How perfectly demonic his eyes seemed as he gazed at me. What a deception! I kissed him again, on the tenderest part of his long, furry face, just beneath his eyes.

I thought again of Louis, and the pain hit me as if I’d been dealt a hard blow by one of the ancients, right in the chest.

Indeed, my emotions were so bitter, and so beyond my control, that I felt frightened and for a moment thought of nothing and felt nothing but this pain.

In my mind’s eye, I saw all the others. I brought up their faces as if I were the Witch of Endor standing over the cauldron invoking the images of the dead.

Maharet and Mekare, the red-haired twins, I beheld together—the oldest of us, who might not have even known of my dilemma, so remote were they in their great age and wisdom, and so deeply wrapped in their own inevitable and timeless concerns; Eric and Mael and Khayman I pictured, who held scant interest for me even if they had knowingly refused to come to my aid. They had never been my companions. What did I care for them? Then I saw Gabrielle, my beloved mother, who surely could not have known of my terrible jeopardy, who was no doubt wandering some distant continent, a ragged goddess, communing only with the inanimate, as she had always done. I did not know if she fed any longer on humans; some dim memory came to me of her describing the embrace of some dark woodland beast. Was she mad, my mother, wherever she had gone? I did not think so. That she existed still, I was certain. That I could never find her, I had no doubt.

It was Pandora I pictured next. Pandora, the lover of Marius, might have perished long ago. Made by Marius in Roman times, she had been on the verge of despair when last I saw her. Years ago, she had wandered away, without warning, from our last true coven on the Night Island—one of the first to depart.

As for Santino, the Italian, I knew almost nothing of him. I had expected nothing. He was young. Perhaps my cries had never reached him. And why should he listen if they had?

Then I envisioned Armand. My old enemy and friend Armand. My old adversary and companion Armand. Armand, the angelic child who had created the Night Island, our last home.

Where was Armand? Had Armand deliberately left me to my own devices? And why not?

Let me turn now to Marius, the great ancient master who had made Armand in love and tenderness so many centuries ago; Marius, for whom I’d searched so many decades; Marius, the true child of two millennia, who had led me down into the depths of our meaningless history, and bid me worship at the shrine of Those Who Must Be Kept.

Those Who Must Be Kept. Dead and gone as was Claudia. For kings and queens among us can perish as surely as tender childlike fledglings.