“I am the Everlasting Thing,” he said. “I feed on the marrow of time. I was here before the oceans turned black with life, and when the deserts are white with death I will remain. And you’re really starting to get up my nose, Harper,” he went on in his normal tone. “So maybe you ought to reconsider your position.”

Whoosh—he blew out the candle. Harper hissed, recoiling, as the inky air clamped over her. There was only his voice again now; that harsh breath; that feral smell. The dark.

“Oh, Harper, Harper, Harper. You really can piss me off at times. I swear, after Argentina, I wanted to kill you. Oh …”

In that blackness, he made a noise, a low growly hum, a sound of such sensual hunger that she felt certain he was going to kill her right now.

But he went on: “That’s just the sort of debilitating woman you are, you know. You made me doubt my own destiny. Almost. But—but, but—I still had the Grail. The blue flower, the blue stone. I still had more than enough of it, and that’s what brought me to my senses. I mean, when a fellow just buys something like that—just picks it up wandering through a Moroccan bazaar—that’s not just chance, that can’t just be chance. Whatever you say. ‘There will arise one who will become the eternal creature.’ That was the prophecy. So, in spite of what you managed to do to me, I knew I’d been chosen. I knew that. And I lay low.” A tone of self-congratulation had entered his voice. He was bragging to her, Harper realized. “I lay low. Patience, patience. And sure enough, just five years later, in a little place off the Edgware Road—on the road to Damascus, Harper—like a flash: a spilled soda, and the next stage was given to me. The trail of stories. Oh, I know you know. Well, let me tell you, darling, it’s been twenty years. I had to wait twenty years before I could follow that trail to its end. Patience, patience, though my time ran short. And just when things were getting desperate, just at the brink of disaster, the wall came tumbling down and my destiny was all before me again. All before me. And now—again—you …!”