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"I'e about you," I said "That you weren't born in this body, that you were an elderly man when Lestat knew you, that this body you inhabit now belonged to a clever soul who could hop fro, and there set up shop with his own trespassing soul "

He gavesmile

"So Lestat said," he answered "So Lestat wrote It's true, of course You know it is You've known since you saw me before "

"Three nights we spent together," I said "And I never really questioned you I mean I never really even looked directly into your eyes "

"We were thinking of Lestat then "

"Aren't ?"

"I don't know," he said

"David Talbot," I said,him coldly with my eyes, "David Talbot, Superior General of the Order of Psychic Detectives known as the Talamasca, had been catapulted into the body in which he noalks " I didn't knohether I paraphrased or"He'd been entrenched or chained inside it, made a prisoner by so many ropey veins, and then tricked into a vampire as a fiery unstanchable blood invaded his lucky anato his soul up in it as it transformed him into an immortal-a man of dark bronzed skin and dry, lustrous and thick black hair "

"I think you have it right," he said with indulgent politeness

"A handso with such catlike ease and gilded glances that he s once delectable, and now a potpourri of scent: cinnaolden, brown or red, whose fragrances can spike s that live now, more than ever, to play themselves out His skin must smell like cashew nuts and thick almond creams It does "

He laughed "I get your point "

I had shocked et etically

"I think it's plain," he said "You want me to leave you alone "

I saw the preposterous contradictions in all this at once

"Look," I whispered quickly "I'ed," I whispered "My senses cross, like so many threads to make a knot: taste, see, smell, feel I'm rampant "