The Watchtower

chasm between us is no more. For I am mortal, too.”
    Shocked at having his worst intuition confirmed, Will nonetheless had the aplomb to respond, “How on earth did that come about?”
    Her look went far away. “Those details are better left for another time. Let me just say that a family member rendered the necessary assistance.”
    For the second time this night, Will felt the tingling of bloodlust. He could smell Marguerite’s mortal blood now—it hadn’t been his imagination—and it smelled delicious .
    “Family member?” he asked through clenched lips.
    She nodded. “My sister. But let’s not go into that. Let’s just enjoy this moment of being back together. ‘Forever,’ as mortals say. Which for them—for us—simply means the length of their lives. Which is more than enough for me, so long as I am with you.” She rubbed Will’s cheek affectionately. Her spirits seemed to be improving, which baffled Will. Perhaps she had no sense of what had happened to him, and her earlier listlessness had simply been from the lesser vigor of mortality, and sadness over his absence.
    Once Marguerite took her hand from his cheek, Will could feel the tips of his growing incisors brush against the interior of his mouth, below. In seconds he’d have to maneuver them beyond his lips, to avoid excruciating pain, and their moonlit enamel would give him away. He might as well make his confession now.
    “I have a terrible truth to tell.” He reached across to caress her.
    She grasped his hand and pressed it closely to her. “Terrible? How can that be? This is the most glorious moment of our lives!”
    “It may still be, if either one of us can reverse what has happened to us in the past forty-eight hours.” He extended both hands out toward the moon-jeweled river, palms up, in a gesture that combined resignation with small hope. “Can you reverse what happened to you?”
    Marguerite got up and swept around in front of Will as though she were a wind, half standing, half crouching, gazing at him as if she wasn’t sure if he was angel or demon. She might be mortal now, Will reflected, but the light in her eyes came from another world. “What has happened to you, my love?” she asked in a wild voice.
    “The venomous John Dee has tricked me,” Will said as matter-of-factly as he could. “I have not been honest with you about the use I made of your box and ring, which you may observe I do not have with me—or at least not the box.” He glanced at her hand and for the first time noticed she wore his silver ring. It gave him courage to go on. “At the depth of my despair over our separation, I was crazy enough to seek counsel from Dee. He offered me the bargain of immortality in exchange for the use of your box and ring. He kept one part of his bargain, though he omitted major details about what immortality meant to him, but he did not return your box. The ring I have. Sadly Dee—and his cohort Charles Roget—has escaped, but I will find him and justice will be done.”
    “What details did he omit?” Marguerite asked in a stunned voice. “Oh, Will, how could you deal with that man—that thing—he’s the soul of Satan himself!”
    Will began to weep, for he had no answer for her. He heard Marguerite gasp. She touched his face and brought back a bloodred hand, as if touching him had wounded her.
    As long as he would live, a portentous thought now, he would never forget the expression in Marguerite’s eyes: they loathed him, they recoiled from him, they hated … him! Or not so much him as what he had become. But was there a difference? He knew in the instant he asked this bleak question that there wasn’t. And that was when his world fell apart. His lover had become his hater. He had bargained away his Christian soul for that of a night thing, a crawler and bloodsucker. Marguerite was right to loathe him. The Will Hughes she had loved had destroyed himself.
    Slowly, Marguerite seemed to regain control of herself. She had been staggering a little down the riverbank away from him, but now she stopped moving. The expression in her eyes calmed from loathing to uncertainty. She might be conquering her revulsion with thoughts of their past love, Will reflected hopefully. Which emboldened him to speak.
    “I may be a creature of the night, but I still love you. Tell me, sweet love, is there really no hope for us? Can’t you walk back across the bridge you went to the mortal side over? Would your family