Rachaela went back to her room, and presently a service trolly came courteously and deferentially to her door. It was the pub's best. Avocado with a lemon sauce, steak and a green salad, strawberries, wine. A rose, real, poised in the vase.

To her surprise Rachaela was ravenous. She ate fiercely, sometimes with her fingers. When she had ended the meal, she buried her face in her hands and wept. She did not know why. She was in her forties. She did not want Ruth. Adamus had been a devil, her enemy. The Scarabae were insane.

They came back after sunset. She heard them, as a child hears in an empty house.

They too wore new clothes, modern clothes that were ageless. They looked like ancient film stars, all in black.

Rachaela went down the corridor, and then she smelled their scent. The odorless inanition of age. Cologne and perfume. And, far stronger, ashes and fire.

They had been at another burning.

It was then, so curiously, that Miranda held out her arms, like a white crystal bird that attempts to fly. And Rachaela went into the arms of Miranda, and together they wept, in the corridor of the modern pub, like ancient sisters in a tragedy.

No one disturbed them. Not Sasha, not Eric. Not Michael, nor Cheta.

Below, the pub made sounds of festival as the village came in for food and drink to drive the dark away. But the Scarabae were the dark, and Rachaela clung to them. Just for a minute. There. That night.

CHAPTER 3

AMANDA MILLS WENT QUICKLY INTO HER bedroom. To immediate scrutiny, it revealed nothing untoward. The teak fitted wardrobes, the plush carpet, the velvet bedroom chair and curtains were undisturbed. But it was the bed which concerned Amanda Mills.

She advanced on it. The duvet and toning pillows were pristine, as she had left them. Nevertheless, she prized them up. Not a ripple on the undersheet.

Amanda sniffed, cautiously, thoroughly. She detected the faint familiar aroma of fabric conditioner, nothing more.

Her sharp shoulders relaxed a little. Not very much. She would go to Timothy's room next.

At her dressing table she paused. A pair of earrings lay on the polished surface, before the jars of cold cream and night cream, the battalion of regimental bottles. Surely she had not left the earrings lying there. Had that ghastly girl—

In her late forties, Amanda Mills had had the gray tinted out and her hair shaped into wings and cemented by lacquer. She was thin from careful dieting. She wore the sleeveless dress in antique sand she had put on for dinner at the hotel, and smart costume jewelry, which, as she moved, clacked like a chain of bones.

There was a strong fragrance about the dressing table which harmonized with her own. The girl had been spraying Amanda Mills's perfume.