"I admit I'm confused as to how you managed to locate me. I mean, there are tons of accountants out there."

"But none other like you," Liliana softly said.

The young man fidgeted with the cigar he had placed in the ashtray. A blush again flushed his face.

"I take that as a compliment, but I haven't proven myself yet."

"I'm sure you'll get the opportunity. Don't you think, Liliana?"

"Uncle, I hate you."

Chapter 24.

Stupide jeune fille!

Sade recalled the debacle from the previous evening. He had been certain that Liliana could easily seduce David. Not only that, she was obviously mesmerized by the resemblance to Stuart. Why did she have to ruin a perfect situation with her stupide declaration of hate?

Sacrebleu, what a waste of some fine, warm, young, and live blood. He would see to it that she had another opportunity, but perhaps in a more intimate setting.

How long would he be able to put David off? he wondered. All the young man seemed to talk about was business. Sade had gone to great lengths to appease his business manager, Gaspard Francois Xavier Gaufridy, who had certainly been irate when he had learned that Sade had made him a vampire. He had promised Gaufridy that he would compensate his family for the loss of their sole financial support. Unfortunately, while the family was alive, the Marquis had run into serious financial problems. But who was to blame for that?

Gaufridy still kept the books, very stingily, Sade recalled. Sade could not ask Gaufridy to turn over the books to this boy, even if for a short period of time. Gaufridy would balk, threaten again to cut off contact with Sade. This threat had been present ever since their boyhood days.

Sade mulled over the situation in the wing chair while Matilda cleaned house around him.

"Matilda."

"Yes, sir."

"What would you consider a romantic evening for a young person?"

"How young, sir?"

"La jeune fille is seventeen. A very mature seventeen."

"Seventeen, sir!"

Sade noted that she had instantly stopped her work.

"And the gentleman, Matilda, is in his late twenties, early thirties."

"What kind of girl is this?"

"Une jeune fille! What more do you need to know?"

"She sounds way to young for the gentleman."

"More likely the other way around."

"You feel this girl is very experienced?"

"Far more than most people know."

"But you know?"

"In practically every way."

"Except?"

"We have not been intimate. As yet." Sade smiled to himself.

"I think you--or whoever this gentleman is--should stay away from her."

"How prudish, Matilda."

"I'm certain the girl has family that would not look kindly on the relationship."

"Kindly?"

"They'd probably do him in for the crime."

"What crime?"

"She's underage."

"Nonsense, Matilda. Besides, I'm family, and I'm trying to set this romance into motion."

"You're related?"

"Liliana, my niece."

"Thank G.o.d!"

"You needn't make it sound like she's an old maid, Matilda."

"She's not an old maid, but I did think she was older than seventeen, not by the way she looks, of course. However, she holds a job and has for some time."

"Why do femmes choose to make everything so complicated? Perhaps she's older. I never remember birthdays." Sade rose from the chair and paced the room. "What would be a romantic evening for you, Matilda?"

"I'm sure my idea of a romantic evening is very different from your niece's."

"Hmmmm. So is mine." Sade sighed.

"Does your niece have any interest in the gentleman?"

"She used to."

"Then they've been separated for a while?"

"Very much so."

"What initially attracted her to him?"

"The uniform, the scar... hmmm. His shyness. But with her he opened up. I must work on him, then."

"You can't remake a person, sir."

"I'm not changing him. I simply want him to be as he used to be."

"Sometimes time can't be turned back, depending on the gentleman's experiences."

"He has similar experiences. He was in the armed services. He still blushes."

"How charming!"

"Les femmes do appreciate that. Although he may not be as shy as he once was." Sade recalled the contact David had made with Evie. "But then, that may be a plus. Before he never knew where to put his hands, never mind his--"

Matilda cleared her throat.

"Excusez-moi. I am interrupting your work schedule. Please finish up."

Matilda ran for the exit to the kitchen, but stopped when Sade called her name.

"How is Cecilia doing?"

"Fine." She turned back to exit.

"By the way, she mentioned a dance recital that she's going to perform. Has the date been set yet?"

"It's been cancelled, sir." Speedily she withdrew from the room.

Chapter 25.

Seeing the gates of the cemetery in daylight chilled Liliana's soul. When she had been with Keith, it had been dusk, and she couldn't make out many of the fine details--or at least they hadn't attracted her attention.

The bars on the gates were closely fitted, and the top of each bar ended in a sharp point. No one would be able to gain entrance or leave the cemetery. Did spirits waft through the narrow s.p.a.ces between each bar? Certainly vampires couldn't. Unlike the stories fed to the ma.s.s market, vampires were not able to turn into a puff of smoke.

Liliana left her car on the triangular dusty s.p.a.ce to the right of the gates. Today she had dressed comfortably in sneakers and jeans. An old sweatshirt with the logo of an out-dated rock n' roll band topped the outfit.

When she touched the door of the gate, she thought she felt an electric shock and immediately pulled her hand away. But there was obviously no circuitry hooked up to the gate. Only her imagination, she thought. She picked up a medium-sized branch and used it to pull back the gate. The gate barely swung open, but it was enough to allow her to squeeze through.

The gravel road she traveled immediately forked into three different paths. Straight ahead she would find Emmeline. Before paying a visit to Keith's wife, Liliana took the path leading to the right. Evidently this led to the old part of the cemetery, for it was less maintained, with tombstones either leaning or fallen over. There did not appear to be any mausoleums, only a few crosses interspersed among the tombstones. Most of the writing on the stones was illegible. Once in a awhile she could make out an unfamiliar name. Most of the surnames were very English-sounding: Stafford, Vaughn. An occasional Irish or Scot name broke the monotony. The tombstone dates preceded the American Revolutionary war. Nettles stretched out onto the road, causing her to trip occasionally. She wondered whether any vampires lived here. She had heard of a mysteriously impaired line of vampires that spent nights looking for food and days hiding underground or in mausoleums. These vampires led a primitive existence. Although she herself had never encountered any of these, she believed the stories about them to be true. There was even talk that some of the impaired vampires had once been fully functional, but that something in their brains had broken down and that they had become something closer to ghouls than true vampires.

The trees here were old and tall. Only an occasional ray of sun poked through the thick branches, comfortable for Liliana and perfect for the impaired vampires. Yes, she decided, if any vampires existed in this cemetery, this would be their dwelling place.

She looked for dirt that had been recently moved or a path disrupting the weeds that grew among the tombstones. Nothing-- until she caught sight of a yellowed piece of lace resting next to a fallen cross. The material did not fly in the breeze; instead it seemed caught in a clump of earth. She walked to the lace and picked it up. She smelled the cloth. Blood, stale, perhaps a week old. She touched the material with her tongue and tasted human baby's blood. Not healthy blood. The child must have been quite ill. The faded blood appeared as pink slashes across the material. After feeling the cloth between her fingers, she could tell the cloth had not belonged to the baby. Instead the lace had been aged well over a century.

Again she searched for moved earth. Did these vampires really dig back into their coffins each daybreak? Or did they hide during the day behind bushes and in hollowed-out trees?

Many weeds but few bushes covered this part of the cemetery. Most of the trees were old and gnarled. A squat dead tree stood to her left. On closer examination Liliana noted some remaining greenery on its branches. She walked around the tree and saw a hollowed-out pit. The hole in the tree was big enough for a child or very small adult. She couldn't see inside. Blindly she slipped her hand into the opening. She could feel the uneven surface of a walnut, and she broke several webs. Certainly the pit hadn't been occupied in a long time. But then her hand caught onto something rubbery. When she pulled out the object she recognized that it was a baby's pacifier.

Now she noticed something she had missed earlier. There were no ants running up and down the bark of the tree. No insects at all. And birds seemed to avoid this area of the cemetery completely, although she couldn't remember whether she had seen any birds near Emmeline's tombstone.

She continued along the path until she reached the ivy-covered fence. No squirrels. No insects. No birds.

An old French hymn came into her mind and she began to hum. She couldn't remember the words, but the tune kept ringing inside her head. It had been a century since she had heard this music. Why would the hymn come to her now? She sensed that at least one ancient vampire slept nearby, one of the primitive ones that survived by the sufferance of a disbelieving public. Could this thing that she tracked be considered human anymore?

She retraced her steps, humming and attempting to memorize as many family names as she could. When she had returned to the fork, she took the center path. The path that led to Emmeline.

Here a mixture of tombstones and mausoleums shared the earth. Flowers had been left at most of the plots, and some plots even had small gardens, carefully planned and colorful as if to deny the emptiness of the cemetery. The doors on the mausoleums were closed. None stood ajar.

She saw Emmeline's tombstone before her. The charcoal-gray granite shined in the sunlight. The simple and legible legend on the stone stated her birth and death dates and that she had been the wife of Keith Bridgewater and the mother of Wilbur.

Liliana investigated Emmeline's neighbors and found that Emmeline was the youngest female buried in this part of the cemetery. One male child slept to her right. The rest had died in their seventies or eighties and one had barely reached one hundred. Wives and husbands buried together for the eternal rest.

"What are you doing here?"

Liliana turned quickly. How had anyone sneaked up on her? Her hearing was acute, and her sense of smell was definitely sharp. Obviously she had allowed herself to be drawn into a deep reverie on death.

"I'm sorry, Wil. I didn't know family would visit today."

"Hadn't planned on it, but the old man's been giving me a hard time all morning. Thought I'd come here and draw on some of my mother's famous patience."

"Famous?"

"Whenever I was bad, my father would wish that mom were around to deal with me. She had the patience, he said."

"Were you that wayward as a child?"

"Willful, as he called it."

Wil walked past Liliana and stood at his mother's tombstone in silence. Liliana was ready to move away when he spoke to her.