"Open," Lestat says, after a long moment of deliberation after her final question, his smile twisted strangely.

It's not one of his fey smiles, or the falsely innocent ones, or a glimmer of dark malice. It's almost entirely human, like the look he had when they discussed Claudia.

"My ears." He crosses back to the axe, picking it up lightly. "I could hear a whisper through a storm - each instrument in an orchestra as if it played alone, the quaver of every string of a violin - the breath of the city in the streets as I walked them, sighing in its dreams. My own little prize."