long and flowing, dressed in clothes of a long gone age. She slowly raised a knife high above her head, striking a tremor of deep, dark, primal fear. Then, just as suddenly as the vision appeared, it exploded into a mass of colored dots and was blown away.

Brovik lay on his back panting as I snuggled up to him.

“Who was she? The dark woman?”

He rose up, clutching me by the shoulders. “You saw a woman? What else did you see?”

I evaded his question. “Just a woman.”

“Does Ethan know you can see in the blood?”

“Can’t everyone— every Immortyl that is?”

“It’s a rare gift. I’ve known only one other who possessed it.”

“Ethan says they’re hallucinations.”

His eyes veiled. “Have you discussed this with any other Immortyl?”

“No, it seems rather, well, personal.”

“Keep this secret. It is best others don’t know.”

“Why?”

“It could bring you harm.”

I remembered the terror gripping Brovik because of this woman, and sensed wheels turning in his ancient brain. He abruptly rose, pulling on his clothing as I retrieved my own from the floor. His room was a surprisingly spare and tidy place. The furnishings were sparse, the large low bed covered in plain white quilts and sheets, a small chest for clothes, two chairs and a small radio. A telescope and some instruments of navigation sat on a small plain table. Books were arranged on a low shelf, mostly about birds, animals and the sea. No poets for Brovik. No starry-eyed dreamers to borrow from. Brovik was poetry.

He stood by the window, holding his hand out to me. “Come, let me show you something.” I joined him and he put his arm around my shoulders, gesturing out to the beautiful night. The tower was glass on all sides so that the sky was visible for three hundred and sixty degrees. The strange light of the aurora played over his features. His eyes looked far beyond and into the past.

His head tilted slightly back, the straight fair hair falling back from his brow as he spoke, “Our Ethan has reached a crucial time in his existence. After a hundred years all ties to the mortal past have died away. The survivors gone, the times change; nothing looks or sounds or feels the same. He mourns the children he left behind, the infant sons he hardly knew. They grew into men, grew old, and are now dead and gone. He clings to what has slipped beyond his grasp.” He turned to face me. “It’s all dust you see, and gone, poof, into thin air.” He gestured again to the snow-covered pines, the fiord and sea beyond. “This is eternity, Mia. It will continue when even we are dust. Ethan cannot love this earth as we do. He’s doomed to seek the unattainable. He blames me for his sorrows, although when I encountered him he was desperate to leave his world behind. I tried to persuade him not to buy the house, too many ghosts there, but you know how stubborn he is.”

“I live with a shadow.” I lifted his hand to my lips. “Let me stay here.”

“Kurt would enjoy company his own age.”

“What was that comment about following someone to a funeral pyre?”

He smiled, drawing his hand away. “I was trying to get his goat as you say. An Old Norse burial rite— when one of our important people died, his slaves were gathered together. It was asked of them, ‘Who will go with him?’ Usually a slave girl agreed to go. She was sacrificed and buried with him.”

Why was I shocked? “She volunteered? Why?”

“Who can say, perhaps she loved her master so much that she could not bear to be parted from him?”

“Maybe they drugged her?”

He chuckled, picking up a small, carved wooden box from which he removed a golden ring. “Come. See what I have for you.”

He dropped a ring engraved with a pattern of interlocking circles into my open palm. “It’s a symbol of my people, meaning unity,” he said, slipping it onto my finger. It fit perfectly. “All members of my house have them.”

I thought of the sewer rats on the beach, and the markings on them, suddenly the ring’s weight felt oppressive. He shut the box and stood, unreadable, mysterious, and serene, reaching out to take my head between his hands. Terrified, I looked up into his eyes. My breath came harder. How many times had I been told to beware him? Yet, I found myself falling under his spell.

His fingers brushed over my face. “Don’t be frightened,