Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil — Chapter no 63

V

London, England 1927

“Happy anniversary, my love.”

Charlotte is standing on the terrace, watching the night settle over London, when Sabine comes up behind her and whispers the words in her ear.

They have been together now one hundred years.

A century.

On paper, the word looks so much smaller than its worth.

“We’ll celebrate,” purrs Sabine, “but first . . .” She turns Charlotte in her

arms. “A gift.”

It lies there in her open palm.

A small gold pendant on a matching chain. It is lovely, but the longer Charlotte studies it, the more certain she is that she’s seen it before, though she can’t remember where or when. Not until she sees that the small letter etched into its front, which at first she took for a C, is in fact a G, and that the pendant is in fact a cuff link, hammered flat.

A strange pit forms in her stomach, and she knows, even though it’s been a hundred years, that it belonged to George Preston. Her first kill.

The young man with the water-blue eyes, and the floppy blond hair, and the body that made such an awful sound when it toppled down the cellar steps.

Charlotte stares at the pendant, torn between amazement that Sabine has kept it all this time, and horror at the fact, and the idea that Sabine, who knows her mind so well, would ever think she’d want it.

Charlotte has always found Sabine’s collection morbid. The way she takes these tokens like trophies from her kills, while Charlotte rids herself of any

evidence, wishes she could shed the memories as well, so they could never haunt her.

Charlotte wants to recoil from the trinket, to fling it off the balcony.

But it is their anniversary, and Sabine’s mood is high, her eyes alight with happiness, and so Charlotte only smiles, grateful that she’s spent the last few years learning to put up walls around her mind, to shield the thoughts that are not safe to share.

And so Sabine believes her when she calls the trinket lovely, when she turns and lifts her curls so she can put it on.

“To the next one hundred years,” murmurs Sabine, and Charlotte shivers as the necklace settles, cold and heavy, at her throat.

Sabine wants to paint the town red, and so they do.

Four bodies dropped into the Thames before Big Ben strikes one, and then, giddy and blood-drunk, they end up at the Cavalcade, one of the few clubs that not only turns the other cheek to the nature of its clients, but seems to revel in its oddness. A place where some women wear suits, and some men wear makeup, and no one cares who you dance with, who you kiss.

The air is full of jazz, and want, and gin. Heartbeats to every side, their hunger beating like a drum, and they are dancing, and Charlotte is so glad she did not make a fuss about the gift, because they’re happy.

Sabine is radiant in lace and emerald crepe, her charms and pendants looped like pearls, copper hair pinned up beneath a sequined band, while Charlotte is awash in cream, fringe flaring just above her knees with every turn.

They dance, and even though it’s been a hundred years, they move within that fateful wind, and they are happy, just the two of them inside the storm.

Until Sabine’s attention snags on something.

Charlotte turns to look, assuming she’s found another mark, someone to slake that endless appetite, is surprised to find she’s staring at a man.

He’s handsome, with rich brown skin and raven hair, dressed in a crisp white shirt and red suspenders, elbows leaning on a burnished rail. And the longer Charlotte stares, the more she understands why Sabine was drawn.

There is something about him—a stillness at odds with the raging club, a sense of being out of time or place.

And then, between one moment and the next, a woman appears at his side.

She is black and gold, her dress shining like light against her dark skin, and the strange feeling expands, surrounds the two of them—an uncanny quiet, a feline grace—and if Charlotte had a pulse, it would begin to race,

because in that instant, she knows.

The strangers are like her.

Like them.

The woman locks eyes with Charlotte, and as she does, the club around them seems to peel apart, the floor to tip forward, Charlotte tipping with it.

The entire moment lasts a lifetime, and a single trumpet roar, and then Sabine is there, drawing her back, a silent no in the flexing of her hand, and by the time she steals another glance, the railing is empty, the two figures

gone.

Charlotte’s spirit gutters.

A hundred years, apart, alone, with no one but Sabine.

A hundred years without another confidante, or friend.

A hundred years of waiting, wanting, and then at last, they were right there. She was so close. She could have caught the woman’s hand. Could have heard the man’s voice. Could have asked if there were others.

The loss is so sudden, so acute, but Charlotte knows better than to show it.

To let her lover see, or feel, or hear. So she turns, puts her back to the empty rail, her focus on Sabine. She lets the music drown her, sinks beneath the beat until it stops. Until the club is closing, and they are ushered out into the

late-night air.

And there they are.

The two strangers, idling beneath a streetlamp, a photograph amid the noise and bustle of the West End. Her—lounging in the front seat of a roadster, a pearl cigarette holder perched between her lips, and him— leaning back against the polished side, flicking a lighter absently against his slacks.

They are striking, yes, but more than that, they are familiar.

It’s not just the light that shines behind their eyes, or the quiet absence of their hearts. They feel in tune, like the same song played on different instruments. Or perhaps the same instrument, playing different songs.

Charlotte always thought that music, that resonance, came from Sabine

alone. But now, she understands. It is the nature of them that brings that quiet harmony.

Charlotte feels her legs carrying her forward, her body tipping toward them once again, before Sabine takes a single, fluid step, putting herself in front of Charlotte, as if they pose a threat.

The woman cocks her head, and plucks the holder from between her lips, and grins, revealing the tips of pointed teeth.

“There they are,” she says, an edge of laughter in her voice. “See, Jack? I told you it was worth sticking around. A city this big, ain’t every night you meet a friend.” Her accent knocks the last letters off of half the words.

“You say we’ve met.” Sabine inclines her head, her face a placid mask. “I do not think we have.”

The woman’s smile doesn’t falter. But it’s her companion, Jack, who speaks.

“What a lapse on our part,” he says in a crisp English voice. “Allow us to make amends.”

He gestures at the roadster. Sabine doesn’t move, and so, neither does Charlotte.

“Come on now,” the woman adds in that strange drawl. “Surely you aren’t planning on turning in just yet. Not when the night’s so young. Hop in,” she says. “I know a place that serves till dawn.”

Charlotte bites her bottom lip, feels like she is full of bees, humming with the sheer force of curiosity and want. She wants to surge forward, into the waiting car, but she remembers how angry Sabine got when Charlotte had merely asked if there were others like them in the world, so she’s prepared for the refusal, the rebuke.

Instead, Sabine rests her fingers at the base of Charlotte’s back and says, “Well, what shall we do?”

Charlotte looks up at her, as if it is a trick, a trap, but Sabine’s expression is a placid mask. “This is your night,” she says, “so you decide.”

Charlotte should have hesitated, she knows that now, feigned reluctance at the very least. But she can’t contain her excitement anymore. She breaks into a happy smile. “Let’s go with them,” she says, buzzing with hope. “It will be fun.”

Sabine smiles back, and kisses Charlotte’s temple before nudging her ahead.

The woman slaps the side of the car with her open palm. “Come on, then.

Jack, be a good sport and get the door.”

The night air whistles and the engine roars.

The car tears through the London streets, the woman—Antonia—behind the wheel. When she said her name, her accent made it four beats instead of three—a melody of high and low.

By the time the roadster comes to a stop in Southwark, only Antonia’s hair remains unscathed, the glossy black finger waves snug as a cap against her head. Jack combs his own hair back in order but Charlotte’s curls have run wild in the open air, and filaments of copper have come loose from Sabine’s sequined band. She tosses the ornament away, and her hair uncoils.

Antonia parks before a warehouse of sorts, one of the many structures throughout the city that at first glance looks like it’s not just closed but boarded up. Abandoned.

But this is the twenties, and things are almost never what they seem.

Indeed, Charlotte can hear the music wafting up from down below like steam. Sabine’s fingers twine with hers as Jack brings his hand to rest against the warehouse door, looks back at them, and winks.

Years later, Charlotte can remember the way that door fell open onto honey-colored light. But she still can’t define the feeling of that place.

The dreaminess, the languid grace. The colors, like a sunrise just before it starts. The promise of a day. Imagine a cabaret, only the tempo has been slowed, the volume dropped by half, rendering the whole thing softer and more intimate.

Guests of all genders and complexions gather at small tables, heads together and voices low as, perched above them, women wearing little more than well-placed feathers contort themselves with feline ease. Servers, some dark and others fair, and all in fine suits and holding silver trays, weave between the tables, while on a round stage a man with silent-film good looks and a somber voice adds a thread of music to the room.

“Welcome to the Way Down,” says Antonia, drifting through the center of the club as if she owns it. Which, it quickly becomes clear, she does. A handful of patrons raise their drinks in her direction. One goes so far as to brush his lips across the peaks of her gloved hand. A server takes her wrap

and calls her Miss Antonia. Another leads them to the best seats in the house, a table raised on its own platform at the back.

“How marvelous,” sighs Charlotte as they sink into their seats, her attention flicking from the gathering back to their hosts as Jack leans in to light the new cigarette that’s waiting in Antonia’s holder.

She takes a drag, fills her lungs just to blow it out.

“I know it does nothing,” she says, smoke sliding through her teeth, “but I must admit, I like the affectation. And Jack here tells me I look sophisticated when I smoke.”

“I do believe the word I used was sexy.”

“Well, that, too. Go on, then, fetch us a drink?”

Jack rises and strolls off, reappears a minute later with a tray, laden with a bottle and four short glass cups, their patterned sides opaque. Charlotte assumes it is merely a formality, another farce—how many glasses of wine, or cups of tea have she and Sabine left undrunk at their tables—but then he pours, and the contents come out dark, and thick, and red.

The scent of blood reaches her immediately. Charlotte’s skin tightens, and her throat goes dry, teeth aching as the hunger turns her hollow, even now, despite the night they’ve had, the bodies in their wake.

She takes up a glass. How strange blood looks, outside the body, how surreal without the struggle. Anger washes through her. If she had known

this was an option— If she had known there was a choice.

“To new friends,” announces Antonia as they raise their glasses. All except Sabine. Antonia glances toward her. “It’s bad luck, you know, not to toast.”

Sabine’s mouth twitches. “Alas,” she says, spreading her hands. “I don’t drink anything that’s already been”—her gaze flicks down and up again —“decanted.”

Charlotte keeps her expression careful, though inwardly she winces.

Sabine is being rude, blatantly so, throwing down a gauntlet, just to see how they’ll react. And even though Charlotte cannot read their minds, she feels the air around them turn to glass.

Jack’s gaze narrows, just a fraction.

But Antonia only smiles, showing teeth. “Yes,” she drawls, “it does lose something, doesn’t it?” She waves her fingers, and a server appears at her shoulder, a fair-skinned man with sun-gold hair.

“Miss Antonia?”

“Send Meredith to the office,” she says, her attention still fixed on Sabine.

“Tell her to wait there.” The server nods, withdraws, and once he’s gone, her gaze flicks to Jack. “Darling, show our guest the way?”

A clever parry. To force Sabine to choose between pettiness and thirst.

She hesitates only a moment, then stands and follows Jack, but not before kissing Charlotte deeply, nipping at her bottom lip as she assures her that she’ll be right back.

There is an instant, as she walks away, when Charlotte finds herself suddenly unmoored, as if the cord between them has drawn taut enough to break. Then it does, and Charlotte is still there, alone and in one piece.

“Where were we?” says Antonia. “Ah, that’s right.” She lifts her cup again. “To new friends.” She knocks the glass against Charlotte’s, and drinks.

Charlotte tips her own glass, frowning slightly when the blood passes her lips. The first thing she notices is the lack of pulse, the absence of a heartbeat. Still, she feels the blood seep through her as she swallows, warmth blooming in its wake.

The world doesn’t fall away, and there is no moment in the sun, but at least her thirst retreats. A brief respite—and in the wake of iron and earth, she tastes a sweet residual. Gin.

Charlotte cannot help herself. She wonders aloud whose blood it is.

“Does it matter?” asks Antonia.

“Shouldn’t it?” Charlotte looks down into the empty cup, the film of red.

“For years, I would only take certain men. And even then I’d search their minds, trying to find one who deserved it.”

Antonia inhales, eyes flaring with her cigarette tip. “That’s a nice idea,”

she says. “But it don’t work.”

Charlotte looks up. “What do you mean?”

“Life is messy. People, too. And you can tie yourself in knots, trying to make yourself feel better, or you can face the truth.”

“Which is?”

Antonia sighs out a plume of smoke. “No one should play God. Least of all us.”

Charlotte feels sadness creeping through her like a chill, but Antonia doesn’t seem bothered by the topic. She only crosses her legs and leans in,

elbows resting on her stockinged knees. Up close, her eyes are dark and bright at once, candles behind tinted glass, her lashes painted gold.

“Now tell me, Charlotte,” she says in that downy drawl, “where are you

from?”

“Hampshire,” she says. “And you?”

Antonia laughs. “Here I was thinking it was plain as day. I hail from those United States.”

Charlotte brightens. For more than a decade, she’s wanted to go, but Sabine recoiled at the thought of spending weeks aboard a ship. Insisted everything they could ever want or need was on this side of that vast stretch of water. Said fire might be a bad death, but drowning sounded worse. And then, as if to prove her point, the Titanic went and sank, and Sabine laughed, a brutal, mocking sound, and they never spoke of it again.

“America,” says Charlotte now. “I’ve always wondered what it’s like.”

“That depends,” says Antonia, flicking the ash off the cigarette, “on your complexion. I imagine you’d fare a yard better than I did. That said . . .”

Her cool hand drifts up to Charlotte’s chin. “I’d wager you’ve a bit of pigment in you. Not much, of course,” she adds, hand falling away. She leans back, dips a fingertip into her cup, lets the blood bead and fall back into the glass. “But over there, they measure every drop.”

Charlotte frowns, looking down at her own hands. She can still remember Aunt Amelia pursing her lips.

How tan you are. Your mother’s side no doubt.

Come away from the window. You hardly need more sun.

In the end, she needn’t have worried. Charlotte’s skin, like the rest of her, is trapped in time, halfway to the bronze she would have been in summer, that patina of freckles now forever on her cheeks.

“Of course, times are changing,” muses Antonia with a shrug. “And I’ll be sticking round, to see they do. But in the meantime, I’ve made a fine life here in London. Me and Jack.”

“How did you meet?” asks Charlotte, hungry for details. “Were you both already—or did you make—” Antonia arches a brow, and she falters, suddenly unsure. “Is it rude to ask these things? I’m sorry. It’s just, I’ve never met anyone else who’s been . . .”

She trails off, uncertain of the words to use.

“What?” says Antonia. “You mean buried in the midnight soil?”

Charlotte stiffens at the use of Sabine’s words. Because of course, until

that moment, she assumed they were Sabine’s. Something she’d invented, a private poem, a bedroom invocation that belonged to them alone.

Her face goes hot, but Antonia breezes on. “Never met another? Where has that Sabine been hiding you?” Her voice is breezy, the question rhetorical, but Charlotte still tenses, a stiff smile rising to her lips.

“How long have you two been together, you and Jack?”

“Going on seventy years now. And no, I didn’t make him, though I knew the man who did. We found each other, after.” She looks past Charlotte and grins. “Speaking of makers and love . . .”

Coils of copper hair drape like arms around Charlotte’s shoulders as Sabine and Jack return.

A look passes between Jack and Antonia, so subtle and so quick Charlotte catches it only because she’s looking, as Sabine plants a kiss along her collar. The stolen pulse still echoes audibly behind her ribs, blood blooming in her cheeks.

“Did you miss me?” she whispers against her skin.

“Always,” answers Charlotte as her lover takes her seat. So does Jack, and for a moment no one speaks; the whole scene hovers on a knife’s edge between uncertainty and dread.

But then Sabine leans forward and refills the other cups, and it’s like a hand, smoothing ruffled fabric. As the glasses empty, and fill, and empty again, the air unwinds around the table.

The hours slide by.

Jack and Antonia finish each other’s stories, their easy banter like a warm bath.

Jack and Charlotte talk of growing up on English soil.

Sabine recounts her entry into London society, how she only learned about the Season thanks to a shop window and a pretty dress.

And the whole time, Sabine is at her very best, a house lit up from every room. That coy smile and that feline grace, and the same magnetic charm that first drew Charlotte all those years ago here again on full display. She is radiant, and every time she so much as glances Charlotte’s way, she blushes from the sheer force of the attention.

The bottle is emptied and another one arrives, the glasses refilled, and Charlotte empties hers again, and again, until one of Antonia’s stories leaves her giggling, a fit she can’t seem to stop, and Sabine cheerfully informs the group that it might be time to put her love to bed.

There are no windows in the Way Down, but Jack produces a watch and declares that it’s an hour until dawn. True to Antonia’s word the bar is still serving but it’s clearly slowing down, only a handful of tables still occupied as the four make their goodbyes, Jack kissing Charlotte on each cheek, and Antonia insisting that they simply must do this again.

She squeezes Charlotte’s hand, kisses her cheek, and says that no matter the hour, or the night, or the year, she and Sabine are always welcome there.

And as they make their way home, in that quiet hour before dawn, the closest London ever comes to sleep, Charlotte leans her head on Sabine’s shoulder and smiles, convinced it’s been the kind of night that they will all

remember.

A perfect anniversary.

“What a wonderful night that was,” says Charlotte once they’re back inside the flat.

Sabine says nothing, and that’s when she notices how quiet the room has gone.

How cold the air has turned around them.

No, no, no, thinks Charlotte as she turns toward Sabine, and finds her gripping the bedpost so hard the wood beneath is splintering.

“Am I not enough?” she says, and even though her voice is quiet, it is as sharp and cold as broken ice.

Charlotte stiffens, the clinging softness of the gin suddenly gone. “Of course you are,” she says, confusion mingling with fear. “Sabine, I only meant—”

“I saw how much you brightened,” she snarls. “I felt how glad you were to go with them.”

What shall we do? Sabine had said. You decide.

It was a trap. She should have known. And now— “Are you so sick of me?”

Charlotte shakes her head, even though Sabine’s back is to her. She grasps at calm, feels it slipping through her fingers. No, everything was good, everything was right. She saw the old Sabine, the one she fell in love with.

She is still in there, somewhere, inside. She only has to get her back.

Charlotte crosses the room, wraps her arms around her lover’s waist. “You are all I want,” she whispers between her shoulders. “All I need. Let’s go to

bed.”

Sabine doesn’t move, doesn’t soften.

“Please,” Charlotte says as she slips off the dress, lets it pool beneath her on the floor, a heap of beads and silk. “Please,” she says as she circles Sabine, reaches up to cup her face, looks her in the eyes, the light in them flickering, on the verge of going out. “Take me to bed, Sabine.”

For a horrible moment, nothing.

Then Sabine twists, pinning Charlotte up against the cracked bedpost. She kisses her, hard, teeth slicing Charlotte’s bottom lip. She doesn’t break away, not as blood—her blood—fills her mouth. Not as Sabine pushes her down onto the bed, one hand holding her wrists, and the other parting her legs. Not as she arches, offering the column of her throat, and Sabine bites deep, teeth sinking to the bone.

Why does Charlotte stay?

That is like asking—why stay inside a house on fire?

Easy to say when you are standing on the street, a safe distance from the flames.

Harder when you are still inside, convinced you can douse the blaze before it spreads, or rushing room to room, trying to save what you love before it burns.

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