But I was distracted by the light pouring through the glass walls, the soft warm splendour of the sun spilling down upon the dark couches and chairs, and on the lush Persian carpet with its pale medallion and wreaths of roses, and even upon the few large modern paintings—furious abstracts all—which I had long ago chosen for these walls. I felt myself shudder at the sight of it, marveling again that electric illumination could never produce this particular sense of well-being which filled me now.

I also noted that there was a blazing fire going in the large white-tiled fireplace—David’s doing, no doubt—and the smell of coffee coming from the nearby kitchen, a room I had scarce entered in the years I had inhabited this place.

At once David stammered an apology. He hadn’t even checked into his hotel, so anxious was he to find me. He’d come here direct from the airport, and only gone out for a few little provisions so that he might spend a comfortable night keeping watch that I might come or think to call.

“Wonderful, very glad that you did,” I said, a little amused by his British politeness. I was so glad to see him, and here he was apologizing for making himself at home.

I tore off the wet overcoat and sat down at the computer.

“This will take only a moment,” I said, keying in the various commands, “and then I’ll tell you about everything. But what made you come? Did you suspect what happened!”

“Of course I did,” he said. “Don’t you know of the vampire murder in New York? Only a monster could have wrecked those offices. Lestat, why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you ask my help?”

“One moment,” I said. Already the little letters and figures were coming up on the screen. My accounts were in order. Had the fiend been into this system, I would have seen preprogrammed signals of invasion throughout. Of course there was no way to know for certain that he hadn’t attacked my accounts in European banks until I went into their files. And damn, I couldn’t remember the code words, and in fact, I was having a difficult time managing the simplest commands.

“He was right,” I muttered. “He warned me my thinking processes wouldn’t be the same.” I switched from the finances program into Wordstar, my means of writing, and immediately typed out a communication to my Paris agent, sending it through the phone modem, asking him for an immediate status report, and reminding him to take the utmost personal care as to his own safety. Over and out.

I sat back, heaving a deep breath, which immediately brought on a little fit of coughing, and realized that David was staring at me as if the sight were too shocking for him to absorb. Indeed, it was almost comical the way he was looking at me. Then again, he looked at Mojo, who was inspecting the place silently and a little sluggishly, eyes turning to me over and over for some command.