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return.
    Apparently her orders only carried so much weight in her patriarch’s manse, because someone had been by to draw a bath, and quite recently too, judging by the steam still rising from the water’s surface. She stepped into the tub and watched as the dirt fled her body and sank to the bottom of the tub. A warm bath had been a once-weekly luxury back home. Now she could have one any time she liked, for only the price of asking.
    A blank envelope sat in the soapdish, propped up in such a manner that she had to take the envelope before the soap, or risk it tumbling into the water. She ripped it open.
    Join me in the dining room when you’re ready.
    There was no signature, but she recognized the sigil: a scar through a ruined eye. Her hand went to her heart, which now bore the same mark. Topan’s doing. But the message was not from Topan.
    She pressed her hand flat against her breast. How strange it was to feel the absence of something that had been so steady and unchanging all her life. Perhaps it was like going blind. Then again, perhaps it was like being blind all of one’s life and one day being able to see. And, then being asked to explain blue. How is it possible to explain blue? Even moreso, how was it possible to describe not feeling her lungs drawing breath, her heart not beating, the blood not flowing through her veins?
    She rose from the tub and stood silently on the cold tile, letting the water drip from her naked frame, her hair hung over her face like a veil. Not a shiver or a shudder crossed her shoulders, not a spot of flesh marbled with goosebumps. She could tell, distantly, intellectually almost, that she had left a warm bath for an icy tile floor, but it didn’t bother her. It was like eating spicy food with a cold; it barely registered.
    She selected a green cheongsam with yellow trim from the wardrobe, knotted her hair, and walked down the hall to the gargantuan oaken doors of the dining hall. She pressed lightly on the crack with her middle finger and each of the half-ton doors practically flew off their hinges opening inward. As the patriarch had taught her, she slammed the doors closed behind her and barred them.
    As soon as she had finished barring the doors the dull, gray fog which had had seemed to settle permanently over her senses cleared, and she was struck as though by a razor through her belly. The smell of warm, palpitating mortal flesh struck her nose first, lighting a fire deep in the pit of her stomach. Even though the dining hall was cloaked in absolute darkness it took her only a fraction of a second to spot the source of her burning desire.
    Set out on the table like a feast was a boy of no more than five or six. He lay on his belly trussed up like a pig. His mouth was sutured shut and his hands and feet were bound with razor wire. As he struggled in his panic, the wire sliced deep into his wrists and ankles, filling the air with the heavenly scent of young blood.
    I can almost…
    As soon as she pressed the tip of her tongue to his arm he shuddered and fell still. She licked a rivulet of blood away from the child’s arm, tracing the flow up to his bonds and slicing her tongue deeply on one of the blades. As her tongue instantly repaired itself, she shook her head. The blood had tasted like milk gone sour, as though there was no longer any sustenance to be had from it once it had left his beating artery. No, the flesh had to be still living, the blood still internal to serve as sustenance.
    Suddenly a queer thought struck her, a premonition, or perhaps the tickle of a sixth sense. She glanced around the room, her nose flaring as she tried to scent whether anyone else was present. There were no other mortals – she would have scented them immediately. But neither did she catch the whiff of another immortal. The patriarch, it seemed, has left this meal for her alone.
    A low whimper emerged from the boy’s nose. The sound was long and continuous, as though he was trying to cry