Maeve's Journal: From Paris to DC Scene Summary

Scene Summary: Maeve's Journal: From Paris to DC

Contents

Scene Summary • Script Summary • Translations • Trivia • Journal Photos

Maeve's Journal: From Paris to DC

Chronicle	DC Chronicle
Game Date	August 10 - November 23, 2015
Real Date	November 25, 2015 - February 8, 2016
Characters	Bella Colin Thomas Dominic Vaughn Ginevra Bianchi Hope Gutierrez Ian Kross Jean Claude Danut Jonathan Stewart Maeve Glaistig Marcus Vitel Pieter Van Reise Sean Fallon
Locations	Limbo Various parts of Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC
Previous Scene	We All Want to Go Home (Colin) All That Remains (Dominic) Tilting at Windmills (Ginevra, Maeve, Pieter) Clip Show: Timely Rescue (Hope) What Makes a Man IV (Ian) Letter: Jean Claude to Evelyn (Jean Claude)
Next Scene	Duty and Devotion (Bella) Undercurrents (Colin) Remember Remember the Fifth of November (Dominic) This is a Legitimate Place of Business (Ginevra, Jonathan, Sean) Hope for the Hopeless (Hope) Stories Are Made to Be Told (Ian) Contact: Jean Claude Danut (Jean Claude) Territorial Nature (Maeve, Pieter, Vitel)
Content Warnings	Ableism, Death, Domestic Abuse, Eating Disorders, Gore, Mental Illness, Rape, Self-Harm, Sexual Harassment, Substance Abuse, Suicide, Violence
Original Scene	Maeve's Journal: From Paris to DC

Maeve's Journal: Paris to DC is a scene from the DC Chronicle featuring Ginevra Bianchi, Maeve Glaistig, and Pieter Van Reise, with minor appearances by Bella, Colin Thomas, Dominic Vaughn, Hope Gutierrez, Ian Kross, Jean Claude Danut, Jonathan Stewart, Marcus Vitel, and Sean Fallon. It depicts Ginevra, Maeve, and Pieter traveling to DC and establishing a new home there while Maeve chronicles recent events.

Scene Summary

In the first entry, Maeve describes awakening in Paris and fleeing the city. She does not remember why she was in torpor, and notes that her only memories of the city are vague ones of spending time with Jean Claude; depressed, she has no other significant thoughts about the situation. She notes that she had thought Pieter was dead, and remembers Zen Pentecost telling her that some people come back from the dead, but not the ones she truly needs. She thinks back but also does not remember much about Pieter, whom she only knew for a short time in Raleigh. She relates Pieter telling her that there is a bloodhunt and that they had to run, which she feels makes sense. She describes running away and eventually being told by Pieter that Octavius Sage was dead, and writes that she is already grieving so much that she can't find it in herself to grieve for him, too.

In the second entry, Maeve decribes a strange, barren place that they stopped on their journey, unsure of its reality. She notes that Ginevra is worried about her and keeps trying to reassure her, but that she is in too much pain and this is why she was in torpor in the first place. She blames herself for using other people as shields to protect herself. She recalls Pieter telling her that she was gone for a year, and is afraid of how much more painful the next few years will be.

In the third entry, Maeve describes another unknown area on their journey. She writes about being awake more often than Pieter, leaving her alone to think about her memories, and describes waking up from a dream of being with someone when Ginevra tried to sponge her face because she was crying in her sleep. She tries to remember if this was how she felt the last time she grieved a loved on, but cannot, and thinks that she should be more prepared this time but is just as devastated. She thinks of someone who would be angry with her for her behavior, but that if he were here, at least she would know that things would be all right. She goes on to describe driving through the countryside with Pieter, who reminds her of her original home in Raleigh, and mentions that she is weak because she has been having trouble eating, noting that trying to eat keeps resurrecting traumatic memories. She closes the entry with the implication that she might prefer starving to death.

In the fourth entry, Maeve describes Pieter cutting off his own hand, which his mental illness had caused him to hallucinate about, and how upset she was, shouting at him loud enough to cause everyone pain. She wishes she could stop him from doing something like this again, but doesn't believe he was that impressed and notes that he probably knew she was frightened rather than angry because he has the same talents she and their sire do. She discusses being afraid that if she lost Pieter, she would no longer have anything left. She then describes making sure Pieter was able to hunt and grow his hand back, and an incident in which Pieter kissed her, causing her to cry, and then apologized for it.

In the fifth entry, Maeve is awake before the sun has gone down and writes about her awareness that it would be very easy for her to commit suicide. She remembers someone telling her that he wanted to be with her in spite of the danger, and blames herself for not stopping him.

In the sixth entry, Maeve describes Pieter suffering from a break with reality and being briefly unable to recognize her. She writes about how she considered not continuing to travel with him and Ginevra, believing that he would not miss her. She discusses feeling that maybe she is a hallucination that Pieter is having, or vice versa, and that she is not sure whether both of them are even alive. In spite of her feelings, she closes by noting that it would be cruel to abandon Ginevra, and that Pieter would miss her once he regained his senses.

In the seventh entry, Maeve bemoans not feeling that anything she writes makes sense, feeling that she is disconnected from events. She says that writing down someone's name would make his death real and therefore refuses to do so, but also recognizes that this makes her deluded in a similar way to Pieter. She says that she misses someone, and that it doesn't matter that she does because he is dead and doesn't care.

In the eighth entry, Maeve describes arriving in DC and going to court with Pieter, something that she had stopped thinking about before realizing that they needed permission from Prince Vitel to stay in the city. She notes that Pieter can't make political requests without help and that he stole her a dress so that they would be presentable. She mentions that court reminded her of Octavius and made her think about his probable reactions and the sadness of his death, although she still feels distant from it. She then discusses almost introducing herself as a member of Clan Ravnos to the Prince, but needing to instead remain undercover as a Toreador to protect Pieter. She regrets letting down someone who once told her to be herself next time, as well as using Octavius' name and reputation to gain favor. She mentions agreeing to do things for the Prince, and that Pieter predicted her new nickname, Songbird, shortly afterward.

In the ninth entry, Maeve describes singing at Limbo for the first time, noting that Ginevra and Pieter helped her, as did Pieter's new ghouls Jonathan and Sean. She describes asking Ginevra if she would like to quit, which was not well-received, and needing to do everyday things again, such as buying clothing. She also writes about the Prince visiting her, something she recognizes is an honor even if she is not invested in it, and about having to reveal her skill in Melpominee to him in order to secure Pieter's safety. She relates that the Prince asked her to make him feel longing, which was easy to do even though she didn't want to due to her current mourning. She remembers Dominic telling her long ago that she would have to feel an emotion in order to use her powers to share it with others, and assumes that the Prince will need to eventually fire her when he asks for a positive emotion she can't summon up.

In the tenth entry, Maeve describes oversleeping and having nothing to do, only noting that Ian is still dead.

In the eleventh entry, Maeve describes Pieter telling her about building something, wondering if he is actually doing so or just hallucinating it but glad that he has something to do. She writes that she convinced Ginevra to move into her own apartment to keep her from becoming too depressed, and also that she needed her own space, although she does not want to do anything. She mentions that she finds it difficult to do anything, and that she cannot watch television because it reminds her too much of someone else who used to. She also describes hearing a dog barking in a nearby apartment, which keeps waking her up during daylight by reminding her of Colin, who she knows will never come back after she banished him and who she says she would banish again if he did. She closes the entry by mentioning that she still can't fully remember what happened on her last night in Chicago.

In the twelfth entry, Maeve describes returning from Limbo to find that Ginevra had left a laptop in her dining room, and that its presence briefly made her think that it belonged to Ian, causing her to sit down on the ground when she realized that it wasn't true. She explains that Ginevra wanted her to use the laptop to be less of a shut-in. She goes on to write that if Ian had been there, she would have had to realize that he was a hallucination, and that Pieter has told her that this happens. She mentions giving Ginevra an apology card.

In the thirteenth entry, Maeve writes about using the laptop but immediately becoming more depressed when it allowed her to see evidence of events past. She mentions that she knows that Ginevra wants her to do something and that she is sorry for frustrating her, but doesn't know what else to do. She writes about reading about Ian online, saying that if he were here he would break the laptop.

In the fourteenth entry, Maeve has saved a black and white photograph from a tabloid of her and Ian Kross sitting in a restaurant, laughing and talking.

In the fifteenth entry, Maeve describes visiting Pieter's new restaurant The Pit, which she assumes is illegal and dangerous but is still proud of him for completing. She worries about his safety, but notes that his ghouls will help him. She mentions that the Pit is down the street from Limbo, which she knows means that Pieter is worried about her in return and doesn't trust the Prince. She agrees that she probably shouldn't trust him either, but that she doesn't care enough to bother. She writes that Pieter sometimes uses her original name Mary, and that it causes her to cry when he does.

In the sixteenth entry, Maeve describes Ginevra getting her a new cat, Bella, in the hopes of snapping her out of her depression. She discusses talking to Bella and how surreal it is to hear the cat give the same name that was once her own nickname. She describes Bella crawling into her lap and licking her tears off of her face, becoming a ghoul.

In the seventeenth entry, Maeve writes about performing at Limbo again, describing that she was glad to do a calm emotion, which she feels she can succeed at, as opposed to the emotion of fear that she performed previously which made her physically ill. She discuses not being used to using her powers so flagrantly and extensively, and notes that she only ever heard Dominic do it before but that it seemed more natural for him than for her. She wonders whether her voice is the same or eternally being overwritten by her powers, and thinks about what hard work singing is for her. She mentions that the Prince visited her again and that she thinks this is unusual, but does not know how to read him.

In the eighteenth entry, Maeve describes realizing that she is angry with Jean Claude for rescuing her and telling her the terrible news about the fall of Chicago. She describes him dragging her screaming onto his plane to Milan and says that she would have felt better if he had left her behind to die.

In the nineteenth entry, Maeve is sorry for her hostility toward Jean Claude, recognizing that she wanted to be angry because it was easier and safer than her other emotions. She thinks about sending Jean Claude something nice, but decides not to because she is afraid he would arrive in DC if she did, and she is unsure how to handle her grief if he did. She thinks that Pieter reminded her that words have power and that saying things aloud can make them real, and wonders if confessing her love to Ian was the reason that he died. She then describes spending forty-five minutes hallucinating an unknown person in the Pit and being comforted about it by Pieter.

In the twentieth entry, Maeve writes about the idea that time should allow healing from grief, noting that it is something that everyone says to her but that she has never actually found to be true. She wonders how much time they mean and admits that while her grief over Dominic's death has faded some over time, she doesn't think it will ever be enough for anyone she is mourning. She says that she feels selfish for having another love affair, writing that she had thought that perhaps it would be all right but has now learned better. She then writes about all the things she loved about Ian, including spending time with him, talking about their childhoods, and making fun of people at court, and mentions being able to choose to allow someone to touch and physically love her as especially important. She closes the entry by saying that she is the only one to blame for the situation.

In the twenty-first entry, Maeve describes receiving a letter from the Prince, calling her to Limbo to give her first private performance. She mentions leaving Ginevra to wait at the Pit while she went into the dark theater, where she bruised herself running into things before finding the Prince, who she thinks probably assumed that she could see in the dark like other Toreador, something she refused to learn when she was younger. She wonders why Princes behave this way and concludes that every one she has ever met does. She then describes finding the Prince in his balcony, where he asked her to perform the emotion of jealousy; she does not know why he requested it, except to note that she is sure it has nothing to do with her personally. She describes being exhausted and says that it took more effort than usual because jealousy is a difficult emotion when she has nothing to be jealous over. She mentions that the Prince touched her and that she knows she should be worried about it, but cannot muster up the effort. She then describes returning to Ginevra and seeing a movie with her, and how surreal it feels for both things to happen on the same night, concluding that she might have hallucinated either event.

In the twenty-second entry, Maeve has saved a black and white photograph from a tabloid of her and Ian Kross sitting in a bar. He has his arm along the back of the booth and is smiling, while she is looking over her shoulder toward the camera.

In the twenty-third entry, Maeve asks why she is always physically covered in evidence when someone she loves dies, concluding that it is a reminder to her of her mistakes.

In the twenty-fourth entry, Maeve wishes that she could remember the events of her last night in Chicago more clearly, although she is not sure whether or not she really wants to know. She describes being injured and disoriented, lying on the ground, and how she knew that Colin was about to attack Ian but was unable to get up to stop them, and then describes her fragmented memories of being covered in gore and ash and eventually being rescued by Jean Claude, who took her aboard his plane. She writes that she must have been wrong and that knowing more about it would not help her, and adds that she also remembers very little about the incident in Paris, which she attributes to being too depressed to care about anything that was happening. She recalls having seen Octavius and not being afraid of him, but nothing afterward until Pieter arrived. She guesses that the incident was probably very traumatic from these clues, and wonders whether being hurt really matters if she is unable to remember it. She then thinks of asking Pieter about forgetting, to which he gave several answers, eventually telling her that forgetting is good because it allows her to move on and let go of distressing events. She ends the entry once again implying that she is thinking about suicide.

In the twenty-fifth entry, Maeve describes Ginevra falling asleep in exhaustion while working in her apartment, prompting her to try to take better care of her because she looks so worn. She says that she has decided that she will now behave as if everything is all right so that she no longer upsets Ginevra or Pieter, and lists everyday tasks that she will do her best to perform. She adds that nothing feels meaningful, but that she can still do it and is all right now.

In the twenty-sixth entry, Maeve admits that she is not actually all right.

In the twenty-seventh entry, Maeve describes having a severe hangover, noting that Pieter's assumption that she would feel better afterward was incorrect. She writes about meeting Hope Gutierrez, an event that was surprising for both of them as they were not aware of one anothers' existence. She mentions that it feels strange to discover that Ian had childer since he never told her about them, and that she likes Hope and was glad to comfort each other with their mutual grief, although she also notes that Hope is very like Ian in her violent response to emotions. She goes on to describe being ill after drinking and then says that it is unfair that she keeps discovering new things about Ian, making it impossible for her to move on. She relates that Hope told her that hoping tomorrow will be better is the reason everyone keeps trying, but that it feels too hard for her to try anymore.

In the twenty-seventh entry, Maeve describes Ginevra being anxious over her because she recently broke her leg at Limbo while performing for the Prince. She relates the story of arriving only to be asked to sing the emotion of love, which she wanted to refuse due to the pain of it but decided not to in order to keep Pieter safe. She speculates about why the Prince would ask for this, but remembers Octavius telling her that all elders are unique and therefore she will probably never know. She describes weeping during her performance and writes that she thinks that other vampires forget that she can hear herself and is affected by her own powers, and writes that she had to pretend that Ian was not dead in order to be able to perform, something that is dificult and painful because she does not forget things as easily as Pieter does. She remembers Octavius telling her that she could be a better performer if she only stopped crying at these moments and is grateful to the Prince for not mentioning anything, although she also remembers the Prince touching her with Obtenebration before leaving. She then writes about being so emotional that she ran away from the balcony in the box, eventually falling on the stairs and breaking her leg, and about returning home with Ginevra, who became so angry when she refused to eat that she threw a blood pack. She repeats that she thinks that Ginevra should no longer be a ghoul for her own happiness, but that she can't take Ginevra's choice about it away from her, and closes out with the mention that the Prince sent her flowers afterward.

In the twenty-eighth entry, Maeve describes Ginevra trying to get her to do things by leaving flyers and schedules for activities around the apartment for her to notice, something she understands but does not believe she can bring herself to respond to. She wishes that she knew how to explain to Ginevra that she does not feel that there is any point in her trying and that the only thing she can do is singing, which she doubts Ginevra wants her to do most often. She acknowledges that she knows Ginevra wants her to start dating again and that she favors Chas Voyager, but writes that she has a uniform lack of interest in everyone. She then describes a flyer for a carnival that Ginevra left for her, which she is now looking at.

In the twenty-ninth entry, Maeve writes about her feelings that Ian's death is unfair, saying that it makes no sense for someone so old and powerful to be dead if she is still alive and thinking about all the years that he survived before she met him. She admits to being angry and pushes back against Pieter's idea that she has to accept reality. She goes on to say that it would make much more sense if she had died instead and that she has always been ready for this to happen, and remembers Ian angrily scolding her about making her life matter to repay those who have fought to help her. She ends by saying that she cannot do this because nothing makes sense to her anymore.

In the thirtieth entry, Maeve repeats a traditional story that Dominic once told her about a woman with a magical voice who was able to use it to create emotions, so happy and comfortable that she never used it in anger; the woman was attacked by white men and thereafter screamed in anger, which was so powerful that it destroyed her body and became the voice of the wind in the mountains. She is unsure whether the story really is traditional or whether Dominic made it up himself, saying that she never knew what about him was real. She describes waking up already thinking about the story, and says that while she could ask Pieter about it, she won't so that she doesn't have to speak to anyone this evening.

Script Summary

The script summary for this scene pares it down to only dialogue and action directions, allowing for a quicker and easier read through what was actually said and done by the characters. Click on the "Expand" tag to the right to view the entire script summary for this scene.

Maeve's Journal: Paris to DC Script Summary

ENTRY ONE.

MAEVE: I woke up in Paris and then we ran away.

That's all of it, isn't it? That's as good a way to describe it as anything else. I woke up and then we ran away.

I don't remember why I was asleep. I don't remember anything except a kind of sleepwalking, Jean Claude and all the others, taking me places, saying things, touching me - like reflections in a mirror. Nothing important. Nothing that mattered. I was too far away to hear them.

I didn't expect to see Pieter ever again. He was supposed to be dead - that's what they told me. That's what they told me about a lot of people. Wasn't that what Zen said, in the garden? "They don't come back," she said. "Not the ones that matter. People come back sometimes, but not the ones you need."

I don't remember much about Pieter. I never knew him very long. Like a lightning flash, like everything else from the carnival - there and then gone, leaving behind afterimages that might or might not be real. He said a lot of things, but I don't remember those, either - just, at the end, we have to go, and also bloodhunt.

And that I understand, that fits perfectly with Pieter. We have to go. There's a bloodhunt. (Of course there was, he was in Paris of all places. I should have scolded him but I didn't remember how and he wouldn't have listened anyway.)

And then we ran away, ran into streets and alleys and then cars and then planes. We're still running. It's a good thing, running. It sucks up all the thought and breath and being in you until there's nothing left but heart beating and legs moving, until the whole world is in the hollow rasp of your throat. It leaves things behind.

Eventually, he told me: Octavius, dead. I should care about that, I can feel myself wanting to care, but it can't rise to the surface, can't find its way out of me. I started crying when he told me, I cried my heart right into my throat, but I wasn't crying for Octavius, not for anyone on this side of the cold, deep ocean, not for anyone who can care about it anymore.

Soon we'll have to stop running. Everyone has to some time. I don't know what will be left of me once I catch up to myself again.

ENTRY TWO.

MAEVE: We are somewhere bleak, somewhere with thin barren hills and windy voices spilling off them, and cold that eats through you and out the other side. I don't know where it is. I don't even know if it's a real place, or just what I brought here with me.

Ginevra is worried about me, and I feel sad for that. She keeps looking for something to say: things will be all right, or don't worry, or you'll see. She is too kind for me. She wrings tears out of me like a dishrag.

This is why I was asleep, I think, this, the not wanting, the hurting. I wanted to be no one for a while. No one doesn't hurt; no one doesn't hurt anyone else. No one is just no one.

No one doesn't have to admit her faults, to look back on her sins. No one doesn't have to see herself hiding in someone's arms, using them as a shield. No one doesn't have to hear him say that it's all right, that he doesn't care about the danger; it's all right now, ringing over and over in memory, over and over and over.

It's all right, Ginevra says whenever I look at her. She wasn't there; someone must have found her and put her on the plane, so that she could brush ash out of my eyes and tell me that it's all right. She didn't see it, in the end.

Pieter says I was gone for almost a year, asleep, no one. This is me, one year: red-eyed, glass-hearted. If that was a year, imagine how long the next ones will be.

ENTRY THREE.

MAEVE: Wherever we are, it is full of ghosts. They rise up out of the ground like foggy-breathed memories. It's the flat ground, I think; flat and grassy and endless, like the fields around Chicago, the last ones.

Pieter wakes up several hours after I do, and falls asleep several before. I lie there, looking at nothing, but unfortunately thinking about nothing is not an option. I am filled up, crowded out; there is no room in me for anything that is not memory.

Once I dreamed that I was next to him and I woke up and it was only Ginevra, trying to clean my face because I had cried in my sleep, and then I cried even harder and we had to throw away the shirt entirely. I told her I was sorry, which is very, very true.

Was it like this before? I can't remember. I feel that I should be able to remember, that I should be able to do this. The entire world ended once before. This time I even knew it was coming. Shouldn't I be more than this, more than blood in my eyes and down the back of my throat, shouldn't I? Shouldn't I be able to be stronger, to have built myself armor so that I could still be myself, be a person, be something?

He would say that. Probably angrily. "Practice and all." And he'd sneer, and then he would pretend he didn't know why I am crying again now, and smudging things, and Ginevra would have to launder another shirt, but she'd finally be right and things would be all right again.

Instead I'm still in the back of a forty-year-old sedan while Pieter bumps us along a highway to no place for no reason. He is humming, something that teases and maybe almost is remembered. He reminds me of a warm place, just a small one, just a little bit of something that isn't terrible: a piece of home. I can't properly enjoy him, but I'm sure he would like the idea.

I'm weak, these days; I need to eat more. Pieter keeps asking me if I'm going to. It's stupid, so much of the so many stupid things I am, not to eat, but when I think about eating I think about teeth, and then I remember teeth, and I remember that terrible snarling sound, and I am under the black sky and he has died and I am wearing everything that is left across my skin.

Maybe if I never eat again, I'll just fade away, gently, and become one of the ghosts on this highway. I can't say I would mind. Memories do not have memories.

ENTRY FOUR.

MAEVE: Pieter cut off his hand today. Just came around a corner and it was gone, all half-wrapped up in a dirty piece of cloth that didn't really help very much at all, looking pale and confused. I lost a few moments, as I am always losing them, scattered around like all the other pieces of me, but I'm told Ginevra kept me from falling down. I can't remember if I told him I was sorry, but I should have; it was selfish of me. It's his hand.

He said he'd realized that it wasn't his, so it had to go. He said it in a way that made it sound like he was confused that it hurt and was bleeding everywhere, like this was not part of the plan. I can't remember what I said, although I think it probably had something to do with that being a very confusing reason for cutting off a hand.

I think I also shouted at him, loud enough that Ginevra had to cover her ears and sit down, loud enough to surprise me - I had forgotten what I sounded like above a whisper. I made it sound angry, so that he would hear it, so that he would not do anything like this ever again, but I don't know if he understood; he has that voice, too, the one that we all three had, and he knows it's a liar. I wasn't angry with him. I was afraid. I was so afraid that I thought perhaps it would overflow out of my eyes and mouth and drown me and there would be nothing else left at all.

Because of course that is what would be left, if Pieter cut off too many of his limbs. Nothing. Nothing else at all, nothing ever again.

We took him somewhere, I don't remember, so that he could find someone to donate enough blood to grow most of it back, and he said something the way he does, that he would make sure to ask me first next time so that he could get my expert opinion. Ginevra drove us out of town so he could lie in the back with me, feeling cold but at least solid, at least there.

He kissed me, and put his all-there hand on the back of my neck, and then I cried, why can I never stop crying, I cried and cried and put myself in the far corner of the car where I am now, while he's asleep on the other side.

"Sorry," he said. "I forgot."

ENTRY FIVE.

MAEVE: It is four o'clock in the afternoon and I am awake and I can almost hear the sun on the other side of these curtains, thick and brown, between it and us. I could open them with a single hand, although they are heavy and I would have to pull very hard.

It is four o'clock and I am awake and all I can think about is him saying It doesn't matter and I don't care about the danger and My decision to make, and all I can hear is myself not telling him no, not saying something, not doing anything.

And I love you, that's there also.

He was wrong. I let him be.

I am going back to the other room, where there are no curtains, and where no one can hear me.

ENTRY SIX.

MAEVE: Tonight, Pieter didn't know who I was. Or, more accurately I think, he didn't know what I was. We had stopped somewhere, in Maryland? Virginia? And he had gone to eat, but when he came back he just looked at me, and he didn't seem to understand what I was saying to him, or to want to understand it. He looked at and around me, and he put out a hand and touched my shoulder, but in that way that you touch things in dreams, to see what they are made of.

Luckily, he had not forgotten that Ginevra existed, so she was able to get him back into the car. He stared at me for hours.

I almost didn't go with them, almost. It would have been very easy; certainly, Pieter would not have stopped me. I could have become part of Maryland or Virginia. And I remember thinking that: good. He wouldn't miss me. He wouldn't even realize I was gone.

I remember thinking that this would make a lot more sense than anything else. Maybe one or both of us is just a dream; we have not been together since the month I was made and maybe one of us dreamed the other into being. Maybe I am dead, buried in the ground in Paris, and this is just a very sad afterlife. Maybe Pieter is still dead, ash on the wind in Raleigh, and I have brought him with me because there is nothing else left for me to do.

But then I thought: where would I go? And the answer is nowhere, again. There is nowhere to go. I couldn't be part of Maryland or Virginia, where real people are really alive. I don't have the ghostliness for it.

Also, it would have been very cruel to Ginevra.

About an hour ago, Pieter said, "Oh, there you are," and that was that. It would also have been cruel to him.

ENTRY SEVEN.

MAEVE: Nothing I write down makes any sense anymore. It's just a lot of words, things that are happening, things that did happen, none of them strung together very much. Of course, that makes it perfectly sensible for everything from my perspective, but probably not from anyone else's.

I say everything in circles, half-truths, partial reflections, things that only hint about what they mean. Nothing is just there. I'm not just there.

This is very easy to understand, too. If I wrote down his name, wrote it down all three letters and straight up-and-down, angry lines, it would become real, and then everything else would be real, too, and I would be in a real world that was made of too many silver lines of sadness to bear. Maybe I'm more like Pieter than I realized; thinking I can make reality into something else, that if I just want it hard enough, just want it, it'll be so.

I am made of holes, these days, and so is everything else.

I miss him. I miss him, and it doesn't matter; he can't care about it anymore.

Ginevra says we will be in the city soon. She means it well, but she pronounces it like it's all right.

ENTRY EIGHT.

MAEVE: It was a shock to go to court again, like being thrown into cold water. I had completely forgotten that court existed. I think I thought it was something that happened to other people now.

We had to go ask for permission to stay, of course. That's always the rule. And Pieter, well, Pieter can't go in front of Princes by himself. We tried letting him do that once before, and look where that got him.

So we put the sedan somewhere and Pieter "found" a dress that he said matched my eyes and was really so sideways and threadbare it was barely a dress at all, and we went to Elysium to see the Prince. Court reminded me of Octavius, and of the way he would have been too shocked to speak if he had ever seen me in a found dress. It was strange, to think of him and know that he will never give me that look again, all love and disapproval and control. A little sad, but mostly only strange. I had started thinking of him like a mountain: an always-thing, impossible to move, impossible to fight.

I suppose he deserves better than that, deserves some sadness from me. Certainly he would have been very sad if our positions were reversed. But there is no room left in me for any more sadness. I'm full at the moment.

For a few mad seconds I thought that maybe I was introducing myself as just me, as just what's left of me: I could tell the Prince that here were Mary and Pieter, a Ravnos carnival of two, just looking for somewhere to stay for a little while. He told me to do that, next time I reinvented myself: just be Mary. Apparently I can't even do that much for him.

But one Ravnos resident, perhaps; two, with no one to vouch for them, never, not in Washington, DC. So I made my pretty speeches and I curtsied in my found dress and I explained that Pieter is a fine upstanding citizen, when he is not decapitating himself. All preamble, all unimportant; an hour of nothing in pretty tones, an hour feeling less and less real every second.

It's even more unfair to Octavius, I suppose, that I used his name so much to make sure I was not ignored. Well, he's certainly been his share of unfair to me. I doubt he minds now.

The Prince reminded me a little of him, all dark and silent and made of power, like a generator engine, humming just loud enough for everyone to hear him. He was very kind, all things considered: Pieter can stay, as long as he behaves, and if he doesn't behave, well, it's only me that will bear the blame. Very kind, considering. And very fair.

I gave away a lot of unreal things: promises, owings, things for Harpies to write in their books and in so doing make them into something tangible. Little pieces of me, really, and what are those worth? I'm not getting any use out of them.

When we left, Pieter asked what he wanted, and I told him that he wanted me to sing, and he said, "They'll call you Songbird. They'll put it on all the posters."

ENTRY NINE.

MAEVE: I sang tonight. I spent all week pretending that I wasn't going to, but contrary to Pieter's worldview, this did not stop it from happening.

The Prince's club is very nice, all red plush and velvet and dark polished wood and things to remind you of where you are and who is around you. Pieter found me a band - they're very nice, I think one of them is named Jonathan - and Ginevra took charge of them, as she does with everything. I asked her the other night if she would like to go home, and she looked at me as if I were out of my mind. I can't imagine she's having much fun, but then again I can't really imagine fun, either.

I had to buy real clothes. I suppose being dead is nice for some things; I never have to worry that my measurements have changed. I ordered whatever people are wearing right now, and didn't much look at it when I put it on. Pieter helped; he said not that one, not that one, don't look that much like a Toreador. He doesn't like the word; he spits when he says it.

The Prince came to see me, just before the show; an honor, probably, although I was all part of the faded backstage room and I wasn't sure he would even see me. He thanked me for being so accommodating, and said he looked forward to it. He has very dark eyes, too dark to remind me of anyone else's, which was nice in its way.

Ginevra gave me a card after he was gone; his order for the night, as it were. I had to tell him all the things I could do, you see, or else there was nothing to give him in return for his kindness: one little wandering girl with a brother only half-here and a dead sire does not amount to much. So he asked for this and that and listened to me and kept his eyes half-open and listened, and then I was allowed to go home, and that is really all I can ask for anymore. Let me go home. To where, I'm not sure.

Longing, said the card. I suppose maybe he plans to dangle something in front of someone tonight, and he wants them to know what it is to want something. Or maybe he just saw it in me, like the too-shiny fabric of my dress: something fragile that should never be seen.

I almost left again, called and told Pieter to get into the car and drive very far away because we would be in oh, so much trouble. But that wouldn't have been fair to him. He is trying very hard.

That's the secret in the voice, the one Dom taught us so long ago: all the feelings in the world, but they have to flow through you first. You cannot make someone feel love if you don't know what love feels like. You cannot make someone long without longing yourself.

I know how to long, that was not difficult. I was almost blind with red tears by the end from longing so much. A cruel thing to ask of me, but maybe, like everything else the Prince does, fair. He is dead. The least I can do, the very least I can do, so little it is almost nothing, is to wish he were not until those tears are exhausted.

I imagine it will be a long time.

There was a lot of applause, and I was sent a dozen roses and a thank you card from the Prince, which was full of very nice nothing.

I wonder what I will do when the card says Joy.

Well, if he fires me, at least it won't be a surprise.

ENTRY TEN.

MAEVE: I slept in tonight, didn't wake up until five o'clock. The sun goes down earlier now, so it was almost dark already. Nothing to do and nowhere to go: like every night.

It's a Tuesday. He's still dead.

ENTRY ELEVEN.

MAEVE: Pieter is building something. Or so he says. Maybe he's building nothing and just thinks it's something. Maybe something is there and he just thinks he built it. I shouldn't be so hard on him. The benefit of the doubt. It's good for him, that he's doing something. It makes him smile.

I finally convinced Ginevra to move into her own apartment instead of sleeping in mine. I know she just moved into one downstairs, although I think she thinks she's being sneaky, but that's all right. She needed somewhere that was for her, and to not see me every time she walks through a room. It's getting so she doesn't breathe right, catching her breath like that every time. A small way to be a little kinder to her, I hope.

I also need somewhere that is for me. Not to do anything, like Pieter, or make anything. Just to be in. A closet to be put away in. I suppose I should be doing something, anything, but instead I just look at things; little parts of the world, still here after all this time. They seem unfair, somehow.

I tried to put on the television a few nights, for company, but now I leave it off. It hurts too much. It feels like emptiness, noise that underscores that there is no one here but me, no one to irritably wander through its channels, to complain that money can't buy anything decent to watch anymore.

Someone in one of the apartments next door has a dog. Sometimes I hear it, and a few times, when she left it locked in at home while she went to work, it whined and cried and I woke up, bolt upright in the middle of the day, with my hands over my eyes.

If Colin came to my door tonight, I would tell him to go away and never come back. He knows that, and so he will not come here. That's why he ran away, on the black-sky night, covered in blood and blackness all over the both of us.

That and the screaming, of course. I'm sure it was very bad. I can't remember anymore.

ENTRY TWELVE.

MAEVE: When I came home from the Prince's club tonight, all tired feet in too-tall shoes and tired throat with too many thoughts, there was a laptop on the dining room table.

I thought, I really thought for a moment, that I would see him. Coming out of the other room, rumpled, scowling. Muttering about reports. Wanting to know where I'd been, what I was wearing.

Instead it was only Ginevra, who wanted to tell me about how she had set it up for me so that I wouldn't be, in her words, "All closed away in here."

I suppose if it had been him, I would have been worse than just sitting down on the floor for a moment. I would have been all the pieces of me again, all broken apart and flung around the city, sad, dim stars without any connecting lines.

Because, of course, he wouldn't be real. I think that would be the worst thing of all: to see him and know that he wasn't real.

Pieter says we see what we want to see, that if we want hard enough, there it will be.

I sent Ginevra an apology card.

ENTRY THIRTEEN.

MAEVE: The laptop was a trap, which of course I knew as soon as Ginevra brought it here, and she knew it, too, only she didn't think of it the same way. She wanted me to do something with my time; watch movies, or listen to music, or talk to other lonely people in faraway lonely places. She even tried to say something timid about a meetup app, although she backed hastily away from it when I looked at her. She's only twenty-three.

Mostly, she wants me to stop what I'm doing, which is of course nothing, which is looking at things and trying to fill myself up with them until everything else is crowded aside for a while. I'm sorry for frustrating her. I don't know how to help her. I asked her again if she wanted to go home and she hugged me.

The problem with a computer is that it's just another thing to look at. And inside it are a thousand thousand other things, and in among them is everything you could possibly be looking for.

I didn't really mean to find him, but he was there. Like Pieter said: what we want to see.

There are so many pieces of him left behind. They add up to nothing.

If he were here he'd break the damn thing.

ENTRY FOURTEEN.

A grainy black-and-white photograph showing Ian and Maeve sitting at a table talking has been pressed between the pages. Ian is leaning toward Maeve, who is laughing. The headline is mostly cut off and reads, "All Smiles--"

ENTRY FIFTEEN.

MAEVE: It turns out Pieter was right after all. He did build something: in fact a whole building of something, in the way where he didn't actually build it but he did lease it and fill it and furnish it and truly for Pieter that is a kind of building. It probably violates several health codes, but I told him it looked nice.

I worry about him; there's open flame in that kitchen. He says the ghouls will handle it. I didn't even know he had ghouls. I haven't been out of the apartment much.

His new place is just down the street from the Prince's club; if you walked for a moment after you left, you'd go right by it without realizing. That's how I know he's worried about me, too, although he says things about good business and trade secrets and not paying rent. I suppose it must be strange for him, for me to be somewhere he can't go. It was never like that when we were new.

I doubt he'll ever trust the Prince, or anyone else at the club. I can't exactly argue with him. I wouldn't trust them, either, except that the phrase seems like so much nothing to me right now: like trusting faces in a window, about to vanish and never be seen again. If I closed my eyes for long enough, they would be gone when I opened them again.

Pieter put his thumbs against my eyelids and held them open last night. "Don't hold them closed too long," he said. "It makes me nervous."

He told me tonight that it's a shame I can't eat, because I'm missing out on the best barbecue in DC. I said he can't eat, either, and he said, "Of course not, Mary-Mary, that's not the point. I already know I'm great."

He does that, sometimes, calls me Mary. He never really learned the other name.

Sometimes when he does I go home and cry a little more.

ENTRY SIXTEEN.

MAEVE: There is a cat in my apartment. Ginevra, again. I heard her when I woke up, wandering around its edges, wondering to herself in little cat-sounds: what's this? what's this? Good question, cat.

Ginevra was also there and I just looked at her. I wasn't trying to make her feel sad, just looking to see her, but she put her binder in her arms like a shield and said that I needed company and I didn't have to actually take care of the cat and she sounded so tired that I almost cried. I hugged her and we sat on the kitchen floor for a while. She deserves to go somewhere real, Ginevra; she could be happy somewhere. I can feel it in her, wanting to come out, but here she is with me and there is no ceiling in my apartment high enough for happiness.

The cat is very small, not a kitten, just not very large, much like me. I asked what her name was and she said a noise I can't write down here, but she meant Most-Pretty. My cat is named Bella. I tried to be surprised but instead I just said all right.

Near the end of the night sometimes she will climb up the very short length of me and sit in my lap and lick my face, because she likes the coppery taste. Someone else did that, once.

I have an immortal cat with my own name in my apartment. That probably can't be real.

ENTRY SEVENTEEN.

MAEVE: I was right; his name is Jonathan. The other one is Sean. They play several instruments and they seem very pleasant, although I didn't talk to them too much tonight. I get the impression that they still haven't quite gotten used to it all, and I know that's easier to do alone.

The Prince asked for Calm tonight. It was nice of him. I was afraid he would ask for Fear again, like he did last time; a terrible thing to ask for. I remember shaking like a leaf, my hands too fluttery to hold a microphone, and I remember glassy quick-moving eyes in the audience. I ruined poor Ginevra's night by not holding down anything to eat.

Calm is much better. I am always looking for it anyway. It is an island that I always believe I can probably reach, if I just reach hard enough; nothing higher, nothing brighter, but calm I can probably do.

I'm not used to hearing myself, not like this. There are two of me, three, four, even five, all of us the same voice and all of us different. I heard Dominic do it once, but for him it made perfect sense; there was always too much of him to fit inside a single body. In me (or outside of me, wherever it is), it feels like a stretching and thinning, until I am paper-thin enough for light to shine right through me. All of me together, and we cannot make a single person anymore.

I wonder sometimes, after, which one of those voices came back and is with me now. Is it always the same one? Am I always a new voice, a new throat, every time? If I don't speak, if I say nothing as I do many nights, am I nothing then? This is the sort of thing Pieter told me not to think about. I suppose he'd know.

It's hard, being five instead of one, being a harmony where really I barely know a single melody line anymore. It's exhausting; not surprising, I suppose. Singing is hard work even when you don't mean it, let alone when you do it as if there were five of you, and each one is drowning in it.

Calm was good. I was exhausted, but exhausted in calmness, in serenity, in smooth nothing for an hour or so. It was like unbeing, like sleeping; a strange contradiction, working so hard in order to pretend to be nothing at all.

It's all very strange, doing these things, using all the hidden, rusty parts of me on a stage for everyone to see. I spent so long hiding them, desperate to keep from being found out; it could feel sacrilegious, maybe, but it doesn't. It feels right. This is something that belongs only to me. So that's something small, I suppose, just a little thing, but a little thing that is more than nothing at all.

The Prince came to see me again tonight, and I think perhaps that is unusual. He told me it was very lovely and thanked me. I said he was very welcome. I wonder how he can even hear me; the air around him always sounds as dark and dead as the inside of the ground.

I sent Ginevra off with Jonathan and Sean, to find something to eat. She was anxious that I could find my own way home. She needn't worry about it. There's nowhere else to go.

ENTRY EIGHTEEN.

MAEVE: I am angry with Jean Claude. I realized it tonight. I am very angry with him and I'm glad he's across an ocean where I can't scream at him until both of us are raw and bloody for it.

He could have just left. He didn't have to catch me, drag me by one wrist into his plane, clap a hand over my mouth because I wouldn't stop screaming. He didn't have to tell me that everything was gone and everyone was gone as if I didn't already know. He didn't have to take me to Milan and dress me up like a doll and stroke me as if everything were all right, as if nothing had ever happened.

He could have just left. He could have left me there in Chicago, where everyone has always known I couldn't have gotten out on my own.

He could have just let me stay there.

That would have felt better than this.

ENTRY NINETEEN.

MAEVE: I'm very sorry I wrote that last night. It was unfair. Jean Claude just wanted to help me, and I would be dead if he hadn't. He would be very upset if he knew I ever thought that.

I suppose I just wanted to be angry with someone. I wanted to be angry, because when you're angry, you can't be anything else. Not sad, not tired, not stripped paint-bare and empty. You're just angry. It's warm, like a fire that you know can't last very long.

I also wanted to be angry with someone that wasn't me, so poor Jean Claude, always the one to be blamed. I should send him something nice, a letter, to tell him I'm all right. Or maybe not. Then he might come here, and I don't want to see him. (That's cruel, I know, he would be very hurt, but I don't want to see him. It would be like the city following me, all the last few living souls of it here remembering together.)

Words have power, even just the ones written down, fixed and dead on a page. Pieter reminded me of that, an echo of something we were both told a long time ago: words have power, words matter. The things you say are real things, sometimes, always. Don't curse someone you don't want to be well and truly cursed; don't tell someone you love them if you don't want it to be true.

If I hadn't said that to him, would he still be alive? Is that the magic word, love? If I didn't let it out, if I just kept it locked up forever, so that it had no power to be gained from leaving my mouth, would it have made a difference?

For almost forty-five minutes tonight I thought there was someone else in Pieter's restaurant besides him and me, someone I kept seeing only out of the corner of my eye. They looked familiar, but I could never quite tell who they were, and I never quite had the moment to stare and find out. Someone tall? A man, maybe?

It turned out no one was there at all. Pieter looked with me, just to be sure, with that sharp frown on his forehead that said he already knew the answer but he knew he would have looked, too, if it had been him. He hugged me and told me to go home for the night, and said, "Don't worry, nobody ever got hurt by someone that wasn't there."

ENTRY TWENTY.

MAEVE: Time is supposed to make things feel better. Or I suppose not better, there's no better. Different. More faraway, like time is a tunnel and we are all moving away down it, hoping things will fall out of sight behind us.

I've always heard that, that time would make things different. Everyone said that, when I was new, when I sometimes looked up at the black skylights and thought about how I would never see the sun again, even though I had made that choice willingly. Octavius said it, said it for a year, as if it were inevitable and I was only being difficult by not agreeing sooner. Stephen said it, when we ran across the country like frightened rabbits, when I couldn't even let him touch me without shivering out of my skin. Jean Claude said it on the plane out of Chicago, while there was still ash cooling on my skin: don't worry, you will forget in time. Ginevra is saying it now - not out loud, she knows me too well for that, but in the way she just waits, watching, hovering, waiting for the moment of time to turn.

How long is time? How long is it supposed to be before everything changes, before things are different? I feel like I have always been waiting for the turn in time, and it has never come. I know that isn't true; some things, the old ones, are more faded now, softer, things I can look at without feeling sharp edges, but it still feels true. I don't know when they became just that little bit out of focus. I wish I had been awake, this past year; then that younger me could feel like this now, and by now I would be someone different, someone not feeling like I had been filled up with powdered glass.

I also wish there were someone else to blame for it, anyone, but there isn't. There's only me. I was selfish; I am selfish.

I was already happy, once before, a long time ago, when I had a family that was bigger than just poor dazed Pieter and we had a home that was warm and dusty and full of all of us. I was so happy then that I didn't even recognize it, the way a fish can't recognize the water it swims and breathes. That was my time. That was my fair share.

No one gets more than one chance. I think maybe that's the reason. I should have known that. I shouldn't have tried to take something that wasn't mine.

But I thought maybe, maybe it would be all right. It was so unfair the first time, wasn't it? It was so short, and it ended in so much pain, and there was so little left afterward: just me, the littlest thing of all. I thought: maybe. Maybe it would be all right to try again. Maybe that wasn't the end.

I loved arguing about the television and who was watching what, and I loved playing pool in a poolhall and pretending to drink there and making fun of reporters behind our glasses and fooling him into thinking I didn't know how to play, and I loved being drunk and telling stories about our childhoods and lying on the floor like great overgrown housecats, and I loved trying to match our clothes and complaining that he wouldn't choose a tie and being offended when he didn't like a dress, and I loved smiling for everyone at court and knowing that later we would whisper things we didn't like about our families and then we would laugh about it.

I loved feeling someone touch me again, just because I said so, because I said it was all right, and I loved being kissed and feeling like I could swallow the world whole, and I loved just sitting or lying or leaning together and being warm, and I loved feeling him solid against my back while he was sleeping, so heavy he was like an unmovable snoring stone, and I loved choosing all of those things, for once, just because I wanted them, just because they made me happy.

I loved, that's really as long as any of those sentences have to be.

I knew I wasn't supposed to, but I did it anyway. I knew it was selfish. I knew. I knew.

So that's all there is, at the end of every night when I want to be angry, I want to blame someone, I want to push it away. There is no one else to blame. There is no one to be angry with. There's just me: still here. Always still here.

ENTRY TWENTY-ONE.

MAEVE: Tonight, I got a letter at the apartment, couriered up by some poor ghoul who probably should have been inside where it's warm. It said, Limbo at ten o'clock, and since going to Limbo without notice for someone else's pleasure is what I do now, off I went. Ginevra fretted about it, was worried it was someone else other than the Prince, but she ended up agreeing to wait at Pieter's place until I was done. I didn't have the heart to remind her that there's no one else left to bother with me.

Dark theaters are strange-feeling places. They feel dead; like you're inside the belly of a great dead creature, underneath its ribs, in the dark of its inner places. Or maybe that's just all the theaters I've been in when they were empty, because everything was gone and done with.

It was very dark and I'll have bruises until tomorrow from running into every piece of furniture on the way up. The Prince was there (of course he was, where else would he be when he sent out a call, and who else on earth did Ginevra think would be looking for me, who in the entire world), but he didn't put on any lights, which I suppose is hardly surprising. Maybe he thought I'd be able to find my way in the dark, the way we're all supposed to be able to do. Octavius was always trying to teach me that, and I was always too stubborn to want to learn any part of him.

I wonder why Princes are always like this. Is it something that they have to be, before they can become the head of a city - an imperious command, a theatrical demanding wait, the willingness for people to be things to move and knock over as they please? Or is it something that happens to them when they become Princes, that makes them forget what they were before? I don't know. I do know that every single one I've ever met has been the same.

He was waiting for me in the dark of his balcony box, and closed in there, in the thick shadow that I suppose I should assume wasn't entirely from the dark dead of the theater, I thought about being afraid of him. I wasn't, quite, but I think probably over time I will be. It takes a lot to make me afraid right now, which I guess is a blessing. Pieter can do it, but that's Pieter for you.

He said, "Sing, Songbird: jealousy," and that was all he said. Like kings in fairytales, calling up their clockwork birds or their imprisoned genies, to give them relief from the boredom of life. I didn't have Sean and Jonathan, so I had to make more of myself just to fill the space, just so it wasn't a single voice crying in the dark. That was fine; jealousy always loves to be a crowd.

I've turned it over, but I still don't know what he wanted. There was no one else there to hear it - or at least, no one I could tell was there - so who was it for? Surely not for me; I think he would probably completely forget I existed if he didn't want me now and then. Surely not for him, who just sat there, somewhere in the dark, silent, being something I couldn't see.

I'm exhausted now, so tired I feel that I could just lie down and drift away even though dawn is still half an hour away and I will probably have to wait through its first hour to go to sleep. You have to have something to be jealous of it. It was hard to remember it well enough to manage.

At the end, he said thank you for coming and I said it was a pleasure and these things sounded even more like nothing, in an empty dark nowhere balcony, than usual. I know he left before I did because one of his hands touched me, just two fingers, brushing a little bit of tiredness off my face, and he said I should see his ghoul downstairs about getting something to eat.

You see? Even now, reading it again, I can see I should have been frightened. He seems perfectly nice, for a Prince, but it was the sort of thing that I know should have made me afraid. But, like singing for him, it seems like too much effort.

I didn't find his ghoul; instead, I just went and found Ginevra, and she chattered about a movie she wanted to see so we went to another kind of theater and sat in the dark there, too, and watched two people fall in love in three days and two hours and then went home again. I'm so tired of things feeling like they're not real; how could any of that be real? How could those two things happen on the same night, and which one of them was less solid, less something to be remembered?

I'm tired. I suppose that means that I must have met the Prince, and sung for him, and then most likely everything else, too.

Or maybe I just went into the empty belly of a dead creature tonight and sang jealous songs to no one. I suppose that also might be true.

ENTRY TWENTY-TWO.

A grainy black-and-white photograph showing Ian and Maeve sitting in a booth at a restaurant. Ian is smiling with his arm along the back of the booth while Maeve looks back over her shoulder toward the camera.

ENTRY TWENTY-THREE.

MAEVE: Why is it that I am always covered, at the end? Is it because I'm supposed to know, really know?

I want to say something pretty about how perhaps that lets me take some of them with me - wrap it up in my poor thin skin, absorb it into my bones so that maybe there is a little bit that isn't dead, or is at least whatever I am. That's what I would say if I were actually Toreador, probably.

It's not any of those things.

It's so I can taste it in my mouth forever: someone else's dust.

ENTRY TWENTY-FOUR.

MAEVE: I wish I could remember what happened. Or maybe I don't, because what would knowing do for me? Nothing better, I'm pretty sure. But I still wish I could remember, so I could look at it a thousand times, turn it over, examine it, find all the parts of it that made it happen. (Find something that explains it? Makes it all right? Poor Ginevra.)

Chicago, last-night-Chicago, end-Chicago, it's a dark terrible blur. I can't remember what happened, how it started, who was there: just the three of us. I remember being on the ground, one side of my vision gone, everything in the world shaking, pounding, hearing my own blood in my ears like a river. I remember how dark it was, that we were outside, and I know I tried to get up but I don't think I quite did, because everything was still so far above me.

I remember seeing him, and then Colin, and I think - I think - I tried to say something, because that's what I remember most clearly, that I knew what was about to happen. I knew it, all of me, and I couldn't even get off the ground.

And then I remember blood, and ash, and Colin's face and hands covered in blackness, and I know I screamed, oh yes, I must have burst even his ears into so many tatters. I remember that by the time Jean Claude found me, I was nothing but raw meat on the inside, nothing left but a single whisper, still screaming, still trying to make everything go away if it just drowned the world out. After that, nothing until Jean Claude. Nothing until someone was trying to clean it all off me on a plane into Milan and I was watching him be taken away, piece by tiny piece, on towels and cloths.

Never mind, I was wrong. Knowing any more of that wouldn't help me. Anything else left there would just be another thing to dream about, and wake up already hungry from all the weeping.

Paris... I remember much less about that. I don't know why that is, unless it must have been very bad. Or else I didn't care enough to pay very much attention. I do remember that: not caring, not caring at all what was going to happen. Watching it from the outside like a movie, far away and soon to be forgotten.

Octavius was there; I saw him. I think I remember that mostly because I wasn't afraid of him, not the way I should have been. All his threats had already come true, after all. What was left for him to do to me?

But after that... nothing. Pieter says I was gone for a year; asleep, he always says very carefully, as if calling it that can make it sound gentle and safe and not at all mostly dead. He says he "woke me up" and "put me back together", but he always changes the subject before he explains what that means.

It doesn't really matter. I suppose that means it was very bad indeed, but if I can't remember it, it can hardly do much to hurt me. If you can't remember being hurt, if it simply isn't there, were you ever hurt at all? Does it still make up a part of you, somewhere?

Pieter forgets things all the time, so I asked him why he thinks that happens. He answered me three times. First, he said: "It's clutter. There's too many things to remember altogether, you have to lose a few if you want to be able to think straight." Then, several hours later when he'd spent some time staring at the chalkboard for his specials and reading things off it to me that were definitely not written there, laughing, a game only he could be playing, he said, "Forgetting's good, chavi.^[1] Means you're moving on, letting it go, making it part of the dust behind your feet." He said it with a smile, and hugged me, and asked did I want to have a drink.

He answered me again when I left at the end of the night, tired out from all his bright lights and smiling teeth. "You need to forget sometimes," he said when I was halfway out the door, talking to no one in the dark while the ghouls turned off the lights. "There are some things you should never see twice."

Now I am alone again, and the sun will be rising soon, and I could pull this curtain aside and see it, if I didn't want to see anything else.

ENTRY TWENTY-FIVE.

MAEVE: Ginevra fell asleep on my floor tonight. Except not really; what she did was fall asleep on the couch, and then sort of slide-roll onto the floor with her envelopes, which is where I noticed her a few minutes after. I took the envelopes away - something about invitations, somewhere I'm supposed to be, probably - and put my comforter over her. She looks so tired, now, even though she's asleep. She looks worn down to the bone.

I've decided that she's right. Everything is all right now.

All right means that no one is dying, no one is running away, nothing is frightening; everything is just the way that it is. Pieter is in the Pit and sometimes he knows what's around him and sometimes he doesn't, and Ginevra is on my floor sleeping off too many days and nights staying awake for twenty hours at a time, and I am here, sometimes singing, sometimes not. The Toreador are demanding and inquisitive but also a little quiet, for once, for a little while until they forget to be. The Prince is a Prince. And everyone else is already dead, so they can't make anything right or not, not anymore.

So she's right. Everything is all right, because all right essentially means nothing, and that's what everything's been since I woke up.

It's all right. I'll help Pieter, remind him who he is, smile for him when I see him at the Pit, tell him that his ideas are very good ones, hug Jonathan and Sean when he's having a bad night. I'll take care of Ginevra, so she can rest more; I'll remember to eat, to ask her for things instead of being surprised when they appear, and I'll give her more time and more spending money and I'll send her away to meet boys and go to movies. I'll even go with her. I'll sing for the Prince, every week when he wants to impress people and sometimes in the dark for him only when he doesn't, and it will be pretty and he'll thank me and send me little things because that's the only way elders know how to show appreciation, and I'll pretend they mean something.

And that'll be all of me, however many of me there are. I can do those things. I can do that much.

It's all right. I'm all right.

ENTRY TWENTY-SIX.

MAEVE: I'm not all right. I was lying.

ENTRY TWENTY-SEVEN.

MAEVE: I am sitting in the dark. I can hear the blood in my ears, in my throat, rushing down to my fingers through my heart. It's loud. Everything is loud. The entire world is a booming, gonging bell and I am sitting underneath it in the dark.

I got drunk. Isn't that what we always used to do, when everything felt like too much? We'd drink together and maybe we would fight, and maybe we would argue, and maybe we would say something we didn't mean, and at the end we'd wake up somewhere with our skins pressed together and our blood slow and peaceful. Not like this, loud, roaring, demanding. Pay attention, it says: this is all there is. There is not going to be anything else, not ever again.

Needless to say, Pieter was wrong. I do not feel like a cleaned-out suitcase, which he said last night while he was helping me stagger inside so that I wouldn't wake Ginevra. I am still full. I am bursting, overflowing with cobwebs and dark corners, running over with words that go nowhere to no one. I can feel it, like my skin is stretched too thin over my bones.

I met Hope last night. She really didn't know what to make of me, or me of her. Both of us surprises, an unwelcome realization: things we didn't know that are now too late to matter. He never told me he had any childer, so it feels like yet another thing that is not real, like a chapter of a book scribbled down by some unknown hand on torn-away paper, pressed between pages, trying to look like it belongs. I knew she wasn't lying. Too much of him was in her, in her disdainful glance, in her uncomfortable silence, in her slamming herself into metal, over and over into something that can't hurt or care, because it is the only way she knows how to take things out of herself.

She seems nice. She even made me laugh, once, although I can't remember what for. It was a sort of comfort, I think, to see someone else who understood, to recognize my own face and hers like mirror images. And also no comfort at all, also a reminder, again: this is all there is.

I was sick. I can feel myself shivering too much, but I'm afraid to move. Everything is already so loud, as if my own breaths were the breathing of a giant looming over me. If I got up, I might crumble into a thousand pieces. A terrible mess for Ginevra to have to clean up.

It doesn't seem fair, to always keep stumbling over him, as if he were following me, or I him. To keep finding new parts of him, things I didn't even know were there, things I never would have recognized. To keep being reminded of how little of him I really ever held in my two small hands; how much more was lost that I didn't even see. It doesn't seem fair, to have to lay each and every other little part to rest, a thousand tiny funerals every night, each one with the same name, the same face.

Hope said something: that if we didn't think that there was a chance our tomorrows would be better, we would all stop trying.

It feels like too much effort to try anymore.

ENTRY TWENTY-EIGHT.

MAEVE: I can walk again tonight. Ginevra would say that is an improvement, even if I only used it to go from the bed into a bath and now onto the living room floor. I almost couldn't make her leave tonight; she is hovering over me like a frightened mother bird these nights, even when she isn't here. She swallows all her breaths, as if she is afraid to let them out around me, for fear they might blow me over.

It doesn't take much, but that's not her fault. I feel like I remember other times, other places, where I was stronger, where I had the balance of the world under my feet. I could think straight, not in endless circles, all spiraling back to the same places and times. I could be filled with colors, painted too bright to be faded or forgotten. But I think maybe I have always been this way, and I just thought that a calm sky meant I was immune to the wind. Maybe this is all I ever was; maybe I remember things that were never real at all.

The Prince is real. I know this because I broke my ankle running away from him. It's hard to suspect a broken bone of being imaginary.

I went to Limbo, because the card asked me to. Or not asked; that's not really the word, but he is kind enough to pretend that it is and I am tired enough to agree with him and that silent lie is a gentle one. It was dark again, but I knew where to find him this time. He fills up the space like a great dark balloon; or as if all those shadows were something real, like dark water that must be pushed through instead of breathed, and it was only my eyes that couldn't tell the difference.

In that little dark box, all black flat space too small for anything but voices, he said, "Sing, Songbird: love." And then he waited in the dark.

I remember, almost, very nearly, almost saying no. Or not, because that would have been like saying no to the evening, a nonsense phrase; but trying to argue. Wanting to ask him to choose something else. Being afraid that if I said anything he would hear why.

In the end I said nothing, of course. There is nothing to say to him that doesn't taste like an empty wrapper in my mouth; pleases and thank yous and you're welcomes and of courses. Perhaps he likes it; maybe, being made of so much black nothingness himself, he enjoys it when I offer him a little of my own. Or else maybe there are too many things in that darkness, in his very black eyes, in his thoughtful stare; Octavius always said each elder was a little universe, spinning in its own path, full of planets that I would never see. Maybe he just doesn't want me adding to his load.

I also wanted to - but didn't - ask him why. I wanted to ask him with one voice reasonable and soft and questioning, and one voice angry and shrill, and one voice too sad for anything but deep alto tones: why do you want that? why are you making me do that? why will you hurt us both tonight?

But instead I did what he asked, and my throat was so sore, so tight and heavy and hot and full, that I could not have asked him anything anyway. I could not have done anything but stand there and let my life run out of me through my useless eyes. Darkness is sometimes a mercy; he could still see me, of course, but at least I couldn't see myself.

But I could hear myself. I think they always forget that. I can hear myself. I could hear myself, having to forget, having to pretend that it was a hundred years ago when everything was all right; having to forget, because there is nothing in me here and now, nothing that does not weigh as much as a sunken island, nothing that tastes like love. Or not love as he meant it; not love alive, love not in mourning, love that does not have to remember.

And I'm not Pieter. I can't just forget forever, leaving my life behind me one piece at a time. When you forget, you can feel the pressure of the memory behind your eyes; when you forget, you know you will have to remember. The very moment later. As if it had never been gone; as if this were the first second it was born. Again, it is yesterday, it is all those months ago; he is dead in a single black cloud of an instant, and the world is undone.

Smile, Octavius always said, when I sang these things for him in brighter rooms but with no more audience. Smile. And if I wept at the end, remembering, he would frown at me and say: you spoiled it. It could have been so lovely, bella.^[2] You could have been so lovely.

The Prince did not tell me that I spoiled it, so I am grateful to him again. Instead, in the dark, where everyone could see except for me, something touched my face, smoothed tears away into the shell of my ears and the underhang of my jaw, and it was cold and smooth and silent and I know, oh I know, it was certainly not a hand. It pressed me, at my aching throat, and maybe it was meant to be comforting, or maybe it was only a gentle reminder of where the important part of me is located.

He told me to see his ghoul for something to eat, and he left, or I thought he left, because it no longer felt like the air-pressure warning before a storm. And then I tried to run away, because I was alone and exhausted and I knew there was too much of me to pour itself out in weeping without starving to death, and so it is really no one's fault except my own that I fell on the staircase. Lucky, Pieter would say, that I did not break my neck instead. He finds luck where he can.

Fortunately, the Prince really was gone, so he did not see any of this sad performance. Or possibly he did, but he was too polite to let me know. Either way, I am grateful, because it is already too much for just me to remember, and anyone else remembering it too would only double its heavy weight.

I eventually found the door, and that is where Ginevra found me, sitting in a stage door with one working leg, and she was frightened by my bloody face and my shaking arms and she took me home, and when I wouldn't eat - and I was so sorry, I am so sorry, but I couldn't do it, not then, not with that sound in my skull - she was so angry she threw it down on the table and stained the wood. She hasn't been back tonight. I could send her away, probably, to somewhere better, but I can't bring myself to tell her what decisions she has to make. I can't take away her choice. I know what that feels like.

Tonight there were flowers at my door, and a card that says thank you and mentions something nice and meaningless about artistic temperaments. The flowers are daffodils; I wonder if they are meant to suggest regret, or if words hidden in flower petals is something only the Toreador bother with.

I walked far enough to put them in water so that they would die more slowly, still remembering the sun, wondering why there is nothing but sheared-away air where once they had roots.

ENTRY TWENTY-NINE.

MAEVE: Ginevra has started leaving things in the apartment. She thinks they're subtle, maybe; or maybe she doesn't care about subtlety anymore. In someone else's apartment, I suppose, they might be subtle, somewhere that was actually lived in, where things were moved and touched and forgotten and remembered. Here, they stick out like strangers; things that were never looked at before, that came into being on an endtable or a countertop out of silver mist.

They aren't quite bright, not enough colors or movement, not enough to make their way out of every corner, but I've seen a few: courses at the local colleges, concerts and open-air holiday festivals, museums, even a video game arcade. I wonder if they are places she would go, if she could. She should. I'm getting better at reading her straight-set shoulders and determined eyebrows, though. I won't ask.

She wants me to do something. I understand that. Ginevra is always doing things, filling up the entire world with them. She builds herself out of doing things, makes walls and body parts and purpose out of hours and minutes and tasks and obligations. She cannot understand being made of things that are thin and breakable and flexible enough to bend in half. She would never be conquered this way.

I would explain to her, if I could. There is nothing for me to do. As I told someone once, I am not good at very many things. There is only one thing I can do, so I do it, and I doubt very much she wants me to do that any more than I already do. I think, if she had to choose between letting me go out to sing or locking me in an apartment forever, she might choose the second one and be a very sad jailer, the kind that sends in gifts through the thin slot between walls and freedom, the kind that apologizes each time your eyes meet.

The thing she would like me to do the most is to see someone. The Primogen, most likely, of all people; but I doubt it really matters to her. Anyone she thought would be kind would do. In that way, we are in agreement: anyone would be the same. Anyone at all.

Today, she has left a flyer on the counter. Premier Community Carnival, it says, with a drawing of balloons in thin blue ink, and the outline of a Ferris wheel, sketched against a white paper background.

I am looking at it. I am just looking at it.

ENTRY THIRTY.

MAEVE: It isn't fair. Nothing about it is fair, nothing about it has ever been fair, and I know I've swallowed unfairness before, taken it down into myself and made it part of me, but I can't do it this time. I try, I try, I paint it across my eyes like shadow so that I will see it until I get used to it, I tell it to myself in the small hours when there is nothing else to hear louder than my own heartbeat, but I can't make it into something that just is.

What is he doing, being dead? How can that make any sense at all?

How old was he? How many years were there that he survived before I ever knew he existed? How many days and then nights did he spend, just being, a solid part of a solid world, before I met him? How many words did he speak, in loud and angry blusters, in steady neck-straightening commands, in those few soft moments of confusion or meaning that he always hated so much, before I heard any of them? How many times did something hurt him - try to destroy him, just try - but fail because he was made of steel and stone and determination and honesty as strong and inflexible and unbreakable as the roots of a mountain?

I am angry. I am so angry.

Pieter says that the world makes its own sense - makes it, not is it - and that if anything in it is real, then this is what real must look like. This: empty rooms, empty time, places where people should be but are not and never will be, and somehow that is what reality is, that is the way it is supposed to be.

I could be dead. That would make so much more sense; that would be a world that was understandable. I am a single-lashed blink in time, something that should have been gone a year after I came into being, when the world inverted the first time, spilled itself inside-out and senseless and suddenly full of nothing. I could have just left it, gentle and unimportant, so many times, each one making more sense than this, each one a natural consequence. Any of those, I could have understood; anyone could have, because it would not be a paving-stone removed from the floor beneath them, just a painting, small and carelessly done by some forgotten artist, taken off of a wall.

I was ready for that. I've always been ready for that.

In Chicago, before that dust-thick night when I screamed myself deaf, before time stopped meaning anything, he told me I was wrong to think that. Shouted it at me, actually, in shirtsleeves and frowns, making himself loud to fill the space, to force me to hear him. If someone is willing to fight and die for you, he said, they expect you to make it mean something.

I heard him. I remember it.

But this is a world that cannot be real, that makes no sense, where I am alone with someone else's centuries smeared across my skin like muddy armor. How could anyone make anything mean anything at all?

ENTRY THIRTY-ONE.

MAEVE: Dominic told me a story, once. And old story of his people, he said, so old it had traveled down out of the mountains with them; so old that each of them were born already knowing it. Older, even, than himself.

It was the story of the woman with the voice, and he told it to me under stars and wind while the carnival lights went out for the night around us. She had the voice, he said, The Voice, all the capital letters bright, easy to hear without being sketched out, and it went everywhere with her. When she was happy, it sang for joy, and the trees bent in happiness with her; when she was sad, it wept and everything around her wept also. When she was frightened, it shattered the air like glass, but it was only fear, and it could not hurt anyone.

She was never angry, the woman with the voice, he said. Why would she be? She was the woman with the voice.

But one day someone hurt her, that woman and her voice. He said that no one could remember, now, what happened to her; that some said when they told the story that she was attacked by white men outside the camp when she went to fetch water and made sport of, and others that she saw her children carried away by a ravenous wolf, and still others that she became sick with a rotting fever, and was left behind by her caravan so that she could not spread it to others. It didn't matter to the story, he said, except to explain this: that she was angry, at last, the woman with the voice. She had been made angry.

And because she was angry, the woman, she screamed; and because there was no one there, on the rocky plain where she was standing, no one except for herself, she screamed herself inside out. She screamed until she burst her veins and bladders, and collapsed her lungs and eyes, and peeled her skin, and cracked and crumbled her bones. She screamed because she was angry, and because all she had to carry that anger was her voice, and it carried that anger with it in such a hot wind that she could not stop screaming, not until there was nothing left of her at all, not the smallest part of her.

And this, he said, is what his people always said, when they traveled through the mountains and the terrible, face-stripping wind shrieked around them: it is the voice, all that is left of her, and it can never stop screaming.

I don't know if this story is actually so old that it traveled out of the mountains in his mouth, or if it is just something he made himself, like so many others. A cautionary tale for young singers. He was stitched out of a million stories, and made more as easily as breathing in and out. I could never tell what was truth that already was and what was truth that he had made that way.

I remembered the story in my sleep, I think; I woke up with it already echoing behind my eyes. I sat in bed for a while, thinking it, but not saying it aloud.

I could ask Pieter about it, but I don't think I will. I don't want to ask him anything. I don't want to open my mouth tonight.

Translations

↑ "girl"; colloquially, "little sister" (Vlax Romanes)
↑ "Beautiful." (Italian)

Trivia

The conversation with Zen Pentecost Maeve recalls took place in In the Garden of Good and Evil.
Maeve acknowledges that of course there is a bloodhunt on them in Paris; due to the activities of Alexis Sorokin, there is a permanent bloodhunt on all members of Clan Ravnos in Paris.
Although Maeve is correct that grief and shock contribute to her feeling distant from Octavius' death, she is also unknowingly experiencing the effects of her blood bond to him breaking.
Although Maeve never writes his name (a fact that she lampshades in one entry), the person she discusses mourning is Ian Kross.
When Maeve refers to the last time she felt grief like this, she means the death of her husband, Dominic Vaughn.
Maeve imagines Ian sneering at her; the words he says are lifted directly from things he said in Veritas.
Maeve's memories of Ian in Entry #5 are from We All Need Somebody.
Maeve's and Pieter's first audience with Marcus Vitel is chronicled in Territorial Nature.
Maeve's memories of Ian in Entry #8 are from [[]].
The unnamed building project that Pieter completes is The Pit.
The sound of a dog crying distresses Maeve because it reminds her of Colin Thomas, a Gangrel whose animal form is a dog.
The photographs of Ian and Maeve are relics of their tabloid notoriety in Chicago.
Maeve finds Bella's name coincidental; bella was Octavius' favorite nickname for Maeve.
Although Maeve believes that she hallucinated seeing a man at the Pit, in fact Pieter was the one hallucinating him, making him visible to her through his Chimerstry.
The Stephen Maeve refers to remembering encouraging her is Stephen Rosengeld.
Maeve mentions Marcus Vitel assuming she would be able to see in the dark; members of Clan Toreador have the Auspex Discipline to allow them to do so, but Maeve is actually Ravnos by blood.
The ghoul that Vitel repeatedly refers Maeve to is Troy Masterson.
Maeve is unable to remember the events of her last night in Chicago due to brain damage from being struck by Ian.
The person Maeve remembers helping clean her up on the plane to Milan is Jenny Ginetti.
Maeve's hangover is the aftermath of the events of Strong Medicine.
Maeve is incorrect that users of Melpominee can be affected by their own powers; this is a weakness she personally has as a result of a Derangement.
Maeve wonders if the daffodils are meant to suggest regret; the Victorian language of the flowers, which Clan Toreador uses extensively to communicate, uses regret as one possible meaning of a daffodil.
Maeve is distressed by the flyer for the carnival because it is a reminder of two major losses: she rode a Ferris wheel at a carnival with Ian in Time's A-Wastin', and Dominic was the proprietor of The Carnival.
Maeve's memories of Ian in Entry #30 are from Sweetest Condition.

Journal Photos

Tabloid photo of Ian and Maeve in Chicago
Tabloid photo of Ian and Maeve in Chicago

[1] "girl"; colloquially, "little sister" (Vlax Romanes)

[2] "Beautiful." (Italian)

[1]

[2]

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