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The cold night air felt good, and I saw the snow was falling thinly. The ground was freshly blanketed in whiteness. And beyond, the trees glistened as they moved in the soft bitter wind. Two dim figures waited for me.

"Goodbye, my friend," I said. "Again, I came to break the silence between us. Come to me anytime, and I'll be back when I can, if you're willing."

"Always," he said. I saw the anguish in his face again, the strange grim unhappiness. "Oh, there's so much I want to confide, but I cannot confide without confiding in the one I fear."

I didn't know what to say.

We stood there, staring at one another, the snow swirling lightly and soundlessly around us, and then he took my hand. His fingers felt warm and human, and I felt the faint beat of his heart in them. What heart? The heart he'd made for himself to become one of us?

"Come to Fareed and Seth," I said. "They are physicians for us all. Come to me. Yes, Amel hears all but, hearing all, can't always hear any one. Come."

"Are they physicians for us all?" he asked.

"They have to be. If we aren't all one--ghosts, spirits, blood drinkers--then what are we? We're lost, and we can't be lost. We won't stand for it anymore to be lost."

He smiled. "Oh yes," he said. He seemed as impervious to the bracing air as I was. Yet his cheeks were slightly reddened and his eyes shining. "I've heard those words before on the lips of ghosts within this house."

"Well, then, go to them and come to me," I said. I was feeling the tears rise in my eyes. In fact, I felt such strong emotions I didn't quite know what to do or say. I felt desperation. "Listen to me, you must. The Court's too busy with being a court. But what is the point of the Court if not to unite all of us? Fareed and Seth are working in their new laboratories in Paris. And Armand's house in Saint-Germain-des-Pres is the Paris home of the Court. You know all this."

"Oh, yes, I know it," he said but he wasn't comforted or encouraged. What was holding him back? What was he not saying?

I couldn't bear this. I couldn't bear the thought of Thorne and Cyril only yards away waiting for me, overhearing all, and thinking what I would never know, and being there, always being there. I didn't know what I wanted, or what to do with the misery I felt, only that some raw feeling had been discovered in me that had been buried all this while in superficial concerns and random pleasures.

Inside the house, the boy was singing again, and the harpsichord notes seemed to be chasing at heated speed his sweet rushing syllables. How safe and strong the vast place seemed for a moment, against the random chaos of the drifting snow.

"Beware, Lestat," said Gremt. He pressed my hand tightly. "Beware Amel. Beware Memnoch. Beware Rhoshamandes."

"I understand, Gremt," I said, assuring him.

I nodded. I found myself smiling. It was a sad smile, but a smile. I wished somehow I could convey to him, without pride, that all my life I'd been menaced by this and that adversary, all but murdered by those I'd loved, and even almost destroyed by my own despair. I always survived. I really didn't know what fear was, not as any permanent fixture in my heart. I just didn't "get" fear. I didn't "get" caution.

"All right, I'm going," I said and I took him by his shoulders and quickly kissed his cheeks.

"I'm glad you came, more than I can tell you," he replied. Then he turned and went back into the open door, and into the yellow light, and the door closed and the door appeared to vanish in the darkness of the wall.

I walked off through the silent snow, away from Thorne and Cyril and away from the warm yellow lights of the monastery windows. The boy was improvising those words he sang, to a concerto that never had words, and I realized in an exquisitely painful moment that he had likely spent his eternity doing such things, weaving such beauty, creating such magnificent songs, and marveled that Notker had given him this, or that he could give such things to Notker. All the world was filled with immortals who had no such purpose, no such thread to follow through the labyrinth of chance and mischance.

"Do you really not know what was bothering that spirit?" asked Amel in a low contemptuous voice. "Or are you simply pretending to be stupid in order to make me mad?"

"Well, he's obviously afraid for me," I said. "He fears you, he fears Rhoshamandes...."

"No, no, no," said Amel. "Do you not know what is wrong with him, inside of him, what he's suffering?"

"So what is it?"

"He can't disperse the body anymore, you idiot," he said. "He's trapped in it. He can't vanish on cue. He can't disappear and reappear and dart from one place to another in the blink of an eye! He's caught in the solid body of his own devising and refining. He's flesh and blood now and he can't get out of it!"

I stood there motionless watching the snow. Far away, very far away, people laughed in a village tavern. The snow thickened. The cold was nothing to me.

"You mean this?"

"Yes, and he's confided it to Magnus," said Amel, "and he's shaken the ghost's confidence in his own material body. He's shaken them all. Hesketh is in fear now. Riccardo is in fear now. They are all in fear of the particle bodies they have created for themselves, that they may be imprisoned as he is now imprisoned. He wanted to ask you to drink his blood." Amel started laughing, his wild mad laugh. "Don't you see? The miserable spirit Gremt has gotten what he wanted: to be flesh and blood; and now there's no reversing it." He went on howling with laughter.

I wanted to protest, to say "How the Hell do you know?" but I had the strong sense that he did know and he was right. So what was this body in which Gremt talked and walked and slept? Could he ingest food? Did he sleep? Did he dream? Had he any telepathic power?

"Teskhamen knows," said Amel. "Teskhamen knows and did not mean for me to know, or you to know, and by way of trying to hide it, he revealed it to me." He laughed again. "Such geniuses!"

I said nothing for a moment. And then I looked back at the nearest window, at the light flickering beyond the snow in the leaded diamond panes of glass.