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"But he doesn't really understand, does he?" I asked. "He doesn't know where he comes from or what his real name is?"

"No, he doesn't know," said Merrick.

I could see the little wounds vanishing, leaving her again the alluring woman she had been before. Her long wavy brown hair was gorgeously mussed, and her green eyes were bloodshot still, and she appeared over-all to still be shaken.

"But he can be made to know," she continued, "and this is our most powerful weapon. Because a ghost, unlike a pure spirit, is connected to his remains, and this ghost is most connected. He is connected to you by blood, and that is why, don't you see, he feels he has always had a right to what you have. "

"Of course," I said, "oh, of course!" Only now was it hitting me. "He thinks it's his right. We were in the womb together. " I felt a deep rivet of pain in my heart.

"Yes, and try to imagine for a moment what death was like for this spirit. First off, he was a twin, and we know of twins that they feel the loss of the other terribly. Patsy speaks of your crying at his funeral. Of Aunt Queen begging her to console you. Aunt Queen knew that you were feeling Garwain's death. Well, Garwain had felt this separation from you in the incubator as well, and at death, undoubtedly his spirit was confused and had not gone on into the Light as it should have gone. "

"I see," I responded. "And now for the first time in all these months I feel pity for him again. I feel. . . mercy. "

"Feel mercy for yourself," said Merrick kindly. Her entire manner was gracious. In fact, she reminded me very much of Stirling Oliver. "But when you were brought to that funeral for him," she went on, "when you were carried there on the day of his interment, his poor miserable little spirit, cast adrift, found its living twin in you, Tarquin, and became your doppelg?nger. Indeed, he became something far stronger than a mere doppelg?nger. He became a companion and a lover, a true twin who felt he had a right to your patrimony. "

"Yes, and we began our long journey together," I said, "two genuine twins, two genuine brothers. " I tried my damndest to remember that I had once loved him. I wondered if she could see into my soul and sense the animosity I now felt for him, the enslavement which had been so vicious for me all during this long year since Petronia had so rudely made me. And the loss of Aunt Queen -- the unspeakable loss of Aunt Queen.

"And now that you've been given the Dark Blood," said Lestat in a cross voice, "he wants what he sees as his share of it. "

"But that's not all that's happening," said Merrick, continuing in her subdued fashion. She looked intently at me. "I want you to describe for me, if you will, what goes on when he attacks you. "

I considered for a moment, then I spoke, my eyes moving from Merrick to Lestat and back again.

"It's like a fusion, a fusion I never felt when I was alive. Oh, he was inside me at times. Mona Mayfair told me that he was. She said when we made love that he was in me and she knew he was there. She could feel this. Mona considers herself a witch on account of the way she feels spirits. "

"You love Mona Mayfair?" Merrick asked gently.

"Very much," I managed to reply. "But I'll never see her again. She'd know me for what I am the minute she looked at me. I avoided Rowan Mayfair desperately at the wake and the Mass. Her husband, Michael, too. They're both what the Talamasca calls witches. And then there was the ghost of Julien Mayfair at the wake. Aunt Queen was his child. I'm his descendant. "

"You have Mayfair blood?" Merrick asked. "And you saw Julien?"

"My precious darling, I had hot cocoa with Oncle Julien in the days when I could drink it," I said. "He served me animal crackers with it on a china plate, all of which later vanished just as he did. "

Very hastily I told her the whole tale, including the affair of the mask and the cape, and saw her lips spread in a generous and beautiful smile.

"Oh, our Oncle Julien," she said with a winsome sigh. "The beds he left unmade and warm, what a man he was. It's a wonder there's anyone in the city of New Orleans who doesn't share some genetic inheritance from him!" She beamed at me. "He came to my Great Nananne in a dream when I was eleven years old and told her to send me to the Talamasca. They were my salvation. "

"Oh, God in Heaven," I declared. "You don't know what I almost did to Stirling Oliver. "

"Forget that!" said Lestat. "I mean it! That's over and done. " He raised his hand and made the Sign of the Cross. "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I absolve you from all sin. Stirling Oliver is alive! Now that matter's closed as long as I'm Coven Master here. "

Merrick broke into a soft, sweet laugh. Her dark skin made her green eyes all the more brilliant.

"And you are the Coven Master, aren't you?" she said, with a flirtatious flashing glance at Lestat. "You become that automatically wherever you go. "

Lestat shrugged. "But of course," he said, exactly as if he meant it.

"We could argue about that, my magnificently feathered friend," she replied, "but we need this time while Goblin is exhausted. And must get back to the matter at hand. So Goblin is your twin, Tarquin, and you were going to tell me what it's like when the two of you are together now. Describe the fusion. "

"It's positively electric," I said. "It's as if his particles, assuming he's made of them --"

"He is," she interjected.

"-- are fused with mine, and I lose my equilibrium completely. I'm lost as well in memories, which he either engenders or falls prey to, I don't know which, but we travel back to moments in the crib or the playpen, and I feel only love for him as I must have felt as an infant or a toddler. It's a laughing bliss that I feel. And it's often wordless except for expressions of love, which are rudimentary. "

"How long does this last?"

"Moments, seconds," said Lestat for me.