She moved back to the window again and, lifting the curtain, looked out at the street once more. For a moment he thought she was going to weep. And he’d never seen Kapetria shed a tear. She turned to him with that loving expression that melted his heart.

“But why didn’t you tell the Prince what Amel said?” He said the words as softly as he could. No human being could have heard. But the vampires, who knew what they heard?

“Amel will tell him,” she said.

Why does she look so sad? She was still looking off again now in the direction of the Château.

“Come,” she said suddenly. “We need to pack up now.”

24

Fareed

HE SAT BEHIND his computer, in his apartment in the Château, and he listened to all that Marius had to say and that Lestat said. Seth was as usual perfectly quiet. He wanted to get to work on this new vial of blood. The blood he’d drawn from Lestat had been contaminated with vampiric blood. This was pure Replimoid blood, fresh and still warm.

“You have no idea what the message said?” asked Fareed.

“None,” said Lestat. “But it was brief, whatever it was. And he pressed me to give it to her right after Roland died. He knew that Roland had died. He didn’t tell me. He just gave me the message and I went into the library and wrote it down. I made a copy of it, of course.”

He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Fareed, and then he turned his back and started pacing, making a slow circle in the middle of the carpet, with his hands clasped behind his back, looking remarkably, Fareed thought, like an eighteenth-century man. Maybe it was the hair tied back like a young Thomas Jefferson or a picture of Mozart. And the frock coat with the flared skirt.

Fareed went over the words. He went over them again and again and again. He tried to relate them to the phone messages which he had also gone over again and again and again. Seth was standing behind him looking down at the paper.

“I can’t crack it,” said Fareed.

“Neither can I,” said Seth, “but it is interesting to see it transliterated that way. The pictographs were hopeless.”

“So what do you think?” asked Fareed.

Lestat sighed and continued with his pacing. “I don’t know. They’re leaving and it’s their prerogative to leave, and what will happen will happen. That’s what my mind tells me. Now does my heart agree with my mind?”

He stopped and he had that blank look on his face which always meant that Amel was talking, but if this was true, that message too was a mystery. Because Lestat said nothing but began pacing again.

There was a sudden pounding on the door.

“Come in, please,” said Seth.