"It is true. Admit it. Admit the pettiness of it. Admit the meanness, that you couldn't 
bear to let me slip into the future with this body which you hadn't the courage to 
endure!"
  
  "Perhaps so."
  
  He drew in close and tried to drag me to my feet with a firm, insistent grip on my arm. 
Nothing happened, of course. He could not move me an inch.
  
  "You're still not strong enough to play those games," I said. "If you don't stop, I'll 
hit you and knock you flat on your back. You won't like it. You're too dignified to like 
it. So leave off with the cheap mortal fisticuffs, please."
  
  He turned his back on me, folding his arms, bowing his head.
  
  I could hear the small desperate noises that came from him, and I could almost feel the 
anguish. He walked away, and I buried my face again in my arm.
  
  But then I heard him coming back.
  
  "Why? I want something from you. I want an admission of some kind."
  
  "No," I said.
  
  He reached out and snatched at my hair, tangling his fingers in it, and jerking my head 
up as the pain shot over the surface of my scalp.
  
  "You're really pushing it, David," I growled at him, pulling myself loose. "One more 
little trick like that and I'm going to drop you at the bottom of the cliff."
  
  But when I saw his face, when I saw the suffering in him, I grew quiet.
  
  He went down on his knees before me so that we were almost eye-to-eye.
  
  "Why, Lestat?" he asked, and his voice was torn and sad, and it broke my heart.
  
  Overcome with shame, overcome with misery, I pressed my closed eyes again on my right 
arm, and brought up my left to cover my head. And nothing, not all his pleas or curses or 
cries against me or his final quiet departure, could make me look up again.
  
  Well before morning I went to search for him. The little room was now straightened, and 
his suitcase lay on the bed. The computer had been folded up, and the copy of Faust lay 
upon its smooth plastic case.
  
  But he was not there. I searched all about the hotel for him, but I couldn't find him. 
I searched the gardens, and then the woodlands in one direction and another, but with no 
luck.
  
  At last I found a small cave high on the mountain, and dug down deep into it and slept.
  
  What is the use of describing my misery? Of describing the dull dark pain I felt? What 
is the use of saying I knew the full measure of my injustice, my dishonor, and my 
cruelty? I knew the magnitude of what I'd done to him.
  
  I knew myself and all my evil to the fullest and I expected nothing back from the world 
now except the very same evil in kind.
  
  I woke as soon as the sun had gone into the sea. On a high bluff I watched the twilight 
and then went down into the streets of the town to hunt. It wasn't too long before the 
usual thief tried to lay hands on me and rob me, and I carried him with me into a little 
alleyway and there drained him slowly and very enjoyably, only steps from the tourists 
passing by. I concealed his body in the very depths of the alley and went on my way.
  
  And what was my way?
  
  I went back to the hotel. His possessions were still there but he was not. Once again, 
I searched, fighting an awful fear that he had already done away with himself, and then 
realizing that he was far too strong for that to be a simple thing. Even if he had lain 
out in the fury of the sun, which I strongly doubted, he could not have been wholly 
destroyed.
  
  Yet I was plagued by every conceivable fear: Perhaps, he had been so burnt and crippled 
that he could not help himself. He had been discovered by mortals. Or perhaps the others 
had come, and stolen him completely away. Or he would reappear and curse me again. I 
feared that too.
  
  Finally I made my way back down to Bridgetown, unable to leave the island until I knew 
what had become of him.
  
  I was still there an hour before dawn.
  
  And the next night I did not find him. Nor the night after that.
  
  At last, bruised in mind and soul, and telling myself I deserved nothing but misery, I 
went home.
  
  The warmth of spring had come to New Orleans, finally, and I found her swarming with 
the usual tourists beneath a clear and purple evening sky. I went first to my old house 
to take Mojo from the care of the old woman, who was not at all glad to give him up, save 
that he had obviously missed me very much.
  
  Then he and I together proceeded to the Rue Royale.
  
  I knew the flat wasn't empty even before I reached the top of the back stairs. I paused 
for a moment, looking down on the restored courtyard with its scrubbed flagstones and 
romantic little fountain, complete with cherubs and their great cornucopia-style shells 
pouring forth a splash of clean water into the basin below.
  
  A bed of dark sweet flowers had been planted against the old brick wall, and a stand of