Now others were curious about the fate of Amel, obviously, but I don’t think anyone felt the pain I felt. Louis knew what I couldn’t confide, and he was respectful of it, and comforting and patient. Louis never failed me. But others spoke carelessly of Amel, of the Amel Factor, of the Amel Core, and of the Burnings instigated by Amel, and of how Amel might have been the ruin of all that he had brought into being when he plunged into Akasha thousands of years ago. The young ones wanted to hear again and again the story of our origins; but the heroes and heroines of the oft-told tales did not include the faceless, voiceless spirit who had only come to himself in the late twentieth century. And by the end of May, it was not uncommon to hear young blood drinkers in the ballroom saying casually that they found it hard to believe “all that old mythology” about Amel.

We were now what we had always been—a tribe of the shadows, hunting humans on the margins, drifting through the mortal crowds of the world wrapped in Gothic splendor and self-sustained romance. But we were united and we were strong. We had one another. And we had the Council, and we had the castle, and we had the Court.

I was intoxicated with the Court by the time summer came. I was spending part of every evening working with Marius on a constitution that he was writing in Latin, that reflected far too much of his Roman principles, and strange Hellenistic disdain for the material and the biological, and then I spent time talking with the young ones about how they must and could protect themselves from discovery, while working with all the relentless digital surveillance of the mortal world. The spiritual, the practical, the timeless challenges, the challenges of the moment.

Renovations were complete on the Château and on the village, and on three manor houses that had been reconstructed from old paintings and molding drawings and historical maps.

I had let most of the mortal architects, designers, and construction laborers go; only a small community of retirees remained. And I faced the question now of whether I wanted to bring my beloved chief architect, Alain Abelard, over into our world.

Meanwhile, Abelard didn’t want to leave the village. He didn’t want to leave me. He told me he had new projects to suggest to me, and would soon be presenting me with various plans. Abelard had no real life apart from me.

When all this became too much for me, I’d break off and go to Paris just to wander places old and new, and breathe in the city’s endless vitality.