on the edge of a cypress swamp, with a dozen or more old cement graves, most names long ago effaced, and one of these raised rectangular tombs black with soot from a recent fire, and the whole surrounded by a small iron fence and four immense oak trees, the kind weighted down by their dipping branches, and the sky the perfect color of lilacs, and the heat of the summer sweet and caressing and-
-you bet I've got on my black velvet frock coat (close-up: tapered at the waist, brass buttons) and my motorcycle boots, and a brand-new linen shirt loaded with lace at cuffs and throat (pity the poor slob who snickers at me on account of that!), and I haven't cut my shoulder-length blond mane tonight, which I sometimes do for variety, and I've chucked my violet glasses because who cares that my eyes attract
attention, and my skin's still dramatically tanned from my years-ago suicide attempt in the raw sun of the Gobi Desert, and I'm thinking-
-Dark Trick, yes, work the miracle, they need you, up there in the Big House, you Brat Prince, you Sheik among vampires, stop brooding and mourning down here, go to it, there's a delicate situation up there in the Big House-and it is
TIME TO TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENED AND SO I DO:
I PACED , having just risen from my secret hiding place, and I mourned bitterly for another Blood Drinker who had perished in this very cemetery, on the aforementioned blackened grave, in an immense fire, and of her own will, leaving us only last night, without the slightest warning.
This was Merrick Mayfair, only three years among the Undead or less, and I'd invited her here to Blackwood Farm to help me exorcise an evil spirit that had been haunting Quinn Blackwood since childhood. Quinn was very new to the Blood, and had come to me for help with this ghost, which, far from leaving him at his transformation from mortal to vampire, had only grown stronger and meaner, and had actually caused the death of the mortal dearest to Quinn-his great Aunt Queen, age of eighty-five, by causing the beautiful lady to fall. I had needed Merrick Mayfair to exorcise this evil spirit forever.
Goblin was the name of this ghost, and as Merrick Mayfair had been both scholar and sorceress before she sought out the Dark Blood, I figured she would have the strength required to get rid of him.
Well, she came, and she solved the riddle of Goblin, and, building a high altar of coal and wood which she set ablaze, she not only burnt the corpse of the evil one but went into the flames with it. The spirit was gone, and so was Merrick Mayfair.
Of course I tried to snatch her back from the fire, but her soul had taken flight, and no amount of my blood poured on her burnt remains could conceivably revive her.
It did seem to me as I walked back and forth, kicking at the graveyard dust, that immortals who think they want the Dark Blood perish infinitely more easily than those of us who never asked for it. Perhaps the anger of the rape carries us through for centuries.
But as I said: something was going on in the Big House.
I was thinking Dark Trick as I paced, yes, Dark Trick, the making of another vampire.
But why was I even considering such a thing? I, who secretly wants to be a saint? Surely the blood of Merrick Mayfair was not crying out from the Earth for another newborn, you can scrap that idea. And this was one of those nights when every breath I took felt like a minor metaphysical disaster.
I looked up at the Manor House as they call it, the mansion up on the rise, with its two-story white columns and many lighted windows, the place which had been the locus of my pain and fortune for the last few nights, and I tried to figure how to play this one-for the benefit of all involved.
First consideration: Blackwood Manor was buzzing with unsuspecting mortals, most dear to me on short acquaintance, and by unsus-pecting I mean they've never guessed that their beloved Quinn Black-wood, master of the house, or his mysterious new friend, Lestat, were vampires, and that was the way Quinn willed it with all his heart and soul-that no untoward evil thing would happen, because this was his home, and vampire though he was, he wasn't ready to break the ties.
Among