The deposition room at Whitfield, Crane and Associates kept its blinds drawn at all hours, a small tyranny maintained by the managing partners who believed that daylight invited sloppiness. Maren Ashford had been sitting under those blinds for nine hours. The leather of her chair had long since warmed to the shape of her, and the pad of her thumb ached where it had pressed too hard against the stylus of her tablet through the last three hours of cross-examination. She had won. That was the cold comfort she carried out of Conference Room 11B at 12:07 a.m., along with her briefcase and the low throb behind her left eye that promised a migraine by morning.
The hallway smelled of burnt coffee and the faintly chemical sweetness of the vending machine on forty-three. She had taken the private elevator down from the forty-fourth floor because the main bank would be crowded with the night cleaning crew and the junior associates who never seemed to leave before two. The private elevator opened into a side corridor, one of those architectural afterthoughts the firm's founders had built in the 1920s, back when executives still smoked cigars in their offices and used a separate staircase to avoid the secretaries.
Maren had not seen another living soul since the security guard at the forty-fourth floor desk had waved her through with a perfunctory nod. The marble floor of the side corridor was older than the rest of the building, veined grey and rose, and her heels struck it with a rhythm that sounded to her own ears like a metronome counting down.
The lobby of the Whitfield building was a cathedral of glass and brass, built to impress foreign clients with the firm's opinion of itself. At this hour, the security desk was manned by a single officer who spent most of his shift reading the racing form on a folded newspaper. The revolving door at the front entrance turned slowly, pushed by some mechanical timer, and the brass centerpost caught the light from the street and threw it in long yellow slashes across the floor.
She was twenty feet from the door when she saw the woman.
The woman was not unconscious at first. Maren almost walked past her. She was slumped against the base of the stone planter that held the firm's municipal ficus, half in shadow, her long coat pooling on the marble in a way that made her look, at first glance, like a bundle of something that had been set down and forgotten. Her hair was dark and looked wet. Her head was tipped back against the planter, and her face was turned slightly to one side, so that all Maren could see at first was the line of her jaw and the pale column of her throat.
Then the woman moved. The movement was small, a kind of tremor that ran through her shoulders, and her hand rose from the floor and pressed flat against her stomach. Even in the dim light, Maren could see the dark stain that spread across the woman's coat, the wet shine of it, and the hand that pressed there came away red.
Maren's briefcase hit the marble. She did not remember dropping it. The sound of it, the heavy thump of leather and brass against stone, was what made the woman raise her head, and for the first time Maren saw her face.
She was younger than Maren had first thought, or perhaps it was the bloodlessness of her skin that made her seem ageless. Her features were striking in the way of old portraits, all geometry and shadow, the kind of face that would have been painted on porcelain and hung in a gallery in Vienna or Prague. Her eyes were dark and very calm, and when they met Maren's, she did not look away.
"Don't call anyone," the woman said. Her voice was low, accented in a way Maren could not immediately place, and had a steadiness to it that did not match the blood on her coat. She spoke as if she were giving an instruction in a boardroom rather than begging for help on a marble floor. "If you mean to help me, don't call anyone. I will explain. But not here. There is a car waiting on the west side of the building. Take me to it."
Maren dropped to her knees on the cold marble. The stone bit through the thin wool of her skirt, and she set her hands on the woman's shoulders without thinking, the way she had been taught in a first aid course six years ago that she had mostly forgotten. The woman was cold under her palms, colder than a person ought to be, and her skin had a waxy quality that made Maren's stomach clench.
"You've been stabbed," Maren said. She heard her own voice as if it belonged to someone else, someone who was not shaking. "We need an ambulance. I can't just pick you up and carry you out of the building, that's not, we need to call 911, I have to apply pressure, hold on, just hold on."
"I have not been stabbed." The woman's hand came up and covered Maren's, and her grip was stronger than it should have been. "I was hurt. It is not a wound you can treat here. I am asking for your help. Will you give it?"
The lobby was silent except for the slow tick of the brass clock above the security desk and the soft, persistent hum of the building's ventilation. Maren became aware, suddenly, of the guard's absence. The desk was empty. The folded newspaper lay on the blotter, and the swivel chair was pushed back at an angle, as if the man had stood up mid-sentence and simply not come back.
"What is your name?" Maren asked.
The woman's mouth curved. It was not quite a smile. It was the sort of expression one sees on the face of a person who has been asked something both expected and slightly amusing. "Carmilla," she said. "Carmilla Varno. And you are Maren Ashford, of Whitfield, Crane. You took the Akers deposition this evening. You won."
Maren stared at her. "How do you know that?"
"I have made it my business to know many things tonight." Carmilla's hand had not let go of Maren's. The blood was between their fingers, dark and cooling. "I will tell you everything, if you help me now. But we have a very short time, and there is a car waiting. Please."
The revolving door turned, a slow brass hush, and the night air came in from the avenue, carrying with it the smell of wet asphalt and the distant, sour breath of the subway grates. Maren looked at the blood on the marble. She looked at the empty security desk. She looked at the woman on the floor, who was watching her with the same calm, considering gaze.
"All right," Maren said. "All right. But I need to support your weight. Can you stand? If you can stand, we can get to the side entrance."
"I can stand," Carmilla said. "I am stronger than I look. Do not let go of my arm."
Maren bent and got her shoulder under Carmilla's, and the woman rose with a grace that seemed impossible given what Maren had seen of the blood. Carmilla was taller than she had appeared, and lighter than Maren had expected, and when she stood fully upright the coat fell around her like a curtain, hiding most of the damage. She smelled of something Maren could not name, a cold green scent, like crushed leaves or a garden after rain.
They crossed the lobby at the pace of two people who are trying very hard not to seem in a hurry. The west side of the building had a service door that opened onto a small courtyard and a private loading bay. Maren had used it once, two years ago, to meet a courier who had refused to come into the lobby. The door was propped open with a rubber wedge, and beyond it a long black car idled in the alley, its headlights off, its engine a low, constant purr.
A figure stood by the rear passenger door. He was lean, dressed in dark clothes, with pale hair that fell to his collar and a face that had the stillness of someone who had been standing in the same place for a long time. He did not speak. He simply opened the door when Maren and Carmilla reached him, and then he helped, with surprising efficiency, to guide Carmilla into the back seat.
Maren climbed in after her. The door closed. The man got into the driver's seat without a word, and the car began to move. Through the tinted rear window, Maren watched the Whitfield building slide away, its brass and glass lit from within, a pyramid of money and self-regard, and then they were on the street, and the city took them.
Carmilla was lying back against the leather, her eyes closed, her hand still holding Maren's wrist. The blood had soaked through the lining of her coat and into the seat. Maren could feel the heat of it, or the absence of heat, and she could not tell which was stranger.
"You should not be doing this," Carmilla said, without opening her eyes. Her voice was thinner now, but still steady. "You are an attorney. You have a code of conduct. You have a career."
"I have a person bleeding on my client's leather seats," Maren said. "I can worry about my career after the bleeding stops."
Carmilla's mouth curved again. "You are not my client."
"I didn't say you were." Maren pulled a handkerchief from her bag, a plain white cotton square that her governess had taught her to carry, and pressed it against the worst of the stain on Carmilla's coat. The cloth came away dark. "Tell me where we are going, and tell me what happened to you. Start with the second one."
The car turned onto the West Side Highway. The streetlights came in through the window in long yellow stripes, and in their passing light Carmilla's face looked like something carved from old bone. She opened her eyes, and they were very dark, and they held Maren's with the same calm, considering steadiness as before.
"I was attacked," she said. "An hour ago, in a place I cannot name, by someone I will deal with in my own way. I came to you because I needed a witness, and because I needed someone who would not panic. You did not panic. That was why I chose you."
"You chose me," Maren repeated. "I just found you on the floor."
"You found me because I allowed you to find me." Carmilla's thumb moved against Maren's wrist, a small, deliberate stroke, and Maren became very aware of the woman's hand on her skin. "I have been watching you for several weeks, Maren Ashford. I know you keep a small fern on the windowsill of your office. I know you take the private elevator because you prefer the quiet. I know you are not married, and that you are not, in the usual sense, lonely, but that you have a small, quiet grief that you carry with you. I know you were orphaned, and that you were raised by a woman named Mrs. Pell who taught you to iron your own collars and to keep a garden. I know you would have been a scholar if you had been allowed, and that you became a lawyer because it was the only way you could think of to matter."
The car moved through the night. The driver did not turn around. The traffic was thin, and the highway stretched out ahead of them, a long pale ribbon under a sky that was just beginning to lighten at the very eastern edge.
Maren did not pull her hand away. She sat very still, and the cold in her stomach was not fear, exactly. It was the feeling of a person who has walked into a room that she thought she knew, and found that one of the walls was not where it had been the day before.
"Who are you?" she asked.
Carmilla's eyes held hers. The car turned off the highway and into a darker street, and the light went out of the windows, and in the sudden dim Maren could no longer see Carmilla's face, only the pale shape of her hand on Maren's wrist and the dark gleam of her eyes.
"I told you," Carmilla said. "My name is Carmilla Varno. I am a collector, and I am very old, and I have been hurt tonight, and you are helping me. For now, that is enough."
The car stopped. The engine died. Somewhere outside, in the new silence, Maren heard the low, slow toll of a bell, and then another, and she realized, with a small start, that it was a church clock, and that it was striking one.
The bell's final note faded into the hush of the street, and Carmilla released Maren's wrist. The cold of her skin lingered on Maren's skin, a print of fingers, and Maren did not rub it away.
The door opened on Carmilla's side. A man stood in the street, holding an umbrella that was not needed, for the night had not yet remembered how to rain. He was very tall, and he was dressed in a long black coat that came nearly to his boots, and his hair was white, though his face, in the spill of a single lamp at the corner, did not look old.
"Carmilla," he said. His voice was not loud. It was the kind of voice that did not need to be loud. He did not look at Maren, or at least he did not appear to, and yet Maren had the very particular feeling that she had been looked at, and weighed, and found something that the man had not yet decided about.
"Etienne," Carmilla said. "This is the lawyer I told you about. She will be staying."
The man called Etienne turned, then, and gave Maren a look that was, on its surface, perfectly polite. Underneath the politeness, something moved, like a fish turning in deep water. "Welcome," he said. "It is not often we have guests. I hope you will forgive the hour."
Maren stepped out of the car. The cobblestones were slick under her shoes, and the air had a taste to it, of stone and river water and something underneath both, something green and old, like the smell of a cellar in a house that has been shut for many years. She drew her coat tighter around herself.
"Thank you," she said. "I am sorry to arrive at such an hour."
Carmilla was already walking, not toward the door of the house they had stopped in front of, but down a narrow passage that ran between that house and the next, so that the lamplight from the corner could not reach. Etienne fell into step beside her, and Maren, after a single beat of hesitation, followed.
The passage was long, and the cobblestones gave way to flagstones, and the walls on either side rose higher than the houses on the street, so that Maren had the odd impression of walking between two cliffs, or at the bottom of a dry canal. At the end of the passage there was a door, low and arched, and the wood was very old, and there was a knocker on it in the shape of a hand holding a ring. Carmilla did not use the knocker. She pressed her palm flat against the wood, and the door opened, inward, into a hall.
The hall was lit by candles, real ones, in sconces of black iron along the walls. The floor was the same dark stone as the passage, and the ceiling was low, and the air was warm, and the smell that had been under the river-water smell was here, unmistakable, like roses left too long in a vase, sweet and slightly wrong. Maren thought of the cabinet in Carmilla's office, of the small pot of something dark that she had lifted to her nose, and she understood, now, what it was.
Carmilla was watching her. "You remember," she said. It was not a question.
"Yes," Maren said. "I remember."
"Good," Carmilla said. "Most people do not. They are too busy looking at the surface." She turned, and began to walk down the hall, and Etienne, without a word, peeled off to one side, through a door that Maren had not seen until it opened, and was gone.
Maren followed Carmilla through a series of rooms. She tried to count them, and lost count, because the rooms did not arrange themselves in the way rooms usually did, and because she was distracted by the things in them, which were not the things she expected to find in the back of a house on a quiet street at one in the morning. There was a room of clocks, all of them stopped, all of them at different hours. There was a room of mirrors, but the mirrors were covered with dark cloth, and the cloths moved, very slightly, in a draft that Maren could not feel. There was a room of chairs, every one of them empty, arranged in a circle as if for a meeting that no one had come to. Through a half-open door she saw a long table, and on the table there were books, and the books were very old, and some of them were chained to the table, and some of the chains were broken, and she thought, with a small cold shock, that the chains had been broken from the inside.
Carmilla stopped at the last door, at the end of a corridor that was even darker than the others, and turned to face Maren. The light from a single candle on the wall threw her face partly into shadow, and her eyes were the only thing that was fully lit, and they were very dark, and very still.
"You have questions," she said.
"I have a great many questions," Maren said. "But I suspect that if I ask them now, you will not answer them. And I suspect that I will not be able to leave until you are ready for me to, whether I have answers or not."
Carmilla's mouth moved, just slightly, at one corner. It might have been the beginning of a smile. "You are not wrong," she said. "But you are not entirely right, either. Come in."
She opened the door, and stepped aside, and Maren went in.
The room was smaller than she had expected. The ceiling was lower. There was a fire in a small grate, and the fire was real, and the heat of it reached her face as she entered, and she was very suddenly aware that she had been cold for longer than she had noticed, and that the cold was not only of the air. The walls were hung with a deep red cloth, and the cloth had a pattern in it, but the pattern was too dark to make out, and Maren did not try, because her eyes had found the bed.
The bed was large. It was set against the far wall, and the frame was of dark wood, carved in a way that Maren could not see clearly, and the linens were white, and on the linens there was Carmilla's coat, folded, and beneath the coat there was a shirt, and the shirt had been white once, and was no longer. The blood had been cleaned, or most of it, but the cloth held the shape of the stain, and the stain held the shape of a hand, or a handprint, or the memory of a hand.
There was a chair beside the bed, and Carmilla walked to it and sat, and the motion of her sitting was the motion of a person who has been standing for a very long time and has only now allowed herself to stop. She looked up at Maren, and her face was very pale, and the lines at the corners of her eyes and at the edges of her mouth were deeper than they had been an hour ago, in the back of the car.
"Sit," she said, and pointed to the foot of the bed. "Please. You are making me tired, standing there like a witness in your own case."
Maren sat. The bed was soft, and the linens were cold except where Carmilla had lain, and the spot of warmth was a long shape, like a body, and Maren sat at the foot of it and put her hands in her lap, because she did not know what else to do with them.
"I have to look at the wound," she said. "I cannot help you if I cannot see it. And I cannot stitch through silk."
Carmilla's hand went to the collar of her dress. The dress was black, and high at the neck, and there was a single button at the throat, and she undid it, and the collar fell open, and beneath the collar there was a bandage, and beneath the bandage there was the smell of roses, and beneath the smell of roses there was the smell of blood.
She unwound the bandage herself, slowly, with the careful motions of a person who has done this many times and does not enjoy it. The skin beneath was very white, and the wound was on the left side, just below the collarbone, and it was not the wound Maren had expected. It was not a knife wound, and it was not a bullet wound. It was a long, shallow tear, like the kind a wild animal might make with a claw, if the animal had been very careful, and very patient, and had wanted the wound to be a message.
The edges of the tear were not ragged. They were clean, almost surgical, and they were dark, darker than the skin around them, as if the blood had been drawn inward, into the body, rather than outward, onto the shirt. Maren leaned closer, and the smell of roses was stronger here, and underneath it there was a smell that was not roses, and not blood, but something older, and she had to press her lips together against it.
"Who did this to you?" she asked. Her voice was steady. She was glad of that.
Carmilla did not answer at once. She watched Maren with the same still attention she had watched her with in the car, and in the hall, and Maren understood, with a small cold clarity, that the answer would be a kind of key, and that she would be expected to know which door it opened, and that if she guessed wrong, the door would close, and perhaps not open again.
"An old friend," Carmilla said, at last. "An older enemy. The two are not always different, in my line of work." She paused. "Her name is Sloane Kessler. You will not have heard of her. Most people have not. She has made a study of being unfindable."
Maren's hands, in her lap, had gone very still. She had not realized, until that moment, how much of her attention had been on her own fingers, twisting a loose thread in her glove. Now the thread was still, and her fingers were still, and the only thing that moved in the room was the small flare of the candle on the wall, and the slow, shallow rise and fall of Carmilla's chest as she breathed.
"Sloane Kessler," Maren said. The name felt strange in her mouth, like a word in a language she had not spoken since childhood. "You said her. A woman."
"Yes," Carmilla said. "A woman. I had hoped, for a little while longer, that she was a man. It is easier, when it is a man. One knows where one is."
She said this without humor, and without bitterness, and with a small, precise shrug that moved only the shoulder that was not wounded, as if the other shoulder were not hers to move. Maren watched the motion, and thought, involuntarily, of the cabinet in the office, of the way the door had opened before she had touched it.
"The wound," Maren said. "I have to clean it. I have nothing to clean it with. I need water, and I need something clean to press against it, and I need to know whether you have been bleeding steadily, or whether it has stopped, and I need you to tell me the truth, because if you do not, I cannot help you, and if I cannot help you, I do not know what happens next, and I have the feeling that you are not the kind of person who allows a great many second chances."
Carmilla looked at her for a long moment. The fire in the grate popped, softly, and a small shower of sparks went up, and died on the hearth, and the smell of woodsmoke joined the smell of roses, and the smell of the old wound.
"There is water in the pitcher on the table by the window," Carmilla said. "There is linen in the chest at the foot of the bed. The wound has not bled since before I came to your office. It is not the kind of wound that bleeds, in the way you mean. But it will not close, either, and I do not know how to make it close, and I have tried." She paused, again. "That is the truth. I am telling you because you asked for it, and because I am tired, and because I have the feeling that you are the kind of person who would know, if I lied."
Maren stood, and crossed the room to the window. The table was there, and the pitcher, and the water in the pitcher was cold, and when she poured a little into the basin beside it, it smelled of nothing, and she was grateful for that. She found the linen in the chest, and it was white, and old, and very soft, as if it had been washed many times, and she folded a length of it into a pad, and brought the basin, and the pad, and the pitcher, back to the bed.
"Sit forward," she said. "Please. And hold still. I am not, in case you were wondering, a physician. I am a lawyer. I learned to do this from a book I was not supposed to have, when I was sixteen, because the only physician in our village was a drunkard, and a great many people were going to die of small things if someone did not learn."
Carmilla sat forward, and the motion was obedient, and almost childlike, and Maren, for the first time, saw how very tired she was. Not the tiredness of a person who has not slept. The tiredness of a person who has been tired for a very long time, and has only now stopped pretending otherwise.
Maren worked. She cleaned the wound, carefully, with the cold water, and the pad, and she did not flinch at the smell of it, or at the sight, because she had promised herself, in another life, in another room, that she would not flinch. The edges of the wound were as she had seen them, clean and dark, and when she pressed the pad to them, very gently, the pad came away pink, and then, after a moment, not pink at all, as if the blood had gone back into the body, of its own accord, or as if the body had decided, at the last, to keep what was its.
"I cannot stitch this," she said, at last. "I will not stitch this. The edges are not right for it. They will not hold. If I stitch it, I will make a worse wound, and I will not be able to undo it." She sat back, on her heels, and looked at Carmilla. "You said you have tried to close it. How?"
Carmilla was looking at the place where the pad had been, and at the skin there, which was unmarked, except for a faint line, like an old scar, like the memory of a thing that had almost happened and then decided not to.
"I have tried," she said, "the way I have always closed such things. I have tried, and it has not worked, and that is why I am here, and that is why you are here, and that is why Etienne is making tea in the kitchen, because he believes, as I do, that a wound that will not close is a wound that is meant to stay open, and that the person who made it will, in the end, come back to see why."
The candle on the wall guttered, and went out, and the room was darker, and the fire was brighter, and in the new quiet Maren could hear, very faintly, from somewhere far off in the house, the sound of a clock that had not stopped ticking after all.
The clock ticked. Maren could not have said how long she sat there, on her heels, the ruined pad in her lap, looking at Carmilla, who was looking at the place where the wound had been and was not. The fire burned. The window stayed dark. Somewhere in the house a door closed softly, and the sound of Etienne's footsteps in the kitchen changed, slowed, and stopped, as if he had decided, for the moment, to wait.
"Show me," Maren said, at last. "Show me the way you have always closed such things."
Carmilla's gaze came up, slow, unhurried, and rested on her face, and Maren felt the weight of it, and did not look away. Carmilla's hand came up, and her fingers hovered over the faint line on her side, not quite touching, and Maren watched the fingers, and the air above the skin, which seemed, for a moment, to thicken, or to bend, or to be paying attention.
"I would have you understand," Carmilla said, "that the way is not a trick. It is not a thing one learns from a book, or from a person who has been taught by a book. It is older than books. It is older than the rooms in which books are kept. It is a thing that one is born knowing, or that one is born into, or that one becomes, in the long hours of a long life, when the body has decided, at last, that it will not be hurried."
Her fingers curved, just slightly, and the air between her hand and her skin seemed to pull, gently, the way water pulls toward a drain, and Maren felt, in her own hand, the ghost of that pull, and her fingers tightened, of their own accord, around the pad in her lap.
"You cannot do it," Carmilla said, and her voice was very gentle. "It is not a thing that can be done by will, or by want, or by the determination to be of use. It is a thing that can only be done by the body, and only when the body is sure. Most bodies, even bodies that have been trained, even bodies that have been loved, are not sure. They hesitate. The hesitation breaks the current, and the current is the thing that closes the wound, and so the wound stays open, and the person who made it is given more time than they should be given."
The fire cracked. A log shifted, and a brief tongue of flame licked up, and died. Carmilla's fingers uncurled, and the pull in the air stopped, and the room was just a room, with a fire in it, and two women on the floor, and a clock that was still ticking, somewhere far off.
"That is why I am here," she said. "I have been sure, for a long time, and then I was not sure, and then I was sure again, and the wound stayed open through all of it, because the body is not a thing that can be argued with. It is a thing that must be persuaded, and I have not, as of yet, found the argument that persuades it."
Maren sat, for a long moment, with the ruined pad in her lap, and the smell of the room in her nose, and the sound of the clock in her ears, and she thought, very carefully, about the words Carmilla had used, and about the words she had not used, and about the way her hand had felt, when the air had pulled, and about the way her own hand had answered, without her permission.
"I am not sure what you are asking me," she said, at last. "I am not sure what you are telling me. I am not sure that I understand the shape of the question."
Carmilla's mouth curved, just slightly, and the curve was not quite a smile, and not quite a warning, and was, Maren thought, the most honest expression she had seen on her face all evening.
"I am asking you," she said, "to hold my hand."
The fire burned. The clock ticked. Maren looked at Carmilla, and Carmilla looked at Maren, and neither of them moved for what felt like a long time, and was, in fact, only a few heartbeats, and then Maren set the pad aside, and she wiped her own hands, very carefully, on the cloth, and she reached out, and she took Carmilla's hand in hers.
Carmilla's hand was cool, and dry, and very still, and her fingers were long, and the bones in them were close to the skin, and Maren could feel, just under the skin, the faint hum of a pulse that was slower than it should have been, and steadier, and that did not change, at first, when Maren touched her, but that did, after a moment, change, just slightly, and the change was a kind of softening, and the softening was a kind of permission, and the permission was a kind of answer.
"There is a thing I should tell you," Carmilla said, and her voice was different now, and the difference was in the way the words came out, which was slower, and lower, and more careful, as if each word were a thing she was placing, very deliberately, on a shelf. "There is a thing I should have told you, earlier, and I did not, because I was not sure, and because I am not, as I think I have said, in the habit of saying things I am not sure of."
"The wound," Maren said. "The way you said it was made. The person who made it. You are not sure they will come back."
Carmilla's fingers tightened, just slightly, around Maren's, and the tightening was a kind of confirmation, and a kind of warning, and a kind of trust, and Maren felt, in her own chest, a tightening that answered it, that was not quite fear, and not quite pity, and was, she thought, the thing that comes after fear, when one has decided, at last, to stay in the room.
"I am not sure," Carmilla said, "that the person who made it is a person, in the way you mean the word. I am not sure that they are a person who will be persuaded by an open door, or by a polite letter, or by the kind of waiting that I have, until now, been very good at. I am not sure that they are a person who can be waited for, at all. I am not sure that waiting is, for them, a thing that exists. I am not sure that time, for them, is a thing that passes, the way it passes for you, and for me, and for Etienne, and for the clock in the kitchen."
The clock ticked. Maren listened to it, and the ticking was steady, and the steadiness of it was, she thought, the most comforting thing in the room.
"But I am sure," Carmilla said, "that the wound is not a thing I made, and that the person who made it is not a person I have invited, and that Etienne is not, in any sense, a person who is aware of the kind of visitor we are, in the long and patient hours of the night, expecting. I am sure of that. I am sure of that, and I am sorry, for it, and I am not sorry, for it, and I do not know which of those I am more."
Maren sat, with Carmilla's hand in hers, and with the smell of the room in her nose, and with the sound of the clock in her ears, and she thought about the words that had been said, and about the words that had not been said, and about the way Carmilla's pulse had changed, when she had touched her, and about the way her own hand felt, now, which was not cold, and not warm, and was, she thought, the temperature of a thing that is being used for its proper purpose.
"Then I will stay," she said. "If you will have me, I will stay, and I will not lock the door, and I will not write a polite letter, and I will not pretend, in the morning, that the night was a thing I dreamed. I will stay, and I will tend the wound, and I will hold your hand, if holding your hand is a thing that helps, and I will not ask, again, for an explanation, because I think, perhaps, the explanation is not a thing that can be given, and is only a thing that can be arrived at, and that the arriving will take longer than the night, and that the night, for now, is enough."
Carmilla's fingers tightened, again, around hers, and the tightening was a kind of answer, and the answer was, Maren thought, the only answer she had been given all evening that she believed, entirely, and without reservation.
The fire burned. The clock ticked. From somewhere far off in the house, the sound of Etienne's footsteps came again, slow, and measured, and then stopped, and then, after a long moment, came again, closer, and the door to the room opened, and Etienne stood in the doorway, with a tray in his hands, and with a face that was, as it had been, a very careful blank.
"I have brought the tea," he said. "I have also brought, as I think I mentioned, the understanding that the door will be left as the lady wishes, and that the night will be a long one, and that the morning, when it comes, will be a thing that we will, all of us, have to learn to be in, in whatever way we are able." He set the tray down, on the small table, and the cups rattled, just slightly, and the rattle was the only sound in the room, for a long moment, and then the clock ticked, and the fire cracked, and the window, behind the curtain, stayed dark.
Carmilla's eyes, which had been on the fire, came up, and rested, for a moment, on Etienne, and then on Maren, and then, briefly, on the place on her side where the wound had been and was not, and where, now, under Maren's careful watching, the faint line of the almost-scar seemed, just slightly, to be less, and the room was warm, and the tea was steeping, and the night, which had been a long one, was not, Maren thought, anywhere near its end.