Page 46 of Lair

His wife.

I snap the curtains shut and lie back, trembling, on the bed.

It is soft, deep, luxurious, and I think—desperate to forget the loveliness of Evangeline Voper—of how many times it has borne his weight. How many years. How old is he?

A ship, she said. A sailing ship. What would that make it, then? A hundred years? Two hundred?

What, truly, would a woman mean to him? What would he want in a woman, when he has seen so much, experienced so much?

The usual things, no doubt.

But no. There is nothing usual about this. About him.

Hot, debilitating shame flares my cheeks. What is wrong with me? Why do I care? He’s a fucking vampire, Aurora.

I close my eyes, breathing in the faint scent of roses, and will my thoughts elsewhere. So this is his life. This pleasure boat gliding along the Côte d’Azur like a specter of death, leaving blood-churned waters in its wake. The drained corpses of supermodels hung in closets or tossed overboard. I think of his life in the offseason, long winter nights wandering the empty yacht alone—his orderly solitude, his systematic reading, his mournful piano playing echoing through the cabins and passageways.

Emptiness. Grief. Rage. Bloodlust.

Forever.

What kind of fool would I be, to not run from that? And what kind of heartless fraud, to leave him to it?

For this is what it comes down to. The fear that to be with him would be a defeat, some kind of capitulation. What would Cailee think of me? What would I think of myself? For there would be compromises, certainly, and uncomfortable accommodations, as in any partnership. His would merely be a more particular and trying kind.

Would he want me to watch? Would he want me to join him? Is that what it would mean, to be with him?

What horror, what quaking shame.

How would I live with myself? To be party to that—mistress to a monster. How could I look myself in the eye?

How could I sleep in this bed in which so many women had died?

I jump off it, skin crawling, and end up huddled against the wall with my knees hugged to my chest. Who am I fooling? This won't last. Not after Josh. How could I subject myself to that again? How could I be with another abuser? What would that do to my trauma?

All the same, the thought is there: Would it not be a kind of sin to refuse this offer? Out of a notion of morality, or fearfulness. For does he not need saving? I have woken something in him, she said. And was there not pain in his voice earlier? A harrowed self-hatred?

Not to say anything of the fact—the trembling, incandescent fact—of my desire for him.

All around me, the feeling—that I’m cornered, that I’m in danger of giving up, or may already have.

But would it be giving up, to give in?

Would it?

TWENTY-FIVE

The days pass. In that sunless suite, the only way to track them is by the serving of my meals. Mrs. Colding, three times a day, bustling through the door with a tray. The shamefaced indignity of watching her service the room. And then the silence afterwards, the crushing loneliness.

She never comments on the sheets I’ve dragged onto the floor. She understands why I wouldn’t sleep in that bed.

Yoga only does so much for my aching muscles, and forget about distracting me from my thoughts. I think of escape, but my fingerprint on the communication console sensor is denied. Big surprise.

Next, I think of Adrian. I’ve gone through it countless times, and still I return to the same question: If I stayed, would I leave if it got bad enough? Or am I the kind of woman who wants to be treated this way?

I pace the suite, restless, anger rising. The unfairness, the sheer craziness of it all, begins to sink in. I bang on the door and scream until my throat is raw. I throw things. I curse and plead. I weep.

The next time Mrs. Colding comes through the door with a tray, she finds me curled up in Adrian’s bed, exhausted and half-asleep. When I open my eyes and see her there, she’s smiling.

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