“If they don’t, they’re fools.”

“I’ve never seen anything remotely like this before.”

“That’s the whole idea. Neither have I. And neither have they. And if there are more of them, if there is a whole tribe of them somewhere, living in our world…”

“I see.”

Derek took a deep breath, but he said nothing, and did nothing to acknowledge their presence. He shrank into his corner.

He had pushed the bed into the corner. Mammalian impulse, the Parents would have said. But he did feel safer, foolishly safer, in his corner, and with his blanket half covering him.

But the silence of the two was unnerving to Derek.

He wiped at his nose and looked up at Rhoshamandes and what he saw startled him.

Other blood drinkers had come and gone above, but the only two blood drinkers Derek had known were Roland and Arion, and this new one was vastly different, harder, smoother all over, with a face that looked like living marble and eyes that bored into Derek as if they could burn. His olive skin was dark as Roland’s skin was dark, but this was superficial, accomplished through a calculated exposure to the sun so that they might more easily pass for human. The being’s skin smelled as Roland’s skin always smelled, of the sunshine of the day and burnt tissue, and a faint added perfume.

The blood drinker’s hair was golden brown, short and wavy, and his clothing was like that of Roland—formal evening dress, with startlingly white linen and shimmering black lapels to his coat, and a long fur-lined cloak that fell to the floor. A ring that was a sapphire, and another that was a diamond, and yet another that was old gold. They all think of themselves as princes, princes of the night and they dress like princes. And they drink the blood of humans as if the humans were animals, as if they themselves had never been human, and surely they had been once. Something had changed them into what they were. No one would make such things as they. That was unthinkable.

“You have no right to keep me here,” said Derek. He licked his lips. Finding his handkerchief under his pillow, he wiped at his face. “Whatever I am, whatever you are, you have no right!”

Roland smiled at Rhoshamandes, that vicious cold smile that Derek had come to loathe. His gray eyes were hard and cunning.