The dark café was cool inside with only a few brightly painted tables and straight-back chairs. David ordered bottles of cold beer, and within minutes Jake came sauntering in—wearing the very same khaki shorts and white polo shirt—and carefully chose a chair from which he might watch the open door. The world out there seemed made of glittering water. The beer tasted malty and rather good.

“Well, the deed is done,” Jake said in a low voice, his face rather rigid and abstracted as though he were not with us at all, but deep in thought. He took a gulp from the brown beer bottle, and then slipped a couple of keys across the table to David. “She’s carrying over one thousand passengers. Nobody will notice that Mr. Eric Sampson doesn’t reboard. The cabin’s tiny, inside as you requested, right off the corridor, midship, Five Deck, as you know.”

“Excellent. And you obtained two sets of keys. Very good.”

“The trunk’s open, with half the contents scattered on the bed. Your guns are inside the two books inside the trunk. Hollowed them out myself. The locks are there. You ought to be able to fit the big one to the door easily enough but I don’t know if the staff will care much for it when they see it. Again, I wish you the best of luck. Oh, and you heard the news about the robbery this morning on the hill? Seems we have a vampire in Grenada. Maybe you should plan to stay here, David. Sounds like just your sort of thing.”

“This morning?”

“Three o’clock. Right up there on the cliff. Big house of a rich Austrian woman. Everyone murdered. Quite a mess. The whole island’s talking about it. Well, I’m off.”

It was only after Jake had left us that David spoke again.

“This is bad, Lestat. We were standing out on the beach at three this morning. If he sensed even a glimmer of our presence, he may not be on the ship. Or he may be ready for us when the sun sets.”

“He was far too busy this morning, David. Besides, if he’d sensed our presence, he would have made a bonfire of our little room. Unless he doesn’t know how to do it, but that we simply cannot know. Let’s board the bloody ship now. I’m tired of waiting. Look, it’s starting to rain.”

We gathered up our luggage, including the monstrous leather suitcase David had brought from New Orleans, and hurried to the launch. A crowd of frail elderly mortals seemed to appear from everywhere—out of taxis and nearby sheds and little shops—now that the rain was really coming down, and it took us some minutes to get inside the unsteady little wooden boat, and take a seat on the wet plastic bench.

As soon as she turned her prow towards the Queen Elizabeth 2, I felt a giddy excitement—fun to be riding this warm sea in such a small craft. I loved the movement as we gained speed.