the passengers of four hundred pounds in cash. Father disowned him, was reinstated by Cunard before he died. Never spoke to his son again.
Ah, the photograph on the ship, I said.
What?
And when you expelled him, he had wanted to sail on that very vessel back to America . . . first class, of course.
He told you that It's possible. I didn't really handle the particulars myself.
Not important, go on. How did he get into the occult?
He was highly educated, spent years at Oxford, though at times he had to live like a pauper. Started dabbling in medium-ship even before his mother died. Didn't come into his own until the fifties, in Paris, where he soon acquired an enormous following, then started bilking his clients in the most crude and obvious ways imaginable, and went to jail.
Same thing happened later in Oslo, more or less. After a series of odd jobs, including very menial work, he started some sort of a spiritualist church, swindled a widow out of her life savings, and was deported. Then Vienna, where he worked as a waiter in a first-class hotel until he became a psychic counselor to the rich within a matter of weeks. Soon a hasty departure. He barely escaped arrest. In Milan, he bilked a member of the old aristocracy out of thousands before he was discovered, and had to leave the city in the middle of the night. His next stop was Berlin, where he was arrested but talked himself out of custody, and then back to London, where he went to jail again.
Ups and downs, I said, remembering his words.
That's always the pattern. He rises from the lowest employment to living in extravagant luxury, running up ludicrous accounts for fine clothing, motorcars, jet excursions here and there, and then it all collapses in the face of his petty crimes, treachery, and betrayal. He can't break the cycle. It always brings him down.
So it seems.
Lestat, there is something positively stupid about this creature. He speaks eight languages, can invade any computer network, and possess other people's bodies long enough to loot their wall safes-he is obsessed with wall safes, by the way, hi an almost erotic fashion!-and yet he plays silly tricks on people and ends up with handcuffs on his wrists! The objects he took from our vaults were nearly impossible for him to sell. He ended up dumping them on the black market for a pittance. He's really something of an arch fool.
I laughed under my breath. The thefts are symbolic, David. This is a creature of compulsion and obsession. It's a game. That's why he cannot hang on to what he steals. It's the process that counts with him, more than anything else.
But, Lestat, it's an endlessly destructive game.
I understand, David. Thank you for this information. I'll call you soon.
Wait just a minute, you can't ring off, I won't allow it, don't you realize-
Of course I do, David.
Lestat, there is a saying in the world of the occult. Like attracts like. Do you know what it means?
What would I know about the occult, David That's your territory, not mine.
This is no time for sarcasm.
I'm sorry. What does it mean?
When a sorcerer uses his powers in a petty and selfish fashion, the magic always rebounds upon him.
Now you're talking superstition.
I am talking a principle which is as old as magic itself.
He isn't a magician, David, he's merely a creature with certain measurable and definable psychic powers. He can possess other people. In one case of which we know, he effected an actual switch.
It's the same thing! Use those powers to try to harm others and the harm comes back to oneself.
David, I am the extant proof that such a concept is false. Next you will explain the concept of karma to me and I will slowly drop off to sleep.
James is the quintessential evil sorcerer! He's already defeated death once at the expense of another human being; he must be stopped.
Why didn't you try to stop me, David, when you had the opportunity I was at your mercy at Talbot Manor. You could have found some way.
Don't push me away with your accusations!
I love you, David. I will contact you soon. I was about to put down the phone, when I thought of something. David, I said. There's something else I'd like to know.
Yes, what? Such relief that I hadn't hung up.
You have these relics of ours-old possessions in your vaults.
Yes. Discomfort. This was an embarrassment to him, it seemed.