They ended up not leaving Saint-Tourre that night. Heavy rain had set in during the early evening and while Estella knew she could keep the fat droplets off them, she couldn’t do so in public. Not willing to risk the books she was borrowing (“Stealing,” Oliver teased) for eighty-odd years, she prompted turned around and located a two-bedroom suite for them to use.

  Estella claimed exhaustion and went to bed. She wasn’t really tired, but the new pain in her chest wouldn’t quiet down and she thought that separation from its object might ease it.

  Tucking in, she brought one of the library books with her. In the next room, she could hear Oliver doing the same on the wingback chair she’d left him in.

  She couldn’t concentrate on the difficult translation. The transcription hadn’t been expanded from the original scribe’s abbreviations and the facing French translation didn’t feel right to her. Too much like wading through mud.

  Tired and dissatisfied, her mind wandered back to where Oliver sat in the adjoining common room. He wouldn’t poke his head in here, not unless she invited him. What would he do if she was brave or careless enough to ask him?

  Best to avoid that road, she thought, and rolled over, committing herself to sleep.

  It came unwillingly and wouldn’t let lie peacefully. She was restless all night, suffering fits of uncertain dreams.

  Several times she saw her family, but it was all nonsense, unclear reckonings. Once she dreamed of Oliver. He was very far away, in some distant room of a vast house. He was lost, or she was lost, and they were trying to find each other, calling their names frantically. But each door she opened led to only more antechambers.

  The clearest dream was of her grandparents, Marguerite and Timoteo. She was small again, seated between them on their faded couch. They were making eyes at each other over her head. No matter what she did, they wouldn’t acknowledge her, even though she sat between them. She didn’t matter. Only they did.

  Estella woke up in a cold sweat to the dawn.

  She didn’t wait around in before to linger on uncomfortable recollections. It didn’t stop her from dropping into the Library to look at the family portraits again, at the unchanging faces of her family members who could still be walking the earth right now if their lives hadn’t been maliciously cut short.

  There were so many questions she had for Estelle and Marguerite, so many answers she will never have.

  Walking away from the paintings, she approached the worktable she frequented in front of the windows. Beside it was a sparsely used piano Jacques would tinker on if he ran out reading material. Or if he wanted to annoy her.

  More often, she used the instrument as a makeshift bookcase, lining her schoolbooks down the keyboard cover. She always had to move them for Jacques and then he’d sit down and grumble about how it was always out of tune, but he’d never been bothered enough to fix it.

  Despite what she told Oliver yesterday, practically Estella did know how to play the piano. She had just never been interested in using the skill much.

  She tapped the keys she thought that inspired her brother’s grimaces. Surprised, they were all in tune. Intently, she went down the row of keys, hitting all the minors, majors, flats, and sharps. All perfectly tuned.

  Biting the inside of her cheek, Estella pulled from the general supplies on top of the low reference table a piece of paper and pencil.

  Oliver watched her in silence, as he had done the entire time, and signed his name when prompted.

  She tucked the note under F major.

  Before they left, she also took out the register book and retroactively signed their names. It wasn’t much, but she hoped if her family caught these things they’d be comforted. They mattered. A large hand grazed the back of her’s. She snatched it in her own. He mattered too.

  ____

  France wouldn’t full fall until the fourteenth of June, the day Paris fell. Between today, May tenth, and then Northern Europe will systematically fall one-by-one to the Axis powers.

  While battles weren’t in their front yards yet, the pressure of the war increased on the civilian population with the start of the Battle for France.

  It wasn’t gunfire Estella had to worry about, it was travel. By the time she and Oliver made their way back to the village in the morning, Germany had attacked Belgium and the Netherlands, and the French command had reportedly responded.

  They learned all of this in the village square where the inhabitants had gathered to share and fret over the news that was being reported over a radio the parish priest had pulled from the church.

  “You lot, who are you?” one man asked them on their approach. They didn’t have time to respond before their story was made up for them. A woman piped up, calling them travelers while another declared they were refugees, then a different man suggested they were an early set of intelligent folks getting out the way before the Germans came.

  “A few of you have come through already. Making your way to Paris are you?”

  “We’re trying to get to America.”

  “America? Ha!” The first old man laughed.

  The woman appeared remorseful. “You’ll have to go to England first. All French ships have been commandeered for the war effort. None left to take you all the way to America.”

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  “No,” a younger man explained,” the best you can do is find a fisherman with a boat who can take you across the channel.” Estella wondered if she would know him if he was drooping and severely wrinkled.

  “It’s true, heard on the radio this morning.”

  This news made Oliver nervous and if Estella was honest, it made her worried too. Getting here hadn’t been too difficult, but they weren’t vying with war refugees either.

  They left quickly after that for the train station, the villagers’ bickering behind them.

  The station in Paris was bustling with pinched, anxious faces. She wondered out loud if, maybe, they should go to Jacques. He secured passage for her grandparents, perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get some help.

  Paris had always been a busy city, but Estella had never seen it like this, so full of fear and anxiety. The streets almost vibrated with it. Hazarding a guess, she led Oliver in a different direction that the one they took a few days ago --- deeper into the human hum, towards Jacques’ second office. The closer they got, the more crowded the streets became with people clearly not Parisian. Their clothing and manners were too different, Estella spotted them before she heard them speak. Belgians asking for help, for directions, for any inkling on what to do when you can’t go home.

  Soldiers stood every street, directing, herding people to temporary housing.

  To anyone she spoke to, Estella begged them to get out, to find a lawyer, a priest, a business owner, a housewife, anyone who could help them leave Paris, the continent. “Don’t stay in Paris,” she pleaded.

  Jacques’ second office was much smaller than the one her kept at the Quarter and more inconspicuous. It was shoved down a narrow alley with not even a sign to draw attention to it. In her time, he kept only a secretary here and came in to either pick up mail or for appointments --- everything else he did in the Quarter.

  Seeing him through the window this time was different. She had rarely accompanied him here, preferring to stay within the protective borders of the Quarter. But she had seen the address enough on paperwork to know it by heart and to follow her vague memories from there.

  He wasn’t alone. Across form him was a woman with two small children who sat silently while the adults spoke. From her speech she was Polish. Jacques handed her an envelope and then the trio left. She and Oliver took their places.

  Estella should speak first. Oliver was expecting it, and Jacques had that tired appearance like when he’d been in court all day, listening and rehashing the pain of his clients. He was waiting for her to ask, to beg, to explain what they needed. She watched him take a deep breath, inhaling their scents, then dismissing them. He didn’t look up from the stack of paperwork on his desk.

  But all she could do was take him in, the angle of his jaw, the lines around his mouth, the hair falling out of the tie at the nape of his neck and his ink-stained fingertips. So much of the Jacques she knew. So much of who she didn’t.

  His face, at first patient and worn like a wrinkled sheet, curled up sharply at the corners, revealing teeth.

  “Well? What do you want? If you haven’t noticed, there’s a war outside with humans needing help. I don’t want to waste time with people who can manage themselves.”

  Estella was taken aback at his harsh tone. Beside her, a low growl emanated from Oliver. Jacques tensed, his hands bracing against the chair arm rests.

  Unable still to speak, to explain but anxious for them both to understand --- one their presence, the other his reaction --- Estella swiped the letter opener from the desk and stabbed her palm, forcing a fresh bloom of blood to sprout then trickle down her wrist like a vine.

  Vampires don’t really bleed, you see. While you can draw blood from one, it coagulates too quickly to truly be considered bleeding.

  “Jesus, Estella, here.” Oliver completely forgot about Jacques’ rudeness, his boy completely softening as he tended to her incredibly temporary wound.

  As for Jacques, he had deflated back into his chair. She was right, he hadn’t realized what she was.

  “I cannot simply swim to America, Monsieur.” The formality dripped like poison from her tongue.

  His stunned eyes slid from the blood wrapping around her wrist to the letter opener to her face.

  For moment, she was a little girl again showing him her bite scar for the first time. He had attempted to control himself then. She remembered a collected Jacques, one who understood and acted accordingly. The one before her certainly comprehended, but he was not calm. His face, with its wide eyes, raised eyebrows, and slightly open mouth betrayed him. If this had been his reaction when she was a child, she surely would have cried. She wanted to cry now.

  Her false bravado from earlier collapsed. Tears spilled over her cheeks. In a strained voice she pleaded, “I cannot stay. You know I cannot stay.” Humans aren’t the only ones who eat their own. She’s heard the stories --- Jacques is the one who told her the stories.

  Sitting up, Jacques began to ruffle through the messy stacks of documents --- a horrendous system she and Marianne worked hard to make sense of and organized, much to his grumbling.

  “You want to go to America?”

  “Please.”

  He nodded. “Done. Sit down. We will go over everything.”

  She managed the arrangements. Oliver, like before, followed her lead and didn’t speak much. Once Jacques learned that they had forged US documentation the process went smoother. They only needed his connections, not his paperwork.

  The whole exchange felt a bit like an out of body experience. It was as if she were watching herself from the ceiling, calming discussing their travel plans and when and where she will need to give the notes of introduction. Her disembodied self was not as collected. No, she was crying and begging for anything denoting familiarity to pass over Jacques’ brow.

  Finally, they were done. Fifteen minutes was all she had to bask in a lover one’s presence. It would not do.

  “How is your family?” The question out of her in a single, rapid burst of air.

  He was startled, his hands that had been messing with an inkwell stilled.

  “How are they?” She repeated. “Matth --- Monsiuer and Madame de Saint-Tourre?” She would seem polite, or perhaps even insolent with her insistence but it wasn’t likely she would cross paths with her grandparents, and she found she couldn’t go without some sort of news.

  A hand joined the ball she made with her own on her lap. Oliver, but his eyes were not recriminating but patience and compassionate.

  “Yes, Monsieur, how are they?” He asked in his atrocious French.

  Wetness threatened to take over her cheeks again. He was supporting her. He always did.

  That was when she knew that she had to tell she loved him. There was simply no other way forward.

  Jacques spoke stutteringly. “They are well, given the circumstances.” Estella smiled broadly, predominately from relief but also amusement. He responded to them in English, Oliver’s accent must have offended him. “Do you know them?”

  She had been too eager. Of course he would notice.

  For a moment, she considered spilling it all, begging him to believe her and welcome her back into his life, but just then the bell above the door chimed and another woman stepping into the small space.

  Time to go. Jacques had another unfortunate soul to tend too.

  Ever the gentleman, he stood to greet the older woman and Oliver offered her his seat. Seeing an opportunity, Estella didn’t give herself the time to think twice. She threw her arms around her brother’s neck and kissed his cheek. Awkwardly, he returned the embrace, patting her shoulders. The lack of warmth made it worse. Her Jacques wasn’t here.

  She cried out some unintelligible goodbye and fled. Oliver caught up with her on the main street. He had simply turned her, but she couldn’t stand it. She needed more warmth to chase away the coldness of her backwards hourglass. Her arms snaked around his waist, pressing herself to his body. Oliver nudged them into a nook and held her until was ready to go.