Merrick

Louis de Pointe du Lac has never stopped grieving Claudia, the child vampire he lost long ago. He wants to speak with her ghost, and he turns to David Talbot, former head of the Talamasca, for help.

David leads him to New Orleans and to Merrick Mayfair, a young witch whose family is steeped in voodoo and the occult. David narrates, going back to the years when he knew Merrick first as a gifted girl and later as a scholar of the Talamasca.

The search for Claudia starts in the streets of New Orleans and ends in a cave deep in the Central American jungle. The spirits there are hostile, and the magic is dangerous for everyone who uses it.

The second half turns on two questions: how much the reunion takes from Louis, and why Merrick wanted the two vampires at her side from the start.

Merrick is the seventh book in The Vampire Chronicles. It also draws on the Lives of the Mayfair Witches, and joins the two series.