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Kids are more susceptible to the supernatural than adults.
Louis knows that's the accepted wisdom around these things. He's read plenty of ghost stories–well, a few–and he's seen “The Sixth Sense” and part of one of the “Poltergeists.” Still, when his eight-year-old daughter tells him about her “new friend that visits her in her room”, it never occurs to him Claudia might be talking about anything other than a figment of her imagination.
He's distracted. He wanted this move to France, but uprooting your life and taking it across the ocean is never easy. He loves their big, old house in the countryside near Auvergne, but there's so much more to do than at their suburban townhouse in New Orleans. Louis has a lot on his mind. That's his excuse, anyway.
“Sorry, Clauds, we’ll have to read an extra chapter tomorrow,” he says, coming into her bedroom to find her waiting in bed with “The Secret Garden” on her lap. “I’ve got an online meeting with the New York office in five minutes.”
“That's okay, Daddy,” Claudia replies easily. “I’ll read with my friend. He’s not very good at reading in English, but I’m helping him learn.”
“That's nice of you.” Imaginary friends are healthy for kids, and Claudia has gone through a lot of upheaval lately. That's what Louis tells himself every time she talks about this “friend”, which she’s been doing since soon after they moved in.
“He’s teaching me a lot of French swear words,” Claudia continues cheerfully.
Louis blinks. “Oh.”
“But I tell him you wouldn't like it.”
“Right.” Louis hates to rush their bedtime routine. It's one of his favourite times of day, but the New York office waits for no man. At least, no man who wants to keep his job. “Good night, sweetheart.” He kisses Claudia's forehead and pulls up her frilly white bedsheets. When he reaches for the bedside light, Claudia says, “You can leave it on. It will be easier to read with my friend.”
“Don't you two stay up too late now.”
“We won't.” She's yawning already. Louis leaves, shutting the door behind him.
As well as half a hectare of woodland and a long disused swimming pool, the house has eight bedrooms and five bathrooms, two of which are currently functional. It's a lot of space for just him and Claudia, Louis can admit that. At the moment, one of the bedrooms is his well-appointed office. That's where Louis has the Zoom meeting that, of course, goes longer than scheduled. It leaves him with several tasks to follow up on, and when Louis looks at the time, he sees it's nearly midnight.
He plans to get up early in the morning to see if he can work on one of those currently unfunctional bathrooms. Closing his laptop, he heads down the hall to his bedroom. As he passes Claudia's room, he notices a strip of light still glowing beneath the door. Fell asleep with the light on again, he thinks fondly. He eases the door open so he can sneak in and turn it off, and immediately screams.
There's a man in his daughter's bedroom. A white stranger, with black platform boots, long blond hair, leather pants and an open silk robe revealing a bare chest with a tattoo of a screaming skull. He’s sitting on the edge of her bed where she’s lying asleep, her mouth hanging open and her book on her lap. Wildly, Louis looks around for something to use as a weapon. The best he can come up with is the floor lamp. He picks it up and points it towards the man, who chuckles and disappears.
Literally disappears, fading from view like he was never there. Louis searches the room: nothing. A hallucination, then. A trick of the mind. It has to be. There's no other explanation, but Louis isn't convinced enough to brush it off. He rushes to the kitchen, grabs an assortment of knives, and hurries back to Claudia's room.
Hours later, he wakes up in her armchair, a crick in his neck and an ache in his back.
“Daddy.” Claudia peers at the arsenal around him. “What are you doing?”
It takes him a moment to remember. “There was–” He stops. He's working too hard, not getting enough sleep. That's all. “Nothing, honey. Do you want pancakes for breakfast?” That's enough to make her forget all about her father's temporary psychosis. Claudia runs down the stairs to the kitchen, her feet pattering on the wooden floors. Louis picks up his makeshift armoury and follows.
***
Later that morning, after he's cleaned up the pancake mess and decided to leave the broken bathroom for another day, Louis is raking up leaves at the front of the house when a neighbour stops by.
They have very few of those. The closest house is two kilometres away. For a man who spent his life surrounded by people, it's welcome privacy, or it was at first. After last night, Louis finds himself wondering what would happen if there truly was an intruder in their home. Louis would be on his own.
“Bonjour!” An unfamiliar voice breaks into his ruminations. Louis looks up to see a middle-aged woman with two small dogs and a big wicker basket coming his way.
“Bonjour,” Louis returns, leaning on his rake. When she's near enough, the woman thrusts the basket at him. It's full of eggs of various shades and sizes.
“A welcoming gift,” the woman says. “I know you’ve been here a while. But still, welcome!” She beams at him. “I’m Blandine, from the house in the valley.”
“Louis,” Louis replies, taking the eggs. “My daughter is Claudia.” He’s glad she's inside. He's been resisting her campaign to get a dog of their own. Blandine’s, cute and sitting obediently at her feet, wouldn't help his case.
“American, yes? We all heard the news when you arrived. You speak very well.” Before Louis can offer automatic thanks, Blandine continues, “It's so nice to see someone in this house again.” Louis knows it had been empty for decades. It’s why he was able to get such a good price on it. The previous owners, a law firm in Paris, seemed glad to be rid of it. “You know someone died here.”
“It's a three hundred year old house.” Louis assumes many people have died here.
Blandine seems to be thinking of someone specific. “I remember it, although I was only a child.” She shakes her head, then brightens. “But welcome! Please, let me know if you need anything.” She whistles at her dogs. Louis watches them until they reach the end of the lengthy driveway, then goes inside to put his eggs away.
Claudia is in what they're calling the library, even though all of the shelves are empty at the moment. That's another dream of Louis's: to fill them with every literary genre imaginable. She's sitting on the floor with her tablet in front of her. A heavy bassline and squealing guitars assault Louis's ears when he comes in, a deep voice growling about hell storms and war drums and thrones of ashes.
“Claudia!” Louis cries, shocked. “What are you listening to?”
She looks up. “You told me I should listen to French music.”
“Yeah, but I meant like pop or something.” Not death metal. He goes over and stops the Spotify track as the guy starts roughly groaning about bloody sunsets. “Where did you even get that from?”
“It's my friend.”
“Someone at school recommended it?” Louis feels torn. He doesn't need his little girl hearing people yelling about shit that belongs airbrushed on the side of a van circa 1982, but he very much wants her to make friends. And improve her French.
“No, Daddy.” She looks at him like it's a stupid question. “My friend that lives here. It's his music.”
Louis feels a chill pass through him. Trying to keep his breathing even, he looks at the tablet. “Trône de cendre”, the song is appropriately called, by le Vampire Lestat.
Louis forces a smile and sits on the sofa beside Claudia. “Honey,” he says, hoping he sounds calm and rational, “Could you tell me a bit more about your friend?”
Lestat was a musician who sang in a heavy metal band. “They pretended they were vampires,” Claudia tells Louis, conversationally.
“Okay.”
“They would bring people on stage and pretend to bite them and everyone in the front row would get splashed with blood. It wasn't real,” Claudia emphasises, like this is Louis's primary concern. “My friend says he wishes he was a real vampire, because then he wouldn't have died.”
“Okay.” Louis hesitates. “And how did that, ah, how did that happen?”
“His boyfriend died of drugs, and then he got into a fight with his band. He was feeling real sad, so he came here. This was his house.”
“Okay.”
“He fell off the roof into the pool and drowned. He wants me to tell you to be really really careful if you fill it up, especially with me around.”
“Could I speak to him?” Not that Louis has any clue what he would say.
Claudia seems to consider this. “Maybe. He thinks you're really handsome.”
“Oh…kay.” Louis isn't sure how to take that.
“But he's worried you’ll be afraid of him.”
“You're not?”
“He says kids are braver than grown-ups. He loves kids. He wanted to adopt eight with his boyfriend, but his boyfriend didn't want any. And then…” She shrugs, a Gallic “what can you do?” gesture that would be more suitable for a grown man than a little girl.
“Okay.” Louis is starting to feel like a broken record. “Well, if he's going to be your friend, I really have to speak to him.”
“I’ll ask him,” Claudia says. She turns back to her tablet.
“You’ve had enough screen time for today,” he says, taking it away despite her protests. He's the parent here, he reminds himself. He has to control something.
***
Louis gave up smoking when Claudia was born. Now feels as good a time as any to start up again, but fortunately for his lungs, the nearest shop is a thirty minute roundtrip from here. Instead, he sits on his bedroom balcony after he puts Claudia to bed, chewing his nails and waiting.
If he hadn't seen the man in Claudia's room, Louis would have immediately booked Claudia an emergency appointment with the nearest child psychologist. But he had. And as much as he doesn't want to believe that was the ghost of a dead heavy metal performer, what other option is there?
Louis took the time to read a little more about Lestat de Lioncourt. It was as Claudia had said: in the summer of 1984, when Lestat was thirty-three years old, his campy band was poised to make it big when their violinist–Louis had never seen heavy metal played on the violin before, but it was surprisingly compelling–died of a heroin overdose. Louis assumes that was de Lioncourt's boyfriend, although he couldn't find that detail mentioned anywhere. Two weeks later, de Lioncourt's body was pulled from the very swimming pool Louis is now gazing at.
“There were not so many mice in it when I lived here,” a deep voice says suddenly. “And more water.”
He looks the way he did last night, the way he does in most of the pictures Louis found online. Curly blonde hair reaching to his shoulders, bright blue eyes surrounded by thick black eyeliner. He's wearing the same clothes as Louis last saw him in, although this time his silk robe is tied closed.
“Lestat de Lioncourt,” Louis says. It has to be.
“Hello, Louis de Pointe du Lac,” the man replies. His accent is thick, but he speaks in English. “Welcome to my house.”
“It's not your–” Louis starts, then decides that's not the way he wants to start a conversation with a ghost. He did see part of a “Poltergeist” after all. “Thank you,” he says instead. “What are you doing here?”
Lestat laughs, like he's delighted by the question. “This is something I have been asking myself for–what year is it?”
“2025.”
“Forty-one years.” He sighs. “It passes so quickly. Of course, I have been alone for most of that time. I have tried to leave on many occasions, but every road away from the house leads me back to the house." He sounds frustrated. Louis is not unsympathetic, but this man's...afterlife? is not Louis's problem, and it's especially not Claudia's.
“Why are you haunting my daughter?”
Lestat barks out a laugh. It's profoundly annoying. “Haunting? I am helping her.”
“She's fine.” Isn't she? “She doesn't need a, a…”
“Dead fake vampire friend?” Lestat puts in.
Louis breathes deeply, allows himself to hope, just briefly, that this is actually a dream or an hallucination or a mental breakdown, and says, “Do you have unfinished business here?”
“Unfinished business?”
“That's why ghosts stick around, isn't it?”
“I don't know about other ghosts, mon ami. I am aware of none.”
Neither is Louis. He looks carefully at Lestat. “Are we going to be able to, ah, to cohabitate?”
“My dear, we have only just met!”
Louis smiles tightly. “I mean, can you have one part of the house, and leave us the rest?”
“Which part of my house do you propose to allow me?”
“Which part do you want?” Louis is very willing to allow him the cellar, or the attic, or even one of the unused bedrooms.
“The kitchen.”
“What?”
“I have a lot of fond memories there. It was an excellent place to snort cocaine off the erections of groupies.” Louis coughs, which only makes Lestat laugh loudly again. “I am joking. That is a terrible way to consume cocaine. You can keep the kitchen. I will have this room.” He looks into Louis’s bedroom. “This was a special place for me. It was my bedroom in childhood, and also when I was older.”
“Okay. Sure.”
“Yes?” Lestat’s blond eyebrows go up.
“Yeah.” Why not? Louis has only been using it for a few months, and if it keeps the walls from bleeding, he’s happy to move. “Give me a day or two to put my stuff somewhere else.”
“You are very kind, Louis. I appreciate it.”
“And you’ll leave Claudia alone?” Louis asks.
Lestat disappears before he gets an answer.
Louis goes to bed soon after. Predictably, sleep eludes him. He picks up his phone. YouTube is where he left it, paused on a short Vampire Lestat playlist. After a brief hesitation, Louis clicks the next video in the list, which happens to be the last.
Vampire Lestat’s final show, Amiens, France, 18 July 1984. Like all of the videos Louis has watched, the quality is spotty. Lestat, wearing gold lamé shorts and those same platform boots he seems to be stuck in for all eternity, is standing on the stage of a smoky theatre, talking too quickly in French for Louis to grasp most of what he’s saying. It sounds threatening. The crowd is eating it up, but compared to the other videos, Lestat doesn’t seem quite as into it. Two band members throw a black cape over his shoulders, and he talks some more. Louis notices that the fifth member of the band, the violinist, is missing. It occurs to Louis he must have already been dead by now.
A couple of stagehands help a screaming fan up onto the stage, pushing this person of large hair and indeterminate gender to stand beside Lestat. Some more threatening dialogue–Louis can make out words like “virgin sacrifice, or close enough,” accompanied by a saucy wink which makes Louis laugh forty years later–and Lestat leans in close. Louis can’t help it. His heart beats along with the increasingly frantic drumline as Lestat grips the ecstatic fan by the throat and buries his face in the side of their neck. Louis can’t imagine anyone getting away with that these days.
A reddish substance spurts energetically from what has to be a pump hidden beneath Lestat’s cape, soaking the stage and the people sitting in front of it. The camera zooms in shakily on Lestat, whose mouth is dripping with the same stuff. Louis can’t tell what it is. Ketchup? Coloured corn syrup? It looks disgusting. “Me voici, le vampire Lestat,” he says, staring into the crowd. “Je viens de vos rêves et les transforme en cauchemars.” The crowd loses their minds. Even on the poorly shot, poor quality video, Louis sees an emptiness in Lestat’s expression that makes him feel sad.
***
A few days later, Louis hasn’t seen much of Lestat. Louis moved into one of the smaller bedrooms, as promised, but every time Louis has given in to curiosity and stuck his head into Lestat’s room, it’s been empty. He hasn’t asked Claudia if she’s seen her friend lately, even though he would love to know.
It’s almost dinnertime and Louis is on a call with New York when Claudia comes tearing into the house, laughing, her shoes still muddy from the woods.
“Claudia!” he calls after her, muting his phone, but she’s already thundering up the staircase, her small hands grazing the banister as she leaps two steps at a time.
It happens in a flash. Her foot slips off the edge of a stair. Off-balance, she pitches backwards, a flash of windmilling arms and flying hair, her cry sharp and high. Louis’s heart seizes. He shouts her name, dropping his phone and already running for the stairs, but something catches her before he can get there. Or rather, someone.
For the barest moment, Louis sees it: Lestat, not pale and spectral but solid, his boots planted firmly on the wooden step, his arms locked around Claudia as if he’d always been there. His body ripples strangely, like sunlight through water, but he is undeniably real.
Claudia blinks up at him, wide-eyed but uninjured. “You caught me!” She exclaims.
Lestat sets her down gently, dusts off her knees with a flourish. He turns his head and gives Louis a look of exhausted triumph. His chest heaves as though he’s just run a marathon. Then, with the smallest bow, he flickers, his boots, his hands, his body dissolving like smoke. By the time Louis reaches Claudia, she’s alone on the landing, cheeks flushed.
“Daddy! Did you see? He saved me!”
Louis drops to his knees, pulling her against him, shaking harder than he wants to admit. He presses frantic kisses to the crown of her head. “Are you okay?”
She wriggles free, beaming. “He was strong! Like a real person!”
As if summoned by the words, the air in the stairwell shimmers faintly. A familiar voice, lower now, tired, fills the space.
“Not for long,” Lestat says. His outline emerges, transparent this time, leaning lazily against the wall. His grin is forced, his hair damp as though from sweat. “It takes everything I have to pull it off. Costs me days of strength.” He glances at Claudia, then at Louis. “But sometimes it is worth it.”
Louis gathers Claudia more tightly, though she squirms in protest. “If she'd been hurt—”
“She was not. I would not let her be. She means too much to me.”
He disappears, slowly this time. Claudia waves after him until he’s completely gone.
***
One again, Louis doesn’t sleep that night.
Every creak of the old house makes his shoulders tighten. He sits in the living room long after Claudia’s gone to bed, the TV playing something he’s not watching, his phone dark beside him. At some point, he hears music: soft, wavering piano notes from upstairs. It’s not a melody he knows, but it’s beautiful. He doesn’t go investigate.
In the morning, Claudia eats her cereal, talks about her day, and doesn’t mention the stairwell incident. Louis wants to bring it up, but he doesn't. Later, when Claudia’s at school and the house is quiet, Louis goes back into what used to be his bedroom. Lestat is there.
He’s reclining on the bed like he's posing for an album cover. This time, he’s not transparent. Not fully, anyway. There’s colour to his skin, a shadow under his jaw, a bit of light catching in his hair. He flickers every few seconds, like a corrupted video frame.
“I see you've made yourself comfortable,” Louis says, smiling.
“This room is very relaxing. I always had good taste.” Lestat sits up, swinging his boots to the floor.
Louis stays by the door. “What was that yesterday?”
“I told you. It’s a trick. A very difficult one. I gather my energy, I bind it to the memory of my body. It doesn’t last. But it feels real. Doesn’t it?”
Louis doesn’t answer. The memory of Lestat’s arms catching Claudia, solid and strong, is too vivid.
Lestat looks at him then. Really looks. “You asked if I had unfinished business. Perhaps she is that.’
Louis stiffens. “You really think you’re helping her?” This is more likely to put Claudia in therapy for life.
Lestat doesn’t answer immediately. He walks to the window and looks out.
“She talks to me, Louis,” he says softly. “About being different. About the kind of loneliness that feels like a fist around your heart.” He turns back. “I remember being that lonely. I don’t want her to feel it.”
Is she really that unhappy here?
Louis doesn't want to ask that. He doesn’t want to hear the answer. Instead, he says, “You were a rock star. How could you be lonely?”
“I was a sideshow. Glitter and fake blood and pyrotechnics.” Lestat smiles faintly. “And I was very good at that. But when the curtain came down, I was alone.” Lestat pauses. “I don't know why I’m still here. But since I am, I’ll do what I can to help her. And to help you.”
When Louis raises his gaze to look at Lestat, the room is empty.
***
The old house doesn't stop needing work just because there's a distracting ghost in residence. For the next few days, Lestat makes himself scarce, and Louis's attention returns to more prosaic matters.
One afternoon, the attic groans under Louis’s steps, the boards thin and uncertain. He climbs anyway, ducking beneath a rafter where cobwebs tremble in the light. He tells himself he’s only checking for water damage from a crack in the roof, but his body knows where it’s going before his mind does.
The boxes are stacked haphazardly in the far corner of the attic. A velvet jacket spills from one, a scattering of sheet music from another. When Louis lifts the lid of the largest trunk, he is met with the scent of leather and cigarette smoke so strong it still hasn't quite faded.
Louis exhales slowly, sifting through the contents. Posters, yellowed newspapers, folded scarves and sparkling shirts and wrinkled velvet pants. And then, beneath a loose magazine clipping, something more personal: an old photograph.
The edges are curled, the colour washed out and faded. Lestat has his arm around another boy, both of them framed by some faded Parisian brick wall. Lestat is grinning. His eyes are bright, open, alive. The boy beside him holds a violin, the bow dangling from his fingers. Dark hair tumbles over his brow; his mouth is curved in a small smile, but his gaze is elsewhere, already distant.
Louis turns the picture over. On the back, in surprisingly perfect penmanship, someone has written: Je me perds dans ta musique comme dans l’infini, toi, mon plus grand amour.
“He hated it,” says a voice behind him.
Louis doesn’t turn.
“Nicki hated all pictures,” Lestat goes on. “He swore the camera drained the music from him. Said it stole his talent.” Lestat laughs. “My love was eccentric, even when we were young. I told him it gave me something for when he was gone. Even then, I knew he wasn't mine to keep.”
Lestat stands in the doorway, his body flickering at the edges. His eyes are locked on the photograph in Louis’s hands. Louis studies it again. Nicki’s violin, his wary half-smile, the pride of Lestat’s arm about his shoulders. The romantic words on the back were written by Lestat. He knows it without asking.
“You loved each other,” Louis says.
Lestat’s laugh is brief, without humour. “I loved him desperately. For five minutes, maybe, he loved me, too. Then I lost him.”
“He died of an overdose.” Louis read it online.
“He died because he wanted to leave and he didn’t love me enough to stay.”
Louis’s mouth opens, but no sound comes.
Downstairs, the front door slams.
“Dad? Where are you?” Claudia’s voice echoes.
Lestat’s gaze softens at the sound. He nods at the photograph, a faint smile tugging his mouth. “You can have it. So you’ll know I wasn’t always a monster.”
Before Louis can answer, the shimmer overtakes Lestat, peeling him away from the air until the doorway is empty once more.
Claudia’s footsteps pound up the stairs. Louis slips the photograph into his pocket before she bursts into the attic.
***
That night, after Claudia has gone to bed and the house has settled into silence, Louis finds himself drawn back to his old bedroom. The door is ajar. He doesn’t need to look inside to know Lestat's there.
He reclines on the bed again, half-shadow, half-colour. Less flicker tonight, more presence. He looks up as Louis enters.
“You keep coming back." He grins at Louis. “That must mean something.”
Louis ignores him. He moves to the window, his hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the dark countryside. His reflection hovers faintly in the glass. Lestat’s does not. For a long time, he doesn’t speak. The silence stretches thin.
“My brother killed himself.” Louis says, eventually. The words fall like stones. He doesn’t look at Lestat when he says them.
After a pause, Lestat shifts. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“His name was Paul. He was…troubled. Religious.” Louis exhales, jaw tight. “He thought he saw angels. One day, he stepped off a rooftop. And I—” His throat works. “I wasn’t there to stop him.”
Lestat’s smile is gone. He looks almost human in the half-light, weariness etched into the lines of his mouth. “I didn't see angels," Lestat says, and Louis knows.
“You told Claudia you fell into the pool.”
“I ended up there.” He pauses, then goes on, softer: “I’m sorry about your brother. I know how it feels to be on both sides of something like that.”
“You’re the first person I’ve ever told.” Louis doesn't know why he’s doing that. Louis came to France in part to escape the memories, not share them with a ghost.
Something flickers in Lestat’s expression: pain, or pride, or something stranger. He starts to rise, to close the distance, but the shimmer catches him again, his form warping at the edges.
“Thank you for trusting me,” he says.
Louis doesn’t answer. He turns back to the glass, to the ghost of his own reflection, while behind him the room grows quiet once more.
When he dares a glance over his shoulder, Lestat is gone, the bed cover as unruffled as if no one was ever there.
***
“Do you want me to bring your family here?” It's something Louis has been wondering for a while. As he’s wrestling with a hedge that's fighting him every step of the way, he brings it up.
“My family?” Lestat is lounging on a garden chair, watching him with amusement.
“Yeah. Or a friend? Is there someone you’d like to see again?”
Lestat shakes his head. “The idea is kind, Louis, but they would think you mad.” That's probably true. It's what Louis would think if a stranger called him up with an offer to meet Paul's ghost, or his father's. “Anyway, my band was my only family at the end, and they replaced me within a week. Probably told themselves I’d want it that way.” His laugh is soft, bitter. “I wonder if anyone even kept my guitar, or if they sold it the moment my body cooled.”
Louis sets the clippers down and brushes dirt from his palms. “People grieve in their own way,” he says. He remembers the days after Paul's death, when he and Grace had to fight their mother not to throw out everything he’d owned. She did thank them later for it, at least.
“They forgot about me,” Lestat corrects. “That’s not grieving. That’s relief.”
Louis looks at him, at the sharp cheekbones, the flickering outline, the mouth twisted in a smile that wasn’t. He feels an unexpected twinge of empathy. “Maybe they missed you more than you think,” he suggests.
“I’m not saying I blame them. I was never easy. After I lost Nicki, I was fucking unhinged. Still, they were all I had.”
The confession lands between them like a struck chord, vibrating through the quiet yard. Louis doesn't answer. Instead, he bends again, pulling stray branches into a pile.
Days pass, but the thought doesn’t. It follows Louis through the motions of living: working, cooking, cleaning, playing with Claudia, tending the house and the yard. Even when he loses himself in the rhythm of hedge-clipping or the hush of late-night reading, the words return: They didn’t miss me.
***
That evening, Louis finds them in the music room just after sunset.
The lamps are off. What little light remains spills in through the tall windows, washing the room in soft blue and shadow. Claudia sits curled on the floor beside the piano, her back to the wall, knees hugged to her chest. Her doll lies forgotten near the hearth. Lestat is seated at the piano bench, half-there as always, flickering faintly at the edges. He doesn’t turn when Louis enters the doorway, but he must sense him. His hands rest over the keys without pressing, as if remembering rather than playing.
“I’m not lonely,” Claudia says, voice flat. “I’m just tired of always being the weird kid.”
Lestat replies without irony. “You’d be surprised how many adults say the same thing.”
“I miss my friends back home,” she says. It’s the first time Louis has heard her say it aloud.
“Me, too,” Lestat agrees.
Lestat doesn't offer comfort, not in the way Louis might. No platitudes. No lies. Instead, he lifts one translucent hand and taps a few quiet notes on the piano. The sound is thin, distorted by his half-real presence, but the melody is unmistakable. A lullaby even Louis recognises. Claudia listens, arms still around her knees. The music continues in halting fragments.
“Do you want to learn it?” Lestat asks, after a while.
She shrugs. “I guess.”
He scoots over on the bench, patting the space beside him. Claudia climbs up beside him. Lestat takes her hand, points her fingers gently in the direction of the right keys. One note, then another.
Louis steps back from the doorway before they notice him. The house is quiet except for the broken strain of music and Claudia’s soft, determined breath.
***
Claudia's in bed and Louis has just finished yet another call with New York when he clicks over to Google and types Lestat’s name. This time he adds the word “death.”
Immediately, a link to a fan page pops up with pictures of memorials: candles, handwritten notes, guitar picks tucked into envelopes, flowers left at the side of that stage in Amiens where Lestat performed for the last time. Comments scroll endlessly. Most are in French, but there are some in English, in German, in Spanish, in Asian languages Louis can't immediately identify. He reads the ones he can and uses Google Translate for the rest.
“Your music saved me when nothing else could.”
“We still talk about the night you played in Oslo. I cried for a week when I heard what happened.”
Louis clicks another link, a blog post from someone who had been at a small-town gig decades ago. They recount the moment Lestat was found dead in his swimming pool: the panic, the rumours, the vigil held outside this very house. Every line drips with longing and disbelief. He finds videos of teenagers whose parents were probably little kids when Lestat died, if they were even born, playing Lestat’s songs note for note and uploading them with captions like:
“Because he deserves to be remembered.”
“For Lestat, the vampire king of our dreams.”
Then, Louis happens upon a video.
The two men and the woman in it are older, past middle-age although they’re still dressed in leather and suede, piercings glinting in their ears and noses. One of the men is behind a set of drums; the other man and the woman hold an electric guitar and what Louis thinks is a bass respectively.
“It was forty years ago today that the vampire king left us,” the man with the guitar says. His English is good, his accent French overlaid by American. “Lestat was our best friend, our brother. It was never the same without him. We know he meant so much to so many people, so we wanted to share a song we wrote for him back then. A song we never released because it was just too personal for us.”
They glance at each other. The drummer counts off a beat, and they launch into a screaming heavy metal song Louis has to play three times before he has any hope of deciphering the French lyrics. It’s only after he’s ninety percent there that he realises someone has helpfully translated them in the comments, even making them rhyme.
When you died, the lights went out,
The city's a grave I scream about.
Every day’s a ghost, every night’s a fight,
Nothing feels real, nothing feels right.
I smash my guitar just to feel the sound,
Kick at the walls till they all fall down.
Life’s a joke that I can’t rewrite,
I’m burning out in the endless night.
Life sucks, since you died!
I’m empty, I’m broken inside!
No future, no place to hide
Life sucks, yeah, since you died!
There’s only one thing Louis can do.
He finds Lestat lying on his bed.
“Lestat." He sits beside him, close enough to touch. “I want you to see this.”
Louis fumbles with his laptop, pulling up the video of Lestat’s band. The music fills the room instantly.
Lestat doesn’t move at first, just watches the screen. His form flickers slightly. His lips part as if to speak, but no sound comes. He leans forward, his eyes fixed on the screen. Louis sees something on his face. Pain, longing, maybe pride, maybe disbelief.
When the song ends, the room feels impossibly quiet. Louis swallows hard, feeling a lump in his throat tighten with emotion. “It’s not just them. I can show you more. Fans who still love your stuff. You were trending on TikTok just a few months ago—”
In an instant, the light around Lestat grows steadier, more solid, as if the music has anchored him back into reality. Lestat blinks at Louis, his sharp features soft, almost vulnerable. And then, without warning, Lestat leans forward and kisses him.
Louis freezes. The kiss is firm yet hesitant, urgent yet gentle, and Louis realises in a way that terrifies and delights him: he can actually feel Lestat—really feel him—like he's kissing a living, breathing person instead of a shadow. It’s dizzying. Every nerve hums with the sensation.
When they pull back, Lestat’s eyes widen. “I—I’m sorry,” he stammers, hands rising in a small, apologetic gesture. “I shouldn’t have—”
Louis waves a hand quickly. “No… it’s… it’s okay. Surprising, that’s all.” He clears his throat, looking down at the floor for a moment. “I wasn’t expecting it.”
Lestat exhales. He’s growing fainter by the moment, flickering in and out. “That took a lot of energy.”
“Yeah. I can imagine.” Louis feels his cheeks heat up.
“Thank you,” he says, even as he fades.
Louis meets his disappearing gaze. “I’m glad you saw it,” he adds, unsure if Lestat can hear. There’s no sign of him now.
With a sigh, Louis rubs a hand through his hair.
“Are you going to date Lestat?”
Louis whips around to see Claudia standing in the doorway in her pyjamas, her doll under her arm. “What?”
“I saw you kiss him. That's gross. But it means you’re going on a date, right?”
“You can’t date a ghost, Claudia.” Which wasn’t a sentence he expected to ever say.
She shrugs. “Not if you don’t try. Could you come upstairs? I’m worried there’s a monster under my bed and Lestat’s not around to chase it away.”
***
The pool has been refilled.
For years it was a gaping mouth in the earth, a reminder of everything that had gone wrong in this house. Now it gleams beneath the garden lights. Claudia floats paper boats across its surface, folded from newspaper. The words blur as the paper dampens, curling at the edges.
Louis sits on the edge of a lounge chair, watching Claudia, but also the faint shimmer beside her. Lestat is half-there again. He looks good tonight, his hair catching the same light the water does. He’s radiant, if a little translucent.
“Welcome, mesdames et messieurs,” he declares grandly, walking along the edge of the pool.
“Tonight, for you, a special performance by le roi du metal français, le Vampire Lestat!”
Claudia cheers and uses a wooden spoon to bang a pot she brought out from the kitchen.
“You mean the screaming?” Louis grins, teasing.
“That’s the poetry of pain, mon amour.” Lestat claps his hands. The lights flicker, and suddenly there’s sound: faint feedback, the hum of an unseen amp. He conjures his guitar, its shape forming from shadow and moonlight, silver strings vibrating though no mortal hand could have strung them.
He looks at Claudia. “Ready, ma petite batteuse?”
“Ready!”
Lestat strums once. The sound hits like thunder in a cathedral. Claudia bangs her spoon, offbeat but enthusiastic.
Lestat begins to sing. “Dans le velours nocturne, ton souvenir se lève,
Un murmure d’outre-vie glissé contre mes lèvres.
Je cherche ton éclat dans le souffle des murs,
Amour aux pas de brume, éternel et obscur.
Tu erres dans mon sang comme un secret qui brûle, un fantôme enlacé à mon âme qui recule.”
Louis doesn’t understand half the words. The rhythm is relentless, the language harsh and beautiful. Yet he can feel it: the ache, the passion, the defiance that defined Lestat. That defines him even after death.
Claudia throws herself into the chorus, shrieking delightedly: “Un fantôme! Un fantôme!” Her saucepan crashes with every beat.
By the final chord, the air itself vibrates. Lestat’s form glows solid—almost alive again—hair wild, eyes bright with ghostly fire. He lowers the guitar, breathing hard though he doesn’t need breath.
When the last note fades, Claudia claps her hands. “Encore!” she cries, laughing. “Do it again!”
But Lestat’s eyes are on Louis. “No encore tonight, chérie,” he says gently. “We end on perfection.”
“And it's bedtime for you, little miss,” Louis tells her.
Grumbling and yawning in equal measure, Claudia drags herself into the house, and Lestat crosses to where Louis sits. His form flickers, stabilises, then flickers again.
“I can’t thank you enough, cher.”
“What?” Louis blinks, embarrassed by the depth of sincerity in Lestat’s tone. “You don’t got to thank me for anything.”
“You gave me back my joy,” he says, smiling. “Now I’ll haunt you with it until you die of old age and join me on this side of the veil.”
Louis lets out a laugh, more trembling than he expected. “Yeah, well. Maybe I wouldn’t mind that. Eventually.”
Louis reaches out, fingertips brushing Lestat’s cheek. This time, he feels a strange warmth, a pulse of life where none should be.
Lestat’s lips curve into that reckless, devastating grin. “Do you think we'll be able to fuck if I save up all my energy for a few days?”
Louis pretends he hasn't been wondering the same thing. Instead, he leans in.
The kiss is slower this time, no surprise, no apology. Fireflies of light rise around them like sparks from an unseen fire. For a moment Louis could swear he feels Lestat’s heartbeat against his own. When they draw apart, Lestat’s hand lifts, his fingers brushing Louis’s chin in a final caress before he vanishes, leaving only a ripple in the warm night air.
Louis sits for a long time, staring at the water. Claudia’s paper boats drift toward the deep end. From somewhere unseen, a faint guitar riff curls through the garden, low and familiar.
And then the garden is quiet, the pool still, the moon shining over a house no longer haunted, but shared, no longer lonely but overflowing with love.