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I could not get the taste and smell of this sweat gone.

"Why did you so object to my pulling out his hair?" I asked. "I only wanted to have it, and he's dead and beyond caring and no one else will miss his black hair. "

He turned with a sly smile and took my measure.

"You frighten me, the way you look," I said. "Have I so carelessly revealed myself to be a monster? You know, my blessed mortal Sybelle, when she is not playing the Sonata by Beethoven called the Appassionata, watches me feed all the time. Do you want me to tell my story now?"

I glanced back at the dead man on his side, his shoulder sagging. On the windowsill beyond and above him stood a blue glass bottle and in it was an orange flower. Isn't that the damnedest thing?

"Yes, I do want your story," David said. "Come, let's go back together. I only asked you not to take his hair for one reason. "

"Yes?" I asked. I looked at him. Rather genuine curiosity. "What was the reason then? I was only going to pull out all his hair and throw it away. "

"Like pulling off the wings of a fly," he offered seemingly without judgment.

"A dead fly," I said. I deliberately smiled. "Come now, why the fuss?"

"I wanted to see if you'd listen to me," he said. "That's all. Because if you did then it might be all right between us. And you stopped. And it is. " He turned around and took my arm.

"I don't like you!" I said.

"Oh, yes, you do, Armand," he answered. "Let me write it. Pace and rail and rant. You're very high and mighty right now because you have those two splendid little mortals hanging on your every gesture, and they're like acolytes to a god. But you want to tell me the story, you know you do. Come on!"

I couldn't stop myself from laughing. "Have these tactics worked for you in the past?"

Now it was his turn to laugh and he did, good-naturedly. "No, I suppose not," he said. "But let me put it to you this way, write it for them. "

"For whom?"

"For Benji and Sybelle. " He shrugged. "No?"

I didn't answer.

Write the story for Benji and Sybelle. My mind raced forwards, to some cheerful and wholesome room, where we three would be gathered years hence-I, Armand, unchanged, boy teacher-and Benji and Sybelle in their mortal prime, Benji grown into a sleek tall gentleman with an Arab's ink-eyed allure and his favorite cheroot in his hand, a man of great expectation and opportunity, and my Sybelle, a curvaceous and full regal-bodied woman by then, and an even greater concert pianist than she could be now, her golden hair framing a woman's oval face and fuller womanish lips and eyes full of entsagang and secret radiance.

Could I dictate the story in this room and give them the book? This book dictated to David Talbot? Could I, as I set them free from my alchemical world, give them this book? Go forth my children, with all the wealth and guidance I could bestow, and now this book I wrote so long ago for you with David.

Yes, said my soul. Yet I turned, and ripped the black scalp of hair from my victim and stomped on it with a Rumpelstiltskin foot.

David didn't flinch. Englishmen are so polite.

"Very well," I said. "I'll tell you my story. "

His rooms were on the second floor, not far from where I'd paused at the top of the staircase. What a change from the barren and unheated hallways! He'd made a library for himself and with tables and chairs. A brass bed was there, dry and clean.

"These are her rooms," he said. "Don't you remember?"

"Dora," I said. I breathed her scent suddenly. Why, it was all around me. But all her personal things were gone.

These were his books, they had to be. They were new spiritual explorers-Dannion Brinkley, Hilarion, Melvin Morse, Brian Weiss, Matthew Fox, the Urantia book. Add to this old texts-Cassiodorus, St. Teresa of Avila, Gregory of Tours, the Veda, Talmud, Torah, Kama Sutra-all in original tongues. He had a few obscure novels, plays, poetry.

"Yes. " He sat down at the table. "I don't need the light. Do you want it?"

"I don't know what to tell you. "

"Ah," he said. He took out his mechanical pen. He opened a notebook with startlingly white paper scored with fine green lines. "You will know what to tell me. " He looked up at me.

I stood hugging myself, as it were, letting my head fall as if it could drop right off me and I would die. My hair fell long about me.