“I see,” I said. And I was beginning to see. “If Amel could do what he did when he did not know who he was, think what he might do if he remembered his entire history.”

“That’s it, exactly,” said Fareed. “And Amel is in you and in all of us and we are inextricably dependent upon him.”

“Gremt, what do you know of this ancient city?” I asked.

Gremt was quiet for a long moment, and then he spoke. “I have no knowledge of it,” he answered. “But as I told you, there was a time in the airy Heavens in which I lived when Amel was not there. Then there was the coming of Amel and wars in Heaven, so to speak, with his tempestuous challenges to other spirits and his wild courtship of the red-haired human witches Mekare and Maharet.”

“Red hair,” said Armand, “and red hair is what I saw in the blood of Garekyn Brovotkin. A red-haired male, a male with pale skin, and red hair and green eyes.”

“Was it that simple,” I mused, “that he warmed to the witches for their red hair? And not their power?”

“It was both!” said Teskhamen. “The Talamasca has studied for centuries the link between red hair and psychic power. We have files and files on witches with red hair from our earliest days.”

The room went silent. It seemed they were all watching me, but I couldn’t help but believe they were searching for some outward sign of him, and there never was any outward sign. There was only the pressure on the back of my neck, the pressure that I could feel and something else like a chill passing through me.

“Lestat, listen to me,” said Marius. “There is no stopping Amel from finding out anything he wants to know from these creatures. Let it be through us and not through Rhoshamandes.”

A terrible foreboding gripped me. It had nothing to do with executing Rhosh. It was all-powerful, this foreboding. “ ‘Out, out, brief candle,’ ” I whispered.

I heard my mother laugh. But no one else laughed.

“So,” she said, laughing still, “these otherworldly scientists have come for Amel, have they? And was it a body they were making in their laboratories at Collingsworth Pharmaceuticals? A body for Amel? Tell him, Fareed, about the crates. Was there a body in one of those crates, prepared for Amel, should he want to escape the vampires once and for all?”

No one answered.

I bowed my head. I stared at the glossy surface of the mahogany table. “Amel, why don’t you speak?” I asked aloud. “You’re listening. You are hearing everything. Why don’t you speak? Are these your friends from a former time and do you know their language?”