Part 5 (1/2)

”It's better, no?” he asked Charles, and Charles made a noncommittal gesture.

”It's better, but you can't really do much, with that sweats.h.i.+rt,” he said, not meanly, and Lorenz sighed and nodded.

”True. Nastasya, you have an adorable figure. The sweats.h.i.+rt does nothing for you,” he said definitively. ”Jewel tones, yes? More fitted. A little cashmere cardigan.”

”I am polis.h.i.+ng tack in a barn,” I felt compelled to point out.

”Ah,” said Lorenz, and nodded. ”Yes, true. But you dress like that all the time. Like a man.”

My eyes widened. ”I don't dress like a man,” I said. ”I dress practically. Because I live on a farm. And do icky, farmy things all the time.”

Lorenz grinned, which was breathtaking. ”A cute little man.”

I took a deep breath, then headed to the tack room. The two of them chuckled out in the aisle as they resumed sweeping.

”I miss carriages,” I heard Charles say.

”They were so elegant,” Lorenz agreed.

I took all the metal stuff off of a harness and began to whack at the dirt with a brush. Someone had been riding out in mud, and it was caked on. I knew Reyn sometimes rode-of River's six horses, three of them were for riding-and so did Lorenz and Anne. Probably others. I never did, though she had offered them to me.

Lorenz began humming, then softly singing a pa.s.sage from Aida. I tried not to listen to the romantic words as I began to soap up a bridle with the aptly named saddle soap. He and Charles actually missed horse-drawn carriages. Here was another reminder of how different we all were, we immortals.

Me + horses = painful memories. I wiped off the saddle soap and started rubbing in tack oil, trying hard not to think about any other time in my life when I had done this. Think about something else. My brain was suddenly awash in memories of the previous night, kissing Reyn in the dark, cold woods. My cheeks flushed with heat and I bent over my task.

Reyn. What was he doing pursuing me? He didn't seem happy about it, like, ZOMG, I met my soul mate and now my life can begin! It was more like he was being compelled against his will. And not that that wasn't fun for me, but still. And I continued to totally resent the fact that I was so drawn to him, found him so overwhelmingly hot.

I'm really good at not thinking about difficult stuff, and I put that skill to use right then. I wondered what was for dinner, how Meriwether's New Year's had gone, what Dray was up to, since I hadn't seen her lately. I wondered why Charles was here, why Lorenz was here....

Why, perhaps I should ask!

”Lorenz!”

A few moments later his handsome head peered around the doorway, gull-wing eyebrows arched perfectly over deep blue eyes. ”Yes?”

”Why are you here?” I gestured largely, denoting ”at River's Edge” rather than ”in the barn.” He blinked in surprise, and I could almost see him weighing the decision to tell me, what he should say, if anything.

He stepped into the stall and stood by the door. I was struck by the change in his demeanor-he was usually brash, c.o.c.ky, charming; self-confident in the way that an incredibly handsome man can be. He opened his mouth to say something-raised his hand, then let it fall.

I polished a saddle very quietly, my eyes locked on him. This ought to be good.

His fingers plucked the fabric of the Italian wool trousers he had chosen to muck out the barn in. ”I...” he said, looking at the ceiling, the floor. ”I have...”

I held my breath. Cheerful, lovely Brynne had tried to set someone on fire, so I couldn't imagine what had brought Lorenz here.

”I have two hundred and thirty-five children,” he said, and I almost fell over. ”Or so.” He didn't look at me, was trying to seem nonchalant, but I'm the queen of nonchalant and I saw right through it.

I realized I was gaping at him slack-jawed, so I closed my mouth, nodded, and worked on the saddle some more, my mind screaming questions.

”Wow,” I said calmly, as if, oh yes, gosh, I run up against stuff like this all the time! Only 235, you say? Why, I knew a man who...

”That's a lot,” I acknowledged. ”All immortals?” Holy moly, our numbers were really increasing.

”No.” He brushed thick black hair off his brow. ”About sixty immortals. I think.”

Instantly I saw it: He was facing the death of about 170 of his own children, one after another. Why would he do that to himself?

”I have tried....” He gave the wall an ironic smile. ”Vasectomies heal.”

Of course. That's what we do. And he was apparently too self-destructive for the obvious condoms or other kinds of birth control. Lordy day.

”And yet you keep going up to bat?” Clearly.

”I'm trying to understand,” he said. That's why he was here. To find out why he would perpetrate such pain on himself, on his children, whom he surely wasn't being a father to, not all of them-and the women he abandoned.

”Holy c.r.a.p-you're only about a hundred!” The thought escaped my mouth before I could stop it.

He nodded solemnly. ”A hundred and seven.”

Oh my G.o.d-say he got started when he was twenty. In eighty years he had fathered 235 kids, that he knew of. Surely some of them were already dead-disease, accidents. But he was facing another ninety years of watching his offspring die. And then there were all the immortal kids, demanding their allowance, forever.

”I am trying to understand,” he said again, and gave me a polite, distant smile. Then he turned and headed out, and a few moments later I heard the swish of his broom again.

Well. I picked up the leather oil and tilted a small bit onto a rag. That had been... rea.s.suring. I mean, not to be all sucks-to-be-you on Lorenz, but the notion that I'm not the worst person in the world was something I clung to like a chunk of the t.i.tanic. And I was blowing my whistle in the dark.

Okay, I don't know where I was going with that-have to stop flinging metaphors around-but you get the picture.

Jeez. All those kids. The half-immortal ones would mostly live very long lives-you tend to read about them in the papers because they're more than a hundred or whatever. And either Lorenz would have to pretend to age in front of them so he would seem normal, or he would simply have to split and never see them again. Either way would suck. But the immortal ones... they were his children, but he'd probably never have a real relations.h.i.+p with more than a handful of them. Or maybe he could. Who knows? Maybe living forever meant he'd have tons of time to get to know each one. But any way you sliced it, it was weird and destructive.

”Oh, nice-looking aisle, guys,” I heard River say. Her booted footsteps thunked on the brick floor of the barn. I began to polish industriously. Tack has to look nice but not too s.h.i.+ny, because s.h.i.+ny means possible slipperiness, which is the last thing you want to be dealing with as you're trying to get a twelve-hundred-pound animal to do your bidding. It's hard enough tacking them up when they're not slippery. And sometimes you can't take the time to tack them up at all....

In the 1860s, I was in England, in some d.i.n.ky little town up north. I was there, like, waiting to catch a train to London or something. I think I had to wait another two days. What had been my name? It wasn't that long ago... what was it? England, England, after the gold rush in America... Rosemund? Rosemary. Rosemary Munson. Yeah, Rosemary. Oh my G.o.d-I remember the name of the inn where I was staying. The Old Blue Ball Inn (I am not making that up).

Anyway, in the middle of the freaking night (this stuff always happens in the middle of the night), I woke up because people were yelling and screaming. So I jumped up and threw open my window, looking out into the darkness for the fire or the invading army or the escaped circus tiger. And saw nothing.

But, you know, when people all around you are running and yelling, it makes a person sit up and take notice. I mean, you can keep your head while others lose theirs, but for G.o.d's sake figure out what's causing the shrill screams of panic. My two cents.

Then I saw it. It took a while to figure out what the h.e.l.l I was looking at, but I put all my context clues together and cottoned on to the fact that people screaming ”The dam broke! The dam broke! It's coming this way!”-plus an enormous gray slug rus.h.i.+ng down the valley, weirdly fast-meant we were all about to die.

I grabbed my jacket and threw it on over my nightdress. (We're talking a Victorian-era nightdress-lace, yards of fabric, long, the works.) I raced downstairs and found the innkeeper and his wife throwing everything they could into the back of their old box wagon. The horses were neighing and rearing and kept almost toppling the wagon.

Much pandemonium. I remember it was cold, and my feet were bare. I ran out to the stables and found about eight horses freaking out and trying to kick down their stalls. In a split second I tried to figure out which one was the least likely to kill me, and then I undid its stable door bolt. It was a mare, a dappled gray with beautiful lines. I had no idea whom she belonged to. She reared and kicked and I whipped around her slicing hooves and looked for some kind of saddle. But most people took their saddles into the inn with them, because of thieves.

The screaming was louder, and then I heard a series of explosions that rocked the ground like thunder, almost shaking me off my feet. I read later that the rus.h.i.+ng flood broke a gas main that had then been ignited by a spark-the showering flames had set most of the buildings on fire. I grabbed the horse's nose halter and clambered onto her back while she tried to throw me off. But I had been riding horses since I was three years old, so I grabbed her mane with both hands, clamped my knees to her sides, dug my bare feet in, and shouted, ”Go!”

And she leaped right out of the barn into the fire. I had no reins, no way to steer this horse. I yanked her head sideways, my fist in her mane, and she turned like a ballerina, swinging left on her two hind feet.