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“It’s fine. In a way, I’ve been expecting you.”
She looked at him, searching his face.
“Really?”
“Last time we talked I told you I was a vampire. I thought you might want an explanation.”
“Lia didn’t seem very happy to see me.”
“Lia cares for me,” Ansel said. “And she’s worried that you are dangerous to me. To us.”
“Is she…?”
“A vampire?” He smiled. “No. You’ve seen her in daylight, haven’t you?”
“I don’t know how this works.”
“Lia is not a vampire. She knows I am, though, and she will serve me until I release her.”
“She’s yourslave?” Saber sounded shocked.
“Not at all, no, she’s myfamiliar. She’s able to do a lot of things I can’t because she can be awake during the day. I meant she will serve me until I release her from her human life. Shewantsto be a vampire.”
“Why would anyonewantthat?”
Saber’s voice sounded small and childish, and she was thinking of Laurel, pressed into that box, surrounded by dead animals.
“An eternal life to pursue your interests, your passions? You can’t think of why anyone would want that?”
Saber sat back.
“Lia is a scientist, genetics. She told me once, before she knew what I was, that an eternity was not enough time for whatshe wants to achieve. I got to know her and her work, offered her an eternity, and she accepted.”
“Didyouwant to become a vampire?”
She saw a corner of his mouth turn up in a slight smile, and he leaned back in the sofa, closing his eyes for a moment.
“Did Iwantto become a vampire?” he asked, laughing a little. “No, Saber. I did not. Or maybe, in a way, I did. It’s so hard to answer that question now. It was such a long, long time ago.”
“When did it happen?”
Ansel sighed deeply.
“I haven’t told that story in a very long time,” he said.
“Well,” Saber said, her eyes leveled at him, “tell it now.”
22
“Iwas born in a part of the world that is now called Slovenia, to a noble family with connections to both the Hapsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire. I was not a prince, exactly, but there’s not a better word for it now, in our language.”
“You were a prince?”
“Asort-of-prince,” he said, laughing. “My ‘country’ was the size of a small city. I had a good life. I lived in a crude castle, I rode horses, I had friends, other boys from noble houses. We would summer on a lake, winter in the little township, everything seemed free and easy and exactly how it was supposed to be. I never questioned the order of the world, or my place in it. It wasn’t like royalty you see in historic movies in the later middle ages. It was much more primitive.”
Ansel drummed his fingers on the arm of his sofa and breathed out.
“My father died when I was quite young, but I didn’t know him very well. I was close to my mother and sister, who I loved dearly. My mother was very beautiful, very charming, was a patron of music and art, and my sister Lina was much like her, a truly captivating child who babied me even though I was a year older than her.
