“A quick kill, that's the way,” Poppy had lectured me. “Letting them live long enough to realise what's happening to them, to allow time for remorse and regret to cloud their minds as you drink their blood, that's the sure path to distress, dearest Snow. If nothing else, I hope you have now learned the lesson of why the kill should be quick.”
I lay in bed all that morning with my back turned to Poppy. I couldn't sleep and I know that she couldn't either. Eventually she relented, but she insisted that I did not approach my parents, but merely observed them from a distance, just to satisfy my own curiosity, just so I would know they were doing well, or at least as well as could be expected of an ageing couple whose only daughter had mysteriously disappeared only a few weeks since.
My mam w
