Hide Me Among the Graves by Tim Powers Page B

one to Christina and asked in a defeated tone, “Very well, who did she imagine I was shooting at?”
    Christina gulped the brandy to avoid replying and Maria just stared out the window, but Gabriel knew what the answer was: their uncle. Or conceivably the Gogmagog thing. Lizzie might have mistaken the apparition for her husband the first time—or two—but had apparently not been fooled forever.
    Jealous husband, he thought bitterly, shoots at immortal vampire rival.
    And then he drained his glass in several eye-watering swallows and went back to refill it, for the thought had occurred to him that the apparition might have taken the form of Walter Deverell.
    Christina finished her own glass and, staring out the window, seemed to brace herself. “Soon,” she said levelly, “there may be two phantom infants in that crib.”
    For a moment Gabriel wasn’t able to take a deep breath, and then he was panting. “Yes, probably!” he burst out. “But I will shoot him, if I get the chance. I’ve got silver bullets.”
    â€œI wish you didn’t carry that firearm about,” said Maria.
    He drew his hand back as if to throw his refilled glass, then just set it down carefully beside the bottle. “William will marry eventually,” he said in a quieter tone. “He’ll try to have children—he doesn’t believe any of this.”
    â€œNot even in God,” said Maria sadly, shaking her head, “who is our only hope.”
    â€œAnd an unhelpfully remote and theoretical hope, at that,” Gabriel snapped. “He was shot once, though, wasn’t he? Our monstrous uncle, not God. In your story, Christina, your ‘Folio Q.’”
    Christina rocked her head back and stared at the high plaster ceiling. “The story took place in Italy, and it concerned a man who didn’t dare look in a mirror. He was threatened by a rival in love, but he let down his guard, and his rival shot him, in the mouth, and yes, it was with a silver bullet; he never really recovered. He died not long afterward, in Venice.” She lowered her head and looked at her siblings. “Papa told me once that he got the little petrified statue in Venice, before he came to England—he said it showed him visions of Mama. And he implied … that the acquiring of it put his soul in peril.”
    Maria muttered something doleful in Italian.
    Christina went on, “I seem to be—our uncle seems to be—writing a sequel now, in which he’s alive again, in London.”
    â€œWe need to read this sequel,” said Gabriel. “I wish you hadn’t burned ‘Folio Q.’”
    Christina gave him a stricken look. “I’m sorry, I—I’ve destroyed the new page too! I didn’t think—”
    For several long seconds none of them spoke.
    At last Gabriel said, gently, “You remember it, though.”
    â€œYes—yes.”
    â€œAnd if you write more—if he does, that is—you can save it.” When Christina nodded, he fished Lizzie’s automatic-writing pencil disk out of his pocket and tossed it to her. She caught it deftly. “Use this,” he said, “if it will help. I don’t want it in the house.”
    Maria frowned, but Christina nodded and gingerly put the thing into the side pocket of her habit.
    â€œAnd,” Gabriel went on, though it actually made his forehead sweat to say it, “he claims that my wife is with child by … by a vampire wearing my appearance, is that right? Does he actually … mention Lizzie by name?”
    Christina sighed and nodded. “Lizzie Siddal.”
    â€œDamn him, her name is Rossetti now, Elizabeth Rossetti .” Gabriel jammed his fists in his coat pockets and paced to the far wall and back, staring around at all the portraits of his wife.
    â€œIf she is with child,” he asked finally, “as the ghosts and devils claim—who is