they don't matter, really. She matters. Where is she? Find her. And their laughter was remote, and it seemed to have a color and a shape but to be part of nothing.
"Then I saw something through the open doorway which was something I'd seen before, a long, long time ago. No one knew of this thing I'd seen years before except myself. No. Lestat knew. But it didn't matter. He wouldn't know now or understand. That he and I had seen this thing, standing at the door of that brick kitchen in the Rue Royale, two wet shriveled things that had been alive, mother and daughter in one another's arms, the murdered pair on the kitchen floor. But these two lying under the gentle rain were Madeleine and Claudia, and Madeleine's lovely red hair mingled with the gold of Claudia's hair, which stirred and glistened in the wind that sucked through the open doorway. Only that which was living had been burnt away-not the hair, not the long, empty velvet dress, not the small bloodstained chemise with its eyelets of white lace. And the blackened, burnt, and drawn thing that was Madeleine -still bore the stamp of her living face, and the hand that clutched at the child was whole like a mummy's hand. But the child, the ancient one, my Claudia, was ashes.
"A cry rose in me, a wild, consuming cry that came from the bowels of my being, rising up like the wind in that narrow place, the wind that swirled the rains teeming on those ashes, beating at the trace of a tiny hand against the bricks, that golden hair lifting, those loose strands rising, flying upwards. And a blow struck me even as I cried out; and I had hold of something that I believed to be Santiago, and I was pounding, against him, destroying him, twisting that grinning white face around with hands from which he couldn't free himself, hands against which he railed, crying out, his cries mingling with my cries, his boots coming down into those ashes, as I threw him backwards away from them, my own eyes blinded with the rain, with my tears, until he lay back away from me, and I was reaching out for him even as he held out his hand. And the one I was struggling against was Armand. Armand, who was forcing me out of the tiny graveyard into the whirling colors of the ballroom, the cries, the mingling voices, that searing, silver laughter.
"And Lestat was calling out,'Louis, wait for me; Louis, I must talk to you!'
"I could see Armand's rich, brown eye close to mine, and I felt weak all over and vaguely aware that Madeleine and Claudia were dead, his voice saying softly, perhaps soundlessly,'I could not prevent it, I could not prevent it. . : And they were dead, simply dead. And I was losing consciousness. Santiago was near them somewhere there where they were still, that hair lifted on the wind, swept across those bricks, unraveling locks. But I was losing consciousness.
"I could not-gather their bodies up with me, could not take them out. Armand had his arm around my back, his hand under my arm, and he, was all but carrying me through some hollow wooden echoing place, and the smells of the street were rising, the fresh smell of the horses and the leather, and there were the gleaming carriages stopped there. And I could see myself clearly running down the Boulevard des Capucines with a small coffin under my arm and the people making way for me and dozens of people rising around the crowded tables of the open cafe and a man lifting his arm. It seemed I stumbled then, the Louis whom Armand held in his arm, and again I saw his brown eyes looking at me, and felt that drowsiness, that sinking. And yet I walked, I moved, I saw the gleam of my own boots on the pavement.'Is he mad, that he says these things to me?' I was asking of Lestat, my voice shrill and angry, even the sound of it giving me some comfort. I was laughing, laughing loudly.'He's stark-raving mad to speak to me in this manned Did you hear him?' I demanded. And Armand's eye said, Sleep. I wanted to say something about Madeleine and Claudia, that we could not leave them there, and I felt that cry again rising inside of me, that cry that pushed everything else out of