“Well, you would think in terms of the Roman Senate,” I said. “Why isn’t he in my head or yours?” Marius asked. “Why is he so quiet? I would have thought he’d be punishing Rhoshamandes and Benedict but he isn’t.”

“He’s in my head now, Marius,” I said. “I can feel him. I’ve always known when he was absent or leaving. But now I know when he’s simply there. It’s rather like having a finger pressed against one’s scalp or cheek or the lobe of one’s ear. He’s here.”

Marius looked exasperated, and then plainly furious.

“He’s stopped his relentless meddling out there,” I said, “that’s what matters.” I gestured to the front of the house, towards the street where the young ones were milling, towards the wide world which lay to the east, and the west, and the south and the north.

“I suppose it would be pointless for me to scrawl a message to you on paper here,” said Marius, “because he can read it through your eyes. But why bring over these two until we’re certain that this thing is not yet going to destroy the entire tribe?”

“He’s never wanted to do that,” I said. “And there is no ultimate solution so long as he exists. Even in the most agreeable host, he can still plot and then travel, and then foment. I don’t see any end to that except for one.”

“Which is what?”

“That he might have some larger vision, some infinitely larger challenge, with which to occupy his mind.”

“Does he want that?” Marius asked. “Or is that not something you’ve dreamed up, Lestat? You are such a romantic at heart. Oh, I know you fancy yourself hard-boiled and practical by nature. But you’re a romantic. You always have been. What he wants perhaps is a sacrificial lamb, a perfect blood drinker, old and powerful, whose functioning brain he can take over and control relentlessly as he gradually obliterates its personality. Rhoshamandes was his prototype. Only Rhoshamandes wasn’t vicious enough or foolish enough—.”

“Yes, that does make sense,” I said. “I’m exhausted. I want to go back to that little retreat I’ve found in the other building.”

“What Armand calls the French library.”

“Yes, exactly,” I said. “He couldn’t have designed a more perfect spot for me. I need to rest. To think. But you may do this with Viktor and Rose whenever you wish, and I say the sooner the better—don’t wait, don’t wait for any resolution that may never come. You do it, go on and do it, and you’ll make them strong and telepathic and resourceful, and you’ll give them the best instructions, and so I leave it to you.”

“And if I do it with a bit of ceremony?” he asked.

“Why not?” I remembered the description of the making of Armand, how he’d taken the young Armand into a painted room in his Venetian palace and there amid blazing multicolored murals he had made him, offering the blood as sacrament with the most appropriate words. So different from my own making, that ruthless Magnus who was now a wise ghost, but had been then a warped and vile blood drinker, tormenting me as he brought me over.

I had to stop thinking of all this. I was bone tired, as mortals say. I rose to go. But then I stopped.

“If we are to be one tribe now,” I said. “If we are to be a true sodality, then we can and should perhaps have our own ceremonies, rites, trappings, some way of surrounding with solemn enthusiasm the birth of others into our ranks. So do it as you wish and make a precedent, perhaps, that will endure.”

He smiled.

“Allow me one innovation at the start,” he said, “that I perform the rites with Pandora, who is nearly my same age, and very skilled at making others, obviously. We will share the making of each between us so that my gifts will go into both Rose and Viktor, and her gifts will go into both as well. Because you see, I cannot really bring both of them over perfectly at the same time on my own.”

“Of course, as you wish,” I said. “I leave this in your hands.”

“And then it can be done with grace and solemnity for both at the same time.”

I nodded. “And if they emerge from this telepathically deaf to one another, and deaf to both of you?”

“So be it. There’s a wisdom in it. Let them have their silence in which to learn. When has telepathy really done us any great measure of good?”

I gave my assent.

I was at the door when he spoke again.

“Lestat, be careful with this Voice!” he said.

I turned around and looked at him.

“Don’t be your usual impulsive self in lending this thing a sympathetic ear.”

He stood and left the table, appealing to me with his arms out.

“Lestat, no one is insensible to what this thing endures in the body of one with dimmed eyes and stopped ears, a thing that can’t move, can’t write, can’t think, can’t speak. We know.”

“Do you?”

“Give Seth and Fareed time, as long as the thing is quiet, to ponder this.”

“What? The making of a ghastly machine?”

“No, but possibly some vehicle can yet be found—some fledgling brought over for the very purpose, with senses and faculties intact, but with little intellect or sanity at stake, and with a physicality—as a fledgling—that can be controlled.”

“And this fledgling would be kept a prisoner, of course.”

“Inevitably,” he said. His arms dropped to his sides.

Inside me the Voice gave a long low agonized sigh.

“Lestat, if it’s in your mind, it’s going to go for your mind. And you must call us, all of us, to your aid if this thing begins to push you to the brink.”

“I know that, Marius,” I said. “I’ve never known myself, but I know when I’m not myself. That is certain.”

He gave a soft despairing smile and shook his head.

I went out.

I went back to the French library.

Someone had been in here, one of those quiet, strange mortal servants of Armand’s who went about the house like obedient somnambulists—and this one had dusted and polished, and laid out a soft green silk cover for me, over the back of the darker green damask couch.

The two small lamps burned on the desk.

I turned on the computer long enough to confirm at clear volume what I already knew. Benji was broadcasting vigorously. No Burnings anywhere on the planet. No word of the Voice from far and wide. No calls coming in from desperate victims.