remembering the entire state of the board with remarkable accuracy; and though Lestat 
would never play with him, I did often. Now he lay gasping for breath, his forehead hot 
and wet, the pillow around him stained with sweat. And as he moaned and prayed for death, 
Lestat in the other room began to play the spinet. I slammed it shut, barely missing his 
fingers. `You won't play while he dies!' I said. `The hell I won't!' he answered me. 
`I'll play the drum if I like!' And taking a great sterling silver platter from a 
sideboard he slipped a finger through one of its handles and beat it with a spoon.
  "I told him to stop it, or I would make him stop it. And then we both ceased our noise 
because the old man was calling his name. He was saying that he must talk to Lestat now 
before he died. I told Lestat to go to him. The sound of his crying was terrible. `Why 
should I? I've cared for him all these years. Isn't that enough?' And he drew from his 
pocket a nail file, and, seating himself on the foot of the old man's bed, he began to 
file his long nails.
  "Meantime, I should tell you that I was aware of slaves about the house. They were 
watching and listening. I was truly hoping the old man would die within minutes. Once or 
twice before I'd dealt with suspicion or doubt on the part of several slaves, but never 
such a number. I immediately rang for Daniel, the slave to whom I'd given the overseer's 
house and position. But while I waited for him, I could hear the old man talking to 
Lestat; Lestat, who sat with his legs crossed, filing and filing, one eyebrow arched, his 
attention on his perfect nails. `It was the school,' the old man was saying. `Oh, I know 
you remember . . . what can I say to you . . .' he moaned.
  " `You'd better say it,' Lestat said, `because you're about to die.' The old man let 
out a terrible noise, and I suspect I made some sound of my own. I positively loathed 
Lestat. I had a mind now to get him out of the room. `Well, you know that, don't you? 
Even a fool like you knows that,' said Lestat.
  `You'll never forgive me, will you? Not now, not even after I'm dead,' said the old man.
  " I don't know what you're talking about!" said Lestat.
  "My patience was becoming exhausted with him, and the old man was becoming more and 
more agitated. He was begging Lestat to listen to him with a warm heart. The whole thing 
was making me shudder. Meantime, Daniel had come, and I knew the moment I saw him that 
everything at Pointe du Lac was lost. Had I been more attentive I'd have seen signs of it 
before now. He looked at me with eyes of glass. I was a monster to him. 'Monsieur 
Lestat's father is very ill. Going,' I said, ignoring his expression. `I want no noise 
tonight; the slaves must all stay within the cabins. A doctor is on his way.' He stared 
at me as if I were lying. And then his eyes moved curiously and coldly away from me 
towards the old man's door. His face underwent such a change that I rose at once and 
looked in the room. It was Lestat, slouched at the foot of the bed, his back to the 
bedpost, his nail file working furiously, grimacing in such a way that both his great 
teeth showed prominently."
  The vampire stopped, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter. He was looking at the 
boy. And the boy looked shyly at the table. But he had already looked, and fixedly, at 
the vampire's mouth. He had seen that the lips were of a different texture from the 
vampire's skin, that they were silken and delicately lined like any person's lips, only 
deadly white; and he had glimpsed the white teeth. Only, the vampire had such a way of 
smiling that they were not completely revealed; and the boy had not even thought of such 
teeth until now. "You can imagine," said the vampire, "what this meant.
  "I had to kill him."
  "You what?" said the boy.
  "I had to kill him. He started to run. He would have alarmed everyone. Perhaps it might 
have been handled some other way, but I had no time. So I went after him, overpowering 
him. But then, finding myself in the act of doing what I had not done for four years, I 
stopped. This was a man. He had his bone-handle knife in his hand to defend himself. And 
I took it from him easily and slipped it into his heart. He sank to his knees at once, 
his fingers tightening on the blade, bleeding on it. And the sight of the blood, the 
aroma of it, maddened me. I believe I moaned aloud. But I did not reach for him, I would 
not. Then I remember seeing Lestat's figure emerge in the mirror over the sideboard. `Why 
did you do this!' he demanded. I turned to face him, determined he would not see me in 
this weakened state. The old man was delirious, he went on, he could not understand what 
the old man was saying. `The slaves, they know . . . you must go to the cabins and keep 
watch,' I managed to say to him. `I'll care for the old man.'
  " `Kill him,' Lestat said.
  " `Are you mad!' I answered. `He's your father!'
  " `I know he's my father!' said Lestat. `That's why you have to kill him. I can't kill 
him! If I could, I would have done it a long time ago, damn him!' He wrung his hands. 
`We've got to get out of here. And look what you've done killing this one. There's no 
time to lose. His wife will be wailing up here in minutes . . . or she'll send someone 
worse!"'
  The vampire sighed. "This was all true. Lestat was right. I could hear the slaves 
gathering around Daniel's cottage, waiting for him. Daniel had been brave enough to come 
into the haunted house alone. When he didn't return, the slaves would panic, become a 
mob. I told Lestat to calm them, to use all his power as a white master over them and not 
to alarm them with horror, and then I went into the bedroom and shut the door. I had then 
another shock in a night of shocks. Because I'd never seen Lestat's father as he was then.
  "He was sitting up now, leaning forward, talking to Lestat, begging Lestat to answer 
ham, telling him he understood his bitterness better than Lestat did himself. And he Was 
a living corpse. Nothing animated his sunken body but a fierce will: hence, his eyes for 
their gleam were all the more sunken in his skull, and his lips in their trembling made 
his old yellowed mouth more horrible. I sat at the foot of the bed, and, suffering to see 
him so, I gave him my hand. I cannot tell you how much his appearance had shaken me. For 
when I bring death, it is swift and consciousless, leaving the victim as if in enchanted 
sleep. But this was the slow decay, the body refusing to surrender to the vampire of time 
which had sucked upon it for years on end. `Lestat,' he said. `Just for once, don't be 
hard with me. Just for once, be for me the boy you were. My son.' He said this over and 
over, the words, 'My son, my son'; and then he said something I could not hear about 
innocence and innocence destroyed. But I could see that he was not out of his mind, as 
Lestat thought, but in some terrible state of lucidity. The burden of the past Was on him 
with full force; and the present, which was only death, which he fought with all his 
will, could do nothing to soften that burden. But I knew I might deceive him if I used 
all my skill, and, bending close to him now, I whispered the word, `Father.' It was not 
Lestat's voice, it was mine, a soft whisper. But he calmed at once and T thought then he 
might die. But he held my hand as if he were being pulled under by dark ocean waves and I 
alone could save him. He talked now of some country teacher, a name garbled, who. found 
in Lestat a brilliant pupil and begged to take him to a monastery for an education. He 
cursed himself for bringing Lestat home, for burning his books. `You must forgive me, 
Lestat,' he cried.
  "I pressed his hand tightly, hoping this might do for some answer, but he repeated this 
again. `You have it all to live for, but you are as cold and brutal as I was then with 
the work always there and the cold and hunger! Lestat, you must remember. You were the 
gentlest of them all! God will forgive me if you forgive me.'
  "Well, at that moment, the real Esau came through the door. I gestured for quiet, but