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be passionate and strong. Can you do that?”
    Lucille nodded, batting her eyelids furiously to convey her promise.
    The rosarian removed his hand from Lucille’s mouth. He lowered his voice to a cracked whisper. “This bond will be much stronger than anything you’ve shared with your … lovers. Do you understand?”
    “Yes.”
    Lucille felt her cheeks redden. How did the old man know about her long afternoons in the room draped with satin?
    “To make the rose your own, you will have to feed her daily—more often if she demands it. You will have to open your wrist to her, your thigh, even your throat. Wherever you feel a pulse, that’s where she might ask to feed.”
    As the old man spoke, he touched Lucille’s wrist, thigh, and throat. Wherever his fingers rested, her blood thrummed in response.
    “What about my heart?” she asked. “Will the rose want my heart?”
    The rosarian said nothing for a moment. He gazed at a point above Lucille’s head, with his silver, unseeing eyes.
    “A rose that truly loves you may ask to feed from your heart. But don’t worry, little fool. The rose will never drain you. She’ll take enough blood to make you a weakened captive, but never so much that you can’t care for her.”
    Lucille tipped her head and let her hip sway into the old man’s firm belly. “What if I gave you something else instead? Something very, very special?”
    The rosarian shoved himself away from her and turned away with a grunt.
    “Why should I go to all the pain and trouble of letting a flower feed off of me?” Lucille grumbled. “What would I get in return?”
    “Eternal life,” the old man said.
    “Hah! That’s not so grand. I’ll have eternal life if I say my prayers.”
    The rosarian limped back to the corner of his shed, where he went back to fumbling with his pots. Lucille flounced out of the shed. The late afternoon sunlight and clean formal lines of the gardens were a relief after the moldy smells and lumpen shadows of the rosarian’s lair.
    Eternal life. Who needed a promise like that? Lucille had no intention of doing anything as dull as dying. As her feet flew across the grass, she could already hear the strains of music floating from the palace.
    But the next morning, and every morning thereafter, Lucille would go back to the rosarian’s shed to find the rose. Again and again, she would let the flower feed.
    * * *
    Lucy yawns and glances at the numbers on the face of her digital watch. It’s almost midnight, way past her bedtime, but she’s sworn she’ll stay awake till dawn to guard ‘Madame de Mortoise.’ Outside the greenhouse the gardens are ghostly, the rosebushes arching toward each other like dancers frozen in time. Lucy’s customers have long gone home, and her greenhouse is draped in mist. Lucy lies on a pallet of blankets at Madame’s feet, a thermos of black coffee by her side. A half circle of beeswax candles gives her enough light to see into the shadowed hallways of the rose’s foliage. Madame fills the entire structure. Lucy’s blood has turned her into a cathedral.
    “I’ve cared for you well, Madame. You’ve never been beautiful, but you’ve grown magnificent.” Lucy fondles one of the rose’s blooms. The blossoms remind her of shriveled monkey heads. “Marie was never beautiful, but so many men wanted her. She made me sick with envy. I was too young to understand.”
    Lucy reaches up and pulls down one of Madame’s branches. She pokes her index finger with one of the thorns and lets Madame drink.
    “You see, my blood is sweet. Marie’s was bitter but powerful, like water from the River Styx. That’s what her lovers wanted, a taste of oblivion. And cruelty. Don’t ever forget Marie’s cruelty.”
    * * *
    Rain streamed down the palace windows. In the afternoon gloom the pink satin sheets looked tawdry, and Lucille’s skin was wan. She lay trembling on the bed. Beside her lay the inert body of Etienne Dordogne. In death he was even more