Exsanguination and Other Love Stories

V. The Genuine Article

I stared at Florian blankly.

"Where I come in?", I repeated. "Um. Right. You're going to need to elaborate there. Because if you're saying what I think you're saying -"

"Oh, do tell, Bill. What do you think I'm saying?"

He flipped open the locket, and held it out to me, both faces open. One side held a wrinkled old photograph, behind cracked glass, and in the other was tied a curling lock of red hair. The woman's features were blurry and indistinct with age, and the paper was arched and mottled, as though water had been spilled on it repeatedly.

"You can't expect me to take that as proof," I said. "I don't look like that. No one looks like that. She's practically melting!"

"I've been known to shed a tear over her upon occasion, in solitude. It's been so long, you see, since I met someone who really had the likeness of her, not just the blood."

"There's no such thing as reincarnation, you know," I said, "And my great aunt was not a natural redhead."

"What?!" Florian exclaimed, with real surprise, to the latter.

"There's a safe in the attic filled with L'Oreal. Go look yourself if you don't believe me."

"I don't believe it!" He flipped the locket shut, and pocketed it. "So that's why she hexed the upper house against me... "

There was a long silence, while he brooded darkly. Then -

"But you - you are the genuine article, aren't you?" And saying this, he reached out a hand, in that easy, natural way he had, and caught a loose tendril of my hair.

"Th - that's none of your business!" I stammered, batting his hand down and turning away.

Suddenly, there came a burst of muffled sound from outside in the garden. I flinched, and turned sharply to gaze outside. The ringtone was unmistakable.

"Is that - " Florian began, glancing past me with a note of triumph in his voice. "Christina Perri's Thousand Years?"

"Absolutely not!" I cried, springing to my feet. And that was true! It was a remix of Christina Perri's Thousand Years. Technically that didn't count. Besides, I had bought my smartphone second-hand from a kid at school, and she'd programmed it like that. Me, I just hadn't bothered to change the tone settings... for the last six months...

"I knew you had it in you somewhere, Bill." said my guest, grinning like a Cheshire Cat. "One step cloooooser...."

I noticed suddenly that his canines were very pronounced, and took several steps back towards the door.

"It's not my ringtone," I mumbled weakly, as I wrenched open the outside door, and fled into the dark garden. When I glanced back over my shoulder, it was to see him pulling open one set of heavy curtains, so he could peer out after me.

Heart pounding, I followed the last strains of the song to a tangled patch of pachysandra. My fingers found my phone just as the music rose to a mortifying crescendo. I hastily slid my thumb across the touch-screen and took the call.

"Hello," I said, breathlessly. "This is Sabilla."

Florian turned away from the window, still smiling ear to ear, and began to occupy himself collecting the various lotions and potions he'd dug out earlier, piling them all back into his handbag.

"Oh, good," said a familiar voice on the other end of the line. "I was worried I might have to leave a message again. This is Florence, from Meyers & Steele. Is now a bad time?"