A Drop of Night(75)

And even though he is bleeding, he smiles, and I see him sitting on a stool in a grimy cottage, his sisters and brothers hanging from his shoulders and bouncing on his knees. His mother sits by a little stove, her knitting needles going clack-clack, and sage and lavender are drying in the rafters, and a cat stretches in the sunlight from the window, and Jacques is smiling, just like that. But as I watch, his smile breaks. His skin drains of life and color, freezing gray and blue like a field in deepest winter.

I grasp his fingers, try to pull him down, crying and screaming.

“Aurélie,” the butterfly man says, close to my ear. “You will be my ally in this long, slow game. And you.” He nods toward Jacques. A deep, rumbling cloud seems to strike me, strike us all, and I am drifting backward, my hair floating around my face. I watch as the butterfly man folds Jacques into his horrible embrace and draws him away from me. “You are nameless. You are lost.”

Vous êtes perdu.



“You were very difficult to track down, you know.” Havriel is seated there casually, his riding boots gleaming, artifacts from a different time. I hear the metallic glide of the nozzle’s tube, dragging over the floor as he fiddles with the head, passing it from hand to hand. “Adopted. Perhaps your parents knew what you were meant for and tried to keep you from us. How selfish of them, don’t you think?”

I ignore the bait. I’m not discussing my parents with him. “You didn’t have to do all this,” I say quietly. “You could have taken anyone. You could have taken some kids off the street.”

“Is that what you think? Oh dear. All this time you’ve had to sort out the truth and you still haven’t managed.” He looks up at the ceiling. “We took you because you were the only ones we could take. There were no other candidates. No elimination rounds. We have been hunting you, and others like you, all these years. From France to London to Boston to San Diego. In five generations we have found descendants as far-flung as Mumbai. Wellington. Cape Town. All this time you have been asking: Why me? Why me? Because you are a Bessancourt, Anouk. You are a part of the family.”

“I’m not related to you,” I spit. “I’m not a friggin’ Bessancourt—”

But I’m seeing it now: tall kids. Blue eyes. Maybe we have something else in common? Something we don’t even know about . . . I feel the pieces grinding together, meshing in place.

Havriel laughs. “You don’t know who you are, so why be upset? Now you know exactly where you belong. You know exactly what your purpose is.”

It feels like my entrails are sliding through me, pooling around my bare feet. “My purpose?” I say. “My purpose is to die miserably so you can keep existing forever?”

Havriel doesn’t answer. It’s like he blanked me out right there, and I need to stall. Once he stops talking to me he’s going to kill me.

“Even if we are related,” I say, my voice cracking, my toes digging into the carpet. “You guys fly us here, let us eat at your table, send us entire folders full of lies. You could have just stolen us off the street. Stuffed us in a van, knocked us out with some chloroform. We never had to meet.”

“But I wanted to meet you!” says Havriel. “How undignified, how cruel to do away with you like commoners. As times become less desperate, there becomes space for formality, as in society, so also in families. And so for this harvest, we devised a little expedition. You must understand that despite how you may view the situation, you are not simply victims. You are our offspring, our precious progeny. So we found a way to connect you to your rightful place in this world, letting you know a little, not too much and not nothing at all, letting you meet others of your kind within your ancestral home.”

“Uh-huh,” I say. “So, basically, you murdered us after dinner. And I thought my family was dysfunctional.”

Havriel crosses his legs in a quick, sharp motion. He doesn’t seem to appreciate his thinking being questioned. It’s like he can’t even fathom how I might have a completely different opinion on what constitutes dignity.

“Anouk, we are entirely functional. We are like a great machine, our family. My brother and I are the engine. You are the fuel. We extended to you the honor due you as scions of a noble bloodline. We gave you every comfort. We treated you with respect. We needed you as close to the Palais du Papillon as possible, as the harvesting of the genes is a complex process and must be handled quickly and delicately after death of the donors. . . .

I snort. “Donors? It’s not a donation if you freaking rob the bank.”

Havriel ignores me. “And Frédéric does not like to leave the palais. He can no longer abide the surface with its many foibles and contagions. So what better way than to bring you here in style, give you a proper send-off, make you all feel special and important, as if you were picked for something great. Because you were. Don’t you see? You are a very valuable person, Anouk.”

The words ignite something in me, a pathetic, involuntary response. I look at him in surprise and stupid hope.

“Your death paves the way for our family’s continued success and dominance. It is not in vain.”

The hope vanishes. What about my life? What about who I want to be?

“And the Sapanis? They’re just a front? An alias?”

“The Sapanis are what we called ourselves as we reemerged from the palace during the Reign of Terror. We could not gain a footing in France under the Bessancourt name. We did not wish to emigrate. And so before we went into hiding, we put a plan in place. We signed the chateau and its grounds and all our monies to the brothers Wilhelm and Ehrfurcht Sapani. Ourselves. We started anew. We opened a bank, then a gunsmithy, then a jeweler’s, and slowly, crawlingly, over the decades and centuries, we rebuilt our dynasty. And now here we are! The most powerful supplier of armaments and technology in the world. They say it’s those with the money who make the rules, but really it’s those who can steal the money from anyone, any country and government. It is those who are feared who make the rules. The truth is, there are no Sapanis. There is no Monsieur Gourbillon finding a crater in the wine cellar, no Project Papillon. My brother is a shy man. We prefer to run our business ventures in private. . . .”