Chapter III
III
The widow arrives on a Monday. A Thursday. A Sunday.
Steps out of a carriage in Paris. Athens. Berlin.
Descends from a riverboat in Vienna. Onto the banks of Budapest. Belgrade.
Ventures as far as Krakow. Amsterdam. Algiers.
On a map, her path would resemble roots, questing outward. In person, she feels like she is drifting, without a destination, a beginning or an end.
She travels alone, and yet, each of her old companions are still with her. In a way.
Now and then she relies on the freedom of the widow’s mourning garb, the shelter of the veil.
And when she feeds, she savors every meal the way Renata taught her, picking out the notes as well as the beat.
When she’s on the road, she follows Hector’s rule, careful to stay ahead of the bodies she makes.
And when she finds a place to spend a fortnight, or a season, or a year, she puts Matteo’s teachings to good use, folds herself into society before she picks her prey.
Makes herself at home in villas, manses, pieds-à-terre.
Becomes a friend, a neighbor, a familiar face.
The years die, and she does not.
Now and then, she wakes to find another little corner of her emptied, some aspect crumbled away in sleep. Perhaps it was a shard of insecurity. A sliver of regret. Sabine probes her mind, trying to find the nature of the absence, like a tongue searching for a missing tooth, but never does.
It does not bother her.
It is a welcome kind of loss.
Especially when other, keener urges move in to fill the space.
In Prague, she lets a man go, not to spare him, simply because she craves the chase. The thrill of watching someone flee. He runs, as if she will not catch him. As if one of her steps is not three of his. As if there was ever a chance of getting away.
The hunger is a constant. It never leaves her. Never fades.
But as the decades pass, her delight at independence does. The novelty of solitude wears off, and Sabine finds herself aware that she’s alone—not lonely, that is too strong a word—but longing, perhaps, for company.
Someone to look at her the way Renata looked at Hector.
To love her as intensely as Alessandro did Matteo.
To be what María’s maid would not, what the widow might have been if she had survived, all those years ago.
Someone to share this life.
Someone to make her feel anything more than hunger. Or at least, a different kind.
Sabine has her prey, of course, the subjects of her games, with whom she passes nights, sometimes even weeks, before the play reaches its conclusion. Though more and more, she begins to wonder what it would be like to spare one. To keep instead of kill, to make them as she is.
But when the moment comes, they scream, they fight, they run, and hunger always gets the best of her. Perhaps, if in that vital, final beat they looked at her with want or love instead of terror.
But they do not.
So she carries on, alone.