“Do you remember,” she says dreamily, “how much we used to love this?”
My skin goes cold at her words. “We’ve never been here before, and we’ve never done this before.”
“We’re each of us the product of the lives that went before us,” she says, still sounding like she’s in a trance. “The things your grandfather did reside in your cells. The rudimentary grunts of your ancestor as he built his first fire: that is a memory you experience in a half second as you light a match. Your mother’s misery in grade school, your eleven-greats-grandfather’s goring by a bull as he tried to pass through his neighbor’s field: it all goes into your makeup, Miles. You are the past. And I am, too. I’m just remembering better than you.”
“What exactly do you remember?” I ask, although I don’t think I want to hear.
“We were linked together,” she says. “But we weren’t supposed to be.”
“Was I supposed to be with Eleanor?” I ask.
She laughs long and low and stands up. Lazily, she walks the sand looking for her clothes. I help her and she dresses. The timelessness fades when she’s back in her Oxford shirt and jeans. Nude, she could be a woman of any era. Now, she’s Phoebe Irving in the early twenty-first century.
“I was supposed to be with Eleanor,” she says.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Folklore persists about the Sangreçu despite there being little to buttress the stories. Harder still is it to prove the existence of a society organized to protect or advance the interests of the genus and species. No tangible artifacts exist, no handbook, no secret signal, only an emblem whose provenance seems dubious.
—Secret Cabals, Societies & Orders
It takes a while for her strange mood to fade. It’s like she’s drunk or high—not herself. I know it’s the Sangreçu blood, but it’s still her and that’s so unpleasant . . . like when someone blames something stupid they said on alcohol, and you think, but you clearly believe it; you just wouldn’t have said it if you were sober.
A crying jag follows all this. She climbs onto a rock like a mermaid and sobs for things she won’t tell me about. I’m halfway committed to leaving her here, but I remember how scary it was when I couldn’t find her the last time. She seems to have more power. If she didn’t want to be found again, I have no doubt I would never see her. So I stay, worried, fretting, hoping everything is all right at Versailles. For all I know, the fireworks could be over by now or the German tourist could’ve been found.
Or Giraude could’ve killed again.
I can’t take it any more.
“Phoebe, we have to go back,” I say, standing at the foot of her rock. Above me she reclines, looking like a Maxfield Parrish painting.
“What do you mean? Back in time?”
“No, back to your family. Remember, Giraude threatened to kill people. We’ve wasted time here. She may have already made good on her promise.”
“That’s her business, not ours,” says Phoebe.
“Snap out of it! Your sister needs you. She’s too young to be around Giraude without us there to guard her.”
“Eleanor’s there,” she says dismissively.
I have never hated anyone so much as I hate her now. She’s not even worth trying to convince. I can’t believe I had her in my arms and that we . . .
I was an idiot.
I don’t even bother to say good-bye.
I use intention and I’m back at Versailles in a heartbeat.
Tabby is running laps around the blanket her parents sit on, while her mom’s face registers the forever-bleak reality of being a bereaved parent. Nearby, the Fountain of Apollo gushes water as the Sun King statue struggles to bring his chariot, pulled by panicked horses, up to the surface.
Eleanor rushes up to me and hugs me. Her touch brings stabbing, startling images to my mind. I can’t even describe what I see because the images come crashing in at an incredible speed: like a movie montage that’s been sped up too fast. The overwhelming feeling I have is that I owe her. She’s been incredibly good and generous to me. In the past, in whatever skin we inhabited, she gave much of herself to me.
“You feel different,” she says. “What happened?”
I don’t know how to tell her. But I’ll be beyond redemption if I don’t.
“I’m Sangreçu now. We found a vial. And we drank from it.”
“My God!” She’s appalled. “You drank it?”
“It called to us,” I say. “It was singing, like a siren in those myths. There wasn’t even really a chance for us to resist.”
She regards me while her face splinters through changes I see in flashes, like film run through the projector too fast. She’s herself, but she’s also someone I see with my Sangreçu memory. I try to focus—who am I seeing?
“Is it all gone?” she asks.
I can almost, almost catch that other person on her face, but I can’t see past the disappointment, because of course she knows the answer to her question already.
“We meant to save some for you.”
Silence.
I want really, really badly to lie. I want to say that it slipped out of our fingers and her portion spilled on the floor.
But I can’t do that to her. So I say nothing.
“I’m sure it is for the best,” she says. “And where is Phoebe now?”
“For the best? Eleanor, I’m so sorry.”
“I have the funniest feeling that her failure to be here now is directly related to the fact that there is nothing in the vial left for me.”
“She’s changed. She’s not who we thought she was. She’s not a good person.”
“She has a very old practice of betraying me,” she says. “And perhaps you as well.”
“What do you know?”
“Nothing—just a feeling.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s none of your doing,” she says. “And so . . . we wait?”
“I don’t think she’ll come back,” I say. “I think it’s up to us to help Tabby. If we can get through tonight, they’ll return to England tomorrow and we’ll be fine.”
“If we can get through tonight,” she repeats. “Tell me, how does it feel to be Sangreçu?”
I don’t want to tell her, because she’s so intelligent. She’s going to figure out that I had sex with Phoebe. But I can’t not answer her question. I owe her that much after everything we’ve been through.
“It heightens all sensation,” I say simply.
“Indeed.” She blushes. I know she knows. I feel awful for her. She’s been stuck here with a family who doesn’t even know she’s here while Phoebe and I did something so bonding, so undoable, so forever.
“And it brings on memories. Images from before. I think it’s what my ancestors saw.”
“A key to your heritage.”
“I think so.”
“And what did Phoebe see?”
I tell her briefly about the man in the well, and she shudders at the part where Phoebe put a stone blocking the entrance. “What a horrible thing to do,” she says.
“And I killed a man,” I say, “or he killed me.”
Suddenly I’m just sick of it all. When I was alive, I was a decent person. I didn’t do anything great, but I didn’t do anything horrible, either. I think I made my parents happy. I made my friends and my girlfriend happy. I was a good swimmer on the swim team.
Ta-da, right?
So why am I torturing myself over things other people did, even if they might be related to me? Why is there a secret society . . . why is some girl visiting my parents when they just want to be left alone?
It sucks. I understand now why Giraude strode to the front of the line and offered up her neck to the guillotine. Sometimes you just want to give up.
Formerly cheerful dead fellow commits suicide.
That could be my obituary.
Which makes me wonder, what did my real obituary say? Too awful to contemplate. My mum must’ve written it. Or maybe Au
nt Ginny, because sometimes she takes charge, like that family reunion where she gave everybody jobs and assignments three months ahead of time. I wonder how she took my death.
“So, drinking from the vial gave you access to old memories and made your skin very sensitive,” says Eleanor. “Anything else?”
“Yes. That’s right. One very important thing. It gave me corporeality. I was able to touch the cupboard the vial was in.”
Her eyes widen. “Why didn’t you say so? You can touch things?”
“Yes.”
“Miles, don’t you see? You can touch Giraude. You can fight her as another human. And you are far taller and stronger than her!” She’s almost dancing, she’s so excited.
“You’re absolutely right,” I say. I can take care of Giraude and then Tabby will be safe. Everyone will be safe.
“Let’s figure out the best approach,” she says. “You should do it now, as quickly as you can. What if the effects wear off over time? The Sangreçu eventually need more to sustain them, and they were alive when they drank. And you two shared a vial, whereas they may have drunk an entire one. The effects may be very temporary for you.”
I’m suddenly frantic at the thought I could lose all this. I can’t bear to go back to a muffled existence where touch feels like I’m wearing five sets of gloves.
“We can use intention to find her, and then you can . . .”
“Right! I can . . .”
“Well . . .”
Big silence.
“Exactly.”
There’s so much we don’t know. But we have made some groundwork into understanding some of the Sangreçu “rules.” A death by blood loss can be overcome. Blood can be replenished, even if someone’s head is completely severed from the body.
But other kinds of death seem to work. Drowning. Maybe poisoning or suffocation.
I picture myself coming up from behind Giraude and getting her in a choke hold. I shudder. I don’t want to do it.
Pick my weapon of choice, I think, except a weapon won’t work. Giraude’s body will have to work against itself. She’ll become her own self-directed weapon.
“What are you thinking?” she asks.
“Unpleasant thoughts.”
“It’s never pleasant to resolve to kill someone, even when you know it must be done,” she says. “I would’ve never thought myself capable, but I found the strength when I knew I was saving many other lives by destroying a single evil one.”
“Tell me how you got ready to do it.”
“I planned it out and then I told myself I’d take the best chance I had to do it. I knew if I picked a certain day I might become too scared by the expectation. So although I knew what to do, I didn’t decide when to do it. I knew I’d say to myself, ‘This is a good night, all the stars are aligned.’ ”
I nod.
“You’re a strong person, Miles,” she says. “You can do it. You saw how ruthlessly she killed that man. He may have been a very fine and good person when there isn’t rum in his gut. But we’ll never know. Anyone who can kill with so much nonchalance—like the way you’d squash a spider in the pantry—she needs to be stopped. It’s noble to stop someone like that.”
“I know,” I say.
“She threatened to kill innocent people.”
“I’m beginning to wish I wasn’t Sangreçu. It has made expectations for my performance that much higher.”
“Which is a grand thing,” she says with emphasis. “I wasn’t looking forward to devising a manner in which to attack Giraude. Phoebe had some ability, but not to touch Giraude herself. I feared it would be an agonizing showdown.”
My jaw drops. Eleanor actually thought we might lose against Giraude?
“But my faith has been completely restored,” she says. “I trust you far more than her . . . and now you are strong in this guise as well.”
I wonder if I should talk to Phoebe’s mum and Steven, staring hard at them sitting there. It could solve some things. It could also lead to him slugging me if I didn’t explain fast enough. I know it’s not my place to approach them. Either Phoebe does it, or no one.
The first firework launches into the sky and Eleanor runs directionless, shrieking, a zigzag since she can’t escape the global noise of the sky. “Come back,” I call to soothe her. “They’re noisy but harmless.”
Thank goodness it’s dark—otherwise, to the people here I would appear to be shouting encouragement to an invisible friend. I’m not used to having corporeality again: it took a while to get used to losing it, but then it became the new normal.
Fireworks dazzle the sky overhead and the shrieks of falling sparklers make me jump. Eleanor’s bolting like a horse at a gunshot.
Tabby’s also screaming. I imagine the dogs of the modern town of Versailles are cowering with their paws over their muzzles. I used to really like fireworks, but what are they good for? Terrifying the young and helpless and making a lot of smoke.
I wonder if Giraude is watching them. Does she enjoy them? Do they remind her of the original fireworks and the applause and envy they earned her king?
If Phoebe’s still at that shore, maybe she sees our fireworks from far away, like tiny mushrooms in the sky that light up and dissolve. Is she even thinking of us? Or is she lost to the past, to the man she hated so much that she shut him away for eternity? He must’ve done something awful to make her do that . . . or she was the one who did the awful thing.
Eleanor calms down enough that I urge her to sit on the grass near the blanket Tabby and her parents are on. We watch the fireworks with our heads tilted back. After a while, Eleanor begins to gasp at the beauty, rather than being scared. The designs of light seem like a rose that blooms too briefly, shedding its petals for longer than it was in flower.
The sky is splintering with rockets, colors, falling man-made stars. Tabby’s pointing up, clinging to her mom’s arm, the perfect mixture of terrified and excited. I look up at a vast umbrella of white light that spreads as the delayed boom hits our ears and dissipates into trailing diamonds that seem like they will touch the earth.
The sound cracks the heavens open.
It’s hard to discern since the sky is black interrupted by patches of blinding color and clouds of resulting smoke, but sure enough: I feel the light change. I’m going away again.
I reach out and take Eleanor’s hand. She can’t go with me, but at least she’ll know I tried. She looks at me questioningly, and I realize it looks like a romantic bid, my taking her hand. “I’m going to—” I start to explain, but it’s too late and nearby Tabby makes a squawk of surprise.
Tabby and I are in the past.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
If anything can call back to me the halcyon pleasures that were once Versailles, it is remembrance of music lifted aloft on a warm summer evening.
—Memories of a Courtier (trans. 1811)
There are no fireworks. The sudden release from their thunder and crackle is breathtaking.
Instead, I hear chamber music floating up from a lit tent on the lawns below us. In the shadows, a few people are walking around. The grass is a dark pewter at this hour.
Tabby whimpers as she turns in a slow circle. “Mama?” she calls out tentatively.
Oh, this is bad.
I’d give her a hug . . . but a hug from a stranger might be the worst of her nightmares coming true.
I kneel down so I’m at her level. “Hi, Tabby,” I say. “I’m your babysitter tonight, Miles.”
Her big gray eyes look terrified.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say. “Your mom and dad will be back soon.”
She gives me a dismissive glance and continues to look around like a deer that knows the wolf is nearby. She’s trembling.
This situation sucks. Her parents yanked out from underneath her, the scene changing, darkness becoming twilight, fireworks suddenly disappearing . . . and no one she knows is around. She’s a time-traveling toddler.
I reflect that the only sa
ving grace is that she didn’t trip to the guillotine in Paris. This just seems to be a placid evening at Versailles.
But if it’s such a placid evening . . . why are we here?
I study the figures on the outskirts trying to figure out if I’m seeing Etienne trysting with his twin of choice. Sex in the shadows wouldn’t be a great thing for Tabby to witness, but better than heads rolling.
“Mama?” Tabby calls out again.
I feel awful for her. It’s not enough to have your sister die on you and have your parents haul you to another country so they can make a new start . . . now you also get to trip all by yourself.
“It’s okay, Tabby,” I say again. “You’re going to be fine. You’ll be back with your mom and dad before you know it.”
I think my best bet is to keep talking, reassure her by the calmness of my voice. “I’m Miles,” I say. “Your sister’s friend. Can you say ‘Miles’?”
At least she’s looking at me now.
“Friend,” I say. I remember that she responded best last time to simple sentences.
“Phee friend?” she asks.
Yes!!!! Yes, yes, yes.
“Yes,” I say. “Phoebe’s friend.”
She breaks into a broad smile and I see, really for the first time, the incredible charm of a kid’s smile, especially one aimed at me. I always found her cute, but it isn’t until this moment that every cell in my body pledges itself to protecting her. I see her just as she finally sees me, the invisible person she’s never been aware of.
Behind her, coming toward us, ready to ruin everything, I see trouble. Yup, not a placid evening after all.
I rise to standing. “Let’s walk,” I say.
She doesn’t budge
I bend and say insistently into her face, “Walk?”
Begrudgingly, she comes when I take her hand and pull her. I lead her to the edge of the pathway where the statues and trees provide some cover.
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