“Juliet,” Rogasz called to the empty darkness. “I forgive you.” He said it mostly to curry favor with the god who was supposed to inhabit this church; yet he found that at this second, his heart held no hatred for the long-lost woman. She had drunk his blood and stolen his sunrise, but even rage could burn itself out. “I forgive you, I forgive you, I forgive you,” he said aloud, striking a chord with each phrase.

A tiny rustle came in response... Hallucination, he thought at first, but his keen eyes soon picked out a shabby figure sitting in the darkness. A teenage girl, a street kid, sat in a back pew and silently tried to shift her weight to a more comfortable position. Of course it wasn’t Juliet — Rogasz had tracked that bitch down less than a century after she created him, and now she was dust on the boots of Prague — but this girl had something of the same look. Tired. Controlled.

“Is there anything you’d like me to play?” he asked, staring directly at her.

She jumped, apparently startled he could see her in the darkness. Then she shrugged and said, “Whatever.”

“Is that the name of a song?”

“Play what you want. Just keep your distance.”

He wanted to tell her what a fool she was — he could bolt from one end of the sanctuary to the other and sink his teeth into her throat before her brain had a chance to react. The words Stupid, stupid, stupid quivered on his lips.

But...

But...

After a few experimental notes, he knew his fingers could no longer manage Bach. Too many centuries had passed without practice... and his daggerlike fingernails clicked unpleasantly on the keys. He went back to slow minor chords, improvising a bittersweet tune to fit against them.