“Leave it to Kapetria,” said Seth. “Whatever we do is likely to be a blunder compared to what she might do.”

It wasn’t that she had brought any superior skill to the experiment of stopping Lestat’s heart. She hadn’t. She’d simply come to assist, to watch, to try to calculate when the experiment might have to be brought to an end. But when it came to the possible fate of Amel, of Amel’s transfer into another body, Kapetria was the only one who knew anything at all.

Before she left on the night of the heart-stopping experiment, Fareed had given her a large vial of vampiric blood—from his own veins. She had asked for that. And since she’d gifted him with a vial of her own blood, how could he refuse?

He was surprised that she’d waited so long to ask for it, actually. But then he could not really construct a path for her because there was simply too much he didn’t know. But Fareed and Seth talked about it all the time.

“Garekyn saw the etheric brain in the biological brain,” Seth pointed out whenever they discussed it. “He described it as something sizzling, sparkling, that he could see. Well, we can’t see it. And just possibly Kapetria can see the very thing she’ll seek to remove from Lestat’s head without killing him. Just possibly she has developed instruments that could see it because she herself can see it.”

If this was a possibility, Kapetria never said. After the experiment, she had left the Château in the same sleek dark blue Ferrari that had brought her there. And the Prince had laid down the law that no one was to try to follow her, or track her license plate, or hack the facial recognition software systems of Europe for any clues as to where the Replimoids were based.

“We made the decision to leave her alone and we leave her alone,” said Lestat. “She knows what she’s going to do.” He had repeated this since with the same rationale he gave that night. “I know what she’s going to do because I know what I would do if I were her.”

Whenever three or more ancient ones were gathered together with him, they ended up pounding Fareed with questions on the entire matter, whether the Prince was present or not. But Fareed had never come up with any new answers.

The Prince himself never asked questions. But surely he listened. Surely he heard all the theories being floated, all the back-and-forth amongst Fareed and Seth and Flannery Gilman. Viktor was working with Flannery now; Viktor had started “reading medicine” with his mother, as they used to call it in the old days. Viktor felt driven to find some solution. And Viktor worried about many things.