Memnoch the Devil (The Vampire Chronicles 5)

"More water," I said. I pushed the polluted glass away from me.

Sluggishly, he acknowledged my request, young blood, bland personality, ambitionless life, then drifted off.

I heard a little laugh nearby . . . the man to my right, two stools away, perhaps, who'd been there when I came in, youngish, scentless. Utterly scentless, which was most strange.

In annoyance I turned and looked at him.

"Going to run again?" he whispered. It was the Victim.

It was Roger, sitting there on the stool.

He wasn't broken or battered or dead. He was complete with his head and his hands. He wasn't there. He only appeared to be there, very solid and very quiet, and he smiled at me, thrilled by my terror. "What's the matter, Lestat?" he asked in that voice I so loved after six months of listening to it. "No one in all these centuries has ever come back to haunt you?"

I said nothing. Not there. No, not there. Material, but not the same material as anything else. David's word. Different fabric. I stiffened. That's a pathetic understatement. I was rigid with incredulity and rage.

He got up and moved over onto the stool close to me. He was getting more distinct and detailed by the second. Now I could catch something like a sound coming from him, a sound of something alive, or organized, but certainly no breathing human being.

"And in a few minutes more I'll be strong enough perhaps to ask for a cigarette or a glass of wine," he said.

He reached into his coat, a favorite coat, not the one in which I'd killed him, another coat made for him in Paris, that he liked, and he drew out his flashy little gold lighter and made the flame shoot up, very blue and dangerous, butane.

He looked at me. I could see that his black curly hair was combed, his eyes very clear. Handsome Roger. His voice sounded exactly the way it had when he was alive: international, originless, New Orleans-born and world-traveled. No British fastidiousness, and no Southern patience. His precise, quick voice.

"I'm quite serious," he said. "You mean in all these years, not one single victim has ever come back to haunt you?"

"No," I said.

"You're amazing. You really won't tolerate being afraid for a moment, will you?"

"No. "

Now he appeared completely solid. I had no idea whether anyone else could see him. No idea, but I suspected they could. He looked like anyone might look. I could see the buttons on his white cuffs, and the soft white flash of his collar at the back of the neck, where the fine hair came down over it. I could see his eyelashes, which had always been extraordinarily long.

The bartender returned and set down the water glass for me, without looking at him. I still wasn't sure. The kid was too rude for that to be proof of anything except that I was in New York.

"How are you doing this?" I asked.

"The same way any other ghost does it," he said. "I'm dead. I've been dead for over an hour and a half now, and I have to talk to you! I don't know how long I can stay here, I don't know when I'll start to . . . God knows what, but you have to listen to me. "

"Why?" I demanded.

"Don't be so nasty," he whispered, appearing truly hurt. "You murdered me. "

"And you? The people you've killed, Dora's mother? She ever come back to demand an audience with you?"

"Ooh, I knew it. I knew it!" he said. He was visibly shaken. "You know about Dora! God in Heaven, take my soul to Hell, but don't let him hurt Dora. "

"Stop being absurd. I wouldn't hurt Dora. It was you I was after. I've followed you around the world. If it hadn't been for a passing respect for Dora, I would have killed you long before now. "

The bartender had reappeared. This brought the most ecstatic smile to my companion's lips. He looked right at the kid.

"Yes, my dear boy, let me see, the very last drink unless I'm very badly mistaken, make it bourbon. I grew up in the South. What do you have? No, I'll tell you what, son, just make it Southern Comfort. " His laugh was private and convivial and soft.

The bartender moved on, and Roger turned his furious eyes on me. "You have to listen to me, whatever the Hell you are, vampire, demon, devil, I don't care, you cannot hurt my daughter. "

"I don't intend to hurt her. I would never hurt her. Go on to hell, you'll feel better. Good night. "

"You smug son of a bitch. How many years do you think I had?" Droplets of sweat were breaking out on his face. His hair was moving a little in the natural draft through the room.