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I was immediately fascinated, but I was also very tired. Almost deliciously tired.

One of these ghosts rose to greet me and beckoned for me to wait as I stood in the door.

I backed up into the passage as this phantom moved out of the room and towards me, not out of fear so much as overwhelming reluctance. I knew where I stood with any human on the planet; I knew what I faced with any blood drinker. But I did not begin to know what I faced with a self-possessed ghost in a solid body.

He stood before me, smiling, the light from the shadowy conference room illuminating his rather remarkable face. Smooth forehead, Grecian features, and long ashen-blond hair.

He was dressed in a long simple black silk soutane. And it was a real garment, made of raw silk. This skin was not real, no, and the organs within were simulated well but not real, and who knew what soul lay behind these cheerful, friendly eyes?

Once again, I felt keenly that these spirits or ghosts clothed in bodies of their own making were exactly like us. They were incarnated souls as we were incarnated souls.

"I've waited a long time to beg your forgiveness for what I did to you," he said in French. "I have hoped and prayed always that you were glad of it finally, glad to be living and breathing now, hard as it's been for you on the Devil's Road."

I said nothing. I was trying to figure what this could possibly mean. That a ghost could speak so distinctly in a deep human voice amazed me. It truly seemed to be coming from his vocal cords. The illusion was perfect.

He stood eye to eye with me. He smiled. He reached for my hands and took them in his. "If only there were time for a long meeting," he said, "a time for me to answer your inevitable questions, time for me to let your anger rise."

Soft dusty fingers. They gave off warmth like human fingers.

"What anger?" I asked.

"I'm Magnus, the one who made you and abandoned you. And I will always bear the guilt for that."

I heard but I didn't believe. I didn't believe in the possibility of it. My human soul refused. And yet I knew this creature wasn't lying to me. This wasn't the season for lies. This was the season for revelations. And this creature or being or entity or whatever it was, this thing was telling me the truth.

I don't know how many minutes passed as we stood there.

"Don't judge me by what you see here," he said. "For a ghost can perfect a body himself which nature never gave him, and that's what I've done. The ghosts of this world have learned much over the centuries, especially the last few hundred years. My body resembles yours now, fine and strong and well proportioned, the body for which you died, and I have given myself your eyes, your shining blue eyes. But I do beg your forgiveness, for bringing you into this realm we now share."

A cool draft moved through the passage.

I felt a tingling on the surface of my skin. I was trembling. I heard my heart in my ears.

"Well, as you said, if only there were time," I responded. "But there isn't time now, is there? It's almost dawn." I struggled to form each word. "I can't stay with you now." I was so grateful for this, so grateful that I had to leave him, and move sluggishly, almost drunkenly, away. Shock and shock and greater shock.

I glanced back at him. How sad he looked standing there, how forlorn and burdened with grief and sorrow.

"You burn bright, Prince Lestat," he said. And tears rose to his eyes.

I hurried away. I had to. I had to find some graceful and secret place to lie down in solitude. There was no traveling for me tonight. It was too late. There was only the hope of sleep now. And up ahead, Sevraine was waiting for me and gesturing for me to hurry.

Give me this little rock-cut tomb of sorts, this shelf on which to lie. Give me these satin pillows, so cool, and these soft woolen covers. Give me this and let me weep alone here. And let me forget all but darkness as you shut the door.

And to think--on rising we would go into the Kingdom of Greater Shocks.

And all I'd been before this night was gone, absolutely gone. The world I'd only inhabited a short time ago seemed bleak and empty and over now.

All my struggles, my triumphs, my losses, were being eclipsed by what was being revealed now. Had ever ennui and despair been banished by such revelations, such precious gifts of truth?

19

Rhoshamandes

Murder Most Foul

FOR TWO NIGHTS, Rhosh had been holed up in a luxury hotel in Manaus, waking up to look out on the small Amazonian city and the jungles beyond stretching into infinity. He was furious. He had sent for Benedict, and Benedict had come, as always frayed and exhausted from the lonely journey through miles of uncharted sky, and was now equally agitated by sleeping in this multistoried mortal hostel with only a hiding place in a closet to keep him safe from the sun and from prying mortal eyes.

There was good hunting for a blood drinker in this city and in its surrounding areas, but that was about all that could be said for it in Rhosh's estimation, and he was desperate to penetrate the compound of Maharet, Khayman, and Mekare, but he could not.