It wasn't an addiction; he could stop any time he liked. The bright lights. The sterile organization. The shamelessly displayed opulence. He had money to spare, and spare it he did. The guestroom in their penthouse had been converted into a closet, which he'd filled from top to bottom. His treasures spilled over into other rooms, as well. He made regular donations to charity in order to fill the space once again.

Online shopping was a convenience he found disgustingly pleasurable, but it would never overtake the urge he had to endlessly peruse the aisle of store after store, touching things with the awed reverence of a child.

While he often found antique stores woefully depressing, preferring the sleek newness of department stores and boutiques, he'd wandered idly into a secondhand shop that had seemingly sprung up overnight in an empty retail space near the park.

Despite having only been open for a short time, it had the musty, lived-in stench that hovered within the walls of all such establishments. Dust and incense and floral potpourri. And with many such merchants, this shop had an abundance of dolls.

He found himself staring at one for an untold number of minutes. A porcelain manikin in cream silk with blush pink trim around an oversized bonnet. Golden hair, and nearly translucent skin. While it was not an exact duplicate, it was eerily like the one he'd gifted Claudia on her fifteenth birthday.

A gift which she had already outgrown; pale and regal and womanly as she would never be. It was a cruel gift, he saw now. He could not recall what possessed him to purchase such a thing, and Claudia, still exuberant and clinging to youth, had kissed his cheek in thanks. It would be years before she would begin rightfully to hate him.

Stepping forward, Lestat gripped the doll's fragile head within his hand and squeezed. It crumbled to powder and toppled to the linoleum floor.

"Hey!" Shouted a young woman manning the counter across the room. She came at him, fury in her eyes, but stopped dead when he turned on her and spoke a wordless warning:

See nothing, if you want to keep your life.

Placidly, she turned away, and gathering himself, Lestat swept out of the store and into the night.

Claudia...

Claudia, who was now dead. Even if he had not learned the truth from Daniel's book, he would've known it to be true. He'd known from the start that the madness that claimed so many of their kind would take her, sooner rather than later. The madness which consumed Nicki and nearly took his Louis. The madness which threatened him, when he was at his loneliest.

And now, he'd doomed another to that fate. Eddie, who seemed to have taken his transformation in such stride, but who clung to humanity in a way that could only end in disaster. He saw it, again and again, and yet he had not been able to stop himself.

Selfish. Evil.

Lurching down the sidewalk, he came upon a young man, ruddy and full of life, and was on him in an instant, dragging the boy into the darkness of an alley and draining the life from him. For a moment, he was satisfied. Bolstered. The natural order, righted.

But as he pulled back to look down upon the boy's face, now pale and his eyes glassy in death, Lestat felt a cold terror grip him. Terror of the act. Terror of himself. Revolted, he nearly abandoned the corpse where he stood, at risk of exposing himself and his kind to the ire of those who might want revenge for such a crime.

And that would be just, would it not?

[[Lestat having a little crisis. Find him in the antique shop, or witness his murder of an NPC, or really any time before, after, or in-between. Open to all. Oh, and this is obviously timed to after dark.]]