Once again, he looked at us with sly eyes.

"You too!" he said, under his breath to us, sending his preternatural voice secretly to our ears. "Come, face the sun, with your arms outstretched! Lestat, God chose you as his Messenger."

"Come," David said. "We've seen enough for this night and many nights hereafter."

"And where do we go?" I asked. "Stop, stop pulling my arm. David? Did you hear me?"

"I've stopped," he said politely, lowering his voice as if to instruct me to lower mine.

The snow fell so softly now. Fire crackled in the nearby black iron drum.

"The books, what happened to them?" How in God's name could I have forgotten.

"What books?" he asked. And he pulled me out of the way of the passersby, against a shopwindow, behind which a little crowd stood, enjoying the private warmth inside, looking towards the church.

"The books of Wynken de Wilde. Roger's twelve books! What happened to them?"

"They're there," he said. "Up there in the tower. She left them for you. Lestat, I've explained this to you. Last night, she spoke to you."

"In the presence of all those others, it was impossible to speak the truth."

"She told you the relics were yours now."

"We have to get the books!" I said. Oh, what a fool I was to forget those beautiful books.

"Be calm, Lestat, be quiet. Stop making them stare at you. The flat is the same, I told you. She hasn't told anyone about it. She has surrendered it to us. She will not tell them that we were ever there. She has promised me. She has given the deed to the Orphanage to you, Lestat, don't you see? She has cut all ties with her former life. Her old religion is dead, abolished. She is reborn, the custodian of the Veil."

"But we don't know!" I roared. "We'll never know. How can she accept it when we don't know and we can't know!" (He pushed me against the wall.) "I want to go back and get the books," I said.

"Of course, we will do this if you wish." How tired I was.

On the pavements the people sang: " 'And He walks with me, and He talks with me, and lets me call Him by name.' "

The apartment was undisturbed.

As far as I could tell, she had never returned. None of us had.

David had come to check, and David had been telling the truth. All was as it had been.

Except, in the tiny room where I had slept there stood only the chest. My clothes and the blanket on which they'd lain, covered with the same dirt and pine needles from an ancient forest floor, were all gone.

"Did you take them?"

"No," he said. "I believe she did. They are the tattered relics of the angelic messenger.

The Vatican officials have them, as far as I know."

I laughed. "And they'll analyze all that material, the bits of organic matter from the forest floor."