His eyes shone with elation.
“We did it, Jess,” he said. “Listen! It’s everything we hoped for!”
The curtain rebounded and Jess saw people’s hands held high as their palms smacked enthusiastically together. Thrown flowers landed helter-skelter among the footlights.
“Author, author!” they yelled.
Nick stepped forward, and they cheered even louder. No one out there knew why Anthony Sinclair had dropped out of the production (although in the theater world gossip had run wild); but Nick’s agreement to take on the role of Marko himself had sealed the success of the production. It was a double comeback: Griffin and Croft, returning together. The audience loved it.
Walter Steinhart ran onstage to take his bows with the cast.
“Jess!” he said, grabbing her hand. “You were wonderful!” He bent to kiss her knuckles, tickling her skin with his whiskers.
“Damn good thing,” Nick said out of the side of his mouth, “considering what a lump she’s got for a leading man.”
The director laughed. “Lump, schmump—what are you talking about? You’re doing fine, and from here on you’ll grow even more into the part. You did great!”
Jess drew the two men’s hands together in her own, smiling from one of them to the other and then raising their hands high, offering her colleagues for the crowd’s adulation.
Meanwhile, her gaze searched among the excited faces out there for one face that she both hoped and dreaded to see. If the brazen-haired vampire was there, she couldn’t spot him. She didn’t know whether she was more disappointed or more relieved.
There followed a half dozen curtain calls, and then a rush backstage to prepare for the whirl of celebration as friends and well-wishers rushing to congratulate the cast. Jess, swiftly shedding her costume and makeup with Marie’s help, toweled off and put on her green silk dress. With a woolen paisley shawl drawn over her shoulders for warmth (the theater boiler was still not working properly), she signaled Marie to start letting in the crowd from the corridor, a few at a time.
Kisses, hugs, extravagant declarations, damp handshakes, clumsy compliments and invitations—she had forgotten how it all felt: glorious, that’s how, a high you never wanted to end. Her aunt Clara bustled in with a box of Godiva chocolates, stared and gushed adoringly, and fluttered out again to wait in the lobby with two neighbors she had brought with her on the subway from Riverdale to see her niece perform.
Between incursions by the admiring public, Jess scanned the congratulatory telegrams and sipped a very good champaign provided by the Whitelys. The adrenaline spike smoothed into a more even buzz of satisfaction over a goal achieved, not just by herself but by all of them together: theater magic, despite a rough road getting there.
When the stream of visitors thinned at last, she gathered herself to leave the shelter of the tatty little dressing room and go celebrate.
Someone knocked. “Nick?” she called.
It was Johnny Wagner, abandoning his post at the stage door, and looking anxious. “Ms. Clausen said not to let him into the theater again, but—”
“Jessamyn?” A tall man in a fur-collared coat leaned hesitantly in past him, hat in hand. “Please?”
Marie drew herself up between him and Jess. “You’re not welcome here, Mr. Sinclair.”
But Jess motioned her aside. “Thanks, Marie, but I’d like to hear what Anthony has to say.”
“It’s okay, then?” Johnny said, trying to look threateningly at the intruder.
Jess nodded, but Marie, glaring at Sinclair, barked, “Stick around outside, John. Just in case.”
Anthony Sinclair winced visibly, and hot color stained his cheeks. “Jessamyn, if we could speak privately—?”
“Say what you came to say,” Jess said, “and I wouldn’t drag it out if I were you. Nick will be along any minute to collect me, and I understand that he gave you a pretty stern warning about not wanting to find you here.”
“Or anywhere,” Marie muttered. With a final glare at Sinclair, she turned away and busied herself with the costumes, creating at least the illusion of privacy for Jess and her enemy.
“I never had a chance to explain,” Sinclair said earnestly, advancing a tentative pace into the little room, “and I don’t want any unfounded suspicions to cloud your relations with the rest of your company, Jessamyn. I—”
He swallowed hard and blinked wretchedly at the floor.
Then he drew himself up with his eyes squinted half-shut and said quickly, “I wanted Anita MacNeil to take your place so that my wife could step into Anita’s role as Magda. Sal was desperately unhappy when she lost her job, she was talking about—about suicide, or retiring and going to live with her mother in Canada and teach school or something equally awful.
“I have an old connection with Walter. I knew I could persuade him to let me import Sal into ‘The Jewel’, once you’d left. The thing is, as soon as we’re working together again on the stage, Sal and I, it will be all right between us again. You have no idea what it’s like, Jessamyn, to love someone like that, to need them so badly—”
She watched the sweat bead on his forehead, noted the carefully combed sweep of his thinning hair, the manicured shapeliness of his graceful hands. It was strange, but she felt more sadness than anger. She couldn’t guess what he felt, but she mourned and resented the loss of their friendship that had never been even that, really. The illusion of his friendship, then, was lost for good, and she was sorry.
“You did it alone and you did it for love, is that what you’re saying?” she said, trying not to sound sarcastic.
He smiled painfully. “Thank you. Yes. I never meant to hurt you, just to get you to leave the production. I felt then and I feel now only the greatest fondness and admiration—”
“Stop, please. That’s not helping.” Nothing could help, but why go into that?
“You don’t understand, you’re young, you have so many chances ahead of you. But for Sal and me—” He licked his lips nervously and looked away.
“Anita knew nothing about it, then, just as she says,” Jess said.
A shamefaced nod.
“Thank you for that clarification,” Jess said. She couldn’t think of anything more to say. Her silence said it all.
The hectic patches blazed on Sinclair’s cheeks and he stepped pleadingly toward her. “They were supposed to frighten you, those idiots, just to frighten you, that’s all! My God, I’d been shadowing you myself after Nick left, to scare you, not to hurt you. I never once thought of doing anything to actually harm you—just to frighten you away.”
He smiled hopefully, attempting camaraderie. “You didn’t recognize me when I followed you, did you? Even Marie didn’t spot me that day I led Johnny off into the bookstore. It was—it was like a game, but you can’t imagine how serious it was for me.”
“They came at me with a razor, Anthony,” Jess said. “Your—your henchmen. It was serious for me, too.”
“I know, I heard, and I’ll never forgive myself.” He raised his fists and pressed his knuckles to his forehead. “You have to believe me. I thought I’d made it absolutely clear that there should be no violence!”
Either he was sincere—or he was acting. It made no difference.
Jess said, “Sally Sinclair is used to leading roles. What would you have done when she got restless playing Magda, a supporting role? How far would you have gone to make your wife happy, when she started chafing to take over the lead and play Eva to your Marko?”
Sinclair’s eyes opened wide with outrage. “She isn’t like that, Sally would never—”
“But you would; and you did, in my case.” Jess sighed. “I’m not pressing charges, Anthony. Nick wanted to, but there isn’t enough evidence, and anyway—I believe in what Eva says in the play. Revenge is an acid that corrodes whatever it touches. You don’t have to worry about me going after you over all this.
“But don’t come here again; and there will be no more discussion. There’s
nothing to say. You’d better leave now, before Nick shows up.”
Sinclair took a breath to speak.
Marie said, “You want to lose the rest of your hair and have your bridgework dissolve in your mouth, Mr. Sinclair? I know some tricks, and I know some people. Mrs. Sinclair wouldn’t be so fond of you with your kneecaps fused. Miss Croft said go away; so go!”
Sinclair turned very pale and seemed to shrink into himself, resembling the skinny old man he would truly be in a few years’ time. Without another word he turned and left. His footsteps hastened down the corridor, although nothing followed him but glares from Marie and Johnny Wagner.
Jess turned wide eyes on her dresser. “Wow. That was pretty ferocious, Marie.”
“He deserves worse,” Marie said, banging the dressing room door shut. She held an open-topped cardboard box in her hands. “Well, forget him. Look at this—odd flowers to send on an opening night.”
“What flowers?”
Marie took a small pasteboard card from between the two plain pots of bright geraniums that were in the box, tied together loosely with a scarlet ribbon. She handed the card to Jess, her expression studiously blank.
The card shook slightly in Jess’ fingers. On its creamy surface someone had inscribed in a firm, flowing hand, “The past can be a prison cell or wings on which to soar. Thank you. v. C.”
Her hand flew up involuntarily to touch the two tiny scars on her throat. If he’d been there himself—a man she held in a fierce, sad fondness and hoped never to lay eyes on again—she’d have gone to him, gone with him, for another taste.
No. That was a dream, a scene from a delirium that she could play onstage but not maintain in real life. She wasn’t cut out to be consort to an immortal; she had too much ego of her own, for one thing, because she was an actress, and a good one by God. But she was not truly Eva, not any of the roles she played, not larger than life.
Offstage, she was just life-sized, like everyone else.
Nick burst in looking angry and alarmed. “Was that Anthony Sinclair I saw just now, scuttling out of here like a bug?”
Marie snorted disdainfully. “He just came around to see if he’s safe from prosecution,” she said darkly. It had hurt her, giving up her crush on the great Anthony Sinclair. On that account alone Jess couldn’t regret having spoken harshly to the man.
She looked at Nick, the flexed shoulders, the aggressive set of the jaw. She was sure he was fighting the temptation to go after Sinclair and beat him up as if they were contemporary rivals, not a muscular young man and a rather frail older one.
Vengefulness corrodes what it touches.
“Nick,” she said. “There’s cold cream in your right ear.”
He made a face and dabbed at his ear with his handkerchief. In that moment, he reverted to the man she knew: smart and funny, and maybe someday as good an actor as he was a playwright.
She took his hand, his warm hand with the slender fingers and big knuckles and the fine golden hairs on the back; a living hand warm with the beat of its own blood under the skin. “Come on, let’s go. Your play is an energy-gobbling monster. I could eat six pizzas!”
“Dissolute theater creatures,” Marie said with a sniff. “You should be resting up for tomorrow night’s performance, not painting the town.” She grinned. “The best revenge is for you two to become an even more famous theater couple than—than that sorry man and his spoiled wife.”
Nick kissed Jess’s palm and pressed it to his cheek. “That’s the plan,” he said. “Oh; you dropped something, Jess.”
Jess picked up the card that had come with the geraniums. She fixed it boldly to the makeup mirror by wedging one corner under the scarred wooden frame.
“A note from a friend,” she said lightly. “Come on, they’re waiting for us. It’s going to be a hell of a party!”
“Will this friend be there?” Nick asked in a low voice, his gaze averted as if he were afraid to see something unwelcome in her expression.
She grabbed his shoulders and drew him down so she could press her cheek to his and speak privately in his ear.
“No. He’s sent the flowers from his apartment for me to take care of; that must mean he’s left town, and he wants me to know it. He wants us to know it.”
“But is it what you want?” He held her by both arms in a tense grip.
“Yes, it’s what I want. It’s your freedom, and mine too.” And his I hope, she thought, but she didn’t say this. She leaned closer to Nick and kissed him, hungry for the salty human taste of his skin, the roughness of the beginning stubble of his beard, and the slightly rank scent of his hair with the sweat of stage work not yet washed out of it.
“Come on,” she said, “the others will eat everything up! Aren’t you starving? We have to start pounding on Walter about that scene change in Act Two, and this is the time to start. Houdini couldn’t do his costume changes in that amount of time—could he, Marie?”
“I’m not old enough to know an answer to that,” the dresser said haughtily.
* * *
In the cab on the way home from the after-opening party and late night buffet at Tony’s All-Night Italian, Nick held Jess against his side as she dozed, the beginning of the inevitable collapse. The high of performance made it impossible to sleep, until food and company eased you down and left you poleaxed by exhaustion.
He studied her face in the light of passing vehicles—not many of them, this early in the morning—and of streetlights at the corners of the blocks as they whizzed by. She was so far from the delicious ingénue he had met on the stage that summer and fallen for so hard.
But this woman with the intriguing asymmetry to her face and its sweet gravity in repose, this woman was more than he had imagined she might become. He only hoped that he, too, had grown—enough, at any rate, to let the past lie quiet. There were questions he should never ask, and secrets he must let her keep, if they were to stay together for good.
Well, he didn’t need her secrets; he had her. His was the body she leaned into with sleepy trust, his was the life she had chosen to link with her own. Thanks to her help, in time there might be children who could take the Griffin name with no fear of mysterious enemies. Actors, he thought; between them they could surely produce an actor or two. They would have to talk about that, but now now. Later, after “The Jewel” had closed.
He smiled in the leathery gloom of the cab. He’d lost the family “treasure” and found a future that felt true. He had literally won a woman more precious than rubies.
With a small groan of mixed longing and contentment, he gathered her closer against him.
“I ate too much,” she murmured drowsily. “Why didn’t you stop me? We should have saved some and brought it home for the dogs.”
* * *
Baron Ivo Dedrick Maria von Craggen ordered Evian in the first-class lounge. He sat looking out at the airport bustle of moving lights and shapes. Beyond, in the cold night sky, he thought he saw movement, darkness on blackness, and the old dialogue resumed in his head.
What now, Baron? With the Ruby Tear lost, so is your occupation.
Yes, he answered readily, without speaking. I am at your service, Lady, as always.
The task lies uncompleted. What of your vaunted vengeance on the family of Griffin the thief, Griffin the murderer?
I have already had it, generations of it, as you well know, he replied composedly. It is a nasty dish at best. Lately I have fed on such generosity and joy that the taste of ashes no longer appeals.
You mean that if the actress is to be part of that family, then you will no longer harry them for the payment you are owed.
He smiled slightly, watching himself in the reflection in the lounge window mirror. You always know my mind better than I do myself, Lady.
So I thought, came the reply.
But I have not known your mind. The balance has been uneven, to say the least.
Silence. He felt the sweat chill on his face; that was fear, no matter ho
w bold his thoughts. He couldn’t remember when he had been so afraid. Why did you never tell me that the ruby had been destroyed?
Why did you never ask? A distant answer, not an answer at all.
All this time, all those deaths—
All that blood, she murmured languorously.
But why?
Oh, you are a fool, my young baron! Her voice lashed him, paralyzing him where he sat so that he could hardly draw breath.
Blood is everything. A family is bound by blood, a tribe knows its members by blood, a nation draws its boundaries in blood. Without divisions of blood—pagan against Christian, Christian against Muslim, Croat against Serb, region against region, village against village, you against himit all sinks back into a formless mass, there is no shape, no spirit, no direction.
There are only little animals scurrying here and there like mice, forgetting who they are, forgetting each who the other is an instant after meeting. Blood defines; the shedding of blood affirms those definitions, and feeds the spirit of the people which holds them together and tells them who they are.
You, you vampire! Drinking the blood of whole peoples—
Because they wish it, Baron, purred the voice. And they need it. Without these divisions and enmities they are confused, they flounder and fail. And so I am called into being. And how can I protect my many children, how can I inspire them to protect each other, without the bonds of blood, the taste of blood, the debts of blood?
It will not always be that way, he protested. Things change. Already, it is not that way everywhere. Are you sure you are immortal, Lady?
Silence again.
He opened his eyes and saw in the seats near him in the lounge a jowly businessman methodically folding a newspaper, a young woman hunched over a laptop keyboard, an older man dozing with big-knuckled hands hanging empty between his knees.
He gathered himself to concentrate only on the black dialogue inside his mind: What now? Do you summon me home? If so, you find me ready to embark.
Summon you? Not I. What use would I have for you, Baron von Craggen?
He sat up straighter, impelled by a thrill of fear. I—What?