Ellie shrugged. “More or less. Oh, and he talked about some estate burning to the ground. A castle... Foulis, I believe.”
“What? No. It can’t be!” Mother clutched the armrests with trembling hands and stared at Ellie with too-wide eyes. “Why would they... When? How? Are there survivors?”
“You...” Unsettled, Ellie’s stomach began to churn with a sick feeling that had nothing to do with stale tea. “You’ve been to Scotland, haven’t you?”
Mama’s eyes glazed. “I?—”
Ellie put down her cup hard enough to crack the china saucer. “You’ve been to Castle Foulis. Haven’t you!”
Mama gave her head a violent shake. “I?—”
Ellie’s eyes narrowed. “If you lie to me, Mother, I shall never forgive you.”
Mama’s chin lifted in her customary hauteur, then her face crumbled into a wholly unfamiliar expression of guilt and despair.
Nothing could have frightened Ellie worse.
“I hope that is untrue,” Mama said quietly, “for I have told many lies in order to keep you safe.”
Frowning, Ellie leaned forward. “Safe from what?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
The tips of Ellie’s fingers traced the twin welts beneath the lace of her bodice. “Try me.”
Her mother slumped against her armrest, the sorrow in her eyes now tempered by a faraway look of remembrance. “Scotland... is very beautiful and very old. Fantastical stories are passed down through the generations, and magic is considered commonplace.” She shifted her gaze to the thick curtains covering the window. “There are those who still believe the legends of the vampires of yore...”
“It’s no myth,” Ellie muttered behind her teacup. Her mother shot up from the chaise. Out of surprise, Ellie did the same.
“Then you know?” Her mother’s voice cracked on the final word.
More confused than ever, Ellie ran the tip of her tongue over her sore gums before replying. “I am irrevocably convinced. Although I admit to not understanding this conversation.”
“Oh, Elspeth.” With the tea tray still on the table between them, Mama reached over to briefly lay a hand on Ellie’s cheek. “I owe you an apology. And an answer to all your questions. I had no idea you suspected... that you knew...”
Ellie stopped massaging her sore gums as trepidation set in. Whatever she thought she knew was merely the tip of an iceberg she hadn’t known existed. The ill feeling in her stomach increased sevenfold. “Perhaps you should start at the beginning?”
“The beginning?” Mama’s laugh was high-pitched and humorless. “A few hundred years are far too many to recount in one sitting. Suffice it to say, I barely recall who I was before I became what I am now. I lived... if not happily, then at least contentedly under clan rule until early last century, when I met your father. He was so sweet, so?—”
Ellie shook her head to clear the cobwebs from her ears. “Beg pardon, I thought you said... early last century?”
Mother nodded abstractedly. “It was forbidden, of course, under penalty of death... but a woman in love cannot refuse the call, even if she has the ill fortune of being in love with a human. And an Englishman, at that. He was?—”
“You’re saying... you’re a vampire?” Ellie blurted as the pieces fell into place. Her flesh grew cold at the obviousness of the truth, now that her empirical mind could no longer disbelieve the signs. Her legs suddenly unsteady, she fell back to the chaise as if awakening from a stupor. “You are!”
Mother perched back on the edge of her seat, her gestures nervous, her eyes guilty. “Was that not what we were discussing?”
Ellie’s sudden laugh bordered on hysteria. “Not at all, but pray continue. It seems I need to know your story in order to better understand mine.”
Watching her daughter uncertainly, Mama stammered at first, then let loose with a torrent of words as if a dam had broken free.
Ellie, on the other hand, could only listen and stare, unable to make a sound. Anger, disbelief, and wonder all crashed together as she tried to assimilate the flood of unforeseeable information and unbelievable twists to what she thought she knew about her own life.
Her mother was a vampire.
“I was reborn in Castle Foulis, centuries ago.” Mama’s voice was dreamy. “I lived amongst dozens more of our kind. There was a clan. A family. A government. It was paradise… and then I ran away.”
“Why?” Ellie asked quietly.
