My appetite had vanished, but deciding it would be rude to leave the plate on the serving table without trying anything, I headed for an empty chair next to Kostya. My father didn't take off his jacket: tense, he sat at the table still in his outerwear, as if ready to finish the conversation quickly and leave this house.
When I sat down and cast a quick glance at the table, I realized everyone had been waiting for me. Only two seats remained empty — one of which, I suspected, was meant for Violetta, and the other for someone else.
My gaze lingered on the vacant chair next to Dr. Smirnov, where he had arranged the cutlery with a certain tenderness. Making sure the knife and fork lay on the snow-white napkin at a perfectly precise angle, Vladimir pinched the slender stem of a wine glass between two fingers and, tilting the vessel slightly away from himself, began slowly filling it with a thick crimson liquid from a thermos. When he set the glass in the place where, I guessed, the lady of the house should have sat, the doctor picked up the glass opposite and filled it halfway.
I had never seen wine so viscous and so rich in color. Could the texture change after heating? Even though no steam rose from its flawless surface, I was somehow certain the liquid before me was warm — otherwise, why keep it in a thermos?
I watched Vladimir, waiting for him to finally say what he had promised, but Smirnov seemed to be deliberately stalling, drawing all attention to himself, and I felt my irritation building. Everything about this man repelled me, and no angelic appearance could soften that effect — not when I knew of at least one unpleasant thing Vladimir had done in the past, for which there could be no forgiveness.
Still, whatever I thought of him, Dr. Smirnov seemed the only person who could piece together the truth about the nature of the being inside me — or at least pretended to know it. Max had his own understanding of how the curse affected my wolf spirit, but he had never shared any guesses about how or why the curse had come to rest on me specifically. That was why I remained here — in a house filled with luxury and polish, but lifeless beneath its careful beauty. Its story should have stayed in the pages of history and faded into oblivion, like a layer in the formation of the future we now lived in. The natural cycle, in which the old is replaced by the new, had been broken in this place, where time seemed to have no power — something the eternally young residents proved year after year.
I caught myself thinking this and shuddered, unsure how right I might be. My thoughts began to generate clichés, inevitably tying to them everything I knew about vampires from books and films. Yet I couldn't say for certain how much of that knowledge was true. My mind easily shuffled facts I already knew together with folklore, blending truth and lies. Only by asking the right questions could I hope to draw a line between one and the other — and perhaps understand what the Smirnov family truly was.
"Dr. Smirnov," I said. Hearing my voice, Vladimir tore himself away from savoring the drink's aroma with a hint of disappointment. "How old are you?"
"To be honest, I lost count after celebrating my three-hundredth birthday and deciding it was tiresome to keep track of how quickly the years pass — especially when the gates of eternity stand open before you. There's no longer any need to hurry, nor any fear of death. All that remains is infinity, in which you somehow must search for novelty. The world is like a worn-out record: one set of events will replace another, yet when you see them as a whole, there's too much in common. The ending of the song is predictable, and everything we touch is just a copy of copies."
A heavy silence fell in the room. The rhythmic clink of forks and knives ceased. Everyone, like me, stared at Vladimir in silence, both spellbound and horrified by his words, which perfectly revealed the kind of man he was: one consumed by boredom, lunging like a starving beast at any trace of the unknown — desperate, like an adrenaline addict, to feel something even faintly resembling emotion.
"That sounded damn grim," Stanislav summed up, folding his hands on the table. "Even for you."
Vladimir wet his throat, leaving a bright red smear on his lower lip.
"You're still young. One day you'll think of the world the same way, and if you're lucky, son, I'll still be here beside you."
"Of course, Father," he replied rather evenly.
Stas gave a faint smile and glanced at his sister, who immediately buried herself in her plate. She seemed to shrink in on herself, which didn't escape my notice. Her hunched posture was unnatural for Diana. At school, the fragile girl with the defiant hairstyle radiated a wild yet magnetic energy — but in her father's presence, her true self hid beneath a thick layer of fear. Did Diana fear her own father? And if so, what happened in this house when no one was watching, if even Vladimir's own daughter seemed to wither within these walls under the oppressive atmosphere?
Vladimir swirled the glass in his hand, and the liquid spun from inertia, staining the flawless smoothness of the crystal. He cast a quick glance at the watch on his wrist, then at the empty seat.
"Well, time to begin."
"I still have a couple of questions," I cut the doctor off mid-sentence. Vladimir failed to keep his composure; his lips twitched. "When did you stop aging?"
"My metabolic age stopped on the day of my turning," he replied briefly, considering the explanation sufficient, but I pressed on.
"And what about your children?"
"What about them?" Vladimir smirked, as if not understanding where these pointless questions were leading, when there were far more interesting matters on the agenda.
"If I'm not mistaken, Diana and Stas were born vampires."
"And Arthur as well. The twins were born witchers before they were turned. But let's say they'd been prepared for it their whole lives — like hereditary hunters of those among our kind who can't control their thirst. Why do you want to know this, Asya? I thought you wanted to sort out your own nature, not sit through a lecture on the finer points of vampirism."
"Who else should I ask, if not you, when I want to at least start to understand the world I live in?"
The words hit their target, feeding the patriarch's ego, and for a moment I felt a surge of pride and a sweet satisfaction at how easily I had played Vladimir by tugging at the right strings. But the pleasure vanished as quickly as it came when I realized I was acting exactly like the doctor himself. I was not like this man who was used to manipulating others — so why did it feel so good?
"I can only assume that when the body reaches its peak, the highest possible form, the metabolic age stops. In Stas's and Diana's case, that hasn't happened yet. Arthur, on the other hand, froze at the peak of eighteen years, as far as we can tell. Repeated tests in three years, and then in five, will either confirm or disprove this theory. If Arthur grows even stronger than he is now, he'll be able to defeat any vampire in combat — even an original or ancient one, by my calculations — though such an outcome seems unlikely. Still, it would be a good thing if that's how it turns out, because then the family will be even stronger, and that means fewer threats from outside."
Vladimir suddenly cut himself off, as if he had said too much, and quickly took a sip from his glass, smoothing over the pause for the others. "In any case, such grand speculations are hardly of interest at this table. Problems of the future are solved in the future."
With every sentence, Dr. Smirnov stirred greater dislike in me. Now the mask of the kind uncle who had taken five special homeless children under his wing had slipped. Everyone living under the roof of the old mansion was, in a sense, an asset — a promising investment that could pay off in the future. A hidden trump card, ready to throw itself into battle thanks to the carefully nurtured noble idea of protecting the family.