"Then Miranda's hair—" Rachaela stopped.

They sat in silence, and the golden clock, which ran, ticked softly. Time, passing. Perhaps.

"Althene," Rachaela said, "nothing's happened to me. I'm not pregnant."

" 'Tis wel goed."

"I mean, Althene, I believed perhaps I was meant to be."

Althene shrugged.

"I mean," Rachaela said, "that was the plan the last time. I was used. Just like my mother."

"Yes, you were used."

"I don't want to be used again."

"In what sense am I to have used you?" Althene said. "By trying to impregnate you with rabid Scarabae seed? Or by masquerading as one thing and being another?"

"It isn't a masquerade, I realize that. But a deception. To make me think I was safe with you and then—"

"And then," said Althene.

She finished her brandy and walked across the room, the coat trailing from her hand.

Rachaela stood up. She said ironically, "Can I have offended you?"

Althene turned. She smiled, from a height.

"Why not persevere? Perhaps you will manage it."

Rachaela came to dinner in the olive dress with a coil of silver around her throat. She felt silly, anxious, fraught, and proud—yes, that was the word. Like a woman from a novel set in 1890.

She watched the others carefully.

Eric. Old and straight, ringed, in his brushed dinner clothes. And Sasha, her iron hair pinned up, in plum velvet. Tray came in with Miranda. Mother and daughter? No, grandmother and grandchild, for Tray had started to call her Nan-Nan. Tray was now a Lily Burne-Jones in her dark sequined frock. She wore pale makeup and dark eyes, but no lipstick or blusher. And Miranda. 1950s dress and hair down her back. The gray had mixed into some other color. Prune-color hair. Like black hair graying, but… the other way around.

Did Miranda's face look young? It did. Deep lines by the mouth and between the eyes. The marks of a thin woman of fifty-four or -five. But she had looked eighty, ninety, Miranda. Once.

Camillo did not come in, or Lou. Off to another gig, in the rain.

She won't come. The Scarabae game.

Adamus. With her for a night. Pinned like a butterfly, impaled on the vampire stake of the burning phallus. And then he hid himself in his tower, which later burned in fire.

Althene came in in a scarlet dress.

Rachaela felt the blood rush into her face and throat.

Burning…

They sat down and ate the meal. Something. What was it?

Rachaela thought of the sea gull they had eaten at the other house, before. Sufficient unto themselves, locked in time. But events had smashed open the glass case, and out they flew.

Was it the shock which made them alter? Kill, or cure.

After dinner they went into the drawing room and put a video on the TV.

Eric said to Althene, "This actor looks like Malach. Don't you think so?"