Free Blood Rites by Elaine Bergstrom

the effect it would have on the girl but she never anticipated the effect it would have on adults. Men could not help but look at it and desire the woman Hillary had almost become. Yet the body was unmistakably that of a child and her protective modest pose made their desire shameful. The expression was frightened and sad as if the subject knew every emotion she aroused and dreaded them.
    Helen was forced to remove it from her London exhibit. The American Gallery that would sponsor her New York show was given a preview look at it along with a number of other paintings. The owners were universally enthusiastic in their reception of the nude, making it the focal point of their publicity.

    After the London showing, Helen and Stephen visited Alpha, the Austra subsidiary in Ireland. While Stephen had his final meetings with the Alpha managers, Helen took long walks through the hills, reveling in the cloudy spring weather, the smell of moss, and the sea. From there, they flew to America—to fame, to death.

    III

    One hope sustained Philippe after Helen left Chaves. She had gone without saying good-bye!
    He had braced himself for the eventual heartbreak but not for his wounded pride.
    Or his hope.
    She hadn’t said good-bye, he decided, because she didn’t want to leave him. He had to see her, had to beg her if need be to give him more time. She had years, centuries, didn’t she? Oh, yes, he’d find a way to get her back.
    At night, he would lie awake, waiting to hear the front door opening and closing, the rusty hinge telling him she had returned. Then, despondent, he would recite over and over in his head all the words he’d say to hold on to her.
    He would tell her how he never even looked at other women, didn’t even think about them. How he dreamed of her on the nights she wasn’t with him, found himself stammering like an adolescent when she was. How, for the first time, he even got along with his daughter, pleased at her unconscious imitation of Helen’s walk and hairstyle and accent. How, the more passion Helen devoured, the more his desire grew.
    He would tell her all of this if only he could find her.
    Hillary gave him his first real clue.

    The girl had been hired to do a final cleaning of Stephen’s house. She was there when the movers came for the last of Stephen’s and Helen’s clothes.
    Hillary came home that evening carrying a package Helen had left for her. A wide green sash circled her small waist and a bright blue ribbon tied back her hair. The colors were festive, concealing her loss. “Tell me where her things have been sent,” Philippe demanded.
    “Why? So you can make more trouble. I’m surprised Senhor Austra hasn’t let you go. He must know about you and Helen.”
    “Of course he does. That’s why you were told to never discuss their relationship with anyone.” As Hillary considered this odd logic, Philippe added, “Have you ever seen me as happy as I’ve been these last few months?”
    “No, Papa,” she reluctantly admitted.
    “Would you like Helen to be with us always?”
    Hillary grinned, the child showing fully for a moment. “Really?” she said, and with no further hesitation, Hillary told him, “The men said the boxes were going to Maine, then something about an architect.”
    “Paul Stoddard?”
    “I think that was the name.”
    Philippe smiled. He remembered the Stoddard beach house well. Paul wouldn’t mind a surprise visit from an old friend.

EIGHT
    I

    Helen Wells’s life hung on the flat white panels supplied by a New York gallery. The watercolors she had done before she met Stephen, the more vibrant canvases completed during her changing, and the stunning realism and depth of her latest works were all there for the world to view. If the critics had been as trained in psychology as they were in technique, they would have known that some dramatic change had occurred in her. Instead they merely admired the result.
    The show was sponsored by a gallery located on the