“Ms. Renfield, it’s a pleasure to see you.” I stepped into the foyer, inside the grandiosity of the house, perfect in every detail.
“Bianca, please. No need for formalities, Katarina, is there?” The small, smiling woman took my coat and hung it in a closet off the hallway, as I slipped off my shoes.
I tried not to look at her, dressed as she was. A red dress – if one might call it that – covered her only to mid-thigh, and was open on each side, showing clearly that it was the only thing she was wearing. A delicate red tie cinched the piece of fabric around her waist.
I tried not to notice. I tried not to notice the enticing lines of bare skin, skimming over each hip. No, I told myself. Latin. We’re here for Latin, for fuck’s sake.
“Follow me, please. I’m afraid this house can appear a little… circuitous, the first couple of times. Would you like help carrying your books?”
She was perfect, and so I was perfect in return, deferring politely. I followed her own barefoot form through three twisting hallways to something that must have been the library. Ancient vigas crossed the twenty-foot ceiling, and a kiva fireplace sat roaring in the corner, illuminating the walls of books.
Bianca picked up a heavy volume that was laying open on the couch, noted the page, and closed it. I put down my own bag on one of the central tables. “What are you reading?”
She smiled. “Collected works of Shakespeare. I’m a bit of a fangirl, I’m not sorry to admit.”
I laughed, only because that’s not a sentence you expect to hear from a half-naked woman. “Which play are you reading?”
A shy smile crossed her lips, and she looked at the floor.
“Taming of the Shrew, obviously.” And then, as if suddenly regaining her composure, she straightened, and asked, “Can I get you a drink?”
She was such a perfect specimen of civility, I couldn’t deny her. “Please. Whatever you’re having.”
“Of course.” There was a hint of something in her tone, but I had no means of placing it. There was that smile again, that made me think… I don’t know what it made me think. It made me… not think.
She returned a moment later with two glasses of red. “I assume Malbec is alright?”
“Of course.” I took the glass and took a sip, trying not to think about why I was already mirroring her language. Language was supposed to be why I was here, in the first place. I cleared my throat, as she sat demurely on the other side of the table. “So I received a call from your husband, that you require a Latin tutor?”
She laughed. “He’s not my husband.”
“Boyfriend, then? My apologies for assuming.”
“Master. He is my Master.” Her expression turned serious. “And if he requires me to learn Latin, I will learn it.”
I heard the words, certainly. But it was like they weren’t computing. I stared at her. “…Master?”
“Will that be a problem, Katarina?” There was an edge to her voice, and it made me want to blush.
Was it going to be a problem to teach Latin to a woman who called a man “Master”?
I bit my lip. No. I was a professional, a scholar. It would not be a problem. “No. No, of course not. It’s just… an odd thing to call someone.”
That enigmatic smile returned. “He’s not just someone. He’s… everything.”
“You say that like you’re in love.”
“Oh, wildly. But then again, he gives me very little choice in the matter.”
I felt my brow furrow. “How can he not give you a choice?” I took another sip of the wine.
She cocked her eyebrows. “He’s very, very good.”
Those words seemed to stretch, dilate, and take on extra layers of meaning. I shook my head, like that might help me clear it. “I’m sorry… but, ‘Master’? Doesn’t that seem a little silly for a man to require that?”
“Nothing has ever felt more natural, I assure you. Now, let’s try and focus. Where do you normally start with new students?”
In my head, I knew she was right. Raspberry and chocolate notes danced on my tongue, but I just couldn’t let the words go. Words were my livelihood, my business. “But… Master. I mean, you’re not a slave.”
“Of course I am.”
The seconds dripped into the future, into an ocean of nothingness. I took a deep breath and swirled the wine in my glass, watching the legs as if I had never seen them before. “A slave?”
“It is only right to serve him,” she said, as if it were the most self-evident thing in the world.
The woman in front of me didn’t seem to be in any outward distress, but I had to ask. “You’re… you’re not here against your will, are you?”
Now it was her turn to frown. “My… will.” The words sounded like they were a foreign combination. “Certainly…” She paused, and considered. “Certainly not.”
I took another drink. I had never been in this situation before, but it’s one of those things you read about on social justice blogs. Not that I followed those. “You can tell me, Bianca. I know we don’t know each other that well, but I can help you.”
I reached across the table and took her hand in mine. It was warm, soft, and delicate.
“I could tell you,” she whispered. She leaned forward, her eyes sliding to the side, as if looking for a secret watcher. “I could tell you, if you would listen.”
“Tell me, please. Let me help you, Bianca.” I drained my glass and rested my other hand on top of hers. “He doesn’t own you. You’re not a slave.”
She shook her head, frowning. “No, that’s… no. That’s not it.”
“Listen, my truck is right out front. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
I watched her take a deep breath, and I swear I could see the air molecules themselves vibrate with the movement of her body.
“Anywhere I want to go?” she asked, timidly.
“Anywhere, sweetheart. I promise you.”
A wide grin spread across her cheeks. “Oh my God, it’s been so long since anyone asked me where I wanted to go, you know?” Then, more to herself than me, added, “I guess it seemed kind of redundant after the first month or so.”
I stood up, bringing her with me. “Let’s get you out of here.” I let my fingers trace down the smooth, bare skin of her hips. She was perfect. Like if Escher were God himself, the perfect shape of a woman in non-Euclidean geometry. Every curve warped into the next, into the roundness of the room, into the slope of the fireplace and the twisting flames.
I blinked. Reality did not become more realistic.
Looking back, that should have been my first clue.
She grabbed my hand, before running her fingers over my lips and the crest of my cheekbone. “Forgive my forwardness, but we don’t have much time.”
Her touch ran in streamers of color, dissipating with the edges of my own skin. It should have been horrifying, but it wasn’t. It was a comfort, to dissolve against her.
She grabbed my hand and pulled me back into the hallway. Her arm stretched unnaturally into a shape I couldn’t describe. “Anywhere I want to go, right, Katarina?”
The syllables of name bounced on her lips. It made me want to bounce something else on her lips. “Yes, of course, yes. Anywhere you want.” Time dilated along the warped space around us. “My drink… what was in that drink?”
She smiled, and it glowed in the dimness of the hallway. “I’m afraid I’m not as good as he is, but I’ve lived many lives before he found me and showed me my true purpose. I still have contacts at Merck that get me the supplies I need.”
Poison. I’ve been poisoned. Panic crawled over me like an army of ants, and I twisted out of her grasp.
“It’s not a poison. You are safe.” She paused. “… Mostly.”
I looked at her, and the hallway stretched in front of me. “Safe?” I tried to put all of my fear, both for myself and for her, into that one word, but the edges of my ego were dissolving into the air, like blue mist.
“You said anywhere I wanted to go, Katarina. Quickly, now. We don’t have much time.” She laced her fingers in between mine, though I have no idea how she found – because I couldn’t have. “The DMT will only last about fifteen minutes with this dose.”
She pulled me through the corridor, and another, and then another. All the while I was dripping away the blue mist that I knew was the boundaries of my own ego. The hallways all looked identical, in the way that abstract paintings all looked identical.
But the third or fourth turn, I was the same as her, connected by the warmth of her hand.
We were the same.
The truth of that statement hit me like a solid wall, and I stopped.
She stopped with me. “What’s wrong, Katarina?” There was an almost-condescension in her voice, like I was missing something. Something that should have been obvious.
“Your blood flows through my veins.”
She turned back and closed the distance between us, laying a small kiss against my lips. “Yes. He’s much better at this than I am; you’re going to love him.”
Did that answer my question? Did I have a question? I had studied for years, I was a teacher, an intellectual.
Love him.
The emotion shattered through my ribs, and I looked down at myself, expecting to see blood dripping onto the floor. There was none, just a stinging, empty ache in my chest. “Love?” That both was, and was not, my question. But it was like my mind couldn’t ask anything else.
“Of course.” Again, completely indisputable. “He will say that the moon is the sun and the sun is the moon, what he will have it nam’d, even that it is, and so it shall.”
I had a moment, that may have been a second or an hour, of lucidity. “This is crazy. Please, let’s get out of here. Please, Bianca.”
She reached to push a piece of my hair behind my ears, and the pleasure of that one feeling was overwhelming. “You told me you’d take me anywhere I wanted to go.”
I nodded, trying to decide if I could even escape this twisting house, much less make it to my truck.
“Katarina, the only place I want to be is at his feet.” Her expression was placid, content. “So let’s go.”