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“ ‘You’re talking one from here’
“ ‘You wanta card palace on the dining roo coward of a va alley cats and rats and staring for hours at candles as if they were people and standing in the rain like a zombie until your clothes are drenched and you smell like old wardrobe trunks in attics and have the look of a baffled idiot at the zoo’
“ ‘You’ve nothing more to tell ered us both I ht live in that oratory alone while this house fell to ruin I don’t care about it!’ I told him Because this was quite true ‘But you s you never had of life and rotesque Now, go look at your father
and tellyou stay, and only if the slaves don’t rise up against us!’
“He told o look at his father ,’ and I did The oldI had been spared my mother’s death, more or less, because she had died very suddenly on an afternoon She’d been found with her sewing basket, seated quietly in the courtyard; she had died as one goes to sleep But noas seeing a natural death that was too sloith agony and with consciousness And I’d always liked the old man; he was kindly and siallery dozing and listening to the birds; by night, any chatter on our part kept hi each piece and re the entire state of the board with reh Lestat would never play with hi for breath, his forehead hot and wet, the pillow around him stained with sweat And as he an to play the spinet I slaers ‘You won’t play while he dies!’ I said ‘The hell I won’t!’ he answered reat sterling silver platter froh one of its handles and beat it with a spoon
“I told him to stop it, or I would make him stop it And then we both ceased our noise because the oldthat he o to hi was terrible ‘Why should I? I’ve cared for hih?’ And he drew fro hian to file his long nails
“Meantime, I should tell you that I are of slaves about the house They atching and listening I was truly hoping the old man would die within minutes Once or twice before I’d dealt with suspicion or doubt on the part of several slaves, but never such a nuiven the overseer’s house and position But while I waited for hi to Lestat; Lestat, who sat with his legs crossed, filing and filing, one eyebrow arched, his attention on his perfect nails ‘It was the school,’ the old‘Oh, I know you remember… what can I say to you…’ he moaned
“ ‘You’d better say it,’ Lestat said, ‘because you’re about to die’ The old man let out a terrible noise, and I suspect I made some sound of et him out of the room ‘Well, you know that, don’t you? Even a fool like you knows that,’ said Lestat
“ ‘You’ll never forgive me, will you? Not now, not even after I’m dead,’ said the old man
“ I don’t knohat you’re talking about!” said Lestat
“My patience was becoLestat to listen to hi me shudder Meantime, Daniel had co at Pointe du Lac was lost Had I been ns of it before now He looked at lass I was a ,’ I said, ignoring his expression ‘I want no noise tonight; the slaves must all stay within the cabins A doctor is on his way’ He stared atAnd then his eyes moved curiously and coldly away from e that I rose at once and looked in the room It was Lestat, slouched at the foot of the bed, his back to the bedpost, his nail file working furiously, grireat teeth showed prominently”
The vahter He was looking at the boy And the boy looked shyly at the table But he had already looked, and fixedly, at the vampire’s mouth He had seen that the lips were of a different texture from the vampire’s skin, that they were silken and delicately lined like any person’s lips, only deadly white; and he had glimpsed the white teeth Only, the va that they were not coht of such teeth until now “You can iine,” said the vampire, “what this meant
“I had to kill him”
“You what?” said the boy
“I had to kill him He started to run He would have alarht have been handled some other way, but I had no tiwhat I had not done for four years, I stopped This was a man He had his bone-handle knife in his hand to defend himself And I took it from him easily and slipped it into his heart He sank to his knees at once, his fingers tightening on the blade, bleeding on it And the sight of the blood, the aroma of it, maddened me I believe I moaned aloud But I did not reach for hie in the mirror over the sideboard ‘Why did you do this!’ he demanded I turned to face him, determined he would not see me in this weakened state The old man was delirious, he went on, he could not understand what the old o to the cabins and keep watch,’ I ed to say to him ‘I’ll care for the old man’