I was a perfect, immovable statue, painfully beautiful but without any of the small graces that mortality bestowed. I looked more and more like you every day.
Even the thinnest rays of sun were painful to me now, and I couldn’t frolic with Magdalena in the soft light of dawn or dusk. I was less and less sated by bread and wine, although I sometimes slipped into the church for communion just to see if I could still taste anything at all. The hunger was relentless, my only companion in the quiet moments between travel and conversation about your newest theory of human nature. I took up diversions constantly to fill the void: needlepoint, viola, the rosary. Nothing made me feel full.
So I lived vicariously through Magdalena, all her wide-eyed wonder at the world, all her brutal little firsts. We hunted together, broke the necks of wicked men and drew beautiful girls and boys into our bower for kisses and love bites. Magdalena and I brought these delicate young blooms to the edge of pleasure and pain, taking small, restrained sips from their still-pulsing veins. I supposed we wanted to see if we could do it, feed from someone without giving in entirely to frenzied bloodlust, and we didn’t think it was fair that every person we took our sustenance from should die. We fancied ourselves fair and just as we coddled our swooning beloveds and sent them home covered in hickeys and a few barely noticeable pinprick wounds.
You, of course, found out eventually.
“What’s the meaning of this?” you demanded, after a boy had stumbled out of our home with his lips swollen from kisses and blood drying on his neck but still very much alive. “You two are going behind my back trying to sire a new family, is that it?”
“Of course not,” I scoffed.
“No, no my love!” Magdalena crooned, wrapping her fingers around your arm. She steered you to the nearest chair. “We would never do such a thing.”
“You couldn’t even if you wanted to, you know. You aren’t old enough, your blood isn’t strong enough. Is this Constanta’s doing?” you asked, though I had barely even spoken. “She’s infected your mind with her moralism.”
“I’ve done nothing!” I exclaimed.
“This is about your obsession with justice, isn’t it?” you said, dark eyes flashing. “You think those youths are innocent and so you let them live. Hear me Constanta: no one on this wretched Earth is innocent. Not you, not me, not those children.”
Tears sprang to my eyes unbidden, and I scolded myself. I hated crying in front of you. I felt like it gave you even more power over me, like your heart was an empty lacrimosa waiting to catch my tears.
“Beloved, please,” I said.
Magdalena, bless her, stepped in before you could reduce me entirely. She settled herself at your feet, skirts pooling around her, and laid her head on your knee. She was the picture of coquettish contrition, but I was beginning to know her well enough to know that it was, at least in part, an act.
We all developed our tricks for dealing with you: my invisibility, her sweetness.
“It was just an experiment,” Magdalena said, thinking on her feet. “We were curious what would happen if it we let them live, if it could be done at all. You’re always talking about studying the nature of humans and vampires. We were simply releasing a few test cases into the wild.”
You threaded your fingers through her hair while your gaze burned into my skin, searching me for any sign of disobedience. You usually looked at us like we were hoards of gold, precious and rarefied. But now you looked at me the way you looked at one of your books. Like you were draining me of all useful knowledge before tossing me aside.
“Very industrious,” you murmured. Your voice was still suspicious, but you seemed to be willing to accept her answer. For now.
I, for my part, tried not to hold how you came to love her against you. You hadn’t set out looking for a new bride. You had simply fallen in love, just the same way I had fallen in love when you had presented Magdalena and I to each other. I couldn’t blame you for that, could I? I tried not to think of the quiet machinations that had gone into our meeting as we followed the whims of Magdalena’s wanderlust from country to country. I tried to banish the clamoring thoughts of how long you must have been writing letters to her without my knowledge or consent, telling her all about our life together. Winning her over to your side.
I tried to be generous with you my love… but the seeds of doubt, once planted, put down deep and stubborn roots. Soon, the suspicion that you had not been entirely honest began to gnaw at me, despite the joy of a life shared with you and Magdalena. I was suspicious, and even more dangerously, I was curious.