“Lestat, don’t I always know what’s best for you?” he asked. “Who was it told you decades ago to restore the Château? Who was it came to you in the mirror at Trinity Gate with the vision of what I was, so that you wouldn’t fear me?”

“And who was it urged Rhoshamandes to take my son captive?” I asked angrily. “And urged Rhoshamandes to kill the great Maharet and would have driven him to kill her sister?”

He sighed. “You are merciless,” he muttered.

Thorne came up close to me, with Cyril not far behind. Cyril was such a big hulk of a blood drinker that he made Thorne look a little small. Male beings like that know an insolent fearlessness that smaller men never quite know. But when I didn’t move, when I just stood there in the snow, with the snow covering my head and my shoulders as if I were a statue in a park, the two of them said nothing.

“You need Louis,” Amel said. “I always know what you need. Besides—.”

“Besides what?”

“I like to look at him through your eyes.”

“I don’t want to think of you inside of Louis,” I said.

“Oh, don’t concern yourself. I don’t go into Louis. Weak ones like Louis have never interested me. Consider those who heard ‘the Voice.’ Were any of them as human as Louis? No, they were not. If you must know, I can’t find Louis. I can’t go into Louis. Maybe in a century or two, yes, he’ll be able to hear me, but for now, no. But I like to look at him through your eyes.”

“Why?”

He sighed. “Something happens to your senses when you look on Louis. Behold Louis. I don’t know. I see him more vividly than I sometimes see the others. I see a blood drinker. I think I see a whole life in Louis when I see Louis through your eyes. I want to know whole lives. I want to know big things, whole things, long things.”

I smiled. Did he know when I was smiling? I was impressed by the continuity of what he was saying. Long things indeed. He spoke in brilliant bursts, but seldom did his thoughts hold to a continuity. Seldom was his train of thought long.

He was correct that most of those who heard his Voice last year had been the older ones….

“You like the ones with power,” I said. “You like to go into those who can make fire.”

Long raw moan of misery.

“And your beloved Louis, if he has the power to make fire, would not discover it and not use it, unless of course someone threatens those he loves.”

That was likely very true.