He stood back.

He and Cheta began to turn out the gracious side lamps of the sitting room.

Dark entered, on cue.

It was to be a seance.

Rachaela said, "You can't include me in this."

"We must," said Sasha. And then, "Anna would want it."

Anna. Adamus's mother—perhaps. Therefore Rachaela's grandmother. Ruth's. Anna: stabbed through the heart by the heartless knitting needle.

"But I can't—" said Rachaela.

They waited.

When she did not go on, did not get up, Eric put the forefinger of his right hand onto the glass, and Sasha and Miranda followed him. The rings of the Scarabae crackled in the half-dark and the last lamp went out.

A chair creaked, as Michael sat down by Cheta in a corner.

Rachaela put her finger on the glass among the fingers of Eric, Sasha, Miranda.

There was a stasis, a cessation.

It won't work. Why should it?

The glass trembled, and began to move.

They are moving it.

In the blackness of the room perhaps they could see, but Rachaela could not very well. Somehow she saw the glass, running like a white surge across the polished table.

Well, let them play at it. If it could comfort them.

The glass was spelling out words, of course, but—of course—she could not tell what they were. Eric exclaimed in another tongue—not that, she thought, which had been used in the prayer. And then Miranda murmured something. A name? Stephan?

The glass darted.

There was a vibration in it, a thrumming, as if from thunder miles away.

Don't imagine things.

Adamus had drunk her blood, in the dark, lying over her, flesh on flesh, so long ago. Adamus…

A pressure mounted in Rachaela's throat, like tears, or the prologue to orgasm.

She would not be coerced. Not even now.

The glass was skidding on the table, squealing.

She lifted her finger—and the glass was gone, seeming to pull the pulse out of her finger's end.

Irresistibly, she let her finger drop back on to the surface of the goblet.

The Scarabae were quiet now, only breathing, concentrating.

There was a light in the room. Someone had lit a lamp. But it was not the lamp. It was too low down.

Keeping her hand in contact with the goblet, Rachaela looked. A powerpoint was glowing fierily against the wall. And there another, slowly blooming up like a gas flame. The light switches had begun to shine. At the room's center, the overhead lamps abruptly fractured with a dull dense crack. Glass showered the carpet.

The Scarabae took no notice.

Suddenly there came the hiss of water and a loud knocking from beyond the room, a bathroom along the corridor also apparently reacting. There were faint noises of stress from every corner. Thumpings, patterings. The hotel sitting room had come alive. The carpet was shifting. Pictures tilted on the walls.

That doesn't make it real. Psychic electricity, a poltergeist.