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“She has stood on the brink of the abyss and stared into it, and the abyss has looked back, has it not?”

I had to swallow hard to be able to answer, because my pulse was pounding, and I was suddenly shivering. “You talk like you know.”

“I do.” She walked towards us, gliding and graceful. She wore the body of a child, but she didn’t move like one. I guess centuries of practice can teach anyone to glide.

She stopped farther back than an adult-sized person would, so she didn’t have to strain to look up at me. I’d noticed she did that while everyone was mingling. “Once I was truly the child this body pretends to be. I wandered away from everyone, exploring as children do.” She looked up at me with enormous brown eyes. “I found a door that was not locked. A room with many windows . . .”

“And none of them looked outside,” I finished for her.

She blinked up at me. “Exactement. What did the windows look out upon?”

“A room,” I said, “a huge room.” I looked up at the cavernous roof. “Like this one, but bigger, and the windowed room sits above it all.”

“You have not been in our inner sanctum, of that I am sure, but you speak as if you stood where I stood.”

“Not physically, but I have stood there,” I said.

We looked at each other, and it was a look of shared knowledge, shared terror, shared fear.

“How close did you get to the bed?” she asked.

“Closer than I wanted to,” I whispered.

“I touched the black sheets, because I thought she was only sleeping.”

“She is sleeping,” I said.

Valentina shook her head, solemnly. “Non, to say she sleeps is to say any vampire sleeps. It is not sleep.”

“She’s not dead, not dead the way the rest of you are when you sleep.”

“True, but she is not asleep either.”

I shrugged. “Whatever you call it, she’s not awake.”

“And for that we are truly grateful, are we not?” She spoke softly enough that I leaned in towards her to hear the words.

“Yes,” I whispered back, “we are.”

She reached up and touched my neck, and I flinched, not from the touch, but from the tension of our words. She didn’t laugh this time. “Only you and I have been touched by that dark.”

“Belle Morte, too,” I said.

Valentina looked a question at me.

“Belle has called me into some kind of dream when the Darkness rose around us.”

“Our mistress has not informed us of this,” Valentina said.

“It only happened today, early today,” I said.

“Hmm,” Valentina said, folding her fan tight, running it through her tiny hands, each tiny nail done in gold. “Musette should know of this.” She gazed up at me, and there was so much more of her than there should have been. She would always appear to be eight, a petite eight, but her eyes held an adult’s awareness, and more.

“There are some unexpected guests that are about to make their appearance. I cannot spoil the surprise, for that would anger Musette, and through her, Belle, but I think that you and I will be equally unhappy with them. I think that you and I more than any will see it for the disaster it is.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Jean-Claude will explain their presence to you, when they appear, but only you and I will truly grasp why the mere fact that they are here is bad, very bad.”

I frowned. “I’m sorry, but you’ve lost me.”

She sighed and unfurled her fan with a practiced movement. “We will speak again after the surprise.” She turned to walk back towards the curtain.

I called after her. “What saved you from the dark?”

She turned, the fan folding away again, as if playing with it had become habitual. “What saved you?”

“A cross, and friends.”

She gave a small smile that left her eyes as empty and gray as a winter storm. “My human nurse.”

“Did she see what was on the bed?”

“No, but it saw her. She began to shriek. She shrieked, and shrieked, and stood there, staring at nothing, until she fell down dead. Her body lay there for a very long time because no one wished to enter the room.”

Valentina opened her fan with a snap. I managed not to jump this time. “The smell got to be quite atrocious.” She smiled,