Archive of Our Own

"Are we really going to attend every production of Macbeth mounted in this city til kingdom come?" Claudia asked, stifling a yawn.

"Longer," I answered, "since that kingdom isn't coming."

"Lestat," Louis frowned in reproach, casting troubled eyes around us to ensure no one took offense at my dreadful blasphemy.

Of course there were eyes on us, and as always, our dazzling family repaid inspection: two handsome, richly dressed young men and their angelically beautiful little daughter, the glass of fashion and the mould of form. Oh yes, watchers on all sides, but it wasn't our conversation they observed with such acuity; it wasn't our words they hungered for. Fair enough. I hungered for something even more sinister from them.

We occupied stiff loge seats in the American Theater, still new enough that the cushions had not yet been beaten down. I liked this place, with its round arched entryways and forthright, flat-faced fronting and its chic modern gas lighting. I liked these people, also arch and forthright and chic, coming out each night to enjoy the first English language plays that New Orleans offered in a proper theater.

And here we were, just as stylish and shiny-new as any of them, clad in the latest evening costumes. Louis, at least, had cause to be pleased with the turn that mortal tastes had taken, in recent years: sober clothes in dark and muted shades, with only exquisite tailoring to truly distinguish them.

I missed the brighter colors of the old century, the more elaborate ornamentation... even the plain white stockings, which had always looked so becoming on me and my companion. It was trousers for everyone now, even for formalwear, even at night, and no matter how close the fit, it just wasn't the same.

At least Claudia could still wear color. Tonight she had a pastel spring green dress, with a complement of blue and green ribbons in her golden curls.

She plucked at the delicate lace of her sleeve to straighten it. "I think this may be the worst version we've sat through yet. Do we have to stay for the second half?"

"My dear, it's kinder to hold criticism until after the play," Louis told her, "and discuss it elsewhere."

"Why?"

"What if someone from the company overheard all their hard work being disparaged?"

"If they don't want to know what people think of their work, they shouldn't bother having an audience," said Claudia pertly.

Louis looked to me, knowing that my sympathies usually leaned toward the performers and producers, but in this instance I merely shrugged, "She has you there."

I'd never admit it, but she was right about this production. Even I was underwhelmed, much as I loved the play.

"The better the audience, the better the players," Louis admonished, which amused me; he'd picked that up from me.

"Enough." I stood, urging them to follow. "Let's play before this audience and see how we fare," and I guided them to the atrium.

Wise that we'd fed early this evening to borrow a lively flush of color for our skins, for the intermission crowd radiated the heat of a hundred bodies, redolent with the musk and salt of human scent. Otherwise, the aroma would have been maddening. As it was, my appetite was still a little piqued. We joined the throng, among them yet above them, insulated by our unnatural state.

Few things pleased me more than this, sweeping into a room with my two breathtaking fledglings, moving through a herd of mortals in our aura of wealth and youth and beauty, the envy of all. The sick joke of our secret predation only added to the wicked pleasure.

I could kill anyone here tonight. I could kill everyone  here tonight. Secure in that power, I had a confidence ordinary men could only dream of, a handsome blond devil whose strut was entirely earned. How could I be anything but envied and admired and stupidly, blindly adored?

Something of my thoughts must have shown in my smile. Louis stirred, fingers curling around my cuff, and he murmured, "Try not to terrify anyone here tonight, please."

I shifted my gaze to him with a flutter of lashes. "Would I."

"You would. You will, if you carry on grinning like a madman." For all his chiding, he watched me as intently as he always did, as though riveted with anticipation for whatever I might do next.

(Did he know how quickly I would wither and lose heart without his expectant gaze? I think he did. He didn't truly want to rein me in. Too eager, perhaps, to continue watching the show.)

I took his arm, and rather than risk a scene, he allowed it, holding back any protest he might have wanted to make when I kept him fast by me and started introducing us by our current set of noms de plume.

I had to glory in this social adventure while I could. Louis had argued strenuously against it, and agreed to accompany me only if I promised we would be visible here among humans for no more than four years.

We had been regulars at the St. Philip theater for decades, by this point. Against that risk, Louis lodged no more than a pro forma protest, so long as we kept to our private box.

Of course, contrary to his warnings, I'd mingled for several years there. But it seemed no time at all until the whispers began to seethe about my perpetual youth.

At that, I had sullenly retired to the box as well. We could still attend St. Philip safely in private. The service staff there changed regularly enough that no one in a position to see us often ever lingered long enough to trouble us.

Mere attendance was only half the pleasure of the theater, though. I wanted to meet people! I wanted to show off my beautiful family!

But at every venue, it was the same. I could only snatch a few short years of notoriety from each group before we were forced to lapse back into the shadows, left to wait until a new place gave us a fresh opportunity to shine.

At least we could mix with the audiences at the American Theater safely now, for a little while, without the threat of recognition. The English-speaking audience here was an entirely different genus from the theatergoers at our other haunts.

And if I missed the styles of earlier years, it was still a pleasure to see my companions on display in new finery. Such a picture we made. Claudia hewed close to Louis, holding his hand, and her filmy dress looked even more diaphanous and lovely against the backdrop of his somber shades, her blue and green ribbons complimenting their vivid eyes.

Windswept hair was the mode, so Louis hadn't tied his back in a queue, leaving the fine black waves loose and wild, curling at his collar. I'd only witnessed it this way before in very private circumstances, in the exigencies of misery or passion, and it felt provocative to see it now in public.

"Behave, Lestat," he told me, low and pleasant enough that I didn't mind the chiding. I realized, then, that I'd fallen into unconscious contemplation and I had leaned much closer to him, nearly burying my nose in his hair.

"I don't see why I should," I answered, passing off our nearness as the requirement of a whisper, for the benefit of our spectators. "How many of these people do you think are actually here for the Bard?"

Louis studied the crowd for several moments, as though I'd asked a genuine question worth pondering. "Half, perhaps."

"Generous," I said, easing back from him. "I wouldn't even put it at one in ten."

"Touché!" sang a merry little voice. "You're the wolf!"

A little boy danced away from us, hesitating and jittering in place when Claudia failed to give chase. For of course it was her he'd tapped to play his game: she looked as though she were the only other child near his age in the room.

Her expression, though, was exactly what one would expect from a woman in her thirties recruited for a child's game. With an air of forced patience, Claudia called to him, "I'm not meant to run in these shoes."

"Aww!" The boy pouted, venturing near again. "Can't you take them off?"

"There you are, Gaspard! What have I told you? No running indoors." A comely older woman hurried to the boy, snatching up his hand. To us, she flashed a strained smile. "Please forgive him, monsieurs, I'm afraid he's not as well-behaved as your lovely daughter."

"Think nothing of it," said Louis gallantly. "It's always a pleasure to see youthful high spirits at play."

"High spirits, yes," she sighed. "You are very kind. He gets so restless, and he doesn't really understand the play, thank goodness, he's far too young for it. We didn't intend to bring him at all, but the nurse fell ill at the last moment."

"I told you I'd stay with him, Maman," said a new voice, as the woman's daughter joined us. She had inherited every bit of her mother's beauty, and more: perhaps owing to the contribution of the father, or simply the benefit of her youth.

"Martine, you've been shut up in that house for months now. You know I appreciate the care you take with your grandparents, but a young woman your age should be out!" The woman turned to us. "I'm sorry, monsieurs. I am Madame DeVillier," she gestured, "my son Gaspard, whom you've met after a fashion; my daughter Martine."

I let Louis recite the proper greetings and benedictions while I indulged myself in study of Mlle DeVillier. Even next to her handsome mother and stood against a crowd of primped and well-heeled theatergoers, Martine had a certain splendor, something about the crisp modeling of her lips and nose, the wideness of her eyes. Her hair was a shining pale brown that I instantly longed to see let down and combed out. She didn't even suffer from comparison with Claudia and Louis, a feat so rare that I couldn't remember another mortal who'd matched it.

"It's so nice to see young gentlemen appreciating the classics!" Mme DeVillier gushed. "I hope it wasn't misfortune like ours that compelled you to bring your daughter, M. Laurent. I worry Gaspard will have nightmares after this."

"My brother is too modest to say so, but our Annette is something of a prodigy," I put in. "She's read the better half of Shakespeare's works, and Macbeth is her favorite. And this production is the best interpretation we've seen yet, isn't that what you said, darling?"

Coolly she replied, "I said it was the most stirring, which is far from calling it the best. I can't fault the staging of the battles or the commitment of the cast. Beyond that perhaps it's kinder not to comment."

"Clever children are so difficult to please!" I said. "Mme DeVillier, perhaps you can advise us."

"I'm afraid my clever children please themselves, most of the time," she answered. "Philippe, come and meet these charming young gentlemen. This is René Laurent, his daughter Annette, and his brother Christophe Tuerloup. Allow me to introduce my husband, Philippe DeVillier."

"Enchanté," I bowed slightly, and left it to Louis to make the more formal greetings.

Meanwhile, young Gaspard was making the most gruesome faces in an attempt to draw a reaction from Claudia. Our daughter indulged him with feigned surprise and laughter, but I could see the pretense was wearing on her.

"Would you like to come up, mon chou?" I offered my hands. To the company, I added, "Even prodigies get tired, no matter how engrossed by the play."

"Papa can carry me," she said, and Louis soon held her, in arms that would never cramp or grow tired under her negligible weight. They both looked happier for it. He might have been content to hold her that way always, if she had agreed to be borne.

"Do you hail from France, M. Tuerloup?" M. DeVillier surprised me by asking. "Perhaps Bourbonnais?"

I'm not sure what shape my face made at the prospect of being mistaken for Bourbonnais stock, but Louis pressed his elbow against my arm, which from him was the equivalent of a sharp kick to the shin.

"My father was Bourbonnais. Durmignac," M. DeVillier continued amiably. "It always catches my ear to pick up a hint of Auvergnat."

"I was born near here," I lied, acutely aware of Louis's sharpened attention. "Any accent must come from my family."

"It can go that way sometimes," the gentleman agreed, and the conversation meandered on without me.

I watched Martine, considering the qualities that gave her such surpassing beauty. Her reaction interested me even more than her looks. For the most part I avoided gazing at her directly for more than a moment at a time, but she plainly knew I was watching her, looking at me steadily in return. She didn't play coy or indignant; aside from returning the scrutiny, nothing in her manner altered at all after she became aware of my attention.

I wanted to learn more. And so I exerted myself to make overtures and be fascinating, building on the friendly charm that Louis and Claudia had offered the family. Soon we had all agreed to meet at a concert later in the week. And after a few more conversational volleys designed to ascertain that we were rich and I was unencumbered, the DeVilliers tendered a further invitation to their home after the concert.

After the play concluded, we had no sooner shut ourselves into the carriage to ride home than Louis announced, "You mustn't kill any of the DeVilliers. That conversation was far too public and attracted too much notice."

I had no such intention, but still I asked, "How do you intend to stop me?"

"If you touch any of them, that's the end of the American Theater—"

"For the whole nation? That seems drastic—"

"—and we'll have to move out of the flat. We should consider that regardless, after so long in the same place. But if you murder someone we've been seen with so prominently, we'll have no choice."

"Murder!" I gasped in mock horror. "But speaking of dinner..."

"I want to hunt in Faubourg St.-Marie tonight," Claudia said. "Louis, will you take me?"

He wavered half a moment, reluctant. "Of course..."

"You can't," I interrupted, "I need you to look over the books and sort out that problem with the Benoit account, and then you'll need to write to the bank. Claudia, I'll take you to your riverside haunts, if you must. Are you sure we can't hunt somewhere more hospitable?"

"No," she said definitively.

"Then we'll slow down a bit and push Louis out when we're near enough to Rue Royale, and then we'll go among the shacks to hunt... or, well, you can hardly call it hunting really, when the prey are all too weak to run. Mercy killing."

"I can get out here," Louis offered as if I'd been serious, reaching toward the door.

I clamped my hand on his arm. I didn't think he was in earnest any more than I'd been, and I doubted he would actually hurtle himself from the moving coach, but sometimes there was no telling with him. Occasionally one of his black moods would seize him so firmly in its jaws that he'd become unpredictable.

Not that leaping off the footboard should have hurt him, but he never used a tenth of his powers, and I was never sure if it was because he eschewed them or because he didn't know how. He was perfectly capable of keeping his feet in almost any circumstance, but would he? I couldn't be certain.

Claudia eyed my grip on him with amusement, while Louis affected to ignore it. I didn't release him until the carriage came to a full stop, and then he was gone and we were off to the poorest, meanest riverfront shanties, where Claudia loved to relieve the poor and innocent of their suffering.

We came home together, and Claudia headed directly back into Louis's arms. I left for my own hunt, seeking the evildoer to exact a toll for my frustration on victims who deserved to pay that price.

If that search just so happened to lead me to the DeVillier's neighborhood, well. Who was there to mind?

The week wended on in much the same way: our outings as a trio; my hunts with Claudia; Louis and Claudia sharing each others' quiet company until dawn.

Then, the night before our planned rendezvous at the concert, we encountered the DeVilliers again. Claudia had dragged us to La Fille mal gardée, and there were Camille, Philippe, and Martine. The nurse must have recovered, for young Gaspard was nowhere in sight.

I left it again to Louis to make the appropriate noises about the wonderful coincidence, and affirm our plans for the next night. Never a devotee of ballet, I had been rendered all but insensible by the first half, and the little mystery of Martine's appeal was intriguing enough to act as an antidote.

Again she received my attention without much overt reaction, her pale brown eyes, veiled with matching lashes, passing casually over me in return. As at the American Theater, her evening costume was modest, her hair braided and bound up, neither very interesting to me: style was not the secret of her allure.

"We have a special flowering tea for tomorrow night," Mme DeVillier was saying when I returned my focus to the conversation. "And a glass teapot to see it properly when it blooms. I can't wait to show you, Annette."

"I can't wait to see it!" Claudia obliged with a smile from her perch in Louis's arms.

This chance meeting amounted to little more than increasing the warmth of our connection with the DeVilliers. But it unveiled further significance the next night.

For this night, when we were expected to meet the DeVilliers at the concert, Martine appeared to much better advantage.

She still wore her hair up, but with loose locks and tendrils gently curling around her face. Her burgundy gown flattered her fair complexion and showed an elegant décolletage. She really was a remarkably well-made young woman, with a swan's neck and graceful contoured limbs.

I found pleasure in the thought that she might have exerted herself to attract me. Futile though the effort might be, it was endearing.

Things took a turn when we arrived at the DeVillier's home after the outing. A townhouse not unlike our own, its railings and doors were painted Paris green, and a panorama wallpaper of a forest stream decorated the parlor wall over the dado rail.

So, a home of some taste and wealth. But to vampire senses, the miasma of illness hung heavy within. I recalled the mother praising her daughter for tending to ill grandparents, and the nurse falling sick. I hoped Martine would avoid contracting anything; it would be like shattering a stained glass window, to lose that smooth complexion and bewitching face.

As Mme DeVillier had promised, the maid brought in a flowering tea, which began as a tight, dry little ball. Martine placed it in the glass teapot herself and carefully poured the hot water over it, keeping it centered as it began to unfurl, filling the air with the lush scent of jasmine.

While the tea slowly bloomed open, Martine dismissed the maid and set out the teacups herself. I admit I felt a little irritated at first, for I couldn't help noticing that one cup had a slight flaw in the pattern ringing its rim... just one imperfect cup, which Martine put in front of me.

Claudia genuinely seemed to enjoy the spectacle as the open blossom floated in the pale gold tea; she asked Louis if we could buy some of our own. When we had all lauded the sight to Mme DeVillier's satisfaction, Martine again stepped in before the maid could be summoned, and poured.

As the family settled around the table, Louis gave me a significant look, but I couldn't make out what he meant by it. Surely he wasn't concerned about disposing of the tea undetected. That was child's play for us, humans being easily distractible and their eyes so slow.

Our cunning little daughter bridged the gap. Holding up the tea with seemingly childish enthusiasm, she tilted it toward me, chirping, "Even the color is special!" And in the waft of steam that floated toward me from her cup, I smelled the poison.

As any book will tell you and seemingly everyone knows, arsenic has no odor and no flavor. Perhaps not— to humans. But to our heightened senses, a mild sweet sulphur aroma marked the presence of arsenic quite distinctly.

"Very special," I said, raising my cup to breathe in the scent. But in my cup, there was only jasmine.

Martine sipped her tea serenely. Her cup, I saw now, had a subtle chip at the base of the handle. And her cup, too, was untainted. Only hers, and mine.

And now I knew what it was in her that caught my attention: the fearless poise of a predator. When I strode through the American Theater atrium, thinking about how I could kill any of them, all of them... Martine might have been thinking the very same thing.

"I want to hunt alone tonight," Claudia announced once the DeVilliers saw us off in the carriage.

"Shouldn't we discuss the arsenic?" Louis asked. "It wasn't just us. It was in Philippe and Camille's cups, too."

"What is there to discuss?" she waved it off. "Martine is killing her family and their guests. It's nothing to us. Mme DeVillier did say that her children please themselves; may it please her, then."

Louis looked to me, brow creased with consternation.

"She's right," I shrugged. "What does it matter?"

He turned his pensive gaze to the window. "It seems a shame. They were so kind to us."

Claudia tittered. "They were eyeing up Lestat as a marriage prospect for their spinster daughter. What do you say, Christophe? Will you have her to wed?"

"Perhaps. She didn't poison my cup."

"No?" Claudia narrowed her eyes.

I told them about the flawed pattern on my cup, and the chip in Martine's, with a strange measure of pride. It touched me somehow that she had marked us both for safety.

"Have her, then," said Claudia. "Enjoy your murderess. Bon appétit."

"I happen to like murderers," I returned. "Are you sure you don't want to hunt with me?"

"You said I could go alone if I kept to safer neighborhoods. I want to go on my own," she insisted.

"I wish you would go with him," Louis said. "Especially tonight, I don't like the idea that you'll be out there alone."

"Especially tonight? Why? Because of Lestat's poisoner? We weren't in the slightest danger."

"It's a reminder that some mortals mean to do us harm even when they don't know the truth of us."

Claudia pouted. "I'm faster and stronger than any stupid mortal, no matter what they mean to do."

"Where is it you wanted to go?" I asked.

"Marigny."

"She'll be safe in Marigny," I said. "At worst, some rich man's mistress will try to adopt her."

Louis sighed and flicked his fingers in the gesture that meant he was still dissatisfied, but wouldn't argue anymore. I saw that one constantly, and Claudia was at least conversant by now, but she wasn't often subjected to it herself.

It gave her pause, but she was determined. "I want it, Louis."

He mustered an unconvincing smile and stroked back her curls. "Very well."

"Can I get out here, then?"

"Come home with us first," he said, "I want you to change out of your slippers into walking shoes. Then... you can go as you like." And his eyes found the scrolling view outside the window again, giving us his gloomy profile.

Claudia's lips parted, a grasping expression on her doll's face; but it quickly gave way to resignation, and she set her jaw, looking away. She'd nearly asked him to hunt with her, then decided against it, knowing that even if he accompanied her, he'd part from her when it came time to make a kill, and the frustration of being so close and yet forbidden from sharing that ultimate moment would be worse than never hunting with him at all.

I could read it in her so easily. After all, how many times had I gone through just the same series of realizations?

We arrived home, and I went through the flat lighting the lamps while Louis fetched Claudia's sturdiest shoes and changed them for her as she lounged atop her child's coffin, still shiny and unused. For Louis this came with the ease of long habit, lingering from that long-ago time when Claudia had actually needed this help, when her little legs would kick and the shoes sliding on would make her giggle.

Now the attitude between them was more the noblesse oblige of an aristocratic lady permitting the assistance of a loyal squire. She pointed her toes daintily when he slipped the shoes on, and her "Thank you, Louis," was bemused. Even so, she presented her cheek for his goodbye kiss, and received it gladly.

"Two hours," I reminded her as she prepared to go out again.

"Very well," she said, put upon. "Two hours."

"And no straying. If you're late we'll come find you in Faubourg Marigny."

"I'll be there! And I won't be late. I'll see you in two hours." And with that she made her escape, her footsteps tap-tapping down the back stairs.

I turned to Louis. He tilted his head to listen as she closed the gate and walked across the flagstones; he didn't notice my steady regard for a few long moments.

Catching his eye at last, I crooked my finger at him.

"She isn't even out of earshot," he said quietly.

I smiled prettily, letting a fang show. "How loud do you intend to be?" When he stayed still, I jerked my chin to beckon him again.

Louis took slow, deliberate steps toward me. Just when I would have chivvied him to hurry— at this rate, one of our two hours would be spent crossing the room— he reached for his cravat, gradually unwinding it from his collar.

That was already more than I expected from him, so when he began undoing buttons, it was an effort not to let my jaw drop.

Those long shapely fingers opening his collar and proceeding even down his chest... arresting. I could remember a time when he'd clutched his shirt closed against my hands, too shy to let me venture further than his clavicle.

I'd made bold with him since then, and we'd come a long way, but it was still a surprise to see him so inviting. The best sort of surprise to have him move into my arms, leaving his own shirt half-open in favor of unbuttoning mine.

"It's been too long," I said, spanning his waist with my hands. "We haven't had a moment to ourselves all month. Things were much easier when we were sending her out for lessons."

"It can't be helped," he answered.

"Can't it?" I toyed with his neckband. "If we had a fourth, we could send her to hunt with Claudia. You're always so disagreeable when she's out on her own."

His hands dropped away; he leaned back from me, peering up into my eyes, disquieted. "Lestat, the city can scarcely support the three of us. If it weren't for all the port traffic, we'd never escape detection. We can't possibly add to our ranks!"

"She wouldn't necessarily have to live here all the time," I said, spinning out the idea for the first time for myself as well as him. "She could have a little house in Metairie and poison all the farmers she likes."

"Her? Martine?" Louis gripped me, crinkling handfuls of my shirt. "Of all people, someone who's already demonstrated she'd like to see the end of us? Who's already dealt us what she believed to be a fatal blow?"

"She just needs to get to know you." I slid my hand into his open shirt, caressing his shoulder, the bend of his neck. "I'm sure she'd come around. And we already know she's a killer. It's no great change for her. Don't you think Claudia could do with a mother?"

"Lestat, Claudia is older than Martine." His brows sloped up in distress, color rising in him with his agitation, magnificent. "How could you even think to make another? What is it you think you need from her?"

All I truly had in mind was a companion to keep Claudia company when we were indisposed. But I couldn't resist turning the question back against him. "Why do you ask? And what if I tell you? Are you prepared to fulfill those needs if it will stop me?"

His face shuttered; I'd pushed a bit too far. "Why speak of this now? Claudia could come back at any moment," he said. "You complain of how short our time is, but then you waste what little we have on this fancy."

"You hope it's only fancy."

"I do!"

"If you'd rather not discuss it yet, so be it," I said, bending to lay kisses along the strong line of his narrow jaw. "We'll talk of something else. You never answered my question earlier."

"Question...?" He was beginning to take on the smoky, longing look that always made me want to touch every inch of his body and drink every drop of his blood, all at once.

I whispered it into his ear just to feel him shudder. "How loud do you intend to be?"

I hadn't, of course, truly planned to make Martine a vampire, because I never truly planned anything.

But, well, Louis made such impassioned arguments against it. And I did so love to see him impassioned. Why would I disabuse him of the notion when I was so rewarded by his remonstrations?

And as he'd said, the DeVilliers were very kind to us. I enjoyed their company. It was no hardship to call on them often, and they welcomed me gratefully. For as Martine went on working her magic, the family soon became all but housebound.

I did them a kindness, of a sort, visiting with them and bringing some light and cheer to dispel the pall of sickness in the home. They weren't able to entertain much, after all.

And unlike their other acquaintances, whose social calls soon dried up, I had less than nothing to fear from their perpetual illness. I didn't mind their pallor and strangely whitened fingernails, or the faint sulphurous scent of garlic hanging about them as the arsenic did its insidious work.

Louis, in the meantime, acquired two ponderous volumes called Treatise on Poisons and furrowed his brow over their pages, night after night. He even suggested to me that I might demonstrate the danger of the tea with chemicals which would cause the poison to fizz and crust into a yellow residue, alerting the DeVilliers as to their fate.

"And what purpose would that serve?" I demanded. "They think they have cholera, like every other mortal in this godforsaken city."

(There was a quarantine for cholera going on at the time, in addition to the practically annual quarantine for yellow fever, and the inconvenience had me out of sorts.)

"The truth is purpose enough."

"They don't want to know that their beloved daughter aims to destroy them," I said. "Ignorance is bliss, my friend. Let them go gently into that good night, believing they've merely stumbled into ordinary misfortune."

"You wouldn't have to accuse Martine," he persisted. "People are exposed to arsenic accidentally all the time. It's easily mistaken for other white powders, gypsum, lime mortar, flour, sugar... they could simply believe they'd got hold of contaminated ingredients."

"And then they'll throw out perfectly good sugar, take their tea black, and carry on dying when Martine doesn't stop," I said impatiently. "What's the use?"

"I assumed you meant to kill her eventually," Louis said stiffly. "That is usually how your mortal liaisons end."

"One way or another," I said with studied carelessness and a cavalier smile.

He eyed me uneasily, and returned to his tiresome books.

I returned to the DeVillier's home the next night. It was growing cold, but the Paris green shutters stood open; the family aired out the house as often as possible, hoping to disperse the choleric air.

"How fares your brother-in-law?" Martine asked cordially. "And your niece?"

"Still unwell, I fear," I said. "I know you understand, my dear. I worry for them dreadfully."

"Our cook makes a wonderfully restorative white soup," said Martine. "It's done us all no end of good. Let me send a pot home with you tonight, for René and Annette."

"Of course, Mlle DeVillier," I said, consummately charmed. "How thoughtful of you."

I poured the soup on a crop of weeds growing alongside our carriage house, and within a few nights the plants withered away to ruin. Martine regularly bestowed more such nourishing gifts, which went straight into the gutters. I didn't have any other weeds to kill.

Still, I never brought back dire news of "René and Annette," and Martine seemed untroubled that they continued to survive. As the weeks went on, no member of her own family expired, either.

Rather, Martine kept the household perpetually imperiled, and personally tended to their uncertain health herself. Her mother regained a measure of well-being at times, when we required a chaperone to appear in public; her father always managed to recover almost entirely when it came time for him to collect the family's rental incomes, only to fall back into bed within a few days, languishing while Martine tenderly sponged his sweat and soothed his fevered brow.

I came home to the flat one night after a visit to our afflicted friends to find Claudia, rarely, alone. Louis had gone out to hunt; indeed, when I checked the time, I realized that if he'd kept to his usual habits, he must have been pushed to the limit of his hunger by now, and thus compelled to leave her.

"Christophe, at last," Claudia greeted me. I wasn't sure what I thought of this new habit of calling me by my alias in such an ironic tone. "How is your murderess?"

"You look very well," I returned as she followed me into the salon. "I shouldn't think you'd have to ask. Is your own state unknown to you, my dear?"

"The other one," she said, unimpressed.

I struck a chord on the pianoforte. "Also well."

"Do you know," Claudia said, with the strangest air of accusation, "I have looked everywhere for a glass teapot like the DeVilliers have, but I can't find a single one so clear and well-made. Where did they buy it?"

Abandoning the instrument, I went to the mantel, warming myself by the fire. "I think it was an heirloom."

"Well, when Martine's 'inheritance powder' takes effect, I expect that heirloom to come to us," she said severely.

"I don't know that inheritance is her intent," I said. "None of them are dying. She seems to delight in keeping them in ill health, but no worse. She may never kill them."

"She'd be worthless as a vampire," Claudia declared. "She doesn't have the nerve to follow through."

"It's not a matter of nerve," I said, too sharply. "It's simply not her goal."

"So you say." She flicked her fingers in Louis's little gesture of dismissal, but unlike him, she persisted. "We don't need another."

"Claudia, if you intend to bear a standard into battle for every single one of Louis's passing apprehensions," I said, "you will never get a chance to lay down your arms. You know he can't be content unless he's fretting over something."

"And you're determined to oblige, is that it?" She followed me to the fireplace, standing at the edge of the hearth tiles. "For once I hope you're only out to taunt him. Bringing her among us would be disastrous."

I'd heard that before, hadn't I? Disaster, my son. It came too late, then. But Martine was nothing like Nicolas. "I'll be the judge of that."

"Why you alone?" she asked. "Don't we all abide together? If she's to live with us, it concerns us all. Or will you put her up in a house of her own in Marigny?"

"Metairie, I thought. If it should come to that." I gave her my back and rearranged the little plaster figures on the mantel. Were they goddesses, or muses, or figures from history? I didn't recognize them, but I must have bought them. I bought everything around here. "Never you mind. It's my decision. It's my power."

"She's young enough to be your daughter."

I frowned, taken aback. It seemed so thoroughly beside the point. "What makes you say that?"

"She's nearly young enough be mine, so she could certainly be yours."

"I'm old enough that any of them are young enough to be my children," I said, which wasn't quite true, "and I'm only going to get older," which was. "That's a human notion. We are outside any such measurements of time."

"He took a drunk last night," Claudia said abruptly, sitting on the divan. Our lowest seat, it was the only one she could achieve on her own without taking the trouble to clamber up onto it. "And you know how he feels about that."

"Our Louis is a hypocrite," I answered, concealing my confusion at the sudden shift of subject. "I think we're both well aware of that by now."

This earned me nothing but a belligerent glare.

Reluctantly, I ventured, "I trust he was fine in the end."

"You'd need me to tell you, wouldn't you?" she said. "You were hardly here last night. Or the night before."

"Oh, poor darling," I came to sit beside her. "Do you miss me?"

"I've not seen much of either of you," she said. "All week he's been laboring over the investments. As if you'd notice if he made you yet another fortune."

"I don't know why you bother me about it. I never told him to do that."

Claudia rolled her eyes.

I lost patience, as I always did. "If you have something to say to me, then out with it."

"I've said all I mean to say," she told me. "I want that glass teapot."

"You'll have it," I said, just as stubbornly. "In due time."

My courtship of Martine could constitute its own small saga. But ultimately it came to nothing, so let us pass lightly over the weeks and months of visits, the chaperoned excursions, the excuses and subterfuges that I employed to conceal my true nature from the DeVilliers, and so on.

Suffice it to say that all these events took place against a dual backdrop: the ever-increasing ill health of the DeVilliers, and the growing discomfiture of Louis as he began to believe that I might truly make Martine one of us.

I can't say I didn't consider it. Beauty can be terribly persuasive. One night, she wore her hair almost entirely down with only a few small braids tucked back into a chignon over the rest of the loose shimmering length. That pale brown river cascading down her back reminded me that water need not be clear to be gorgeous, that the silty Mississippi could offer its own grandeur.

It was so easy to picture it, sometimes, how she would fit in among us, her self-contained gravity and subdued coloring, like a tawny hawk among golden eagles and our solitary raven.

I enjoyed her air of calm, and still more enjoyed how she created chaos around her, sending the waves crashing while she stood, implacable stone, at the center of it all. Could that disruptive tranquility endure the centuries? I did sometimes wonder.

My curiosity never extended to bringing her to the flat, however. My appreciation remained superficial. Our conversations were confined mostly to pleasantries, and I never pushed for anything more. I never drank from her, either, preferring to keep her a mystery; I was content to play the part of the smitten young swain and observe. I never even tried to bring Louis or Claudia around again to spend time with her, reporting that they were feeling poorly, like everyone else in town.

The DeVilliers inquired faithfully after René and Annette, and offered wan consolation at the news that they were unwell. But none of them could muster much energy to learn more about our circumstances. They were so thoroughly distracted by their own woes that I doubt they would have noticed if I arrived on a centaur riding a unicorn.

They never showed the least suspicion over any of my peculiarities, never asked why I never ate with them— after all, most of the time they took their meals abed— or why I was never seen by day— how could they realize it, when constant headaches kept them hiding from the sun as assiduously as I did?

Indeed, for me the situation was ideal, and so I sustained our association longer than any such mortal tie I'd indulged in before.

Martine kept busy with her potions and schemes. One or the other of her parents was always indisposed, young Gaspard had been packed away to lodge with cousins for the duration, and the surviving elders of the family were all ailing in confinement. In all this time I had only caught glimpses of her grandparents, rattling around on their last legs, and an aunt, of a certain age and more consistently afflicted than the parents.

Martine supervised all their care herself, and often made excuses to me that we could not go on this or that planned outing after all, owing to the sickness of that or this family member.

A patient suitor, I never complained at spending yet another evening shut in with Martine while she tended to her invalids and served me unadulterated tea from the flawed china cup I had come to think of as my own.

It was understood that I would propose to Martine when the sickness passed from the family home, one way or the other. But the DeVillier family's health continued to waver, prolonging the uncertain wait for a change that never seemed to come: someone always sick, no one ever dying.

But finally, and strangely enough, by accident, Martine's aunt expired. Martine was most distraught, and her show of emotion was singular enough that I exerted myself to read her mind a little, the first time I'd tried in any significant way.

The death didn't bother her; it was that she had misjudged the dosage and killed her unintentionally, unaware that her aunt's Paris green wallpaper and her white face paint were both subjecting her to arsenic poisoning in addition to Martine's toxic tea.

I used the phantom illness plaguing "René and Annette" to excuse myself from the funeral, but I attended the later hours of the wake. There, between feeble coughing fits, M. DeVillier hinted heavily to me that the family would be most grateful to celebrate a happy occasion amid all this tragedy. Gather ye rosebuds, et cetera.

And so, why not? I asked him for Martine's hand.

I still had no serious plans to make her one of us. I wasn't insensible to Louis's arguments. Another killer striking down a victim each and every night would tax New Orleans heavily.

I never intended the betrothal to portend her birth to darkness. Like most things, I did it because I did it, assured that I could make the best of it, or at least avert the worst.

Permission secured from the family, I made a few preparations, which did not happen to include telling my fledglings about this development.

Then, with impeccable staging, in a truly romantic mise en scène of blooming flowers and glowing moonlight, I proposed. I had never portrayed Lelio to better affect. The ring came from that night's victim, chosen particularly for the matching size of her hands. Martine blushed, shed a few demure tears, and accepted.

Six nights later, Martine gave me tea in a flawless cup. At the first curl of steam, I smelled the arsenic.

I saw no reason to conceal anything, slamming the cup back onto its saucer and glaring at my erstwhile fiancée.

We watched each other, as indeed we had from the first. Had she recognized our fundamental kinship before this? Did she see it now?

"You knew," she said at last. "You're letting me kill them."

"What you do with your family is no concern of mine."

"And your family?" she inquired. "How are René and Annette?"

"Louis and Claudia are perfect, thank you," I said, my patience well and truly spent. "Why me? Why now? Are you weary of me, my dear? Have I come to bore you? My charms run dry?"

Sedate as ever, she let me rage, then reached for my hand with her own, the gold band gleaming on her finger.

"You're mine now," she said. "That's why. You belong to me."

"Did you think to shut me away in a sickroom with all your other toys?"

With a mad little smile, she nodded. "And the other two, if they lived. If you need them. There's just enough space here for the three of you. We could all be together. So I could look after you."

I took her hand and stood, pulling her with me. "Come," I said. "Get your coat."

The Rue Royale flat was dim, as it always was before I came home. Claudia had a single lamp lit to read a novel in the salon, and Louis was shut away in his room. I could hear him behind his door, putting his papers away.

Claudia glanced up at us as I brought more lamps to life, unsurprised and unconcerned. "Louis!" she called. "Lestat's brought his poisoner."

Now the room brightened, light by light, revealing the truth of Claudia. She hadn't hunted yet, and her cheek was not just pale, but deathly white, tinted here and there with the blue of her veins. She wore a tea gown decorated with extravagant, delicate embroidery, slippers to match, and a locket on the most fragile gold chain, none of it suited to a child.

More than anything, it was her manner that gave it away; her bored, indolent attitude, her ladylike disdain for the poor taste of this midnight intrusion, her hand spread artfully on Les Amours de deux sauvages dans le désert, well-thumbed on her lap.

Louis joined us, frowning slightly at the blazing lamps and at Martine, out of place in our home.

I could see the exact moment when he noticed the ring on her hand. Nothing changed in his expression, but a tint of color rose in his face, and I knew.

It had been months since I'd seen them all in the same room together. The notion that she ever could have been one of us stood revealed as ludicrous fantasy. She looked on Louis and Claudia with flat dislike, with the self-contained chill of a lizard on its rock.

For her part, Claudia looked as if she couldn't be bothered to dislike her in turn, and Louis regarded her, wary, unsettled, yet polite as ever.

"Mademoiselle DeVillier," he greeted her evenly.

"Monsieur Laurent," she replied.

"De Pointe du Lac," I corrected roughly. I hated the whole farce of it, suddenly, all the lies we lived with. And much as I understood the need of it, still: before this one woman, at least, our fellow raptor, I would have the truth.

"And you?" she asked. "Lestat?"

"The same," I said. "This is my family. Unscathed, as you can see. Your venom couldn't harm them, even if I hadn't dumped it out in the street. They never touched a drop."

She surveyed them, eyes still more cold and narrow. "Yes. I see."

A rare thing happened then: Louis lost patience. His air of civility dropped away and he turned to me, his attitude all at once suggesting that Martine might as well have been a paperweight for all the significance she had in his eyes.

"Not here," he told me.

As usual, I bristled at anything resembling an order. "I'll do what I like, where I like."

"Then I'll need to contact our agent about moving to a new residence," he said. "Shall I pen a letter to him now?"

"We're not moving," I scoffed.

"You've been carrying on this courtship for months," he said. "You've been visible. There must be some explanation."

"Fine!" I threw up my hands. "Not here. Now stop badgering me about it."

"Thank you," he said primly. A fleeting look at Martine, and he thawed a bit, pressing my hand.

Despite this bit of chafing— by our standards it barely qualified as a disagreement— I felt more united with him than I had in a long time.

This was the real reason I'd brought Martine here, it occurred to me. Not merely to show her how her plots had come to nothing, but to feel joined with my family against this outsider.

It might grate on me to be excluded from mortal existence; it might wear on me that we could never form real connections outside our little company. But I had this. I had them. And for all my yearning, I wouldn't trade them for any human connection in the material world.

Louis dropped his voice and said gently, "Take her home, Lestat."

If Martine sensed any danger, I could detect no sign of it in her. Calmly she let me escort her to the carriage, and back to the DeVillier home. Calmly, she joined me on the settee, and looked on impassive as I boiled a kettle of water.

"Is it in all the cups, then?" I asked. "All but two?"

"Painted inside, yes."

I swished steaming water in one cup after another, and poured it all into the tea she'd given me, in its flawless cup. I placed the cooling tea in reach, and drew her close to me.

Martine cupped my cheek. "I'll take such good care of you," she said.

"I know," I told her, turning my face into her touch, and from there it was nothing to sink my teeth into her wrist.

Now I had the measure of her madness in the blood, and it was far beyond anything I'd conceived. No, she never could have been a vampire. She would have collected a ward of half-depleted victims: a houseful, a tenement, a town wouldn't have been enough, an endless parade of incurables to cling to her and suffer and call her their angel of mercy.

When her heart began to slow, I withdrew my fangs from her flesh, and smeared a drop of my own blood over the punctures to heal them.

Martine blinked herself to awareness again, her eyes vague and filmy. I knew exactly how she felt at this moment: drained so near to death, body straining to replenish itself, all senses focused on nothing but thirst.

She was too weak to stand, or even to crawl; too weak to reach further than the nearby table. It was the tea, or nothing.

No one could be more intimately familiar with what that brew would do to her if she swallowed it. She had nursed her victims through every step. Cramps, convulsions, hemorrhage. Wrenching, abject sickness unto death.

That certain knowledge stayed her hand... but not for long. I didn't read her mind to learn if she simply grew so impaired she forgot the danger, or if she knew what was happening, right to the very end. I only watched as she fell on the cup and drank down every drop.

I stayed until all life left Martine, and then I searched for the arsenic. It was in the kitchen, plainly labeled. I brought it to join the tableau I'd created, Martine's body limp on the settee, the fatal cup in her hand.

No subtlety here: I left a powdered line from the saucer to the package of arsenic, tipped over with a damning scatter of white. A few grains of poison in the cup, just to leave absolutely no doubt.

A suicide, certainly. That alone would be scandal enough, condemning the DeVilliers to withdraw from society and very likely depart from New Orleans, with no questions to spare about Martine's bygone fiancé.

If the family puzzled it out beyond that as they slowly recovered from the brink, that was their concern, and none of mine. I was ready to be done with this.

I took the glass teapot for Claudia. And I took back the ring. Foolish, when the gold band meant nothing to me, just a prop taken from one corpse to give to another. But dead or alive, I didn't want her to have it anymore.

The flat was blazing beautifully when I came home again; they'd left it lit up the way I liked it, and kept it waiting that way for me.

I came to the salon without even shedding my coat. Both my fledglings laid their books aside and looked at me expectantly. With a flourish, I produced the glass teapot.

"I told you!" Claudia said triumphantly, jumping up to take it from me. No sooner was it on the table than she scooped up the ball of flower tea she had there waiting, and dropped it in as Louis fetched the kettle, for Claudia had been so assured that she'd kept water heated and ready. I dropped the ring on the table as the flower began to open.

"Here," said Louis, "let me take your coat," slipping it off my shoulders with more care than the task might ordinarily seem to merit.

The smell of jasmine filled the air, and nothing of sulphur at all.

It was a week or more after the end of the affair when Claudia petitioned again to hunt alone, and to my surprise, Louis bade me to allow it.

And in her absence, "Will you follow after me?" he asked. "Once she's back?"

Powerfully curious, I agreed.

Claudia returned shortly, refreshed and satisfied. I missed our companionship during the hunt, but it was becoming clear that I would have to relinquish her to her own pursuits now and then, if Louis now stood ready to approve it. A certain tension had eased in Claudia after her lone predation, some fulfillment reached that it seemed she could only find alone.

At the usual time, Louis left for his own hunt, and I followed soon after. Claudia took no special notice; it was far from the first time I'd hurried out in the same direction just after he'd gone.

I caught up with him on the corner. He didn't explain, simply setting off once I joined him. Together we swiftly made our way toward the river.

"Faubourg St.-Marie?" I asked, as we passed into the neighborhood. "Are we hunting here?"

"Not as such."

We passed the meager cabins of the riverfront and turned toward the sturdier buildings, where Creoles of modest means bought or rented serviceable houses from their bourgeois counterparts.

I expected a tavern or a gambling house, tucked in among the respectably shabby little homes. Some low place that might offer us an assortment of rogues for our delectation.

Instead, Louis led me to one of the unassuming houses, and unlocked the door.

Once inside, I found myself thoroughly confused: there wasn't a living soul within these plain walls, so why were we here? And the rooms were confounding, even more cramped than the scant dimensions of the outside structure would suggest.

I turned to find myself the focus of all Louis's attention, as he stood a little away from me, watching me with every sign of fascination.

"Here," he said, unlocking another door. He pressed the key into my hand and glided about the small inner room, sparking the lights.

The carved and canopied four-poster bed was almost shocking compared to the bare little rooms just outside that door. Wedged alongside was a matching wardrobe, with scrolling woodwork and louvred doors. Opposite, a small nightstand with a drawer and a shelf.

"These are mine," I realized. My bed, my wardrobe, my nightstand. I'd done my bedroom over twice since I had these; I'd thought them long gone, but here they were.

"When you replaced them, we happened to need furniture in one of the rental properties, so I had them taken there," Louis explained.

"That explains how we still have them," I said, "but it doesn't explain how they're here."

"The rental changed hands, the new tenants had their own furniture..."

Louis turned his hand to acknowledge that this was somewhat beside the point. I'd missed those eloquent gestures of his, lately.

"I didn't like my chances if I tried to guess at your taste," he said. "So I brought these things here, since you must have liked them once. If nothing else, they're familiar."

"I know you're not threatening to move us here," I said, nonplussed.

"No," that even made him smile a little, with a breath of a laugh. "This is more in the way of a retreat." Serious again, he said, "You were right. Our time has been short of late. And I'm not always very agreeable when Claudia's out hunting on her own. I know it's foolish to worry..."

"Very much so. Past experience suggests you're far more likely to blunder into trouble than she is."

Louis flattened his mouth and raked me with a glare, but it was mild and faded quickly. He seemed in no hurry to come to the point, though, moving to open the wardrobe.

"My mirror!" I said, delighted, lifting it out of the cubby. I'd replaced this stolid square with a larger round version years before, but I did like this gilded frame, the tinny depth of the reflection.

"I thought we might hang it by the door."

At last I realized just what Louis intended with this place. The tiny house with its peculiar outer rooms, oddly shaped to make way for this inner space. The bedroom, completely concealed from outside, with just enough room for the bed, a change of clothes... and a mirror, to inspect and amend our appearances before going out and returning home.

And in Faubourg St.-Marie, of course, where we'd forbidden Claudia to go alone.

"Have you really been so anxious that she might chance to overhear?" I asked.

He dropped his gaze, only to glance up at me in brief brilliant flashes of green as he spoke, a habit I'd always found captivating. "Merely making an effort to be more agreeable." He indicated the mirror. "Should we put it up here?"

"Absolutely not," I said, casting about us for a proper vantage point. "Step this way. No, here, stand here. How much of yourself can you see from there?"

It took a few adjustments before I found just the right spot for the mirror and mounted it near the bed. Louis made a few disparaging noises about my vanity, but his remarks died away when I returned to him, putting him between me and the glass.

"Marvelous," I said, kissing his neck. A minor drawback of bloodsharing, I'd found, was the view. Drinking from him, I was too close to see him; even when I took from his wrist, it was awkward to try.

Now, though: now, with the mirror angled just so, I could press my lips to his pulse and see that look on his face, that dreamy, torrid expression that somehow always made me want him even more.

He turned in my arms, and I allowed it, taking his mouth the moment he faced me again. After all our years together, every kiss and embrace was practiced and refined, every movement matched, like the most intricate waltz. And like any dancers who know each others' every step, it was easy to shift, to surprise, and still keep in time with one another.

When Louis broke away unexpectedly, I kept him near, and he allowed it, cleaving to me closer than ever. There was nothing like this, the feeling of holding him in my arms, blood of my blood, as much mine as anyone could ever be.

"I know you're... restless," Louis said, in his low and quiet way.

A strange choice of words, I thought. I was more settled with my little family here in this sultry city than I had ever been at any other time in my life.

"But you wouldn't leave us," he went on, not quite a question, but not quite certain either.

A flicker of his green eyes catching mine, and he seemed to give up on implication, the proud line of his shoulders softening. "Don't leave us. Please," he said, his voice dwindling almost to nothing. "Don't leave me."

It was impossible to answer such an earnest plea; it was impossible not to. I kissed him again and again, willing him to accept that as my reply.

But the moment I eased back, his eyes met mine again, exposed, hopeful... and how seldom did I see him hopeful? How could I deny him?

I wound our hands together and held on. "I promise."