“Well, he was taking refuge,” he said. “It was exactly what you said. I should have known he would do it! But damn, it never occurred to me. We had our hands full, so to speak, dealing with the switch. And God knows, I never thought he’d try to seduce you into the Dark Trick. What made him think he could fool you when the blood started to flow?”

I made a little desperate gesture.

“Tell me what happened,” I said. “He knocked you out of your body!”

“Completely. And for a moment I couldn’t imagine what had happened! You can’t conceive of his power! Of course he was desperate, as were we all! Of course I tried to reclaim myself at once, but he repelled me and then he started firing that gun at you!”

“At me? He couldn’t have hurt me with it, David!”

“But I didn’t know that for certain, Lestat. Suppose one of those bullets had struck you in the eye! I didn’t know but that he might shock your body with one good shot and somehow manage to get back into it himself! And I can’t claim to be an experienced spirit traveler. Certainly not on a level with him. I was in a state of plain fear. Then you were gone, and I still couldn’t recapture my own body, and he turned that gun on the other, lying on the floor.

“I didn’t even know if I could take possession of it. I’ve never done this. I wouldn’t even attempt it when you invited me to do so. Possession of another body. It’s as morally loathsome to me as deliberately taking human life. But he was about to blow the head off that body—that is, if he could get proper control of the gun. And where was I? And what was to happen to me? That body was my only chance of reentrance into the physical world.

“I went into it exactly the way I’d instructed you to enter your own. And I had it up and on its feet instantly, knocking him backwards, and almost dislodging the gun from his hand. By that time the passage outside was full of panic-stricken passengers and stewards! He fired another bullet as I fled over the veranda and dropped down to the lower deck.

“I don’t think I realized what had happened until I hit those boards. The fall would have broken my ankle in my old body! Probably even my leg. I was prepared for that inevitable splitting pain, and suddenly I realized I wasn’t hurt at all, that I’d climbed to my feet almost effortlessly, and I ran down the length of the deck and into the door to the Queens Grill Lounge.

“And of course that was the very wrong way to go. The security officers were on their way through that room to the Signal Deck stairs. I had no doubt they would apprehend him. They had to. And he’d been so awkward with that gun, Lestat. It was the way you described him before. He really doesn’t know how to move in these bodies he steals. He remains too much himself!”