But she was talking, talking about what Amel was, and what Amel could do, and who she was, and how she had no choice but to try to free him and put him in a body very nearly like the one that had been blown to pieces in Atalantaya, sending him on his journey of thousands of years into the realm of the spirits out of which we had been born.

I stood against the parapet a few feet to her right looking out over the modern buildings of Collingsworth Pharmaceuticals and the modern towers of Paris all around it, a world away from the old city and the cathedral in which I’d first drunk innocent blood. Somewhere lost in the confusion of rooftops was the doorway to Fareed’s laboratory in another building, but I couldn’t tell where that was. The fact is, we were safe here and I heard no preternatural hearts near us, no foolish angels to the rescue. Gregory had not followed. Fareed and Flannery were likely miles away at Court, and we were alone.

And she, a fragile thing, in spite of all her gifts, had about her the perfume of innocent blood.

Innocent blood. Amel had stopped asking for it, stopped bringing it to my mind the way he had been only a few months ago. Innocent blood, that tasted just the same as evil blood, if you closed your eyes to the visions that traveled with it, and just drank and drank and drank.

It was supremely enticing to me that she would not die if I drank every drop of her innocent blood, and in my secret lawless mind where fantasies are nurtured only to die an early death, I saw her as a captive wife in the dungeons of my ancestral château, kept there for me the way Derek had been kept by the unfortunate Roland, and I thought what conversations we might have, me and my immortal bride whose blood would never run dry. She was so very lovely, with her shining dark skin, such rich dark skin, and her raven hair and her quick, crisp speaking voice so easy to listen to, if I really wanted to hear anything she said. And I’d always want to hear what she had to say, because she was brilliant, and she knew things impossible for me to know. She’d really been up there, with the moon and the stars, on a star called Bravenna, higher than I could ever soar.

“All right,” I said bringing to a halt her latest exhortation as to why I should do it now. “I’m not ready, but I’ll be ready and when I am I’ll tell you.”