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He laughed in spite of himself, a very short, quiet laugh. "I know," he said, "but really I did and I have, and I've seen them in other places. But I never believed in God or the Devil or Angels or Vampires or Werewolves, or things like that, things that could affect fate, or change the course of some chaotic-seeming rhythm that governed the universe. "
"You believe in God now?"
"No. I have the sneaking suspicion that I'll hold firm as long as I can in this form¡ªlike all the ghosts I've ever glimpsed¡ªthen I'll start to fade. I'll die out. Rather like a light. That's what's waiting for me. Oblivion, And it isn't personal. It just feels that way because my mind, what's left of it, what's clinging to the earth here, can't comprehend anything else. What do you think?"
"It terrifies me either way or any way. " I was not going to tell him about the Stalker. I was not going to ask him about the statue. I knew now he had had nothing to do with the statue seeming animate. He had been dead, going up.
"Terrifies you?" he asked respectfully. "Well, it's not happening to you. You make it happen to others. Let me explain about Dora. " "She's beautiful. I'll. ,. I'll try to look out for her. "
"No, she needs something more from you. She needs a miracle. "
"A miracle?"
"Look, you're alive, whatever you are, but you're not human. You can make a miracle, can't you? You could do this for Dora, it would be no problem for a creature of your abilities at all!"
"You mean some sort of fake religious miracle?"
"What else? She's never going to save the world without a miracle and she knows it. You could do it!"
"You're remaining earthbound and haunting me in this place to make a sleazy p
roposition like this!" I said. "You're unsalvageable. You are dead. But you're still a racketeer and a criminal. Listen to yourself. You want me to fake some spectacle for Dora? You think Dora would want that?"
He was flabbergasted, clearly. Much too much so to be insulted.
He put the glass down and sat there, composed and calm, appearing to scan the bar. Looking dignified and about ten years younger than he had been when I killed him. I don't guess anyone wants to come back as a ghost except in beautiful form. It was only natural. And I felt a deepening of my inevitable and fatal fascination, this, my Victim. Monsieur, your blood is inside me!
He turned.
"You're right," he said in the most torn whisper. "You're absolutely right. I can't make some deal with you to fake miracles for her. It's monstrous. She'd hate it. "
"Now you're talking like the Grateful Dead," I said.
He gave another lithe contemptuous laugh. Then with a low sombre emotion, he said, "Lestat, you have to take care of her . . . for a while,"
When I didn't answer, he persisted gently: "Just for a little while, until the reporters have stopped, and the horror of it is over; until her faith is restored, and she's whole and Dora after all, and back to her life. She has her life, yet, She can't be hurt because of me, Lestat, not because of me, it's not fair. "
"Fair?"
"Call me by my name," he said. "Look at me. "
I looked at him. It was exquisitely painful. He was miserable. I didn't know whether human beings could express this same intensity of misery. I actually didn't know.
"My name's Roger," he said. He seemed even younger now, as though he were traveling backwards in time, in his mind, or merely becoming innocent, as if the dead, if they are going to stick around, have a right to remember their innocence.
"I know your name," I said. "I know everything about you, Roger.
Roger, the Ghost. And you never let Old Captain touch you; you just let him adore you, and educate you, and take you places, and buy you beautiful things, and you never even had the decency to go to bed with him. "
I said those things, about the images I'd drunk with his blood, but without malice. I was just talking in wonder of how bad we all are, the lies we tell.
He said nothing for the moment.
I was overwhelmed. It was grief veritably blinding me, and bitterness and a deep ugly horror for what I had done to him, and to others, and that I had ever harmed any living creature. Horror.
What was Dora's message? How were we to be saved? Was it the same old canticle of adoration?
He watched me. He was young, committed, a magnificent semblance of life. Roger.
