Tim Powers - Hide Me Among the Graves

Christina turned to McKee. “North of the river in a borrowed dress? She must have trusted you, to let you wander so far from Griffin Street.”

Both Cayley and the Crawford fellow were looking from one speaker to the other in evident dismay.

“My young daughter,” said McKee, “is in the same peril as this woman you’re referring to, I believe. We’re talking about the Nephilim? ‘The giants that were in the earth in those days’? I agree with Sister Christina about the perils of calling in a priest.”

Gabriel was squinting at her. “Daughter?” he asked hollowly.

“By this man,” said McKee, waving toward Crawford. “Put your mind at ease — about that, at least.”

Crawford was still sitting on the sofa, and he and Gabriel exchanged an embarrassed and unfriendly glance.

The Rossettis’ housekeeper bustled in then with a tray on which sat a teapot and four cups.

“Mr. Gabriel!” she said. “I’ll fetch another cup.” She set the tray down and returned to the kitchen.

“Never mind, Lillibet,” Christina called after her. “Charles, I must beg your forgiveness here, I—”

“Yes,” said Cayley, getting to his feet. “We can talk another time.” His face was red, and his bald scalp was gleaming. “I fear that your volunteer work among the lower — excuse me — among the unfortunate, has — has—”

“Lower—?” began Crawford, getting to his feet; Christina sent him an imploring glance, and he sat down again, grumbling.

Gabriel laughed, and it pained Christina to see her youthful brother for a moment in that prematurely sagging face.

“If you will all forgive me,” said Cayley in his piping voice, “it’s been a — I certainly never meant to — but I’m afraid I must—” He bowed and scuttled out of the room.

Nobody spoke until they heard the front door click shut and the knock of boots descending the front steps.

“Poor Charles,” said Christina.

“The man’s an idiot,” said Gabriel. He glanced at the clock on the mantel. “Is that right? Half past noon?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Crawford sourly. “My watch is in fragments down a well.”

Gabriel nodded. “That’s the spirit. It’s damnably sunny out, but I think we should take this conference to the park, so as not to disturb Lillibet with talk of devils.”

“Lucky thing for you that you had that watch,” McKee told Crawford as she got to her feet. “Or the devils would be digesting you right now.”

Crawford shrugged and nodded. “Both of us,” he said.

Christina sighed. “Let me get my coat and a bonnet.”

“And a parasol,” advised Gabriel, picking up his scarf and hat. “The sun is like a lion.”

REGENT’S PARK, TWO STREETS away to the west, was a landscape of black trees and iron fences standing up in a carpet of old snow under a deep blue sky. The road linking the inner and outer circles was marked by a few tracks of hooves and boot prints, but aside from Crawford and McKee and the two Rossettis, the only figure in the landscape was a man walking an ungainly dog a hundred yards away.

As if the dark old houses they had passed had been huge, blank-eyed brickwork heads poked up out of the pavements to spy on them, they had not spoken until they were past even the tall white Cumberland Terrace houses on the park’s eastern boundary and had crossed the outer circle and were well out onto the park grounds.

Crawford couldn’t even see any birds, and McKee’s linnet was silent — the only sounds were the wind in the bare branches and the crunch and slither of boot soles on the snow-drifted gravel.

Finally Christina’s brother Gabriel spoke. “It’s my wife — she seems to be dying, and I don’t want—” He waved helplessly.

“You don’t want her to come back,” suggested McKee, staring down at the path as she walked. “If she does die.”

“What I want is for her not to die,” Gabriel said angrily. “This isn’t a — a game, you know — we’re talking about a woman’s life. And an unborn child’s too — she’s apparently—”

“Believe me,” interrupted McKee in a flat voice as cold as the wind, “I know it’s not a game. You brought this to me, like a disease, and now my daughter is likely to die of it. I want her not to die too — but if she does, I want to see that she stays dead.”

“You said,” intervened Christina, blinking anxiously in the shadow of her parasol, “that your daughter might be living in Highgate.”

McKee nodded. “That’s what old Carpace’s ghost said. She said she had seen the girl in the cemetery — that the girl’s father was buried there.”

“Swallowed there,” Crawford corrected.

“Swallowed, buried,” said McKee impatiently. “And she brings him flowers.”

“Her father,” said Christina. “But I thought you, sir, were the child’s father?”

Crawford opened his mouth, intending to say allegedly, but instead simply said, “Yes.”

“Ghosts don’t lie,” said Christina thoughtfully, at which Gabriel snorted.

“Adoptive father, I imagine,” said McKee. “The … the vampire.”

“Oh,” said Christina. “Of course.”

“Our father is buried at Highgate,” said Gabriel.

“He’s safe,” said Christina. “He died clean, with God’s name on his lips and in the midst of garlic and cold iron.”

Crawford glanced at Christina Rossetti — Sister Christina! — and wondered if this serious and respectable young lady might know even more about the occult world than McKee did.

“And we know,” said Gabriel, “who the vampire father is.” His eyes glittered under the broad brim of his hat.

Christina sighed, blowing away a plume of steamy breath, and Gabriel gave her a look that seemed almost reproachful.

“Over there,” said Christina, pointing with her free hand away across the white-dusted dead grass plain to the right, “are the zoo cages.”

She stepped off the path and onto the faintly crunching grass. The skirts of her coat flapped around her boots.

“We’ve got more privacy out here,” said Gabriel impatiently, following her.

“There are cages outside the wall,” Christina said, “on the west side. They’re empty in the winter, nobody’d be out there on a day like this.”

McKee and Crawford looked at each other and shrugged, then trudged after the Rossettis.

“Sister Christina,” called McKee, “who is the vampire father?”

Christina swung her parasol aside and looked back over her shoulder, still walking. “You deserve to know, since one of us woke him and the other brought him to you. It’s our uncle, my mother’s brother. His name is—”

“Best left unsaid!” interrupted Gabriel. “Even in daylight.”

“Your uncle? ” exclaimed McKee, stopping on the grass.

“Yes.” Christina halted too, and she tucked the parasol handle under her arm to take hold of McKee’s hand; and with the forefinger of her gloved right hand she began stroking McKee’s palm. After a moment Crawford realized that Christina was drawing a series of letters.

“I know you can read, Adelaide,” said Christina. “Can you remember that name?”

“Yes,” said McKee, frowning down at Christina’s scrawling finger, “yes, but if it’s—”

“He killed himself in 1821.” Christina released McKee’s hand and resumed walking, gripping the parasol handle again. “He had tried to enter a monastery, but they wouldn’t have him — I can’t blame them, since by that time he was—” She waved vaguely.

“Pledged to death and eventual resurrection,” suggested McKee with a brittle smile as she stepped after her.

Gabriel was striding along beside Christina, but Crawford took a moment to look around at the desolate park grounds before rejoining his peculiar companions. The man with the dog had passed them, well to the north — Crawford noticed that the dog appeared to be tied up in some sort of flapping shawl against the cold.