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to answer. I sank down into the chair, and my own images of her blazed hot enough to eclipse everything that was emanating from him. She was alive and she was in Paris. And Nicki was still here and he was with her.

Roget came close to me, reached out as if he wanted to touch me:

"Monsieur, you go ahead while I dress. She is in the Ile St. Louis, three doors to the right of Monsieur Nicolas. You must go at once. "

I looked up at him stupidly. I couldn't even really see him. I was seeing her. There was less than an hour before sunrise. And it would take me three-quarters of that time to reach the tower.

"Tomorrow . . . tomorrow night," I think I stammered. That line came back to me from Shakespeare's Macbeth. . . "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. . . "

"Monsieur, you don't understand! There will be no trips to Italy for your mother. She has made her last journey in coming here to see you. "

When I didn't answer he grabbed hold of me and tried to shake me. I'd never seen him like this before. I was a boy to him and he was the man who had to bring me to my senses.

"I've gotten lodgings for her," he said. "Nurses, doctors, all that you could wish. But they aren't keeping her alive. You are keeping her alive, Monsieur. She must see you before she closes her eyes. Now forget the hour and go to her. Even a will as strong as hers can't work miracles. "

I couldn't answer. I couldn't form a coherent thought.

I stood up and went to the door, pulling him along with me. "Go to her now," I said, "and tell her I'll be there tomorrow night. "

He shook his head. He was angry and disgusted. And he tried to turn his back on me.

I wouldn't let him.

"You go there at once, Roget," I said. "Sit with her all day, do you understand, and see that she waits -- that she waits for me to come! Watch her if she sleeps. Wake her and talk to her if she starts to go. But don't let her die before I get there!"

Chapter 1

Part III

Viaticum For The Marquise

1

In vampire parlance, I am an early riser. I rise when the sun has just sunk below the horizon and there is still red light in the sky. Many vampires don't rise until there is full darkness, and so I have a tremendous advantage in this, and in that they must return to the grave a full hour or more before I do. I haven't mentioned it before because I didn't know it then, and it didn't come to matter until much later.

But the next night, I was on the road to Paris when the sky was on fire.

I'd clothed myself in the most respectable garments I possessed before I slipped into the sarcophagus, and I was chasing the sun west into Paris.

It looked like the city was burning, so bright was the light to me and so terrifying, until finally I came pounding over the bridge behind Notre Dame, into the Ile St. Louis.

I didn't think about what I would do or say, or how I might conceal myself from her. I knew only I had to see her and hold her and be with her while there was still time. I couldn't truly think of her death. It had tile fullness of catastrophe, and belonged to the burning sky. And maybe I was being the common mortal, believing if I could grant her last wish, then somehow the horror was under my command.

Dusk was just bleeding the light away when I found her house on the quais.

It was a stylish enough mansion. Roget had done well, and a clerk was at the door waiting to direct me up the stairs. Two maids and a nurse were in the parlor of the flat when I came in.

"Monsieur de Lenfent is with her, Monsieur," the nurse said. "She insisted on getting dressed to see you. She wanted to sit in the window and look at the towers of the cathedral, Monsieur. She saw you ride over the bridge. "

"Put out the candles in the room, except for one," I said. "And tell Monsieur de Lenfent and my lawyer to come out. "

Roget came out at once, and then Nicolas appeared.

He too had dressed for her, all in brilliant red velvet, with his old fancy linen and his white gloves. The recent drinking had left him thinner, almost haggard. Yet it made his beauty all the more vivid. When our eyes met, the malice leapt out of him, scorching my heart.

"The Marquise is a little stronger today, Monsieur," Roget said, "but she's hemorrhaging badly. The doctor says she will not -- "

He stopped and glanced back at the bedroom. I got it clear from his thought. She won't last through the night.