His fledgling is very clever. Maybe they could both do with listening to him a little more. Louis should not be doing this. Armand should try psilocybin.
The burning feeling stings something deep. Armand grips the windowsill. He wants to assert— Yes, he has, yes, he has only reached out to Molloy, who isn't harmed, who is better, and Louis should be grateful because he didn't have to take this on himself. But this train of thought jumbles together with Armand imagining Louis having done it, they way they discussed, and it fills him with a bizarre and awful anxiety.
He tries to say 'Fine, have it your way', tries to concede, even lie about it. Just end this conversation and move on, be more careful. But anger stirs, then stirs a little more, and he touches the severed thing in his head left by Marius, who he knows isn't dead, and he compares it to the connection with his fledgling, his fledgling, and he feels nauseous.
'Yes.'
One word, and his distance remains, but he sounds angry. Yes, he has left Louis alone. Yes, he is still contacting Daniel sometimes, yes, he will continue, yes, he did all of it, yes, he knew the whole time.
The hammering ebbs. A hand, flattening along unyielding ice. Not unlike Louis, folding bonelessly in against Armand. Turning his face in against Armand's throat, breathing there against skin.
Should he have understood this? That Armand is remote and unyielding?
They have been far from each other. But there had been enough. Just enough. Their love had been threadbare and fading, but it had held. Louis hadn't understood it was strung from a frame built upon a lie. It cannot stand without that fiction to keep it from unraveling.
A stretch of quiet. Not disconnection, only breathing. Louis' presence, pressed against stone.
Eventually, He wasn't yours to take.
And how much has been taken? Claudia. Seventy-seven years of Louis' life.
And Daniel. Daniel, who says he is fine. Who says he is happy.
For so many years, Armand held him. Helped him through anger, through trauma, putting Lestat behind him, putting Claudia behind him. Packing things away in his past where they could harm him no longer. Armand was happy for it— if he couldn't make his own pain go quiet, he could at least make Louis' disappear. And it was rewarding because it was Louis. Louis, who he loved. He loved him. He had to, at least for a while. Right?
A phantom impression of what once was. Louis, slumped against him. Armand, winding arms around shoulders, petting his hair, giving him shelter. He should tell him: I wanted it to be real. You used me as punishment, but I still wanted it to be real, and I tried. I failed. The broken part is me, it was never you.
Of course, this does not occur.
A funny little feeling, like laughter. Hysterical, sad. When did Armand decide Daniel was his? Recently? Years ago? Was it in San Francisco, using him like a doll? On a business trip in London, finding his face on a book staring out at him? Was it when he recognized the dialect of his prayers? Just now, because Louis is trying to deny him this possession?
Maybe Daniel would know. Armand finally lights a cigarette, instead of shredding it. The phantom impression fades away.
But even this, a true thing, twists like a knife in his chest.
No, nothing can be undone. True. But they know now, don't they, that Louis' responses are malleable? That Armand is capable of making Louis' reactions what he wishes?
It changes nothing.
Claudia is dead.
Daniel is a vampire.
And Armand lied. For seventy-seven years.
Louis, eyes closed, hands resting on the wrought iron of the balcony rails, feels the anger and grief of it all tearing through his chest all over again. Emotion too vast to contain. It spills through that yielding sense of his presence in Armand's mind, unchecked.
What is time to a vampire? Claudia would have gone mad in a year, or one hundred, so why not end it now; Louis was burdened by her, Louis made a fledgling when he didn't want to for her. Why not dispose of them. What was so wrong. He'd be mourning her with this same jaggedness when her mind inevitably broke and she flung herself into the sun. Time to a vampire was giving him this head start, this century, on healing.
Louis won't understand that. Armand knows it's not acceptable reasoning; he knows, too, that his reasoning was not his only motivation. He wanted her, them gone, even though he wanted Louis. Louis disrupted his life. Louis told him he was good at running things, that he'd fix it, and it fell apart. Perhaps Armand shouldn't have bet on him at the end— he could have stopped the fire. He could have turned on Louis.
But he did love him. He did. So he holds where he is and endures this tidal wave of emotion, lets it burn over him, choke him, threaten to drown him. His breath shudders when he draws it in, his vision blurs and clouds, soft pink with the stinging threat of tears. Love of his life. That's what he put in Louis' mouth, about himself. That's what they were. What he wanted. There is still a cowardly, desperate part of him that would reach for it.
'You changed my life,' comes, in time. A murmured mental tone. 'That will be true forever. When I said I wanted you more than anything in the world, I meant it.'
Now? After nearly eighty years of what they put each other through? Maybe the Armand then still does. The Louis then. Paris, when they were just a little awkward, just a little star-crossed.
'I wanted to spare you from your pain and your anger. That I caused much of it seemed a poor excuse not to.'
His project settles into their old penthouse, in the dark. Sits down on the sofa that belongs to the current resident, asleep in the primary bedroom. His alarm will go off in an hour, in the dead of night. Stocks to be traded. Money waits for no mortal. Louis will think this project is about him. Armand recognizes this, especially now, but that's no reason to call it off. Another poor excuse.
Is this what Daniel feared? The way something in Louis shudders to hear these things, the repetition of Armand's devotion passed between them on a park bench?
The thing inside Louis that is still capable of falling into him, falling back to Armand. Wavers in the space where Louis' rage ends and grief begins.
But Claudia. Claudia.
Is the admission enough? If this can be counted as an admission. If it matters that it came only after Daniel had forced his hand.
If it matters that it comes on the heels of something that might be honest.
You changed me.
An echo. Subtle difference in the choice of words.
It will be true forever. No matter where I go, how long I live.
Armand's fingerprints, the impressions of his hands, Louis will carry them all his life. How his life has been changed. How he has been shaped, cultivated. The worrisome suspicions that they would still fit together neatly, regardless of the way Louis feels shattered into something new in these past weeks.
The difference — my life versus me — unsettles Armand, though he isn't sure why. It wriggles in his awareness, strange, and he can't manage to pin it down. Something about it feels harming, and he finds himself unpleasantly disoriented over being unable to ascertain why.
(Is Armand changed? Is he capable? Is there enough of him that exists at all?)
He picks around the proverbial edges of an apology. He understand this is where he should present one, that it is probably what Louis wants to hear. But the shape of it is difficult, and unfamiliar. Why does he owe Louis such prostration? After all he's done to make up for it? All he's done, and it hasn't been good enough. What good would an apology do, especially on he wouldn't really mean?
'I regret hurting you.'
That much, he means. He had meant it back then. He might have even let Lestat kill him in that tower, he meant it so much. But Lestat gave Louis to him, looked straight at him and allowed him to keep his lie. And Armand did keep it. Kept it safe, held carefully in a cage.
'I can't give you what you want.'
Not shelter from anger. Not Claudia restored. Not Daniel reverted. And not Daniel left to Louis—
A word that falls between them, plummeting into empty space.
Louis, still a presence leaning against the barrier constructed between them, watching it go.
Won't, comes as a correction, harkening back to what they'd circled round and round on in those last days of the interview, all three of them trading back and forth Armand's explanation:
I could not prevent it.
Louis feels sick remembering how he had repeated those words, that justification. How long he had believed it.
The thread that had calmed itself in the lull of Louis' familiar moods itches up again, and Armand finds himself abruptly, incredibly, irritated.
'Can't and won't, is snapped, harder than he usually does, harder and sharper than he's been in years, in decades, a vicious edge to it. A sudden warning in preparation for the bite that comes too fast:
'If I could bring Claudia back I would just to shut you up about her.'
Can't.
'This thing now, this—' say something, what it is, say it, 'With Daniel', has Louis ever even heard Armand use his first name? How many times has Armand said it to his face? Once? Getting up from the floor where Louis left him, just then, I'm fine, Daniel, 'Is no longer your concern, and your requests and demands about him to me will be ignored.'
The force of it knocks Louis back off that marble.
An abrupt vanishing of emotion. Louis' presence winnowing down to something flat and colorless, a thin link threading between them. What's left of the bond, the thing Louis had once claimed to have been knitting anew. Stubbornly maintained, even as Louis' eyes open on the balcony.
Waits, one breath, then another, and another, until the knife twist of Claudia passes. The rail is bending under the grip of his palms, white-hot anger, agonizing grief, winding through Louis' body.
A moment where he considers walking out of this hotel room. Giving his answer in person.
It would horrify Daniel.
It would take too long.
There is no sense of proximity, even when Louis' voice returns. Remote. Dispassionate.
Marius De Romanus, who begat Armand. Armand, who begat Daniel Molloy.
Painful, to say this. Drawing the knife from his own belly to carry these words forward. This accusation.
I will not permit you this thing, Armand. Understand I am no longer making a request.
Armand wants to spare him pain, and anger. Armand regrets hurting him. Armand will still say that, and he has no real explanation for why. His patience, his grace, taken advantage of. He could always be this terrible, and he's never given any due for how hard he's worked to preserve their life, how calm he's remained, how many times he could have been hurtful but chose not to be.
It feels good to know it landed. It feels horrible to know it landed.
'You aren't entitled to that anymore, either.'
No longer maitre. It hasn't been convenient in decades, hasn't been hot in more. Louis doesn't get to make demands of him, and Armand doesn't have to pretend that his threats are viable.
It is incidental, unavoidable, that Louis will think his current project will be about him. Armand considers this— but opts not to embellish it further. He is content with his plan, with the moving parts of it, the delicate set-up and impending payoff. A satisfying end to an itch for himself. But he knows, as he begins to withdraw from this foolish exchange, that he will do something about Louis with deliberation.
Molloy isn't about Louis. It may have started that way, spite, revenge, punishment, a bitter testament to Armand keeping his promises even when Louis breaks his, but it isn't anymore. He made this choice and it horrified him, but now he looks at it, this immortal arrow shot through Marius, through Armand, through Daniel, and he wants to follow the line of it. His blood, their blood. His fledgling. Their connection. He touches that bond again, a flexing thread of strangeness, of comfort.
'I've had enough for tonight. Goodbye, Louis.'
As easy as the shrug from before, Armand closes his mind, and no matter how hard Louis tries or how loud he screams, he will not be able to find him again. Straight to voicemail. He turns the whole phone off.
Perhaps not unlike standing on cold stone, looking upwards at bookshelves dangling out of reach.
Louis' whole body is flushed hot, responding to anger even if Louis' mind is slow to parse the dimensions of it.
He had felt so little for so long. Years and years of serenity, of calm. He has stepped back from himself now, aware that he is shaking. That he has ruined the rail of the balcony.
That Armand has left him with nothing but this, anger and guilt, a scream of reaction that can go nowhere at all.
The stinging invocation of what Louis had kept so private, a veil drawn down between their intimacy as it had existed outside of Paris. What they had built it into. What had fractured so instantly upon contact with the truth.
Louis tries briefly, uselessly, to find Armand's mind. Knows it is of little use. His gifts are what Armand made of them. The holes have ever been left for Armand's beneft. Finally, defeated, Louis lifts aching hands from the rail, observing how the metal has bent and warped under his grip.
He stands for a long time, listening to the minds of other vampires, the chill of the night air lowering the temperature of his body little by little, until the sound of Lestat and Daniel's return draws him away from contemplation of the void Armand left behind.
Armand smokes a cigarette, and another; the temptation is there to reach out towards Daniel, slingshot around the mind he cannot access and attempt to monitor him via anyone else in his proximity. Spite, punishment. He could dig out his phone, take a page out of an insignificant mortal's playbook and just call him.
He does none of those things. Lets it go, sets it aside on some shelf to inspect later. Not ignored— it will wait for him to attend. He was in the middle of something, before Louis barged in with his foolishness. The night goes on, and Armand finishes this stage, and he smokes a third cigarette while watching the dawn. Still beautiful. He has imagined sunrise for so long as a still thing, seen only as paintings, single seconds captured for an eternity in impressions in oil and water.
It would look more impressive at night. Fireworks of the highest order. But that's needlessly dramatic, and this way, he can wait until neighbors upstairs have left for work. One captive becomes two, as though his control is a contagious disease. They both work to coat the entire unit in gasoline, to remove smoke detectors, to disable sprinkler heads. Furniture that would delay the spread of fire is shuffled to more advantageous positions, and the gas stove is turned on without striking the flame. It's an old building. Set to finally be upgraded to glass tops in a year. All the doors inside are open, but the front is locked and barricaded. One window in the bedroom is left cracked open to invite more oxygen.
Then they all wait.
A little after one pm, the landlord uses the last gas can to dunk his tenant in fuel, before holding it over his own head. It takes four tries with a matchbook, but it goes, and once it does it is instantaneous. Two humans cooked and killed, a quarter of the whole floor of a building is engulfed in an inferno. Windows melt and buckle and shatter. Only briefly the top domestic story in the 24 hour news cycle, but it's given frequent updates in asides and ticker crawls all day and onward.
There are some injuries from other residents. From pedestrians. The fire is so well-fueled it rages on and on, still smoldering into the evening. It's unlikely any deaths will be discovered for another few days; there's no telling when it'll be safe for firefighters to make the climb in. Armand watches it from some blocks away. A woman with short blonde hair, who seems familiar to him in an odd way, stands by him for a while before he realizes she handled their laundry services when they lived here last. It is awkward, but eventually, she hands him an envelope with phone numbers in it, and then takes her leave.
He considers it on his walk home. And he considers his next project. There have been potentials, ones he cast aside as his activities concerning Daniel have changed. One in particular stands out as the most— someone Armand has discarded due to the difficulty in moving him. It will take a week or more, to arrange it without causing alarm. But he accepts this. What is time, to a vampire?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
The burning feeling stings something deep. Armand grips the windowsill. He wants to assert— Yes, he has, yes, he has only reached out to Molloy, who isn't harmed, who is better, and Louis should be grateful because he didn't have to take this on himself. But this train of thought jumbles together with Armand imagining Louis having done it, they way they discussed, and it fills him with a bizarre and awful anxiety.
He tries to say 'Fine, have it your way', tries to concede, even lie about it. Just end this conversation and move on, be more careful. But anger stirs, then stirs a little more, and he touches the severed thing in his head left by Marius, who he knows isn't dead, and he compares it to the connection with his fledgling, his fledgling, and he feels nauseous.
'Yes.'
One word, and his distance remains, but he sounds angry. Yes, he has left Louis alone. Yes, he is still contacting Daniel sometimes, yes, he will continue, yes, he did all of it, yes, he knew the whole time.
no subject
Should he have understood this? That Armand is remote and unyielding?
They have been far from each other. But there had been enough. Just enough. Their love had been threadbare and fading, but it had held. Louis hadn't understood it was strung from a frame built upon a lie. It cannot stand without that fiction to keep it from unraveling.
A stretch of quiet. Not disconnection, only breathing. Louis' presence, pressed against stone.
Eventually, He wasn't yours to take.
And how much has been taken? Claudia. Seventy-seven years of Louis' life.
And Daniel. Daniel, who says he is fine. Who says he is happy.
no subject
A phantom impression of what once was. Louis, slumped against him. Armand, winding arms around shoulders, petting his hair, giving him shelter. He should tell him: I wanted it to be real. You used me as punishment, but I still wanted it to be real, and I tried. I failed. The broken part is me, it was never you.
Of course, this does not occur.
A funny little feeling, like laughter. Hysterical, sad. When did Armand decide Daniel was his? Recently? Years ago? Was it in San Francisco, using him like a doll? On a business trip in London, finding his face on a book staring out at him? Was it when he recognized the dialect of his prayers? Just now, because Louis is trying to deny him this possession?
Maybe Daniel would know. Armand finally lights a cigarette, instead of shredding it. The phantom impression fades away.
'It can't be undone.'
no subject
But even this, a true thing, twists like a knife in his chest.
No, nothing can be undone. True. But they know now, don't they, that Louis' responses are malleable? That Armand is capable of making Louis' reactions what he wishes?
It changes nothing.
Claudia is dead.
Daniel is a vampire.
And Armand lied. For seventy-seven years.
Louis, eyes closed, hands resting on the wrought iron of the balcony rails, feels the anger and grief of it all tearing through his chest all over again. Emotion too vast to contain. It spills through that yielding sense of his presence in Armand's mind, unchecked.
no subject
Louis won't understand that. Armand knows it's not acceptable reasoning; he knows, too, that his reasoning was not his only motivation. He wanted her, them gone, even though he wanted Louis. Louis disrupted his life. Louis told him he was good at running things, that he'd fix it, and it fell apart. Perhaps Armand shouldn't have bet on him at the end— he could have stopped the fire. He could have turned on Louis.
But he did love him. He did. So he holds where he is and endures this tidal wave of emotion, lets it burn over him, choke him, threaten to drown him. His breath shudders when he draws it in, his vision blurs and clouds, soft pink with the stinging threat of tears. Love of his life. That's what he put in Louis' mouth, about himself. That's what they were. What he wanted. There is still a cowardly, desperate part of him that would reach for it.
'You changed my life,' comes, in time. A murmured mental tone. 'That will be true forever. When I said I wanted you more than anything in the world, I meant it.'
Now? After nearly eighty years of what they put each other through? Maybe the Armand then still does. The Louis then. Paris, when they were just a little awkward, just a little star-crossed.
'I wanted to spare you from your pain and your anger. That I caused much of it seemed a poor excuse not to.'
His project settles into their old penthouse, in the dark. Sits down on the sofa that belongs to the current resident, asleep in the primary bedroom. His alarm will go off in an hour, in the dead of night. Stocks to be traded. Money waits for no mortal. Louis will think this project is about him. Armand recognizes this, especially now, but that's no reason to call it off. Another poor excuse.
no subject
The thing inside Louis that is still capable of falling into him, falling back to Armand. Wavers in the space where Louis' rage ends and grief begins.
But Claudia. Claudia.
Is the admission enough? If this can be counted as an admission. If it matters that it came only after Daniel had forced his hand.
If it matters that it comes on the heels of something that might be honest.
You changed me.
An echo. Subtle difference in the choice of words.
It will be true forever. No matter where I go, how long I live.
Armand's fingerprints, the impressions of his hands, Louis will carry them all his life. How his life has been changed. How he has been shaped, cultivated. The worrisome suspicions that they would still fit together neatly, regardless of the way Louis feels shattered into something new in these past weeks.
You took from me. You have taken from me, Armand.
Claudia. Lestat.
And in some tangled, complicated way, Daniel.
no subject
(Is Armand changed? Is he capable? Is there enough of him that exists at all?)
He picks around the proverbial edges of an apology. He understand this is where he should present one, that it is probably what Louis wants to hear. But the shape of it is difficult, and unfamiliar. Why does he owe Louis such prostration? After all he's done to make up for it? All he's done, and it hasn't been good enough. What good would an apology do, especially on he wouldn't really mean?
'I regret hurting you.'
That much, he means. He had meant it back then. He might have even let Lestat kill him in that tower, he meant it so much. But Lestat gave Louis to him, looked straight at him and allowed him to keep his lie. And Armand did keep it. Kept it safe, held carefully in a cage.
'I can't give you what you want.'
Not shelter from anger. Not Claudia restored. Not Daniel reverted. And not Daniel left to Louis—
His fledgling.
no subject
A word that falls between them, plummeting into empty space.
Louis, still a presence leaning against the barrier constructed between them, watching it go.
Won't, comes as a correction, harkening back to what they'd circled round and round on in those last days of the interview, all three of them trading back and forth Armand's explanation:
I could not prevent it.
Louis feels sick remembering how he had repeated those words, that justification. How long he had believed it.
no subject
'Can't and won't, is snapped, harder than he usually does, harder and sharper than he's been in years, in decades, a vicious edge to it. A sudden warning in preparation for the bite that comes too fast:
'If I could bring Claudia back I would just to shut you up about her.'
Can't.
'This thing now, this—' say something, what it is, say it, 'With Daniel', has Louis ever even heard Armand use his first name? How many times has Armand said it to his face? Once? Getting up from the floor where Louis left him, just then, I'm fine, Daniel, 'Is no longer your concern, and your requests and demands about him to me will be ignored.'
Won't.
no subject
An abrupt vanishing of emotion. Louis' presence winnowing down to something flat and colorless, a thin link threading between them. What's left of the bond, the thing Louis had once claimed to have been knitting anew. Stubbornly maintained, even as Louis' eyes open on the balcony.
Waits, one breath, then another, and another, until the knife twist of Claudia passes. The rail is bending under the grip of his palms, white-hot anger, agonizing grief, winding through Louis' body.
A moment where he considers walking out of this hotel room. Giving his answer in person.
It would horrify Daniel.
It would take too long.
There is no sense of proximity, even when Louis' voice returns. Remote. Dispassionate.
Marius De Romanus, who begat Armand. Armand, who begat Daniel Molloy.
Painful, to say this. Drawing the knife from his own belly to carry these words forward. This accusation.
I will not permit you this thing, Armand. Understand I am no longer making a request.
no subject
It feels good to know it landed. It feels horrible to know it landed.
'You aren't entitled to that anymore, either.'
No longer maitre. It hasn't been convenient in decades, hasn't been hot in more. Louis doesn't get to make demands of him, and Armand doesn't have to pretend that his threats are viable.
It is incidental, unavoidable, that Louis will think his current project will be about him. Armand considers this— but opts not to embellish it further. He is content with his plan, with the moving parts of it, the delicate set-up and impending payoff. A satisfying end to an itch for himself. But he knows, as he begins to withdraw from this foolish exchange, that he will do something about Louis with deliberation.
Molloy isn't about Louis. It may have started that way, spite, revenge, punishment, a bitter testament to Armand keeping his promises even when Louis breaks his, but it isn't anymore. He made this choice and it horrified him, but now he looks at it, this immortal arrow shot through Marius, through Armand, through Daniel, and he wants to follow the line of it. His blood, their blood. His fledgling. Their connection. He touches that bond again, a flexing thread of strangeness, of comfort.
'I've had enough for tonight. Goodbye, Louis.'
As easy as the shrug from before, Armand closes his mind, and no matter how hard Louis tries or how loud he screams, he will not be able to find him again. Straight to voicemail. He turns the whole phone off.
no subject
Perhaps not unlike standing on cold stone, looking upwards at bookshelves dangling out of reach.
Louis' whole body is flushed hot, responding to anger even if Louis' mind is slow to parse the dimensions of it.
He had felt so little for so long. Years and years of serenity, of calm. He has stepped back from himself now, aware that he is shaking. That he has ruined the rail of the balcony.
That Armand has left him with nothing but this, anger and guilt, a scream of reaction that can go nowhere at all.
The stinging invocation of what Louis had kept so private, a veil drawn down between their intimacy as it had existed outside of Paris. What they had built it into. What had fractured so instantly upon contact with the truth.
Louis tries briefly, uselessly, to find Armand's mind. Knows it is of little use. His gifts are what Armand made of them. The holes have ever been left for Armand's beneft. Finally, defeated, Louis lifts aching hands from the rail, observing how the metal has bent and warped under his grip.
He stands for a long time, listening to the minds of other vampires, the chill of the night air lowering the temperature of his body little by little, until the sound of Lestat and Daniel's return draws him away from contemplation of the void Armand left behind.
no subject
He does none of those things. Lets it go, sets it aside on some shelf to inspect later. Not ignored— it will wait for him to attend. He was in the middle of something, before Louis barged in with his foolishness. The night goes on, and Armand finishes this stage, and he smokes a third cigarette while watching the dawn. Still beautiful. He has imagined sunrise for so long as a still thing, seen only as paintings, single seconds captured for an eternity in impressions in oil and water.
It would look more impressive at night. Fireworks of the highest order. But that's needlessly dramatic, and this way, he can wait until neighbors upstairs have left for work. One captive becomes two, as though his control is a contagious disease. They both work to coat the entire unit in gasoline, to remove smoke detectors, to disable sprinkler heads. Furniture that would delay the spread of fire is shuffled to more advantageous positions, and the gas stove is turned on without striking the flame. It's an old building. Set to finally be upgraded to glass tops in a year. All the doors inside are open, but the front is locked and barricaded. One window in the bedroom is left cracked open to invite more oxygen.
Then they all wait.
A little after one pm, the landlord uses the last gas can to dunk his tenant in fuel, before holding it over his own head. It takes four tries with a matchbook, but it goes, and once it does it is instantaneous. Two humans cooked and killed, a quarter of the whole floor of a building is engulfed in an inferno. Windows melt and buckle and shatter. Only briefly the top domestic story in the 24 hour news cycle, but it's given frequent updates in asides and ticker crawls all day and onward.
There are some injuries from other residents. From pedestrians. The fire is so well-fueled it rages on and on, still smoldering into the evening. It's unlikely any deaths will be discovered for another few days; there's no telling when it'll be safe for firefighters to make the climb in. Armand watches it from some blocks away. A woman with short blonde hair, who seems familiar to him in an odd way, stands by him for a while before he realizes she handled their laundry services when they lived here last. It is awkward, but eventually, she hands him an envelope with phone numbers in it, and then takes her leave.
He considers it on his walk home. And he considers his next project. There have been potentials, ones he cast aside as his activities concerning Daniel have changed. One in particular stands out as the most— someone Armand has discarded due to the difficulty in moving him. It will take a week or more, to arrange it without causing alarm. But he accepts this. What is time, to a vampire?