“I was powerfully intrigued,” he said, “by your descriptions of the vampire Armand in The Queen of the Damned—how he used his precious powers to acquire wealth, and built his great enterprise, the Night Island, such a lovely name. It rather took my breath away.” He smiled, and then went on, the voice amiable and smooth as before. “It wasn’t very difficult for me to document and annotate your assertions, you realize, though as we both know, your mysterious comrade has long ago abandoned the Night Island, and has vanished from the realm of computer records—at least as far as I can ascertain.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Besides, for what I offer, ten million is a bargain. Who else has made you such an offer? There isn’t anyone else—at the moment, that is—who can or will.”

“And suppose I don’t want to switch back at the end of the week?” I asked. “Suppose I want to be human forever.”

“That’s perfectly fine with me,” he said graciously. “I can get rid of your body anytime I want. There are lots of others who’ll take it off my hands.” He gave me a respectful and admiring smile.

“What are you going to do with my body?”

“Enjoy it. Enjoy the strength, the power! I’ve had everything the human body has to offer—youth, beauty, resilience. I’ve even been in the body of a woman, you know. And by the way, I don’t recommend that at all. Now I want what you have to offer.” He narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. “If there were any corporeal angels hanging about, well, I might approach one of them.”

“The Talamasca has no record of angels?”

He hesitated, then gave a small contained laugh. “Angels are pure spirit, Monsieur de Lioncourt,” he said. “We are talking bodies, no? I am addicted to the pleasures of the flesh. And vampires are fleshly monsters, are they not? They thrive on blood.” Again, a light came into his eyes when he said the word “blood.”

“What’s your game?” I asked. “I mean really. What’s your passion? It can’t be the money. What’s the money for? What will you buy with it? Experiences you haven’t had?”

“Yes, I would say that’s it. Experiences I haven’t had. I’m obviously a sensualist, for want of a better word, but if you must know the truth—and I don’t see why there should be any lies between us—I’m a thief in every respect. I don’t enjoy something unless I bargain for it, trick someone out of it, or steal it. It’s my way of making something out of nothing, you might say, which makes me like God!”

He stopped as if he were so impressed with what he had just said that he had to catch his breath. His eyes were dancing, and then he looked down at the half-empty coffee cup and gave a long secretive private smile.

“You do follow my drift, don’t you?” he asked. “I stole these clothes,” he said. “Everything in my house in Georgetown is stolen—every piece of furniture, every painting, every little objet d’art. Even the house itself is stolen, or shall we say, it was signed over to me amid a morass of false impressions and false hopes. I believe they call it swindling? All the same thing.” He smiled proudly again, and with such seeming depth of feeling that I was amazed. “All the money I possess is stolen. So is the car I drive in Georgetown. So are the airline tickets I used to chase you around the world.”