The blood sometimes seemed almost intelligent, the way it laid traps for bacteria. And the cells were remarkable, too. Unlike human cells, they did not scavenge for free radicals with mechanisms that grew stiff and unresponsive with age. Instead, the blood converted them into nutrient components, actually changing their atomic structure.

Sarah had allowed herself to imagine that Miriam was her blood, that the body was only a receptacle for this brilliant organ.

She had watched it as it worked in her own veins, how after a period of acclimatization, it had adapted itself to her needs, preserving those parts of her own blood that were essential to her life and adding most of its strengths as well.

It could not change the structure of her cells, though, which continued to try to destroy free radicals. What Miriam’s blood did in Sarah’s veins was to destroy so many of them that little more was necessary. Still, Sarah aged. Just very, very slowly.

Sometimes, she would go to the attic and whisper to the others, “John, I’m coming, Lollia, I will be here soon.” She would tell them of Miriam’s doings. She would tell them of her own work, trying to find a way to bring them back to life. How it must be in those coffins, she could scarcely imagine. To have been like that for even a few days had been so extremely awful that she still had nightmares about it. But Lollie had been there for three hundred years. And there were others who were little more than teeth and long strings of hair, who had worshiped at Miriam’s feet when she was pharaoh’s daughter.

The selfishness of Miriam’s making herself gifts of these “lovers” had crossed Sarah’s mind. This was an unambiguous evil, and for a time she’d believed that she could find in herself moral ground to sabotage Miriam, on this basis.

But the nights in that bed of theirs, the nights . . . and living Miriam’s exquisite life with her, playing their violas together and going to the club, and seeing the world through a Keeper’s eyes, as if everything were always new-washed with rain—she did not have the strength to say no.

She wanted Miriam right now. To lie naked in her steel-strong arms, to taste of the kisses of a mouth that killed—for her it was an ecstasy more appealing, she suspected, than that of being lifted in the arms of God.

The truth was that she revered this creature, whom she ought to hate. She had not the moral strength to hate the pleasures of being Miriam’s possession. Had she been the maid of Hera or Proserpine’s sotted girl, it would not have been different. A human being had fallen in love with a terrible god.