In All of Infinity Read Online Free PDF Page B

up?”
     
    “I should have known you would always be a
gentleman. I didn’t know you’d still be faithful to your wife even
when she’s dead,” she said with a serpentine spat while she
gathered her housecoat and stood. “I also see you still want a
child. Oh, you are pathetic. I have never met a more dismal man
than you. You haven’t bathed properly in months! You haven’t even
brushed your teeth! To think I was willing to give myself to you,
you ungrateful bastard.”
     
    He stared at her, blinking, then put his
hand in his pocket. “What?”
     
    Nadia raised her hands and two glass balls
appeared in them, floating. He stared at them, confused and amazed
all at once. In her right hand, the glass ball was bright white; in
the other, it was empty, transparent.
     
    “Do you wish for a child? Do you wish to
live forever? Do you wish for riches beyond your wildest dream?”
she asked and glared at him. “Or do you wish for something else?
What do you wish for, Emmanuel? What is it that you desire?”
     
    “Who are you?” he stammered, wondering when
he was going to awaken from his dream. “What are you doing in my
house?”
     
    “Must I bring her here?” she barked,
irritated by his perplexity. “Or can you figure it out by yourself?
Must you mortals always be so damned stupid? I thought you were a
man of science!”
     
    “Figure what out? Bring who here? And, yes, I am
a man of science,” he said with a smile. He was enjoying this
dream, even though it was becoming crazier by the second. He smiled
brighter as he considered this dream was perhaps the wildest he’d
ever had, but he didn’t say so aloud.
     
    Nadia smiled and he found all the darkness
in the room shy away from it as all wickedness found its way there,
in the dimples of her expression. He heard screaming and looked
towards the doors leading out of the living room, his brow
furrowed. The doors opened suddenly and two burly men in coats of
armor dragged a blue cloaked figure into the room.
     
    “Alright, so you brought more people into my
house?” he asked with a cocked eyebrow, shaking his head at
Nadia.
     
    She threw her head back and laughed. “Reveal
her face!”
     
    Emmanuel turned to his attention back to
them, watching as one of the men tossed off the captive’s hood.
When he saw who was hidden beneath the hood, he felt as if his
heart had surged out of his chest, run across the room, and leapt
into the fire. She stood there, staring at him, her blonde hair cut
boyishly short and her blue eyes filled with fright.
     
    “Esme?” he managed, feeling as if he’d
walked into a nightmare. He realized, with an unexpected feeling of
terror, that this wasn’t a dream. Seeing her face made it become
real for him because it indeed was. “Esme?”
     
    Nadia laughed again. “Oh, yes. The lovers
reunited at last. Guess what, though, Emmanuel… she can’t speak to
you. No. I made sure she couldn’t. Do you want her back or do you
want your baby?”
     
    He found himself unable to turn from Esme,
so he spoke to Nadia while he gazed at his wife, her eyes filled
with sympathy while his filled with questions. “I don’t have a
child.”
     
    “You do have a child,” she assured him, the
white ball rotating slowly. “What are you willing to sacrifice in
order to see her? Your eternal soul, perhaps?”
     
    He looked at Nadia. “I have a daughter?” He
turned back to Esme. “I thought you were dead. I thought the baby
was too. What’s going on?” He remembered that she couldn’t respond
to him, and again found tears forming in his eyes. “Esme, you have
no idea…. We have a daughter…”
     
    Nadia exhaled sharply, irritated by his
delay. “Say the word, Emmanuel, and you may have whatever you wish,
but you cannot have Esmeralda. She is no longer to be yours. Do you
want riches? Power? Name it and it’s yours.”
     
    He glanced at Nadia. “Why are you willing to
grant my wish? What do I have that could possibly