The Vampire Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles 2)

Far off a village church bell rang.

Then very suddenly there came over me the feeling that someone was watching me. This was so unfamiliar to me that I panicked. I turned, almost stumbling into the chest, and stared at the mouth of the secret tunnel. No one there.

No one in this small empty sanctum with the candlelight playing on the stones and Magnus's grim countenance on the sarcophagus.

Then I looked straight in front of me at the barred window.

And I saw her looking back at me.

Floating in the air she seemed to be, holding to the bars with both hands, and she was smiling.

I almost cried out. I backed up and the sweat broke out all over my body. I was embarrassed suddenly to be caught off guard, to be so obviously startled.

But she remained motionless, smiling still, her expression gradually changing from serenity to mischievousness. The candlelight made her eyes too brilliant.

"It's not very nice to frighten other immortals like that," I said.

She laughed more freely and easily than she ever had when she was alive.

Relief coursed through me as she moved, made sounds. I knew I was blushing.

"How did you get there!" I said. I went to the window and reached through the bars and clasped both her wrists.

Her little mouth was all sweetness and laughter. Her hair was a great shimmering mane around her face.

"I climbed the wall, of course," she said. "How do you think I got here?"

"Well, go down. You can't come through the bars. I'll go to meet you. "

"You're very right about that," she said. "I've been to all the windows. Meet me on the battlements above. It's faster. "

She started climbing, hooking her boots easily into the bars, then she vanished.

She was all exuberance as she'd been the night before as we came down the stairs together.

"Why are we lingering here?" she said. "Why don't we go on now to Paris?"

Something was wrong with her, lovely as she was, something not right . . . what was it?

She didn't want kisses now, or even talk, really. And that had a little sting to it.

"I want to show you the inner room," I said. "And the jewels. "

"The jewels?" she asked.

She hadn't seen them from the window. The cover of the chest had blocked her view. She walked ahead of me into the room where Magnus had burned, and then she lay down to crawl through the tunnel.

As soon as she saw the chest, she was shocked by it.

She tossed her hair a little impatiently over her shoulder and bent to study the brooches, the rings, the small ornaments so like those heirlooms she'd had to sell long ago one by one.

"Why, he must have been collecting them for centuries," she said. "And such exquisite things. He chose what he would take, didn't he? What a creature he must have been. "

Again, almost angrily, she pushed her hair out of her way. It seemed paler, more luminous, fuller. A glorious thing.

"The pearls, look at them," I said. "And these rings. " I showed her the ones I'd already chosen for her. I took her hand and slipped the rings on her fingers. Her fingers moved as if they had life of their own, could feel delight, and again she laughed.

"Ah, but we are splendid devils, aren't we?"