The Taker by Alma Katsu

Author:Alma Katsu
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Paranormal, Romance, Fantasy, Adult, Historical
ISBN: 9781439197059
Publisher: Gallery
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-SIX

BOSTON, 1817

After hearing Adair’s story, I withdrew to my room in fright. I crawled onto the bed and tucked my knees under my chin. I was afraid to recall the things he’d told me and I tried to push them away.

Alejandro knocked, and when there was no answer, nudged the door back so he could slip in bearing a tray of tea and biscuits. He lit several candles—“You can’t sit in the dark, Lanore, it’s ghoulish”—and then placed a cup and saucer quietly at my elbow, but I wanted none of his hospitality. I pretended to look out the window, but in truth I could see nothing, still blinded by fury and despair.

“Oh my dear, don’t be so sad. I know it’s scary. I was scared when it happened to me.”

“But, Alej, what are we?” I asked, hugging the pillow to my chest.

“You are yourself, Lanore. You are not part of the magic world. You can’t pass through walls like a ghost or visit God in his heaven like an angel. We sleep and wake, eat and drink, go through our day like anyone else. The only difference is that another person might ponder, from time to time, which day will be his last. But you and I, our days will never end. We go on, bearing witness to everything around us.” He said all this dispassionately, as though the endless shuffle of days had washed all the excitement out of him. “When Adair explained what he’d done to me, I wanted to escape from him, even if it meant killing myself—the one thing I couldn’t do.

“But to lose your baby on top of it … well, it is too terrible to contemplate. Poor Lanore. Your sadness will pass, you know,” he continued in his singsong English, accented with Spanish. He took a sip of tea and then looked at me through steam rising from the cup. “Every day your past drifts farther and farther away and life with Adair grows more and more familiar. You become part of this family. Then, one day, you will remember something from your other life—a brother or a sister, a holiday, the house where you used to live, a toy you used to cherish—and you realize you no longer mourn its loss. It will seem like something from long ago. That’s when you know the change is complete.”

I glanced over my shoulder at him. “How long does it take for the pain to go away?”

Alejandro lifted a lump of sugar from the bowl with a tiny pair of tongs and dropped it into his tea. “It depends on how sentimental you are. Me, I am very tenderhearted. I loved my family and missed them for ages after the change. But Dona, for instance, he probably never looked back. His family had abandoned him when he was a little boy, for being a catamite,” Alejandro said, dropping his voice to a whisper on the last few words, even though we were all sodomites in this house.

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