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The shame of deja vu was loud, but not as loud as the longing.
He reached out with that longing, weaved it through the waves of the vampire mindspace among the thoughts and babbles of the god-damned undercurrent, like the tendrils that kept catching on the points of your shoes in the bayou back home, that were already shaking their way up your leg before you realized you were falling. The tendrils that seemed the shortest usually caught fast best. This awareness kept him from barreling straight into the crevice he knew her mind resided in; the caution a fisherman's tactic, a fitting bait. It was sensible.
When, then, a dizzy wave of relief and happiness washed over him, unfamiliar in its intensity–another tendril of thought touching his; it was because gratitude and pragmatism had gotten him where he was. He wasn't about to scorn the seduction of success only because he'd gotten into bed with it once already; he knew better.
And, well. Claudia's joy was palpable, and what brother could help but be moved far beyond his expectations?
“Louis?” Soft, tentative.
“Come on, you know it's me.” He had to apologize. He had to remind her to repeat Lestat's lessons and Lestat's non-lessons. He had to address the elephant in the room, doubtless sitting right there listening to his aborted attempts at connection. He had to–
“I’m glad you called. Where are you now?”
Are you with him? Was the unspoken question. She'd opened her mind up too large in an uncharacteristic show of vulnerability. Or a show of a show of vulnerability, asking, did the predator scent the pack’s reunification, look up from the prey it was mauling?
But–-no, that was a different image, a blood-dripping jaw turning up with careful nonchalance as he approached, violence and sex wrapped in that one graceful, confident motion as the monster picked himself up off the floor. The frames were blending into one, and he was in danger of losing it. It had been too long. Armand didn’t like it when his pliancy won, wanted to give him some belief of control.
A brief flash of irritation sliced through him. The idea of her concern expertly tangling itself in his thoughts while she was off risking god knew what– “He's sleeping in your coffin,” he blurted. Reached up to touch the lid of his own, so unfamiliar yet.
There was a silence. “And the coven?”
Kicked him out, like he deserved, she was thinking. She must've just fed, for the sense of secure satiation to come through that strong. His heart swelled. “We're companions now, no coven. I'm his coven.”
“He's his coven,” she repeated, presumably to Madeleine. “Do they know about us, yet?
Another silence, this time from him, and what would’ve emerged from her mouth like a bullet now just lacquered itself in disdainful pity. Perhaps she just couldn’t bother herself with tone.“Oh. You didn't ask.”
This was how it was going to be, then. Passing gratitude at having dumped the path to vampirism and companionship on her desk, and a closed door while she chipped away at life like a sculptor. His thread to Madeleine dangled, in a parallel line to that with Claudia. He didn’t even have to pay attention for it to sway with every movement Claudia made in her direction. His fledgling, and his sister.
He tried, “Look, even if they had, they wouldn't tell him, they just kicked him out to live with me! And where are you?”
It was like one of the coven’s animations, the way her mind folded up nice and slow like a wind up toy going back to sleep, or the lid of a treasure chest tantalizingly falling shut. She wanted him to know she could do it. She’d noticed him trying, and now a test of her own in response. Well, he'd match it. “Look, don’t start worrying about me and him. I'll get there.”
“When you get there , come visit.”
“Or you could come see us. Paris is pretty big. Big enough.”
“Louis, the coven–”
“Are all dead in their beds by curfew and too tired from the new play to take note of you. At least say goodbye to Paris.”
The second wave of the day crashed over him with considerably greater force. Armand, as always, had been right, holding back had never been his strong suit. I will miss this place. Every inch of the city built from the wilderness surrounding it…
He shook his head, hard. It wasn't a last dance before death, it was a promise. A faith. Claudia and he didn’t need god, only a pew to share. If she laid that bench across the span of memory, of home, of continents–no matter where he was, who he was with, he’d come running once a week to sink into it like he sank into the coffin with her so many years ago, in 1917, brushing her slippered feet out of his face and pretending to be offended by her amusement at his involuntary nose scrunch. He was good enough now to try. And maybe the pew wouldn’t always be figurative.
A gentle prod, like a feather out a palanquin into the bearer’s ear. “Louis?”
“Yeah?”
“Not until they name the date of the theater’s reopening.” His heart unfurled like a flower, lighting up in his chest. He wanted to freeze it like this, forever, her presence across the channel, the promise of more down the line. “‘Cause god knows they can’t be trusted to stay in there until they’re frantic counting down the days.”
He smiled, despite himself. “It’s a play, not a death sentence.”
“Mm.” Eyes closed, like this, the sound didn’t need the French to take on the same cadence that gripped his life like horses’ reins for thirty years, die as she would before she admitted it. Still, still, so much of the way she spoke was the best of those golden years, when being her father’s daughter was a point of pride. That same condescension she’d meant to let through to him earlier, and by god, wasn’t it so much sweeter when she saw he understood? When the clench in his chest was anticipatory, a slow sweet release with nothing but gratitude on the other side. This would be his last debt, he decided. The compulsion of this visit.
He almost felt a new coolness rise in her as he thought it, perhaps a little too loud. “Just promise we’ll keep talking after.”
“Call me in the middle of a hunt for all you like, Louis,” and now it was her smile that was audible, “making no promises I’ll pick up is all.”
He allowed himself a small fake gasp out loud, praying and trusting in the soundproofing abilities of the secondhand coffin’s velvet. “And interrupt your honeymoon? I know you better than that, sis.”
She only sent him an image in response: her and Madeleine, crouched over the same small white man in a dingy living room. Reassurance. A peace offering, since he still hadn’t apologized. Was that her thought or his own? “We’ll talk in a week, Louis,” she put in, soft but pointed. “Gotta go now. Bye.”
His heart throbbed like a small rabbit in his chest as she receded, bursting the bubble of their conversational booth, letting the myriad thoughts and horrors of their cursed companions filter back in.
Louis hadn’t fed before turning in for the night. He resisted his impulses, refrained from pulling her mental photograph to the forefront of memory and instead created a small box in an alcove off the main hallways of his own mind to store it. It would have to remain regularly dusted but irregularly touched, so as to keep the image from fading and allow for stacking. God knew he only had what they called the eye in a limited capacity, apparently. Who could take the risk?
But he felt full already. Only now did Armand’s soft snores begin to seep through Claudia’s second-rate coffin lid, tugging his own eyelids closed with the powerful thrum of relief that it induced.