They stood together in the huge drawing room of the Tudor-style house on Redington Road in London that belonged to the non-human Garekyn Brovotkin. It was silent and empty around them, just as it had been when they arrived.

“What do you mean ‘inconceivable’?” said Rhoshamandes. He was growing weary of Roland, dim-witted Roland who’d kept the secret of the otherworldly Derek for a decade. “If I can conceive of it, it is conceivable, my friend. The arm grew into a duplicate being!”

“But if the creature could multiply in that way, surely he would have done it a long time ago.”

“Not if he hadn’t known how to do it,” said Rhoshamandes. “Did you think he was a genius of his kind? He was a child, a pawn, a foot soldier at his best. He would have cracked easily if I hadn’t had so much interference.”

“You have to tell the Court,” said Roland. “You have to tell them to turn off the radio broadcast. You have to go to them now.”

“The Hell I do,” said Rhoshamandes. He was humiliated, angry. The words of his frightened old caretaker echoed in his ears. “We thought they were guests. We provided them with food, wine….”

When he thought of the sight of Benedict’s old room, in chaos with clothing and money and documents strewn all over the floor, he knew a rage he couldn’t contain any longer.

“The creature is not coming back to this house,” said Roland. “Whatever these things are, they’re too smart to do that.”

When Rhosh didn’t answer him, Roland pressed again:

“Tell the Court you want to come in,” he said. “I’ll go with you. They won’t dare to harm you at a time like this. They’ll need you, want your cooperation and assistance.”

For a brief second, only a second, it seemed possible—a future in which Rhosh would be welcomed, in which Benedict would be there, pleading perhaps for his acceptance, and then he would confer with the Prince, and he would see Sevraine again, Sevraine who had refused to receive him in her own compound, and he would be with Gregory, Gregory who’d been brought into this realm of darkness six thousand years ago. But it vanished, this brief flash of possibility, as if it were the flare from the guttering of a dying candle.

Before he’d even decided, the heat had gone out of him, blasting the heavy draperies that flanked the windows of this room, causing them to explode in flame.

Roland was startled, Roland who would do well to stop talking altogether, Roland turning around and around as all the draperies of this great room went up in flames, as the dark oak paneling began to blister and smoke.