If only there were a ghost that would pop up now. Something lewd or absurd, to distract from all of this. Why not a memory of the disgraceful party at the Delancey house after the official end of the Fifth Blight? Why not that time he almost drowned as a young man? But the ghosts remain perversely unmoved, leaving them with only one another.

"Are you making reference to this specifically?" His voice is still flat. Indifferent. "Watching this little pantomime? Or are you speaking more broadly?" Do you wish you were elsewhere, Lexie? Do you wish to leave the Inquisition? How incautious of her, that she's given him the power to drive her off. How foolish, that she's given him the power to make her cry. He's told her that he's a wicked man; does she truly believe he won't use that power to wicked ends?