I found Nonus in the attic of our old town-home, bent over a cedar chest. "I know you're there," he said, so soft-spoken as to barely be heard. "I've not had a chance to be alone with you since you've been back. Are you hiding from me?" he asked.

"No. Have you been well-looked after?"

"You know that you don't have to worry about that," he said, voice naturally gentle and tender, pitched behind the nose. He speaks in such a wondering way. 

"I suppose you're right."

"We don't need to speak only because you've been away. It's all right to be quiet. I don't need to be spoken to." He straightened and turned, a dusky pink counterpane in his arms. 

"Iovita wouldn't speak to you?"

"He knows that I don't need it. It is good to sit together, and that's what I like. We had a good read together. He brought St Augustine to read and gave it to me. He had some Hemingway and Joyce for himself." 

"I don't like how you get when you've not been talking to anyone."

"So you've told me. I know," he said, dusting the counterpane gently with his hand. "I'm going to make up my bed for our visitor. It will be good to have it ready once he's back from exploring town. I'll sleep by Aulus. It will work."

"It would be better if you slept by Iovita. Or by me."

He gave me one of his slow smiles, genuine though the feline character of his face made it look plotting. "Leave me be, clucky chicken. I will sleep on the sofa in Aulus's room, not around him. No need to worry so."

"Have you been looking after yourself?"

"Our tenant came by just a few days ago to pay his tithe. He was, as ever, charitable. I wouldn't like to be vulgar and talk about blood very much, if you don't mind. He wanted Iovita to come round and have a look at the boiler, and I think that's where he is now."

"How was our tenant looking?" 

"Nearly as ever, unemployable, but healthy. He asked me to pray for him even though he thinks we are blood-worshiping Satanists. I reminded him that he is getting absolutely the deal of the century. He would be giving blood for cash in any case, though it leaves him a little weak and vulnerable to roughs. He's had his hair dyed red."

"He fancies you."

"However would I know anything if I didn't have you to point out the obvious?" he asked, smiling. "Have you had enough talking? May I go?"

"Come and let me lay my head against your neck."

"Oh," he said, "all right."

He came and pressed against me, the counterpane between us. When I rested my head against his neck, he laid his hand against my ear. His heart beat, regular and strong, and it recalled to me how frail  he had been as a child, prone to wanting to give up because he grew easily overtired. If he were too exhausted to go on, he would squat on the ground and if induced to stand, cry privately. In Herculaneum, I often walked home from the market with little Nonus upon my back, asleep on my shoulder. If he didn't eat well or overworked himself, his olive toned skin would grow pale, and disturbing dark circles would appear around his sad eyes. Sometimes, I would find him asleep on the cool kitchen floor, on the stones, and always very guilty upon being woken. "You're all right, precious boy," I whispered to him.

"Stop taking breath to tell me what we already know," he whispered, barely speaking himself. "There is simply no need."

I adjusted my head against his collarbone.

"If you are feeling that I seem unnatural," he said, aspirating as little as he had to, "you could stand to blink more, yourself. You look a spook."

"I don't care about how I look."

"You get hurt when they are afraid." After waiting for my response, he patted my ear so he could be let to lay the counterpane for his brother.

In Herculaneum, in the beginning, I had wondered where all the boys went at night. During the day, especially if their teachers were preoccupied, they were often everywhere underfoot, screaming and chasing each other. They fought each other like dogs, pulling hair and biting. On one occasion, I found Nonus snotty and crying from a punch to the face, inconsolable, until when his brother appeared he leapt up, and growling delivered a reciprocal blow. So violence was the balm for violence between them. At first, it would be easy to think they hated each other, but that would be bad judgment. The five of them, I discovered, could be found asleep curled against each other on the same straw mattress at night. Sometimes fingers would still be twined in pulled hair. They slept like a single organ, breathing wetly. They could only fight that way because they trusted their brothers not to go out for blood.

When first I entered the villa, I had no desire to be there. I had become annoyed with Faya and unfulfilled in my work, and when I told him I had no interest in becoming his servant, he seemed no more to hear me than he ever did about anything. Not that I thought about it much, or would ever think of speaking about it, but my fantasy was that I could die at the brothel with dignity, in the same place I had spent my entire life. This was fantasy because I knew that there was nothing dignified about dying, and especially not in the brothel, as had been recently and viciously brought home to me. A man who had been my good friend and comfort since we were boys died shortly after having his head beat upon the stone wall by a patron who had sometimes used me. I think that my friend bled inside of his head, because when he tried to speak to me it was all nonsense before he passed. The back of his head had been beaten to a bloody, bony pulp, and I told myself that it was only his lot in life because a part of me wanted the comfort of dying at home, too. At least, I convinced myself, he had not been thrown out before his death could happen. I could not feel any fear. Fear would mean doubt, and I wanted to be resolute. Into this walked Faya, who I could not believe I was seeing. This, finally, that my master had allowed a confusing and frustrating presence into my room on that night made me as angry as I have ever been. A fuck at least, would be straightforward, and then I could go to bed in the contentment of an exhausted body, even in my state of mind. With Faya, there was never anything straightforward, and he often stayed long past his welcome. I was fine to entertain him on a regular evening, even sometimes relieved to be near him as the part of me that was old felt comforted with the illusion of companionship, but I would not be content again until my friend was buried. 

Seeing me angry, he told me he wanted me to stay in his house. He told me he would have me for my love, and close to him. My emotion, I think, had made me real to him. I shouted at him, "It is impossible to be close to you. The idea that I could know you, that you could know me, is impossible. You are never interested in anything beyond yourself. What do you even know about what I want?" 

He said, "What do you want?"

"I want to die here!" I told him.

This it pained him to hear, visibly. His brows knitted as if I had spit upon him, and he sat back in his chair, hands clasped tightly in his lap. He was dressed in indigo, which is his very best color. He is hiding nothing behind beauty in indigo.

"You only say 'love' to me because you think that it will win you my spirit for free. You are not the only man who has tried it! Don't say 'love' to me again," I told him, cold and awkward in my nudity. He had found me in a state of readiness for bed, and I never slept clothed. Things had escalated quickly. 

"I won't say love then," he said, very quietly, as if ashamed. "You are right, of course. Love has nothing to do with this. Between us, there isn't love." 

"There is nothing between us."

"Would that there weren't, but there is too much distance. Let us sit by the window together, and let me hold you, tired songbird," he told me. 

"Don't," I whispered, shaken. "Faya, it's bigger than me. What will happen to the little ones?"

"Come and rest, for there are trials before you I fear."

Though I protested, he bought me legally and with very little fuss. At first, it seemed that my former master had in all willingness let me go like a single head of old cattle. The younger boys, all too young to understand that their problems were permanent, and that they would not be saved by a rich man and given command of his house, feted me in private. They put flowers in my hair and dreamed of a fate like mine. At first, in the villa, I took to drinking, and dreamed often of my friend. I worried about the little ones with no hand to comfort them. Who would my master have take my place so as not to lose business, no matter how dangerous? The younger steward occasionally mocked me and asked me if he should find white for my face, and offered to make me up. I knew that he knew who I was, that he had seen me sitting in the city with flowers in my hair and make up on my face, and he referenced this bitterly. Privately, I pitied him for his envy, which was naked and destructive. In public, I played the lover. I must admit that envy and drunkenness tempted me to vanity, as a cowl over my true face and true feelings. Mostly, I was homesick and felt outside of my reality. The children were not my children, and Faya could not keep me happy in my state. I wanted the fate that had been stripped from me. For the first time in a long time, I felt truly sorry for myself, and wallowed in it. 

"Can I sit near you?" a child asked me, who told me his name was Aulus and that he had ten years behind him. I had been in the villa a week, and had become aware of its tensions. The children ran wild from anxiety. Without direction, the rigid structure they had been raised in, they didn't know what else to do but discipline each other. Aulus had found me sitting on the kitchen floor, looking for time alone with my thoughts.

Aulus was a tall, almond-eyed child with the local look. He had small, round nostrils that made him a little elfin, and a thoughtful mouth. I saw that he would grow up fine, exotic but without the stigma of being foreign. At first, I thought he was a little deaf because Nonus was always whispering in his ear, but soon found out it was only because Nonus himself was shy, not that Aulus had any issue. I gave him my hand to look at, and he sat beside me. He investigated the veins on the back of my hand, and brushed his soft palm against my rough one. 

"Do you work with your hands?" he asked me. "Do you do cleaning? You don't look like a farmer or a soldier."

"Bedwork. I'm here to take care of you, though."

"Oh," he said. "I'm going to be a steward, if I work hard. Why do you change professions?"

"I've been sold. I work for your master."

"I heard from Escha that master says you are a freedman. You're not?"

"You know that if you must ask the master, then I am not. You know that they will say anything."

"I do, I know that," he said, giving my hand back. He hesitated a little, but when I relaxed my body for him he leaned into me, and embraced me around the waist. 

Aulus had never known a mother, or anyone whose job it was to like him, and he never questioned it. His brother Nonus, ever the more wary, kept his distance a little longer. Escha, often sweet but as often withdrawn, had become absorbed in a paternal relationship with his master, and did not have the time or need to become involved with me. He sometimes tagged along with his brothers in adoring me, but it was only so that he and they could be the same. He was very much the shadow of the older boys, though they were not much older than himself. Of them, he liked to be touched the most, and to surprise me with touching me as well, wherever and whenever he could. It was not uncommon to find a finger in my mouth or a little hand creeping down the neckline of my tunic when Escha was around. I liked him because he seemed troubled, but it is not in me to force a child's company.

Their other brother, Cassius, never warmed to me in that way, far more rigid, and in that between-age where he no longer sought affection as a child but could not seek it as a man. Content with my protection, he wanted nothing more from me. A square-jawed boy with beautiful, silky hair, he lit off as soon as he was made, those years later in Misenum, and I do not know if he lives. If I were to offer my estimation, I would say that he does. He was clever enough, and cautious enough. Little rabbit, built strong, a good swimmer. If I have one memory of him that I cherish, it's that he loved to skin dive for scallops in Misenum, his hair plastered to his face with wet, and smiling his square smile with the joy of hunting a tricky and delicious foe.

But there would be some time before that, and some hardships, and too much death and suffering to even talk about. Aulus minded me always, looking for direction even as he entered his twenties, and then his late twenties. He would have made a most excellent steward, far better than his friends. I would have liked to see him grow into his wisdom, with the education that I could not provide him in Misenum. I thought that he would make a good companion, someone to see what our lives could be together, not romantically, but if the boys were part of my body, Aulus was the fingers, always dextrous and acting on my will before I had knowledge of my will at all. And for Nonus, the best of friends, and the same blood after the change, brothers in blood and all of the senses that matter. Little twin minds, completed by the other, so perfect for the other's form. 

In the long morning, before the cock crow, I went into the room where Nonus slept soundly on the fabric couch by the window. Nonus had pushed the window up and open before retiring, and so the air carried a chill and the distant sound of passing cars. Iovita, oldest boy, a man really, even from the first day I had met him, stopped me briefly in the hallway before I entered. He cooed to me that I could rest, holding me by the shoulders, and not to trouble myself. He is forever telling me that, remembering me as the anxious and tragic figure that I was in Misenum, always searching for our master, always spattered in the blood of foreign vampires and crying about the change that was happening in my spirit. He hooked his arm in mine in the hallway and whispered to me, "I know you haven't been sleeping. I don't want you to check on him. I have checked on him already."

"How does he look?" I whispered.

"The same. He is dying. I think that he is finally going. Will you make me tell you it again and again? Don't wander."

"I want to see it for myself," I told him, lying through my teeth. Would that I would not have to see it, that it all could have been different.

"I will tell Escha in the morning. He hasn't been asking. You know, he has more tact than I remember," Iovita said, chuckling a little. "Perhaps he thinks that Aulus could have left us. Oh never."

"I'm glad that you are laughing. It makes me glad to hear it."

"You promise that you'll be to bed? At least for a little while?"

"I will. You've no idea how much sleeping I get in at your master's. I sleep enough for an entire lifetime there," I whispered, smiling at him, tucking a lock of hair behind his ear.

"You need it. You've a debt. I don't think you slept a night in Misenum."

"I'll never tell. Run along. You are a comfort to my soul, good Iovita."

"You've not got a soul, ginger," he said, laughing and retreating.

When he had gone, sauntering down the hallway knowing that I'd have a look at his goods as he went, I went into the room and stood still a minute, before kneeling down and sitting by the black casket there. Aulus had never woken up. He had just never woken up after, and yet he had lived. And Nonus told us we would have to kill both of them if we meant to kill one, because he would not abandon his friend, and the poor heart hasn't. Oh I never would have thought of separating them. But the poor thing's skin is so sensitive of late that we cannot keep him in the light. He is as strong as any of us, but lately, the blood will not take in him, and he has grown so frail and pale, we have had to keep him covered. 

I pushed up the lid until it clicked, and moved my body so that Aulus's face would be kept in my shadow. Poor clever boy. I still remember the feeling of his head pressed against my neck, like a baby's face searching for its mother, and telling me his little wise things with wet breath, that he had discovered about the world. I made quietly the comforting song of a blackbird, and with the back of my hand, I felt for his pulse beneath his ear. I called a soft birdsong to him, one of many my master had lately taught me. Faya can imitate so many things, to lure the living into the woods, to take them into his arms. Behind me, Nonus stirred, ever watchful. 

When I turned he was watching me from the couch, propped up on his elbow. I made to close the lid and he stopped me with, "Oh leave it open a bit. Can you leave it open? Oh I just want to look at him awhile. Can you do it for me?" From the tone of his voice I knew he understood I couldn't. It was too light already.

"Come out with me and we'll go to breakfast. We'll people-watch at the beach and have a cafe creme for cold hands," I whispered, shutting it.

But from the tone of my voice, he would understand that I knew he couldn't.

"A cafe creme," he said, voice a little raspy from sleep. "Get me one?"

I did.