Then Gregory said softly, “But what possible disposition for the Voice can there be? The Voice is in the body of Mekare. Mekare is quiet now. The Voice is quiet. But the Voice will begin to scheme again. The Voice will plot.”

“This creature, Mekare,” said Sevraine, “she is a living thing. She knows, in some brutal and simple way, she knows her tragedies. I tell you she knows.”

Seems Fareed said something about reasoning with the Voice, but I scarcely heard him.

Seth asked me if I was hearing the Voice. “You are communing with it, aren’t you? But you’ve sealed yourself off from us. You’re battling the Voice alone.”

“So this is the decision you want from me?” I asked. “That the Voice remain with Mekare?”

“What other decision can there be for now?” asked Sevraine. “And whoever else takes this Voice into himself risks being driven mad by it. And how can anyone seize Amel from Mekare without ending her life? We have no recourse but to reason with it as it lives inside of her.”

I drew myself up. I had to appear alert, even if I was not, in control of my faculties, even if I was not. I was by no means irrational. It’s simply that I had to return to a state of examining these things on my own which I could not share.

Gregory was trying to read my thoughts. They all were. But I knew too well how to lock them out. And in the dark little sanctum of my heart I saw that blood-red face, that suffering face. I beheld it in pure wonder.

“Put aside your fears,” I said. My tongue was thick, and I didn’t sound like myself to me. I looked directly at Gregory, then at Seth, then at each of the others in so far as I could see them. Even at Marius who reached out to grasp my arm.

“I want to be alone now.” I removed Marius’s hand from me. The Latin words came to me. “Nolite timere,” I said. I gestured for patience as I started to close the door.

Slowly they withdrew.

Marius bent forward to kiss me and he told me that they would all be in the house till morning. No one was leaving. Everyone was here, and that when we were ready to talk with them further, they’d come together at once.

“Tomorrow night,” said Marius, “at the hour of nine, Viktor and Rose will be brought over by Pandora and me.”

“Ah, yes,” I answered. “That’s good.” I smiled.

At last, the door was shut once again, and I moved back into the room. I sat down again, on the leather ottoman of one of the chairs, near to the fire.