"Pretty dismal to call whatever the fuck that was a 'lifelong relationship,'" is sharp and dry in a way that Daniel has so far avoided being, with Lestat. But there's been no need for deadpan hostility. Here, though, he wants to be clear. Louis and Armand were a miserable disaster, and at no point was Daniel even tempted to believe otherwise.

"The story stops when they left Paris, because that's when you left. And then Louis spent nearly eighty years slowly suffocating. When he talked to me for this interview, it was the first time he talked about most of this since— since it happened, I think. It was hell on him to revisit it, but I think he..."

Daniel trails off. He wanted to make a point here, and he does, but he can't just say please don't hurt him, he's been through so much shit and I'm scared for him, please don't drop him off the side of a building. If only shit was that simple, right.

"I think he felt like if he didn't do it, he was going to fucking die." Armand had accused him of documenting a suicide, but Daniel sees it as the opposite, in retrospect. A shriek for help from someone about to slip over the edge, in a convoluted, sleep-walker way. "And I think a lot of it feels like it happened last month, opposed to last century."