"So it seems."
"Lestat, there is something positively stupid about this creature. He speaks eight languages, can invade any computer network, and possess other people's bodies long enough to loot their wall safes-he is obsessed with wall safes, by the way, hi an almost erotic fashion!-and yet he plays silly tricks on people and ends up with handcuffs on his wrists! The objects he took from our vaults were nearly impossible for him to sell. He ended up dumping them on the black market for a pittance. He's really something of an arch fool."
I laughed under my breath. "The thefts are symbolic, David. This is a creature of compulsion and obsession. It's a game. That's why he cannot hang on to what he steals. It's the process that counts with him, more than anything else."
"But, Lestat, it's an endlessly destructive game."
"I understand, David. Thank you for this information. I'll call you soon."
"Wait just a minute, you can't ring off, I won't allow it, don't you realize-"
"Of course I do, David."
"Lestat, there is a saying in the world of the occult. Like attracts like. Do you know what it means?"
"What would I know about the occult, David? That's your territory, not mine."
"This is no time for sarcasm."
"I'm sorry. What does it mean?"
"When a sorcerer uses his powers in a petty and selfish fashion, the magic always rebounds upon him."
"Now you're talking superstition."
"I am talking a principle which is as old as magic itself."
"He isn't a magician, David, he's merely a creature with certain measurable and definable psychic powers. He can possess other people. In one case of which we know, he effected an actual switch."
"It's the same thing! Use those powers to try to harm others and the harm comes back to oneself."
"David, I am the extant proof that such a concept is false. Next you will explain the concept of karma to me and I will slowly drop off to sleep."
"James is the quintessential evil sorcerer! He's already defeated death once at the expense of another human being; he must be stopped."
"Why didn't you try to stop me, David, when you had the opportunity? I was at your mercy at Talbot Manor. You could have found some way."
"Don't push me away with your accusations!"
"I love you, David. I will contact you soon." I was about to put down the phone, when I thought of something. "David," I said. "There's something else I'd like to know."
"Yes, what?" Such relief that I hadn't hung up.
"You have these relics of ours-old possessions in your vaults."
"Yes." Discomfort. This was an embarrassment to him, it seemed.
"A locket," I said, "a locket with a picture of Claudia, you have seen such a thing?"
"I believe I have," he said. "I verified the inventory of all of those items after you first came to me. I believe there was a locket. I'm almost certain, in fact. I should have told you this, shouldn't I, before now?"
"No. Doesn't matter. Was it a locket on a chain, such as women wear?"
"Yes. Do you want me to look for this locket? If I find it, I shall give it to you, of course."
"No, don't look for it now. Perhaps sometime in the future. Good-bye, David. I'll come to you soon."
I hung up, and removed the small phone plug from the wall. So there had been a locket, a woman's locket. But for whom had such a thing been made? And why did I see it in my dreams? Claudia would not have carried her own image with her in a locket. And surely I would remember it if she had. As I tried to envision it, or remember it, I was filled with a peculiar combination of sadness and dread. It seemed I was very near a dark place, a place full of actual death. And as so often happens with my memories, I heard laughter. Only it wasn't Claudia's laughter this time. It was mine. I had a sense of preternatural youth and endless possibility. In other words I was remembering the young vampire I'd been in the old days of the eighteenth century before time had dealt its blows.
Well, what did I care about this damned locket? Maybe I'd picked up the image from James's brain as he pursued me. It had been for him merely a tool to ensnare me. And the fact was, I'd never even seen such a locket. He would have done better to pick some other trinket that had once belonged to me.
No, that last explanation seemed too simple. The image was too vivid. And I'd seen it in my dreams before James had made his way into my adventures. I grew angry suddenly. I had other things to consider just now, did I not? Get thee behind me, Claudia. Take your locket, please, ma cherie, and go.
For a very long time, I sat still in the shadows, conscious that the clock was ticking on the mantel, and listening to the occasional noise of traffic from the street.
I tried to consider the points David had made to me. I tried. But all I was thinking was ... so James can do it, really do it. He is the white-haired man in the photograph, and he did switch with the mechanic in the hospital in London. It can be done!
Now and then I saw the locket in my mind's eye-1 saw the miniature of Claudia painted so artfully in oils. But no emotion came to me, no sorrow, no anger, no grief.
It was James upon whom my entire heart was fastened. James can do it! James isn't lying. I can live and breathe in that body! And when the sun rises over Georgetown on that morning, I shall see it with those eyes.
It was an hour after midnight when I reached Georgetown. A heavy snow had been falling all evening long, and the streets were filled with deep white drifts of it, clean and beautiful; and it was banked against the doors of the houses, and etching in white the fancy black iron railings and the deep window ledges here and there.
The town itself was immaculate and very charming-made up of graceful Federal-style buildings, mostly of wood, which had the clean lines of the eighteenth century, with its penchant for order and balance, though many had been built in the early decades of the nineteenth. I roamed for a long time along deserted M Street, with its many commercial establishments, and then through the silent campus of the nearby university, and then through the cheerfully lighted hillside streets.
The town house of Raglan James was a particularly fine structure, made of red brick and built right on the street. It had a pretty center doorway and a hefty brass knocker, and two cheerful flickering gas lamps. Old-fashioned solid shutters graced the windows, and there was a lovely fanlight over the door.
The windows were clean, in spite of the snow on the sills, and I could see into the bright and orderly rooms. There was a smart look to the interior-trim white leather furnishings of extreme modern severity and obvious expense. Numerous paintings on the walls- Picasso, de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol-and intermingled with these multimillion dollar canvases, several large expensively mounted photographs of modern ships. Indeed there were several replicas of large ocean liners in glass cases in the lower hall. The floors gleamed with plastic lacquer. Small dark Oriental rugs of geometric design were everywhere, and the many ornaments gracing glass tables and inlaid teak cabinets were almost exclusively Chinese.
Meticulous, fashionable, costly, and highly individual-that was the personality of the place. It looked to me the way the dwellings of mortals always did-like a series of pristine stage sets. Quite impossible to believe I could be mortal, and belong in such a house, even for an hour or more.
Indeed, the small rooms were so polished it seemed impossible that anyone actually inhabited them at all. The kitchen was full of gleaming copper pots, and black glassdoored appliances, cabinets without visible handles to open them, and bright red ceramic plates.
In spite of the hour, James himself was nowhere to be found.