"I'm sorry, Uncle," Chinja says, and quickly obeys.

Yes, Dawit decides, Mahmoud is right. It's best for them to leave him. They have no place for any child.

"Ah!" Mahmoud says, grabbing Dawit's shoulder, excited by a thought. "Morocco! I count thirty years since we were there."

"Yes, and it's a short journey," Dawit says, suddenly heartened. "Agreed."

As the two men descend the stairs, they plan their adventures at the next port. The mortal child who listens to their fading footsteps from behind the closed door, like his mother, has already been forgotten.

14.

"Like this, Daddy?" Kira asked, stirring a wooden spoon in cake batter from a bar stool he'd brought to the kitchen counter. His stewed chicken and lentils with rice were simmering on the stove, ready to eat. Next, dessert.

Dawit's head, for the moment, was quiet. "Just like that, d.u.c.h.ess," he said. He wrapped his larger fingers around hers to guide the spoon. "Sc.r.a.pe the sides. The blender didn't get it all."

"Can I lick it after?"

He c.o.c.ked his ear, leaning closer to her. "Excuse me?"

"I mean ... May I lick it after? Please?"

"Yes," Dawit said, squeezing her shoulder with a wistful smile, "of course you may."

If this small pleasure is a crime, Dawit thought, no man has ever been more guilty. He had not come back to North America intending to collect another family. Yet, he had done it.

He'd only left Lalibela again because the rigors of study in the House of Science had proven too monotonous, too dissatisfying; his brothers had teased him, saying he'd adopted the mortal's laziness. After his stay at Harvard to write a small part of what he knew of jazz history, he'd bought this house in a simple neighborhood, envisioning it as a private retreat where he would organize his ideas and grade a few students' papers, nothing more. He'd chosen a city near his beloved ocean, whose waters he'd missed while living in Lalibala's seclusion. And Miami, he knew, was large enough to provide him any anonymous delight he might crave. That aside, he'd planned a quiet life as a teacher, just as he'd promised Khaldun when he left.

How had it all changed so quickly? He had not only a wife but this child to call his. He was certain he'd sired countless children before-one or two who had even known his face well enough to recognize him and, upon chance meeting, call him Father-but this was something else again. This was not supposed to be.

Shortly before his departure, a very wise Life brother, Melaku, had come to him and politely suggested that Dawit was the victim of an addiction; he hungered for his old way of life, the mortal's way, and he was unwilling to accept Khaldun's guidance to a higher consciousness. As always, he'd advised Dawit to practice his meditations. "The meditative state is a Life brother's highest, and happiest, existence," Melaku told him.

Dawit had heard this said many times before, especially by Khaldun himself, but he could not abide it. Endless meditating? He had visited the House of Meditation and seen for himself how the brothers there were frozen, barely breathing, their eyes fixed on nothing. That was the same as not living, Dawit thought.

So, he'd thanked Melaku for his advice, but told him not to worry. "Believe me, I understand better than most how frivolous the mortals' world is," he'd said. "My only addiction is diversion, and there's no hazard in that."

"Dawit ..." his brother had said, as if he'd never spoken to anyone so confused, "Don't you see that Khaldun has only prepared your mind with languages, sciences, and lessons from the old ways? That had its place in the beginning, to teach discipline, but it is only a means, not an end. You are ready to absorb much more, if you stay and allow it. When will you make your life's home with your own kind?"

His own kind? Whom could Dawit claim as truly his kind? Only Mahmoud had seemed kindred to him; they both enjoyed study, but they also needed their time away, and Mahmoud had shared his zeal for pleasure. The other Life brothers who traveled abroad too often behaved like cheerless archaeologists afraid to leave any markings. One brother, Teferi, had made homes with mortal families for ages-even Dawit had once joined his brothers' complaints to Khaldun that such an act was akin to living with primates-but by now, Teferi had simply gone mad.

No, Dawit knew, his Life brothers were not like him. He had not spoken to Mahmoud in many years, since he'd left Chicago to return to Lalibela in the late 1920s-and then Mahmoud had been embarra.s.sed to learn of Dawit's brief time spent with a mortal wife and children. It seemed to have come between them, Dawit thought sadly. He and his friend had shared a few happy reminiscences, but then Mahmoud cloistered himself in the House of Mystics, a group whom Dawit considered a pack of fanatics. Dawit hadn't even had an opportunity to say goodbye to Mahmoud before he left again.

Dawit cringed to imagine what Mahmoud would think of him now. Yes, he loved these mortals. Not all mortals, certainly, but these. He was learning lessons Khaldun did not teach, then. He was finally exercising not his mind but his heart.

What a farce his family in Chicago had been, he realized, a mere backdrop for the dizzy pace of his life. His sole love then had been music. Christina surely had lived to curse the day she'd first heard him on his clarinet at the supper club, her watchful parents by her side. He'd noticed her rapt eyes while his fingers were possessed on the keys. Was anyone else hearing the music as he heard it? Yes, she was, a lone listener in a room drowned in chatter and tinkling silverware. Later, she would tell him that was when she'd fallen in love; she'd been fooled by the pa.s.sion in his breathing, the beauty of his sounds. She'd failed to realize that, at that moment, all the humanity he had to offer was on the stage with him, leaving his lips.

Christina had kept his bed warm with her tentative surrender to his desires, and Rosalie and Rufus were mere products of those couplings, nothing more. Often, instead of coming home to her, he'd visited many other willing beds. He had never cooked a meal with Rosalie the way he did now with Kira. Despite his son's begging, he'd never taught Rufus to play even a simple scale on the clarinet. He'd had no notion that it should be any other way.

Now this. Unasked for, unantic.i.p.ated.

Jessica had captured his eye when he first spotted her in the front row of the tutorial-the seats chosen by only the most serious students-and he'd taken note of her feigned c.o.c.kiness, her lovely full lips, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pressed tight against a Lycra top, her hair combed back into an efficient ponytail. Teach me something, I dare you, her face said.

Still, he'd never sought out any of it. He'd made no effort to socialize with her, yet there she was one day, in the student union, joining him for coffee. He never meant to ask her out, but he couldn't resist when she said she'd never seen The G.o.dfather, his latest discovery in the world of film that he'd ignored for so long. (He'd sworn off movies after seeing only a half hour of the infuriating distortions in The Birth of a Nation with Christina in 1916; it had taken him sixty-four years to venture back to a theater.) He had tried to make only polite conversation with Jessica, and something else, unexpectedly winning or frightfully boyish, emerged from his lips instead.

When he knew he wanted her, he told himself it would be s.e.x only. His manhood had gone too long untended-he'd realized, with disbelief, that he'd so segregated himself that fourteen years had gone by without a woman in his arms-and he wanted to possess her. He wanted to cup her appealing young b.r.e.a.s.t.s in his hands. He wanted to feel her skin against his. He wanted to be swallowed by her.

He'd been so deluded by his desires. How could he have believed once their flesh joined that he could disentangle himself from her? Hadn't it been the same with Adele? It wasn't merely these women's bodies he wanted, it was their souls. Their love.

Mortals he'd encountered in years past had learned only to despise him. And why not? He was so different from them in his thinking, in his deeds. Living among them, he'd come to see how altered he was; at painful moments, even how terrible he was.

But he'd never seemed so to Adele. Nor to Jessica.

And certainly never to Kira. Kira's love, wholly unconditional, was an enchantment.

In Kira, Dawit understood how reborn Khaldun must have felt when he collected the Life brothers as pupils, so many fertile minds ready for seeds. Kira wanted to know everything, to learn everything, and she learned so quickly! And her love for him was so profound that even the smallest things he taught her governed her life.

For a flickering instant, he'd seen a glimpse of a child's love once before, in Chicago. Not in Rufus, who'd been so young that Dawit never considered him anything but a nuisance, but in Rosalie. There'd been one time-he couldn't remember the circ.u.mstances nor what words had been spoken between them-when he looked at her and comprehended that she was not merely an accident who carried his genes and traces of his face, but a treasure. That was the first time he'd looked upon any of his offspring the way he knew many other mortals did, with a tenderness that had shaken him with its power.

Adele, years before, had been scarred by the pain of losing so many children to slavery. But even as he'd tried to console her, Dawit had regarded her stories with the dispa.s.sionate knowledge that many children were sold, lost, discarded; it had been so since the beginning of time, and it would always be so.

It shocked him when he found himself so touched by Rosalie, the gentle way she yearned for his love. And he'd seen it so late! Before he'd had an opportunity to explore this new depth of feeling for her, the Searchers came. He had joined them without argument, even with some eagerness, because he knew his life with that family and those musicians was only an illusion. Within a month of his return to Lalibela, Chicago seemed like a distant, pleasant dream. He'd been happy to enjoy it all while he could, but there was no point in languishing. Those mortals had their world, he had his.

Even now, he could never permit himself to forget that his separateness was his essence.

He'd known all along it was unnatural to make a home with mortals, to tether himself to any mortal's ever-dying heart. Knowing this was what kept him sane; it enabled him to leave those he was fond of when he needed to, and to kill those he was indifferent to when the Covenant of secrecy compelled it.

But this time, he knew, he was treading a dangerous path. There were moments-particularly soon after Princess died, and only a dog!-when he feared that he'd taken his attachments too far. That perhaps he was like an addict, after all, propelling himself toward an eternal h.e.l.l.

Yes, the feelings Jessica and Kira awoke in him were intoxicating. He wanted to drink his fill of them, to revel in them, to learn what it was to feel as they did, with life pared down to its emotional simplicities.

But he must never forget his limits.

He could not expose himself to the emotional ravages he'd suffered with Adele. That period and its circ.u.mstances had been too violent, and her death too horrid.

Now, his only enemy was pa.s.sing years. Living with mortals again, Dawit couldn't help noticing how quickly they aged. Jessica was thinner, her face drawing more tightly at her cheekbones and betraying the life experience of a woman at the end of her twenties, not the beginning. And Kira! Kira, so recently an infant, was nothing like she had been. Already, her head reached the kitchen countertop.

Suddenly, as if to punish him, Dawit's mind transported him back to snowy Chicago, to Rosalie's room in the nursing home, to her wrinkled skin and ravaged, weightless form. The mere image, surfacing in his head, unsettled his stomach with near nausea.

Kira would be deformed the same way one day. And Jessica.

He must not be here to see it. No matter how much it might grieve him to leave, and even if he were permitted to stay, he could not bear to witness their slow deaths to time.

But, if ...

"See, Daddy?" Kira had left only a few lumps in the cake batter.

"Perfect," Dawit said. Even simple conversation with his daughter drew out the gentleness in his voice, on his face, no matter what his thoughts. Jessica, too, had this effect on him.

"Can I go up and get Mommy?"

"Not yet. Let's give her a few more minutes."

Dawit's hands trembled as he found the aluminum cake pans in the storage bin beneath the oven door. In an instant, he had allowed his mind to venture to the place he fought against so hard, and he could not arrest the poisonous idea.

What if Jessica and Kira never had to age or die? What if they could share his blood?

It was so simple a solution. It would create a scandal, and Khaldun's most severe punishment might await him, but would those things be worse than losing Kira and Jessica so soon? Jessica, at last, could be his true life mate, no longer separate. And Kira would have the world at her disposal for all of time.

He knew of no precedents. Of all the brethren who had come under Khaldun's tutelage when he had, he knew of none who had broken the Covenant, pa.s.sing on the Living Blood to a mortal. Could that be? Had even Teferi felt consigned to watch family after family fade away? No wonder his senses had fled!

Speaking emphatically, with his reasons listed from dusk until dawn, Khaldun had made the Covenant the clearest lesson of all. Pa.s.sing on the Living Blood was a defiance against G.o.d, or Allah, or Yahweh, the Life Force who made the blood live. Larger numbers would be dangerous to all, Khaldun said, inviting the scrutiny of outsiders. They might all find themselves imprisoned, studied, exploited. Moreover, any newcomer not first approved by Khaldun might be reborn as a monster to humankind.

And absolutely no women could receive the blood, he said- because women might carry it in their wombs, pa.s.sing it on to children. Immortals must not become a race ungoverned, Khaldun said. They would remain a select few.

Your only Covenant to me in exchange for the Life gift is this: No one must know. No one must join. We are the last.

They had each sworn it, invoking whichever deities ruled their lives. They had sworn it with their own blood, which they spilled in ceremony to meet death. They had sworn their word to Khaldun, the savior who transformed their pa.s.sing deaths into eternal life.

Dawit had watched his beloved Adele, swinging beside him on a tree, her neck snapped in two at the hands of mortal demons. Yet, he had never thought about defying the Covenant. He had never before struggled, as he did now, to remember the Hebrew words Khaldun recited while performing the Ritual of Life on one of the dead while Dawit, beside him, was still semiconscious. Dawit had always been true to Khaldun. He loved Khaldun, as they all did. Why was Dawit's mind now tormenting him so with thoughts of disobedience?

As if sensing his inner struggle, Kira gazed at Dawit with solemn, unblinking eyes as she watched him pour the batter into the pan. "Daddy ... Why is Mommy sick?"

Dawit cursed himself, as he had many times before tonight. He'd so often wished he could relive that moment in the parking lot, at Peter's Mustang, and let that mortal live. Killing his wife's friend, he now realized, had been a hasty mistake. A mortal's life was nothing to him, but everything to his mortal wife. He'd made what should have been his last resort the first.

But could he otherwise have prevented them from learning what happened to Rosalie? He'd believed killing Peter would halt Jessica's research in Chicago, and he'd been right. But he was to blame for making it necessary. Wretched impulse! If he had let nature take Rosalie instead, their book would not have endangered him. Peter would be living still.

Dawit had wanted Jessica and Kira with him at home, away from the newspaper and her pa.s.sions she wasted there-yet, this was not his wife. Her friend was two weeks dead, and so was she. As often as mortals confronted death, Dawit was intrigued by how it affected them. Any deaths they endured seemed to serve as further evidence that theirs was coming too. Now, Jessica seemed afraid to live.

"She's not really sick, honey. She's sad. A good friend of hers died. You remember how we felt when Princess died and you stayed home from school? That's what's happened to Mommy. When you're sad, you don't like to do the things you usually do."

"Will she be sad forever?" Kira asked, looking alarmed.

"No. Are you still sad about Princess?"

Kira nodded emphatically.

"But not as sad as you were the very first day. Remember how you cried? And me too? We'll always be sad inside a little, but not the same way. It gets better. Mommy will get better too."

Kira leaned closer to Dawit, lowering her voice. "Is it Peter?" she whispered.

Dawit paused, his hands on his hips. More and more, he and Jessica had learned that it was useless to try to keep a secret from their daughter. "Now, why would you ask that?"

"I heard her talk about him on the phone. She thought I was asleep."

Dawit sighed. He slid the cake pans into the oven, then closed the door quickly to avoid the blasting heat. He, like all his Life brothers, was sensitive to all physical sensations. The brothers in the House of Science had determined that the Living Blood's rejuvenation process affected the body's nerve endings, invigorating them as well. It was a small sacrifice, Dawit had decided. He could no longer remember the time when all touch had been duller, less exquisite. He had lived only thirty years as a mortal. Since then, he had lived more than a dozen times that.

"Yes, Kira," Dawit said, "Peter is her friend who died. We didn't tell you because we thought it would make you sad, too."

"Peter was very nice," Kira said. "He gave me presents."

"He was nice to Mommy, too."

"So, nice people go to Heaven. That's what Mommy says."

Heaven. Even the concept made Dawit's lips curl with distaste, but he tried to check himself for Kira's sake. Heaven was the only answer Khaldun did not offer, because Khaldun's knowledge was only of the world. So, Dawit had decided, Heaven was a lie. He refused to believe he had forfeited his soul's salvation as the price for the Living Blood. Was he expected to live in guilt, craving forgiveness? Should he cower before an invisible G.o.d like a primitive who expects lightning bolts to be flung from the skies by rain spirits? All because of a tale of Christ's blood?

The storyteller whom Khaldun met those many centuries ago may have lied about the blood's origin from the start. Or, perhaps Khaldun had fabricated it all. Who could prove that Khaldun himself was not the only source?

Dozens of years after joining the Life brothers, Dawit had finally sought Khaldun for an answer to his question: Was the story you told us the truth?

This question had teased Dawit since his first reawakening. He'd waited so long to broach it only because he dreaded the answer, not because he feared Khaldun. And it was uncommon to have a private audience with Khaldun, who was usually occupied with teaching or in an unreachable meditative state. That day, however, Dawit had his teacher's full attention. One thing Dawit admired most about Khaldun was the supreme objectivity he had gained through mastery of his emotions; he was not quick to anger nor to judgment, and he was always just. That day, Khaldun had even gazed at Dawit with what might have been a gentle smile. Dawit had not yet asked the question aloud, but Khaldun could hear even what was unspoken. That was another of his gifts.

If you believe it, Khaldun had said, I could never convince you otherwise. If you do not, nothing I tell you could sway you. I am the one who should be asking you: Is it the truth?

No, Dawit said, certain within himself. And Khaldun, still smiling faintly, had not addressed the subject again.

Why should he believe it? His brothers in the House of Science could devise a half-dozen explanations for the Living Blood's regenerative properties. And the Khaldunites were convinced Khaldun himself was a deity, despite Khaldun's insistence that his gifts could be attained by any of them, given enough time and study. No, Dawit had decided, he would not be a prisoner to Christ or Allah or Satan, or any other of humankind's imaginary guardians or tormentors. He would not mourn his exclusion from a fabled Heaven. The world was all he knew and ever would know, so he would worship only worldly things.

How much breath did he waste on Adele and other slaves who traded their lives away in the hope of a redemption after death? How often did he urge them to come to his Sunday reading lessons rather than flock to church meetings where their masters would have them pray and sing? Adele tried to explain to him how it made their troubles more bearable, but it only infuriated Dawit. Had the slaves' belief in salvation erased the misery of their lives?

Oh, sweet Adele, Dawit thought, I would build a Heaven for you if it meant you could rest there. I would gather the bricks and carry them on my shoulders, if only you could be at peace. To Adele, a slave from birth, a mother to children stolen from her breast, death was Heaven enough. Perhaps, indeed, Dawit thought, death was Heaven after all.

"Peter was a very nice person," Dawit told Kira. "If you believe he is in Heaven, then perhaps that is where he is."

"He is," Kira said. "Heaven is a good place, Daddy. I think it's a very good place. Jesus lives there."

A Christian for a daughter, and already bent on converting him! Dawit sighed, wishing Jessica and her zealot of a mother would stop filling his child's head with such nonsense.

The telephone rang. "Keep away from the oven, Kira," Dawit said, rushing to pick up the living room phone so Jessica would not be disturbed. He wished they could live without a telephone altogether. The invention had brought nothing but interruptions.

Dawit recognized Uncle Billy's breathing and the meandering of his drawl immediately. "Boy, you ain't gon' b'lieve the stuff I'm digging out. Some of these old records I ain't seen since my daddy died. He's even got photographs in here, ticket stubs from all the big shows. And we're talking a long way back."

"Like what?"

"Jelly Roll Morton, one thing. And I think my daddy must have bought every Louis Armstrong record they put out. One of *em got an autograph right across the label and I never even knew it. And I'ma get you that Jazz Brigade you looking for. You need to come *round here sometime."

"I will. This week," Dawit promised, "and if you find The Jazz Brigade, I'll come right away, no matter what time of day or night. They only pressed a handful of records."

"d.a.m.n shame ..." Uncle Billy said. "Some of *em didn't press no records at all. And once it's gone, it's gone."

Dawit wished more mortals shared Uncle Billy's sense of history. Jessica's great-uncle had a sincere appreciation of music that made Dawit long to forge a more meaningful relationship with him, beyond casual phone calls or banter after Sunday dinner. But, then, what was the point? The old man would surely be dead soon. Dawit had learned that he might as well be a visage, like all mortals. What point was there in befriending ghosts?