The tale of the body thief - By Anne Rice Page 0,175

felt David’s hand, tugging gently at my arm.

“Yes, let’s go on in,” I said, and I turned my back on the soft Caribbean sky. Night had already fallen. And my thoughts were with James and James alone.

Oh, how I wished I could glimpse the fool when he rose from his silken hiding place. But it was far too risky. There was no vantage point from which we could watch in safety. Our only move was to conceal ourselves now.

The ship itself changed with the fall of darkness.

The small glittering shops of the mezzanine were doing a busy and noisy trade as we passed them. Men and women clad in shiny fabrics for evening were already taking their places in the Theatre Lounge below.

The slot machines had come alive with flashing lights in the casino; there was a crowd around the roulette table. And the elderly couples were dancing to the soft slow music of a band in the vast shadowy Queens Room.

Once we had found a likely little corner in the dark Club Lido, and ordered a pair of drinks to keep us company, David commanded me to stay there as he ventured up to the Signal Deck alone.

“Why? What do you mean, stay here?” I was instantly furious.

“He’ll know you the minute he sees you,” he said dismissively, as if he were talking to a child. He fitted a pair of dark glasses over his face. “He’s not likely to notice me at all.”

“All right, boss,” I said disgustedly. I was outraged to have to wait here in silence while he went adventuring about!

I slumped back in the chair, drank another deep cold antiseptic swallow of my gin and tonic, and strained to see through the annoying darkness as several young couples moved out over the flashing lights of the electrically illuminated dance floor. The music was intolerably loud. But the subtle vibratory movement of the giant ship was delicious. She was already tearing along. Indeed, when I looked to the far left out of this little pit of contrived shadows, and through one of the many vast glass windows, I could see the cloud-filled sky, still luminous with the light of early evening, simply flying by.

A mighty ship, I thought. I must give her that. For all her flashy little lights and ugly carpet, her oppressively low ceilings and endlessly boring public rooms, she is a mighty ship indeed.

I was reflecting upon it, trying not to go mad with impatience, and attempting in fact to see it from the point of view of James, when I was distracted by the distant appearance, in the far corridor, of a magnificently handsome blond-haired young man. He was dressed all in evening clothes, except for an incongruous pair of violet-tinted glasses, and I was drinking up his appearance in characteristic fashion when I suddenly realized with stultifying horror that I was gazing at myself!

It was James in his black dinner jacket and boiled shirt, scanning the place from behind those fashionable lenses, and making his way slowly to this lounge.

The tightening in my chest was unbearable. Every muscle of my frame began to spasm in my anxiety. Very slowly I lifted my hand to support my forehead and bowed my head just a little, looking again to the left.

But how could he not see me with those sharp preternatural eyes! This darkness was nothing to him. Why, surely he could pick up the scent of fear that emanated from me as the sweat poured down beneath my shirt.

But the fiend did not see me. Indeed, he had settled at the bar with his back to me, and turned his head to the right. I could make out only the line of his cheek and his jaw. And as he fell into a state of obvious relaxation, I realized that he was posing as he sat there, his left elbow leaning on the polished wood, his right knee crooked ever so slightly, his heel hooked into the brass rail of the stool upon which he sat.

He moved his head gently with the rhythm of the slow, woozy music. And a lovely pride emanated from him, a sublime contentment in what and where he was.

Slowly I took a deep breath. Far across the spacious room, and well beyond him, I saw the unmistakable figure of David stop for an instant in the open door. Then the figure moved on. Thank God, he had seen the monster, who must have looked to all the