“ ‘Were there other reasons? I don’t honestly know,’ he went on. ‘Perhaps I harbored a heated desire to see you transformed. You are so very admirable. So young. So splendid in all your parts. And with the sole exception of Manfred, it’s been centuries since she worked the Dark Trick, as some of us call it. Centuries. And she has an idea that the desire builds in us and then must be discharged, and so she brings someone into our midst and makes of that one a Blood Hunter.’

“ ‘But the girls who prepared me, and the boy—they spoke as if there had been others.’

“ ‘She plays with others, and then she destroys them. The servants? What do they know? They’re told that the postulant is being prepared for great gifts, and then fails. That’s all. Now the girl, I don’t know about her. She’s ignorant and greedy. But there is some spark in the boy. Perhaps Petronia will bring him to us.’

“ ‘And has it been well done?’ I asked.

“ ‘Oh, yes, of course it’s been well done,’ he said, almost as if I’d insulted him with my question, ‘not without much more cursing and kicking I think than was ever necessary, but in the main well done; I saw to it that it was well done, though I have more to tell you.’

“He made a little gesture with the coffee, playing with it, as though he liked to see it move in the cup and savor the aroma of it, which was dark and thick and alien to me. Then he spoke.

“ ‘I’m watching you, of course,’ he said. ‘When you drink from the evil ones you have to revel in it, not cringe from the evil. It’s your chance to be evil as the one you kill. Follow your victim’s evil as you empty his soul. Make it your adventure into crimes you yourself would never wantonly commit. When you’ve finished, you take your soul back with what you’ve learned and you’re clean again.’

“ ‘I feel anything but clean,’ I said.

“ ‘Then feel powerful,’ he said. ‘Disease can’t touch you. Neither can age. Any wound you receive will heal. Cut your hair and it will grow back within the space of a night. Forever you will look just as you are now, my Caravaggio Christ. Remember, only fire and the sun can harm you.’

“I listened intently as he continued.

“ ‘Fire you must avoid at all costs,’ he said, ‘for your blood will burn, and terrible suffering may result, which you may survive, healing slowly over centuries. As for the sun—one day of it cannot kill me. But in these early years, either can destroy you. Don’t yield to the desire for death. It claims too many of the young in their impetuosity and grand emotions.’

“I smiled. I knew what he meant—grand emotions.