"When did I discover their existence, you mean?"
"And devote yourself to this, over all these years."
Chapter 16
He was silent for a moment, summoning the memory. "I was a young man then. During World War Two, I found myself interred in occupied Poland, very much against my own wishes. A small camp northeast of Warsaw, named Treblinka."
Nora shared the old man's stillness. "A concentration camp."
"Extermination camp. These are brutal creatures, my dear. More brutal than any predator one could ever have the misfortune of encountering in this world. Rank opportunists who prey on the young and the infirm. In the camp, myself and my fellow prisoners were a meager feast set unknowingly before him."
"Him?"
"The Master."
The way he said the word chilled Nora. "He was German? A Nazi?"
"No, no. He has no affiliation. He is loyal to no one and nothing, belonging not to one country or another. He roams where he likes. He feeds where there is food. The camp to him was like a fire sale. Easy prey."
"But you...you survived. Couldn't you have told someone...?"
"Who would have believed an emaciated man's ravings? It took me weeks to accept what you are processing now, and I was a witness to this atrocity. It is more than the mind will accept. I chose not to be judged insane. His food source interrupted, the Master simply moved on. But I made a pledge to myself in that camp, one I have never forgotten. I tracked the Master for many years. Across central Europe and the Balkans, through Russia, central Asia. For three decades. Close on his heels at times, but never close enough. I became a professor at the University of Vienna, I studied the lore. I began to amass books and weapons and tools. All the while preparing myself to meet him again. An opportunity I have waited more than six decades for."
"But...then who is he?"
"He has had many forms. Currently, he has taken the body of a Polish nobleman named Jusef Sardu, who went missing during a hunting expedition in the north country of Romania, in the spring of 1873."
"1873?"
"Sardu was a giant. At the time of the expedition, he already stood nearly seven feet tall. So tall that his muscles could not support his long, heavy bones. It was said that his pants pockets were the size of turnip sacks. For support, he had to lean heavily on a walking stick whose handle bore the family heraldic symbol."
Nora looked over again at Setrakian's oversize walking stick, its silver handle. Her eyes widened. "A wolf's head."
"The remains of the other Sardu men were found many years later, along with young Jusef's journal. His account detailed their stalking of their hunting party by some unknown predator, who abducted and killed them, one by one. The final entry indicated that Jusef had discovered the dead bodies inside the opening to an underground cave. He buried them before returning to the cave to face the beast, to avenge his family."
She could not take her eyes off the wolf's-head grip. "How ever did you get it?"
"I tracked this walking stick to a private dealer in Antwerp in the summer of 1967. Sardu eventually returned to his family's estate in Poland, many weeks later, though alone and much changed. He carried his cane, but no longer leaned on it, and in time ceased carrying it altogether. Not only had he apparently been cured of the pain of his gigantism, he was now rumored to possess great strength. Villagers soon began to go missing, the town was said to be cursed, and eventually it died away. The house of Sardu fell into ruin and the young master was never seen again."
Nora sized up the walking stick. "At fifteen he was that tall?"
"And still growing."
"The coffin...it was at least eight by four."
Setrakian nodded solemnly. "I know."
She nodded. Then she said, "Wait-how do you know?"
"I saw, once-at least, the marks it left in the dirt. A long time ago."
Kelly and Eph stood across from each other in the modest kitchen. Her hair was lighter and shorter, more businesslike now. Maybe more Mom-like. She gripped the edge of the countertop, and he noticed little paper cuts on her knuckles, a hazard of the classroom.
She had gotten him an unopened pint of milk from the fridge. "You still keep whole milk?" he said.
"Z likes it. Wants to be like his father."
Eph drank some, and the milk cooled him but didn't give him that usual calming sensation. He saw Matt lurking on the other side of the pass-through, sitting in a chair, pretending not to look their way.
"He is so much like you," she said. She was referring to Zack.
"I know," said Eph.
"The older he gets. Obsessive. Stubborn. Demanding. Brilliant."
"Tough to take in an eleven-year-old."
Her face broke into a broad smile. "I'm cursed for life, I guess."
Eph smiled also. It felt strange, exercise his face hadn't gotten in days.
"Look," he said, "I don't have much time. I just...I want things to be good. Or at least, to be okay between us. The custody thing, that whole mess-I know it did a job on us. I'm glad it's over. I didn't come here to make a speech, I just...now seems like a good time to clear the air."
Kelly was stunned, searching for words.
Eph said, "You don't have to say anything, I just-"
"No," she said, "I want to. I am sorry. You'll never know just how sorry I am. Sorry that everything has to be this way. Truly. I know you never wanted this. I know you wanted us to stay together. Just for Z's sake."
"Of course."
"You see, I couldn't do that-I couldn't. You were sucking the life out of me, Eph. And the other part of it was...I wanted to hurt you. I did. I admit it. And that was the only way I knew I could."
He exhaled deeply. She was finally admitting to something he'd always known. But there was no victory for him in that.
"I need Zack, you know that. Z is...he's it. I think, without him, there would be no me. Unhealthy or not, that's just the way it is. He's everything to me...as you once were." She paused to let that sink in, for both of them. "Without him, I would be lost, I would be..."
She gave up on her rambling.
Eph said, "You would be like me."
That froze her. They stood there looking at each other.
"Look," Eph said, "I'll take some blame. For us, for you and me. I know I'm not the...the whatever, the easiest guy in the world, the ideal husband. I went through my thing. And Matt-I know I've said some things in the past..."
"You once called him my 'consolation life.'"