The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla A Pink Carnation Novel Read Free

might add. It was as if we were both afraid that absence might break the fragile thing we had built between us, as if we might tether ourselves together across the Atlantic through the magical invocation of the bristles of an Oral-B and a J.Crew cashmere-merino blend.
    Sometimes, I took comfort from the fact that my toothbrush was still there. Other times, in the twilight, when I was tired from teaching and alone in my little studio apartment, in those dreary moments when the sun has gone down but you haven’t quite turned on the lights, a purple plastic toothbrush seemed a very fragile object on which to build my future happiness.
    Nine out of ten dentists notwithstanding.
    Megan checked her watch and grimaced. “Twelve forty-five,” she said.
    It was our fifteen-minute warning. Tutorial started at one. Office space being scarce, especially for the junior of the junior, we both taught our tutorials in the café at the Barker Center, the vast redbrick building that housed the English department.
    I was a little jealous. The history department didn’t have a café. We just had a black plastic coffeemaker that no one ever remembered to clean.
    “At least we’re in your territory today,” I said, heaving my black leather satchel up on my shoulder.
    In honor of Halloween, we had joined forces. We were teaching Le Fanu’s Carmilla , and, of course, Bram Stoker’s Dracula . With particular reference to gender politics and class considerations. This was Hist and Lit, after all. If you couldn’t work the term “liminal” into your tutorial, you were doing it wrong.
    Megan made the sort of face I make when people assume I’m a Victorianist. “Not really . . . People have already worked Carmilla and Dracula to death. I’m looking at the antecedent narratives. Earlier references to vampires in popular fiction,” she translated.
    Lit people tend to assume that Hist people are a little slow. From their point of view, we’re practically social scientists, and everyone knows what those social scientists are like.
    “Yep, understood,” I said. “So, like, what?”
    Most of the works she mentioned were completely unknown to me. I let the catalogue of names wash over me as I crumpled my napkin onto my paper plate. I was trying to determine whether there was enough Coke left in my cup to justify taking it with me when I heard Megan say, “Then there’s The Convent of Orsino. . . .”
    The name acted on me like an electric shock. I nearly dropped my waxed-paper cup. “You’re writing about The Convent of Orsino ?”
    Megan stopped with her own straw halfway to her lips. “You’ve heard about The Convent of Orsino ?”
    Had I heard of The Convent of Orsino ?
    It was a long and rather improbable story, involving family feuds and lost jewels, so I decided to boil it down to essentials. “The author was one of Colin’s ancestors. Ancestresses. Whatever.” I couldn’t resist bragging a bit. “There’s a great big ornate first edition at Selwick Hall.”
    Megan choked on the dregs of her Diet Coke. “I can’t believe you actually got to hold a first edition of The Convent of Orsino .”
    “Phrases that don’t come up often . . . ,” I murmured.
    “This is great! You can help me out. I mean, Colin can help me out.” Common sense tempered academic fervor. Megan shot me a sheepish glance. “If that’s okay with you. I don’t want to monopolize your Colin time.”
    “It depends on what you want him for,” I said cheerfully.
    Colin was supposed to be in town for four days—a very short time by some reckonings, a very long time by others. I hadn’t known what to plan or not plan. In England, our days had simply meandered peacefully along: Colin had worked on the spy novel he was convinced would make him the next Ian Fleming, I had worked on my dissertation, and in the evenings we had watched silly movies or headed out to the Heavy Hart, ye olde local pub (trivia night on Tuesdays, chicken tikka on