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she spent no more time walking, but simply shifted from the alley, and into her own bedroom at Thayer Street. She shed her clothes immediately, and hid them away for later disposal. She used the remaining contents of a pitcher of water on her bedside table to scrub her face and hands, then walked all round the room, smelt every corner – and deemed it passable.
    Feeling intensely wearied, she lay down upon her bed. She closed her eyes, and saw behind their lids the image of a blood-strewn alley, littered with shredded rags where their wearer had recently lain: the small things she had collected, and disposed of, which were a testament to the fact that he had existed.
    Now, this was by no means her first kill. Many times before she had done the same thing – though only a very long time ago, when her youth could be proffered as an excuse for such transgressions. She knew very well, now, how dangerous it could prove for herself and her household. Forty years and more ago, perhaps it had not been so clear. Such a space of time, too, made the act seem as an entirely new thing; and she could say with no little certainty, that it was a messy and complicated thing. She much preferred the method of McGee and Sons.
    It was not, however, any guilt that she felt. No – it was far from that. The miserableness of human nature made remorse a hard thing to come by. They killed themselves off, with their animal-like ways of violence and destruction, far faster than the Lumaria could ever hope of dispatching them. They beat, raped, and stole from their own. Hoodlums sold white powder to small children from the lining of their jackets.
    What had Anna to feel sorry for?
     
     

V:
    The House of Adrian Ilo
     
    S he woke late next morning, after a deep and dreamless sleep. The sun shone into the room, as a single wide yellow beam; the birds sang loudly in the trees; and the sky was a vast and unbroken sea of powder blue. The air, which flowed in through the half-open window, was cold and fresh. The smell of blood in Anna’s nostrils had dissipated.
    And yet, in spite of all this, she felt mightily strange. It was an odd sensation that had woken her in the first place, and presently she felt it again. It was a feeling almost of warmth, spreading all across her ice-cold skin. To add to it there was a sharp twinge persisting in her chest, at the left side, where she thought her dead heart to be. It was quite as if – albeit very slowly and thickly – it were trying to beat.
    But these things, of course, were impossible. A Lumarian’s heart does not beat, first because it does not live; and second because it has no blood to circulate. A Lumarian’s body is like a block of cold, dry marble; and yet if you were to shear the hair from its head, it would grow back just as it was before (quite as its arm would, if you were to lop it off at the shoulder).
    Lumarian lungs do not breathe, for they need no air. A Lumarian can remain underwater, therefore, for any length of time. It must sleep, just as it must eat; and also it must drink to assist in the digestion of food. With no liquid, too, there eventually starts up a very unpleasant sensation of painful dryness in the back of the throat, and all down the gullet. The strange necessities of immortal creatures! 
    Both a Lumarian’s food and drink linger for a time in its stomach, much longer than in ours, until simply burning down to nothing, and leaving no remains. A born Lumarian can never shed tears; and one who has been transformed loses the ability after a few months. It does not sweat. Its only fluid is its saliva, and the poison which it can secrete at will. This is called mazhin , and is the ancient secret of the immortal curse.
    No – a Lumarian’s heart does not beat. But still Anna could not dissuade herself from the idea that her own heart was attempting, in some way, to move. She shook her head in bewilderment, and got out of bed. She had not, at the moment, the perspicacity of mind