“And what about Mekare in all this?” I asked. “How has it been with Mekare since Akasha was killed? That’s the question tormenting me most of the time though I don’t particularly want to admit it. How goes it with the one who is the true Queen of the Damned?” I knew well enough that Mekare had from the beginning seemed unchangeable, uncommunicative, mute in soul as well as mute in body, a mysterious thing that obviously loved one person and one person only, her twin, Maharet.

“Has there been no change in her over these years?” I pushed.

Jesse didn’t respond. She looked at me in silence and then her face broke. I thought she’d break down completely but she pulled herself up.

She looked at David. David sat back on the sofa, and took a deep breath. “Mekare has never shown any sign of understanding what in fact happened to her,” David said. “Oh, in the beginning, Maharet had hopes.”

“If there’s a true mind there,” said Jesse, “no one can reach it. How long it took for my aunt to resign herself to this I can’t say.”

I wasn’t surprised, but I was horrified. And anytime in my life I’d been in contact with Mekare, I’d been uneasy, as if dealing with something that looked human but was in no way human anymore. Now, all blood drinkers truly are human; they never cease being human. They may talk of being more or less human, but they are human, with human thoughts, desires, human speech. Mekare’s face had never been more expressive than that of an animal, as mysterious and unreachable as the face of an animal, a thing that seems intelligent yet is not intelligent in the way we are at all.

“Oh, she knows she’s with her sister and she shows love to her sister,” said David, “but beyond that, if any thought, any coherent verbal thought, has ever emanated from Mekare, I’ve never heard it, and neither has Jesse. And neither has Maharet as far as I ever knew.”

“But she remains docile, manageable,” I said. “She always seemed that way, utterly compliant. Isn’t that so?”

Neither replied. Jesse was looking uneasily at David and then she turned to me as if just hearing my question. “It certainly did seem that way,” she said. “In the beginning, Maharet would spend nights, weeks even, talking with her, walking with her, taking her about the jungle compound. She sang to her, played music for her, sat her down before the television screens, playing films for her, brilliant colorful films full of sunlight. I don’t know if you remember how large it was, the compound with all those salons, or how much of an enclosed area it provided for solitary walks. They were always together. Maharet was obviously doing everything in her power to draw Mekare out.”