General of the Order of Psychic Detectives known as the Talamasca, had been catapulted 
into the body in which he now walks." I didn't know whether I paraphrased or made it up 
as I went along. "He'd been entrenched or chained inside it, made a prisoner by so many 
ropey veins, and then tricked into a vampire as a fiery unstanchable blood invaded his 
lucky anatomy, sealing his soul up in it as it transformed him into an immortal-a man of 
dark bronzed skin and dry, lustrous and thick black hair."
  
  "I think you have it right," he said with indulgent politeness.
  
  "A handsome gent," I went on, "the color of caramel, moving with such catlike ease and 
gilded glances that he makes me think of all things once delectable, and now a potpourri 
of scent: cinnamon, clove, mild peppers and other spices golden, brown or red, whose 
fragrances can spike my brain and plunge me into erotic yearnings that live now, more 
than ever, to play themselves out. His skin must smell like cashew nuts and thick almond 
creams. It does."
  
  He laughed. "I get your point."
  
  I had shocked myself. I was wretched for a moment. "I'm not sure I get myself," I said 
apologetically.
  
  "I think it's plain," he said. "You want me to leave you alone."
  
  I saw the preposterous contradictions in all this at once.
  
  "Look," I whispered quickly. "I'm deranged," I whispered. "My senses cross, like so 
many threads to make a knot: taste, see, smell, feel. I'm rampant."
  
  I wondered idly and viciously if I could attack him, take him, bring him down under my 
greater craft and cunning and taste his blood without his consent.
  
  "I'm much too far along the road for that," he said, "and why would you chance such a 
thing?"
  
  What self-possession. The older man in him did indeed command the sturdier younger 
flesh, the wise mortal with an iron authority over all things eternal and supernaturally 
powerful. What a blend of energies! Nice to drink his blood, to take him against his 
will. There is no such fun on Earth like the raping of an equal.
  
  "I don't know," I said, ashamed. Rape is unmanly. "I don't know why I insult you. You 
know, I wanted to leave quickly. I mean I wanted to visit the attic, and then be out of 
here. I wanted to avoid this sort of infatuation. You are a wonder, and you think me a 
wonder, and it's rich."
  
  I let my eyes pass over him. I'd been blind to him when we met last, that was most true.
  
  He dressed to kill. With the cleverness of olden times, when men could preen like 
peacocks, he'd chosen golden sepia and umber colors for his clothes. He was smart and 
clean and fretted all over with careful bits of pure gold, in a wristband timepiece and 
buttons and a slender pin for his modern tie, that tailored spill of color men wear in 
this age, as if to let us grab them all the more easily by its noose. Stupid ornament. 
Even his shirt of polished cotton was tawny and full of something of the sun and the 
warmed earth. Even his shoes were brown, glossy as beetles' backs.
  
  He came towards me.
  
  "You know what I'm going to ask," he said. "Don't wrestle with these unarticulated 
thoughts, these new experiences, all this overwhelming understanding. Make a book out of 
it for me."
  
  I couldn't have predicted that this would be his question. I was surprised, sweetly so, 
but nevertheless taken off guard.
  
  "Make a book? I? Armand?"
  
  I went towards him, turned sharply and fled up the steps to the attic, skirting the 
third floor and then entering the fourth.
  
  The air was thick and warm here. It was a place daily baked by the sun. All was dry and 
sweet, the wood like incense and the floors splintery.
  
  "Little girl, where are you?" I asked.
  
  "Child, you mean," he said.
  
  He had come up behind me, taking a bit of time for courtesy's sake.
  
  He added, "She was never here."
  
  "How do you know?"
  
  "If she were a ghost, I could call her," he said.
  
  I looked over my shoulder. "You have that power? Or is this just what you want to say 
to me right now? Before you venture further, let me warn you that we almost never have 
the power to see spirits."
  
  "I'm altogether new," David said. "I'm unlike any others. I've come into the Dark World 
with different faculties. Dare I say, we, our species, vampires, have evolved?"
  
  "The conventional word is stupid," I said. I moved further into the attic. I spied a 
small chamber with plaster and peeling roses, big floppy prettily drawn Victorian roses 
with pale fuzzy green leaves. I went into the chamber. Light came from a high window out 
of which a child could not have seen. Merciless, I thought.
  
  "Who said that a child died here?" I said. All was clean beneath the soil of years. 
There was no presence. It seemed perfect and just, no ghost to comfort me. Why should a 
ghost come from some savory rest for my sake?
  
  So I could cuddle up perhaps to the memory of her, her tender legend. How are children