They were all standing in the water—the women—together under the soft sparkling downpour, some naked, some clothed in sheer gowns that had turned transparent with the water, faces glistening, hair slicked into long serpentine streaks of darkness over their shoulders. And in the far-left corner were the singers—three white-robed blood drinkers obviously made in boyhood, singing in high sweet soprano voices, castrati made by the Blood.

I found myself transfixed by the vision of this. The women beckoned me to come into the bath.

The musicians sang on as if blind to all those present, though they were not, each strumming the strings of a small ancient Greek-style lyre.

The room was warm and moist and the light itself was golden from the candles.

I moved forward, stripping off my clothes and joining them in the fresh sweet-smelling pool. They poured the water over me from pink-throated seashells. And I splashed it again and again against my face.

Allesandra, naked, danced with her arms up, singing with the boy sopranos, though in words of Old French, some poetry of her own, and Sevraine, her body frighteningly pale and hard, the water glancing off it as if it were marble, kissed me on the lips.

The sharp yet exquisitely controlled singing pierced me, paralyzed me, as I stood in the cool flowing water. I closed my eyes, and thought, Always remember this. Always remember though agony and fear crouch at the door. This. The throb of the lyre strings, and these voices weaving like vines together, climbing to heights undreamt of by the logical fearful mind and descending slowly to blend in harmony again.

Through the flashing waterfall I looked at them, these boys, with their round faces and their short curling blond hair; very slightly they swayed with the music and it was the music that they saw, not us, not this place, not this now.

What does it mean to be a singer in the Blood, a musician, to have that purpose, that love affair to carry you through the ages—and to be as happy as all of these creatures seemed to be?

Later on, dressed in fresh garments provided by the mistress of the palace, I passed a long shadowy chamber in which Gremt sat with Raymond Gallant. There was a blood drinker with them, as ancient perhaps as was Sevraine. And other ghosts there as beautifully realized in material bodies as were Gremt and Raymond Gallant.

I was immediately fascinated, but I was also very tired. Almost deliciously tired.

One of these ghosts rose to greet me and beckoned for me to wait as I stood in the door.