"These are absolutely gorgeous," she whispered reverently. "Early to mid-Victorian England, if I'm not mistaken. How I remember..." her voice trailed off and her eyes misted up as she recalled another life, another century. I sat with my hands in my lap and watched the joy in her face, and the alternating sadness when she realised all the time she had lost.
Then suddenly she froze, shock in her eyes and gripping the muscles of her face.
"What?" I asked, looking over her shoulder at the photograph she held between her fingers. I saw three people, two men and a woman. The men had the same stern expression that they all seemed to have from that era, but the woman's expression was indefinably different from the other women in preceding photos. She somehow managed to dominate the photograph without being obtrusive in any way. She was smaller than the men, and plainly dressed. I looked closer, past the drab clothing and the severe hairstyle, and saw an expression that radiated serene confidence and something else - a kind of tranquil menace. And then it struck me. She had the eyes of a vampire.
"Lizzy," said Julia eventually. I nodded, dumbstruck. Julia's other sister.
"But what is she doing in your family photographs?"
"Good question," I finally replied. "I have no idea." And then it occurred to me how I might become better informed about this whole crazy business. My mother, that keeper of secrets big and small. I needed to speak to her, face to face. And I needed to do it soon.
Angus
"Right," said Fergus. "Now we need to just sit down for a moment and try to make sense of the chaos of the past couple of days."
We had gathered around the dining table while we ate a late lunch and discussed the situation. It had been less than twenty-four hours since Mark had been taken, and yet so much had happened in those hours, that our metaphorical heads were spinning. Oliver had woken up and wandered downstairs to join us. He was still pale, but his arm looked like it belonged to him again. That awkward angle at which it had hung from his body earlier had disappeared, and some of the fire was back in his eyes.
"Right," said Fergus again. "Fact number one. Anne abducted Mark yesterday afternoon, and carried him straight to Scotland, where she has her base."
"That's an assumption," interjected Oliver quietly. "She could have several bases, and the one we scouted out this morning might not be one of them. Having said that, though, I could smell vampires there, and so could Angus. And one of them was definitely female. So not a fact, maybe, but a strong supposition."