She realized now that Louis was looking at her and so was Viktor. Louis very likely had been reading her thoughts. Had he seen those images of her with Viktor, together? She blushed.

“I think Seth has made the decision,” said Louis, speaking to her very thoughts. “Otherwise he would have never brought you to Trinity Gate last night. No. He’s only waiting for Lestat to ratify it. He’s made up his mind.”

Rose smiled, but felt the sting of tears in her eyes.

“He’ll come tonight, I know he will,” said Louis.

“Fareed places a high value on human life, human experience,” said Viktor. “Maybe my father does too. I think that Seth cares nothing for human experience much at all.”

Rose knew that Viktor was right. She remembered too vividly the first time she’d ever laid eyes on Seth. It had been in the small hours, and she’d been in pain. Needles, tape, monitors all around her. Viktor wasn’t coming back until morning, and Dr. Gilman could not be found.

Seth had come to her, a dark-eyed man in the ubiquitous white scrubs of the hospital, who stood at a remove from her bed, talking to her in a low voice.

He’d told her the pain would vanish if she would listen to him, just follow his words, and sure enough as he talked to her about the pain, as he asked her to describe it in colors, and to picture it, and to say what and where she felt it, the pain had melted away.

She’d cried. She’d told him about Uncle Lestan and how he’d wanted her to be a happy healthy young woman and how she’d ruined it again and again. Maybe she’d never been good enough, she’d said, for life.

A soft cold laugh had come from Seth. He’d explained with great authority that she had ruined nothing, that life was in charge of life, that pain was everywhere, that it was as much a part of the process of life as birth and death. “But joy, the joy you’ve known, the love you’ve known, that is what matters, and we, the conscious ones, the ones who can grieve, only we can know joy.”