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But I sensed that our small company was by no means ready to disband.
Merrick sat forward in her chair. She made it quite evident that she meant to address all of us.
"I have something which must be said," she began, her eyes hesitating respectfully on me for a long moment before she looked at the other two. "There is much guilt here on the part of Louis and David that I'm now one of you. And perhaps there are questions in your mind, Lestat, as well.
"Hear me out, then, for all your sakes, and decide what your feelings should be when you know the key parts of the tale. I am here because I chose to be here a long time ago.
"It has been years since David Talbot, our revered Superior General, disappeared out of the warm protective arms of the Talamasca, and I was by no means mollified by lies about how he had come to the end of his mortal life.
"As David knows, I learnt the secrets of the body switch that had removed David from the elderly body in which I'd always loved him with all my heart. But I didn't need a secret narrative written by my friend Aaron Lightner to tell me what had become of David's soul.
"I learnt the truth when I flew to London, after the death of that elderly body, that body which we called David Talbot, to pay my respects, alone with the body in the coffin before it was forever sealed. I knew when I touched the body that David had not suffered death in it, and at that unique moment my ambitions began.
"Only a short time later, I found Aaron Lightner's papers, which made it clear that David had indeed been the happy victim of a Faustian Switch, and that something unforgivable in Aaron's mind had taken David, within the young body, out of our world.
"Of course I knew it was the vampires. I didn't need popular fictions masking facts to figure how Lestat had had his way with David at last.
"But by the time I read those curious pages, with all their euphemism and initials, I had already made a potent and age old spell. I had made it to bring David Talbot, whatever he was¡ªyoung man, vampire, even ghost¡ªback to me, back to the warmth of my affection, back to his old sense of responsibility for me, back to the love we'd once shared. "
She stopped speaking, and reached down and drew up a small cloth wrapped parcel from her bag. There came the acrid smell again, which I could not classify, and then she opened the cloth to reveal what appeared to be a yellowish and somewhat molded human hand.
It was n
ot that old blackened hand I had more than once seen on her altar. It was something altogether more recently alive, and I realized what my nostrils had failed to tell me. Before it had been severed, it had been embalmed. It was the fluid that caused the faint noxious odor. But the fluid had long since dried up and left the hand as it was, fleshly, shrunken, and curled.
"Do you recognize it, David?" she asked me gravely.
I was chilled as I stared at her.
"I took it from your body, David," she said. "I took it because I wouldn't let you go. "
Lestat gave a small laugh that was tender and full of easy pleasure. I think that Louis was too stunned to speak.
As for me, I could say nothing. I only stared at the hand.
In the palm was engraved a whole series of small words. I knew the tongue to be Coptic, which I could not read.
"It's an old spell, David; it binds you to come to me, it binds the spirits who listen to me to drive you towards me. It binds them to fill your dreams and your waking hours with thoughts of me. As the spell builds in power it presses out all other considerations, and finally there is one obsession, that you come to me, and nothing else will do. "
Now it was Louis's turn for a small smile of recognition.
Lestat sat back, merely regarding the remarkable object with a raised eyebrow and a rueful smile.
I shook my head.
"I don't accept it!" I whispered.
"You had no chance against it, David," she insisted. "You're blameless, blameless, as Louis was blameless for what ultimately happened to me. "
"No, Merrick," said Louis gently. "I've known too much genuine love in my years to doubt what I feel for you. "
"What does it say, this scribble!" I demanded angrily.
"What it says," she answered, "is a particle of what I have recited countless times as I called my spirits, the very spirits I called for you and Louis the other night. What it says is:
"'I command you to drench his soul, his mind, his heart with a heat for me, to inflict upon his nights and days a relentless and torturous longing for me; to invade his dreams with the images of me; to let there be nothing that he eats or drinks that will solace him as he thinks of me, until he returns to me, until he stands in my presence, until I can use every power at my command on him as we speak together. Do not for a moment let him be quiet; do not for a moment let him turn away. '"
"It wasn't like that," I insisted.
