As for Goblin, everyone knew the danger. I did not have to tell Jasmine and Clem to look after Jerome, or tell Nash to keep his eye close on Tommy. Everyone knew what Goblin had done to Aunt Queen. Even Patsy believed it and Big Ramona was now her companion and guardian.

No one was to climb the staircase alone. No one was to react with panic to the breaking of glass. Everybody was to remain within the house, in pairs or threes, including me, who had my “two friends” visiting in my private parlor.

And they were waiting for me just as they had promised. We clustered around the center table, Merrick, Lestat and I, and Merrick, a tall, very lean woman with almond-colored skin and full dark hair, who had taken off her white scarf and her big glasses, immediately began to talk.

“This creature, this ghost that’s haunting you, he’s related to you by blood, and the connection is more than important.”

“But how can that be?” I said. “I’ve always believed him to be a spirit. I’ve been haunted by ghosts. They declare who they are. They have histories; they have patterns.”

“He has a history and a pattern too, believe me.”

“But what is it?” I asked.

“You have no idea?” she probed, looking me in the eye as if I was concealing something from myself perhaps.

“None whatsoever,” I replied. I found it easy to talk to her. I felt she would understand. “He was always with me,” I said, “from the beginning. I thought that I created him almost. That I drew him to myself, out of the void, and developed him in my own image. Oh, I know he’s made of something. Ether. Astral particles—some form of matter. Something, yes, something that obeys natural laws. Mona Mayfair explained to me once that such spirits have a nucleus, a kind of heart, and a circulatory system, and I understand that my blood feeds that system now, and that he’s becoming stronger and stronger as he draws blood from me after I feed. But I’ve never had an inkling that he was the ghost of somebody.”

“I saw him in the cemetery,” she responded. “Just as you did.”

“You saw him before our crypt? When I went to take the roses?”

“I saw him before that,” she said. “He was very strong there. Tarquin, he’s your twin.”

“Yes, I know, my absolute doppelgänger.”

“No, Tarquin, I mean he’s the ghost of your twin brother, your identical twin brother.”

“That’s impossible, Merrick,” I said. “Believe me, I appreciate your wanting to attack this problem head-on, but there’s a very simple reason why that can’t be so. There are two reasons, actually.”

“Which are?” she asked.