I woke up in the fortress, back on the island, lying on a low bed made of cushions on the floor of Adair’s study. Gulls called from out over the sea. It was daylight outside, and the bright white ocean light bouncing through the window lit up the entire room.

I sat bolt upright. My head sloshed as though I had a hangover. For no reason I could think of, I had the taste of seawater in my mouth.

Adair was lying on the floor next to me. He was very still. Dear God—I grabbed his arm: he felt cold and heavy. I shook him, jostling harder and harder when there was no response. Wake up. You must wake up.

His eyes popped open. I burst into tears.

He was up, comforting me in an instant. “Why are you crying?” he said, trying to soothe me. “There is no reason to be sad. We’ve been returned. It’s a miracle. We are the luckiest people in the history of the world.”

He was right, of course. We were lucky. I threw my arms around his neck and blotted my tears on his collar. “I can’t believe we’re back, that’s why I’m crying. He listened to you. He gave you what you asked for,” I said.

“He isn’t without a heart. I was just able to move him to use it.”

“I don’t understand. . . . These memories . . . how are we able to remember what happened in the underworld?”

“A gift, I imagine. I’m sure he wants for us to know exactly how generous he has been to us.”

“And the queen—I suppose this means she’ll rule alone?” I asked.

Adair gave me a sheepish look. “Not alone, not exactly. She has Jonathan with her, remember. I may have persuaded the old man to see Jonathan in a new light. You see, gods are made when a lucky confluence of conditions come together at the moment of creation. I think you could say that Jonathan was the product of one such lucky confluence: take his extraordinary beauty. I think that, under other circumstances, he might’ve been intended to be a god, perhaps even Eros, the god of desire. But waste not, want not; he was there in the underworld already—why not give him a try?”

“You persuaded the old man to make Jonathan your replacement? To be king of the underworld?” I said doubtfully. Adair had always teasingly called Jonathan “the Sun God.” Maybe he’d had a sixth sense about it.

“You have to admit, there is a poetic justice to it,” Adair said with a little smile. “He’s been given tremendous privileges throughout his life, but for the first time, he will have to work hard for it.”

We lay back on the bower of cushions and the cashmere blanket, shoulder to shoulder, in a square of strong white sunlight. It was a delicious moment of respite, a curiously normal moment of calm, and I think Adair and I came to the same conclusion at the same time: we were back on earth in the house where everything had started, but how did we know that anything had changed? We’d been returned to the land of the living, but beyond that, how did we know that we weren’t exactly the same as we’d been before the journey?

“I want to see for myself,” Adair said, determined. He sat up and reached to his desk and began searching with his fingertips for something on the desktop. After a moment of groping and cursing under his breath, he found it: a penknife. The tiny blade, with its ivory handle, seemed an anachronism, a device from another time.

He pressed the blade to the tip of an index finger until it pierced the skin. A corona of red welled to the spot. We held our breath and waited. A minute passed and the wound hadn’t healed over yet. After another minute, a drop of blood rolled down his finger. The wound remained doggedly open.

“My God,” he said, raising it to his mouth to suck on the wound. With a burst of alarm, I realized that Adair could be made to hurt now, to suffer, to feel the burr of pain from a headache, a broken bone, or a tumor. Now wasn’t the time to turn my thoughts to the fragility of life, not when anything could press down and rupture our delicate human bodies, crush us like eggs, but I saw that I could lose Adair still. He could be taken away from me as swiftly as Luke had been.

I stared into his face and I knew that it had changed, almost unperceivably, but it had changed. I knew that soon time would be etched there, recorded in small lines near his eyes and mouth. It would come to me, too. We would see proof of time’s progress on each other and would be forever reminded of the bargain we struck today.

He’d given up so much for me that it was nearly incomprehensible to grasp the scope of it. Who would give up everything for love? Give up infinite power, all of time? And in exchange for the precariousness of the human condition, illness and decay, never knowing which day would be your last. Still, he’d agreed to this because of me. Me. It was humbling. I felt grateful that Adair could love me so much.

Then it struck me, the tremendous responsibility that came with love. He’d traded the entirety of the cosmos for this world, the infinitely small and yet complete world that contained just him and me. Together, we would experience everything that world had to offer. We would have children and raise them together; we would grow old together, and one day we would die. We would experience a common, everyday life, and that was the true miracle of love, I saw. That two people could be the world to each other. We had only the days of one lifetime to dedicate to the task, and suddenly—after two centuries of living as though life would never end—that timeline felt ridiculously short, as though we’d been cheated. Would the days of one lifetime be enough? They would have to be.

Again, Adair seemed to read my mind. He took my hands and looked into my eyes. “We have a set number of days together now—and who knows how many—so we must always remember that our forever is the rest of our two lives, our two lives together. Are you ready to do this, to spend the rest of our lives together, Lanny my love?”

My love. Those words had never sounded better. I leaned into him. “Yes,” I said, holding tightly to his arm as we lay back together on the cushions, bonded together for the rest of our lives. “Yes, I am.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’d like to thank the folks who brought The Taker Trilogy to life. First and foremost, my thanks to the family and friends who have been so supportive during the whole adventure. Special thanks once again to Eileen McGervey, and Terry and Lelia Nebeker from One More Page Books; fellow Washington-area authors Allison Leotta, Rebecca Coleman, Kathleen McCleary, and Rebecca York for reading pages and generally keeping my spirits up; Janet Cadsawan for her sage advice; and all the wonderful, enthusiastic book bloggers—especially Jennifer Lawrence and Swapna Krishna Lovin—who have been behind the books from day one.

Thank you to my fearless editor at Gallery, Tricia Boczkowski. To Louise Burke and Jen Bergstrom, my gratitude for their commitment to The Taker Trilogy. My thanks to everyone at Gallery for taking care of these books every step of the way: Alexandra Lewis, Mary McCue, Natalie Ebel, and Elana Cohen. Thanks also to Liz Perl, Jennifer Robinson, Wendy Sheanin, and Stuart Smith at Simon & Schuster for their incredible support.

Thanks to Anna Jean Hughes and now Georgina Hawtrey-Woore for seeing The Taker Trilogy through at Century/Random House UK. My sincere thanks to Giuseppe Strazzeri, Fabrizio Cocco, Valentina Fortichiari, and Tommaso Gobi at Longanesi for the wonderful time in Milan for the launch of Immortal (The Taker). Thanks to Milla Baracchini, Ana Prado, and Julian Cunha of Novo Conceito for the spectacular rollout of Ladrão de Almas (The Taker) in Brazil. I am grateful, as always, for Intercontinental Literary Agency work on my behalf, especially that of Nicki Kennedy, Sam Edenborough, and Katherine West, and to Gray Tan of the Grayhawk Agency.

And as always, I thank my husband, Bruce, for his love and support.

TOPICS & QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION


1. As the book opens, Lanny is haunted by dreams of Jonathan being tortured, and she determines to go to help him. Given the history of their relationship, what do you think compelled Lanny to pursue this mission? Would you have been willing to make the same choice?

2. Lanny convinces the captain of the boat she’s hired to leave her on an island off the coast of Sardegna (Sardinia) where she hopes to find Adair. What does this decision reveal about Lanny and how she feels toward Adair? What did you feel as she got out of the boat and signaled the captain to leave? Would you want to be left on a seemingly barren island without any plan for an exit? Why or why not?

3. Why do you think Adair allowed Terry and Robin to stay on the island with him in spite of his suspicions about them? What role do they play in the story? What does it say about Adair that he was willing to risk their companionship?

4. In part,

The Descent

is an exploration of one of the great mysteries of life: what happens when we die? On

page 37

, Lanore describes the process of being with Luke during his final days. How did she respond to his imminent death? Have you been with someone at the moment of death? Do you agree with Lanny’s observation that “they’re afraid of what’s coming, afraid and confused”? How do you feel about death? Have you contemplated your own mortality?

5. Lanny confesses that “Immortality had made me less human” and “robbed me of the ability to feel real emotion in the face of death.” How do you feel about this tradeoff? Would you be willing to trade being fully human for the “gift” of immortality? Why or why not? Do you think people would behave differently if they knew they would never die?

6. At the point where Lanny asks Adair for his help to accomplish her mission of going to Jonathan, she realized that “Adair had truly changed.” Do you agree? Describe. Had Lanny changed? Describe.

7. How does Adair’s island home foreshadow his identity? What role does the weather on the island play in the story?

8. When Lanny arrives in the underworld, she initially is transported to various experiences and relationships from her past. What purpose did these travels serve in her journey? If you could travel to a prior time and place, what would it be and why?

9. During Savva’s visit with Lanny, he says about Adair: “We’re rarely attracted for the reasons we think. . . . There was something in him that we were looking for, each of us in our way.” What do you think Lanny was looking for in her relationship with Adair? Did she find it?

10. Describe some of the qualities of Adair during his youth in Venice studying under the bishop and ultimately Cosimo. What was the main desire that fueled his hunger to learn alchemy? How was the profession of alchemy ultimately a cover for his true identity?

11. During Lanny’s reunion with Luke in the underworld, she reflects that “being alone was what I feared most.” Why do you think someone who was immortal would be afraid of being alone? What was her strategy to avoid aloneness? Is fear of being alone universal? Do you resonate with this fear? If so, what is your strategy to avoid it?

12. When Lanny finally meets Jonathan in the underworld, how is their reunion different from what she imagined? How does her journey to help him turn out to be ironic?

13. Do you think Lanny and Adair are capable of true love and fidelity to each other? Why or why not?

14. What was your response to the end of the story? How did it compare or contrast with your imagined ending?

15. What was your favorite scene or chapter in the book? Explain.


ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB



1. Visit

www.AlmaKatsu.com

to learn more about the author and listen to an interview with her.

2. The author calls The Taker series “anti-romance” in that it reveals the dark side of love. Make a list of examples from the book that connect various characters’ evil/dark actions to a corresponding desire to be loved. Discuss your lists at your next book club meeting. What do you learn or observe from this exercise about the human heart? How do the experiences of the characters in the story compare and contrast with your own experiences with love, or the experiences of people you know?

3.

The Descent

describes Eternity as a breaking apart and disintegration into absolute emptiness. Is this view of man’s place in the cosmos similar to, or different from, that of religions with which you are familiar? Read