“You are half my heart, Constanta,” she said, with as much seriousness in her eyes as when she wrote her long letters of political advice. “We have our spats, but that will always be true.”
Magdalena brought her thumb to her mouth and bit down, sharply enough to draw a bubble of blood to the surface. She held her hand out to me. Not up to my mouth, as though she were inviting me to taste her, but in front of my chest, as though she were a merchant inviting me to shake hands on an agreement. I understood her right away.
I wrapped my lips around my own thumb and made an identical wound. Magdalena latticed her fingers through mine, our thumbs hovering over each other.
“Let’s be sisters,” she said. “Really and truly. The kind of bond that no one can separate, no matter how they try. Even if we’re on opposite ends of the Earth, you’ll have a bit of my blood in your veins and I’ll have a bit of yours.”
We pressed our thumbs together and Magdalena kissed me hard, her mouth bruising mine as our blood mingled. Warmth spread through my entire body. I felt like I was being transformed from human to vampire all over again; made new in the wake of a powerful love.
“I want to celebrate Carnival with you,” I breathed, breaking our kiss.
“Tonight?” Magdalena said. Her eyes were wide and sparkling, delighted by my unexpected whim.
“Tonight. I want to see the city with you, and I want to remember our first Carnival with you by my side.”
“But what about—？”
“Never mind him. I’ll handle everything when we get back. We’ll just say we got turned around and delayed. If we slip out now we can enjoy the city for hours before we have to go home.”
“You’re serious,” she said, a smile bursting across her face.
“I’m serious. Besides, you’ve seen the best part of the opera now anyway.”
We gathered up our things and swept out into the night, following the glow of torches and singing of revelers to one of the large squares. We stopped at a vendor to pick up two of the eerie volto masks that were so popular with women at the time before picking up our skirts and speeding off after the rest of the partygoers like young girls. In our winter capes, we were indistinguishable from any other person in the crowd.
We gasped at the fire eaters and the acrobats, gawked at the ladies of Venice in their elaborate costumes, and let out delighted yelps when men in gruesome masks jumped out at us. I had never seen so much beauty together in one place. My memory of that evening is one happy blur, with the memory of Magdalena’s hand in my own clear as crystal. When we finally tore ourselves away from the party and began to race home, dumping our masks and veils into the arms of two young girls who had been watching the festivities from afar with longing eyes, we were as tired as dancing princesses from a storybook.
You were as absorbed in your research when we returned home as you were when we left, oblivious to the secret pleasure we had indulged in away from your watchful eye. With a few perfunctory kisses and kind words, you disappeared back into your world of calculations and hypotheses, leaving Magdalena and I to slip away to bed.
The rooms in Venice were small, and we all shared a large featherdown bed that we girls very rarely had to ourselves. Having Magdalena all to myself was a special delight that I didn’t intend to waste.
I kissed every inch of her as though she were a holy relic, sloughing off her dress with the delicate care I might use while unwrapping a communion chalice from its linen. She whispered my name like a prayer as I worshipped the secret place between her thighs with my mouth. Her fingers tangled in my hair and she giggled as I brought her closer and closer to the brink, my own body trembling with desire. She was so beautiful like this, head tipped back, brow smooth and free of any worry. I wanted the moment to last forever: just her and I trapped in a small, perfect eternity of pleasure.
Laying with her made me feel so vibrantly alive. It was almost enough to make me forget that I was already dead.
Maybe I was drawn to her because she was so fully alive. Even your bite hadn’t yet snatched the high color from her cheeks, the sparkle from her eyes. I liked looking at her better than I liked looking at myself, for it became increasingly difficult to recognize myself in the mirror. My long reddish hair shone with the illusion of life but was always cold to the touch, even in the sunlight, and my skin had a pallor most women had to paint their faces with white lead to achieve. My eyes were dark and flat, more animal than woman, and I often startled passerby because I forgot to remind myself to blink. I wondered if eventually even my reflection would fade away, leaving nothing but the cold unbroken surface of a mirror.