“ ‘Do you forgive me… for forcing you with the woman?’ he asked.

“ ‘You don’t need my forgiveness.’

“ ‘You need it,’ he said. ‘Therefore, I need it.’ His face was as always utterly calm.

“ ‘Will she care for Claudia? Will she endure?’ I asked.

“ ‘She is perfect. Mad; but for these days that is perfect. She will care for Claudia. She has never lived a moment of life alone; it is natural to her that she be devoted to her companions. She need not have particular reasons for loving Claudia. Yet, in addition to her needs, she does have particular reasons. Claudia’s beautiful surface, Claudia’s quiet, Claudia’s dominance and control. They are perfect together. But I think… that as soon as possible they should leave Paris.’

“ ‘Why?’

“ ‘You know why. Because Santiago and the other vampires watch them with suspicion. All the vampires have sees Madeleine. They fear her because she knows about them and they don’t know her. They don’t let others alone who know about them.’

“ ‘And the boy, Denis? What do you plan to do with him?’

“ ‘He’s dead,’ he answered.

“I was astonished. Both at his words and his calm. ‘You killed him?’ I gasped.

“He nodded. And said nothing. But his large, dark eyes seemed entranced with me, with the emotion, the shock I didn’t try to conceal. His soft, subtle smile seemed to draw me close to him; his hand closed over mine on the wet window sill and I felt my body turning to face him, drawing nearer to him, as though I were being moved not by myself but by him. ‘It was best,’ he conceded to me gently. And then said, ‘We must go now…’ And he glanced at the street below.

“ ‘Armand,’ I said. ‘I can’t…’

“ ‘Louis, come after me,’ he whispered. And then on the ledge, he stopped. ‘Even if you were to fall on the cobblestones there,’ he said, ‘you would only be hurt for a while. You would heal so rapidly and so perfectly that in days you would show no sign of it, your bones healing as your skin heals; so let this knowledge free you to do what you can so easily do already. Climb down, now.’

“ ‘What can kill me?’ I asked.

“Again he stopped. ‘The destruction of your remains,’ he said. ‘Don’t you know this? Fire, dismemberment… the heat of the sun. Nothing else. You can be scarred, yes; but you are resilient. You are immortal.’

“I was looking down through the quiet silver rain into darkness. Then a light flickered beneath the shifting tree limbs, and the pale beams of the light made the street appear. Wet cobblestones, the iron hook of the carriage-house bell, the vines clinging to the top off the wall. The huge black hulk of a carriage brushed the vines, and then the light grew weak, the street went from yellow to silver and vanished altogether, as if the dark trees had swallowed it up. Or, rather, as if it had all been subtracted from the dark. I felt dizzy. I felt the building move. Armand was seated on the window sill looking down at me.

“ ‘Louis, come with me tonight,’ he whispered suddenly, with an urgent inflection.

“ ‘No,’ I said gently. ‘It’s too soon. I can’t leave them yet.’

“I watched him turn away and look at the dark sky. He appeared to sigh, but I didn’t hear it. I felt his hand close on mine on the window sill. ‘Very well…’ he said.

“ ‘A little more time…’ I said. And he nodded and patted my hand as if to say it was all right. Then he swung his legs over and disappeared. For only a moment I hesitated, mocked by the pounding of my heart. But then I climbed over the sill and commenced to hurry after him, never daring to look down.”

“It was very near dawn when I put my key into the lock at the hotel. The gas light flared along the walls. And Madeleine, her needle and thread in her hands, had fallen asleep by the grate. Claudia stood still, looking at me from among the ferns at the window, in shadow. She had her hairbrush in her hands. Her hair was gleaming.

“I stood there absorbing some shock, as if all the sensual pleasures and confusions of these rooms were passing over me like waves and my body were being permeated with these things, so different from the spell of Armand and the tower room where we’d been. There was something comforting here, and it was disturbing. I was looking for my chair. I was sitting in it with my hands on my temples. And then I felt Claudia near me, and I felt her lips against my forehead.

“ ‘You’ve been with Armand,’ she said. ‘You want to go with him.’

“I looked up at her. How soft and beautiful her face was, and, suddenly, so much mine. I felt no compunction in yielding to my urge to touch her cheeks, to lightly touch her eyelids — familiarities, liberties I hadn’t taken with her since the night of our quarrel. ‘I’ll see you again; not here, in other places. Always I’ll know where you are!’ I said.

“She put her arms around my neck. She held me tight, and I closed my eyes and buried my face in her hair. I was covering her neck with my kisses. I had hold of her round, firm little arms. I was kissing them, kissing the soft indentation of the flesh in the crooks of her arms, her wrists, her open palms. I felt her fingers stroking my hair, my face. ‘Whatever you wish,’ she vowed. ‘Whatever you wish.’

“ ‘Are you happy? Do you have what you want?’ I begged her.

“ ‘Yes, Louis.’ She held me against her dress, her fingers clasping the back of my neck. ‘I have all that I want. But do you truly know what you want?’ She was lifting my face so I had to look into her eyes. ‘It’s you I fear for, you who might be making the mistake. Why don’t you leave Paris with us!’ she said suddenly. ‘We have the world, come with us!’

“ ‘No.’ I drew back from her. ‘You want it to as it was with Lestat. It can’t be that way again, ever. It won’t be.’

“ ‘It will be something new and different with Madeleine. I don’t ask for that again. It was I who put an end to that,’ she said. ‘But do you truly understand what you are choosing in Armand?’

“I turned away from her. There was something stubborn and mysterious in her dislike of him, in her failure to understand him. She would say again that he wished her death, which I did not believe. She didn’t realize what I realized: he could not want her death, because I didn’t want it. But how could I explain this to her without sounding pompous and blind in my love of him. ‘It’s meant to be. It’s almost that sort of direction,’ I said, as if it were just coming clear to me under the pressure of her doubts. ‘He alone can give me the strength to be what I am. I can’t continue to live divided and consumed with misery. Either I go with him, or I die,’ I said. ‘And it’s something else, which is irrational and unexplainable and which satisfies only me…’

“ ‘Which is?’ she asked.

“ ‘That I love him,’ I said.

“ ‘No doubt you do,’ she mused. ‘But then, you could love even me.’

“ ‘Claudia, Claudia.’ I held her close to me, and felt her weight on my knee. She drew up close to my chest.

“ ‘I only hope that when you have need of me, you can find me…’ she whispered. ‘That I can get back to you… I’ve hurt you so often, I’ve caused you so much pain.’ Her words trailed off. She was resting still against me. I felt her weight, thinking, in a little while, I won’t have her anymore. I want now simply to hold her. There has always been such pleasure in that simple thing. Her weight against me, this hand resting against my neck.

“It seemed a lamp died somewhere. That from the cool, damp air that much light was suddenly, soundlessly subtracted. I was sitting on the verge of a dream. Had I been mortal I would have been content to sleep there. And in that drowsy, comfortable state I had a strange, habitual mortal feeling, that the sun would wake me gently later and I would have that rich, habitual vision of the ferns in the sunshine and the sunshine in the droplets of rain. I indulged that feeling. I half closed my eyes.