minutes, and tried not to imagine Master James's kind face and solid form inert under a sheet. My father sat in a deep chair by the fire and gazed at her, at us. Barley had put his long legs up on an ottoman and was trying, I thought, not to stare at the cognac, until my father recollected himself and poured us each a glass. Barley's eyes were red with silent weeping, but he seemed to want to be left alone. When I looked at him, my own eyes filled with tears for a moment, uncontrollably.
My father looked across at Barley, and I thought for a moment that he was going to cry, too. "He was very brave," my father said quietly. "You know that his attack made it possible for Helen to shoot as she did. She would not have been able to shoot through the heart like that if the monster had not been distracted. I think James must have known in the last moments what a difference he had made. And he avenged the person he had loved best - and many others." Barley nodded, still unable to speak, and there was a little silence among us.
"I promised I would tell you everything when we could sit quietly," Helen said at last, setting down her glass.
"You're sure you wouldn't like me to leave you alone?" Barley spoke reluctantly.
Helen laughed, and I was surprised by the melody of her laugh, so different from her speaking voice. Even in that room half full of grief, her laugh did not seem out of place. "No, no, my dear," she said to Barley. "We can't do without you." I loved her accent, that harsh yet sweet English of hers that I thought I already knew from so long ago I couldn't remember the time. She was a tall, spare woman in a black dress, an outdated sort of dress, with a coil of graying hair around her head. Her face was striking - lined, worn, her eyes youthful. The sight of her shocked me every time I turned my head - not only because she was there, real, but because I had always imagined only the young Helen. I had never included in my imagination all her years away from us.
"Telling will take a long, long time," she said softly, "but I can say a few things now, at least. First, that I am sorry. I have caused you such pain, Paul, I know." She looked at my father across the firelight. Barley stirred, embarrassed, but she stopped him with a firm gesture. "I caused myself an even greater pain. Second, I should have told you this already, but now our daughter" - her smile was sweet and tears gleamed in her eyes - "our daughter and our friends can be my witnesses. I am alive, not undead. He never reached me a third time."
I wanted to look at my father, but I couldn't bring myself even to turn my head. It was his private moment. I heard, though, that he did not sob aloud. She stopped and seemed to draw a breath. "Paul, when we visited Saint-Matthieu and I learned about their traditions - the abbot who had risen from the dead and Brother Kiril, who guarded him - I was filled with despair, and also with a terrible curiosity. I felt that it could not be coincidence that I had wanted to see the place, had longed for it. Before we went to France, I had been doing more research in New York - without telling you, Paul - hoping to find Dracula's second hiding place and to avenge my father's death. But I had never seen anything about Saint-Matthieu. My longing to go there began only when I read about it in your guidebook. It was just a longing, with no scholarly basis." She looked around at us, her beautiful profile drooping. "I had taken up my research again in New York because I felt that I had been the cause of my father's death - through my desire to outshine him, to reveal his betrayal of my mother - and I could not bear the thought. Then I began to feel that it was my evil blood - Dracula's blood - that had caused me to do this, and I realized that I had passed this blood to my baby, even if I seemed to have healed from the touch of the undead myself."
She paused to stroke