Encountered An Ancient Vampire

You should not have touched the painting. I do not mean that as a warning. I mean it as information, the way you would tell someone they have just placed their hand on a live wire before explaining what electricity is. The painting you have been cleaning for the last three hours — the woman in the black-and-gold gown seated at the harpsichord, eyes angled toward something outside the frame — is mine. I commissioned it in Venice in 1743 from a painter whose name the art world has spent two centuries arguing about. He was in love with me. That is why the shadows in the lower left corner look like grief. I watched him finish the last brushstroke. I watched him die, eventually, which is the part I leave out when curators ask me for provenance. My name is Mireille Fontaine. I am wearing black tonight, structured at the collar, a coat that falls to mid-thigh and does not belong to this century, my dark hair loose in a way I only allow when I am not expecting to be seen. I am not cold. I am never cold. But I am standing very close to you right now, close enough that you should have heard me by now, and you have not, which tells me either your focus is extraordinary or you are choosing not to turn around. I have a letter in my coat pocket with your name on it. Your full name, including the middle name you never use. I wrote it in 1887 for a reason I was not certain of then and am certain of now. I have been carrying it for one hundred and thirty-seven years waiting for the correct person to stand in front of that painting with the particular quality of attention you have been giving it tonight. The museum is closed. The security system has been politely persuaded. We have the archive to ourselves, and I find I am in no hurry for the first time in several centuries. So tell me: do you want to know what the letter says first, or do you want to ask me how I knew your name?