His eyes, shifted in colour and unnaturally bright, watched me across the room. “I did.”
“Why?”
“To see what it was like, of course.”
“And how did you find it?”
“Unpleasant, naturally. Not an experience I would recommend.”
“The madness, the risk of death…”
“My exposure was short. I simply… wished to know.”
And just like that, my curiosity was gone.
I recognised its absence with a start, surprised to discover it so quickly faded.
There was nothing more I wanted from this man.
Nothing I wanted to say or do.
He was…
… boring.
A boring ex-tyrant. Petty in his ambitions. Tedious in his self-righteousness. Predictable even in his excessive flourishes of egotistical drama. A big man in a tiny room on an island in the sea.
I sighed, rose to my feet, suddenly aching, suddenly very human after all.
“I’ll call the authorities,” I said. “They’ll send someone to pick you up.”
“Don’t.”
“It’s the right thing to do.”
“I will shoot you and run away if you try,” he explained, sounding almost a little embarrassed. “I will not tolerate a show trial, you see. I will not have my throat cut by the Yeh’haim while I sleep.”
“I think it would be hard to argue that you deserve anything less.”
He shrugged.
It was such a strange gesture. A thing of the Shine, of the old world. Something my parents might have done, before the bombs fell. I watched his shoulders move, and there it was, a little whiff of fascination, my old, familiar friend, gone in an instant. But not anger.
“Are you going to kill me?” he asked.
“Is that what you want?”
“I expected as much.”
“But is it what you want? I think it is. I think it is the easy way out. And I suppose you reasoned that with me, death is fairly unavoidable. Come to the isle, leave your boat, wait. The sun will set, and in the dark… who knows what I’ll do? No choice, really. No chance to change your mind, once I get myself in a certain kind of mood. I’ll find you no matter what. I’ll be curious to taste your blood, no?”
“I didn’t dwell too much on the details.”
“Of course you didn’t. Of course.”
I finished my tea. Drained it down. Stood up, walked to the counter, set my cup on the side. Listened to the wind. Rain had come, was thickening to a familiar tappity-tap on the roof. The cottage’s battery would need servicing too, repriming after all this time. Messy job, if you didn’t do it right, but worth sorting before winter.
“How old are you?” I blurted, the question rising to my tongue despite myself.
