Rachaela had noted them holding their breath as they stared at him from the dining room, where sometimes, about eleven o'clock, they drank orange juice or Fanta.

If Camillo was the film director, what was Malach in their scheme of things?

The two wolfhounds had been exercised on the common by Kei, and then they too had gone away, perhaps to the kitchen to consort with him.

Some kind of delivery had also come. Clothes, seemingly, for Althene. Perhaps this dark brown garment, clinging to the slim, flat-bellied form, the narrow buttocks, and high, quivering breasts.

Rachaela studied Althene and her body as she descended into the garden.

"How wise to sit beneath the tree," Althene said, standing over her. "Those two awful little girls with their cooked skin. In ten years they will be withered as raisins, but not so appetizing."

Rachaela said, "At least, you come out by day."

"Oh, yes. That is their age, Eric and Sasha and Miranda. To be afraid of sunlight."

"One of them was consumed by it."

"Really?" said Althene, dispassionate. "Who?"

"Miriam."

"You mean, she caught fire?"

Rachaela said coldly, "No, that's too dramatic, isn't it? I mean she couldn't stand the sun. She fell down and then she died."

"Or perhaps it was the shock of the house burning. And of the deaths of the others."

"Are you like them?" said Rachaela.

"Yes. No."

"And you like word games, too."

"All sorts of games," said Althene.

"I mean, do you claim to have lived hundreds of years? Do you drink blood? You, and Malach."

"That is," said Althene, "a personal question. Intrusive. Do you mean to offend? What's your purpose?"

"They evade questions. They wriggle around them."

"To the family, sometimes, the question of blood, being to do with lovemaking, is considered—impolite."

"But you're young and liberated. What are you? Thirty? That makes you anything from forty-five to ninety-five, I suppose."

Althene sat down on the grass in her Mocha skirt. The grass was dry and seemed to receive her with the promise not to taint or stain. She had that casualness they can afford, those to whom the world molds itself obligingly.

"Let's say," said Althene, "I'm a little older than you. Just a very little. As I am a little taller."

Rachaela felt herself blush, mildly, almost coolly.

She thought: Another corruption. One more inch toward the Scarabae.

She said: "And the blood, Althene?"

"No," Althene said. She smiled. Her teeth were white, well set, even. But Ruth's had been like that.

"And Malach?"

"Is it Malach who intrigues you?"

"Malach is hunting my daughter."

"Your daughter. They told me, you didn't want the child. She was imposed on you."

"Yes." Rachaela let her hands fall on the book.