The two towers of the bridge loomed ahead. She’d circled above an hour earlier but went in for another look, knowing it was a favorite haunt of her sister’s. Her wings beat out a steady rhythm as she glided over the roof of the north tower. And there, slumped behind a corner turret facing the river, she saw her. Mary sat deep in shadow with her shawl draped over her head and her knees drawn up to her chest. Edwina swooped down, shifting from bird to woman the moment her feet touched the shingles.
“Go away.”
“No.” Edwina tucked her skirt in under her knees and sat against the angled roof. “Not until you tell me why.”
“Why what?”
“Why you didn’t confide in me how bad the need had become. Why you allowed innocent people to be murdered.” Edwina felt little room in her heart at the moment for forgiveness, but she needed answers. “And why him?”
Mary lifted her face. She’d been crying. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and looked out at the city, where arc lights kept the darkness at bay on the busy streets. It was only a matter of time before the entire world would be bathed in the harsh white light of electricity.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
Edwina’s anger piqued. “There isn’t another being in all the world who could understand more!” Exasperated, she turned her shoulder to Mary, wondering what she was going to do with her sister. There were other cities to flee to, but they’d fare no better there. If they couldn’t find peace in the biggest city in the world, there really was no place they could go to escape who and what they were. It was worse for Mary, she knew. It had always been worse for her, but Edwina’s charitable patience had run out.
“It was thrilling,” Mary said after a moment. “Not like the memories of the old people at the hospital, who’d forgotten half their lives by the time they died. Did you never notice how shrunken and dull their memories were? Like common quartz compared to the brilliant blue-and-gold hue of people still in their prime.” She raised her chin, proud of her thoughts. “Throw in the threat of imminent death and the most precious memories come surging to the surface for the taking.” She closed her eyes and smiled, as if reliving the sensation of extracting the baubles again for the first time. “Do you have any idea what true euphoria feels like?”
Edwina’s intuition drifted on a current of disquiet in the wake of her sister’s admission. There was a time she’d convinced herself they were two sides of the same unique coin, but in truth they were different currencies altogether. “There’s a moment in people’s eyes when they begin to figure out there’s something not quite right about us,” she said. “They say mortals don’t experience things beyond their five senses. Perhaps they don’t recognize what’s triggering their unease, but their instinct tells them there’s something to be wary of.” Edwina turned to face Mary. “I say ‘us,’ but it’s really just you they’re afraid of. I used to see it in the old people’s faces at Saint Basil’s before they passed. They feared they wouldn’t make it through the veil safely with you sitting so near at their moment of death. I swear they were afraid their soul would be devoured. I’m ashamed now I looked away as if I hadn’t noticed.”
“You know what the mortals call a gathering of our kind?” Mary asked with a derisive laugh. “An Unkindness. Well deserved, don’t you think? Me and you.”
Across the city, the clock tower chimed the midnight hour, punctuating the rift between them until the final bong rang out.
“I know you’re angry,” Mary said. “But the life we had wasn’t enough for me anymore. Can’t you see? None of it. Digging in the mud for dented castoffs, scraping by in the shop every day, and then having to make do with the feeble memories of the sick and the dying. I craved more. And Nick gave that to me.”
“By murdering mortals.”
“Not always.” Mary’s eyes flicked to Edwina when she turned to hear more. “Like your Ian on the foreshore that morning,” she said. “I saved his life.”
“You took his memory thinking he was dead.”
“But he wasn’t. I made sure I called you over before Nick could find the knife he’d dropped during their struggle and do the cutting. And yet I couldn’t have the man remembering all those incriminating details he’d uncovered. I’d grown too fond of my nights with Nick—the killing, the shiny new baubles, the feel of him inside me when it was over.”