Chapter 13
XIII
étienne’s first kill had come months after he had joined Gunnar. He resisted the easy prey Gunnar urged him toward—old men, lonely women, the weak who would not fight back. It felt dishonorable, he said, almost cowardly.
“You have to start somewhere,” Gunnar countered.
Then, one evening, étienne found him. A boy not much older than himself, slipping into the hayloft with the careless grace of someone in love.
Soon, a girl followed, skirts rustling, and étienne stayed close enough to hear the soft laughter and the muffled sounds of their pleasure.
He blushed as he listened, burning with shame and hunger both.
The girl left first. The loft smelled of their lovemaking, sweet and animal, hay crushed flat beneath them. The young man lay half-undressed in the straw, one arm tucked lazily behind his head. Peaceful, radiant, so vividly alive.
He was strong, stronger than étienne expected, and nearly wrestled him to the ground.
It might have ended there, étienne broken, his hunger unanswered, but Gunnar was watching.
Coalescing from the dark, he retrieved a knife from his belt and pressed it into étienne’s hand.
étienne’s fingers trembled so badly he nearly dropped it.
“Do it now.”
And étienne obeyed. His hands shook so badly that he cut himself in the frenzy. He almost brought his own bleeding wrist to taste before Gunnar stopped him.
I told étienne how I'd reacted to consuming my own blood earlier that day.
You learned the hard way. We cannot drink from ourselves or each other. Our kind is poison to itself. Only the living will do, he said.
Our kind, I considered.
I pondered over his love story with Gunnar. I saw Gunnar in Etienne’s memory, through étienne’s eyes—the way he looked at the boy, so gentle. I’d never seen Gunnar show so much affection. Not to Ophelia, anyway.
Sylvie’s eyes had long since been drained of love for me, too. We put all our money into the house, only for her to realize she didn’t want any of that. And she didn’t want me. But I wasn’t a toy to be played with and discarded when she grew bored. Nor was Whitmore!
This was supposed to have been our haven. I had wanted to keep her here with me. If we kept renovating, I thought she might eventually fall in love with me again. That had been the plan.
I’d done my research and started small. I peeled back wallpaper and tucked damp scraps and potato peels into the corners where they would spread like disease.
I worked my way outside as well. I got a bag of coarse salt and spread it along the perimeter of the house, pressing it into the mortar between the stones.
I knew at least one of these things would work. I just needed a little mold, one crack, anything to keep the house from selling. Keep us renovating. Keep Sylvie with me.
I turned it over in my mind for the rest of the night while Gunnar and Ophelia held their blood feast.
The newest victim had long, heavy, curly black hair. We were not identical, but certain features echoed me. Her face had the same narrowness, the same quiet severity around the mouth, similar eyes, though I couldn't tell the color. I pretended not to notice.
Ophelia tortured her with passion. She moved slowly, prolonging each moment, drawing gasps from the woman in small, merciless thefts, savoring each tear, each scream.
My hands slid across Gunnar’s and Ophelia’s bodies. Our limbs tangled together, knees pressing, wrists caught, weights shifting. It felt disturbingly natural.
étienne had told me our blood was poison. Yet when I slit Ophelia’s throat, she did not die. She must have swallowed some of her own blood. Why had she not died?
“Agatha!” The mention of my new name pulled me back, and I automatically continued to move, to suck, to lick, to kiss, serving as part of this bloodied machine.
Agatha. The name pulsed in my temples like a flesh-eating worm.
I wondered whether Ophelia had once been someone else, too.
For several nights, she shifted between lunging at me and nagging Gunnar. She demanded my presence, my hands, my mouth. I stayed with her, let her caress me, listened as she complained about Gunnar, about me, about the bones.
Sitting on the floor at her feet, I watched us in the mirror—two ghostly figures suspended in the glass.
Her knees pressed lightly into my back as she drew the brush through my hair.
The bristles scraped my scalp in long, luxurious strokes.
For a moment, I closed my eyes and drifted, but then her tone turned low and edged. Threatening.
“I feel like I am just another one of his bones.” She pulled harder, and I winced. “Not a partner. Just something he keeps around until someone better comes along, and then he can add me to his collection.” She let out a bitter laugh. “Maybe then he’ll pay me some attention.”
She gathered a section of my hair, ran her fingers through it, then set the brush aside, twisting the strands between her hands like rope.
“He never stopped missing étienne. Did you know that? I see it in the way he goes quiet. In the way he stares at the walls, like he is listening for a voice that’s no longer there. ”
The brush dragged through another tangle, harder this time. My eyes watered.
“He loved étienne. Sometimes I think he even prefers you. As though the two of you share a secret.”
She knows, I thought. She knows.
She yanked so hard my head jerked back. In the mirror, her eyes caught mine.
“And when he touches you—” She leaned closer, her lips warm against my ear. “When he looks at you, Agatha, I see it. That hunger. He is not thinking of me at all. And that”—her fingers tightened in my hair, lifting my chin higher—“is the problem.”
I needed to escape.
The house had grown colder as winter approached. A few windows had pulped and collapsed inward. Even in that dull gray light of day, I still could not go outside. At night, I was under constant watch.
Suspicious, Ophelia ventured out more and more seldom and almost never returned with anyone. The few prey she brought back were subtle and easy. They squirmed, and she was ravenous, her games crueler now, designed only to inflict as much pain as possible.
She fought Gunnar and me for sustenance.
Me, because she could, and Gunnar, to see whether he would yield or battle.
She wanted Gunnar’s devotion, but it was already slipping from her grasp, and she did not see that I was the one holding it now.
The acrimony between them was as loud as the bones in Whitmore.
“He’s mine!” she snarled, blood flying from her mouth.
Gunnar stared at her, contemplating, and I wondered whether he wanted her around at all. Then he stepped back without a word, and I heard the floor creak above us as he retreated to his sanctuary of bones.
After that, Ophelia watched Gunnar and me like a hawk during our blood-soaked games, her eyes fixed and suspicious. Gunnar felt it too. He no longer touched me in front of her. But when we were alone, he always claimed me.
Ophelia must have sensed as much, because she stopped going out to hunt altogether. She skipped one night, then another, then a week. The hunger became overwhelming.
That night, they left together—Gunnar behind the wheel, Ophelia beside him, shining like a newly polished diamond, happy they were together.
She even kissed me on the lips, promising to bring me something nice.
I noticed she wasn’t wearing Sylvie’s clothes.
She was wearing mine: jeans, a horror-movie T-shirt, right down to the heavy Dr. Martens on her feet.
It made her look so young, like a teenager—her subtle frame swallowed in the oversized tee.
And then they left in the car Sylvie and I had shared since we had to sell mine.
Now was the time.
I needed to leave before Ophelia came undone. Before she and Gunnar reconciled and traced their undoing back to the venomous snake in their garden of affection—me.
I pushed the door open, and the cool night air rushed over me like a baptism.
It smelled like rain and woodsmoke, dead leaves and fresh linen, so unlike the house, which withered more each day.
I inhaled greedily, like an addict getting their fix.
The night belonged to me now. I stepped onto the porch.
Barefoot, nightgown clinging to me, I didn’t care about the cold.
I didn’t care about anything except freedom.
One step became two. Then I sprinted. The slimy grass slapped at my ankles, the earth sucking me in, but I didn’t stop. I bolted for the trees that circled the property. Beyond them lay the state park, miles and miles of forest. If I ran all night, maybe I would reach people.
All that mattered was that I was no longer inside that house.
I ran hard, lungs tearing, legs flying. The trees blurred, slick with rain, the forest opening to consume me. But then my steps faltered, each stride grew heavier than the last.
I pushed harder. The ground tilted. I stumbled, gagging, the sour heat of my stomach climbing my throat.
I tried again—another step, another gasp. I collapsed to my knees, clutching at the clammy earth, trying to force myself forward. The harder I fought, the worse it got. My vision pulsed black at the edges. I convulsed, heaving, spitting blood.
Half-faint, I crawled back toward the house.
And then—relief.
My chest loosened, and air rushed back. By the time I reached the porch again, the sickness had already ebbed.
The house took me back with open arms.
I was missing something. There had to be a way for me to leave. Gunnar and Ophelia traveled constantly. Why couldn't I?
I sobbed when I told étienne about it. He had been unusually silent that day.
When he finally spoke, he told me how much he missed home. He painted a vivid image in my mind: the quaint cottages, flowers in bloom, the lush, rolling fields, the endless horizon, and the sun! Oh, he missed the sun most of all.
We used to take the soil from our home with us. Helvig’s voice caressed me. On our travels and conquests. To make sure we would always return home. Alive.
It was the same thing étienne had shared with me. It hadn’t occurred to me then that he was speaking of me, too—that I wasn't just listening to stories, but to my own unmaking.
Ophelia and Gunnar had done the same, wearing the soil around their necks. I had wondered, then, if I could take some soil from Sylvie’s grave, pack it into a small jar, and keep it close. If that could serve as a promise to come back. If it could allow me to leave.
I wondered what eternity would be like, when the world had already rejected you long before you became the thing that plagued the night.
Would one get a job? Steal? Wander the streets, feeding on people who were already forgotten?
What would one do with the opportunity to live forever—or at least as long as Gunnar?
He was ancient. He had seen the world gather itself from nothing, crumble in wars, and rebuild again.
He had seen continents discovered, empires rise and crumble.
He had watched fire become industry, and industry become light.
He had lived through Copernicus mapping the heavens, through the first plague that swept Europe, through the Reformation tearing faith apart, through the French Revolution drowning the streets in red.
He watched the trenches of the Great War fill with boys who still smelled of milk.
He saw men walk on the moon. And still, he remained there, hiding from daylight in a crumbling house, surrounded by the bones of his dead lovers.