Seth had gone out hunting the dark corners of Paris tonight, a willowy white-clad wraith decked out in antique Egyptian bracelets and rings, likely to attract predatory mortals by his sheer peculiarity and seemingly defenseless reserve.

Gregory Duff Collingsworth on the other hand was thoroughly fortified by a modern demeanor in all respects. He moved with the easy grace of twenty-first-century men of power, comfortable on escalators and in elevators, in high-rise towers or cavernous shopping malls, and before television news cameras and human interrogators—an impeccably groomed and conservatively dressed “man of business,” who spoke to one and all with an effortless courtesy that was both formal and warm.

Even here in this vast rococo drawing room, Gregory had the manicured gloss of a male of these times. He wore a “casual” belted gray suede jacket, with a pale-blue-checkered shirt under it and denim slacks. He wore his usual gold-banded wristwatch, and a pair of soft brown calf-leather pull-tab boots. All the immortals who took to the air wore boots.

Of course Gregory went to great lengths to “pass.” He spent his comatose daylight hours in a glass rooftop chamber. Everybody knew this. At the Château he slept exposed atop the south tower. Here in Paris, he slept in a high-walled courtyard. This kept his skin always darkly tanned. And every evening on rising, he cut and trimmed his dark hair perfectly, so that few of his new immortal companions even guessed that it had been shoulder length when he’d been made.

This question of the hair afforded him great flexibility. With his long hair grown out and tied back, he could and did now and then wander through the corridors of his own company in Geneva as a “mail-room boy.” And when hunting he could use the long hair to advantage, decking himself out in torn dungarees and neon shirts to roam alleyways and drug dens unnoticed until he chose to strike.

When Gregory met with human employees and reporters, he was skillfully painted with modern cosmetic compounds that disguised his preternatural skin even further, and he never lingered in the company of any human very long. Almost all of his business he conducted by phone or email, some by Skype when it was absolutely necessary, and much by long and often witty “Letters from the Desk of Gregory,” which he circulated amongst his employees from the top to the bottom of the giant company of which he was the de facto owner and chairman of the board. The glossy publicity photos of him which the company distributed to news services were all taken by his beloved Blood Spouse, Chrysanthe.