“How many?”
“Ingaborg gave birth to eleven children. Seven lived past their infancy. While at war, I fathered another. I know nothing of what became of her. ” He said these things like they were footnotes in a history text. To him, they must have been. Could someone still love a child who had died before Western civilization was a reality? Sig’s children might have died before Jesus.
Sig’s children might have killed Jesus.
I reminded myself Sig was Finnish, and it was pretty unlikely any of his spawn would have traveled across Europe to kill a trouble-making Jewish carpenter. I was also putting way too much thought in to this. I had to admit, though, it would be cool if one of his children had played a famous part in history. Asking him about this seemed frivolous, so I didn’t.
“What happened to your family after you were turned?”
“I do not know. ”
“Why?”
“I was turned in 9 A. D. , during the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, in what is now Germany, but was then simply Roman land in need of leadership. I had come from the North two years earlier to help prevent my brother’s settlement from being overtaken by the Romans. This, ultimately, proved unsuccessful, but we did manage to hold them off at the time. It was a special kind of day to be turned. September ninth, in the year nine. A lot of nines. Of course, the modern system of dating didn’t exist then. I only learned that date later when the history books wrote about our war, and I liked the symmetry of it. All I knew then was that I was seized one night from the camp, and the next night I had to dig myself out of a shallow grave. ”
I was starting to be sorry I asked.
“The reason I don’t know what happened to my family was because I didn’t go back to Finland for almost forty years. It took me a long time to learn how to control myself and not be the killer who emerged from the woods that night. ”
“I’m sorry. ”
“You needn’t be. ”
“Do I remind you of her?”
“Of Ingaborg?”
“Yes. ”
“No, my sweet. Only in your breathing and your pulse. The nearness of someone alive feels marvelous. It makes me feel almost human, and I haven’t felt that since I died,” he admitted. I raised my face to look at him, and he smiled down at me even though his eyes were closed. “Ingaborg was very…womanly. Not all bones and angles like you girls today. She was unbreakable. ”
I found it hard to imagine Sig married to any woman, especially a curvy, motherly type with a brood of babies all around. But the way he smiled when he talked about her made me shut my mouth fast. Love is love, and though she was nothing but history now, Sig had obviously loved his wife.
We lay like that for another hour, and then it was time to leave.
Chapter Six
I knew Sig could wake before sunset, but I’d never known before that being near him would make it easier for me to do the same. It had still been light out when we’d had our chat in the motel room, and now the final minutes of sunset were upon us.
When Sig pulled his navy blue Lexus out onto the old highway with me in the passenger seat, I didn’t look back at the motel. The sun had dipped below the horizon, and the whole sky was glowing a deep peach-pink. I was too busy enjoying the briefest glimpse of day to spoil it with remembrances of how I’d gotten here.
When we arrived at the main highway and began driving east, the last traces of twilight vanished in the rearview mirror. We drove in silence, and I didn’t attempt to make small talk. What could a twenty-two-year-old say to a two-thousand-year-old vampire that wouldn’t sound completely vacuous?
I pressed my temple to the cool glass of the passenger window and watched the darkness set in while the scenery whipped by in a nauseating blur. Vampires always drove too fast.
Before I had time to think too much about my return home, we were in New York State. I hadn’t yet let myself think about what I would do when we got back to the city. Foolishly, I’d assumed we must have been several hours away from home. Worry yielded to reality as the road signs began to read shorter and shorter dista
nces to New York City. The pretty, wooded spaces of upstate New York became more populated and urban, and at last the glow of the city skyline came into view.
“Where am I to take you, pet?”
I didn’t have much time before we’d be in the heart of Manhattan, and my gut was a clenched fist of nerves. Did I want to go to the office and see Keaty? Or perhaps have Sig drop me at the 52nd Street Starbucks? It was a short walk from my apartment but also a gateway to the unique reality inhabited by the Oracle, Calliope. Certainly the half-god/half-fairy would have a thing or two to tell me about what my arrival home meant. Did I maybe, instead, want delivery to Rain Hotel, where my coveted black keycard would give me direct access to the three-story penthouse?
Unless my access had been cut off.
I swallowed hard.
“Take me home. ”