“Oh, wait, don’t tell me!” Everard declared. And in a mock-American voice he said, “ ‘We are the change that we seek’! No? Tell me you believe that, and I’m going to fall off this chair and roll into the street laughing.”

The three smiled at him, but he could sense that, polite as they were, they did not like being mocked, and he was suddenly sorry. It penetrated to him with amazing sharpness that these three had been nothing but kind and courteous and that he was behaving crossly and stupidly, wasting these moments, and for what?

“Why can’t we come together,” asked the younger male ghost, “to achieve some kind of peace for the realm we share?”

“And what realm is that?” asked Everard. “Since you’re a ghost, my friend, and I’m flesh and blood, no matter how loathsome I am?”

“I was a human being once,” said the younger ghost. “I was a blood drinker for centuries after that. And I am a ghost now. And my soul has been my soul in all three forms.”

“Blood drinker,” murmured Everard. He was marveling, studying the face of this ghost again and that generous, kindly mouth and the expressive eyes. “Magnus!” he said with a start. “Not Magnus the Alchemist.”

“Yes, that’s who I was,” replied the ghost. “And I knew you in those old times, Everard. You were made by Rhoshamandes and I was made, so to speak, by Benedict.”

Everard laughed out loud. “Methinks it was you who made Benedict all right,” he said. “Stealing the blood from him and making him the laughingstock of blood drinkers everywhere. And so you’ve become a ghost, a ghost of a blood drinker.”

“I don’t think I’m the only one in this world,” said Magnus, “but I’ve had help from my closest friends here, help in becoming what you see before you.”

“Well, it bears no resemblance to the wicked old hunchback I knew,” Everard said, but he was immediately sorry. He looked down and then up. “I regret those words,” he whispered. “I beg your pardon.”

But Magnus was smiling. “No need to be sorry. I was a frightening creature. One of the great advantages of being a ghost is that you can perfect the etheric body much more profoundly than ever you could the physical body even with the Blood. And so you see me as I had always wanted to look.”