Free Personal Darkness by Tanith Lee

children, perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two. Their bodies were tanned seamlessly like the honey chicken. Lou wore sequins and Tray tassels, on their black. Their limbs were garnished by silver beads and blossoms of bone. They sat either side of Camillo.
    Rachaela thought of the story, the legend of Camillo. How he had killed his bride, the broken vase of neck and all the blood. But that had been a century at least ago, and now the necks of Lou and Tray were marked only with beads or, in the case of Lou, a tattoo of a rose.
    The joy was muted, but it was present.
    He had come back to them.
    How?
    He did not say.
    "Oh, Cami, can I have another pink squirrel?"
    And Camillo got up and mixed it for them, the two little flawless girls. While the Scarabae sat about the table like open flowers. And the Scarabae ate. They ate heart-fly-
    "Aren't the bones pretty?" said Tray, when the chicken had been demolished.
    Camillo had an earring in his right earlobe, a silver snake holding a moon in its mouth that was also a skull.
    There were no questions. No answers.
    Camillo and the girls went up into one of the outposts of the architecture, on the third floor.
    The trike was stabled somewhere in the lower house.
    It was four in the morning.
    Eric sat playing chess against an invisible opponent.
    Rachaela said, "How did he survive?"
    "We do," said Eric. "We do survive."
    "No, not always."
    "Yes. I concede."
    "How then?"
    "One day, he will tell us."
    "Why didn't you ask him?"
    "Or you, Rachaela, you could have asked."
    "He'd talk nonsense."
    "Yes," said Eric.
    Miranda and Sasha had gone away, perhaps to their rooms or only to another part of the house.
    Rachaela contacted with one finger the elegant telephone, which never rang.
    "Can you survive death?" she demanded futilely.
    "You've seen us die."
    She was tired, her body not accustomed yet to the altered hours, wanting to sleep both day and night, and to be awake then, too.
    "I said I should go away, and perhaps now I should. Now you've got Camillo back." She waited, and then she said, "Does he sleep with those two girls? If so—if he can —is he fertile?"
    Eric did not reply. Rachaela recalled the sexual reticence of the Scarabae. The Scarabae who lay son with mother, daughter with sire.
    "Will that continue the line?" she said.
    But Lou and Tray would be on the pill. And Camillo —Camillo was old.
    Rachaela felt old. She felt desiccated, and yet curiously immature, a child again among the family.
    "Anyway," she said, "he's found a horse to ride."
    Camillo, the outcast. He had given Rachaela the key to the attic when Ruth had been shut up. He had wanted Ruth taken away. And with the key Rachaela had let Ruth out.
    Rachaela had known Camillo was burned to cinders.
    She imagined him lying on a bed with the two girls like limpets, showering him with hair.
    She felt far older than Camillo.

CHAPTER 9

    WARM SUNSHINE STILL HOVERED HIGH up over the street; it would be light for another hour. No one was about. In the five-foot front garden of the empty house adjoining Julie and Terry's, dusky opium poppies had sprung wild between the old concrete paving. The nettles around Julie's dustbin were gilt-edged. It was a peaceful scene spoiled only by sound effects: the music center was playing loud enough to be heard fifteen doors away.
    Joseph Black and Jennifer Devonshire walked up the road. He was dressed very casually, but Jennifer wore a short pink flowery dress and twenty bracelets. She carried a carrier bag with a bottle of wine in it.
    "Here we go," said Blackie, swinging through the gate in front of her. He rammed the knocker against the front door and shouted through the letter box: "It's a raid!"
    It was Terry who came to the door in an orange shirt and very blue jeans.
    "You're late."
    "No car."
    "Where's Lucy?"
    "She's got a cold," said Jenny.
    "She says," said Blackie. "It's a cold sore" He smiled at Terry and punched him lightly in the chest. "Worried?"
    "Nah," said Terry, grinning. He