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"Well, there's at least a chance for peace," said Rose. She wiped her hair out of her eyes, and stared for a moment at her hand, at her fingernails. Her fingernails were the only real giveaway right now that she was preternatural. They were shining. She couldn't help but look at them, be fascinated by their sheen. Luracastria.

"A chance, yes," said Viktor, "but frankly I wish that Rhoshamandes was no more. Don't we have enough to worry about now without him?"

"It's time for me to show myself and do what I can to calm the others," I said. "I have to go out into the ballroom, no choice."

"We'll go with you," Louis said.

I headed out and through the long series of connective salons which stood between me and the ballroom of this my glorified lair. The music was playing as always, and this evening it was Sybelle at the harpsichord and Antoine conducting and Notker's singers chanting in a monosyllabic delirium--in a riotous waltz spinning off of Camille Saint-Saens's "Danse Macabre," carrying the melodies to savage heights.

When I stepped into the room, I saw it was packed, and almost every single blood drinker was dancing, either alone or with a partner or a ring of partners. Only a few sat here and there, some caught up in the music as if in a trance. At least a hundred newcomers or recent comers were in the crowd, and if there was any panic over the Replimoids, it certainly was not visible to me. Yielding to the music, yielding to the dance, that is what mattered in the ballroom. Faces brightened as they saw me, bows as they saw me, salutes from the ragged and the bejeweled.

At once, the gorgeously attired Zenobia took my hand and moved out on the dance floor.

"I'm so grateful that Marius has stayed behind with us," she said. She was delicate of face and build and her fine shimmering black hair was artfully threaded with ropes of pearls. Eyes that had gazed on Byzantium, eyes that had seen Hagia Sophia in all her glory.

"I'm glad too," I said. "But why did he?"

"They put it t

his way," said Zenobia. "Some of them might not return from their visit to Rhoshamandes, so it was imperative that, if things went wrong, there be strong ones here, here to help you on your right and your left." Such a sweet voice, speaking English with a heavy accent that gave it a distinctive charm.

"I see," I said. "And Avicus?"

"Dancing," she said with a quick smile. She made a graceful gesture with her small hand that meant "somewhere here." She was as lovely as Marius had described her when he'd first encountered her in Constantinople so many centuries ago. And I found it especially enticing that she wore finely tailored men's clothes--slim-waisted jacket with sequined lapels, tight shimmering pants, a silk shirt of brilliant turquoise.

We were turning in wild circles before I knew it, and then I was passed by her to the lovely brown-haired Chrysanthe in a graceful swirling white gown with diamonds on her breast that were blinding. The music was driving towards a frenzy.

"And from Gregory? Have you had any word?" I asked because surely her Blood Spouse would have let her know what he might be keeping from the rest of us.

"I've heard nothing," she said. "But I'm not afraid. Yet I won't rest easy till he returns. I wanted to go with them. But Gregory wouldn't hear of it. None of them would hear of it."

"I should be with them," I said. But the others had been completely against it. Why wouldn't Rhoshamandes on the precipice strike out at me and thereby seek to destroy all of us?

The dancing continued to be dizzyingly fast. I caught glimpses of Davis and Arjun playing instruments in the orchestra, Davis the oboe this time, and Arjun the violin, and there was Notker the Wise himself singing with his choir of male and female soprano voices, and Antoine conducting so fiercely it was a dance in itself.

There was Marius in his long red-belted tunic sitting on the sidelines in fast conversation with Pandora, and Gremt Stryker Knollys, the spirit incarnate, staring at me and watching my every move as David Talbot sat beside him, obviously talking to him, and leaving him unmoved. Gremt needing me, calling to me silently without a visible sign.

"Forgive me," I said to Chrysanthe. "There are things I have to do."

She nodded that she understood. But I held her hand as I motioned for David to come forward, and then I delivered her now into his gentlemanly arms. I headed in the direction of Gremt. And when Gremt saw this he rose and moved towards the open doors that led to a stone terrace. Did the young vampires think he was a vampire? Did the old vampires despise him because the Talamasca, their age-old stalker, had been founded by him? I could have spent every single night at Court talking to new blood drinkers, or encountering old ones who were forever arriving, it seemed, to put to rest the "exaggerated" rumors of their demise. Please, Quinn, my beloved Quinn, some night, if we have many nights left, come walking through these doors.

Gremt wasn't trying to avoid me. Rather, as he glanced over his shoulder, he appeared to be asking me to follow him outside.

The air was freezing and the terrace was covered in the snow, but the sky was remarkably clear and clean, and the snow crunched and crackled under my feet because it was frozen.

Gremt stood at the railing, and looked out over the village below. This terrace had not existed in my time, but had been added to the Chateau by my workers, and it gave the finest view of the village with its winding street and dimly lighted tavern and townhouses. Curfew was in effect for the humans of the village, but going from and coming to the tavern was allowed, and I could see furtive figures down there on the fresh-swept pavers, and some lingering against the wall like dark ghosts gazing up at the Chateau, and perhaps at us as we stood side by side, though mortal eyes couldn't have seen me clasp Gremt's hand.

Kapetria and her kindred Replimoids waited in the inn down there for word on Roland and Rhoshamandes--the re-creation of the inn in which, centuries ago, I'd drunk myself sick with my lover Nicolas and first confronted my mortality and gone out of my head.

Gremt's hand. So warm, so human. He was the picture of dignity gazing out, silken hair as well groomed as that of a Greek statue, his tall formidable body clothed in the long black clerical-looking thawb, a garment he apparently liked very much. And what were his thoughts tonight? Why couldn't I read his mind or the minds of the Replimoids? So be it. He'd tell me when he was ready just what Kapetria's revelations had meant to him. They must have shaken him to the root.

I caught the scent of blood as if it were something Gremt could release at will, and I heard the tripping of his mysterious heart beneath it, and felt the pulse in his wrist.

Innocent blood, there came that suggestion again, that whisper from Amel in a voice that didn't need words. His blood, yes, now. My mouth was tasting blood. I want it, I want it, his blood.

"Is this what you want?" I asked Gremt. "You want me to do what I did with her?"

"I want to know what you taste and what you see when you drink the blood of this body," he said in a muted and anguished voice. "What do you think this Replimoid woman might tell me about what I've done--how I've incarnated?" So that meant far more to him now than the revelations about Amel.