I laughed. “Keep your voice down,” I said. “We’ll be thrown out of the Ritz.”

“Very well, we’ll strike a bargain. I’ll go back to London and hit the computer. I’ll boot up every case of body switching in our files. Who knows what we’ll discover? Lestat, maybe he’s in that body and it’s deteriorating around him, and he can’t get out or stop the deterioration. Did you think of that?”

I shook my head. “It’s not deteriorating. I would have caught the scent. There’s nothing wrong with that body.”

“Except maybe he stole it from its rightful owner and that poor soul is stumbling around in his body, and what that looks like, we haven’t a clue.”

“Calm down, David, please. You go on back to London, and hit the files, as you described. I’m going to find this little bastard. I’m going to hear what he has to say. Don’t worry! I won’t proceed without consulting you. And if I do decide—”

“You won’t decide! Not until you talk to me.”

“All right.”

“This is a pledge?”

“On my honor as a bloodthirsty murderer, yes.”

“I want a phone number in New Orleans.”

I stared at him hard for a moment. “All right. I’ve never done this before. But here it is.” I gave him the phone number of my French Quarter rooftop rooms. “Aren’t you going to write it down?”

“I’ve memorized it.”

“Then farewell!”

I rose from the table, struggling, in my excitement, to move like a human. Ah, move like a human. Think of it, to be inside a human body. To see the sun, really see it, a tiny blazing ball in a blue sky! “Oh, and, David, I almost forgot, everything’s covered here. Call my man. He’ll arrange for your flight … ”

“I don’t care about that, Lestat. Listen to me. Set an appointment to speak with me about this, right now! You dare vanish on me, I’ll never—”

I stood there smiling down at him. I could tell I was charming him. Of course he wouldn’t threaten never to speak to me again. How absurd. “Ghastly mistakes,” I said, unable to stop smiling. “Yes, I do make them, don’t I?”

“What will they do to you—the others? Your precious Marius, the older ones, if you do such a thing?”

“They might surprise you, David. Maybe all they want is to be human again. Maybe that’s all any of us want. Another chance.” I thought of Louis in his house in New Orleans. Dear God, what would Louis think when I told him about all this?

David muttered something under his breath, angry and impatient, yet his face was full of affection and concern.

I blew him a little kiss and was gone.

SCARCELY an hour had passed before I realized I couldn’t find the wily fiend. If he was in Paris, he was cloaked so that I couldn’t pick up the faintest shimmer of his presence. And nowhere did I catch an image of him in anyone else’s mind.