There were memories, always on the edge of mental sight and hearing. She could not grasp them, yet she partly saw from the corners of her eyes, and nearly heard their whispering. It seemed she must stand wholly still, and then the veil would melt, and she would know it all. All there was or could be. And she was not afraid.

And I'm drunk, of course. Their dinner and their wine.

Yet she stayed on in the timeless garden, floating in space.

Scarabae. I, too, am Scarabae.

An oval melted in the veil and the shadow, and through it came a man clad in black with long white hair.

He walked toward her deftly, over the grass, and past the fountain.

Malach said: "It's true, the Scarabae women are the most beautiful in the world."

He lifted her hand quietly and kissed it, close beside the ruby ring that had been Anna's and Miriam's. Then he leaned and kissed her cheek. He smelled still of the dark, and of danger. But it was not for her, his dangerous dark.

"Why are you here?" she said. "Have you brought Ruth here?"

"Oh, no. Ruth is safe. I've come to fetch my sons, the dogs."

"Your sons," she said.

"My other sons are lost to me," he said.

Rachaela felt a rill of excitement flow through her, but it died because she made it die.

"Are you going to kill Ruth?" Rachaela said. "Or won't you answer?"

"What is death?" said Malach.

He widened his eyes and now there was enough light to see their hard sheer color. So bleak, so far, the distance inside the eyes.

"Death is what happened to Anna," said Rachaela. "And to the others. Death is what Ruth caused."

But she thought, / believe in his age. A hundred. More. There, and there. How can something so old ever kill?

"I must be going now," he said. She could find no further words to say to him. She watched him move away through the spell of the garden, and the veil mended, and a blackbird sang.

Under the electric lights of the utility room, Camillo was burnishing the Cinderella carriage of the trike.

He had brushed the damson velvet, and rubbed the stained-glass window, and now attended on the sharklike bodywork with rags.

A man was in the doorway.

Camillo's face set into a kind of doughy flatness. He stood up and rubbed his cleaner hand between the ears of the burned horse head.

"Come to see my horse?"

Malach walked into the room. But for the trike, there was little there. A few boxes, bottles, cans of fuel and cleaning agents, and the block of raw light. Malach stayed still, and looked at everything. Finally at Camillo.