Page 11

"Okay, we're getting out of here," I said, and headed for the door with both of them struggling to keep up with me.

The hovering paparazzi vampires shot away in all directions, except for one intrepid young female with an actual camera flashing away as she danced backwards in front of us.

I had a car waiting to take us to the Plaza Athenee, and we were silent for the short trip, though it was the strangest and most sensuous experience to be with them, so close, in the backseat of the car, pressing on through the rain with the dim lights blurred in the downpour and the paparazzi following us. I felt pain, being so close to them, and so glad of it. I didn't want them to know how I felt; indeed, I didn't want anyone to know how I felt; I didn't want to know how I felt. So I grew hard and quiet and stared out the windows as Paris was rolling by, with all the endless undying energy of a great capital around us.

Halfway home, I threatened the paparazzi streaking on both sides with immolation if they didn't scatter now. And that did it.

The sumptuous wallpapered living room of my suite was a perfect sanctuary.

We were soon settled under the soft electric lights in the bland but comfortable melange of eighteenth-century and modern-style sofas and chairs. I loved the comfort of these stur

dy furnishings and relished the cabriole legs and bits of brass ormolu and the satin gloss of fruitwood tables and chests.

"Look, I'm not making any excuses for being in exile," I said at once, speaking my usual rough brash brand of English. "I'm here now and that's enough and if I want to tell you what I've been doing all these years, well, I'll write a damned book about it." But I was so glad to be with them. Even yelling at them was a sublime pleasure, instead of merely thinking about them and missing them and longing for them and wondering about them.

"Of course," David said sincerely, his eyes suddenly rimmed in red. "I'm simply glad to see you, that's all. The whole world's glad to know you're alive. You'll know that soon enough."

I was about to say something sharp and unkind when I realized that indeed "the whole world" would know soon enough with all those mavericks out there disseminating their iPhone images and videos. The initial telepathic blast must have been like a meteor crashing into the sea.

"Don't underestimate your own fame," I said under my breath.

Well, we'd be gone from here soon enough. Or I'd tough it out and go on enjoying Paris in spite of the little pests. But Jesse was talking now in that cool American-British voice of hers, drawing me back into the room.

"Lestat, it's never been more important," Jesse said, "that we come together." She looked like a nun with a ragged red veil of hair.

"And why is that?" I demanded. "How can we change what's happening out there? Wasn't it always like this, more or less, I mean what has changed really? It must have been this way before."

"A great deal has changed, apparently," she replied, but not argumentatively. "But there are things I must confide in you and in David, because I don't know where else to go or what to do. I was so glad when I realized David was looking for me. I might never have had the courage to come to you on my own--either of you. David, let me speak first, while I have the courage. Then you can explain what it is you want to tell me. It's about the Talamasca, I understand. But for now the Talamasca is not our greatest concern."

"What is it then, dearest?" David asked.

"I'm torn," she said, "because I have no leave to discuss these things, but if I don't ..."

"Trust in me," David said reassuringly. He took her hand.

She sat on the edge of her chair, small shoulders hunched, her hair tumbled down around her in that veil of waves.

"As you both know," she said, "Maharet and Mekare have gone into hiding. This began some four years ago with the destruction of our sanctuary in Java. Well, Khayman is still with us, and I come and go as I please. And nothing's been said to forbid me from coming to you. But something's wrong, deeply wrong. I'm afraid. I'm afraid that our world may not continue ... unless something is done."

Our world. It was perfectly plain what she meant. Mekare was the host of the spirit that animated us. If Mekare were destroyed, we would all be destroyed as well. All blood drinkers the world over would be destroyed, including that riffraff out there encircling this hotel.

"There were early signs," Jesse said hesitatingly, "but I didn't notice them. Only in retrospect did I come to realize what was going on. You both know what the Great Family meant to Maharet. Lestat, you weren't with us when she told the story, but you knew and you wrote the entire account of this accurately. David, you know all of this as well. My aunt's human descendants have kept her alive through the millennia. In every generation she reinvented a human persona for herself so that she might care for the Great Family, care for the genealogical records, distribute the grants and the trusts, keep branches and clans in touch with one another. I grew up in this family. Long before I ever dreamed there was any secret surrounding my aunt Maharet, I knew what it was like to be part of it, the beauty of it, the richness of the heritage. And I knew even then what it meant to her. And I know well enough now that this was the vocation that maintained her sanity when everything else failed.

"Well, sometime before we left the Java compound, she'd succeeded in making the Great Family entirely independent of herself. She confessed to me that the process had taken years. The family's huge; branches exist in almost every country in the world; she'd spent most of the first decade of the new millennium sitting in law offices and bank offices and building libraries and archives so that the family would survive without her."

"But all this is quite understandable," said David. "She's tired, perhaps. Perhaps she wants a rest. And the world itself has changed so dramatically in the last thirty years, Jesse. What with computers now it is entirely possible to unite and strengthen the Great Family in a way that simply wasn't possible before."

"All that's true, David, but let's not forget what the Great Family meant to her. I didn't like to see the weariness. I didn't like to hear it in her voice. I asked her many times if she would keep watch as she'd always done, even though she no longer had to play an official role."

"Surely she will," David offered.

"She said no," Jesse responded. "She said that her time with the Great Family was over. And she reminded me that it was her interfering in my life, as she called it, her coming to me as my beloved aunt Maharet, that eventually resulted in my being inducted, as she put it, into our world."

All this was true obviously. It had been Maharet's custom to visit many of her mortal descendants. And she'd been particularly drawn to the young Jesse. And the young Jesse had been kept too long in the company of blood drinkers not to realize that something profoundly mysterious set these "people" apart from others. So Maharet was right.

"I didn't like it," Jesse continued. "I feared it, but when I pressed her, she said this had to be. She said we were living in an internet age when scrutiny made impossible the secrecy of the past."

"Well, I think she's right about that too," David said.