He sits with his back to me, allowing me to drag the brush through the midnight shadow of his silky hair. He has not cut it short as he so often does, shearing off the black strands in a fever of expiation each night.

The pure pleasure of having my hands upon him is nearly more than I can bear, but he reacts very little to what I am doing. I have noticed that the times he allows my touch are the times that he seems the most remote.

Most remote.

He is always remote; his green eyes are vague and unfocused much of the time. Oddly, the only time they are sharp are the times I come upon him after he has fed heavily and he will let me approach him. He does not allow me the ecstasy of taking his blood, nor does he ever make a move to quench his own considerable thirst by assuaging his appetites with my blood. He has no desire for the strength I might bequeath him, nor does he care one whit for the compulsive, aching need I have for him.

I love a shadow.

I love a wraith.

"You don't love me, Armand." He says. "You need me."

He knows only a little of my machinations to keep him with me.

"How can you say that?" I ask him, cringing in shame at the plaintive note I hear in my own voice.

He stiffens under my hands, his shoulders going wooden as he slowly turns his head to glance back at me.

"I say the truth. Why do you protest? Will you now tell me that your love for me was so strong that you would take from me all that meant anything to me so that you might have your turn at possession? You feel nothing, Armand...you feel nothing. "

He gets up and moves fluidly to the windows of the flat we occupy in Gramercy Park and looks out at the snow falling past the street lamp, standing in a way that I have become familiar with, back straight, hands clasped behind his back.

"You cannot have me, Armand." He drawls. "Your exploration of my flesh is futile and the probing you attempt in my mind.... there may be that which you extract, but none of it is what you wish to see." He turns and bestows a beatific smile upon me. "Is it?"

When he taunts me this way I want to dismember him...I want to kill him by roasting him slowly, I want to make him suffer.... only I know that he cannot suffer more than he already does. All that he wants is Lestat; all that he has ever wanted is Lestat. To kill him would be to liberate him. To kill him would be to admit defeat. To kill him would be to make my failure complete.

He removes his shirt, exposing porcelain flesh to my avid gaze, purposefully negligent in his movements, his white hand performing a subtle effluerage upon his smooth skin.

Desperation wells up from somewhere deep within myself. He does this to me over and over and over again, allowing me a small closeness before once again firmly closing the iron gate that separates his soul from mine. That it is done with deep and heartfelt purpose I have no doubt. Perhaps it separates his soul from everything...but there lies a truth I have no wish to face.

"Do you fret over those that are lost to you. Armand?" He asks me.

"I fret over nothing." I tell him, leaning to his shoulder to rest my head. He allows this but makes no move to enclose me.

"I thought as much." He says musingly.

He turns slightly and presses against me, sinuously lascivious, and I wind my arms around his neck. I am not deceived. I know that when he is near me his head is filled with torment and rage and the ashes of his lost daughter, for he never bothers to shield such thoughts from me. He knows that I can find whatever I like, probing the grey folds until I have mined whatever nuggets I am searching for. I hold the illusion close, tracing the long, smooth muscles of his back, the knobs of his spine, and I refrain from looking up into his eyes, for that will shatter the moment.

His eyes are always cold.

He lifts a hand and skates it up my back and grasps a fistful of my hair. My head is drawn back roughly so that I can see the green ice of his gaze and his exposed, elegant fangs gleaming whitely.

"I'm thirsting." He growls, releasing me and moving away. I am left to stand trembling and furious while he pulls a sweater over his head. He trains his gimlet stare my way again. "You?"

Not so much an invitation to join him in the hunt as a taunt. I make no answer and he leaves the apartment without another word and after a moment I moved to the window to watch him walk away. He does not hurry, crossing the street on a diagonal and although he adjusts his movements to appear like the mortals that he walks among, he moves like the feral creature that he is.

Louis believed for a moment in the brisk flow of time that I would be the one who would give him the answers he was searching for. I believed that he could love me. He does not love me...I daresay he cannot even muster the will to hate me. His indifference flays and the questions he once had have long since scattered like withered leaves in the wind. Each time he leaves I wonder if it will be the time he simply does not return.

On this particular night he returns, pinked with blood and when he passes where I sit I am intoxicated with him all over again. Melting snowflakes gleam like jewels in the sable net of his hair. I imagine that when his glance passes over me it is less chilly and that when he answers my questions that his voice has warmed.

"You were gone a long while." I say. He sits across the room from me, his eyes trained on the wavering light that spills in from the street lamp outside. His hair is damp, the ends curled with moisture.

"I went to the Waldorf Hotel. There was an orchestra playing and mortals draped in beautiful clothes, drinking and dancing." He says. "And I went to look at the bridge."

His voice *is* warmer because he is thinking about the marvel of the Williamsburg Bridge. I followed him one night and watched him walk, light as a dancer, up one of the huge, heavy cables. He followed it up to the turret on the Brooklyn side of the bridge and sat there for hours looking at the lights and letting the cold wind chill his body.

We have remained longer in this city than in any other place we had been and Louis has been less withdrawn here than when we had wandered Europe. I am uncomfortable with the manifestation of liveliness in him, for it seems a precursor to some change.

"Are you cold?" I ask. "The snow is thick."

He takes no notice as I rise and stir the embers on the wide fireplace.

"Such a question coming from you of all people." He says mockingly. "Does it matter if I am cold? Will you warm me? "

All semblance of warmth fled from his tone and his posture and familiar furious despair washed through me.

"And drag you kicking and struggling from your wallow? How absurd." I say acidly.

"Yes. How absurd." He agrees. "All your efforts for naught, oui? Do I waste your time, little cherub? Little Amadeo? We have so very much of it, do we not?"

He laughed, seeming to find genuine humor in what he had said.

"Why do you stay?" I cry. The windowpanes shiver and the fine crystal chandelier trembles musically.

"I am biding." He says, seriously.

More can be read from the eyes of a beast than from the doll-like glitter that sheens those green orbs and I feel a shudder ripple through me. His continued stare is enervating, as though he might at any moment lunge. He does no such thing, of course, remaining as still as stone, but I can feel malice swirling about me as though the air were charged with it.

"Malice?" His mild tone matches the ease with which he has plucked the word from my thoughts. "Surely too a strong word. Malice suggests wrath and I feel no such passion toward you."

"As we have agreed, Louis, you appear to draw sustenance from misery. Yet I cannot help but wonder if you do not draw some satisfaction from baiting me."

The ice in his eyes breaks for a moment as he considers this.

"Peut-être." He says, looking directly into my eyes. "Though I gain little satisfaction, as you term it, from such exercises. It is more of an aid to the biding, you see."

I am unsure what he means by this, but I can no longer bring myself to try and follow the train of his thoughts. I wonder how it is that I have spent decades with him, yet I understand so little about how his mind works. Wandering his thoughts uninvited provides no illumination whatsoever, and I find his passivity at such intrusions disturbing. The only clear thing in his mind is the shining gold of Lestat's hair, impossibly bright in the dark corners of his consciousness.

He laughs again. I have only recently become aware that he has the ability to find his way past my own mental barriers when I relax them even the slightest amount. He rises and leaves the room without another word and a moment later I hear him descending the stairs into the cellar. Louis has a secure bedroom, but he chooses to sleep curled in a heavy oak armoire most days. My own bed is a sumptuous one, absurdly large for one of my stature.

It's meant for two people.

Fin