By Blood We Live Read Online Free PDF Page A

it’ll …”
    “What?”
    She thought for a moment. Then her shoulders went slack. A decision.
    “Before you fell asleep,” she began—then stopped, reassaulted, I knew, by the bare fact of my being there, real, with her again. “Sorry,” she said. “This is just so fucking bizarre.”
    “Tell me what happened.”
    “I need another drink,” she said—and oddly, it sounded a false note between us. The Lash gives bright clues to the elusive truth, yes, but vivid flashes when lies are flying too. Her dark eyes flicked away. I didn’t say anything about it. She went to the kitchen and came back with her glass refreshed. I lit us another American Spirit each.
    “Before you fell asleep,” she began again, “you got sick. We were in Europe. You don’t remember any of that?”
    Well? Did I?
    Something. On the periphery, until I tried to focus on it—then it whisked away. The study was live with currents of déjà vu. Shocking recognition was somewhere near, a sheer drop you wouldn’t see until you were falling through it.
    “It’s in there somewhere,” I said. “Go on.”
    “Okay. We were in England. You left me in London and went to Crete.”
    Each place name a recognition test. So far nothing.
    Or rather not quite nothing. The faintest synaptic twinge. London. Crete.
    “What was I doing on Crete?”
    “You were … I don’t even know. You wouldn’t tell me. You left me in London for weeks. You came back from Crete, then we were in England together, but while we were there you got ill. Don’t you remember? I had to get us home.”
    “From England?”
    “We had Damien. The jet.”
    “Jesus Christ.”
    “You really don’t remember?”
    She was incredulous, but there was something else underneath it. Relief.
    “I got you back here,” she went on. “You couldn’t drink. You had a temperature. And your mind was … You were forgetting things. And remembering things. You said you thought if you remembered everythingthat had happened … Anyway, you were a mess. You kept telling me things you’d already told me. It was like you had fucking Alzheimer’s.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said.
    “Stop saying sorry.”
    “It’s hard not to. You’ve suffered.”
    She shook her head, impatient. She’d felt pity for herself alone here in Las Rosas while I’d slept, and now the memory of it disgusted her. Her default was to be brutal with herself. When I’d seen her standing by the dumpster that night in Manhattan I’d recognised someone who could only ever take solace in the world when it was obvious the world was offering none.
    “Okay,” I said. “I don’t remember Europe. Crete. London. I don’t remember being ill. And I don’t remember losing my marbles either. What happened after we got back to LA?”
    “We had about a week of you getting more and more sick and confused and me getting more and more freaked out. You were in and out of fever. You couldn’t feed. You couldn’t do
any
thing. You were weak and rambling and fucking green in the face.”
    “Green?”
    “Then it seemed to break. You seemed better. Clearer. You said you realised you hadn’t been well. We watched the movies. Then you went down to the vault and never fucking came out.” Saying it brought her loneliness back. Her eyes filled, but she didn’t, quite, cry. To Justine her own tears are unforgivable. Which makes her irresistible to me. Nothing draws me to humans like the absence of self-pity. For a while we remained in silence. A police siren went
boowepp?
half a mile away. I wanted to tell her about the dream but I knew it wouldn’t help.
He lied in every word
ear-buzzed me again, then veered away.
    I got to my feet. I didn’t want to. Nor did I want the recollection of the false note when she’d said she needed another drink. Right up until I opened my mouth I wasn’t sure what I was going to say.
    “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s me. I know who I am.”
    “Who are you?”
    In a cod Transylvanian