She thought of the others whom she’d glimpsed last night, coming into the rooftop ballroom of the huge house called Trinity Gate. She had become used to the preternatural glow of Fareed, even of the powerful Seth, who always stood away from the bright electric lamps when he’d come to her, who spoke from the shadows in a low secretive voice as if he were afraid of its volume, its vibrato. But nothing had prepared her for seeing them all in that huge ballroom at the top of the long flight of marble stairs.

Fareed had been uneasy with her being brought there. She knew it. Could feel it. It was Seth who’d made the decision for her and for Viktor, Seth who had said, “Why keep them locked away?”

As far as Rose could see, Seth’s mind was made up.

Gilded tables and chairs had been scattered on the periphery all along both sides of the dance floor, against walls of French doors paneled in mirrored glass. Drowsy green palms and blue and pink and red flowers in bronze pots were placed every few feet in tasteful groupings.

And at the end stood the grand piano and the cluster of musicians and singers, blood drinkers all, who’d enchanted her with their physical beauty as well as the sounds they made—violinists, harpists, singers making a symphony of sorts that filled the immense glass-ceilinged room.

There had been bright unnatural faces everywhere under the three crystal chandeliers in the dreamy gloom. The names had passed her in a steady numbing current as she was introduced—Pandora, Arjun, Gregory, Zenobia, Davis, Avicus, Everard.… She couldn’t remember them all, couldn’t recall at will all the remarkable visages, the particularities that had enthralled her as she was brought from table to table across the dark polished floor.

And then the striking otherworldly musicians, the tall, baldheaded, and smiling Notker who bowed to her, and his violinists from the mountains and the young boys and women who’d been singing with such brilliant and throbbing soprano voices, and then Antoine, Antoine who looked like the impersonation of Paganini with his violin, and Sybelle, Sybelle in long black chiffon, her neck positively wrapped in diamonds, rising from the piano bench to take her hand.

Out of the pages she’d read, out of the fictions that had permeated her dreams, they’d come alive around her, along with a multitude of strangers, and she had found herself seeking desperately to engrave every moment on her quivering heart.