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“No,” the boy said quickly “I know better than to ask you anyin your own time” And his h he were ready for hiain

There was a sound then from far off It ca around them, the first such sound they’d heard The boy looked up towards the hallway door It was as if he’d forgotten the building existed Someone walked heavily on the old boards But the vaain disengaging himself from the present

“That village I can’t tell you the naone I remember it wasalone by carriage And such a carriage! It was Claudia’s doing, that carriage, and I should have expected it; but then, things are always taking me unawares From the first es in her which hter as well as my own From me she had learned the value of money, but fro it; and she wasn’t to leave without the e, outfitted with leather seats that ht have accommodated a band of travelers, let alone a nificent compartment only for the transportation of an ornately carved oak chest To the back were strapped two trunks of the finest clothes the shops there could provide; and ent speeding along, those light enorhtening ease over the mountain roads There was a thrill to that when there was nothing else in this strange country, those horses at a gallop and the gentle listing of that carriage

“And it was strange country Lonely, dark, as rural country is always dark, its castles and ruins often obscured when the moon passed behind the clouds, so that I felt an anxiety during those hours I’d never quite experienced in New Orleans And the people themselves were no relief We were naked and lost in their tiny harave danger

“Never in New Orleans had the kill to be disguised The ravages of fever, plague, cris competed with us always there, and outdid us But here we had to go to great lengths to make the kill unnoticed Because these siht have found the crowded streets of New Orleans terrifying, believed completely that the dead did walk and did drink the blood of the living They knew our names: vahtest rumor, wanted under no circumstances to create rumor ourselves

“We traveled alone and fast and lavishly a to be safe within our ostentation, finding talk of vahter sleeping peacefully against uests who spoke enough German or, at tiends

“But finally we ca point in our travels I savor nothing about that journey, not the freshness of the air, the coolness of the nights I don’t talk of it without a vague tremor even now

“We had been at a farht before, and so no news prepared us — only the desolate appearance of the place: because it wasn’t late e reached it, not late enough for all the shutters of the little street to be bolted or for a darkened lantern to be swinging from the broad archway of the inn

“Refuse was collected in the doorways And there were other signs that so A small box of withered flowers beneath a shuttered shopA barrel rolling back and forth in the center of the inn yard The place had the aspect of a town under siege by the plague

“But even as I w

as setting Claudia down on the packed earth beside the carriage, I saw the crack of light beneath the inn door ‘Put the hood of your cape up,’ she said quickly ‘They’re co back the latch

“At first all I saas the light behind the figure in the very narrow e lanterns glinted in her eye

“ ‘A rooht!’ I said in Ger, badly!’

“ ‘The night’s no ti…’ she said to me in a peculiar, flat voice ‘And with a child’ As she said this, I noticed others in the roos and see the flickering of a fire Froathered around it, except for one man as dressed much like myself in a tailored coat, with an overcoat over his shoulders; but his clothes were neglected and shabby His red hair gleaner, like ourselves, and he was the only one not looking at us His head wagged slightly as if he were drunk

“ ‘My daughter’s tired,’ I said to the woman ‘we’ve no place to stay but here’ And now I took Claudia into my arms She turned her face towards arlic, the crucifix above the door’