Hard to believe, but they meant it. Their mother’s death had been quite a traumatic experience. In particular, the brutish way in which the house familiar had tried to sequester her to the netherworld had frightened them immensely.
“We will never again attend the Sabbath,” Victoria hissed to her sister.
Rosa nodded.
“We will abandon the study of dark magic,” Victoria continued, making sure no one could hear them. “We will break our vows of fidelity with the Dark Lord and start over.”
“But we’re his wives.”
“We’ll get an annulment.”
After the funeral the priest had a private word with the drunkard and warned him about the peril in which the three girls were, without the guidance of a loving mother. With tears in his eyes, the man repeated the promises he had made before and the priest left the house with the satisfaction that after the tragedy, there was still hope for the family.
But hours later the man was drunk again, sleeping it off by their front door. The young girl attempted to wake him up and get him to go sit with them for dinner. He responded by throwing a punch to her nose.
“We can’t stay here,” Victoria cried from the table, aghast.
“He’ll never get a job,” Rosa responded.
“He’ll ruin our chances to marry.”
“We’ll end up selling ourselves on the streets to survive.”
Victoria sank her face into her hands and started crying.
“I know what we should do,” Rosa said. “We should write to our godparents!” The idea had just occurred to her. “Aren’t godparents supposed to take care of helpless orphans? We will ask them to take us in. We’ve been far too seen in Venice. I’ll move to England, with the fairy, and you’ll move to Los Angeles, with Harris. And—” she interrupted herself, as she and her sister usually did before referring to their little sister, “she could move to wherever the vampire lives, if he takes her—which I very much doubt. Who in the world would want her?”
“The vampire lives in New York.”
The young girl, sitting on the opposite side of the table holding a glass full of cold water against her swollen nose, raised her head. She knew nothing about her godfather.
“New York?” Rosa asked, intrigued. “That cannot be better than living in a castle, can it? My godfather is a fairy from Gloucestershire. What do you think?”
“Not a terrible idea,” Victoria said. “Harris is quite handsome.”
“Looks aren’t everything, sister. I pity you. A werewolf living in an apartment.” Rosa served herself some more soup. “Don’t take me wrong, I like Harris and all. I do think he’s handsome. But my godfather lives in a brugh. That’s Gaelic, for castle. The furniture is all velvet and gold. The walls are mother of pearl. The doorknobs are made of diamonds. And he’s almost two thousand years old. You can’t compare.”
Victoria replied with the condescending tone that elder sisters love to use: “In comparison, yes, Harris is poor. The fairy is the wisest and the most powerful. You are right. But the richest of all our godfathers is hers,” she used her spoon to point at her youngest sister. “The richest one is the vampire.”
The young girl gasped in surprise. She put down the glass of cold water. The man who had presented her at baptism was a vampire; that’s all she had ever known. He lives in New York? And he’s rich? Richer than the English fairy? These things were unbeknownst to her. How could she have a godfather if she didn’t have a name?
“That cannot be,” Rosa retorted, pretending to laugh. “My godfather lives in a beautiful castle built on the roots of a sycamore tree.”
“Yes, with the walls made of mother of pearl and doorknobs made out of diamonds,” Victoria continued. “But dust of diamonds. His brugh is a small hole in somebody’s yard. The dome of his grand salon is the shell of an acorn. The tapestries on its walls were loomed with the barbs of just one feather. You’d be living all curled up, exposed to the elements, for nothing larger than the tip of your little toe could fit inside his teeny little castle. If I remember well, the vampire lives in a life-size mansion.”
“He cannot be richer than a fairy, can he?” Rosa squealed.
He couldn’t, the young girl agreed. Fairies had more money than the pope in Rome. Why would a rich and powerful vampire care to present her at baptism? Perhaps he wasn’t a true vampire but a goblin.
“But he is,” Victoria replied. She took another spoonful of her soup. “He is immensely rich. He is a member of the aristocracy. He was born many centuries ago, in the old continent, and made his fortune marrying mortal princesses. He has so many nobility titles that his full name takes an entire page of his passport.”
“How do you know that?” Rosa shrieked.
“Mamá told me,” Victoria responded with a straight face.
“No!” Rosa cried. Her face had turned red and tears threatened to roll down her cheeks. “My godfather is the richest and the most powerful of the three. You stupid hag. You’re just saying this to hurt me! My godfather is an English fairy, for God’s sake! A fairy! His name is Gillespie Oakenforest, and he lives in a brugh with walls of gold and mother of pearl in Gloucestershire. He has an army of magical servants! One of his wives is related to the king!”
“Is she?” Victoria asked, feigning surprise.
“She is a distant cousin of King Edward.”
“King Edward?” Victoria repeated. “If that’s so, she must be very short. When was the last time you saw him, sister? I’ve never met him. Has he ever come visit us? Harris has. At least a few times. We went to his wedding.”
At this, Rosa threw her spoon at her sister, but she failed. Victoria reached over the table and smacked Rosa on the nose with her full palm.
Rosa covered her face with her hands, sobbing quietly. She had a good reason to cry, other than getting boxed. Her sister was right; in sixteen years, Mr. Oakenforest had never visited or even sent so much as a postcard.
“You are just one among hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of godchildren that Lord Oakenforest has,” Victoria explained, at this point truly pitying her sister. “Mamá wanted the best for us, and that’s why she asked him to be your godfather. He just happened to be in our garden the day they met. You are not that special. That, on the other hand,” Victoria pointed again to her youngest sister, “may inherit millions.”
The young girl almost fainted.
“Millions?” Rosa repeated twitching her face.
“The vampire does not have any children.”
They started their letters: Rosa and Victoria on beautiful stationery that they bought especially for that purpose; our nameless girl on the back of an old receipt.
To whom should she address the letter? The young girl wondered. She didn’t know her godfather’s name. She didn’t know anything but what Victoria had said at the table. Too afraid to ask, she simply wrote “To HRH The Vampire, My Godfather.”
And what should she say to him? Please take me with you sounded too desperate, but that’s exactly what she wanted to say. Take me away from this family, away from all their mistreatment, away from the yelling, the beating, the insults, the taunting, the mockeries, and the derisions; away from the hard days of doing chores cleaning up after her sisters, away from the ridicule of the freak show, away from everywhere. But why would he? Vampires aren’t particularly fond of ugly little girls, are they? She decided to write the facts as they were, without adornment. Mamá died, she wrote, and now my sisters and I are practically alone in this world, for the man we call father is an irresponsible drunk unable to provide. She scratched irresponsible. Then she scratched