Jane Vows Vengeance

She lifted the doll’s coat. “The hands and head are ceramic,” she said. “But the main body is a cylinder of wood. And under here”—she pulled the clown’s pants down, exposing what would have been its backside if it had had one—“is the keyhole.”

Jane looked more closely. Sure enough, there was a small keyhole in the clown’s posterior.

“I always assumed it was some kind of wind-up mechanism,” Ninon said. “Perhaps for a music box of some kind. But there was never a key.”

“What made you think this key might work?” Jane asked her.

Ninon looked at her. “I don’t know,” she said. “I hadn’t thought about this Pierrot in years. But when you showed me the key, somehow I knew what it was for.”

“Well, let’s see if you’re right,” said Lucy.

Ninon took the key and inserted it in the hole. It slipped in easily. When she turned it there was a slight clicking sound. Then the doll’s body opened up. Inside it was lined with red velvet, and down the center was an impression that was designed to hold something long and needle-shaped. The impression was filled with what looked like iron filings. The velvet had several rust-colored stains on it.

Lucy looked at the empty doll. “There was something here,” she said. “It was real.”

Jane picked up some of the filings and rubbed them between her fingers. The remnants of what she was certain had been Crispin’s Needle fell like dirty snow.

“But now it’s gone,” she said.

Chapter 19

Monday: Paris

“It was nice of Ninon to give you the doll,” Lucy said. She and Jane were walking back to the hotel. Jane had the Pierrot cradled in her arms.

“I suppose,” Jane said glumly. “Clowns are creepy, though. I don’t think I can be in the same room with it.”

“You’re just upset that the Needle wasn’t in it,” said Lucy.

“Well, it was in there,” Jane said. “Just not in any usable form.”

Lucy shrugged. “Maybe it just wasn’t meant to happen. The universe doesn’t always work the way we want it to.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Jane. Under her breath she muttered, “Stupid universe.”

“I’m serious,” Lucy said. “Don’t you think things happen for a reason?”

“Maybe,” said Jane. “But if that’s true, then why has everything on this trip pointed me toward finding Crispin’s Needle? You have to admit, there have been a lot of coincidences since we got here.”

“True,” Lucy admitted. “It does seem a little odd that you’d keep getting pointed in one direction, only to have it be a dead end.”

“Maybe it’s God’s idea of a joke,” said Jane. She looked up at the sky. “Well, it’s not funny!” she said.

“At least you’ve gotten to meet a lot of interesting characters,” Lucy said. “And look at it this way—if it really all was a story made up by Ratcliffe, you’ve actually done yourself a huge favor.”

“What are you,” said Jane, “the author of Chicken Soup for the Vampire’s Soul?”

“I’m just trying to make you feel better,” Lucy said. “Geez.”

“I know,” Jane said. “I’m sorry. It just all feels off somehow, like I picked the wrong door in a choose-your- own-adventure story. I can’t help thinking that the Needle is still out there somewhere and I just need to retrace my steps and go in a different direction.”

They reached the hotel and went inside. The tour group hadn’t come back yet, and wouldn’t for several hours. Jane and Lucy made plans to reconnect for dinner, then went to their respective rooms.

Jane set the Pierrot doll on the dresser, then lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. She was exhausted, and not just because she and Lucy had walked a great deal. Her entire body felt heavy and drained of energy. Her head was pounding and her thoughts felt dull and insubstantial. The only thing she could focus on was her disappointment, and even that was vague and insubstantial.

What am I really upset about? she wondered.

She considered the question. Was she disappointed that she hadn’t found the Needle intact? Yes. But a week ago you hadn’t even heard of it, she reminded herself. This was true. But once she had learned of its possible existence, it had become the most important thing in the world to her.

Maybe that’s the problem, she thought. Maybe you should have been happy with what you had.

That was it. She should have been happy. And she had been. She had Walter, and Lucy and Ben, and all of her other friends. She had the bookstore and her career. There was also Miriam, of course, and she was a problem, but not an insurmountable one.

Her only real problem was the fact that she was a vampire. And that wasn’t even really the problem. No, the real problem was that she hadn’t told Walter what she was, and that she didn’t want to. In short, she’d looked upon Crispin’s Needle as the thing that would save her from having to tell Walter anything at all. She could have just (assuming the legend about the Needle was true) restored her human soul, married Walter, and lived out the rest of whatever her natural life would have been.

If that’s how it would have worked, she reminded herself. For all you know, the instant you pierced your heart with the Needle you might have dropped dead. You really ought to ask these kinds of questions before you get excited.

She thought about this. All she knew was that supposedly Crispin’s Needle made a vampire human again. But maybe it did so only for a moment, so that when death came seconds later (after all, there was a needle stuck through the heart, and that couldn’t be entirely good news) the restored soul flew up to heaven. Or wherever.

If this was the case, Walter would then be grieving her death. She herself wouldn’t be particularly thrilled about the matter either. But was that worse than letting Walter marry her not knowing that she would in all likelihood outlive him by centuries, that she would never age physically while he would suffer the inevitable ravages of time? Looking at things this way, there seemed to be no option that didn’t end in unhappiness.

But you were going to let him marry you without knowing what he was in for, her conscience argued.

“I was going to figure it out later,” she said aloud.

When? she asked herself. When you got pregnant? When Miriam spilled the beans? When Suzu or someone else caught you feeding and told him?

“Leave me alone,” she said, turning onto her stomach and putting a pillow over her head.

That’s what I thought.

The bottom line was, she had been looking for an easy way out. Now that the way had been blocked, she was back where she had started and still no closer to knowing what to do than she had been when she’d accepted Walter’s proposal in the first place.

Remarkably, she fell asleep. The next thing she heard was the sound of the door to the room opening and Walter’s voice saying, “Honey! I’m home!”

She rolled over and discovered that her cheek was wet. She’d been drooling. She wiped it away with the pillowcase and sat up.

“What time is it?” she asked, yawning.

“Almost nine,” said Walter. “We just got back.”

He came over and gave her a kiss. “How was the festival?”

“The what?” Jane asked, momentarily forgetting the lie she’d told. “Oh, it was boring. You didn’t miss anything. How was the winery?”