"He would never have killed me."

"Oh, yes, he would!" I said, and Benjamin said the very same exact words in concert with me.

"He was drunk and he didn't care what he did," said Benji in instant rage, "and his hands were big and clumsy and mean, and he didn't care what he did, and after the last time he hit you, you lay still like the dead in this very bed for two hours without moving! Do you think a Dybbuk kills your own brother for nothing?"

"I think he's telling you the truth, my pretty girl," I said. It was so hard to talk. With each word I had to lift my chest. In crazy desperation, suddenly I wanted a mirror. I tossed and turned on the bed, and went rigid with pain.

The two were thrown into a panic.

"Don't move, Dybbuk, don't!" Benji pleaded. "Sybelle, the silk, all the silk scarves, get them out, wind them around him."

"No!" I whispered. "Put the cover up over me. If you must see my face, then leave it bare, but cover the rest of me. Or ..."

"Or what, Dybbuk, tell me?"

"Lift me so that I can see myself and how I look. Stand me before a long mirror."

They fell silent in perplexity. Sybelle's long yellow hair lay flaxen and flat down over her large breasts. Benji chewed at his little lip.

All the room swam with colors. Behold the blue silk sealed to the plaster of the walls, the heaps of richly embellished pillows all around me, look at the golden fringe, and there beyond, the wobbling baubles of the chandelier, filled with the glistering colors of the spectrum. I fancied I heard the tinkling song of the glass as these baubles touched. It seemed in my feeble deranged mind that I had never seen such simple splendor, that I had forgotten in all my years just how shining and exquisite the world was.

I closed my eyes, taking with me to my heart an image of the room. I breathed in, fighting the scent of their blood, the sweet clean fragrance of the lilies. "Would you let me see those flowers?" I whispered. Were my lips charred? Could they see my fang teeth, and were they yellowed from the fire? I floated on the silks beneath me. I floated and it seemed that I could dream now, safe, truly safe. The lilies were close. I reached up again. I felt the petals against my hand, and the tears came down my face.

Were they pure blood? Pray not, but I heard Benji's frank little gasp, and Sybelle making her soft sound to hush him.

"I was a boy of seventeen, I think, when it happened," I said. "It was hundreds of years ago. I was too young, really. My Master, he was a loving one; he didn't believe we were evil things. He thought we could feed off the badlings. If I hadn't been dying, it wouldn't have been done so soon. He wanted me to know things, to be ready."