Sasha and Miranda and Eric ate hungrily, yet with a delicate reserve. Their hearts were broken, like sections of clockwork in their breasts. They must live with this. Did so.

Sometimes Eric, or Sasha, would beckon Michael and Cheta to the table, and insist that they sample something on a little side plate.

Michael wore also the dinner clothes of the 1950s, and Cheta a matte black dress with a golden brooch like a snake.

There was hardly any conversation. And yet, the brain was full of unheard noises, sounds and sweet airs, elegies, faint cries. Beyond the house, the storm had long since died.

Rachaela was amazed she had eaten so much, and thought her stomach would rebel. But it did not. She felt soothed and sad, easy, distant.

The meal was like a symphony, with themes and developments.

It too had an end.

After the symphony of meal, came actual music. It was dance music. Tangos, a quick-step, a waltz.

Eric partnered Miranda on the space of polished floor beyond the table, and then Sasha. They danced well, even glamorously, young slim beings with ancient faces and hands. Then Eric came to Cheta, and she shook her head, but as with the food he insisted. Then Cheta too danced like a young slim girl.

Eventually Eric nodded to Michael, and he went out onto the floor alone. And there he danced alone, graceful as a ghost and with a ghost for a partner.

When this was done, seen through a kind of mist—it was two in the morning, the candles had shed their leaves of light—the Scarabae went from the room, almost all of them. Sasha and Miranda, and Camillo, shepherding the two tiddly little girls, and Althene in her wine and ruby. Eric was left. And Rachaela.

Have they drugged me? I can't move.

It was only the drink. The wonderful food.

She longed suddenly to sleep.

But Eric stood in the dimness of the candles' dying. He said, "I must tell you now, Rachaela. Malach has found Ruth."

Rachaela felt as if she had been brutally struck through layers of sponge.

"I—Ruth. You're saying Ruth—"

"Malach has her."

"What does that mean?"

Eric stood still. They all had this habit, this immobility. She too.

"I mean, Eric, what will happen now?"

"It will depend."

"On what?"

"The decision is Malach's."

"It shouldn't be. What is he? Some hired assassin?"

"Scarabae," said Eric.

"But you want her dead, don't you? She's a child—" Rachaela thought, A child that kills.

"She is ours."

"But she killed your kind."

My kind.

"She isn't given to us," said Eric. "Malach has her."

How did they know? Some messenger? Some telephone call while she was floundering in Althene's peacock room. How?

It did not matter how.

Rachaela was helpless. As before.

And Ruth—was with Malach.

CHAPTER 22