I backed up into the passage as this phantom moved out of the room and towards me, not out of fear so much as overwhelming reluctance. I knew where I stood with any human on the planet; I knew what I faced with any blood drinker. But I did not begin to know what I faced with a self-possessed ghost in a solid body.

He stood before me, smiling, the light from the shadowy conference room illuminating his rather remarkable face. Smooth forehead, Grecian features, and long ashen-blond hair.

He was dressed in a long simple black silk soutane. And it was a real garment, made of raw silk. This skin was not real, no, and the organs within were simulated well but not real, and who knew what soul lay behind these cheerful, friendly eyes?

Once again, I felt keenly that these spirits or ghosts clothed in bodies of their own making were exactly like us. They were incarnated souls as we were incarnated souls.

“I’ve waited a long time to beg your forgiveness for what I did to you,” he said in French. “I have hoped and prayed always that you were glad of it finally, glad to be living and breathing now, hard as it’s been for you on the Devil’s Road.”

I said nothing. I was trying to figure what this could possibly mean. That a ghost could speak so distinctly in a deep human voice amazed me. It truly seemed to be coming from his vocal cords. The illusion was perfect.

He stood eye to eye with me. He smiled. He reached for my hands and took them in his. “If only there were time for a long meeting,” he said, “a time for me to answer your inevitable questions, time for me to let your anger rise.”

Soft dusty fingers. They gave off warmth like human fingers.

“What anger?” I asked.

“I’m Magnus, the one who made you and abandoned you. And I will always bear the guilt for that.”

I heard but I didn’t believe. I didn’t believe in the possibility of it. My human soul refused. And yet I knew this creature wasn’t lying to me. This wasn’t the season for lies. This was the season for revelations. And this creature or being or entity or whatever it was, this thing was telling me the truth.

I don’t know how many minutes passed as we stood there.