“I thought so. Was your husband?”
“Of course. He was the patriarch. And Rainier. Eleanor, however, was like you. The family grotesque.”
“She was Daddy’s girl, wasn’t she? It’s his fault Eleanor wasn’t dead like Mommy.”
Koralin doesn’t say anything for a couple of minutes. Just stares at Aki. I wait. I count the molecules that make up the pearls in the necklace.
Finally, she says, “Not being alive ourselves, we can’t produce our own children. Jan conceived Eleanor with a living woman.”
“Was she pretty? Was she nice? Did he fall in love with her?”
A slight smile plays around her mouth likes she’s found a pleasant memory.
“Tell me about your father,” she says.
“Which one? I seem to have a lot.”
“The human one.”
I shrug.
“He was all right. I wasn’t an easy kid. He tried his best, but he never really took a shine to me.”
“What a surprise. And your other father?”
“Until an hour ago, I thought it was Lucifer.”
“That would be almost as good a family secret as ours.”
“So, Jan was in love with a pretty human and they had a girl. Then what?”
She looks at her hands and then starts.
“Jan was a romantic. He loved the woman and didn’t want their daughter to be Death Born. The Geistwald children receive the death bite at birth when the head of the family removes the umbilical with his teeth. Jan refused. He stole the child, and by the time he brought her back, it was too late for her to be reborn.”
“So you tortured and tormented Eleanor and her father every day of her life.”
“They deserved worse. I would have killed her, but she was still a Geistwald and there would have been talk.”
“Rainier was born right, though. And you weren’t going to let him get away.”
“Rainier was a good boy and I took care of him.”
“But he was still too stupid to live. Even with all your torture, I think Eleanor and Dad got the best of that deal.”
“My new Rainier will be born properly and become the new head of the family.”
She waves to him.
“I love you, dear. Hold on just a little longer. Daddy is on the way.”
“You just said you have to be Death Born at birth. Aki is at least twenty-five.”
“There are ways around that. Sorcerers who can remove his spirit and put it into the body of a newborn. I’ll personally make the child Der Todes Geboren and Rainier will be reborn.”
“But he’ll still be Aki. You keep choosing fuckups for sons.”
She leans forward on her seat.