“Yes, and try to imagine for a moment what death was like for this spirit. First off, he was a twin, and we know of twins that they feel the loss of the other terribly. Patsy speaks of your crying at his funeral. Of Aunt Queen begging her to console you. Aunt Queen knew that you were feeling Garwain’s death. Well, Garwain had felt this separation from you in the incubator as well, and at death, undoubtedly his spirit was confused and had not gone on into the Light as it should have gone.”

“I see,” I responded. “And now for the first time in all these months I feel pity for him again. I feel . . . mercy.”

“Feel mercy for yourself,” said Merrick kindly. Her entire manner was gracious. In fact, she reminded me very much of Stirling Oliver. “But when you were brought to that funeral for him,” she went on, “when you were carried there on the day of his interment, his poor miserable little spirit, cast adrift, found its living twin in you, Tarquin, and became your doppelgänger. Indeed, he became something far stronger than a mere doppelgänger. He became a companion and a lover, a true twin who felt he had a right to your patrimony.”

“Yes, and we began our long journey together,” I said, “two genuine twins, two genuine brothers.” I tried my damndest to remember that I had once loved him. I wondered if she could see into my soul and sense the animosity I now felt for him, the enslavement which had been so vicious for me all during this long year since Petronia had so rudely made me. And the loss of Aunt Queen—the unspeakable loss of Aunt Queen.

“And now that you’ve been given the Dark Blood,” said Lestat in a cross voice, “he wants what he sees as his share of it.”

“But that’s not all that’s happening,” said Merrick, continuing in her subdued fashion. She looked intently at me. “I want you to describe for me, if you will, what goes on when he attacks you.”

I considered for a moment, then I spoke, my eyes moving from Merrick to Lestat and back again.

“It’s like a fusion, a fusion I never felt when I was alive. Oh, he was inside me at times. Mona Mayfair told me that he was. She said when we made love that he was in me and she knew he was there. She could feel this. Mona considers herself a witch on account of the way she feels spirits.”

“You love Mona Mayfair?” Merrick asked gently.