She pleated her skirts. “I had thought I knew how my life would go. I was content to be a spinster, once I realized what was happening. I was all right with it. I wanted to look after my father. I wanted to be there, even though I feared him aging, feared watching it happen and being unable to do anything about it. And then I was denied both things, after all,” she whispered. “I never closed that chapter of my life. I never got to say goodbye of my own volition. And there isn’t anything I have from it—none of my mother’s teacups or samplers, none of my father’s letter openers—not even a single pen wiper. Nothing, save your books.”
Kendrick said, “You may have all of them. Whichever is missing, I’ll buy you.”
“Thank you,” she said, looking up at him. “It means so much. But there is a lack there—in my past. I suppose that’s why I have such—trouble with Christmas.”
Inwardly, he thought,How long has it been since you have had a Christmas, Genevieve? And how can I, old fool that I am, see that it comes for you?But all he said was, “Would you like to do some small things, then? For the children?”
She bit her lip. “Oh, yes, we can purchase presents for the children. They might never have had gifts before.” She thought about it. “Maybe a little greenery?”
“We can manage a little greenery,” he assured her.We can manage so much more, if you’ll only let me, Genevieve.But he had to remind himself to go slow. Healing came slowly and at its own pace.
But they’d have a little Christmas in the meantime.
The two older women watched Genevieve and Kendrick with birdlike intensity from their chairs beside the fire. Both gray-haired and thin, one knitted while the other embroidered on an embroidery hoop. Otherwise, they looked exactly the same. Twins. They were draped with several shawls, as if to keep off the night’s winter chill.
But they did not need them. They were vampires, after all.
“It’s about time,” Miss Dolores Connors said over her knitting. “We’ve been waiting this age for a visit from the new master.” She cast a speculative glance at Genevieve. “And you, my girl? Who are your people?”
“I’m from Oxford originally?—”
“No, no. Your bloodline.”
Genevieve’s mouth thinned. “Cuthbert.”
“Oh, yes, we knew him.” Miss Hattie Connors chortled. “He was from Preminger, was he not?”
“Quite so, quite so.”
“Too much wildness in the blood in that line. You’re not wild, though, are you?” It was a rhetorical question. “But you do the proper thing. Rupert, that upstart, never did the proper thing. WetoldGisela she was backing the wrong horse, but did she listen?”
The two sisters wagged their heads solemnly. “She should have set her cap for that other lad—Salem, wasn’t it?”
Beside Genevieve, Kendrick stirred. To Genevieve’s practiced eye, he looked like he was trying not to laugh. “How is Gisela related to you, ma’am?”
The old woman cackled. “In more ways than one!” She rang the bell on the side table and the human woman who had admitted Genevieve and Kendrick to the small terrace house reappeared. She looked about forty, with hair beginning to show a few strands of silver, but she kept herself well.
The other Miss Connors said, “Ana, do ask Gisela to join us if she is in the house.”
The woman replied, “Yes, Aunt Hattie,” and withdrew.
“Areyou her aunt?” Kendrick asked.
“Many times great-aunt, but a lady never tells her age.” Hattie Connors wagged her finger at him slyly. “We are the family’s godmothers and benefactors! We invested in the ‘Change, you see! Right at the start!”
“Ana and Gisela are sisters, you know,” Miss Dolores said, her needles pausing their comforting click-clack. “We erred with Gisela.” She and her twin sister shared a commiserating look. “She was so beautiful as a little girl. She begged us to turn her so she could be young and beautiful forever. We forgot that with age comes maturity.”
Genevieve tried to turn the subject. “You didn’t approve of the previous master?”
Miss Hattie snorted. “He was younger than us! But liked to pretend he was older. Gathered a bunch of claptrap around him as treasures of a bygone era and surrounded himself with toadies. He liked being fawned over, not getting his hands dirty. And the master before him was ineffectual—it was all that woman, what was her name?”
“Renata,” Kendrick supplied.
“Yes, yes. Yet he kept power so long because he recognized that she was intelligent and smart, and he used his might to enforce what she dictated. Unfortunate that so much of what she decreed was regrettable and in support of her own desires. They kept power for quite some time—longer than we’ve been extant. All and all, it’s been quite a while since the Ossuary has seen true change.”
Miss Dolores sniffed. “Gisela thought she could steer that ship, and perhaps she did, but what good is a rudder when your ship has no oars or sails?”
She broke off as the door opened. Gisela stepped into the room, looking cool and svelte in a day dress of icy blue. When she saw Genevieve and Kendrick, she froze. Kendrick stood as she entered, and she curtseyed belatedly.
