“Crawford the accoucheur? I’ve heard of you.”
“But that plan went to hell when Josephine recognized me. The sister-in-law. I suppose she’s been doing nurse work at several London hospitals in case I might try getting back into medicine. So I guess I’ll leave England. No court would judge me innocent if it came to a murder trial.”
Keats nodded. “Damn few neffers in the judiciary … that would admit to their knowledge, anyway. Here’s Kusiak’s.”
The inn they had arrived at was a broad, two-story place with a stable at the side and a dock out back so that patrons could arrive by boat; Keats led the way into the taproom, which, with its oak panelling and leather-upholstered chairs, was a reassuring contrast to Galatea’s. Crawford hoped he didn’t still smell of the place.
“You … said you thought you were to blame for your mother’s death,” he said when they had found a table by a window that overlooked the river. “How is that? And does that mean I’m responsible for Julia’s?”
“Jesus, man, I don’t know. If so, it was obviously unintentional on your part. I think there’s a number of ways these things can attach themselves to people, but only most of them involve the people’s actual consent. In my case I’m pretty sure it was because of the night on which I was born. I think the things can get at infants born on the night of the thirty-first of October—some normal protection is missing on that night, and if you’re born then you’re … honorary family to these things. You’re adopted. They can … focus their attention on such a newborn, and then, once they’ve focussed on anyone, they seem to keep track of him throughout his life. And keep track, keep disastrous track, of his family, too. A glass of claret, please,” he added to the aproned girl who had walked up to the table.
“And a pint of bitter,” added Crawford.
“Do you have a family?” Keats asked when the girl had walked away toward the bar. A river beer-seller’s bell could be heard ringing far out across the water.
Crawford thought of the foundered boat, the burning house, and the imploded corpse in the bed. “No.”
“Lucky man. Think hard before ever changing that status.” He shook his head. “I have two brothers and a sister. George and Tom and Fanny. We’re orphans, and we’ve always been very close to each other. Had to be, you know?” He held his hand up and stared at it. “The—thought—of anything like this happening to them, of their becoming a part of this … especially Fanny, she’s only thirteen and I’ve always been her favorite …”
Crawford had to keep reminding himself that Julia really had died inexplicably and that he really had seen that levitating serpent this morning; what Keats was telling him might not be the true explanation, but there would never be a natural explanation for it.
The drinks arrived, and Crawford remembered to pay for them. He took a sip of the beer, then opened his mouth to speak.
Keats spoke first. “You want me to fetch your things from the house and bring them to you somewhere and be careful not to be followed.”
Disconcerted, Crawford shut his mouth and then opened it again. “Uh, right, as a matter of fact. I’d be very damned grateful … and though I can’t reward you now, as soon as I get settled abroad, I’ll—”
“Forget it. I may need a favor myself someday from a reluctant neff-host.” He raised his eyebrows. “Switzerland?”
Crawford could feel his face getting red as he stared at the younger man, for he knew that he hadn’t told anyone about his travel plans, and he himself didn’t know why he had decided to go to the Swiss Alps—Keats seemed to know more about Crawford than Crawford himself did.
“Look,” he said levelly, “I’m willing to admit that I’ve stumbled into something … supernatural here, and you obviously know more about the whole sordid business than I do. But I’d appreciate it if you’d just tell me what you know about my situation straight away, and save your sense of dramatic timing for your goddamn poetry.”
Keats’s confident smile was gone, and he suddenly looked young and embarrassed. “… Stephens?” he said. “Told you?”
“He did indeed. And how can you go on about how contemptible all these people are, these neffers, when you’ve saved those disgusting bladder stones to help you write your stuff? Do they work like good luck pieces? I suppose someday you’ll have old Barker’s deformed jawbone on your mantle—and then Byron and Wordsworth and Ashbless had better just fold up their tents and go home, right?”
Keats grinned, but his complexion was looking spotty. “Not your fault,” he said tightly, almost to himself. “You don’t know enough about it all for me to take offense … much offense, anyway.” He sighed and ran his fingers through his reddish hair. “Listen to me. I am one of the people who’ve attracted the attention of a member of this other race; as I said, it happened on the night I was born. If I wanted to use that connection to help my writing—and I think I could, these things may very well be the creatures remembered in myth as the Muses—I could summon my … my what, my fairy godmother, call it. I certainly wouldn’t have to hang around the neffy wards looking to snatch a bladder stone or a cup of blood, in the hope of getting the kind of dim contact that only really shows up in the warping of certain dreams.”
Crawford started to speak, but Keats waved him to silence and went on.
“Did you know—but no, you wouldn’t—that it’s fashionable among neffers to carry a blood-spotted handkerchief, so as to seem consumptive? It implies that you really got the attention of one of the vampires, that one of them can spare the time to devour you. Quite an honor … but I’m a member of the goddamned family. So are you, clearly. They pay so much attention to us that they won’t let us die—though they’ve got no such scruples about members of our real, earthly families.” Keats shook his head. “But my poetry is my own, damn you. I—I can’t help a lot of my situation—the protection, the extended life—but I will not let them have anything to do with my writing.”
Crawford spread the fingers of his maimed hand. “Sorry. So why do you save those things?”
Keats was staring out the window at the river. “I don’t know, Mike. I suppose it’s for the same reason I didn’t quit when the hospital administrators decided I was ignorant and unobservant enough to be assigned to Lucas. The more I know about these creatures, these vampires, the more likely it is that I’ll be able to get free of the one that oversaw my birth … and killed my mother.”
Crawford nodded, but he thought that Keats was lying, and mostly to himself. “The hospital administrators know about this stuff?”
“Sure … though it’s hard to say to what extent. A lot of patients vary from the human norm, of course, especially once you get a look inside them, but there’s a consistency to the neffy variations. And they’re generally less dramatic, too—the kidney and bladder stones just look a little quartzy, or the skin turns hard and brittle when they stay out too long in the sun, or they see fine at night but are blinded by daylight. I guess the hospital has decided to try to ignore it—not turn patients away for no reason, which would cause talk, but give the neffy cases to the most inept staff members. I wonder if something like today’s adventure has ever happened before—the senior surgeon sure closed the book on it in a hurry.”
“So why am I going to Switzerland?”
Keats smiled—a little sadly. “The Alps are the biggest part of the neffer dream.” He stared out at the river as if for help in explaining. “There’s supposed to be a plant in South America that gives people hallucinations if they drink a tea brewed from its leaves—like opium, but in this case everybody sees the same vision. A vast stony city, I understand. Even if a person hasn’t been told what to expect, he’ll still see the city, same as every other person who’s taken the drug.”