”

  She lifted her hand again to stop me from saying anything more. “You don’t have to apologize to me. I’m grateful for what you did. I wanted to stop Adair—we all did—but I never saw a way. Or perhaps we were less courageous. . . .” She glanced away, ashamed. “Lanore, I wasn’t always the woman you knew in Boston. After so many years with Adair, I became shaped by his nature. I did what was necessary to survive his temper, his moods. And that included hardening my heart against anyone else’s plight. So, if anything, I should be apologizing to you for the terrible way I treated you.”

  It struck me that she had been Adair’s victim, too, but while I had suffered for only a few years, she had spent centuries in his tyrannical grip. How could she not have changed under the pressure of his fierce will?

  They all must’ve been twisted in this way—Alejandro, Dona, Jude, poor Savva—forced to become ruthless and calculating in order to survive. Fighting for just enough space to exist in the presence of a force as relentless as Adair. Perhaps Tilde wasn’t the ogress Adair had made her out to be. It was he who’d told me her story, after all, not Tilde; he might’ve lied, as apparently he’d done about Uzra. He might’ve lied about everyone.

  “Alejandro said you needed my help. It’s yours, if I can be of service.”

  I cleared my throat nervously. “He hinted that you know about the magical arts, the source of Adair’s power. I’m looking for someone who understands that sphere.” My cheeks warmed as I fumbled for the right words.

  She shifted in her chair. “Yes, I believe we should try to understand our condition. It makes sense, doesn’t it? If you had cancer, you’d want to know all about the disease, its symptoms and effects, your options for treatment. Why should it be any different for us? That’s why I’ve tried to study what some people might call ‘magic,’ to follow up on practitioners as I’ve heard of them.

  “But if you’re asking if I’m like Adair, if I acquired any power over the physical world, well, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I was with Adair a long time, nearly the longest of any of his companions, and during that time I saw him do things that are simply impossible. I’ve always known there was something unexplained—and possibly unexplainable—about him. I’ve sought to be able to understand what he is, where his power comes from, but I haven’t come up with any answers, any more than anyone else. And as for reproducing it . . .” She trailed off, looking at me intently. “What is it, exactly, that you want?”

  “I want to break the spell.” I tried not to sound as ridiculous as I felt.

  “Break the spell?” she asked. “Why on earth would you want to do that?”

  We’d been free of Adair so long that she’d forgotten: he was the price for immortality. “Because Adair is coming for me.”

  Tilde flushed, bringing uncharacteristic warmth to those cheeks, perhaps out of embarrassment for having made me speak so plainly. “I see, and you’re right. Now that he’s free, that’s something we’ll all have to come to terms with. He’ll come to each of us in turn, I have no doubt. . . . Still, to give up your life seems such a dramatic solution. Is that really what you want?” Tilde spoke passionately. “Think it through thoroughly, Lanore. Do you have any idea what might happen if your condition were, uh, alleviated? You might die immediately; we died as part of the transformation, after all. There’s no guarantee that life would resume where it had left off, starting again at whatever age you were and progressing toward a normal mortal end. Your life might end immediately, right where you stood. Do you really wish to die? Have you no one to live for? No one to mourn your passing?”

  The truth was I wasn’t sure if I wanted to die. I was afraid of dying. Who knew what waited for me in the afterlife—God or this queen of the underworld—and what purpose could a hereafter serve if not to settle up the crimes one committed in this world? I didn’t know if I’d accepted death, but I’d accepted that I had no other choice.

  Tilde had raised good questions. I hadn’t thought of the possibility that I might die right away. I thought I would keep my death as a possibility I could hold in abeyance, a poison pill to use when it was clear I couldn’t escape from Adair. As for Tilde’s second question, it would take brutal honesty to answer it. Have I no one to live for? It had always been Jonathan, just Jonathan. I thought it might be Luke. But now I’d given him up.

  I twisted my hands in my lap. “No, there’s no one. No one in my life, no one to come looking for me. It might as well be over.”

  Tilde looked at me uncertainly, then took in the purse at my feet, my abandoned jacket. I’d brought no suitcase, having forgotten it in the trunk of Jude’s car. I was as I’d presented myself: a lonely soul, unattached and unprotected, blown on the wind and dropped at her doorstep. She couldn’t doubt the truth of what I had told her. I was alone.

  “All right . . . let me see what I can do. You’re welcome to stay with us. I can understand how vulnerable you must feel, and you shouldn’t be by yourself at a time like this. We have a spare room at the back of the house. Why don’t you rest.”

  The same dark-haired young man who’d been at the front door escorted me now to a quiet cranny, a maid’s room off the kitchen. On our way, we passed a great room with two young men—their hair was nearly as white as snow, and they looked so alike that they had to be brothers—sitting slouched on a leather couch in front of a television, playing some kind of video game. A few others rounded out the group: another handsome young man, a wide-eyed young woman about the same age as the brothers. They glanced at me wordlessly, with no introductions made: we could’ve been ghosts observing one another from our separate planes of existence.

  I lay down on the single bed and listened to the voices from the great room, now mumbled and indecipherable, the murmur broken by the occasional flash of laughter. They might have been speaking a language I didn’t understand, or it might have been the walls masking their words. The maid’s quarters were cold and reminded me of a doctor’s examination room, nondescript and spare. No computer, no television.

  I must’ve fallen asleep on the maid’s bed, because I woke to rapping at the door and had barely sat up when Tilde came into the room, a mug in her hand.

  “I might have an answer to your problem. I don’t want to get your hopes up, but I think this might work,” she said, holding the mug out to me. “It’s something I found in an old book of spells attributed to a group of thirteenth-century monks. The book’s provenance has been confirmed, according to the scholars I’ve consulted—if that has any bearing on anything. I figured if you’re looking for a remedy, we might as well start there as anywhere. This potion is supposed to lift all curses.”

  I looked into the mug of dark opaque liquid, a color between brown and green, like a frog. It smelled of bitter herbs and alcohol. “Do I drink it?”

  “All of it. I’ve never made it before, let alone used it on anyone.” She folded her arms across her chest, staring at the mug pensively. “It might not have any effect right away, and if it does . . . well, I admit, I’m a tiny bit curious to find out what will ha
ppen.”

  With Tilde watching, I drank down the entire contents of the mug. It tasted strongly of alcohol and something else I couldn’t place, an unnatural bitterness covered by the taste of the herbs. Within minutes my muscles went slack all at once, as though I’d been hit on the back of the head. I fell on the bed, my mind functioning perfectly but unable to support myself upright. The physical change was so striking and so swift that I figured I had to be dying. You wanted this, I recalled. Don’t fight it. It took all my forbearance not to panic and pump adrenaline into my veins in reaction to this weird sensation.

  I opened my eyes to find Tilde leaning over me with a wicked grin, a grin I instantly remembered from our days together in Boston. She picked up the mug that had fallen from my hand. I was unable to move my mouth and ask Tilde what she had done to me.

  “I figured it would be easier to knock you out than to hold you against your will. I wasn’t sure if it would work on you—the date rape drug, Rohypnol—so I put enough in there to take down a horse. I’d let the boys take advantage of your sedation to have a little fun with you if I didn’t think Adair would mind, but he probably wants that honor for himself—for starters, at least. God, I almost didn’t think you would fall for it.” She laughed that merciless, cheerless laugh that had rung through the halls of the mansion in Boston. “I thought it was all over when I said ‘if anything, I should be apologizing to you.’. . . I thought, Oh no, I’ve gone too far, sure that I’d oversold it, but you didn’t bat an eyelash. . . . You wanted to believe so badly. You haven’t changed, have you? Still the gullible fool.” Tilde dabbed at the corner of an eye, having laughed so hard, she was tearing.

  “Okay, lie still now. Don’t fight it. Just let the drug take you away. Adair should be here shortly. Have a little peace while you can. Time has caught up with you, Lanore. The reckoning you’ve been anticipating for centuries is just about upon you.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  His wait was over. The time of deliverance was at hand. And still—the private jet had not been fast enough for Adair. He had twitched throughout the entire flight, barely able to tolerate the chatter of his companions. And now the car that picked him up at the airport—could it not go faster? He thought he might burst out of his own skin with impatience.

  As they neared Tilde’s house, Adair felt something fundamental shift inside him, as though a great force was bearing down on him and compressing his consciousness and energy into something as hard and dense as a diamond, for a purpose unknown. He couldn’t help but think of the girl in the Wonderland story, a fantastical tale read to him by Pendleton, who admired it very much. Adair thought this was how the girl must have felt when she was shrunk by means of a magical potion so she could fit through the door to another realm. He felt he, too, was being changed, altered to fit the circumstances that lay ahead.

  At the same time, he felt as though a storm front was descending on him. The keening in his brain was brighter and stronger—he could feel Lanore’s presence building the closer he got—and his thinking was clearer than it had been since his entombment. Whatever had been interfering with his mind was suddenly swept away. He was being changed by an unseen force, made stronger, sharper, more intuitive, for reasons he couldn’t guess. He had the distinct impression that he could see into the mind of every living thing while being able to keep each one separate and distinct, like having a conversation with everyone simultaneously. He was sure it was a trick or hallucination, a problem with his overwrought mind, but at the same time he couldn’t ignore it. It was exhilarating.

  Tilde stood waiting by the front of the house as his car pulled up. She trembled with visible excitement as he climbed the stairs, but fell back when he swept by her without a word of greeting, let alone a kiss or embrace. Crestfallen for an instant, she recovered to hug Jude and Alejandro each in turn, like siblings she had not seen in a long while. Pendleton hung back at the rear of the group, watching them as carefully as the newest child on the playground. The last to emerge from the car was a tall man in a long overcoat who peered up at the sun through dark glasses.

  Adair stopped in the front hall, cocking his head like a bloodhound trying to pick up a scent in the air. “Where is she?” he asked Tilde over his shoulder.

  “You needn’t worry. She’s here and can’t get away. I wouldn’t disappoint you.”

  Tilde wound around the others to step beside him. She lifted a hand to his chest, then—when he hadn’t batted her hand aside—pressed her cheek against his for a long instant. “I’ve missed you.”

  As soon as Tilde’s palm pressed against his breast, in that one touch, Adair was flooded with the knowledge of every day she’d lived since he’d been gone. It was similar to when he’d touched the doorknob during his projection to Lanore’s house in Paris and felt her come alive to him, except now it was more intense (for being present in the flesh, he guessed). In that one instant, Adair knew everything there was to know about Tilde: what she’d been through for the past two hundred years and everything she was doing now.

  He saw that she had spent the entire time living from husband to husband, killing one to live in solitary contentment off his fortune until it ran out, when she would find a new rich man and start all over again. She’d paid someone to tamper with the car of this last one once she’d tired of his egomaniacal ways. Since then she’d seduced both his sons for amusement and to fill some pitiful and implacable longing in her soul. What a sad creature she has become, Adair thought, aimless and petty.

  “It’s so good to see you,” Tilde purred, and she pressed against him for a scant second, revealing her desire for him. Adair found it unnerving, like being licked by a tiger. He almost swerved for her cheek when he bent over to kiss her, when he realized that Tilde and the others would notice if he didn’t kiss her on the mouth. It would not sit well with Tilde—nor would it do for him to betray his weakness for Lanore to a woman like Tilde, whose ruthlessness he had once depended on but now detested.

  Adair cupped the back of her head and pulled her toward him, giving her the kind of kiss she would expect, the kind he used to give her, domineering and possessive. Reassured, Tilde sighed and relaxed.

  She lifted her chin in the direction of the man standing beside Pendleton. “Who’s that? I would almost swear—”

  “It’s Jonathan,” Alejandro said.

  “But what’s happened to him? He doesn’t look the same. I thought we would never—” she said, her voice rising in alarm. Jonathan regarded her with a bemused look as he pocketed his sunglasses.

  Adair replied, “Don’t worry, Tilde. What’s happened to Jonathan will never happen to you—as long as you manage to avoid dying.”

  She swiveled back to look at Jonathan in horror.

  “Yes, I’m back from the dead,” he said drily. “All things considered, I think I look pretty good.”

  At that moment a shuffling sound came from the back of the house, and the two brothers walked toward them with the quiet curiosity of a pair of housecats as they peered out from behind long platinum bangs. After one last uncertain stare for Jonathan, Tilde put her unease aside and extended an arm in their direction, waving them to her. “Let me introduce my stepsons. Josef, Mika, come here. . . . Boys, I want you to meet a very dear friend of mine. This is Adair.” Her smirk was the same as it had always been, possessive and gloating. The smirk he’d seen many times before, whenever she would bring him prey—a frightened young woman, a young man helpless with lust—that she intended for him to share with her. Adair knew by her manner that Tilde meant for them to be lovers again, but he had no intention of letting that happen.

  His ability to sense their thoughts and feelings continued, and he realized that he didn’t even need to touch the stepsons for their stories to rush at him. A look was sufficient, part of this unexpected strengthening of his power, or perhaps it was the strength of their suffering. The older one was trying to appear worldly and sophisticated at nineteen, to be the kind of man (still a boy, really)
who could fuck his father’s wife and remain unaffected. His aura told Adair that he was unhappy and guilt-ridden, wishing he could be free of her yet under her control because of their secret.

  But Mika, the younger one . . . Adair could tell that the boy was completely in love with her. His desperation seeped through his teenage ennui. He thought he’d concealed it, but the only thing on his mind was being with Tilde again, his desire betraying him as he shifted and fidgeted uncomfortably. He was, maybe, sixteen, and at this age a slave to lust. At the moment, he was nearly paralyzed by the desire to put his cock in her mouth. He wanted only to be lost between her legs and on her lips, and everything else in his life—indulgent as it was—came a distant second. No girl his own age could make him feel the way Tilde could, or so he believed. He’d do anything for her, and Adair knew that made him dangerous. It was stupid and incendiary to fuck both her stepsons, and Adair respected Tilde less for it.

  The two boys stared back at him before Tilde dismissed them, hostility roiling beneath their calm expressions. For all Adair knew, they might have been good boys before crossing paths with Tilde, but now they would be forever warped by the shameful thing they’d done with her. They would always believe there was something fundamentally wrong with them, that they were bad inside, like rotted fruit. Tilde was a smart woman and he thought she knew better than to corrupt her own stepsons for sport. Nothing good could come of it. Adair wanted no part of this melodrama with Tilde and wished he had never found out about it. It only heightened his impatience to see Lanore and put everything else behind him.

  Tilde, believing she knew what was on Adair’s mind, touched his sleeve lightly. “You’ll find her at the end of this hall, in the room behind the kitchen. I’ll send the boys to the slopes, and I’ll head into town with Jude and Alejandro to give you some privacy for your reunion.”