Washed in that wiped out brilliance, wearing exquisite clothes, the leftovers of ball outfits and evening garments, their developments elegant yet to some degree solid, pale couples orbited to the imperceptible rhythms of a calm three step dance—one unintelligible basically to Beheim’s ear—staying away from the various little dark pools, round asperiods, that specked the spread, passing all through the shadow of monster sculptures, fighters, monsters, etc, nine or ten of them, that grew up at unpredictable stretches like chess pieces in an endgame. It was a social event like that held in the feast lobby on the evening of the homicide, besides here there was no music, no giggling, no discussion, just a thick quietness that appeared to well from the blue shadows at the furthest edge of the chamber. Notwithstanding the dismal erraticism of the scene, this chamber struck him as being more accommodating than the first; however whatever carelessness that thought had reared was run when he saw a lady rising the step toward him. She was, he saw as she moved close, very lovely, however her paleness and unbending nature of articulation—run of the mill, he had heard, of the most admired individuals from the Family—never really improved this impression. Her dark hair was molded into a substantial interlace that hung down behind her; the smooth bends of her midsection and bosoms displayed through rents in her outfit of white brocade, and her components were solid, too solid to be in any way in agreement with the fragile bone construction that upheld them. It was a Mediterranean face, with enormous dim eyes and high cheekbones and full lips, its olive tone gone waxy, yet generally figuring out how to hold an arousing offer; truth be told, the more he took a gander at her, the more her spooky shading and absence of appearance came to appear to be positive features of her magnificence, unreasonable accents that bespoke a frightful sexuality. However tremendous possibilities for savagery and malignance were implied in what her identity was, he couldn’t resist the urge to wonder about her and wanting to be near her, to acquire through a private affiliation some piece of her insight and force. How long, he pondered, had she lived? 1,000 years and that’s just the beginning, he’d bet. She may have trample the Byzantine world, the Roman, strolled with Darius and Caesar. She may be Helen, Magdalene, Cleopatra, a Cretan sorceress. Contrasted and her, contrasted and the power of the virus fire that moved from her, desensitizing his dread and delivering him progressively helpless against her charms, every one of the ladies of the Family he had known, even Alexandra, were offspring of their sex. She opened her mouth, then, at that point shut it and moaned, as though discourse were hard for her. When finally she talked, her voice was slight, corroded, a portion of the words fusing stops between syllables, pivoting them with dry breaths. “You are generally welcome, Michel,” she said, offering him herleft hand, which was enhanced with a moonstone set in a wide silver band. “Come, let me acquaint you with your senior cousins.” Her grasp was misleadingly delicate. She could, he knew, wrench off his arm and sling him most of the way across the chamber with just an insignificant exertion; yet as she drove him down the steps and out onto the floor among the floating artists, he didn’t zero in on the critical conceivable outcomes orderly on her touch, however on the frisson of excitement he encountered at whatever point her hip brushed against him; the electrifying fragrance of her blood; the undulating of smooth tissue across the highest points of her bosoms brought about by the shock of her footfalls; the charge of light in her eyes that streaked each time she looked at him, similar to silver fish surfacing momentarily in dark lakes, scarcely a flicker, yet too splendid to be in any way simple reflection; the dazed half grin that went to her lips when she discovered him gazing; the whole nuance of her quality, a powerful spread where he figured he could recognize the characters of old enchantments and sad narratives, barren realms, copying urban communities. He was so excited by her, he hardly enrolled the presentations she made. The men’s self-important, pretentious gestures, according to the ladies attempting to nail down some vacillating corner of his spirit, the distinguished names of the branches they addressed, Vandelore, Moritella, Agenor, Pescalco, de Czege, LeMiron, Sepulveda—these were insignificances. It was her name he wished to know, her signals and looks he longed to decipher. Furthermore, not until a dancing couple passed excessively close, jarring him, did the spell she had projected lift and license him to recollect why he had come. Nor was it until that exact moment that he completely caught where he stood, feeling with intensified power an attention to Mystery, the bewilderment and hailing spirits that got from a propinquity with the nation of death, which lay all over, connected to the skin of life like a dull subdermal layer and, in spots like this, displayed in patches through the unstable front of the living scene.