“And I feel a great responsibility for Goblin. I feel that I created Goblin and that I nourished him and made him what he is. What if he should hurt someone else?

“I have one last detail and my story is closed.

“I have seen Petronia once since I left Naples. I was sitting in the Hermitage, amid all the shining marble and torchères, dreaming, thinking, brooding, I don’t know what exactly, feeling my unhappiness in a sort of spectacular way, when she came up the stairs, all dressed in a white three-piece suit with her hair loose and flying and full of chains of diamonds, and she gave me your books, which she had in a little dark green velvet sack.

“ ‘These are the Vampire Chronicles,’ she said. ‘You need to read these and know these. We told you about them, but we don’t know if you listened. Remember. Don’t hunt New Orleans.’

“ ‘Get out of here, I loathe and detest you,’ I said to her. ‘I told you our bargain is off. This place is mine!’ I stood up and ran at her and struck her hard across the face before she could get her wits about her. The blood flowed from her mouth where her fangs had cut her lip, and it soiled her white vest and she was furious. She slapped me hard this way and that before I could get back and be ready for it, and then she knocked me down and went to her trick of kicking me.

“ ‘What a charming greeting,’ she said, ramming the toe of her boot over and over right between my ribs. ‘You are the epitome of the grateful child.’

“I climbed to my knees, pretending to stagger and to be hurt, and then rose up and grabbed her hair and hung on to a hank of it with both hands so that she couldn’t shake me off, cursing her all the while. ‘Some night, I’ll make you pay,’ I said. ‘I’ll make you suffer for all your hateful blows, for the way that you did it, for the way you brought this curse on me.’

“She clawed at me as I pulled her hair with both hands; she clawed at my head and dragged me off herself, so that I had hair in my fingers, and then she slammed me down on the floor and she kicked me across the room and against the wall. Then she sat down at the desk and with her face in her hands she sobbed. She sobbed and sobbed.