Inside, I find Emily sitting at my desk, looking through my notebooks. A flare of anger ignites. We had always respected each other's privacy. Well, except Charlotte, the snoop. Emily's regard for propriety was tenuous before, but since the turning it seems to have been eradicated. There is a feral quality to her now that unnerves me. However, I say nothing.
I set my saber by the door and spin a dimmer switch so that the chandelier lights softly. Next, I turn on a Tiffany lamp and it wells up in rich shades of amber and blue. Ivanhoe is at my legs, slipping through them like liquid gold.
"How'd you get in?"
"The key beneath the pot on your porch. So obvious, Anne. How can you be so careless?"
I build a low, slow fire. In the kitchen, I heat water for tea, keeping an eye on Emily, afraid she might slip away again, leaving me for another century. Ivanhoe howls at me and I pour him dry food, then place a small bowl of cream beside it.
"I can't believe you have a cat," Emily says. "What do you do when you have to run from here?"
"Since I've had him, that hasn't happened, but I will take him with me when I leave," I say, inwardly vowing I will never panic and leave him behind again.
"I've missed our animals," says Emily "Keeper especially."
I smile at the thought of the big Mastiff mongrel. "Did you know he was at your funeral?"
She tilts her head in surprise.
"He walked beside your casket as it was carried to church, and during the ceremony he sat quietly with us in the pew." Her eyes glaze and she looks away.
"I didn't know," she said.
Then the scroungy mongrel refused to move from her bedroom door, waiting and waiting for her to come home. But I don't say this. I can see her pain is fresh enough. Even near death, wasted and starving, Emily had gone to Keeper on teetering legs, rebuffing all help while Charlotte and I watched from the shadows, ready to catch her if she fell as she fed him from her own hands. Emily showed more tenderness to Keeper and Flossie than she did her own sisters, refusing our care, armoring herself in steel stoicism until her very death.
She spurned our love, but it didn't matter. We gave it to her anyway.
Emily turns a page of my notebook and begins to read, "Noah lived 930 years. But we are more ephemeral, risen and walking, made of dust but filled with thirst. Dust that will not rest. And this is god's will, but his cruelty was to make the dust think, so that it would know its thirst as it walked." She looks at me, curiosity lighting her eyes.
"David Vann. He's an extraordinary writer."
"Is he writing of us?"
"No, only mere mortals."
"Do you think he could be one of us?"
"It seems unlikely. He's a professor at university."
"You are the only one of our kind I have ever known to work. Is that how you have afforded all this?" She glances around the room with an air of disdain.
"I've worked since the Crimean War. Over the years I spent little and put the rest in savings. It's grown considerably. In the 80s, I began to invest and to my surprise did extremely well."
I walk to my bookshelf and finding Goat Mountain, hand it to her. "Keep it," I say. "I've read it a dozen times. Although beware. It's a bit bleak."
"I'm not afraid of bleak." She smiles sardonically. "Your library is astonishing. Can you imagine if we had this before? We would have thought we were in heaven."
"I have not once mistaken this room for heaven. Heaven would contain more light, more warmth."
"The night is full of light and warmth. It is subtle and hidden, more powerful for its concealment. You always believed, Anne, that the more exposed something was the less mystery it contained. The night is gentler than the day. Quiet. I much prefer it."
"And more dangerous too."
"No. It simply requires more awareness."
A tendril of anger flickers within. Did Emily ever ask herself what I would prefer before she condemned me to this prison? How readily she embraces the darkness with all its blood and death. Does killing not bother her at all? The night is more dangerous because we are in it.
I force myself to cool. My sister is here. Emily is in my home before the fire, talking of books. How I have dreamed of this moment! I must be grateful.
"Do you mind stoking the fire?" I ask, indicating the heavy iron poker near her. "A little light can't hurt. It's been a long time since I've gazed upon your face. I'd like to see you clearly while we speak."
"Is your vision so weak you need fire to see by? You are starving yourself, sister. This is not how we are meant to live."
"It's ironic you would say so. No one had such mastery over her appetites as you."
"Now that I am free, I enjoy sustenance."
"Do you really call this freedom? Killing? Draining little girls dry. Stalking brilliant professors in the moonlight to end their contributions to the world?"
"I don't kill children and I was not stalking your professor. I was just teasing you. I enjoy cemeteries. They remind me of home. I was merely gazing at the tomb of Thomas Wolfe when that half blind terrier started at the sense of me and tripped up his master. I would not have harmed a blind dog's master. Who would take care of the poor little fellow then?"
"You have more compassion for an animal than for the professor, who happens to be a Brontë scholar."
"Animals are innocent. Humans are not, and anyone who devotes his studies to our legacy surely has a touch of madness about him."
Her hands drift to a volume of the Luminous Gospels.
I cannot contain my excitement. "Those are newfound gospels of Thomas, Philip, and Mary Magdalene." Emily's eyes spark in surprise at Mary's name. "Scholars say Mary was Christ's greatest disciple. She wasn't a prostitute at all. That was a false claim made by the early church to weaken her role—"
Emily cuts me off. "Why aren't I surprised?"
If only I'd known earlier these gospels existed, how comforted I would have been! I remember my spiritual breakdown at 17. I almost died from loss of faith until Minister La Trobe visited my bedside and guided me toward the light. Yes, there is the Father, and He is harsh, but there is also the Son, and oh my, He is beautiful. My vision of God had been steeped in the Old Testament, forged in its laws and duties, condemnation and punishments, but Reverend La Trobe showed me a new vision of a New Testament. He pulled me back from the brink. I lived 12 more years.
Emily tosses aside the gospels, looking bored. "You are tenacious in your beliefs, Anne. I'll give you that. Even death cannot destroy your faith." She shakes her head, confounded, as if I am an imbecile. Hurt wells. Why did I say anything? Her contempt for my beliefs was strong before, one more reason we grew apart. Why should she feel differently now, condemned to walk the earth like a fiend?
"How do you survive?" I ask abruptly.
"By constantly moving. Never staying in one place longer than a few months at the most."
"For all these years?"
"Yes, Anne. What you have done here is pure suicide. You've been lucky, that's all. It's obvious you don't value your life much."
"Do you really call that a life: moving constantly for a century and a half? Never having a home or making connections."
"I enjoy it. The earth is beautiful. Especially the New World. There is still so much to see."
"But no one loved their home more than you. Every time you left, you almost died."
"It was the confinement of society that injured me, not movement. My soul requires solitude, wilderness, freedom. The wide-open earth. It is society I cannot bear and the imprisonment insignificant minds press upon us, with their petty concerns and inane small talk. As if others could know how I should live? Who can know that better than myself?"
"How do you feed?" I brace myself for the answer. How many humans has she killed in all her years? Thousands? Her jacket is off, thrown over the couch and I see her more clearly now in the firelight. Beneath her torn t-shirt and long, tangled hair, she glows. Her eyes are blue and luminous, her limbs sleek and strong.
I feel weak and pale in comparison.
"I hunt the strong. Males mostly. Occasionally I take a female prostitute." I must look shocked because Emily says, "If she so little values her dignity, why should I? Sometimes I take the evil, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, so I have come to avoid it."
"Who are the evil?"
"Pimps, dealers, rapists, murderers. You'd be surprised at the never-ending supply of targets, especially in cities, which I detest and enter only to hunt."
"Too bad you couldn't take out some of the world's dictators and spare us a few wars. Hitler or Pol Pot sound like appropriate marks."
"I don't involve myself in politics, although I did hunt for Bin Laden, but I could never find him. Generally, I avoid cities."
"So why are you here?"
"As I said, I was looking for you and Branwell."
"Is Branwell here? Is he alive?" My heart leaps with excitement and a trace of fear. With all his flaws, I still desperately love my brother, even as the mere thought of seeing him unnerves me. Still, Branwell is impossible not to love. Oh, how he tried and tested all of us, me especially. I wonder what the years have done to him. Has his soul gone dark, as his days once had?
"Yes, he's alive, but he's very tricky and paranoid. I've been on his trail for years, but always a step behind. I don't understand why he wishes to avoid me, unless it is out of guilt. That's something I understand." She looks at my seascape above the fire. "Like you, he has continued his art. I see it on walls and buildings all over the world—Palermo, New York, London and Cape Town—incredible graffiti, like markers taunting me, pointing me in a certain direction with their ancient obscure symbols and allusions to Horace. But when I arrive, he's always gone. The last time I saw evidence of him was in Miami, but the trail went cold. No vampire stays in one place long. How in God's name have you survived with boyfriends and partners and jobs?"
"I don't have a boyfriend," I say indignantly.
"Then why are you glowing?"
Mercifully, the teapot begins to squeal and I escape to the kitchen, where I prepare our ginger tea. I bring out a tray with a china pot and two delicate cups, placing them on the table before us. Emily wrinkles her nose. "Tea? Really?"
"Have you tried it?"
"Not in about a hundred years and it was horrible."
"Try this. It's organic gingerroot from Burma. Just sip to warm the tongue. I make it mostly for the scent. The Hawaiian Blue is wonderful too. It smells like spring."
Emily takes a sip. "It isn't bad, but I prefer blood."
I press my lips together to refrain from chastisement. After so much time apart, now is not the time for judgment but Emily notices my expression anyway. I could never conceal much from her. So little has changed between us and yet everything has.
"We are animal creatures," Emily says.
"We are spiritual beings."
"You deny your nature, Anne."
"As do you. By surrendering to your basest impulses, you deny your higher self."
"By denying your animal instincts, you betray yourself."
We fall silent, both of us staring into the fire. I see red flames of hell warning me of what's in store for both of us. I wonder what Emily sees reflected back at her.
"Perhaps we are both, animal and angel," I finally say. "The aim is learning how to find the middle way, or maybe making a choice between the two."
"Why choose one or the other when we can be both? The world is not so black and white, Anne. We do not all stand on one side or the other. You are an Angel of Darkness, sister, and the world is a brighter place for having you in it."
My heart cracks. "If only it were true."
"It's true if you choose it to be so."
With envy, I look at her. She leans back in the chair, legs crossed like a man in her black leather boots, sparking with energy, clear in her nature like a jungle cat or a hawk on the moors, free from morality and shame. Oh, how good it must feel to be at one with yourself!
I take a sip of tea when suddenly her whole body goes rigid. Her head whips to the door. "Someone's coming." She stands and darts to the shadows. In a flash, I am beside her, my hand on her arm.
"Wait, sister. You're safe here. Let me see who it is."
Her muscles tense beneath my hand and she pulls away. "Emily. Wait. Trust me. I'm not as clueless as you think." She stares at me with flashing eyes. "I need you, sister. Don't leave me yet." Her eyes soften and I release her. She backs further into the shadows and hovers there, watching, waiting.
At the window, I sweep aside the thick curtain. The sky is shifting from black to lavender and grey. Dawn is coming and with it Santos, stepping out of his squad car.
Great.
With a hand on his holster, he takes a determined step to the front door and I pray that I am not mistaken in placing my trust in him when it is all too clear he has so little trust in me.