The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla

by Lauren Willig

  Colin’s arms tightened around me, his nose nuzzling my hair.

  “Here I am,” he confirmed, and let go. “After a very easy flight. And you’ve been . . . ?”

  “I caught a drink with Megan after class.” I dug in my bag for my keys, feeling thoroughly discombobulated. This wasn’t quite how I’d meant the reunion to go. “And by ‘drink,’ I mean coffee.”

  I hadn’t wanted to be blotto for Colin-greeting, so we’d abandoned Grafton Street in favor of the Starbucks on Church Street. Pumpkin spice lattes had seemed like an appropriate beverage for the discussion of vampires.

  Colin bent his head towards mine. “I can smell it in your hair,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. Colin was well aware of my latte habit. He’d been dragged to every Costa Coffee within a fifty-mile radius of Selwick Hall.

  “Eau de caffeine,” I said, and pushed open the door to my tiny studio apartment. “Welcome!”

  It felt a bit weird to be treating Colin as a visitor when we’d been living together for months in England.

  But we’d been living together on his turf, not mine.

  He bumped his wheelie over the threshold. The doorway was smack in the middle of the room, on the dividing line between my living area and my sleeping area. I’d stuck bookshelves down the center of the studio to mark out the difference between the two, but it was purely a nominal barrier; Colin’s head was higher than the highest shelf. The whole was smaller than Colin’s bedroom at Selwick Hall.

  “It’s nice,” said Colin, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand.

  “It’s cozy,” I replied, a little stiffly. I caught myself wanting to explain that this was actually reasonably large for Harvard Square, that property values were different in the wilds of West Sussex and across the street from Harvard Yard. “Anyway! Just leave your bag wherever.”

  There wasn’t much wherever to leave it. Colin seemed to take up an inordinate amount of floor space. I could see him looking dubiously at my bed. My single bed. It doubled as spare couch and work space, but that didn’t change its overall square footage.

  All the more reason to snuggle?

  Maybe having Colin stay with me hadn’t been the best idea. New England was full of adorable little inns. We could have gone to a bed-and-breakfast up in the Berkshires, with blueberry muffins for breakfast and a big four-poster with brass knobs and a patchwork quilt, with leaf-peeping and apple picking and the sounds of sleigh bells in the snow. Well, not the snow, but the rest of it.

  But I’d wanted to show Colin what my life was like. Partly just because, but also as a diagnostic. If we were going to stay together, we were going to have to work out some way to bridge the continental divide. We’d lived his life together; could he live mine?

  One thing was clear: if he was going to live mine, I was going to have to get a bigger bed. And possibly a larger apartment.

  I shoved the wheelie into the corner, next to the blanket chest that lived at the foot of my bed, and dumped the folder Megan had given me down on top of it. “Are you hungry? Thirsty? Sleepy?”

  “All three.” Colin wrapped his arms around my waist and rested his cheek against my hair. “But mostly glad to see you.”

  “Me too.” I felt some of the frenetic energy dissipate as I leaned my head against his chest. In a slightly muffled voice I said, “I hate that we only have four days.”

  “On the bright side,” said Colin, “we have four days.”

  “Fair point.” I removed my nose from his collarbone, tipping my head back so I could see his face. “What would you like to do? Do you need a nap?”

  Reluctantly releasing me, Colin raised a brow. “I think I can stagger on for an hour or two more.”

  It was at moments like this that I loved him so much it hurt. It’s always the silly little things, isn’t it? A quirk of expression, a tone of voice. In Colin’s case, just the indefinable Colin-ness of him. I knew that he was longing to conk out. Colin was, left to himself, an early riser; he’d been on the road all day; he’d probably already been fed a number of meals on little plastic trays with reckless disregard to (a) the actual time of day and (b) the recipient’s state of wakefulness. But he would come out with me anyway, because he knew I was itching to take him out and about in my world.

  “There’s a pub a few blocks away . . . ,” I said, trying to sound as though it was just a suggestion.

  I had it all planned out. For tonight, since Colin was tired, I had chosen a comfortable dive bar for drinks and sandwiches. Tomorrow, we could do fancy cocktails at Casablanca, the restaurant in the basement of Café Algiers, Indian food at my favorite Indian place across the street from the K school, followed by dessert and chocolate martinis at Finale, the dessert place down the block from the Holyoke Center.

  Saturday night was the Dudley House Halloween Costume Ball, and, incidentally, my sort-of birthday eve. Since my actual birthday was Monday, the day Colin flew back, we were celebrating Birthday Eve Observed on Saturday night. And then a quiet night in on Sunday. Colin had looked into staying for my birthday proper, but the vagaries of airline pricing had been against us. For some absurd reason, the ticket was far cheaper on the Monday than the Tuesday. And what was a day here or there?

  In between prebirthday festivities, there would be visits to the history department and the Harvard Coop, a walk by the river, brunch with my friends Liz and Jenny, and various other representative activities designed to place my existence in Cambridge in the best possible light.

  Of course, if I were really trying to give Colin an accurate view of my life, these activities would include sprinting from the library to the Barker Center and back again, retail therapy via the sale rack at Ann Taylor, eating take-out burritos with one hand while grading papers with the other, and getting blotto on red wine at Grafton Street.

  Maybe that would have been better. Maybe that would make Colin feel a part of my life here, the way I had been part of his in England.

  But we had only four days. . . .

  “The pub would be brilliant,” said Colin promptly, and I gave his arm an extra squeeze, just because.

  “After you,” I said with a flourish.

  “No, after you,” said Colin gravely, trying to move aside to let me pass, and hip-bumping his wheelie in the process.

  Megan’s folder made a slow slide towards the floor, spewing papers.

  We both lunged for it at the same time, cracking heads in the process.

  “Ow,” I said, lurching back to my feet.

  Crouched on the floor, Colin grimaced. “Sorry.”

  “No. No, it’s fine.” I surreptitiously touched a hand to my forehead. I was sure I would stop seeing stars in a moment.

  “I’ll get these for you, shall I?” offered Colin.

  “That seems wise,” I murmured, and perched gingerly on the arm of the love seat. The love seat was secondhand, and not the sturdiest construction in creation.

  Which reminded me that I ought to warn Colin about that. And about the desk chair, which was held together by one of its original four screws. And the coffeemaker that liked to spew coffee in odd directions.

  Basically, my apartment was a health hazard.

  “Um, can I get you anything?” I offered the top of Colin’s head. “Water? Booze?” Other than that, the options were limited.

  “Didn’t you want to go to the pub?” Colin asked absently, holding up one of Megan’s printouts. He glanced up over his shoulder. “A little light reading for Halloween?”

  “A little— Oh, right. I haven’t really looked at those yet.”

  Megan, in an excess of generosity, had entrusted me with the folder containing her notes on the Ghoul of Belliston Hall, that being, apparently, the name that the press had given to Britain’s first vampire.

  Edging carefully between Colin’s knee and the bookcase, I plunked myself do
wn on the floor on the other side of the puddle of papers and craned my neck to catch a glimpse of the one in Colin’s hands. “The year The Convent of Orsino came out, there was a vampire scare in London. A woman was found dead with fang marks on her neck.”

  “That explains this, then.” Colin obligingly held the paper out towards me.

  I scooted in closer, or as close as I could with the bookshelf getting in the way. The page was a photocopy of what looked like a Gillray cartoon. I could recognize the classic Gillray figures, tall and wasp-waisted—and the telltale smudges of the Widener copy machines, each of which had its own unique pattern of grime.

  Gillray knew his stuff. Even in blurry black and white, there was something deeply chilling about the scene. A woman lay upon a marble bench with scrolled ends, one arm flung gracefully behind her head, the other dangling down to the stone flags of the floor. The thin fabric of her dress showcased the lines of her legs; the long, dark curls of her hair twined sinuously along her bosom. Roses bloomed from large marble urns on either side of her, like something out of the imagination of Edward Gorey.

  One might have thought she was asleep, but for the man crouched behind her. His long black cloak was furled high around his neck, and his back was turned away so that we saw him only in profile and in shadow—a nice way of avoiding an action for libel.

  Gillray being Gillray, he hadn’t resisted the urge to lampoon the thrill-seekers. You could see them, crowded into the door from the balcony, craning to see over one another, their expressions more rapacious by far than that of the supposed vampire.

  I gave a little shiver. “The word of the day is ‘macabre.’ Or, as I used to pronounce it when I was little, mack-a-bray.”

  “Mack-a-bray, indeed,” Colin agreed. He set the paper aside. “Is this for the dissertation, or purely for your amusement?”

  “Possibly the former, probably the latter.”

  Megan hadn’t been able to tell me much. The Duke of Belliston had been suspected of the murder of an unknown woman who had turned up dead on the balcony of his uncle’s house. The press had drawn the obvious parallels to The Convent of Orsino: beneath the cartoon Colin had been holding was another, in which the Duke of Belliston—at least, I assumed that was the Duke of Belliston—was portrayed as the Knight of the Silver Tower, sparkling armor and all.

  “I’m trying to figure out whether there’s anything dissertation-worthy in it.” I drew my legs up and wrapped my arms around my knees. The heels of my boots added new scrapes to the hardwood floor. “Miss Gwen’s book sparked a vampire craze—so the question is, was the duke a crazed admirer of Miss Gwen’s writing—”

  “Had he read it?” murmured Colin.

  “Hey, that’s your ancestress you’re talking about. And it was the bestselling book of 1806.”

  Colin shook his head. “Heaven help us all.”

  “Pretty much.” Personally, I didn’t think The Convent of Orsino was that bad, once one got past the purpler-than-purple prose, but I wasn’t going to say so. Colin was currently writing his own potboiler, of the guns, drugs, and car crashes variety, and it seemed to have unleashed a deep vein of criticism in my boyfriend. “Anyway, the question is, was the duke a nutcase—”

  Colin leafed through the rest of Megan’s photocopies. “Inbreeding has been known to produce such things.”

  “—or”—I was determined to finish my sentence this time—“was this a deliberate attempt to taunt Miss Gwen? The whole vampire thing, I mean.”

  Colin looked up from a lurid headline from The Speculator, the nineteenth century’s answer to the National Enquirer.

  “Come again?”

  Okay, admittedly, I hadn’t put that well. I hugged my knees closer to my chest. “What if someone was deliberately trying to pique Miss Gwen’s interest? The Pink Carnation had gone into deep cover. What if someone used a faux vampire kill to get Miss Gwen to draw her out?”

  Colin massaged his temples with his fingers. “I think I left my brain in the lost luggage at Heathrow,” he said apologetically.

  “Sorry.” I scrambled to my feet, using the edge of the blanket chest to haul myself up. “You must be exhausted. And hungry. And here I am talking at you.”

  “With,” Colin corrected me, rising with considerably more grace. At least, until he bumped a knee on the blanket chest. I winced in sympathy. “‘With,’ not ‘at.’”

  “Let’s get you a drink,” I suggested. And out of my apartment, which, with Colin in it, seemed more and more like a maze designed for a midget.

  “Yes,” Colin agreed, slinging his Barbour on, and narrowly missing karate-chopping my bookshelf. “I’m sure this will all make more sense after a pint or two.”

  “Or not.” I gave his arm a quick hug before letting go to open the door. This time, Colin wisely didn’t try to help. “It’s just a theory. I haven’t done the research yet. And, anyway, I’m not really supposed to be adding new material at this point. It’s all about writing up.”

  In the gloom of the hallway, Colin’s expression was inscrutable. He slung his hands into the deep pockets of his Barbour. “So you’re almost done, then?”

  “‘Done’ is a relative term.” We made our way down the narrow staircase, into the narrow hall, decorated in an unattractive combo of yellow and a red that had taken on the rusty shade of dried blood. I ducked my head so that my hair fell in front of my face. “I gave my advisor the first ten chapters. The ones I wrote at Selwick Hall.”

  Me on my bulky green laptop in the library, Colin on his desktop in his study, late-summer sun slanting through the long windows, the scent of the roses from the garden heavy in the air.

  The October air bit at my neck. I pulled my collar closer.

  “Good on you,” said Colin, and if he didn’t sound quite as enthusiastic as he could have, well, that was probably a function of jet lag, and the wind that had whipped up, choking off his words, making him hunch down into his jacket.

  I looked at him anxiously, swiping at the hair that the wind blew into my eyes. “I hope you don’t mind. I have a meeting with my advisor tomorrow afternoon.” It was the only time that had worked for Professor Tompkins. Advisors were never there until you didn’t want them to be, at which time they suddenly became strangely insistent. “It shouldn’t take long. Especially on a Friday.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “I can give you the keys to the apartment, so you’re not housebound while I’m away. Or you can go to the Peabody. They have a new exhibit up. Or—”

  “It’s fine,” Colin repeated, as we dodged someone wanting us to sign a petition, and passed the inevitable Goth teenagers hanging out next to Out of Town News. “I’m sure I’ll find something to entertain myself.”

  “Mm-hmm.” I swallowed what I had been about to say. “I just hate that this is cutting into our time together.”

  Colin reached out and twined his fingers through mine. Even in the cold, his hands were warm. “This is your work,” he said matter-of-factly. “Of course you have to see him.”

  We passed Tealuxe and the obligatory Urban Outfitters, with its display of glow-in-the-dark bobblehead Jesus dolls and fatigue chic at civilian prices. The late-afternoon sun had faded into twilight, taking the warmth of the day with it. There was something terribly melancholy about Cambridge on an autumn evening. Or maybe it was any autumn evening, anywhere, with that sense of things slipping away.

  I held tight to Colin’s hand. “I’ll keep it brief,” I promised. “It should be just a yes/no on those chapters. He just needs to tell me if I’m on the right track so I can keep going.”

  “And then?” That was another of Colin’s strengths. He listened. He’d spent a lot of time listening to me babble on about my work in the months we were together. This dissertation was as much his as mine; he’d been part of it every step of the way.

  Well, almost every step of the way
.

  I took a deep breath. “If he likes it—there’s a shot I could submit for June.”

  Even as I said it, I wished I hadn’t. The words felt like a jinx. But there it was: vampires aside, I was scarily close to finishing. The chapters I’d given my advisor represented a good two-thirds of my outline. Discovering what had happened to the Pink Carnation would be nice, but it wasn’t necessary for the dissertation, which dealt less with personalities and more with mechanisms. Or, at least, that was the idea. My advisor was big on mechanisms, not so much on personalities. I’d tried to tamp down the fascination I felt for the individuals and make it look like I was merely mining them for their methodologies.

  “Will I have to call you Doctor?” Colin’s voice was warm against the chill air, like hot cider with a kick of brandy in it.

  “Please!” I said. “Only the pretentious do that. Besides, it’s only the first step. I may not be ready to submit in June. Who knows.”

  The shadows seemed to press around us as we crossed the green in front of Peet’s Coffee, the same Peet’s Coffee where I had my weekly writing dates with my friend Liz. As counterintuitive as it might seem, I didn’t want to think about finishing. I’d gotten used to life as a grad student. As a grad student, I could pick up and spend three months in England. Once I was on the job market—what then? It was one thing to try to imagine Colin sharing my life in Cambridge, here and there, for a week at a time. But what would happen after that? The future was a large, frightening blank.

  Jobs for historians of modern Britain weren’t exactly thick on the ground. I would have to go where I had to go.

  But I didn’t want to think about that now, not with Colin here, with our own future so uncertain and unsettled.

  “There’s a good shot that even if I finish this year, I’ll stay on in Cambridge another year,” I said, dodging a group of drunk B-school students who were staggering out of the depths of Grendal’s Den, having evidently started their weekend early. “It’ll be too late to go on the job market, so what usually happens is that they dredge up a job here as a Hist and Lit lecturer. I’m already teaching in Hist and Lit, so that’s an easy option for me.”