“No, there’s some fierce self-denial in you. You’re hungry for love the way I starve night after night for blood. You punish yourself in your nursing, denying your carnal desires, and your love of music, and all the things of the world which are like music. You are a virtuoso, a virtuoso of your own pain.”

“You’re wrong, Lestat,” she said with another little smile, and a shake of her head. “You know that’s not true. It’s what you want to believe about someone like me. Lestat, listen to me. If all you’ve told me is true, isn’t it obvious in light of that truth that you were meant to meet me?”

“How so?”

“Come here, sit with me and talk to me.”

I don’t know why I hesitated, why I was afraid. Finally I came back to the blanket and sat down opposite, crossing my legs. I leaned back against the side of the bookcase.

“Don’t you see?” she asked. “I represent a contrary way, a way you haven’t ever considered, and one which might bring you the very consolation you seek.”

“Gretchen, you don’t believe for a moment that I’ve told the truth about myself. You can’t. I don’t expect you to.”

“I do believe you! Every word you’ve said. And the literal truth is unimportant. You seek something that the saints sought when they renounced their normal lives, when they blundered into the service of Christ. And never mind that you don’t believe in Christ. It’s unimportant. What is important is that you have been miserable in the existence you’ve lived until now, miserable to the point of madness, and that my way would offer you an alternative.”

“You’re speaking of this for me?” I asked.

“Of course I am. Don’t you see the pattern? You come down into this body; you fall into my hands; you give me the moment of love I require. But what have I given you? What is my meaning for you?”

She raised her hand for quiet.

“No, don’t speak of larger schemes again. Don’t ask if there is a literal God. Think on all I’ve said. I’ve said it for myself, but also for you. How many lives have you taken in this otherworldly existence of yours? How many lives have I saved—literally saved—in the missions?”

I was ready to deny the entire possibility, when suddenly it occurred to me to wait, to be silent, and merely to consider.

The chilling thought came to me again that I might never recover my preternatural body, that I might be trapped in this flesh all my life. If I couldn’t catch the Body Thief, if I couldn’t get the others to help me, the death I said I wanted would indeed be mine in time. I had fallen back into time.

And what if there was a scheme to it? What if there was a destiny? And I spent that mortal life working as Gretchen worked, devoting my entire physical and spiritual being to others? What if I simply went with her back to her jungle outpost? Oh, not as her lover, of course. Such things as that were not meant for her, obviously. But what if I went as her assistant, her helper? What if I sank my mortal life into that very frame of self-sacrifice?