locket, I said, a locket with a picture of Claudia, you have seen such a thing?
I believe I have, he said. I verified the inventory of all of those items after you first came to me. I believe there was a locket. I'm almost certain, in fact. I should have told you this, shouldn't I, before now?
No. Doesn't matter. Was it a locket on a chain, such as women wear?
Yes. Do you want me to look for this locket If I find it, I shall give it to you, of course.
No, don't look for it now. Perhaps sometime in the future. Good-bye, David. I'll come to you soon.
I hung up, and removed the small phone plug from the wall. So there had been a locket, a woman's locket. But for whom had such a thing been made And why did I see it in my dreams Claudia would not have carried her own image with her in a locket. And surely I would remember it if she had. As I tried to envision it, or remember it, I was filled with a peculiar combination of sadness and dread. It seemed I was very near a dark place, a place full of actual death. And as so often happens with my memories, I heard laughter. Only it wasn't Claudia's laughter this time. It was mine. I had a sense of preternatural youth and endless possibility. In other words I was remembering the young vampire I'd been in the old days of the eighteenth century before time had dealt its blows.
Well, what did I care about this damned locket Maybe I'd picked up the image from James's brain as he pursued me. It had been for him merely a tool to ensnare me. And the fact was, I'd never even seen such a locket. He would have done better to pick some other trinket that had once belonged to me.
No, that last explanation seemed too simple. The image was too vivid. And I'd seen it in my dreams before James had made his way into my adventures. I grew angry suddenly. I had other things to consider just now, did I not Get thee behind me, Claudia. Take your locket, please, ma cherie, and go.
For a very long time, I sat still in the shadows, conscious that the clock was ticking on the mantel, and listening to the occasional noise of traffic from the street.
I tried to consider the points David had made to me. I tried. But all I was thinking was ... so James can do it, really do it. He is the white-haired man in the photograph, and he did switch with the mechanic in the hospital in London. It can be done!
Now and then I saw the locket in my mind's eye-1 saw the miniature of Claudia painted so artfully in oils. But no emotion came to me, no sorrow, no anger, no grief.
It was James upon whom my entire heart was fastened. James can do it! James isn't lying. I can live and breathe in that body! And when the sun rises over Georgetown on that morning, I shall see it with those eyes.
It was an hour after midnight when I reached Georgetown. A heavy snow had been falling all evening long, and the streets were filled with deep white drifts of it, clean and beautiful; and it was banked against the doors of the houses, and etching in white the fancy black iron railings and the deep window ledges here and there.
The town itself was immaculate and very charming-made up of graceful Federal-style buildings, mostly of wood, which had the clean lines of the eighteenth century, with its penchant for order and balance, though many had been built in the early decades of the nineteenth. I roamed for a long time along deserted M Street, with its many commercial establishments, and then through the silent campus of the nearby university, and then through the cheerfully lighted hillside streets.
The town house of Raglan James was a particularly fine structure, made of red brick and built right on the street. It had a pretty center doorway and a hefty brass knocker, and two cheerful flickering gas lamps. Old-fashioned solid shutters graced the windows, and there was a lovely fanlight over the door.
The windows were clean, in spite of the snow on the sills, and I could see into the bright and orderly rooms. There was a smart look to the interior-trim white leather furnishings of extreme modern severity