a high luminous sheen, and when I ran my fingers back through it I felt a new and strange vitality there.
In fact, this was not Lestat in the mirror at all, but some replica of him made of other substances! And the few lines time had given me by the age of twenty years were gone or greatly simplified and just a little deeper than they had been.
I stared at my reflection. I became frantic to discover myself in it. I rubbed my face, even rubbed the mirror and pressed my lips together to keep from crying.
Finally I closed my eyes and opened them again, and I smiled very gently at the creature. He smiled back. That was Lestat, all right. And there seemed nothing in his face that was any way malevolent. Well, not very malevolent. Just the old mischief, the impulsiveness. He could have been an angel, in fact, this creature, except that when his tears did rise, they were red, and the entire image was tinted red because his vision was red. And he had these evil little teeth that he could press into his lower lip when he smiled that made him look absolutely terrifying. A good enough face with one thing horribly, horribly wrong with it!
But it suddenly occurred to me, I am looking at my own reflection! And hadn’t it been said enough that ghosts and spirits and those who have lost their souls to hell have no reflections in mirrors?
A lust to know all things about what I was came over me. A lust to know how I should walk among mortal men. I wanted to be in the streets of Paris, seeing with my new eyes all the miracles of life that I’d ever glimpsed. I wanted to see the faces of the people, to see the flowers in bloom, and the butterflies. To see Nicki, to hear Nicki play his music—no.
Forswear that. But there were a thousand forms of music, weren’t there? And as I closed my eyes I could almost hear the orchestra of the Opéra, the arias rising in my ears. So sharp the recollection, so clear.
But nothing would be ordinary now. Not joy or pain, or the simplest memory. All would possess this magnificent luster, even grief for the things that were forever lost.
I put down the mirror, and taking one of the old yellowed lace handkerchiefs from the chest, I wiped my tears. I turned and sat down slowly before the fire. Delicious the warmth on my face and hands.
A great sweet drowsiness came over me and as I closed my eyes again I felt myself immersed suddenly in the strange dream of Magnus stealing the blood. A sense of enchantment returned, of dizzying pleasure—Magnus holding me, connected to me, my blood flowing into him. But I heard the chains scraping the floor of the old catacomb, I saw the defenseless vampire thing in Magnus’s arms. Something more to it . . . something important. A meaning. About theft, treachery, about surrendering to no one, not God, not demon, and never man.
I thought and thought about it, half awake, half dreaming again, and the maddest thought came to me, that I would tell Nicki all about this, that as soon as I got home I would lay it all out, the dream, the possible meaning and we would talk—
With an ugly shock, I opened my eyes. The human in me looked helplessly about this chamber. He started to weep again and the newborn fiend was too young yet to rein him in. The sobs came up like hiccups, and I put my hand over my mouth.
Magnus, why did you leave me? Magnus, what I am supposed to do, how do I go on?
I drew up my knees and rested my head on them, and slowly my head began to clear.
Well, it has been great fun pretending you will be this vampire creature, I thought, wearing these splendid clothes, running your fingers through all that glorious lucre. But you can’t live as this! You can’t feed on living beings! Even if you are a monster, you have a conscience in you, natural to you . . . Good and Evil, good and evil. You cannot live without believing in—You cannot abide the acts that—Tomorrow you will . . . you will . . . you will what?
You will drink blood, won’t you?
The gold and the precious stones glowed like embers in the nearby chest, and beyond the bars