Jeanne Valliers
Faction: The Veil · View the Gallery
The Veil: 3 - Lingerer (Power Level 3)
Jeanne Valliers was the daughter of a modest Parisian bookseller. In 1870 her lover — a young printer's apprentice called Laurent — enlisted during the Franco-Prussian War, promising to return by autumn. She waited six years with the door on the latch. In 1876 the door opened. It was Laurent. It was not Laurent. Whatever came back from Alsace wore his face and had learned his voice and had forgotten the tenderness. It fed on her in her own doorway, slowly, over the better part of a night — and then left her not turned, not dead by morning, but emptied: a body that kept breathing for a week before it stopped. She came to the Veil with two marks on her neck and no sunrise in her memory. At the Lodge she keeps the Foyer doorway. She greets each member as they arrive. She is looking past them for the thing that wore her lover's face. She has been looking for a hundred and forty-nine years and she does not intend to stop.