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After, after, when there are still tears but they’ve managed to shove the mournful shadows of themselves back into their bodies, Louis asks, “Would you want to go on a hunt with me? After all this passes over?”
The house creaks between them. The howling wind gives Lestat enough cover to pause, though Louis can still see the way his brow wrinkles, an infinitesimal hesitation. It’s enough to send snakes squirming through Louis’ gut. This wouldn’t have happened if he’d kept his thoughts to himself. If he hadn’t opened himself up for it, Lestat couldn’t tell him off, reject him the way he deserved.
“What happened to companion enough for yourself, mon—” Lestat cuts himself off.
Louis hears what he holds back, hears his own words in Lestat’s mouth. He’s forgotten so much, but this is the voice he hears in his dreams. Long years in New Orleans have eroded Lestat’s accent into soft half-familiar sounds: a beloved, estranged. Lestat is softer on the whole: hair lank with humidity, the robe listless with decay against Louis’ fingers, ice-pick blue eyes turned so pale in the dark light of the storm threatening to tear down this house. Even the birds over his shoulder flutter quietly, their wings caressing the air buoying them upward.
“I am,” Louis says. “Don’t mean two old friends can’t spend some time together.”
“Ah, well,” Lestat says, and makes a slithery-snakey sort of gesture; somewhere between shrug and hair flip. It’d probably be more disarming if he wasn’t still half-cuddled under Louis’ arm.
“Is that a yes, cher?” Louis asks, distracted by the crack and groan of the house and the feel of Lestat’s ribs under his fingers. He’s too thin. Rats or no, the twerp with the bad dye job hadn’t been good enough at bringing Lestat something to eat. And he clearly wasn’t leaving the house.
Raccoons are scratching at the floorboards. They’ll mess with the projector, Louis thinks, knock the film out of its comfortable little groove. Armand always gets so annoyed when that happens, his pointed comments razor-edged.
“Yes,” Lestat sighs, “I suppose if we keep things strictly…vegetarian. I could be convinced to go on a short promenade.”
Louis lets himself laugh, warmth filling up the Lestat-shaped indentation inside of him and spilling out. He can’t help it, waits for Lestat to stiffen up and get that offended curl to his mouth, the one Louis used to kiss away before things broke bad between the two of them.
Lestat’s head must be in a similar place. His eyes drop to his mouth, starving for something other than rats. Louis lets him go finally, but doesn’t go far.
“Cher,” Louis says again, because it feels good in his mouth. It feels so good, to relax the hard consonants he’d held onto so tightly in Dubai, to let loose the easy affection to anyone he can see and loves, reflexively — a sweet woman with a winking gold tooth working the cash register at the CVS he’d stopped at; a teenage boy, barely pubescent and bony, who’d stumbled into Louis on his way out of the hotel. It feels good to watch it settle over Lestat, watch it ripple through him, echoes of their first time around.
—the romance of you two, Claudia shouts from another room.
“Lestat,” Louis starts again, having left the sentence too long, “I’ve missed you.”
Lestat starts at that, eyes glowing and hands up, fingers reaching to Louis. Louis takes another half-step back.
“Armand did a number on me,” he downplays, grabbing both Lestat’s hands to hold in his. “I’m not ready to…eighty years is a long time to be someone’s.”
“Ah,” Lestat says, a short, round exhalation. “A promenade between friends.”
“Yeah,” Louis says, sweeping his thumb across Lestat’s knuckles. They’re empty. Ringless. That’s wrong. “Yeah, friends. You get it. I knew you’d understand me.”
“Yes,” Lestat rumbles, “yes, Louis. I might be the one that understands you best, no matter what your new fanbase might assume.” He says fanbase like it's a prognosis and Louis laughs again, beside himself with affection.
Jesus Christ, Daniel says in his head, a few nights after the storm passes over. He checks in on Louis like this, lets a few days pass between them before they find each other through the bloodthirsty cacophony.
Louis sits on the deep couch, the one swiftly becoming his favorite in the penthouse. He’d planned to shop around, figure out which of the high-rising hotels he wanted to make his second home but Poule et Épouse had been treating him so well, was outfitted so comfortably.
He sighs and presses his eyes closed. He can hear scratching nearby, probably one of the birds making a nest in the exposed joists of the ceiling. It seemed late for that kind of thing, the city air wet with summer heat. But what does he know about birds and their habits?
You asked, he tells Daniel, shifting around and trying to sweep away some of the static from his mind, the whispers of other vampires — their desires and fears, the calls of those that want his attention so badly.
Yeah, Daniel says, and you friendzoned the love of your life, so who’s really got the moral high ground right now?
Louis’ phone jangles, unpleasantly loud. He groans again and answers the video call.
“I wanted to see you while I berate you,” Daniel says. He’s walking somewhere. The whir and bustle of the city around him makes it harder for him to hear, but Louis loves it. He loves the sound of a noisy city, and business looks right on Daniel.
“Nothin’ to berate,” Louis says, “we’re friends. I’m allowed to have friends. You’re my friend.”
True enough. Daniel’s fifty-year-old offer sits between them sometimes. He’s got a little Claudia in him. A little too much Lestat. Would-be little brother, would-be lover. Louis not looking to replace the ones he’s got — had. But the memories bubble up, and Daniel’s there occasionally, in Louis’ thoughts.
“Hm,” Daniel says, and rolls his eyes, dismissing the history between them. He’s not so much into looking backward right now, their boy. His boy.
“I’m not your fucking boy,” Daniel says into the silence between them. “We both get the irony of me saying that to you, right?”
“Too obvious,” Louis says, bringing his thumb to his mouth, worrying the rough edge where flesh meets nail.
“Yeah,” Daniel laughs. Louis imagines he’d be a few shades pink, if he were less unshakable, more human. “I’m the obvious one.”
The birds are scratching now, wings flapping. Irritated, fighting among themselves.
“I haven’t heard from him,” Louis says, glancing up at the high ceilings, trying to catch the shadow of a nest. He’s irritated with Daniel. Restless with the things between them. Daniel always feels too close, when Louis bothers to think of him, too good at the chase. “Since you’re wondering. He’s gone to ground. Armand’s hard to find when he doesn’t want to be. Not that I’m trying that hard.”
His daddy taught him to fight. Had smacked him, again and again, til Louis learned to dodge. You’re too small and too soft, Daddy’d said. Better learn to surprise ’em. Take ’em out before they know what’s happening. Only way you’re ever going to come out on top. He was mean as a snake.
I’m cursed with my maker’s temper, Lestat says from the other end of the couch where he doesn’t sit. His hair is too long. He pushes a heavy golden hank of curls behind an ear. Light catches his rings: a heavy, blank-faced signet on his smallest finger, the thrice-stoned one that decorates his ring finger.
“...Yeah,” Daniel says, in that way he does, dragging Louis’ attention back. It’s a close approximation to how he’d sounded in his human life, but he’d been equal parts excitable and unflappable back then. He’s young again, blood hot and too close to the surface. Louis can feel it like this, watching Daniel work to control his irritation, at his missing maker and at Louis for bringing him up.
Amusement tingles in the corners of his mouth, the bony hinge of his jaw. Louis fights the smile, because he’s serious and he wants to keep talking to Daniel. It’s harder, these days. Armand’s smoothing, suffocating hand is gone and Louis feels everything now. Too close to the surface, blood primed to escape the cut.
“Where are you going, anyway? Audubon? Congo Square?” Daniel asks. “Where does one hang out with their ex-spouse? Never engaged in that particular implosion myself.”
His eyes and attention skip away from Louis now, darting. Hunting probably. Hungry, probably. Louis remembers the clawing hunger of the early days, can imagine the thrum Daniel feels, meals passing on every side of him.
“No,” Louis sighs, “just an old park we used to go to. One of the first ones we walked after I was turned. You seem familiar though. Have you been googling New Orleans, Daniel?”
“It’s one of the most famous cities in the world, Louis.” Daniel laughs, but he’s gone, visibly distracted now. “But remind me to mock you, mercilessly, next time we talk.”
Louis rolls his eyes this time. “You should visit, when I’ve got my feet under me. I’ll show you the old haunts, places Google can’t see.”
“Uhuh,” Daniel says. “Yeah, yeah. Hey, I see someone I know. I’ll—”
He hangs up before he bothers to finish his thought, leaving Louis to his amused imaginings of who Daniel’s chosen for dinner.
The park feels smaller, is smaller, surrounded by busy streets and businesses where there were once acres of green. But it's historic now, a glistening green gem, even in the suffocating summer heat. It's well-kept, maintenance worthy of its designation.
“History,” Lestat laughs, quietly and mostly to himself, nails tapping against the placard that declares this park, one of their parks, a landmark.
“The ground was freshly turned the first time we came here,” Louis agrees, “grass barely seeded.”
The air is sweet with late-flowering trees they’d likely seen as saplings. But the breeze and late hour haven’t done a thing to cut the heat. So many things are worse now, the modern age is too noisy, too busy. Modern fabrics are terrible, barely breathable.
“Mm, yes,” Lestat agrees, and Louis realizes he’s been talking aloud. “Tailoring is terrible as well. The money I spend on a trouser that breaks properly. I could buy a house or two for it, when we first met. My tailor, Louis, I’ll need to introduce you. I haven’t seen him in a while, j'espère qu'il est toujours en vie. He’s sentimental, always trying to send me this special cufflink, that particular button, you know the type.”
Louis smiles, letting Lestat go on with his quiet rambling about his tailor while he checks his pockets, back and front of his trousers, the small pocket over his chest.
“Honestly, Louis,” Lestat says, huffing a little, “If you’re not going to listen to me and we’re not going to the part of the park where the rats like to gather, I don’t know what we’re doing here.”
“We’re chatting,” Louis says easily, pulling the ring box from his pocket. He rests a hand on Lestat’s waist, gently, stopping him in the archway cut into two thickly branched fig trees. “Oh, I got you something.”
“Gifts won’t erase a conversational imbalance,” Lestat says, grabbing the box from the palm of Louis' hand. He’s nakedly curious, even as he scolds, greedy fingers running across the velveted box. “I haven’t had a friend of such caliber in a while, mo— Louis. You’ve got a duty to be more impressive than your adoptive fledgling siblings, being their senior and better in so many ways. What is this?”
Why don’t you want him to know how much you love him? The wind asks in Madeline’s voice. Her accent is so thick compared to Lestat’s now. It's almost cartoonish.
“Did a little shopping,” Louis says, reaching to pluck the ring from the box. “Found a ring that reminded me of an old one you had. Been thinking about it.”
Gold band, a quartet of stones, surprisingly light green for emeralds, in a military-straight line across the band. From Elk and Austin, an upstart shop the neighbors had whispered about when they’d opened, in Louis’ time. They’d serve anyone with the cash, regardless of color or the kind of sweetheart a customer was hoping to festoon.
He’d been pleased to see them still open on his literal stroll down memory lane. Even more pleased to see Black people behind the counter, both the cashier and the jeweler who’d taken his order. It hadn’t been so when they’d first opened, nondiscriminating as they’d claimed to be. Seemed unlikely that these folks were ancestors of Elk or Austin.
They’d taken his order, made pleasant noises at his design requests, and a generous tip whittled the wait time down to a few days.
“I wasn’t sure if you had the old one,” Louis says, because Lestat isn’t talking. Conversational imbalance, indeed. He glances around before taking Lestat’s hand, pushing the ring over the knob of his knuckles, settling into the cradling valleys on either side of his ring finger. Lestat inhales sharply and Louis lets his hand fall away. It fits perfectly, snug and secure. Lestat looks a little better, a little closer to the image of him Louis keeps tucked away in his thoughts.
“No,” Lestat says, “I lost it in some unpleasantness or another.” He sounds faraway. Louis looks at him, at the years between them, the long silence between Paris and the last few weeks. What had Lestat done, he wonders, while Louis let Armand inside of him, in his head, under his skin, hoping to burn away his first life with a new one. The penthouse in Dubai was always cold, even to Louis. The heat outside was dry, but there were still dehumidifiers, top of the line, nearly soundless. For the art. To maintain stasis.
“Well,” Louis says, brushing his thumb across the ring, and Lestat’s knuckles, just once. He looks up through his eyelashes, and offers Lestat a smile. “Unpleasantness sort’ve messed up the last one for me, but maybe with this one, we can keep things good between us. Pleasant. Friendly.”
He drops Lestat’s hand and faces the cobblestone path, moving forward.
“Yes,” Lestat says, trailing a step behind Louis. “Pleasantness between us would be…ideal.”
“Do you think that theater still exists?” Louis asks, trying to listen out for the scratching and chittering of rats’ nests. He’d promised Lestat a meal, after all. “The one me, you and Claudia used to go to? Still getting my feet under me, trying to remember where things used to be.”
“No,” Lestat says, catching up to Louis and sounding distracted, thoughtful. “No, that one doesn’t. But I would like to go see a film, if you’re amenable, Louis. It’s been a few years and there are actresses I’d kept up with before. Miss Therón. That Kidman woman fascinates me. And I’m certain there’s a whole crop of ingenues to familiarize ourselves with.”
“Sure thing,” Louis says, and there the feeling goes again, something more than laughter, like cicadas buzzing in his chest. “I’ll buy you popcorn, hah?”
Louis strolls the city alone, most of the time. He’ll join a ghost tour sometimes, trailing behind curious out-of-towners and hear what modern times have made of his old haunts. He pops into stores that smell nice, buys trinkets. A pair of sunglasses for Danny. Cufflinks for himself. He sees an exquisite suit in a window, and rattles Lestat’s measurements off to a tailor to have a similar one made. The city welcomes him, her wet warmth so different from Dubai’s heat.
She’s an old lover and mother though, offering memories lined with cobblestone. He sees Grace in women who walk by with curls piled on top of their head. The church bells ring and he watches Pauls of all shapes and sizes walk in and out of sanctuaries. He hears them, when he lets the sounds of New Orleans pierce him.
He visits the Pointe du Lac family home. It's another historical site, open for tours. Preserved in its original state, one placard exclaims. None of it looks familiar, to Louis.
He hears their old thoughts, their centennial fears while he haunts Treme and Uptown and even braves the Quarter to see what Bourbon Street looks like these days. He sees Lestat, the wrong Lestat, has to check the hair, the clothes, count the rings. He’s the itinerant vampire of New Orleans, restless, haunted and recalcitrant. It's hardly a shock, then, when he starts seeing Armand behind his closed eyes.
Armand sits on a couch in one of the cleaner apartments they bought in San Francisco. Louis hadn’t been sure of this one. The neighborhood is almost too nice. There’s trash in the streets and too-skinny kids in doorways, watching them when they’d walked into the building. But there were parents, too, tugging them back into the house, paying enough attention to paste on smiles when Louis nods his nonexistent hat to them.
Louis sits beside Armand, turns his hand up for Armand to place his hand in it, lacing their fingers together.
“This is a hallucination,” he tells Armand flatly. He hates to be so blatant with Armand, to show all his cards at once.
“Maybe,” Armand agrees. His eyes are dull, tawny gold. “We’ll have to hold on to this one. The neighborhood hasn’t degraded enough.”
Armand’s fingers are thin, bones grinding against each other in Louis' hand. His hair is long, longer than Louis ever saw it, curls heavy around his face.
“I can feel you,” Armand says, reaching to press a short-clawed finger to Louis’ temple. “Seventy-seven years listening to your thoughts. Your boredom. Your little disappointments, your hypocrisies. Oh no, fox for dinner again? Oh no, the moon rose another night for me. Oh no, this home, this safety isn’t enticing. I have everything I need. How could I be satisfied? I have nothing. Your tantrum, your ultimatum doesn’t change these things. We are still vampires. We are—were companions. My name is on all the leases and you don’t know how to be, without me.”
“You’re gonna make me late,” Louis says, looking at their clasped hands, the blankness of Armand’s fingers. His hands are smaller than Lestat’s, his fingers tuck between Louis’ easily.
“He will unmake you,” Armand hisses. “Again.”
“I’m running late,” Louis says. He looks around the small apartment. It’s got nice light. The ceiling’s got watermarks from a flood upstairs. It’s not so bad, this apartment. It was one of the last ones they sold, right before the housing collapse. He thinks they lost money on it, for whatever that mattered.
“You came to me in pieces he made,” Armand says. “He kisses you once, lets you bend him over and you forget the long, long fall he gave you as a lover’s gift. He broke you, on purpose, and you would return to him. Should I pencil in a plan to see you in a hundred years, then?”
“Sure,” Louis says, dropping Armand’s hand and standing, “Maybe you’ll teach me to fly this time, since you’re so concerned with me falling and all.”
Louis looks down at Armand, “I miss you.” The snakes in his gut writhe. The haze had been so sweet in Dubai. It had hurt so much, for Daniel to come when Louis called, to wave it away.
He reaches to dig a hand into Armand’s hair, pressing him back, back into the couch, staring up at Louis who hovers over him. His mouth parts.
“Stay here,” Louis says, finding the part of him that sounds like his commanding father. He watches Armand scurry away, making space for Arun. Louis’ arousal is perfunctory, his fangs appear, but they’ve released for less — a long neck, a thickly muscled thigh.
“Stay here,” he snarls, holding Armand until he hears Armand’s breath go high and thin in his chest, an echo of a whine. He nods and his lips press together, voiceless words.
Louis releases Armand’s hair and stands. He had just enough time to change out of his suit into something more interesting for Lestat to look at.
Back at the park, Louis relented to Lestat’s insistence that he plan their next outing. He regrets it as he follows a young woman to an alcove in the restaurant Lestat has chosen.
“Here’s your friend,” she says, cheery voice a little out of place, her blood rushing a little faster when Louis thanks her with a nod and a smile. The booth Lestat’s found is velvet, lit low and warm by halogen lamps. Someone on the other side of the building plays piano, a real person, not a recording. Louis can’t see them, in this dark, tucked-away space.
Yes, he thinks, safe in his thoughts. Casual.
“Black again, Louis?” Lestat asks, fingers tracing the wine glass that sits in front of him, sweating beneath his fingers. “Mon bijou, it's like you hate me. There are so few delights in this world, so drab, everything online, everything a stretch fabric, and you bring me this?”
He gestures at Louis, hands waving with his words, a full-body disappointment.
Louis looks down at himself, as if he’d forgotten the clothes he’d chosen an hour ago. The square, bronze buttons of his shirt catch the lamplight and when he looks up, Lestat’s eyes are on his throat, at the dip where a thin herringbone chain rests.
“This is clearly navy,” Louis says, gesturing at his top. It was, rich picotee blue that caught his eye when Rashid pulled it from a rack of things brought to the apartment years ago.
“Oh, navy,” Lestat says, aping an American accent, shamelessly watching the bob and settle of Louis’ neck. Louis feels his cheeks heat. He had a few rabbits before he came and the blood rushes through him. Lestat’s eyes are colorless in the warm light, his eyelashes flakes of shaved gold. He’s wearing the suit Louis had sent to him. Dark cloth, pale pinstripes, nipped in neatly at the waist.
“What are we doing here anyway?” Louis asks, glancing around. “Doesn’t look like the kind of place that shows a movie. And we aren’t exactly the meal type.”
“I am aging,” Lestat says with an insouciant shrug. “It's not so different from a babe turning into an adult and expanding their palate. Things that tasted of bile and uselessness before have blossomed.”
Louis has other questions, but a server is coming up to them, a young Black woman in a slinky black dress, her locs spilling down her shoulders from the silky-looking scarf she’s wrapped them in. She smells of burning herbs and sex, and she’s thinking of the woman she’d left in her bed to come here to work.
“Hey and welcome in, sweethearts,” she smiles, and Louis catches the small space between her two front teeth. “We celebrating tonight?”
“Nah,” Louis says, too quiet to be heard over Lestat’s enthused agreement.
“We are, ma belle,” Lestat says, sitting up taller to meet her gaze,”the ecstatic reunion of two former lovers. Just the wine menu, please.”
Ooh, she thinks, messy. And French? Messy exes and French. Tip could go either way. Better be worth it.
“Thank you,” Louis says when she hands him a sheaf of soft, heavy paper. She leaves them with a wink and a nod, and a longing flash of eager fingers, slipping into wet heat.
“Well,” Lestat says, clearing his throat.
“Don’t know that I thought I’d ever see you in a drinking house again.” Louis says.
It’s not the right thing to say, to dispel the trail of sex their server left wafting on the air. It calls up the old times, whiskey and Miss Lily between them. Or nothing between them, only fire and skin. Louis’ mouth aches, where his fangs are sheathed.
“Daniel’s coming to visit soon,” he tries again. “Got a story he’s following, some true-crime thing. Should be here in the next couple days.”
“Ah,” Lestat says, a strange-familiar grimace chasing across his face, followed by a rictus smile. “How wonderful. It’s good that you’re receiving visitors, Louis.”
Louis tilted his head, “Is it?”
Lestat sits back, nodding and clapping his hands together once, too loud for the space but mostly covered by the music piped into the room.
“Of course!” Lestat says, eyes going suspiciously doll-like, “From what I’ve read in the, ah, book. You and Mr. Molloy have a lot to catch up on.”
Louis feels his nostrils flare, a little of the tightening of focus, not unlike the breath when a casual stroll turns into a hunt.
He picks up the menu, rubs his fingers against the thick paper and says, voice light, “Been thinking about going over to Mt. Olivet, pay Maman her respect, since I’m back home now.”
The grimace again and Louis has to press his lips together, make sure his fangs haven’t asserted themselves. Blood in the air.
“That’s wonderful, Louis. I’m sure Madame de Pointe du Lac is surely smiling, ah, wherever she is.”
Louis nods, glancing around the room before pinning Lestat with a look. “You wanna come along? Make a day of it? See Gracie, pay Paul a visit.”
Lestat is many things, and an actor is certainly one of them. But Louis has been inside of him, under his skin and between his veins. Louis has just spent near eighty years with a person who couldn’t get butter to melt in his mouth if he tried. Louis knows how to read the things people don’t want you to see. Like that same grimace, flitting across Lestat’s face again.
“You hate the book,” Louis says.
“What?” Lestat laughs, “No. Non. Of course not. You and Mr. Molloy did such work! Such thoroughly entertaining work. No idea what this has to do with your beloved late family, Louis. We shouldn’t speak of such things.”
“Les,” Louis says. “You’re looking a little crazy around the eyes.”
“Have you considered that it is you who’s gone eye crazy?” Lestat asks, visibly crazy around the eyes. He starts tearing little half moons off of the menu.
“It tells a man something when you make the same face about his book as you do about a mother-in-law that called you, in so many words, the devil.” Louis leans forward, pitches his voice low and serious. “I didn’t come home to be lied to, Lestat, not for the sake of my own ego. Had enough of that.”
“It was unbecoming,” Lestat hisses back, then sits back, looking surprised by the betrayal of his own mouth. “And I could never hate Madame de Pointe du Lac. She was unpleasant, certainly, in an amusing, if bitter, sort of way. But how could I hate the architect of my— anyway. I do not hate your project. I think Molloy was overeager in his erstwhile humanity, artless, and your desire to protect your gremlin of a former companion made certain depictions of his actions…less shameful than they were. The reproduction of Claudia was appropriately fierce, as is expected. And she called you the devil. It was Paul who cast me as such.”
Claudia’s name so casually dropped between them steals the air from his lungs, but not the laughter from his throat. Louis chuckles at Lestat loudly enough for the couple next to them to glance over with that fond, searching look humans get, when they think there’s someone they might form a pack with.
“The architect of what, Lestat?” Louis asks, leaning further across the table to grab one of Lestat’s hands, brushing his thumb over his ring on Lestat’s knuckle.
“Louis,” Lestat says, pressing his other hand into his mouth, fanning his fingers across his eye. “Do not make me say it. You will be upset. We’re having such a nice night.”
“I’m not making you say anything, cher. You’ve always decided everything between us.”
Lestat huffs, “This a trap, Louis. I know your traps.”
Louis grins now, “We could argue. Or you could tell me what my mother was the architect of, other than three mad children. Well. Two. Gracie seemed fine. Or we could talk about Daniel and Armand. Daniel’s going to be delighted to hear what you think of the book, by the way.”
“Madame de Pointe du Lac is the architect of my greatest joy,” Lestat murmurs. His hand is still pressed to his mouth, but he’s looking down now, watching the sweep to and fro of Louis’ thumb.
“Ah,” Louis says. “Oh. Well that’s—”
“Y’all doing good?” their waitress asks, standing between them, briefly part of the audience for their joined hands before she snaps on a smile and looks between them. “We ready to order?”
“We are,” Lestat says, taking advantage of Louis stumbling. “Do you have the Romanée-Saint-Vivant?”
The server’s eyebrow goes up. Louis glances at his menu but he barely has to. She’s thinking $6,000?! so loudly he’s not certain she didn’t say it out loud.
“We do, sir. We don’t do samples though, since we only have a few in stock.”
“No matter,” Lestat says. He looks up at her expectantly. “We’ll simply find another, if it's not to our liking, yes? Merci.”
She gathers menus from them. Louis watches Lestat watch her leave, eyes tracing the long curves of her.
“She’s beautiful,” Lestat says, absently. “She favors Ms. Lily, no? A distant relative, perhaps. The same fire, though much more, comment d— voluptuous. Women are so much more interesting these days, Louis, have you noticed?”
Louis drops Lestat’s hand, “Don’t wanna talk about Miss Lily. And you’re not gonna distract me by being a horny old man. What else? More book reviews? Any other opinions you’re sitting on? Maybe not the Armand stuff.”
Louis would actually love to know more about Lestat’s thoughts on Armand but he wants more to mine a rare, off-kilter Lestat for what he really, actually thinks.
Armand’s thoughts were a soft background buzz, even when he wasn’t listening, which was often. The absence of thought where Lestat sits is restful, a kind of peace Louis can’t think about too long. And yet Louis finds himself starving with curiosity, relishing in the sudden deluge of information.
“Aren’t we having a good time, Louis?” Lestat asks, waving a hand at the restaurant. “There’s wine on the way. There are birds to catch on the way to the theater. The practical magical sisters await us. Truly, Louis, I’m telling you, there’s a story beneath the story, a romance interdite, that you have to see. Between them that is. Louis.”
Louis looks at Lestat. Waits.
“Your friend is no Krakauer,” Lestat sighs heavily. “I think it's suspicious that you haven’t invited me to see your new domicile. I suspect it's because you’re ashamed of the decor. You had an unfortunate predilection for damask, naturally inherited, of course. Your wardrobe is still horribly inflected with Armand’s asceticism, though I can see you trying. I appreciate the efforts.”
“It’s beautiful,” Louis argues. “My place. And damask. It catches light.”
Lestat rolls his eyes, “A grande dame your age would say such.”
Louis laughs again, “Is this how you speak to your other dates? Insulting lovers over their interior design? There’s no damask in my penthouse, thank you. You can see for yourself. Got a few Man Rays mounted finally. Mad’moiselle Sélavy would welcome you. ”
“Lovers?” Lestat asks, watching their server deliver their wine. Lestat tastes, approves, then says, “There’ve been no lovers.”
Louis pauses, allows his senses to fill with the noise and bustle of the restaurant. Their server pours wine. In the kitchen, one cook whispers to the other, the cotyledon of a union. Someone on the other side of the restaurant proposes. There is clapping around them. Rats find something meaty, noisily, in the alley.
“None?”
“None,” Lestat confirms, the couple catching his attention. He tilts his head, listening. “They’re very excited, non? The husband, his heart races. A cheater maybe? Oh, he’s stolen the money for the ring. Romantic. Do you think she knows?”
Louis clears his throat, and Lestat’s eyes snap to him.
“You spoke cruelly, in that cave, but true.” Lestat moves around, resettling in his seat. He affects a louche half-lean against the table, resting his jaw on his fist. “Any other lover would be a pale imitation, even at their zenith.”
“Oh,” Louis says. Are they talking about this? “A loss to the world of lovers.”
Messy, their server had thought. Knowing. Amused.
Lestat tuts, “It’s not so bad. There were lessons I needed to learn. Working on myself, as the youths say.”
“None of the strays you picked up wanted a ride?” Skepticism colors Louis' voice. They both know what Lestat looks like. The thought is ridiculous, sitting across from Lestat and not desiring, not unconsciously reaching out to see if the marble he’s carved from is cool.
“Well,” Lestat demurs, “life is long and temptations are great. Flings, perhaps, but a lover? Someone to…to stroll the night with? To share blood, and coffin, and home. Non. No, Louis. No one after you.”
A cardinal, trapped in Louis' chest. His heart, fluttering out of sync with Lestat’s.
“Come over,” Louis says again. “Tonight. After the movie. You can tell me what you think of the place.”
Lestat doesn’t speak, but he holds Louis' eyes and nods. The new fiancees have settled, finally. Someone from the restaurant is bringing them free champagne. Burnt anyway, their waitress thinks as she returns to them, checking to see if they want food. Lestat drinks deeply and Louis sips. The wine is heavy, smoky even through the first spread of ash on Louis’ tongue. Louis goads and Lestat mocks him: his taste in music, his walking habits, the way he smiles and refuses to rise to Lestat’s bait.
Eventually, Lestat announces they’re about to be late, drops a roll of cash on the table and stands to leave. The server tries to stop them, insisting that they let her bring the bill. Lestat smiles at her, meeting her eyes, and presses a second roll of bills into her hand. She lets them go, after that.
There are no birds. Not on the walk from the restaurant to the movie theater and then the theater home. There is Lestat’s voice, the memory of Claudia on the turn of every corner, and a hot, quiet breeze.
Lestat, Louis learns, doesn’t care for photography. He makes the appropriate noises when Louis moves him through an impromptu gallery tour. He murmurs appreciatively about the lights, scoffs when Louis talks about his betters in the craft. He stands too close to Louis, his hair moving in the wake of Louis’ breath, so he can hear better.
And still his eyes drift over to the paintings, tracing the bursts of color, the textures across canvases. Louis ignores it, selfishly, and ends the tour early.
Instead of showing Lestat Ajitto in one of the guest bedrooms, he leads them to the couch and sits, swinging his feet up onto the couch. He glances at Lestat, who sits too far away and, emboldened, rests his feet on Lestat's thighs. He sighs, stretching and rests his head in his hand, gazing at Lestat.
“Stay the night,” he says, nudging Lestat’s thigh with his heel. “There is plenty of space. All the rooms are blacked out. I want to hear more about why you think those nice sisters were having an affair.”
“It's obvious,” Lestat coughs, “and I know when I’m being mocked, Louis. It’s fine that you don’t have the eye for the alternative reading. Photos can be your domain, and the moving picture mine.”
Louis huffs and lets the silence fall between them. He looks at Lestat now, tracing the outline of his face, the pale scar on his cheek, the proud curve of his nose. He’s a little warmer now, hot with the rush of a few rats and a stray cat that had the misfortune to come across them in their walk back to Louis’. Poule et Épouse is newer, not even fifty years old; its smell of sawdust and fresh concrete harsh to Louis’ senses. He can still find the smell of Lestat beneath it — there’s rainwater and sweet-scented mold, from the hovel he insists on remaining in, the particular blood-and-organ flavor of rodents.
Lestat rests his hand on Louis’ feet, tucking his thumb beneath the elastic band of one of his socks. The cardinals that live in the rafters of Louis’ home, or his mind, flap quietly, settling.
“I am thinking of returning to the stronger stuff,” Lestat murmurs, abruptly intimate. The night's bluster is gone, as he cradles Louis’ feet. “I’ve lived on rodents for years, making other people’s fledglings bring me these small meals. It was what I deserved, I thought. Supplementing your punishment for my misdoings. Louis, why do you smell of Claudia’s grave? Just faintly.”
Louis pushes his heel against Lestat’s thigh again, firmer this time. “Brought some souvenirs with me from when they kept me in the box.”
Lestat turns his head to look at Louis. His thumb slips beneath the sock, brushing the delicate skin stretched over the knob of Louis’ ankle.
“May I see?” Lestat asks.
“Nothing much to see,” Louis says, lifting his foot just so, tugging against Lestat’s thumb hooked against the sock, pulling it down a little more. “You can feel, though. The skin is thin, just press a little.”
The curtains are drawn, but Louis imagines the sky is probably beginning to go purple. It’s late and he’s old, but not so old that he doesn’t feel the pull of sleep, the anodyne dark of the coffin. Reasonable, then, that he feels drunk, short of breath when Lestat takes his words as permission enough, tugging the sock the rest of the way off.
His senses are addled. It’s fine, the way Lestat’s thumb traces down his achilles tendon, takes a detour to follow a blue-green vein. That it makes him ache, deep in his sacrum, is nothing. Trick of the moon.
“Oh,” Lestat says, fingers tracing too lightly over the raised skin of Louis’ ankle, down to his heel and back. Louis can still feel the infinitesimal shifting of rock against muscle. It’s familiar, not as harsh as when he stands, but the reminder, always.
He waits for the inevitable question, can hear Lestat asking about removal. He grinds his dull molars together, braced.
“Oh, darling Claudia,” Lestat sighs, pressing on the outline of the pebbles. Louis flinches, but Lestat doesn’t stop. “A terrible memory. Our last day together as a family.”
Louis feels the soft, red smear of tears before he sees them, running down his foot, staining the ankle of his pants. A window opens somewhere. The first waking birds chirp.
“C’mon,” Louis says, insistent. “It’s late. Come to bed.”
Lestat sits, stone still.
“Les,” Louis tries again. “Just. Just to sleep. You can go back to your den late. You can’t go out now. Sun on its way up.”
Lestat makes a face at that, illegible in profile. Louis would ask, but Lestat is raising Louis' foot to press a tender, bloody kiss just above his ankle, then stands, extending a hand to help Louis up. He doesn’t let go of Louis' hand once he’s up.
“Well,” Lestat says expectantly. “Are you going to have me check doors until I find a room with a bed? You’re clearly out of practice as a host, Monsieur du Lac.”
Louis makes the appropriate noises for the joke, taking the lead to take them to the bedroom he’d selected as his own. It’s obnoxiously large, the room with the tallest ceiling, the biggest windows, now covered to keep out the morning sun.
“Most of my clothes are still packed up,” Louis says, still holding Lestat’s hand, standing at the foot of the bed. “Otherwise, I’d offer you something to sleep in.”
Lestat shrugs, “Nothing you’ve not seen before. I’ve heard of these. Sleepovers. Children do them now, with their friends.”
“Mhm,” Louis agrees, turning to face Lestat. “I have as well. Maman would be horrified. Sending her children out to someone else’s house to eat and sleep, as if she’s not able to keep her household in order. You always wear this many layers?”
Lestat doesn’t answer, watches Louis babble as he steps closer and eases the buttons of Lestat’s waistcoat apart. He remembers then that he’d effectively put Lestat in these clothes. A careful approximation of what he remembers from the trial — the last, terrible memory.
“It's too hot for all this,” Louis says into the silence, easing cloth over Lestat’s shoulders, slipping his thumb below the leather of Lestat’s belt. He pulls it away from Lestat’s body, folding it around his own hand, ignores the flashes of sound — leather against skin, Armand’s worshipful gasp.
“Just like that robe,” Louis says, letting his fingers skim across Lestat’s chest, the row of buttons crawling down his crisp white shirt. He crouches down, his face even with the buttons of Lestat’s trousers. “In the middle of hurricane season, swanning around in that heavy antique. Should I do the rest?”
Louis looks up, catching Lestat’s blown-out eyes, the flare of his nostrils. He nods, and Louis reaches for buttons, so many buttons. Eventually, the side of his finger beginning to ache, he has Lestat in front of him, solid and real, naked other than Louis’ ring on his finger.
He looks the same. The same as the first time Louis saw the long expanse of his chest, the planes of his skinny sides, his long arms. Lestat, mercurial, water through his fingers. His maker. His man, once upon a time. Louis can see it now — the way Lestat wants him. It would follow, that this is unchanged, too. That he’s always looked at this way, wanting, loving, all-consuming. He’d smelled of oranges, once. Oranges, musk, tea. Rich scents. Animalic. He’s been brought low, Louis’ Lestat, but he stands so proudly now, meeting the challenge of Louis’ inspecting gaze.
Imagine, standing across from him and not wanting to reach, to touch. Imagine Louis, in the dark and untouched for so long, denying himself anything.
Lestat’s mouth is soft, maybe the softest thing about him. He hardly moves, lets Louis hold his head between his hands, only tilts his head down, just slightly. Louis takes Lestat’s bottom lip between his. Holds him there, pressing forward, trying to say something, everything with this connection.
Am I the problem? Lestat asks, in an apartment, nestled between students and sex workers, before it all went wrong.
Louis draws back, splits Lestat’s bottom lip with a nail to the center, where the skin is thin. Kisses him again, the taste of wine and blood swelling between their mouths. Lestat inhales sharply, pulls at him, a hand curved around his jaw, a firm grasp on his hip.
Want burns hot and fast through Louis; this is unchanged between them too. Louis lets it go on, opens his mouth for Lestat to taste his teeth, the give of his tongue and ridges of his hard palate.
And then he steps away. He catches the wild abandon on Lestat’s face, a flash before it's smoothed away.
“Friends, ma moitié?” Lestat murmurs. He’s hard between them, skin rubbing harshly against the rough tweed of Louis’ pants. The hand he has on Louis’ hip flexes, but falls away when Louis takes another step back.
“Friends,” Louis nods. He skates his fingers across Lestat’s stomach, up to his chest.
“Is this what you did with your friends?”
“Yes,” Louis says, “For the short time between meeting and eating. I was real friendly-like. Would you come, if I asked you to? Could you?”
Flashes. Armand, on his knees. Armand, face down in a coffin. Armand, demanding that he stop asking and take. Armand, always empty, unfathomable, bottomless.
“Eventually,” Lestat tells him. “With the right encouragement. Assuming you mean my cock and not something more emotionally compromising.”
The banter is easy between them. Lestat allows Louis to touch him, humming low in the back of his throat and only touch when Louis allows. He gasps and grunts when Louis finally takes him in hand, palm wet with blood-tinged spit.
“I don’t remember this part,” Louis says, letting Lestat press his forehead to Louis' shoulder. “My memories are— head’s all scrambled.”
“This is what we did best,” Lestat groans into his ear. “Whatever we fought about, whichever little betrayal. Your body was made for me, my Saint-Louis. And mine for you. You wanted me in you, all the time. Begged me for it.”
“Hm,” Louis says, “That so?”
Lestat tries to answer, but Louis kisses him, keeps kissing him until Lestat is leaking noise into his mouth, and Louis feels wetness drip over his knuckles, and onto the smooth, knobby length of his toes.
Lestat bodily pushes Louis onto the bed, kneels before him. The darkness is near perfect, Louis just barely sees Lestat, but meets his eyes anyway. Lestat holds him with his gaze, an imitation of the early days when he could rifle through Louis’ every thought. He breaks first though, looking away from Louis and down to his lap, where he now held Louis’ feet.
“Let me see you. Let me see all of the parts of you I’ve missed, my Louis.”
Louis rolls his eyes. “I guess I can figure out what you mean by that.”
“Touch yourself,” Lestat says, undeterred.
“And just what will you be doing?” Louis demands, still pulling his dick out. He’s been hard for ages, since they sat on the couch. It’s a relief, almost too much, to feel cool air on his skin, the squeeze of his own hand.
Lestat doesn’t answer, and Louis flops onto the bed, stroking himself and staring at the ceiling. Lestat is doing something down there, adjusting Louis, pushing his legs this way and that. Louis is preparing to complain, when he feels the first brush of Lestat’s tongue across the bridge of his foot, the soft drag of his hair.
“Ah.” Louis closes his eyes now, drawing his attention down to two points, the firm squeeze of his own hand and the wet of Lestat’s mouth, his tongue lapping after his come on Louis’ skin and then the whole of his mouth, enveloping each of Louis’ toes.
“What are you doin’ to me?” Louis murmurs. HeHis presses his eyes so tightly closed, he sees sparkles of light behind them, blue jay bright.
“Minor foot play,” Lestat mumbles, nipping delicately at Louis’ instep, careful teeth at the raised pebbles beneath thin skin. “Your gremlin was too good for this? Did he not see cause to worship every part of you, Louis?”
“Don’t talk about him,” Louis says, hips curling up when Lestat slices a bright, careful light of pain away from the branching arteries of his foot. Blood must well quickly, because Lestat makes an affectionate sound, nearly cooing, before he latches on.
Louis comes, but it's tangential. Lestat is on him, he is in Lestat. The slow thumping of their hearts align. Lestat kneels before him, takes what Louis has to offer gladly, so tenderly. He sighs as he feeds, kisses Louis’ skin tenderly as he pulls away.
“I’ll be cleaning you,” Lestat finally answers Louis’ long-forgotten question. Louis shakes, letting feeling move through him. Eventually, Lestat moves him around, getting him properly into the bed. He likes the release from Louis’ fingers, strokes his face, drags careful claws through the short shorn sides of his hair and Louis lets him; Louis lets go.
Later, he says, “I wouldn’t mind,” into the dark where Lestat is, probably. “If you decide to start eating human again. If you were worried. I did, back home. Dubai, I mean. They lived. Well-paid volunteers. But I did.”
“Hm,” Lestat is breathing deeply, like he liked to, the closer sleep came. He’d told Louis once that he finds it soothing, not unlike the rocking of a vessel. “I thought so. You taste...deeper. Féconde.”
The night passes. They rest. And when Louis wakes, there is a third heartbeat in the apartment. Louis opens his eyes, checks and — yes, Lestat is awake, sitting up and looking irritated. It's a good, familiar expression.
Gotta say, Louis. If this is casual, I should probably start suit shopping for the first date.
“You’re early, Danny,” Louis says, pressing a hand to tired eyes. “Lestat, Daniel. Daniel, Lestat.”
Lestat climbs out of the bed, long and pale in his nudity, leans down to grab his clothes. The intimacy of vampires being what it is, Louis can feel the trip of Daniel’s heart, the shift of his blood. It’s fine. Lestat is attractive, he understands. Daniel looks over to catch Louis’ gaze, mouth already quirked.
Lestat’s head snaps up, eyes narrowed.
“Désir, enfant?” Lestat says, staring at Daniel and hissing mad, fast French. “Vous venez chez mon époux pour désirer l’e êpouse de mon cœur?”
Everything is suddenly now, colliding in present tense. Sharp French, Armand’s shadow in Daniel’s thoughts, Claudia, bouncing ball between the three of them. Lestat Lestat Lestat Lestat. Falling, still. Even with Lestat in his bed, his ring on Lestat’s finger. There is still the dropping, the falling, the uncertainty.
There is a chunk of panic caught in Louis’ throat. He pushes out. “I’m still getting my French back, cher, please.”
“It’s no matter,” Lestat says, snappish but in English. Gracious. “Daniel Molloy, delightful to meet you. Louis, I’ll leave you with your other— friend. Good night.”
Lestat could be gone in a flash. Louis watches Daniel watch Lestat dress. Daniel finds Lestat attractive, hardly surprising. He also catalogs Lestat’s body coldly, tucking away details like he’s preparing for a follow-up article. But also, beneath that, is Danny from San Francisco, measuring himself against Lestat again: jilted lover, jilted brother. Lonely step-son too, now.
“Alright,” Louis says, just as Daniel says, “Not sure I really see what all the fuss is about.”
Everyone in the room knows Daniel is lying, but Louis still says, again, “Alright. Peep shows are small-time and I’m long retired. Lestat, go if you’re going to go.”
It’s a misstep, of course. Who is he to dismiss The Vampire Lestat? But Lestat only pins him with an outraged look, and leaves, crumpled shirt and vest in hand.
“Well,” Louis says, looking between Daniel and the space Lestat was recently inhabiting. “You’ve met him now.”
“Hot,” Daniel says flatly. “Seems like a piece of work. You’ve got a type.”
“Yes, well,” Louis says, grimacing.
“He probably hasn’t brainwashed me though,” Daniel sighs, leaving his lean against the door to sit in the chaise across from the bed. “I think that makes him my favorite of your exes, maybe.”
“He thinks your writing is overeager.” Louis stands, stretching. He can feel Daniel watching, his skin prickling. Better that Lestat doesn’t see this part, maybe.
“Oh,” Daniel says, “Well. Pretty similar to murdering me, you’re right.”
“You said a few days, Danny. You’re early”
“Yeah, my source got annoying. I get hungry when I’m annoyed these days.” Daniel looks out the window, at the city lights doubled in the dark waters of the Mississippi. “It’s a good thing I came when I did. Would’ve hated to come too late to stop you from doing something to jeopardize your, what did you call it? Deep and platonic bond with the maker of your child?”
“I do not like you,” Louis says, stressing each word.
“Yeah, join the club,” Daniel sighs, standing. “Are you back to eating rats? I’m starved. Got any strapping volunteers lying around?”
Lestat makes himself scarce, during the week Daniel stays with Louis. He shows up twice. First, to hand-deliver a bouquet of bloodily red camellias and tarragon. The second time, to deliver an invitation — to Louis and Louis only. He is, incongruously, in a very soft-looking peacock-blue cardigan and a t-shirt.
“One of my pseudo-fledglings is a disc jockey,” he tells Louis, a mean curl to his lips at Daniel’s audible bark of laughter, deeper in the penthouse. “She’s visiting our city and requests my presence at her...set.”
“You want me to meet her?” Louis asks, not bothering to blink away the tears that well up. Daniel brings Dubai and San Francisco with him, rubbing away whatever patina Louis had managed to cover himself with. It's a dull knife twisting; Lestat is a mother to other people’s children, strangers to Louis. He had better to offer them, the love and patience he’d learned in Louis and Claudia’s absence, rather than petty jealousies and ash. It’s beautiful to see Lestat grow. It’s awful.
Lestat looks alarmed with Louis’ tears, then unequipped to deal with that alarm, grimace-smiling as Louis sniffs and wipes at his eyes with his sleeve.
“If it's upsetting, Louis—”
“Nah,” Louis cuts him off. He steps into Lestat’s space, mostly closing the door behind him. “I want to come. Send me the details. I got you something.”
Lestat hesitates, a split second when Louis could step back if he wanted, then kisses him. Louis sinks into it, letting Lestat lick at his canines, find the traces of a late breakfast — a bag of someone’s B . It’s dangerous, Louis suspects. If they keep carrying on like this, one of them might get the wrong idea. Start thinking it's more than it is. He sighs when Lestat presses him to the closed door of the penthouse. He reaches up, digging fingers into Lestat’s hair, pulling him impossibly closer.
“You gotta come in to see it,” Louis says, long moments later, when Lestat’s taken his fill of him. “Danny’s promised to be on his best behavior.”
“The water of the tomb,” Lestat mutters, allowing Louis to pull him into the penthouse.
Louis sees things. He hears things. Madeline on the wind. Grace and Mama’s twinned disapproval beneath his skin, certain as stones. Paul walks the floors of the penthouse in the early morning before Louis sleeps, murmuring he leadeth me into temptation, he leadeth me, he leadeth me. He wakes with Claudia’s birds; they roost with him on the nights he goes to bed alone. There are so many people behind his eyelids, making their homes below his tongue, peeling away at the beds of his nails, pushing their way out.
Lestat is a noisy void. Louis can hear him — his heartbeat, his arrhythmic breath, the way he walks and hums absently, his mold-and-iron-and-sometimes-magnolia scent. But the place where his thoughts should be is an absence, a blissful, easy silence. Louis dives into it, into the emptiness that trails behind him, shaped like Lestat.
“Luxury-pianos.com seems like it shouldn’t be a thing, but it came in handy,” Louis says, sliding the door to the meditation room open. “Wait. Do you know what the internet is?”
Lestat is so good at scoffing, Louis thinks. He doesn’t know what it means that he’s surrounded by scoffers, people who are so dismissive of his honest suggestions, his thoughtful interjections. Lestat is the best at it, his disgust at the possibility that he might not know something is full-body.
“Anyway,” Louis rolls his eyes. “Had to do some finagling. You know I don’t know much about instruments. I recognized Steinway, of course, but the dealer said this was the best of the best.”
Lestat moves past him, sits at the piano. He traces the calligraphed B stamped into the dark face of the piano. They’re reflected in the dark shine of its surface.
“You’re looking to learn?” he asks, glancing at Louis. “It’s impressive, Louis. Still taking up new hobbies. It’s good.”
“No,” Louis says slowly. “It's for you. It’s yours. You said, back at the house, that you were preparing for a tour. I thought, since we’re friends now, you could practice here. Come by whenever you want.”
Lestat’s laugh rolls up from deep in his chest, up up up to rattle Louis’ bones.
“You purchased me an eighty-thousand-dollar piano to come by and practice occasionally, Louis?” Lestat asks, twisting his body to look at Louis.
“Bit more than that, what with shipping. Handling. Delivery and all that.” Louis says, watching Lestat look past him. This meditation room is smaller than the one in Dubai. The whole penthouse is. Claudia’s dress hangs in its display, catty-corner from Paul’s portrait now. The yellow is paler now, washed out by museum lighting and age.
“Or you could stay,” Louis says.
“Hm,” Lestat says. “I suppose this is what you do with friends. What with Daniel being here.”
“Yeah,” Louis says, “Yeah, something like friends.”
Lestat hums, then turns to the piano. Louis had forgotten what it looks like, the moment when Lestat settles, spine straight, fingers light and certain on the keys. He thinks of Lestat’s hands on the skin of his heel, Lestat’s fingers, tugging carefully at tufts of his hair.
Lestat plays a tune that sounds oddly hollow, as if it's been halved.
“I’ve had my staff flown in from Dubai,” Louis says quietly as he sits beside Lestat on the piano bench. “If you’d like to stay for dinner. We’ve received a shipment of blood. The chef is also particularly good at selecting live entrees. She’s been complaining about the wildlife, mostly gators and the like, y’know? But she mentioned something about a black bear.”
Lestat glances at him. “I’ll stay.”
“Alright,” Louis says. “Alright then.”