Somewhere in a chest locked away, a chest that had survived neglect and fire, I still had in my possession all the letters once written to me from Paris by Eleni, the letters that had told me of the Théâtre des Vampires in the Boulevard du Temple that I had left behind in my wanderings, the letters that told me of its prosperity with the Paris audiences, of Armand’s governance, and of the death of my Nicolas, my second fledgling, my only mortal friend, and my greatest failure.

This was Eleni, and her companion Eugénie, fresh and perfumed and quietly resplendent in their simple silk garments. They were dark-eyed with soft almond-colored skin and dark hair loose over their shoulders. And I had thought them long gone from the Earth, gone in this or that catastrophe—a mere memory of the century of white-powdered wigs consumed by time and violence.

“Come, let’s all sit down together,” said Sevraine.

I looked around a bit dazed, a bit uncertain. I wanted somehow to sink into some shadowy corner and think about what was happening, absorb what was happening, but there was no time or place for this. I was shaken and at a loss. Indeed, I was overwhelmed when I contemplated how many other reunions and shocks awaited me, but how could I shrink from this? How could I resist it? Yet if this was what we all wanted, if this is what we dreamed of, in our grief and our loneliness—being reunited with those we’d lost—then why was I finding it so very hard?

The ghost, the puzzling ghost of the elderly man with the dark gray hair, had taken a seat beside Gremt, and he sent me a quick sharp telepathic introduction. Raymond Gallant. Did I know that name?

Eleni and Eugénie went around the table and sat beside Allesandra.

I saw a hearth now to the far left, well stacked with burning logs, though the light of the fire was lost in the great electric illumination of this golden room with its twinkling and flickering walls and ceiling. I saw a multitude of things—sconces, bronze sculptures, heavy carved chests. But nothing registered for the moment except that I was suffering a kind of paralysis. I worked against it. I had to look at the faces that surrounded me.

I took the empty high-backed chair opposite Sevraine. That’s what she wanted. Gabrielle sat beside me. And it was quite impossible to ignore that I was the center of attention, that all these beings were connected by earlier encounters, or even long history, and that I had much to learn.