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She nodded. She turned and rested her back against the mantel and folded her arms.

"Its first goal will be to get out of that body," she said. "But then what will it do? It will depend on the new host body and its powers. If we could trick it into a young fledgling body, that might be a very good call."

"Why do you say that?"

"If it's an older body again, a truly old body, it can expose itself to the sun and kill off half the vampires of the world by doing this, just as it happened in ancient times. If it's in a young body, it will destroy itself if it attempts this."

"Mon Dieu, I never even thought of that!" I said.

"That's why we have to come together, all of us," she said. "And New York's the place of course. But first we must enlist Sevraine."

"You do realize that the Voice can hear us right now," I said.

"Not unless it's here, in one of us," she said. "The Voice has visited me more than once, and I think it can only be in one place at a time. It hasn't spoken to groups of blood drinkers simultaneously. No. It certainly can't speak to everyone at the same moment. That is not remotely possible for it. No. If it's temporarily anchored in you or in me, yes, it can hear what's being said in this room. But not otherwise. And I don't feel its presence. Do you?"

I was pondering. There was considerable evidence she was right. But I still couldn't figure why. Why didn't the Voice's intelligence permeate all of its immense body, assuming it did have a body as we know the word? But then whose intelligence does permeate its entire body? That of an octopus perhaps? I thought of Mekare and Maharet long ago comparing these spirits to immense sea creatures.

"This Voice moves along its own etheric anatomy," Gabrielle said, "and I use that word simply because I don't know any other to describe it, but I bet your learned friends Fareed and Seth would verify what I'm saying. It moves through its various extremities and cannot be in any two places at once. We must meet with them, Lestat. We must get to New York, and before that we must go to Sevraine. Sevraine should come with us. Sevraine's powerful, perhaps as powerful as the host body."

"How do you know about Seth and Fareed?" I asked.

"From the blood drinkers calling Benji Mahmoud in New York. Don't you listen to them? You with your rock videos and sometime e-mail, I thought you'd be on top of all this technology. I listen to the tramps calling in and talking all about the benign vampire scientist of the West Coast who offers them cash for samples of their blood and tissue. They refer to Seth, his maker, as if he were a god."

"And they're headed to New York?"

She shrugged. "They ought to be."

I had to confess I listened to Benji, but seldom to the others, except in snatches.

"Surely this entire body feels," I said, "as I can feel pain in my hand and in my foot."

"Yes, but you don't have independent consciousness in your head or your foot. Look, what do I know? This Voice comes to me, rattles off some nonsense or other, and then it's gone. It flatters me, exhorts me to destroy others, tells me I am the one and only one that it wants. Others have disappointed it. On and on. I suspect it's saying the very same thing to any number of us, but I'm speculating. It's crude, childlike, then wondrously clever and intimate. But look, I'm speculating, as I said." She shrugged. "It's time to go to Sevraine," she said. "You have to take us there."

"I have to take us?"

"Come on, don't be coy, Brat Prince--."

"You know, I could kill Marius for coining that term."

"No, you couldn't. You love it. And yes, you have to take us there. I don't have the Cloud Gift, Son. I never drank the Mother's blood or Marius's blood."

"But you've drunk from Sevraine, haven't you?" I knew she had. I could see subtle differences in her that were not simply the work of time. But I wasn't certain. "Mother, you have the Cloud Gift and you don't know it."

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She didn't answer.

"All of us must come together," she said, "and we don't have time for all this. I want you to take us to Sevraine."

I put my feet on the floor, stood up, and stretched. "Very well," I said, "I rather like the prospect of holding you helpless in my arms as if I might drop you at any point into the sea."

She snickered. Ugly word, but she was still irresistible and pretty when she did it.

"And if I did drop you, you'd realize quick enough you have the Cloud Gift as I said."

"Maybe, maybe not. Why don't we put off that experiment? Agreed?"

"All right. Give me five minutes to tell my architect that I won't be here for a few nights. And where are we going?"