“There should be no secrets with any of us,” I said. “I mean the Talamasca’s no more, right? You’ve let the human Order go into the world without your governance. And now you’re free to come live with us for as long as you like! To be part of us, part of the Court, part of the company that we are.”

He gave me a long loving smile. I was faintly humiliated.

Amel was silent but most assuredly present.

“You need never worry about the Talamasca anymore,” said Teskhamen. “Surely you know that. And they’ll never seek to harm you any more than they did in the past. They’re off studying supernatural phenomena with the same dreary dedication for which they have always been famous.”

“Hands off the Talamasca,” I said with a shrug. “We agreed to that the first time we came together to agree on anything.”

That didn’t surprise them. Likely they knew. Likely they had some ghost in the very room spying on us. Where were the other ghosts? Hesketh? And that male ghost who’d come to Trinity Gate, bringing tears from Armand, the one called Riccardo?

“But you,” I said, “you, the very heart of the Talamasca, you must come and visit with us and share with us everything you ever discovered, ever learned….”

“And what do you think we learned,” asked Teskhamen, “that Maharet didn’t long ago tell you? Ghosts exist. Spirits exist. Are all spirits ghosts? Nobody knows. It always ends with ‘nobody knows.’ And nothing changes the ascent of biological humans, humans of body and soul, to rule the planet and reach for the stars beyond it.”

Suddenly in a silent flash I saw that city falling into the sea, that great city of glistening spires….But the image vanished as if snatched away from me. A misery came over me, certainly originating with Amel. I knew because it was like nothing I ever felt in the regular course of things. The fire. The sea. A city melting? And then that too was gone, and the fire here on the hearth was crackling and the air filled anew with the sweet smoke of the burning wood, and I felt an icy draft moving along the floor that meant it was colder outside, and maybe it was snowing. I couldn’t see out the windows from where I sat, but I could feel that it was snowing. I longed for the sweet balmy air of New Orleans, across the sea, for Louis.

Teskhamen started speaking again.