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"She's photographing you, of course."
"They all are," said Gregory. "Fareed, my company investigates every single person working anywhere, Paris, Zurich, Geneva, New York."
"But look at her eyes."
"I don't feel it," Gregory confessed. "She's beautiful, intriguing, and how nice for her, and for those who know her, and for me if she's doing good work."
Fareed went silent. But as he stared at the dark focused expression on the woman's face, he shuddered.
"I don't think..."
"Don't think what?"
"I don't think she's human."
"What do you mean? She's one of us?"
"No, definitely not. She lives and works by day and night, obviously. I have footage of her coming and going during the day. She's certainly not one of us. No."
"A ghost then, is that what you're saying? Another one of these genius spirits--like Gremt or Magnus, or the others lodging with them?"
"No. She's flesh and blood all right. But I don't think it's human flesh and blood."
"Well, that's easy enough to verify. Her DNA should be on file. Nobody works in research for me who doesn't have his or her DNA on file. The woman took a physical when she was hired, gave blood, submitted to X rays...."
"I know. I checked. But I don't believe the results. I think the whole package was fabricated. I'm running the DNA through every data bank in the world."
Gregory turned and walked back slowly to the table. He sat down rather heavily in the damask armchair and once again laid his right hand on the deck of cards.
"Fareed," he said in a more serious tone. "Never mind that a breach of security like that is almost impossible. It does concern me and I will check on it. But what you're saying is preposterous."
"Why?"
Gregory sighed. He sat back in the chair, eyes moving wearily over the room.
"Because I've roamed this earth for so long I can't count the years or think of them in succession," Gregory said, "or grasp how they've shaped me....I have no sense of the continuity of my life except from the times of the Emperor Julian. But it has been thousands of years, years of hunting, years of roaming, years of loving, years of learning, and I tell you, in all this time I have never encountered any flesh-and-blood creature of intelligence on this planet that appeared human but was not human."
Fareed was unmoved.
"Are you listening to me?" asked Gregory. "Will you try to grasp what I'm saying?"
Fareed thought to himself that he'd been alive for less than fifty years, but he had seen so much in those fifty years, so much of vampires, spirits, ghosts, and other mysteries that it did not surprise him at all to encounter a human-looking thing that was not human, but he did not say this aloud.
He'd enlarged the picture of the woman in the dark suit jacket and long skirt, standing among the reporters. Perfectly almond-shaped eyes. And the skin, the lovely bronze skin. Not human.
"Fareed, are you listening to me? Spirits and ghosts, I've known. We all have, all the old ones. But not biological humanoids who are not really human."
"Well, I'll know better if I can get close to her, won't I?" said Fareed gazing steadily at the woman's face. It was not a cruel face. It was not a mean face. But it wasn't generous and it wasn't curious and it lacked some spark, some definable spark--.
"What, you believe in the human soul?" asked Gregory.
"No," said Fareed, "but I do believe in the human spirit. How else would there be ghosts knocking on our doors now? I don't say it's a divine spark, I am thinking only that some human spark is not there."
"Is there a spark of something else?"
"Good question. I don't know."
"Do you have time for this?" asked Gregory. "You haven't completed your research on Mekare's remains or Maharet's remains. I thought this was of great importance to you and the remains were deteriorating. I thought you were inviting Gremt here so you could test the body he'd made for himself. I thought you wanted to expand the Paris laboratory--."
