relic he brought back with him, Veronica's Veil."
  
  "If you want to tell me. But more truly, I wish you would come and rest."
  
  I put my hand on top of his, marveling that in spite of all I'd endured, my skin was 
almost as white as his.
  
  "You will be patient with my children till I come, won't you?" I asked. "They imagine 
themselves so intrepidly wicked, coming here to be with me, whistling nonchalantly in the 
crucible of the Undead, so to speak."
  
  "Undead," he said, smiling reprovingly. "Such language, and in my presence. You know I 
hate it."
  
  He planted a kiss quickly on my cheek. It startled me, and then I realized that he was 
gone.
  
  "Old tricks!" I said aloud, wondering if he were still near enough to hear me, or 
whether he had shut up his ears to me as fiercely as I shut mine to the outside world.
  
  I looked off, wanting the quiet, dreaming of bowers suddenly, not in words but in 
images, the way my old mind would do it, wanting to lie down in garden beds among growing 
flowers, wanting to press my face to earth and sing softly to myself.
  
  The spring outside, the warmth, the hovering mist that would be rain. All this I 
wanted. I wanted the swampy forests beyond, but I wanted Sybelle and Benji, too, and to 
be gone, and to have some will to carry on.
  
  Ah, Armand, you always lack this very thing, the will. Don't let the old story repeat 
itself now. Arm yourself with all that's happened.
  
  Another was nearby.
  
  It seemed so awful to me suddenly, that some immortal whom I didn't know should intrude 
here on my random private thoughts, perhaps to make a selfish approximation of what I 
felt.
  
  It was only David Talbot.
  
  He came from the chapel wing, through the bridge rooms of the convent that connect it 
to the main building where I stood at the top of the staircase to the second floor.
  
  I saw him come into the hallway. Behind him was the glass of the door that led to the 
gallery, and beyond that the soft mingled gold and white light of the courtyard below.
  
  "It's quiet now," he said. "And the attic's empty and you know that you can go there, 
of course."
  
  "Go away," I said. I felt no anger, only the honest wish to have my thoughts unread and 
my emotions left alone.
  
  With remarkable self-possession he ignored me, then said:
  
  "Yes, I am afraid of you, a little, but then terribly curious too."
  
  "Oh, I see, so that excuses it, that you followed me here?"
  
  "I didn't follow you, Armand," he said. "I live here."
  
  "Ah, I'm sorry then," I admitted. "I hadn't known. I suppose I'm glad of it. You guard 
him. He's never alone." I meant Lestat of course.
"Everyone's afraid of you," he said calmly. He had taken up a position only a few feet 
away, casually folding his arms. "You know, it's quite a study, the lore and habits of 
the vampires."
  
  "Not to me," I said.
  
  "Yes, I realize that," he said. "I was only musing, and I hope you'll forgive me. It 
was about the child in the attic, the child they said was murdered. It's a tall story, 
about a very small little person. Maybe if your luck is better than that of everyone 
else, you'll see the ghost of the child whose clothes were shut up in the wall."
  
  "Do you mind if I look at you?" I said. "I mean if you're going to dip your beak into 
my mind with such abandon? We met some time ago before all this happened-Lestat, the 
Heavenly Journey, this place. I never really took stock of you. I was indifferent, or too 
polite, I don't know which."
  
  I was surprised to hear such heat in my voice. I was volatile, and it wasn't David 
Talbot's fault.
  
  "I'm thinking of the conventional knowledge about you," I said. "That you weren't born 
in this body, that you were an elderly man when Lestat knew you, that this body you 
inhabit now belonged to a clever soul who could hop from living being to living being, 
and there set up shop with his own trespassing soul."
  
  He gave me a rather disarming smile.
  
  "So Lestat said," he answered. "So Lestat wrote. It's true, of course. You know it is. 
You've known since you saw me before."
  
  "Three nights we spent together," I said. "And I never really questioned you. I mean I 
never really even looked directly into your eyes."
  
  "We were thinking of Lestat then."
  
  "Aren't we now?"
  
  "I don't know," he said.
  
  "David Talbot," I said, measuring him coldly with my eyes, "David Talbot, Superior