Tropic of Darkness by Tony Richards Page B

little of the grave scent with her. It hung about her nostrils, embedded in her clothes. And since, in truth, she possessed neither, it could only be her own imagination, taunting her.
    Every evening though, the moment she materialized, she thought she could detect it.
    Merging. That was the one, the only thing that would set her completely free. It would happen one day, she was certain of it. But when? She had tried numerous times throughout the decades, first with local men. And then, when that hadn’t worked, with foreign visitors. And still she hadn’t found any suitable vessel.
    It had to be a man. The means by which she tried to merge demanded that, an absolute fusing of bodies. But it had turned out that not just anyone would do. She was not quite sure what the important factor was. An inner strength perhaps, or an emotional affinity. Or maybe whoever she’d finally take over needed to have something missing from his own depleted soul. In any event, she’d not found him yet, and neither had Lucia. The gods knew, it wasn’t for lack of trying.
    Isadora pondered on it bitterly as she went down the stairs. She found this entire business so distasteful. She could hear Dolores shuffling around somewhere down there, but paid it no attention.
    Did anybody think that she wanted to harm all those men? Far from it. Lucia might be cruel and vicious, but not her. She cared. She had a special place in her heart for each and every one of them. Poor Lucas. Poor Alfredo, Francis, Mario. She knew every last one of their names. That proved how much she cared, didn’t it?
    You are such a very kind-hearted person , she told herself. So sweet, so very tender. Far too kind, in fact. Almost a saint .
    She wound up in the big, bare pantry. Her sadness, she’d decided, was a pious thing, almost sacred in its depth and its solemnity.
    A martyrdom. Yes, that was it. She was indeed a martyr.
    She remembered when she’d first begun to understand how special she was. It was when she had been a little girl, merely six years old. There had been a game she’d liked to play. Like so.
    Standing with her back against a wall, she put her feet together. Stretched her arms out sideways, palms cupped, her knuckles against the plaster. Tipped her head to one side, letting her eyes slip shut.
    Look! She was a female Jesus, nailed onto a cross!
    She’d done it often as a child. And Mama, catching her at it, had always gotten mad and started shouting. “Isadora, what d’you think you’re doing?! Are you crazy, girl?!”
    But of course, she wasn’t that. Just special, that was all.
    What a poor, mistreated little girl she had once been.
    Bad Mama!
    *   *   *
    Everything was as it should be, in its proper place. The dead preferred things this way, their surroundings frozen so they resembled the past.
    Every last room had been checked, except for one—the blackened, charred remains of the old master bedroom, where Dolores never went. She had only ever looked in at the ruins once in her whole life, and that had been from just outside the door. It was the scene of the twins’ violent deaths, and so forbidden.
    She stopped in front of a large, faded mirror with a beautiful jade frame, hanging in the second story hallway a few yards down from the house’s central room. Somehow, it had moved. Things seemed to do that by themselves occasionally.
    She reached out to adjust it, and then paused. And gazed at her reflection in the smudged, streaked glass.
    It was like trying to see through fog, the quicksilver had faded so badly. But she could get a vague impression of her face. Enough to shift her mood toward resentful weariness.
    She might have grown up beautiful had she been born elsewhere. She had seen the paintings of her ancestor, Camille, and the genes were certainly there. But as it stood, the ebon of her skin had faded to a rough, lusterless gray from its long absence from