A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood #1)(36)

“Does that make him Peter?” I asked drolly.

“He’s certainly moody enough to play the part.”

“You haven’t seen anything. After that whole debacle with the Harkers he was sullen for months.”

“Who are the Harkers?”

“Before your time dear, just some dreadful Victorians.”

Alexi slid the scarf from my shoulders with a theatrical flourish.

“Come on. I’m buying you this, and then we’re going for coffee. You can still drink coffee, can you?”

“Yes,” I lied. I could manage a few sips, for Alexi.

“Good,” he said. “There are people I must introduce you to.”





Alexi had an appetite for danger. He liked to wear a gun, and to walk along the thin edge of the Seine by night, and to slice shallow cuts into himself to entice Magdalena and I into a frenzied bedroom game. Once, you found us three together: we girls lapping up the blood pooling in Alexi’s collarbones like kittens while he made soft, pleasured noises, the bloody pocket knife still in his hands.

You dragged your little finger through the blood on his chest, tracing out the first letter of your name before bringing your finger up to your mouth. To this day, I cannot fathom your restraint. Even the littlest pinprick of blood set me on the hunt, and I was suckling at the cut Alexi had made with an almost painful desire. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to pin him down and tear out his throat, and I’m sure Magdalena felt very much the same. But that, of course, was the sweetness of his game.

“Your thrill-seeking will kill you,” was all you said, flatly. “You shouldn’t drink from each other.”

“Why?” Magdalena whined, her mouth smeared with her brother’s blood. She didn’t get to finish her line of questioning, because I started kissing it off her insistently.

“Because I don’t know what the effects are. I haven’t done enough research.”

“Well then get in here and do some research,” Alexi said, pulling you into bed.

His charms were hard to resist, as you well knew, and so did half the city of Paris. Alexi must have had a hundred friends scattered throughout the city, and he did his best to split this time between all of them. You disapproved of these connections and did your best to keep him at home, within arm’s reach. Relationships with humans were all doomed from the start, you insisted. Either they died unexpectedly, breaking your heart, or they caught on to your true nature eventually and had to be put down. But Alexi wouldn’t be deterred. He kept befriending actors and poets and jazz musicians, and he kept pushing you to let him roam freely outside the house.

“It’s been ages since I was on the stage,” Alexi pleaded one night. We were all coming back from a night at the theatre, taking our time walking home in the warm summer air. “Why won’t you let me audition?”

“Because it’s dangerous,” you said with a heavy sigh. This was not the first time you and Alexi had had this conversation. “Eventually, people would start asking questions. They would notice that you don’t age. Use your head, Alexi.”

“Then I’ll switch troupes! You’ve never even seen me act, I was very good! I would be responsible, I promise.”

You gave him an indulgent smile.

“Why don’t you do a monologue for us at home, then? We can have our own private performance; we don’t need all those other people. Besides, I don’t want to share you with them.”

You were speaking in a low, cajoling voice, the way you spoke to him when you were trying to entice him into your bed. Alexi didn’t look convinced, but he nodded anyway.

Later that night, Magdalena accentuated his features with dabs of her makeup while I created a backdrop of bedsheets. He performed scene after scene from memory, declaring valiant love before launching into a tyrant’s triage and then dying beautifully on the ground as Romeo. You cheered him on and tucked roses into his lapel, waxing poetic about his once-in-a-century talent. Alexi, ever a lover of the spotlight, grinned so wide that I thought his face might get stuck that way.

“See?” you said. “You don’t need to go running around on stage with the rabble of Paris. Our home will be your theatre, and we your devoted audience.”

Alexi’s smile faltered a little, but he let you kiss him all the same.

Alexi was entirely rapt by you, following you around like a dog at the heels of its master. He adored everything about you, good and bad, from your soft-spoken declarations of love to your flashes of foul temper. The love he had for you was the cartographer’s love for the sea, trembling and all-consuming and so far beyond the reaches of right or wrong. Far from shrinking from your bad moods, he welcomed them.

Alexi provoked and riled you at every turn, seeming to delight in the conflict, and he did whatever he pleased despite your litany of rules. Nothing was sacred to Alexi, and he was happy to commit the most outlandish and egregious of faux pas whenever it pleased him. For the most part, you ignored his antics as though he were a misbehaving child, probably hoping he would settle into his new life with time. But the opposite happened. The longer Alexi lived with us, the more restless he became. Eventually, even your sweetest words and most luxurious gifts couldn’t placate him.

One night, you and I came back from the hunt to find all the lights burning in the apartment. We were greeted at the door by the sounds of tinkling champagne glasses and uproarious laughter, sounds so foreign to that house.