Page 129 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

“Where were you before?”

“Boston, most recently. Before that a number of places. I have moved a great deal.”

“Your family’s held that house for a long time.”

“There has been somebody up there under one name or another since the seventeen nineties,” says Julian. “Everybody in this room could have told you that and several of them have.”

Rowan smiles slightly. “That’s not quite an answer.”

“It’s exactly the answer,” Julian says. “It is simply not the one you wanted, and I would rather be honest about the difference than pretend I haven’t noticed.”

Doris wins something at the other end of the bar and there is a small commotion about it.

I stand by the fire with a warm glass in my hand and love him so much it is difficult to remain upright. Because I know what I am watching. This is the same thing he has done to me since October—the tiny portion, the exact corner I happened to point at—and I have been furious about it in a hall and a hidden room and my own kitchen. And here it is being used, at last, in front of everybody, by a man who has walked into the town he has spent two hundred and thirty years being careful about and sat down.

“Okay,” says Rowan. “Let me try it the direct way, because I think you’d prefer that.”

“I would.”

“I think the man in the 1816 portrait at the Maritime Museum, the man in the 1851 engraving, the man in the Bangor paper in 1938, and the man sitting on this stool are the same person.” Rowan says it quietly and levelly and without any relish whatsoever. “I’ve thought that since the first week of October, and everything since has made me think it harder.”

The pub goes on. Wendell is talking to Peg about the dog again.

“I am not going to answer that,” says Julian.

“I know.”

“I would like you to understand that I am not declining because I think you are a fool, or because I think the question is absurd.”

“That’s generous.”

“It is not generosity. You’ve done very good work.”

Rowan studies him for a moment. “Then help me understand something. I’ve spent two weeks here and everyone in this room would apparently take a bullet before they’d let me get within ten feet of an old photograph. Why?”

“Because you keep asking about their neighbor.”

“That’s not enough.”

“Why not?”

“Because people don’t close ranks like this over nothing.”

“No,” Julian says. “They close ranks over people.”

Rowan leans an elbow on the bar.

“That’s a nice distinction.”

“It is also the correct one.”

“Then explain it to me.”

Julian is quiet for a moment.

“You have interpreted everything that has happened here as evidence of a conspiracy. Mrs. Libby will not give you records, so she must know what they contain. Mr. Goodwin will not let you film his bar, so he must know what I am. Mr. Finch objects to your camera, so he must have inherited some great secret from his father.” Julian glances down the bar. “Perhaps they do. Perhaps they don’t. I have no intention of answering for them.”

Arthur Finch, without turning around, raises his beer approximately an inch.