“Finally we came to a botanical garden. The gentlemanly black driver parked the little car and invited me to go in. What did it matter to me? I bought the admission with some of the money you’d so kindly left in your pockets for the Body Thief, and then I wandered into the garden and soon found myself in one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen in all the world.

“Lestat, all this was like a potent dream!

“I must take you to this place, you must see it—you who love the islands so very much. In fact, all I could think of … was you!

“And I must explain something to you. Never in all this time since you first came to me, never once have I ever looked into your eyes or heard your voice, or even thought of you, without feeling pain. It’s the pain connected to mortality, to realizing one’s age and one’s limits, and what one will never have again. Do you see my meaning?”

“Yes. And as you walked around the botanical garden, you thought of me. And you didn’t feel the pain.”

“Yes,” he whispered. “I didn’t feel the pain.”

I waited. He sat in quiet, drinking the Scotch again in a deep greedy gulp, and then he pushed the glass away. The tall muscular body was completely controlled by his elegance of spirit, moving with his polished gestures, and once again there came the measured, even tones of his voice.

“We must go there,” he said. “We must stand on that hill over the sea. You remember the sound of the coconut palms in Grenada, that clicking sound as they moved in the wind? You’ve never heard such music as you will hear in that garden in Barbados, and oh, those flowers, those mad savage flowers. It’s your Savage Garden, and yet so tame and soft and safe! I saw the giant traveler’s palm with its branches seemingly braided as they came out of the stalk! And the lobster claw, a monstrous and waxen thing; and the ginger lilies, oh, you must see them. Even in the light of the moon it must all be beautiful, beautiful to your eyes.

“I think I would have stayed there forever. It was a busload of tourists which shook me out of my dreams. And do you know, they were from our ship? They were the folks from the QE2.” He gave a bright laugh and the face became too exquisite to describe. The whole powerful body shook with soft laughter. “Oh, I got out of there then very fast indeed.

“I went back out, found my driver, and then let him take me down to the west coast of the island, past the fancy hotels. Lots of British people there on vacation. Luxury, solitude—golf courses. And then I saw this one particular place—a resort right on the water that was everything I dream of when I want to get away from London and jet across the world to some warm and lovely spot.