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He stared at his hands. “I’m afraid, Zoë. He could kill me. He knows how to do it.”
Zoë was astounded. “You’re afraid of death?”
Simon shrugged. “It doesn’t matter how long you live, the idea of nonexistence is still frightening. No matter how tired you are of life, it’s better than facing the unknown.”
“But you don’t have to lose.” She glanced at her mother. She couldn’t fight the death taking her mother, but she could fight the death that had taken his. She could fight Christopher. “What if I helped?”
It was his turn to be astounded. “You’d help?”
“Yes, because I know you can do it.”
He reached to stroke her hand. “How can I let you endanger yourself?”
“Let me help you,” she said, “or I swear I’ll do it myself.” And at that moment she felt she could.
He laughed suddenly, his eyes lighting up. “I have never received such an offer.” His voice was tender. “How could I ever fail with you beside me?”
“We’d better go,” she said, already frightened at her own words. “I’ve got a phone call to make.”
Before they left, she took a folded piece of paper from her coat pocket, smoothed it out, and laid it under her mother’s hand. It was a poem—“Spells against Death.”
12
Simon
It was too cold for lovers, and too late. A chill November night wind rustled the bushes, rattling azaleas, making the privets hiss. But Simon didn’t feel the cold—ice kissing ice doesn’t freeze—neither did he sweat as he thrust the stolen shovel repeatedly into the hard-packed soil. The lip of the trench was already at his knee.
The leather coat lay across a branch. One arm of the jacket swung drunkenly each time a load of dirt hit the trunk of the shrub that held it. Simon’s muscles bunched and strained in relentless rhythm as he tore a gash in the earth.
Clouds covered the sky, but he didn’t need light to see by, even if the witch’s moon was high enough to help. He had animal eyes, and the steady pace of his work was the gait of the wolf, who could run all night till it found its prey.
The hole came to his waist. He thought of Zoë as he dug, and the pleasure of it spurred him on—the torture of her skin, her human breath, the shadows in her eyes, her fragile bones, the whole ephemeral beauty of her that would fade and die before he’d ever wear one wrinkle on his face. I could cup one of those sweet breasts, he thought, and she’d be gone, before ever the pleasure had stopped singing in me.
He mustn’t let himself care. He’d spend longer missing her than knowing her. But was it a wonder that he’d lasted this long without caring, or was it a wonder that he could care at all? Who knew? He chuckled softly at the thought that age brought knowledge. It just brought new surprises.
It was sad that Zoë’s mother was dying, and sadder that Zoë already missed her. I could tell her, It’s not too bad, he thought. Your life is short. It’s not a long time to miss someone. But she wouldn’t believe him. It was all she had. A lifetime was a lifetime, regardless of its years.
The hole was deep enough. It was ragged and uneven, but deep enough. He yanked the corner of a moth-eaten blanket above him and rolled the waiting bundle down. The finishing touches didn’t take long. He threw the shovel out and then, with preternatural strength, leapt after it, defying gravity. He grunted fiercely at the pleasure it still brought.
How much sadness have I caused? he wondered as he arranged scavenged branches across the pit. Were they missed as badly, the people I took to extend my worthless life? He had never thought of them as being missed by someone. He’d thought of the cruelty of taking their lives, he’d worried at the pain they might feel, but it never entered his head that there would be pain left behind. How stupid I am, he thought. Am I doomed to be a shallow youth forever, as Christopher is a petulant child? What a waste of years, never learning from them, never growing. It was all so senseless, but all part of the same curse.
He spread the blanket on the branches and began covering it with the dead leaves that clogged the lower joints of the bushes.
The moist, pungent smells brought back to him another autumn, the one when he had found his way back to his father’s house, too late. He had peered through the diamond panes, like a thief, at a wizened, white-haired man, who wore grief and pain on his face like a web. There was no one there to comfort the old man as he tossed and turned on his bed, no son to hold his dying hand. A servant brought in a drink to the nightstand, turned down the light, and left, never speaking once.
Simon had stood there all night, his face pressed to the glass. There was no one to invite him in. He could only wait and stare longingly at his father, aware that even if fate gave him a door, he could never enter, never tell his father what he had become. Better to let him suffer in ignorance than in the unbearable pain of knowing both his sons damned.
Trapped on the other side of the window, trapped in the world of the night, Simon knew they were forever separate now, no matter who it was alive, or dead, or dying.
He left before the sun rose, his heart as swollen with grief as if it were beating. He had barely stopped being an animal and remembered he had been human once, when he was forced to put aside that knowledge, deny that heart to stop the pain.
He stayed close in London, though he never dared lo
ok again, and when he heard of his father’s death it was money robbed from a drunk that bought the family portrait from a skulking, thieving footman, not three hours past the burial. The only ones he could love were now dead. He could never care for someone again, and no one would ever care for him.
But Zoë cares, he thought as he tossed a last handful of leaves on the pile. She said she’d help me. No one has ever helped me; yet, knowing what I am, she’ll help. He moved a broken trellis and began shoveling earth into the damp hole behind. Yes, there were still surprises.
As the sky silvered, before the red sun tore shreds in the east, Simon approached the boarded window of his den. It was there he received a different surprise—nasty.
