...Or was that actually:unspoken?
Ugh, feelings made no sense! She was still simmering over the outrageous disconnect between her clamoring instincts and her brain two hours later as she left behind her rigidly still, unbreathing husband, the bed eerily empty in their mirror, and stalked down the long corridor and then the main staircase to meet Leonie by the inn’s front door.
The nachzehrer was, as usual, clad in plain black robes, ornamented only by a harsh-looking rope that she’d tied around her middle like a belt. She raised her hood over her bare head as Margaret approached, hiding her expression, but her red eyes glowed from within its shadows. “Ready?”
“Almost.” Distracted or not, Margarethadread through every mention of nixen in the books that she’d unpacked, so she knew there was one more piece of preparation to fulfill. “Do you know how to find the kitchen?”
“No need. Konrad already packed you food and drink. See?” Leonie jerked her hooded head towards a small side table that was almost hidden in the shadows of the great staircase.
The picnic basket that sat atop it was full of gleaming red apples and carefully wrapped cheese, as well as a small flask of cider and an empty cup. “Oh, this is perfect,” Margaret murmured as she looked through the selection. “How did he know what I would need?”
Leonie gave a jerky shrug. “He knew we’d be out for hours, didn’t he? He looked through those maps, aswell. He’d never let you go hungry now that you’re one of us.”
One of us. For a moment, Margaret simply let that impossible phrase ring through her arrested body. Then she drew a deep breath and cast aside all irrelevant emotions. “Andnowit’s time to work!”
Thank goodness, there were no disruptive envelopes lurking on the front door step this time; only a pile of waiting newspapers with headlines that trumpeted warnings of tension across the continent. Margaret was only too happy to disregard them all and focus on her own local surroundings. The sky above the inn’s small clearing was grey and overcast, but the early morning air felt pleasantly cool against her skin. A light breeze carried the beckoning scent of pine sap, and the vast, rustling walls of the forest loomed ahead.
Margaret strode into the green world of the Black Forest, ready to explore every mystery safely unconnected to her own heart.
The Diamantensee was significantly further from the inn than yesterday’s waterfall. However, today she had the advantage of an updated and corrected map, as well as the brass pocket compass whose fabulously modern design had been praised to the skies by the shopkeeper in Paris who’d sold it to her. Still, it took a surprising amount of concentration to find the right direction through the trees, with the thick forest canopy overhead obscuring the angle of the clouded sun and tinting the air around her in an eerie, dusky green glow that made the day feeloddly timeless. Even the magnetic needle of her new compass swung wildly back and forth in indecision as if it, too, were cut off from all ordinary signposts.
Could an implanted supernatural artifact affect the magnetic signals of the earth both beneath and around it? Now,thatwould be an intriguing question to address! Particularly as these new pocket compasses became more widely available and more statistical evidence could be gathered from around the world...
But Margaret had only just begun to consider the matter when Leonie suddenly spoke, her voice harsh. “No one else can hear us anymore, so you may as well tell me the truth.”
“I beg your pardon?” Shaken out of her absorption, Margaret turned and found that the nachzehrer had come to a halt on the moss-covered ground, crossing her black-robed arms across her chest and bracing herself in what looked like self-defense.
Blinking, Margaret cast her mind back over the last few minutes of their hike. She couldn’t think of any sound she’d uttered that could possibly have elicited that response. “I don’t think I can have heard you properly.”
“Well,I’veheard everything you’ve said about your work.” Leonie had lowered her hood as soon as they’d stepped into the shade of the forest. Now, her smooth, pale head was tinted green, her red eyes shadowed, and her face set in hard, defiant lines. “But I’ve been thinking about it eversince we all met last night, and one thing doesn’t ring true no matter how I look at it. Yousaidyou don’t think it’s a curse or an abomination to be a supernatural like me or anyone else at the inn.”
“Because it isn’t.” Margaret frowned, searching the girl’s fierce expression for clues. She knew herself to be poor at guessing at other people’s feelings, but Leonie’s voice sounded more hurt than angry. “Why in the world would you imagine that I was lying about that? I’ve made the supernatural the focus of my life’s work. How could I disdain it?”
“Yesterday,youtold me, because of the extra time I gained, that you would consider my transformation agift.” The word emerged from the nachzehrer’s lips as a bitter snarl.
Margaret cringed. “That phrase—I do know I wasn’t being tactful or considerate at the time. I am sorry. Your feelings about your situation are your own, and I should not have tried to tell you?—”
“Oh, Iknowyou didn’t mean it,” Leonie said flatly. “You couldn’t have. Otherwise, you wouldn’t still be human, would you?” Lifting her chin, she let out a derisive snort. “You put on a good show for all of us last night, but it only took me half an hour afterwards before I remembered the simple truth:youwouldn’t need to be buried in the right cemetery to gain eternal life if that was what you actually wanted, would you?”
“Well—”
“Don’t pretend your own husband wouldn’t happily give it to you!”
“I wouldn’t?—!”
“So there’s nopointclaiming you respect any of us when it’s obvious how you truly feel.”
Margaret took a long, settling breath. Apparently, this expeditionwouldn’toffer her any retreat from unsettling emotions after all.
Even her own husband had never asked her this particular question so directly...but the mingled pain and rage in the nachzehrer’s voice made it impossible to raise the cold, cutting shields that Margaret had erected against so many importunate male classmates in the past.Theirquestions had been designed purely to wound or shatter her confidence; this question, only too clearly, arose from the girl’s own lack of it.
“First of all...” The thick, spongey green moss yielded disconcertingly beneath her booted feet as she shifted in place, trying to find the right balance of words and feelings. “I don’t have tobecomesomething in order to respect it. For instance, I can respect both Germanic and French scholars while remaining British myself. I respect musicians and artists too, without sharing any of their gifts.”
“That isnotthe same thing, and you know it.” Leonie tightened her crossed arms. “Didn’t your husband offer to make you a vampire when you were wed?”
“Not when we werefirstwed,” Margaret said with painstaking accuracy, “but, yes. Fairly soon afterwards, he did say he would be willing to share immortal life with me if I ever wish it.”
He had never pressed the matter, though. In fact,they hadn’t even spoken of it since that same, life-shifting conversation when they’d agreed upon their practical alliance and rational partnership...
