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“There’s one other thing: Lucy and Paul have a chronograph of their own at their disposal,” said Gideon. “They could try to visit you here, today or maybe earlier … and prevent all of this, including the handing over of the elixir.”
“Ah, now, surely by this time you understand enough of the laws of continuity to know that, so far, they have not succeeded in sabotaging my plans, or we would not be here together, would we?” The count smiled. “And I have, of course, taken special precautions for the next few hours, until the elixir is in my hands. Rakoczy and his men will kill any unauthorized person who ventures near us.”
Gideon nodded and put a hand on his stomach. “Here we go,” he said, and at last our eyes met. “I’ll be back soon with the elixir.”
“I am sure that you will carry out your mission to perfection, my boy,” said the count cheerfully. “Bon voyage. Gwyneth and I will pass the time while you are gone with a little glass of port wine.”
I fastened my gaze on Gideon’s, trying to put all my love into my eyes, and then he had disappeared. I felt like bursting into tears, but I went on gritting my teeth and made myself think of Lucy.
Over sandwiches and tea in Lady Tilney’s salon, we had gone through it all over and over again. I knew that we had to beat the count with his own weapons if we wanted to defeat him once and for all. And it had sounded simple enough, at least if Lucy’s assumption was right. She had come up with it, just like that, and at first we dismissed it. Then, after some thought, Gideon nodded. “Yes,” he said. “You could be right.” And he began prowling around the room again.
“Suppose we do what the count says and give Gideon our blood,” Lucy went on. “Then he can close the Circle of Blood in the second chronograph, and hand the elixir over to the count, and then the count gets to be immortal again.”
“Which is exactly what we’ve been trying to avoid like the plague for years, right?” said Paul.
Lucy raised her hand. “Just a minute. Let’s at least think this through.”
I nodded. I didn’t know exactly what she was getting at, but somewhere at the back of my mind a question mark was quietly forming. It grew bigger, and turned into an exclamation mark. “So the count gets to be immortal—until I’m born?”
“That’s right,” said Gideon. He stopped pacing up and down. “And that means that he’s still traveling all over the place in the history of the world, alive and well. Including in our own present.”
Paul frowned. “You mean…”
Lucy nodded. “We mean that the count is watching the entire drama live, in full color.” She paused for a moment. “And I guess he has a seat in the front row.”
“One of the Inner Circle,” I guessed.
The others nodded. “The Inner Circle. The count is one of the Guardians.”
Now, as I sat here with the count, I looked at his face. Which of them was he? The clock above the mantelpiece was ticking loudly. It was going to be an eternity before I traveled back.
The count gestured to me to sit down in one of the upholstered armchairs, poured glasses of dark red wine for both of us, and handed me one. Then he took the armchair opposite and raised his glass to me. “Your good health, Gwyneth! It was two weeks ago today that we first met—well, from my point of view, anyway. I am afraid that my first impression of you was not especially favorable. But by now we are good friends, would you not agree?”
Oh, sure. I sipped my wine, and then said, “You almost throttled me at that first meeting.” I took another sip. Then, rather bravely, I added, “At the time, I thought you could read thoughts. But I expect I was wrong about that.”
The count laughed in a self-satisfied way. “Well, I am able to understand the main currents of other people’s thoughts, but there is no magic about it. Indeed, anyone could learn it. I told you, when we met before, about my visits to Asia and how I acquired the wisdom and abilities of Tibetan monks there.”
So he had, yes. And I hadn’t been listening properly. In fact, even now I was finding it hard to make out his words. They suddenly sounded strangely distorted, sometimes long drawn out and slow, then as if they were being sung. “What on earth…,” I murmured. Veils of pink mist were gathering before my eyes, and I couldn’t blink them away.
The count interrupted himself in his lecture. “You’re feeling dizzy, aren’t you? And now your mouth is dry, am I right?”
Yes, it was! How the hell did he know? And why did his voice sound so metallic? I stared at him through the strange pink mists.
“Have no fear, my child,” he said. “It will soon be over. Rakoczy has promised me that you will feel no pain. You will have fallen asleep before the spasms begin. And, with a little luck, you won’t wake up again before the end.”
I heard Rakoczy laugh. It sounded like the noises you get on a recorded tape in a ghost-train ride at a funfair. “But why…” I was trying to speak, but all at once, my lips felt numb.
“Don’t take this personally,” said the count in a chilly voice, “but in order to realize my plans, I am afraid I have to kill you. The prophesies foretell that, too.”
I wanted to keep my eyes open, but I couldn’t. My chin fell on my breast, then my head flopped over to one side, and finally my eyes closed. Darkness surrounded me.
* * *
MAYBE I REALLY am dead this time was the first thought to cross my mind when I came back to my senses. But I hadn’t really imagined angels as nak*d little boys wearing nothing except rolls of excess fat and silly grins, like the specimens playing their harps above me here. Anyway, they were only painted on the ceiling. I closed my eyes again. My throat was so dry that I could hardly swallow. I was lying on something hard, and I felt utterly exhausted, as if I’d never be able to move again.
Somewhere behind my right ear, I heard a tune being hummed. It was the death march motif from Wagner’s The Twilight of the Gods, Lady Arista’s favorite opera. The voice humming the tune in an unsuitably jaunty way seemed to me vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it. And I couldn’t look to see whose it was, either, because my eyes simply refused to open.
“Jake, Jake,” said the voice, “I’d never have expected you, of all people, to get on my trail. But your medical Latin will do you no good now.” The voice laughed softly. “By the time you wake up, I’ll be over the hills and far away. You know, it’s very pleasant in Brazil at this season. I lived there for several years, from 1940 onward. There’s much to be said for Argentina and Chile as well.” The voice paused for a moment to whistle a few bars of the Wagnerian theme. “I’m always drawn back to South America. And Brazil, incidentally, has the best cosmetic surgeons in the world. They’ve dealt with my annoyingly hooded eyelids, my hooked nose, my receding chin. Which is why, fortunately, I don’t look much like my own portrait anymore.”
