“There was Mardi Gras too, when, even though we’re an hour and a half from New Orleans, we were booked solid, and we decorated in the traditional colors of purple, green and gold.

“Sometimes, a very few times, I went into the city to see some of the Mardi Gras parades. Sweetheart’s sister, Aunt Ruthie, lived on St. Charles Avenue, which you know is the main parade route. But she wasn’t a Blackwood, and her sons, though probably normal, appeared to me to be monsters with too much body hair and overly deep voices, and I felt uncomfortable there.

“So Mardi Gras didn’t penetrate to me very much except for all the gaiety out here at the house, and the inevitable costume ball we held on the night of Fat Tuesday itself. It was amazing how many revelers came back at sunset from New Orleans, after hours of watching Zulu, Rex and the interminable truck parades, to drink themselves sick at our festive bar.

“Of course I did very occasionally encounter other children here—at the Halloween party and at the Christmas party in particular, and sometimes at the weddings—but I didn’t take to them. They seemed to me to be freaky little people. I have to laugh at myself for thinking such a thing. But as I’ve said, my world was made up of spirits and adults, and I just didn’t know what to do with children.

“I think I feared children as treacherous and even a little dangerous. I’m not sure why exactly, except that Goblin didn’t like them, but Goblin really didn’t like me to be with anyone very long.

“I hung with the adults by natural inclination and strong choice.

“I can’t think about the weddings now, as we talk together, without thinking of something ghastly that I have to confess to you—something that happened far from Blackwood Manor, and on the night I was made a Blood Hunter. But the time will come for that, I know.

“That’s the family history, as it came down to me when I was innocent and protected by the umbrella of Pops and Sweetheart, and Aunt Queen, who was ever like a fairy godmother, dipping down to Earth only now and then with her stacked heels and invisible wings.

“There are other family members—connections of William’s wives—he had two, the first of whom was the mother of Gravier, and the second, the mother of Aunt Queen, and of Gravier’s wife, and, of course, connections of Sweetheart’s. But though I’ve seen such cousins from time to time, they are not part of this story, and they had no impact on me whatsoever, except perhaps a feeling on my part of being unordinary and hopelessly strange.

“It’s time now for me to move on to the tale of me and Goblin, and the account of how I got educated.