he said softly. ‘But I thought it best you have a hand in it. Otherwise you would not give Claudia up. You must know you wanted it….’

“ ‘I loathe what I did!’ I said.

“ ‘Then loathe me, not yourself.’

“ ‘No. You don’t understand. You nearly destroyed the thing you value in me when this happened! I resisted you with all my power when I didn’t even know it was your force which was working on me. Something nearly died in me! Passion nearly died in me! I was all but destroyed when Madeleine was created!’

“ ‘But that thing is no longer dead, that passion, that humanity, whatever you wish to name it. If it were not alive there wouldn’t be tears in your eyes now. There wouldn’t be rage in your voice,’ he said.

“For the moment, I couldn’t answer. I only nodded. Then I struggled to speak again. ‘You must never force me to do something against my will! You must never exert such power…’ I stammered.

“ ‘No,’ he said at once. ‘I must not. My power stops somewhere inside you, at some threshold. There I am powerless. However…this creation of Madeleine is done. You are free.’

“ ‘And you are satisfied,’ I said, gaining control of myself. ‘I don’t mean to be harsh. You have me. I love you. But I’m mystified. You’re satisfied?’

“ ‘How could I not be?’ he asked. ‘I am satisfied, of course.’

“I stood up and went to the window. The last embers were dying. The light came from the gray sky. I heard Armand follow me to the window ledge. I could feel him beside me now, my eyes growing more and more accustomed to the luminosity of the sky, so that now I could see his profile and his eye on the falling rain. The sound of the rain was everywhere and different: flowing in the gutter along the roof, tapping the shingles, falling softly through the shimmering layers of tree branches, splattering on the sloped stone sill in front of my hands. A soft intermingling of sounds that drenched and colored all of the night.

“ ‘Do you forgive me…for forcing you with the woman?’ he asked.

“ ‘You don’t need my forgiveness.’

“ ‘You need it,’ he said. ‘Therefore, I need it.’ His face was as always utterly calm.

“ ‘Will she care for Claudia? Will she endure?’ I asked.

“ ‘She is perfect. Mad; but for these days that is perfect. She will care for Claudia. She has never lived a moment of life alone; it is natural to her that she be devoted to her companions. She need not have particular reasons for loving Claudia. Yet, in addition to her needs, she does have particular reasons. Claudia’s beautiful surface, Claudia’s quiet, Claudia’s dominance and control. They are perfect together. But I think…that as soon as possible they should leave Paris.’

“ ‘Why?’

“ ‘You know why. Because Santiago and the other vampires watch them with suspicion. All the vampires have seen Madeleine. They fear her because she knows about them and they don’t know her. They don’t let others alone who know about them.’

“ ‘And the boy, Denis? What do you plan to do with him?’

“ ‘He’s dead,’ he answered.

“I was astonished. Both at his words and his calm. ‘You killed him?’ I gasped.

“He nodded. And said nothing. But his large, dark eyes seemed entranced with me, with the emotion, the shock I didn’t try to conceal. His soft, subtle smile seemed to draw me close to him; his hand closed over mine on the wet window sill and I felt my body turning to face him, drawing nearer to him, as though I were being moved not by myself but by him. ‘It was best,’ he conceded to me gently. And then said, ‘We must go now….’ And he glanced at the street below.

“ ‘Armand,’ I said. ‘I can’t.…’

“ ‘Louis, come after me,’ he whispered. And then on the ledge, he stopped. ‘Even if you were to fall on the cobblestones there,’ he said, ‘you would only be hurt for a while. You would heal so rapidly and so perfectly that in days you would show no sign of it, your bones healing as your skin heals; so let this knowledge free you to do what you can so easily do already. Climb down, now.’

“ ‘What can kill me?’ I asked.

“Again he stopped. ‘The destruction of your remains,’ he said. ‘Don’t you know this? Fire, dismemberment…the heat of the sun. Nothing else. You can be scarred, yes; but you are resilient. You are immortal.’

“I was looking down through the quiet silver rain into darkness. Then a