"Oh, I know it must be tantalizing," I said, finally. "It's so easy to conclude that we're coming close."

"No," he said, turning to me politely. "Don't you see, David? You heard the music. I haven't heard it. Jesse heard the music. I've never heard it. Never. And I've been years waiting to hear it, asking to hear it, wanting to hear it, but I never do."

His French accent was sharp and precise, as always happened when he was emotional, and I loved the richness it gave to his speech. I think we are wise, we English speakers, to savor accents. They teach us things about our own tongue. I rather loved him, loved his lean graceful movements, and the way in which he responded wholeheartedly to things, or not at all. He had been gracious to me since the first moment we met, sharing this, his house, with me, and his loyalty to Lestat was without a doubt.

"If it's any consolation to you," I hastened to add, "I've seen Merrick Mayfair. I've put the request to her, and I don't think she means to turn us down."

His surprise amazed me. I forget how completely human he is, being the very weakest of us, and that he cannot read minds at all. I had assumed also that he'd been watching me of late, keeping his distance, but spying as only a vampire or an angel can, to see when this meeting would take place.

He came back around and sat down again.

"You must tell me about the whole thing," he said. His face flushed for an instant. It lost the preternatural whiteness and he seemed a young man of twenty-four—with sharply defined and beautiful features, and gaunt well-modeled cheeks. He might have been made by God to be painted by Andrea del Sarto, so deliberately perfect did he seem.

"David, please let me know everything," he pressed, due to my silence.

"Oh, yes, I mean to. But let me have a few moments more. Something is going on, you see, and I don't know if it's her general wickedness."

"Wickedness?" he asked in utter innocence.

"I don't mean it so seriously. You see, she's such a strong woman and so strange in her ways. Let me tell you everything, yes."

But before I began I took stock of him once more, and made myself note that no one among us, that is, no one of the vampires or immortal blood drinkers whom I had encountered, was anything like him. In the years since I'd been with him, we'd witnessed wonders together. We had seen the very ancient of the species and been thoroughly humbled by these visitations, which had made a weary mockery of Louis's long nineteenth-century quest for answers which did not exist.