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It was a very all-American kind of expanse. As long as you didn’t know that it was owned and built and maintained by vampires.
Her grandfather came out tamping tobacco into his pipe, the screen door clapping shut behind him. “Do you know where we’re going?”
She glanced back at him, noting the fabric roll under his arm. “Yes.”
“Do you have any questions?”
“No.”
“Let’s go out to the barn, then.”
They walked side by side across the fragrant, freshly cut lawn. The maple trees seemed more beautiful than she remembered, the boughs laden with their emerald green, late-August leaves. Soon, when the weather turned, they would be red and gold, and then finally, crunchy brown upon the ground.
“Actually, I do have a question,” she said. “How did you know Janelle had killed the old male? How were you so sure?”
Her grandfather put his pipe between his teeth and lit it with his old, serviceable lighter, clustering down with his palms, hunching to keep the breeze from disturbing the flame’s work. And then it was puff, puff, puff . . . the fragrant smoke rising up.
She was becoming convinced he was going to ignore her when he finally spoke.
“He called me. Two nights before he was killed.”
When she looked over sharply, her grandfather showed no signs of noticing her surprised reaction. He just took his pipe out of his mouth and peered into the belly as if checking to see it was sufficiently embered.
“He told me that she had threatened him,” he said as he stopped and had to relight. When things were properly going, he resumed speaking, but not walking. “He called me as her male next of kin, in accordance with the Old Laws. At first, I thought it was disciplinary in nature. Then I realized that he was scared of her. I interceded on his behalf. I told her there was no cause to go over to the property again, that her services were no longer required.”
“And what happened,” Nyx prompted when he fell silent.
Her grandfather started walking again and did not respond until they were inside the barn. And even then, he waited until he was standing by a guide boat that, going by the sweet smell of varnish, he had recently put a first coat on.
He puffed on his pipe, releasing clouds of white that drifted over his head. “I am an old male now, and fifty years ago, I had already been on the planet for five hundred and seventy-three years. In all that time, I have never been looked at like that.”
“How did she . . .” Nyx’s voice got unreliable so she had to let the words go.
“Janelle had no soul in that moment. Behind that stare, there was . . . absolutely nothing.” He put up his forefinger. “No, that isn’t true. There was logic and calculation. Nothing of any humanity, however. No love or connection to me as a member of her bloodline. And that was when I saw the true nature of her. That was when I realized . . . that I had been living all of those years with a predator.”
Nyx shook her head as she remembered the female’s cold stare through the steel mesh of the holding cell. “I didn’t know, either,” she whispered.
“I fault my own reasoning. I assumed . . .” He ran his hand along the gunwale of the gleaming golden boat. “I assumed females couldn’t think like that, be like that. Of course, there had been flashes of strange detachment from her, things that lingered from time to time, but I disregarded all of that because she was my granddaughter and I loved her.”
“She was my sister.” Nyx walked over to the lineup of orderly tools on the wall above the workstation. “I did the same.”
“The next night, the old male called and told me she was welcome back on his property. Even now, I wondered what she did to get that result. I can only guess. I decided to stay out of it. I doubted myself . . . and I was, like him, scared of her. When she came home from work early the following night, with that cash and that so-called gift?” He shook his head. “I knew what had to have happened. I came out here, so she would think I was working, and dematerialized over to the house. I demanded to see the body. The butler tried to stop me, but I rushed upstairs and followed the scent of death. I saw the old male propped up in his bed, lying against the pillows. His butler informed me that it was his time. That he had been suffering the rapid descent of age. I pretended to be overcome and require a glass of water. When the doggen left me, I went across and inspected the male. His neck was broken, snapped free of the spinal cord. Old age does not do that.”
