He returned then to the hearth and opened the teakettle that hung there, filling it from a pitcher of water that rested on a nearby table.The fire had burned low, and he tossed in what looked like bricks of turf, which sometimes made their way to Roche from Bodmin Moor.
“It was the same with my grandmother,” he continued. “It seems they couldn’t survive the birth of a monster.”
His voice sounded flattened by a lifetime of grief pressing down on him. Monster or no, I pitied him. He hadn’t chosen to be what he was.
He came away from the hearth again, but he kept a careful distance now that he had nothing to prove to me.
He craves my blood.Yet here I still stood. As if entranced by him, like the powdery, gray moths that slipped inside and fluttered around our lamp.
“How is it they were able to ... to marry?” I asked, heat creeping into my cheeks. “You’re uncomfortable with me even in your house.” There was living together, which would have been hard enough. But there was also the seeding of children.
He stared at the floor between us, again clasping his hands behind his back, shoulders tipping forward under the weight he carried. “They learned to manage their thirst in other ways,” he said. “We’re still human for the most part. There is still love, and the drive to reproduce. To continue a family line, even if it’s a cursed one. There is still frailness. And hope. Always hope that the next generation will be free of the curse.”
I felt a tug in my throat at the tragedy of it.Yet they are killers.
“What do you mean by ‘other ways’?” I asked. “Did the ones who came before you have their own vital essences?”
He looked up. “No.”
I folded my arms over my chest against the chill in the air, waiting for him to say more. Butheseemed to be waiting for me to come up with the answer on my own. After a moment, I did, and my heart lurched.
“They drank other people’s blood instead.”
He slowly nodded. “I won’t lie to you, Miss Penrose. There would certainly have been lovers and wives killed, even with the best intentions. Probablymanyof them over the centuries, because it was always a risk. An unacceptable one, in my view. When you ... when youwantsomeone,the temptation is even stronger.” His eyes flitted to mine, and a fire flickered in my belly. “It’s a very cruel trick of the disease.”
It was a horrible, heartbreaking family history ... and made my squabbles with Jack seem childish and small. Yet I knew the pain of loss and loneliness, and in that moment I hurt for him more than I feared him.
“Thomas Tregarrick, the first of us to be afflicted, was a hunter,” he continued. “But toward the end of his long life, he did try to assert some control over his thirst, and this carried through to future generations. All of us gain more control as we age—or as we accumulate years. But also my family’s ancient wealth, with careful management, only increased over the centuries, which opened the door to various alternatives.”
“Ways to avoid killing, you mean?”
“Yes. Agreements were struck with surgeons and physicians, for example, who in the process of treating patients sometimes acquire blood that would otherwise be discarded. Or a trusted family physician might harvest blood from willing donors.” He frowned. “Feeding the old way was still preferred, and there were always people poor enough to risk just about anything.”
Unsettling as this was, it seemed to suggest at least the possibility they could feed on people without taking their lives.
“Now, Miss Penrose,” he said as his gaze came back to me, “you will want to ask me a question.”
I swallowed, feeling pricks along the back of my neck. “Have you ever killed anyone?”
I watched his chest rise slowly. The kettle over the fire began to whistle, and he started toward it, muttering, “Possibly.”
My heart raced as he tipped the water into a teapot, and I thought about the madness of being served tea by a blood-drinking monster. The smoky smell of “Caravan” drifted through the room.
I find it warming.To balance his cold, dry earth.
“You’ve taken a chill,” he said, placing the teapot on a tray. “Go downstairs and I’ll bring you a cup of tea. After that you’re going home, where you will have a decision to make.”
Though I wasn’t sure what he meant, I did as he asked, and his boots sounded softly on the steps behind me.
He set the tray down on the dining table before closing the front door and going for an ember from the hearth. Then he began the same ritual with the frankincense. Suddenly I realized it wasn’t about purifying the air, or at least it wasn’t only about that.
In a tone of surprise, I said, “You can smell my blood.”
One of his eyebrows lifted as he glanced at me. Then he returned to his task.No reply necessary.The flame that flickered again in my belly also took me by surprise. His awareness of me—the way I affected him—caused my heart to jump in a way that was more excitement than fear. Which confused me, and made me wonder if maybe I really was as careless of my own safety as Jack seemed to think.
To cover these emotions—and also because it felt upside down for him to serve me—I took the cups from the tray and filled them. He reached for his, but instead of joining me at the table, he remained standing behind the chair.
“Knowing how uncomfortable you are around me,” I said, “I’m even more grateful for what you did for me on the heath.”
