Chapter 9: The Ledger

"Ruth Albrecht," he said, to my bedroom ceiling. "She was twenty-four, and she worked the reference desk at the public library."

I lay very still against his side.

"I went in every night for a month to read the harbor logs, so she'd have to bring them to me."

"That's a long con."

"It was the happiest month of my life." His voice caught, and he laughed at himself.

"She had a gap in her front teeth and a lovely laugh, and she wasn't afraid of me at all."

"What happened?"

"She asked me to bite her."

I closed my eyes.

"In October, then November, then the week before Christmas. The third bite and then, by law, the parting."

His chest rose and fell beneath my hand. "I went to the Chair."

"I knelt in that Hall and I begged her to let me keep Ruth past three."

"What did she say?"

"That a fourth would kill her. That I would have to watch it happen, and that I'd have done it with my own mouth."

He took a long breath. "I released Ruth on the twenty-first of December, 1962, in front of the whole Compact. She didn't understand. She cried."

"Oh, Emlyn."

"I never looked for her again. I never learned what became of her. I could not."

I held him for a long time.

On Saturday night, at his house, he opened the green ledger.

It lay on the study desk in a pool of lamplight, under the maps.

"I want you to see it," he said. "I haven't shown anyone."

I sat in his chair and turned the pages.

They were ruled in his small neat hand, in columns.

There were nineteen names, one to a page, going back to 1850.

Beside each one, three dates.

The first was a seamstress in 1881, then a barge captain's widow, then a young teacher.

The last name on the last page was a Finnish dockworker, with dates in 2004.

"What's this column?" I asked.

The fourth column was headed with one word, After.

"I look them up," he said. "Every year. Obituaries, church bulletins, a Christmas card address, whatever there is."

I read down the page.

Alive in 1955. Alive in 1960. Died, aged ninety-one, a Tuesday in March.

Down the whole ledger, page after page, in his handwriting.

They had all lived.

They'd had children and gardens and bad knees, and they had died at the end of long lives of ordinary things.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Vampire Won't Bite Without My Yes, and I Keep Giving It from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.