Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [4]
All was well in my little palazzo in the swampland.
No sign of Goblin. No sense of Goblin’s thirst or enmity. Nothing but that which was natural, and faraway, keen to my vampiric ears, the faint stirrings from Blackwood Manor, where Aunt Queen was just rising, with the loving help of Jasmine, our housekeeper, for a mildly eventful night. Soon the television would be going with an enchanting old black-and-white movie. Dragonwyck or Laura, Rebecca or Wuthering Heights. In an hour perhaps Aunt Queen would be saying to Jasmine, “Where is my Little Boy?”
But for now there was time for courage. Time to follow through.
I took the cameo out of my pocket and looked at it. A year ago, when I was still mortal—still alive—I would have had to hold it to the lamp, but not now. I could see it clearly.
It was my own head, in semi-profile, carved skillfully from a fine piece of double-strata sardonyx so that the image was entirely white and remarkably detailed. The background was a pure and shining black.
It was a heavy cameo, and excellent as to the craft. I’d had it done to give to my beloved Aunt Queen, more of a little joke than anything else, but the Dark Blood had come before the perfect moment. And now that moment was forever past.
What did it show of me? A long oval face, with features that were too delicate—a nose too narrow, eyes round with round eyebrows and a full cupid’s-bow mouth that made me look as if I were a twelve-year-old girl. No huge eyes, no high cheekbones, no rugged jaw. Just very pretty, yes, too pretty, which is why I’d scowled for most of the photographs taken for the portrait; but the artist hadn’t carved that scowl into the face.
In fact, he’d given me a trace of a smile. My short curly hair he’d rendered in thick swirls as if it were an Apollonian halo. He’d carved my shirt collar, jacket lapel and tie with equal grace.
Of course the cameo said nothing of my height of six foot four inches, that my hair was jet black, my eyes blue, or of the fact that I was slight of build. I had the kind of long thin fingers which were very good for the piano, which I played now and then. And it was my height that told people that in spite of my all too precious face and feminine hands, I really was a young man.
And so there was this enigmatic creature in a good likeness. A creature asking for sympathy. A creature saying crassly:
“Well, think about it, Lestat. I’m young, I’m stupid. And I’m pretty. Look at the cameo. I’m pretty. Give me a chance.”
I’d have engraved the back with those words in tiny script, but the back was an oval photo case, and there was my image again in dull color, verifying the accuracy of the portrait on the other side.
There was one engraved word on the gold frame, right beneath the cameo, however: the name Quinn, in a good imitation of that routine handwriting which I had always hated so much—the left-handed one trying to be normal, I imagine, the seer of ghosts saying, “I’m disciplined and not insane.”
I gathered up the pages of the letter, reread them quickly, bristling again at my unimaginative handwriting, then folded the pages and put the cameo with them inside of a narrow brown envelope, which I then sealed.
I put this envelope in the inside breast pocket of my black blazer. I closed the top button of my white dress shirt and I adjusted my simple red silk tie. Quinn, the snappy dresser. Quinn, worthy to be a subject in the Vampire Chronicles. Quinn, dressed for begging to be allowed in.
I sat back again, listening. No Goblin. Where was Goblin? I felt an aching loneliness for him. I felt the emptiness of the night air. He was waiting for me to hunt, waiting for the fresh blood. But I had no intention of hunting tonight, even though I was faintly hungry. I was going into New Orleans. I was going, perhaps, to my death.
Goblin couldn’t guess at what was happening. Goblin had never been more than a child. Goblin looked like me, yes, at every stage of my life, but he was forever the infant. Whenever he had grabbed my left hand with his right,