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"Maharet, I'o And if anyone in the world would understand, it was Maharet

The Tala years, would never forgive her for disobeying their orders But Maharet knew the reason; Maharet was the reason Maharet would forgive

Dizzy The nighto The rando in the shadows, yet the twilight burned so clear suddenly that even the forested hills were giving back the light And the roses were phosphorescent, like the white flesh of the twins in the dream

White roses, she tried to re she'd heard about white roses You send white roses for a funeral But no, Maharet could not have meant that

Jesse reached out, took one of the blossoms in both hands, and the petals came loose instantly Such sweetness She pressed thee cao su on a bed of rose petals, so athered up and pressed to her face and her throat

Had Jesse really seen such a thing? Sored hair Hair like Jesse's hair Hair like the hair of the twins in the dreaold

Chapter 11

It was one of a hundred fragments of memory which she could never afterwards fit into a whole But it no longer mattered, what she could or could not remember of that dreamy lost summer The Vampire Lestat waited: there would be a finish if not an answer, not unlike the promise of death itself

She got up She put on the worn hacking jacket that was her second skin these days, along with the boy's shirt, open at the neck, and the jeans she wore She slipped on her worn leather boots Ran the brush through her hair

Now to take leave of the e It hurt her to leave it But it had hurt her more to come at all

At the first light, she'd arrived at the edge of the clearing, quietly stunned to discover it unchanged after fifteen years, a ra structure built into the foot of the mountain, its roofs and pillared porches veiled in blue rassy slopes, a few tiny secret s caught the first flash of ht

Like a spy she'd felt as she came up the front steps with the old key in her hand No one had been here in months, it seemed Dust and leaves wherever she looked

Yet there were the roses waiting in their crystal vase, and the letter for her pinned to the door, with the new key in the envelope

For hours, she'd wandered, revisited, explored Never ht She had to walk the long shaded galleries, torooms Never had the place seemed sothe rough-sawn plank ceilings, the rusted s from the round stone hearths

Even the furnishings were massive-the millstone tables, chairs and couches of unfinished lumber piled with soft down pillows, bookshelves and niches carved into the unpainted adobe walls