“It will only make parting more difficult.” He held out his hand to stop her, but Jane dodged him. “Let me go. Please. I can’t think on this any longer now.”
The gentle, mournful quality of her expression then stirred a memory in him of another girl—someone who reminded him of her. The name Bianca flickered in his mind, and it seemed to him it was important, but he couldn’t hold on to it for long.
Jane hurried away, and Balthazar simply stood and watched her. The dreamlike quality of it all made him wonder if this could be really happening, but he found he didn’t care. If it were a dream, let him get lost in it and go on dreaming, as long as he was able to keep looking after Jane, to keep her in his sights. That was worth anything.
“A pity, to see two young lovers parted,” Redgrave said.
Balthazar startled; he hadn’t heard Redgrave’s approach. His cheeks burned as he thought of the private moment this peculiar man might have seen. “Sir, you should have made your presence known.”
“As indeed I just have.” Redgrave leaned against a nearby tree. He seemed a part of the golden grove around them—primeval, in some unfathomable sense—and yet unnatural, too. “Will you let her go so easily?”
“I’ll see her again soon.” Though, Balthazar thought with a pang, not for long: Within the month, they would return to Rhode Island, where Catholics, Anabaptists, and all sorts of freethinkers were tolerated.
“Yet the two of you think a parting is inevitable. That you could never marry, and of course you think marriage is the only way to truly be together.”
The man presumed too much. Balthazar had tried to be friendly to these strangers for his sister’s sake—she liked their eccentricities, and for their part they seemed to accept her—but something about the Redgraves had always unnerved him. Their money, which they blithely said came from “trading,” seemed to outstrip even that of Governor Winthrop; Redgrave’s ability to stare down the church elders and flout all kinds of rules was less inspiring, more unnerving. If Balthazar were to speak of such private matters with anybody, John Redgrave was the last candidate Balthazar would ever have chosen. “I can’t see how it concerns you. It’s improper to discuss it.”
“Proper! You want to speak of propriety after such a passionate scene.” Redgrave laughed. Balthazar, who had never glimpsed even the knees or shoulders of a woman not his mother or sister, felt grossly violated by having been seen at such an intensely intimate moment—and Redgrave was vulgar enough to laugh about it. Just as Balthazar was ready to walk off without another word, Redgrave continued: “What if I told you there was a way to escape all the ties that bind you?”
To escape being a son? A brother? A citizen of Massachusetts Bay Colony? “Impossible.”
“Very possible.” Redgrave leaned closer, so close that Balthazar felt uneasier than before. “What would you be willing to do if it meant you could be with the woman you love?”
Balthazar considered the answer carefully before answering, “Anything but your bidding.”
Redgrave didn’t like that. The angry flash in his eyes threatened to shake his composure for the first time, and Balthazar felt a small thrill of triumph. How good it felt to deny this man his arrogance.
But Redgrave said only, “We’ll see what you’ll do. And I tell you now, Balthazar—you may be surprised.”
Ropes around his wrists, blood trickling down his arms, Balthazar gasping helplessly as he looked at the knots holding him to the beam overhead as Redgrave whispered in his ear, “Are you ready to do my bidding yet?”
No, Balthazar thought, but already the world was slipping away.
Chapter Twelve
“HEY.” SKYE SHOOK BALTHAZAR BY THE SHOULDERS as her mood shifted from merely concerned to deeply freaked out. His eyes were all but shut, his face still, and he swayed on his feet like a man in a trance. “Hey, come back. Come back. Balthazar!”
She slapped her hand across his face, hard, and instantly his fingers clamped around her wrist. His eyes opened wide, but it still took him a moment to speak. “Skye.”
“Yes. It’s me. Where did you go?”
Balthazar slumped back, so unsteady that she wondered if he was dizzy or ill. Was her blood some kind of poison? Skye braced his shoulders in her hands, and that seemed to rouse him. Haltingly, he said, “It was as if—it was like I was reliving my own past.”
“Just memories?” Skye frowned; she didn’t know what she had been expecting, but not that.
“Not just memories. It’s as if I’m really there. Every sensation, every sound—they’re all perfect.” As he spoke, he smiled, but uncertainly, as if he were saying words he didn’t dare believe. “And not just any memories, either. Skye, your blood takes vampires back to when they were alive.”
She wasn’t seeing any difference here. Why would vampires be mad to kill her merely to do the equivalent of looking through old photos? “So—just memories.”
“You don’t understand.” Balthazar shook his head, impatient but not unkind. He took her arms from his shoulders and held her hands in his—only a gesture, she thought, but the touch still made this cold, sterile room feel as if it glowed with warmth. “Life has power, Skye. It has a … grace, and beauty, and vitality that nothing after death can match. Despite all our abilities and immortality, every single vampire longs, down deep, to feel the experience of life again. Some of us deny it, but each of us knows it. Life is irreplaceable.”