“But you love books, then,” Aunt Queen was saying. I had to listen.

“Oh, yes,” Lestat said. “Sometimes they’re the only thing that keeps me alive.”

“What a thing to say at your age,” she laughed.

“No, but one can feel desperate at any age, don’t you think? The young are eternally desperate,” he said frankly. “And books, they offer one hope—that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that new universe, one is saved.”

“Oh, yes, I think so, I really do,” Aunt Queen responded, almost gleefully. “It ought to be that way with people and sometimes it is. Imagine—each new person an entire universe. Do you think we can allow that? You’re clever and keen.”

“I think we don’t want to allow it,” Lestat responded. “We’re too jealous, and fearful. But we should allow it, and then our existence would be wondrous as we went from soul to soul.”

Aunt Queen laughed gaily.

“Oh, but you are a specimen,” she said. “Wherever did you come from? Oh, I wish that Quinn’s teacher Nash was here. He’d so enjoy you. Or that little Tommy wasn’t away at school. Tommy is Quinn’s uncle, which is slightly misleading since Tommy is only fourteen, and then there’s Jerome. Where’s little Jerome? Probably fast asleep. Ah, we’ll have to make do with only me—.”

“But tell me if you will, Miss Queen,” asked Lestat, “why do you love the cameos so much? These buttons, I can’t claim to have chosen them with much care, or to have been obsessed with them. I didn’t know they were the Nine Muses until you told me, and for that I’m in your debt. But you have here a fine love affair. How did it come about?”

“Can’t you see with your own eyes?” she asked. She offered him a shell cameo of the Three Graces and he held it up, inspecting it, and then he laid it down reverently before her again.

“They’re works of art,” said Aunt Queen, “of a special sort. They’re pictures, complete little pictures, that’s what matters. Small, intricate and intense. Let’s use your metaphor of the entire universe again; that’s what you find in many of these.”

She was in a rapture.

“One can wear them,” she said, “but it doesn’t cheapen them to do it. You yourself just spoke of the charm.” She touched the Medusa at her breast. “And of course I find something unique in every one I acquire. In fact, there’s infinite variety in cameos. Here, look,” she said, handing Lestat another example. “You see, it’s a mythical scene of Hercules fighting a bull, and there is a goddess behind him and a graceful female figure in front. I’ve never seen another like it, though I have hundreds of mythological scenes.”

“They are intense, yes,” said Lestat. “I see your point completely, and it’s truly divine, yes.”

She looked about for a moment and then picked up another large shell cameo and offered it to him.