Lestat nodded and made some small sound of assent. “I’m very ready for it,” he said.

“It seems when a person sees ghosts, for whatever reason, he has to talk of it,” said Aunt Queen. “And surely I should understand.”

Something opened in me rather suddenly.

“Aunt Queen, you know my talk of ghosts and spirits more truly than anyone except Stirling Oliver,” I said calmly. “I’m speaking of my old friend of the Talamasca because he did know too. And whatever your judgment of me, you’ve always been gentle and respecting, which I appreciate with all my heart—.”

“Of course,” she said quickly and decisively.

“But do you really believe what I told you of Rebecca’s ghost?” I asked. “I can’t tell even now. People find a million ways not to believe our ghost stories. And people vary in their fascination as to ghosts, and I have never been very sure of where you stand. Now’s a good time to ask, isn’t it, when I have you in the storytelling mood.”

I was reddening, I knew it, and my voice had a break in it which I didn’t like. Oh, the thunder of ghosts and their aftermath. Let it distract me from Stirling Oliver in my lethal arms and the bloody bride lying on the bed. Blunders, blunders!

“Where I stand,” she said with a sigh, looking directly from Lestat to me and back again. “Why, your friend here is going to think he’s entered a house of lunatics if we don’t break off with this. But Quinn, tell me now that you haven’t gone back to the Talamasca. Nothing will upset me so much as that. I’ll rue the night I ever told such stories to you and your friend if it sends you back to them.”

“No, Aunt Queen,” I answered. But I knew I had reached my limit as to how much I could conceal if this painful conversation went on. I tried to rejoice again quietly in the fact that we were all together, but my mind was jumbled with frightening images. I was sitting very still, trying to keep all tight in my heart.

“Don’t go into that swamp, Quinn,” Aunt Queen said, abruptly appealing to me, as if from the core of her being. “Don’t go to that accursed Sugar Devil Island. I know your adventuresome spirit, Quinn. Don’t be proud of your discovery. Don’t go. You must stay away from that place.”

I was hurt through no fault of hers. I prayed I could soon confess to Lestat or someone in this world that her warnings were now too late. They had been timely once, but a veil had fallen over all the past, with its impetuosity and sense of invincibility. The mysterious he was no mystery whatsoever to me.

“Don’t think about it, Aunt Queen,” I said as gently as I could. “What did your father tell you? That there was no devil in Sugar Devil Swamp.”

“Ah, yes, Quinn,” she responded, “but then my father never set out in a pirogue in those dark waters to roam that island as you do. Nobody ever found that island before you, Quinn. That wasn’t my father’s nature, and it wasn’t your grandfather’s nature to do anything so impractical himself. Oh, he hunted near the banks and trapped the crawfish, and we do that now. But he never went in search of that island, and I want you to put it behind you now.”