All that long night, we didn't know where he was. We knew his feelings, yes, and we understood them and we respected them, and in some unspoken fashion we resolved that we would do what he said. If we had a leader, it was Lestat. As dawn approached we took great care in going to our hiding places. We shared the common sentiment that we were no longer concealed by the human crowd.

After sunset the following evening, Lestat returned to the flat in the Rue Royale. Merrick had gone down to receive another letter from a special courier, a letter of which I was in dread, and Lestat appeared in the front parlor of the flat just before her return.

Lestat was windblown and flushed and angry, and he walked about with noisy strides, a bit like an archangel looking for a lost sword.

"Please get yourself in hand," I said to him adamantly. He glared at me, but then took a chair, and, looking furiously from me to Louis, he waited for Merrick to come into the room.

At last Merrick appeared with the opened envelope and the parchment paper in her hand. I can only describe the expression on her face as one of astonishment, and she looked to me before she glanced at the others, and then she looked to me again.

Patiently, gesturing to Lestat to be still, I watched her take her place on the damask sofa, at Louis's side. I couldn't help but notice that he made no attempt to read the letter over her shoulder. He merely waited, but he was as anxious as I.

"It's so very extraordinary," she said in a halting manner. "I've never known the Elders to take such a stand. I've never known anyone in our Order to be so very explicit. I've known scholarship, I've known observation, I've known endless reports of ghosts, witchcraft, vampires, yes, even vampires. But I've never seen anything quite like this." She opened the single page and with a dazed expression read it aloud:

"We know what you have done to Merrick Mayfair. We advise you now that Merrick Mayfair must return to us. We will accept no explanations, no excuses, no apologies. We do not mean to traffic in words with regard to this matter. Merrick Mayfair must return and we will settle for nothing else."

Lestat laughed softly. "What do they think you are, cherie, " he said, "that they tell us to give you over to them? Do they think you're a precious jewel? My, but these mossbacked scholars are misogynist. I've never been such a perfect brute myself "

"What more does it say?" I asked quickly. "You haven't read it all." She seemed to wake from her daze, and then to look down again at the paper.