“We’re not going to the hospital,” he said, as if deliberately trying to calm a hysterical child. He gestured to the taxi. “Please get in.”

Sliding onto the leather seat beside me, he gave the driver the address of Grand Bay Hotel in Coconut Grove.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I WAS still in a pure mortal state of shock as we entered the large marble-tiled lobby. In a haze, I saw the sumptuous furnishings, the immense vases of flowers, and the smartly dressed tourists drifting past. Patiently, the tall brown-haired man who had been my former self guided me to the elevator, and we went up in swooshing silence to a high floor.

I was unable to tear my eyes off him, yet my heart was throbbing from what had only just taken place. I could still taste the blood of the wounded body in my mouth!

The suite we entered now was spacious and full of muted colors, and open to the night through a great wall of floor-length windows which looked out upon the many lighted towers along the shores of dark serene Biscayne Bay.

“You do understand what I’ve been trying to tell you,” I said, glad to be alone with him at last, and staring at him as he settled opposite me at the small round wooden table. “I hurt him, David, I hurt him in a rage. I … I flung him at the wall.”

“You and your dreadful temper, Lestat,” he said, but again it was the voice one uses to calm an overwrought child.

A great warm smile fired the beautifully molded face with its clear graceful bones, and broad serene mouth—David’s unmistakable smile.

I couldn’t respond. Slowly, I lowered my eyes from the radiant face to the powerful straight shoulders settling against the back of the chair, and the entire relaxed form.

“He led me to believe he was you!” I said, trying to focus again. “He pretended to be you. Oh, God, I poured out all my woe to him, David. He sat there listening to me, suckering me on. And then he asked for the Dark Gift. He told me he’d changed his mind. He lured me up to the rooms to give it to him, David! It was ghastly. It was everything I had wanted, and yet I knew something wasn’t right! Something about him was so sinister. Oh, and there were clues, and I didn’t see them! What a fool I was.”

“Body and soul,” said the smooth-skinned, poised young man opposite. He removed the seersucker jacket, tossing it on the nearby chair, and sat back again, folding his arms across his chest. The fabric of the turtleneck shirt showed his muscles to great advantage, and the clean white cotton made his skin seem all the more richly colored, almost a dark golden brown.

“Yes, I know,” he said, the lovely British voice flowing naturally. “It’s quite shocking. I had the very same experience, only a few days ago in New Orleans, when the only friend I have in the world appeared before me in this body! I sympathize completely. And I do understand—you needn’t ask me again—that my old body is probably dying. It’s just I don’t know what either of us can do.”