"Carlisle," I asked, sliding into his study. I knocked once and he told me to enter without speaking a word. "Who is Lestat?"
He brought his hands together, resting his fingers against his forehead.
"So, you have met Lestat…" Carlisle said aloud.
"In New Orleans," I said, taking a step forward. "I heard him playing."
I was walking down a shady street in the Garden District when I heard it… the throbbing, frantic pace as fingers flew across the strings… it was Mozart. It was furious, melodic, perfect.
Only a vampire could play like that. Precise. Echoing. Dripping with emotion, longing, regret. He reeled me in. I turned down a cobbled walkway, around the porch of a dimly lit white house, flocked with hydrangeas. He had Esme's flair for landscaping.
And then I saw him. His shaggy blonde hair thrashed as his head moved with the violin. His fingers flew along the frets, striking even faster than my own could. And his eyes burned… but green. Deep emerald green as he swayed in time with his song…
I wanted to play with him.
"Hello…" I said, feeling slightly ashamed of my human greeting. "I couldn't help myself…" I cocked my head and gave him a crooked smile.
The blonde vampire raised an eyebrow at me, tossing his hair, and played faster, more ferocious. Even my ears could barely keep pace with his song.
He stopped abruptly. Chuckling before locking his eyes with my own.
"I am Lestat," he said. "You must belong to Carlisle…"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
He gestured toward a piano beyond the threshold of the patio, inside the house. "Sit, Edward," the stranger said.
I pulled the bench from the piano and rested at its center. I made a show of flexing my vampire knuckles, an obvious inanity for us both. He blinked, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. I was cautious. He knew more than he should. More than I was comfortable with.
But I couldn't keep my fingers from its keys. I felt my muscles rippling with the urgency of the music that Lestat suddenly ripped from the violin.
We played in tandem, music I had never even imagined – succulent harmony. The moon moved across the sky as we played.
Abruptly at the end of a song, I stood.
"Thank you," I said to the man, noticing for the first time he was dressed in dark leather pants and a sheer, short-sleeved shirt – as if he were a rock star. "I should be getting home to my wife."
I thought of Bella's soft, chestnut waves. I would have blushed if I could. I felt scrutinized under his gaze. Why did I care what he thought of me?
"Nonsense," Lestat sneered. "Your human is a delight, I'm sure. But you and I... How often do vampires have a lust for performance before blood?"
I stared at him dumbfounded… He was obviously an ancient. His hair glittered like gold. His skin glistened like marble. He breathed music. But something about him seemed older than even the Volturi.
Music lust. Blood was an afterthought.
Who was this vampire? Why did he know me? How did he know Bella was human?
I didn't linger to ask. I turned and walked the way I came, back to the sidewalk, where I finally took a deep breath, inhaling the flowers that hung heavy in the humid New Orleans air. When I got back to the house where Bella slept, I packed our things. I told her we were leaving when she woke, and she didn't question why. Bella sometimes knew what I needed without me having to explain. I sighed in her arms.
And we returned to the gray damp of Washington. Home. Where I could ask Carlisle about the vampire… Lestat.
