The antique store was dusty and dim, but Alexi’s face brightened as soon as we stepped inside as though he had found a doorway to Camelot. He ran his fingers over the pendants and parasols, the cigar boxes and hat boxes, losing himself in the reverie of days gone by. Soon, your morning spat had been entirely forgotten, and he was prattling on about all the historical events he wished he could have lived to see.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was sure to live through plenty of history. I doubted he would find it as rarefied an experience as his imagination hoped.
The shopkeeper appeared at the back of the store, a thin man with a nose like a hawk.
“Can I help you find something, young man?”
“We’re just taking it all in,” Alexi said pleasantly.
“Good. If you or your mother need any help, just ring the bell and I’ll be right with you.”
He disappeared into the back room, leaving Alexi snickering. I scowled, crossing my arms tight across my chest. Coming out with Alexi suddenly seemed foolish. That was all anyone ever saw when they looked at us together, a mother and son, or a governess and her overgrown ward. I had a face built for a chaperone, not for making beautiful young men fall in love with me.
“Come now Constance,” Alexi purred soothingly as he sidled up to me. It was his special nickname for me, and it always warmed my heart to hear him say it. “Don’t be mad. It’s an honest mistake.”
“Honest in that I look like a spinster?” I muttered.
Alexi snatched up a nearby silk scarf, fluttering it through the air before looping it around my shoulders. His touch was heavy and warm on my skin, and desire pooled in my stomach. Paris and a steady diet had banished the gaunt look from his features, and I hadn’t noticed until that moment how healthy and handsome he had become.
“Honest in that you’re motherly,” he conceded. “Why, you’re a regular Wendy Darling to us lost children.”
I couldn’t help but smile at the comparison. Alexi had taken me to see the play, and even though I hadn’t been a child for a long time, I had a fondness for its charming tale of eternal childhood. Sometimes rousing Magdalena and Alexi from bed so we could face the night as a family felt like dealing with children.
“Does that make him Peter?” I asked drolly.
“He’s certainly moody enough to play the part.”
“You haven’t seen anything. After that whole debacle with the Harkers he was sullen for months.”
“Who are the Harkers?”
“Before your time dear, just some dreadful Victorians.”
Alexi slid the scarf from my shoulders with a theatrical flourish.
“Come on. I’m buying you this, and then we’re going for coffee. You can still drink coffee, can you?”
“Yes,” I lied. I could manage a few sips, for Alexi.
“Good,” he said. “There are people I must introduce you to.”
Alexi had an appetite for danger. He liked to wear a gun, and to walk along the thin edge of the Seine by night, and to slice shallow cuts into himself to entice Magdalena and I into a frenzied bedroom game. Once, you found us three together: we girls lapping up the blood pooling in Alexi’s collarbones like kittens while he made soft, pleasured noises, the bloody pocket knife still in his hands.
You dragged your little finger through the blood on his chest, tracing out the first letter of your name before bringing your finger up to your mouth. To this day, I cannot fathom your restraint. Even the littlest pinprick of blood set me on the hunt, and I was suckling at the cut Alexi had made with an almost painful desire. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to pin him down and tear out his throat, and I’m sure Magdalena felt very much the same. But that, of course, was the sweetness of his game.
“Your thrill-seeking will kill you,” was all you said, flatly. “You shouldn’t drink from each other.”
“Why?” Magdalena whined, her mouth smeared with her brother’s blood. She didn’t get to finish her line of questioning, because I started kissing it off her insistently.
“Because I don’t know what the effects are. I haven’t done enough research.”
“Well then get in here and do some research,” Alexi said, pulling you into bed.
His charms were hard to resist, as you well knew, and so did half the city of Paris. Alexi must have had a hundred friends scattered throughout the city, and he did his best to split this time between all of them. You disapproved of these connections and did your best to keep him at home, within arm’s reach. Relationships with humans were all doomed from the start, you insisted. Either they died unexpectedly, breaking your heart, or they caught on to your true nature eventually and had to be put down. But Alexi wouldn’t be deterred. He kept befriending actors and poets and jazz musicians, and he kept pushing you to let him roam freely outside the house.