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"I dreamed about it more. I homed to Fareed and did my best to get him to focus on that woman again, but Fareed is good at ignoring me, or turning on me, seizing on my presence and demanding to know all manner of things so that I leave because his questions are deafening. That's when I think it started. I saw her, and I remembered something. I think I remembered her voice--the actual sound of her voice. And yes, I know damned good and well that I was once living, walking around this earth just like you, and those spirit friends of yours don't know anything. Anyone who believes a spirit is an idiot."

"And that goes for a ghost too?" I asked.

My right hand jerked suddenly and then fell back down on my thigh.

"You didn't like that, did you?" he asked.

"Try to do it again," I said. But in truth it alarmed me. It had been no more than a spasm, but I didn't like it. He who can cause a spasm can cause a fall, or perhaps...Didn't want to be thinking about it.

"Why don't you trust me!" he demanded. "I love you!"

"I know," I said. "I love you too. And I want to trust you."

"You're all so emotional!" he said.

"And you're not? Okay. So that might be the reason you saw the city--that he had stumbled on that woman, and was considering bringing her over."

"He thinks he can make other blood drinkers without asking anyone. He is a god unto himself, that doctor. He thinks his maker, Seth, protects him against your authority."

"Likely that's true," I said. "Who is he supposed to ask for permission to make others anyway? Me? Or the Council?"

"Well, whom do you think, genius!" he replied. "Who is it that animates the entire Corpus Amel, may I ask? Your Frankensteinian friend would have put me in a jar if he could have done it."

"I'll never let him do anything like that to you ever," I said.

"And I'll never let anyone hurt you. Remember that!"

"Is somebody trying?"

Silence.

"These creatures, these non-humans. They would hurt you, wouldn't they? This Garekyn thing ate the brain of Killer and ruptured the skull of Eleni."

"Blunders," I said. "Why are they looking for you?"

"I don't know!" he said.

"So why did you feel a blow to the gut when you saw the vision of that city?"

"Because I loved it and all those people perished and they were crying. It was a horrible thing what happened to them. Aren't you cold out here? The snow is getting thicker. We are covered in snow."

"I'm not cold," I said. "Are you cold?"

"Of course not, I don't feel hot and cold," he said.

"Yes, you do," I said.

"No, I don't!"

"Yes, you do. You feel cold when I feel cold and it takes more than this."

"You just don't understand how or what I feel," he said dejectedly. "You don't understand how the world looks to me through your eyes, or feels to me through your hands. Or why I want innocent blood."

"So you're the one who wants innocent blood," I replied. "And that's why I'm thinking of it all the time, night and day, the boss man who's telling the Children of the Night all over the world that they can't drink innocent blood."

"I loathe and detest you."

"How big was the city?"