it away. I couldn’t revive him; I tried for ten minutes. Two men on their way to the harbor were kind enough to help me get him to our room; I told them he spent too much of the night in the pub. While he slept, I arranged for another driver with the aid of the innkeeper, and we left at first light. By that point, Bram had awoken but was groggy. It took some time to coax him to the coach. Once in the light and fresh air, he began to get his wits back about him.”
I turned to Bram and held out my hand. “Let me see your wrist.”
Bram hesitated for a moment, then held out his arm, turning it over.
The two small puncture wounds at the wrist were clearly visible at the vein, but neither appeared fresh. Had I seen them without the benefit of Matilda’s recap, I would have thought them to be an old injury, far on their way to healing. I touched one tentatively. “Does it hurt?”
“No,” Bram replied. “They itch. They have always itched.”
His response gave me pause. “This has happened before?”
My sister and Bram both glanced at each other. My brother nodded. “They first appeared the night I was healed as a child. They have been with me ever since.”
“Why have you not spoken of this?”
“I knew . . .” Matilda said hesitantly. “Ever since we were children.”
This was of no surprise to me. Bram and I were not close as children, nor was I close to Matilda.
“There’s more.” Matilda plucked a letter opener from my desk and handed it to our brother. “Show him, Bram.”
Bram took the instrument and without hesitation cut a three-inch gash in his arm.
“What are you doing?” I cried, pulling my handkerchief from my breast pocket and wrapping it around the wound.
Bram calmly placed the letter opener down on the side table. “There is no need for that.” He peeled away the handkerchief, now damp with his blood, and used it to wipe away at the cut.
I stared in awe. The gash was gone! There was no sign of the injury aside from a thin pink line. And, within a moment, that, too, had vanished.
“How can this be?”
Bram perched on the edge of the sofa. “It has always been this way, at least since Ellen cured me as a child.”
“He hasn’t been sick, not a single day,” Matilda pointed out. “Not since that night.”
I frowned. “And last night was, what, some kind of treatment? An exchange of blood?”
Nobody answered this query; there was no need to. We all understood it was true. I took a deep breath, then resigned myself to reveal a secret of my own. “There is something I must show you both.”
I led them through the house and up the grand staircase to the master bedroom, where Emily slept soundlessly atop the covers. Matilda and Bram both hesitated at the door, and I motioned for them to enter and gather around the bed. We kept an oil lamp on the night table; I lit the wick and held the flame close to my wife’s neck. The two tiny pinpricks were scabbed with dry blood. “I first saw these Tuesday night. They appeared to be healing, but last night something reopened the wound and left fresh marks. I heard her scream when I was coming home and found her in a swoon next to the bed, bleeding.”
Bram leaned in closer. “They’re like mine, only more ragged, as if healing slower. Has she demonstrated anything like I showed you downstairs?”
I shook my head. “Not at all. The opposite, in fact. See this little cut on her cheek? She did that yesterday when she fell; I think she hit the bedpost. It has barely healed at all; I had the hardest time getting the bleeding to stop—nothing like what you showed me. Today she hasn’t moved from this bed. She seems to be lost in a deep sleep. I tried to wake her earlier to no avail. She has no fever or other outward sign of illness, but her breathing at