Cerulean Sins   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

The wig looked too heavy for that slender white throat, but she walked as ifthe jewels and feathers and powdered hair weighed nothing. She had absolutely perfect posture, but I knew that was from the corset that was under the dress. Those dresses don't fit right without the proper undergarments.

There had been no need for powder to make her skin white, rouge and red lipstick had been enough. Oh, and a black beauty mark in the shape of a tiny heart near that rosebud mouth. She should have looked ridiculous, but she didn't. She was like a sinister doll. When she flipped open her gold and lace fan with a sharp snap, I jumped.

She laughed, and only the laughter was childlike, a hint of how she might have sounded long ago.

"She has stood on the brink of the abyss and stared into it, and the abyss has looked back, has it not?"

I had to swallow hard to be able to answer, because my pulse was pounding, and I was suddenly shivering. "You talk like you know."

"I do." She walked towards us, gliding and graceful. She wore the body of a child, but she didn't move like one. I guess centuries of practice can teach anyone to glide.

She stopped farther back than an adult-sized person would, so she didn't have to strain to look up at me. I'd noticed she did that while everyone was mingling. "Once I was truly the child this body pretends to be. I wandered away from everyone, exploring as children do." She looked up at me with enormous brown eyes. "I found a door that was not locked. A room with many windows…"

"And none of them looked outside," I finished for her.

She blinked up at me. " Exactement. What did the windows look out upon?"

"A room," I said, "a huge room." I looked up at the cavernous roof. "Like this one, but bigger, and the windowed room sits above it all."

"You have not been in our inner sanctum, of that I am sure, but you speak as if you stood where I stood."

"Not physically, but I have stood there," I said.

We looked at each other, and it was a look of shared knowledge, shared terror, shared fear.

"How close did you get to the bed?" she asked.

"Closer than I wanted to," I whispered.

"I touched the black sheets, because I thought she was only sleeping."

"She is sleeping," I said.

Valentina shook her head, solemnly. " Non, to say she sleeps is to say any vampire sleeps. It is not sleep."

"She's not dead, not dead the way the rest of you are when you sleep."

"True, but she is not asleep either."

I shrugged. "Whatever you call it, she's not awake.