Mathias took a step toward them, then turned to glance at the forest behind him. Among all the new sounds and calls that animated the forest, there was one missing. He paused for a moment, secretly hoping to hear that presence again, to spot it somewhere among the trees, but there were no shadows left in the woods.

-81-

-81-

The old asylums for the criminally insane had been replaced by institutions commonly known as psychiatric rehabilitation centers.

Teresa hoped that the change was not purely a matter of semantics. She had to believe that the man who was waiting for her behind that door would have, at long last, an opportunity to learn how to live, rather than just to survive. Perhaps this was naive of her, but now more than ever before in her life, she needed something to hope for.

“Ready?” said Marini beside her.

Teresa nodded, and a warden opened the door.

There was Andreas Hoffman, sitting before her not with the air of a convicted killer, but of a king in exile. His throne had been usurped, his reign handed over to bulldozers and diggers that would tear it to pieces. Yet he took up all the space in the room with the majesty of a conqueror.

He was sitting on a chair, staring ahead at the bare wall with his back straight and his head held high, and with his hands—restrained by flexible handcuffs—resting on his lap. They had cut his hair and shaved his beard. He had a strikingly beautiful face that looked as if it had been carved out of some golden, luminous wood. Studying his face, Teresa understood that nothing would ever corrupt his soul, not even the blood he had shed.

Andreas existed on a different plane from theirs: a primordial place stripped clean of all hypocrisy and human iniquities. Not even death seemed to have tainted him.

Teresa was awed by the power he radiated: it wasn’t just a question of physical vigor, but of a vital energy that seemed almost tangible, and that she could feel pressing against her, even at a distance. It was that animal magnetism that Wallner had described in his diary.

But, she reminded herself, it was also a lot more than that: it was the force of leaders and kings, the charisma of commanders; it was mana, a spiritual energy that few were blessed with, and which could be used to rouse another’s conscience or indeed to crush it.

Teresa wasn’t sure whether she was imagining it all, or if the creature in front of her truly was special.

Stay calm and think clearly, she told herself as she sat across from him.