"Something's following you again?" he asked. "This is what Armand told me. So did 
Jesse."
  
  "Where did you see them?"
  
  "Armand?" he asked. "A complete accident. In Paris. He was just walking on the street. 
He was the first one I saw."
  
  "He didn't make any move to hurt you?"
  
  "Why would he? Why were you calling to me? Who's stalking you? What is all this?"
  
  "And you've been with Maharet."
  
  He sat back. He shook his head. "Lestat, I have pored over manuscripts such as no 
living human has seen in centuries; I have laid my hands on clay tablets that..."
  
  "David, the scholar," I said. "Educated by the Talamasca to be the perfect vampire, 
though they never had an inkling that that is what you'd become."
  
  "Oh, but you must understand. Maharet took me to these places where she keeps her 
treasures. You have to know what it means to hold in your hands a tablet covered in 
symbols that predate cuneiform . And Maharet herself, I might have lived how many 
centuries without ever glimpsing her."
  
  Maharet was really the only one he had ever had to fear. I suppose we both knew it. My 
memories of Maharet held no menace, only the mystery of a survivor of Millennia, a living 
being so ancient that each gesture seemed marble made liquid, and her soft voice had 
become the distillation of all human eloquence.
  
  "If she gave you her blessing, nothing else much matters," I said with a little sigh. I 
wondered if I myself would ever lay eyes upon her again. I had not hoped for it nor 
wanted it.
  
  "I've also seen my beloved Jesse," said David.
  
  "Ah, I should have thought of that, of course."
  
  "I went searching for my beloved Jesse. I went crying out from place to place, just the 
way you sent out the wordless cry for me."
  
  Jesse. Pale, bird-boned, red-haired. Twentieth-century born.  Highly educated and 
psychic as a human. Jesse he had known as a human; Jesse he knew now as an immortal. 
Jesse had been his human pupil in the order called the Talamasca. Now he was the equal of 
Jesse in beauty and vampiric power, or very near to it. I really did not know.
  
  Jesse had been brought over by Maharet of the First Brood, born as a human before 
humans had begun to write their history at all or barely knew that they had one. The 
Elder now, if there was one, the Queen of the Damned was Maharet and her mute sister, 
Mekare, of whom no one spoke anymore much at all.
  
  I had never seen a fledgling brought over by one as old as Maharet.
  
  Jesse had seemed a transparent vessel of immense strength when last I saw her. Jesse 
must have had her own tales to tell now, her own chronicles and adventures.
  
  I had passed onto David my own vintage blood mixed with a strain even older than 
Maharet's. Yes, blood from Akasha, and blood from the ancient Marius, and of course my 
own strength was in my blood, and my own strength, as we all knew, was quite beyond 
measure.
  
  So he and Jesse must have been grand companions, and what had it meant to her to see 
her aged mentor clothed in the fleshly raiment of a young human male?
  
  I was immediately envious and suddenly full of despair. I'd drawn David away from those 
willowy white creatures who had drawn him into their sanctuary somewhere far across the 
sea, deep in a land where their treasures might be hidden from crisis and war for 
generations. Exotic names came to mind, but I could not for the moment think where they 
had gone, the two red-haired ones, the one ancient, the one young. And to their hearth, 
they had admitted David.
  
  A little sound startled me and I looked over my shoulder. I settled back, embarrassed 
to have appeared so anxious, and I focused silently for a moment on my victim.
  
  My Victim was still in the restaurant very near us in this hotel, sitting with his 
beautiful daughter. I wouldn't lose him tonight. I was sure enough of that.
  
  I sighed. Enough of him. I'd been following him for months. He was interesting, but he 
had nothing to do with all this. Or did he? I might kill him tonight, but I doubted it. 
Having spied the daughter, and knowing full well how much the Victim loved her, I had 
decided to wait until she returned home. I mean, why be so mean to a young girl like 
that? And how he loved her. Right now, he was pleading with her to accept a gift, 
something newly discovered by him and very splendid in his eyes. However, I couldn't 
quite see the image of the gift in her mind or his.
  
  He was a good victim to follow flashy, greedy, at times good, and always amusing.
  
  Back to David. And how this strapping immortal opposite me must have loved the vampire 
Jesse, and become the pupil of Maharet. Why didn't I have any respect for the old ones 
anymore? What did I want, for the love of heaven? No, that was not the question. The 
question t me right now? Was I running from it?
  
  He was politely waiting for me to look at him again. I did. But I didn't speak. I 
didn't begin. And so he did what polite people often do, he talked slowly on as if I were 
not staring at him through the violet glasses like one with an ominous secret.
  
  "No one has tried to hurt me," he said again in the lovely calm British manner, "no one 
has questioned that you made me, all have treated me with respect and kindness, though 
everyone of course wanted to know all the details firsthand of how you survived the Body