He'd meant it as a question of verification, back to that ask me something only I would know bit. Gabriel's reply more than covers it, though, as well as makes his appearance all the more disturbing. Where before Peter had merely been looking at some stranger, now he's suddenly filled with the urge to edge away.

Or he would do, if his brain wasn't busy playing the last few words of Gabriel's first comment back over and over like a scratched record. Lestat. Bloody stupid fiction it may be, but Peter read the entire Vampire Chronicles several times over as a teenager (though inexplicably to the few gothy friends he'd had at the time, he'd detested all the protagonists).

"This is a dream, isn't it?" he asks urgently, visibly upset about something.