Fangs of a Butterfly

CHAPTER 44

Ten full years passed since the last time I saw him. If I added it up it had been fifteen years since I last properly faced him and spoke to him. I won't lie, I occasionally go to his house and see his smiling face or just the house with his closed curtains. I often passed by his place when I visited Manon.

If I "visited" Uriel I went to see Manon with Gregoire. She grew up and from a distance she looked completely human, brown-haired and plain features. Gregoire was always doing strange things, catching a kitten to raise one time, walking under a parasol with Manon in summer.

I never got caught by either side, I truly felt like a butterfly. I only made sure they were happy, and most of the time the humans were smiling.

These fifteen years I think I never stopped thinking about him and my muse, Sabine. Dark nights when I was afraid of someone, Agnes or Elsie, I tried to think of those I loved. I thought of the brief times I kissed Uriel or drank his blood, things that confused me yet at the same time made everything clear.

I didn't want to become the next Elsie, so I had to leave them after short visits. Every time I saw Yves's letter and thought of Uriel with his fiancé I found it hard to stick to my own morals.

I wanted to return, to see him, and to feel whole again.

That year I realized Manon would be fifteen and it reminded me of when Lark, Adalyn and Bernadette left the castle. They were so incredibly young now that I thought about it, as a—what, forty year old?

When I looked in the mirror I only saw that girl from fifteen years ago, twenty five and ready to leave a cage and be dependent.

And I was happy with my choice: I went to Asia and returned, became less seasick, but I still preferred to travel through steam locomotives or even cars. But it was just a gnawing feeling in me, how I wanted to tell Uriel "I'm riding a car!" Or "Look at that dress, wouldn't I better in it?"

He could move on, because he was a human and only lived to what, sixty? He could move on, because he had a wife and most likely children—as Gregoire moved on from his first wife. But for vampires, it's a curse.

I'm twenty-five, dancing in Jardin's rainfall and holding his hands, and he's putting his coat over my shoulders and chasing after me that snowy day to apologize—I can't move on.

Through these years I've killed men to protect myself, but I have never drank their blood.

But ten years changed other things about me; I had my hair cut into a bob I curled and stopped wearing stifling hats. I still hated boots, but heels bother me too, so I wear oxfords or loafers. I'm very particular about shoes because my body is still sensitive. Funny, I wear anything but a brassiere.

The fashion changed by then and I wore dresses up to my calves, some sequined and others with savant garde cuts. I even wore trousers when I have to walk a lot, like that day I went back to Jardin.

Yes, I returned to Jardin to put an end to my nightmares around six years ago, and there I saw something interesting.

I lingered around our empty castle before I headed towards the lake Cecile loved.

A young vampire girl—I could tell by her looks, very distinct to our clan—was crushing Jardin's trademark red butterflies. Their sorry figure and the smearing of their red wings made me instinctively run up to the emotionless girl.

"You," I had said, trudging up to the place by the lake she was, "stop killing them!"

She glared at me, and then seemed to relax when I got closer and she could smell or sense I was one of her kind.