Blood to Blood by Elaine Bergstrom Read Free Book Online

said. "I hardly guessed that I would have to restore it first."
    "Did you purchase the house recently?" Essie asked.
    Mrs. Harker looked up at her for the first time, and Essie saw that her eyes were wet. "I inherited it from a friend. It belonged to Lord Gance," she explained.
    Essie turned away to look at the house again and to hide her knowing expression from her employer. Having worked for a wealthy family, she'd overheard enough gossip to know Gance's reputation.
    "He was no gentleman as you would think of them," Mrs. Harker said, as if reading her mind. "But he was hardly the sort of ogre your last employer turned out to be."
    "You've checked my reference already?" Essie asked, amazed.
    Mrs. Harker stood and smiled. "Merely remembered," she replied. "Let's get out of this heat, shall we? I'd forgotten how small this house was. After we have something cool to drink, we'll have to find you a bit of privacy until I can arrange to have some rooms added on."
    Essie pumped water from the well, cool and tasting faintly of iron. They cut the taste with wedges of lime. When they'd finished, her employer took her on a tour.
    Essie blushed when she saw the upstairs bedroom, something out of one of those dirty magazines, and marveled at the bathrub that drew water from the heater in the kitchen. As Mina opened the doors that led to the narrow second-floor porch, Essie saw a bug scurry toward the fringe on the carpet. She caught it with her boot before it could escape.
    "How long has the house been unoccupied?" she asked.
    "It was never…" Mina began, then concluded, "eight weeks."
    "Then it needs a good airing, mum."
    "Call me Mina, Essie. Let's just shake out the bedcovers and worry about the rest tomorrow. I'm sure you're as exhausted as I am."
    Essie spent the night on the setee in the solarium with the doors that led to the rest of the house shut to give her some privacy. She wasn't used to such huge windows, nor the view of the open spaces beyond, and when she woke in the middle of the night, it took her a moment to get her bearings.
    When she did, she stood and with blanket wrapped around her, walked closer to the glass. Outside, the half moon lit the garden and turned the river into a precious glowing ribbon.
    Without really thinking, she opened the doors that led to the garden, intending to step outside. Something unseen scurried away from the door, and she heard a beating of wings, the ghostly call of an owl. She shut the door quickly and stood with her back pressed against it, shivering with fright and exhilaration, like a housecat who had just realized the freedom that lay beyond an open door.
    "There's nothing there. Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all," she whispered, then padded quickly back to her makeshift bed.

Five
    Joanna Tepes learned to read the night's shadows… the blinding ones thrown by the full moon, the dimmer ones of the partial moon, the softest ones unseen by any but night birds and vampires, the shadows of the stars.
    And when these shadows began to dull at the edges, she would find shelter. There were always small canyons where the horse could graze, overcroppings of rocks beneath which her box of earth—her haven—could rest. The horse had a Gypsy coin embedded in its bridle. She added to this a coin of her own, a gold one stamped with the likeness of her brother. If a man ventured too close to the animal while she slept, the likeness of the Gypsy coin would keep all but the Gypsies from stealing her mount. As for them, the other gold coin would give them pause.
    She doubted that any found the beast, though. She was careful in her resting places, and the land was so empty.
    It took her two weeks to reach the settled areas along the coast. As the cities and farms grew more numerous, she was forced to take greater precautions during the day until the night when she woke at dusk she realized she was not alone.
    Silent as the mist she became, she spilled out of the hairline crack in the side of