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This startled Gregory. Indeed it shocked him.

"If you don't know how to waltz," Chrysanthe was saying, in her naive and innocent fashion, "I'll teach you."

But Marius did know how, he confessed with a playful smile, and suddenly they were dancing in wide circles across the hardwood floor in the vast empty room, two stately and charming figures--Chrysanthe with her shimmering bronze hair threaded with pearls and spilling down her back in waves, and Marius staring right into her eyes as he

guided her effortlessly in time with the music. He had cut his pale-blond hair short for this evening, and wore the simplest of male attire, a dark dinner jacket and trousers with a white turtleneck sweater.

He is the most impressive immortal here, Gregory thought, and my Chrysanthe is as beautiful as any, as beautiful as Pandora who is just now coming into the room. I don't like it, their dancing. I don't like it at all.

When had he ever seen blood drinkers dancing? He and Chrysanthe went out into human society frequently and always had, and they had danced, yes, on many a polished dance floor, passing for mortal, but this was wholly different. This was a gathering of immortals, and the dancing of immortals was different.

Suddenly the music was too loud for him, and he felt his pulse in his veins, and he didn't want to watch Marius with his Blood Wife, Chrysanthe. But he didn't want to walk away either.

From far beyond these walls there came voices in the night, the young blood drinkers out there arguing with one another in the park, and suddenly one of them was fleeing from another in terror.

The tempo of the music became ever more rapid. Pandora had begun to dance with Louis, the ancient one with the inevitable living-marble demeanor and the younger, more human Louis beaming down at her as if she were in fact an ingenue in his care. Recent infusions of ancient blood had not entirely altered Louis. He was still perhaps the most human-appearing immortal in the house.

Davis moved out onto the dance floor, alone, his head slightly bowed, left arm raised in an arc, right hand on his waist making his own little private dance to the waltz music with exquisite feline ease. His heavy-lidded eyes were dreamy, and his dark brown skin gorgeous in the light of the chandelier.

Fareed had taken his place beside Seth and appeared to be enraptured now with these goings-on. Vampire musicians were such curiosities and had appeared so seldom in the history of the Undead. What they did with their instruments was always so difficult to analyze. But Gregory was convinced it had to do with the changelessness of the vampiric body and the ever-shifting changes all around them; they did not yield to tempo as did human musicians, but kept rebelling against it, playing with it, threatening to destroy it, yet snapping back into it with surprising suddenness, which gave the music a friable and almost tragic sound.

Armand was suddenly at Gregory's side.

"Rather like fiddling while Rome burns, isn't it?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know," said Gregory. "But the intensity of this is undeniable. This many of us gathered here in one place. This is ... I didn't ..."

"I know, but this time we mustn't scatter like marbles rolling in all directions when it's over."

"No," said Gregory, "it's not possible anymore for us to live isolated from one another and uncooperative with one another. I've known that for a long time."

"Yet it's never worked when I've tried ..." Armand broke off and turned to the music.

Benji came into the room.

The music stopped.

In his dark gray three-piece suit and matching fedora Benji moved through the crowd with the smiling vigor of a visiting politician, shaking this hand and that, bowing to Pandora, and to Chrysanthe, accepting the kisses of the women graciously and then taking the center of the room, eyes sweeping over all. He was perhaps five feet two inches in height, yet a perfectly proportioned man. His hat was clearly integral to his costume, and no one need bother to tell him that a gentleman takes off his hat indoors, because his hat was not coming off, it was part of him.

"I thank you all for coming," he declared, his boyish voice ringing out clearly and distinctly with a commanding self-confidence. "I've broken off broadcasting to inform you of the following. The Voice has called our phone lines, and spoken to us through the vocal cords of a vampire male. The Voice says it is trying to come to us."

"But how can you be certain this was the Voice?" asked Armand.

"It was the Voice," said Benji with a little deferential bow to Armand. "I spoke to him myself, of course, Armand, and he referenced for me the things he had told me privately." Benji tapped the side of his head beneath the brim of his hat. "He recalled for me the bits of poetry he'd been reciting to me telepathically. It was the Voice. And the Voice says he is struggling with all his might to come to us. Now, ladies and gentlemen of the Night, I must return to the broadcast."

"But wait, please, Benji," said Marius. "I'm at a disadvantage here. What poetry was it exactly that the Voice recited?"

"Yeats, Master," said Benji with a deeper more referential bow. "Yeats, 'The Second Coming': 'And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.' "

And he was off without another word for his studio upstairs, tipping his hat as he passed Pandora and Chrysanthe. And the music filled the room again--the throbbing, rushing sound of "The Carousel Waltz."

Gregory moved back, close to the wall, watching the dancers as they resumed. Then he realized that Davis was at his side. He felt the cool touch of Davis's hand on his.

"Dance with me," said Davis. "Come dance at my side."

"How?"

"Oh, you know. You've always known. The way men have always danced. Think back. Long ago, you must have danced with other men." Davis's eyes were moist, searching. Davis was smiling, and he seemed utterly trusting, trusting in Gregory somehow no matter what the future held. How sweet was that trust.