I obsessed over this painting even though I had no proof that there were any other vampires in existence. My mum always told me there were none, and when I said that couldn’t be true, she just told me to stop pestering. Once, though, I think I came close to meeting one. At the birthday party of a boy I went to primary school with, I’d felt a strange attraction to another girl. While the other children ate cake, me and this girl played in the ball pit. As I’d got closer to her, I’d smelled a familiar scent coming off her body, and I’d felt no heat emanating from her skin. Before I could ask her anything, though, my mum snatched me out of the ball pit and took me home, and I never went to a birthday party again. So, this painting was all I had, and it wasn’t even definitively a depiction of vampires. I decided, though, that because I’d found a picture of this painting among my dad’s things, it meant that, had he met me, he would have loved me and accepted me for what I was; he might have painted me too, in the same colors Sher-Gil used.

I find myself slipping this book into my bag, next to the puppet, which is still sitting in there. I don’t know what it is that makes me do it; maybe there is a part of me that feels slighted by Gideon, that feels angry about how far from my expectations this internship has been so far, about my weak and vulnerable position in this institution and under Gideon’s gaze. I take the Bernice Bing book too, and also a yellowy lime-green book called Adventures of a Russian Puppet Theatre, thinking that it might enlighten me about puppet making, and perhaps I’ll learn something about my stolen puppet’s identity. All these books are slim; the bookcase barely looks different after I’ve taken them. I zip my bag up, put it on my back, and then continue sliding the box of hangers across the floor, feeling—as I did after stealing the puppet—a little bewildered and anxious but also quite happy.

When I get to the door, I hear stomping coming from downstairs. The sound rises, until all the floorboards start creaking again, and then Heather arrives in front of me, standing on the top step. “What the hell are you doing? It sounds like you’re dragging a body across the floor,” she says. Standing behind her, partway down the staircase, sipping a coffee from a takeaway cup, with his glasses hanging on his shirt, which is now unbuttoned at the top, is Gideon.