by Rice, Anne
"Where is Mona!" she demanded. Her husky voice had never been more effective. "You think I don't know you took her away from Blackwood Manor? I was there first thing this morning, as soon as I could get away from the Medical Center. Clem drove the three of you to the Ritz Hotel last night. I went to the Ritz Hotel. No Mona. No Quinn either. And no Lestat de Lioncourt. That's the name you signed in Aunt Queen's funeral book, isn't it? I checked the spelling and your flamboyant handwriting. You like signing your name, don't you?-
"-And you have such a lovely French accent, oh, yes. Where is Mona right now, Monsieur de Lioncourt? What in the name of Heaven is going on? Why are you asking questions about Stella? You think I don't know that you're behind everything that's happening? Jasmine and Big Ramona think you're some sort of foreign prince, with your melodious French accent and your mind reading gifts and your exorcism to rid the house of ghosts and spirits. And oh, yes, Aunt Queen absolutely adored you! But you sound more like Rasputin to me! You can't just steal Mona from me! You can't!"
A stinging hurt spread through me, over my face, my skin. I'd never felt anything quite like it.
Julien was back there, in the shadows, laughing cruelly, collecting just a seam of the light along the edge of his face and form.
Michael was on his feet and so was Stirling.
"Rowan, please, honey," Michael said, trying to calm her. He seemed hesitant to touch her, hesitant to enclose her with his arms, though this might have been welcomed by her.
"I've told you all I know," I said. I stammered.
"Let me see you out," said Stirling. I felt his hand on my arm.
"You tell Mona we love her," said Michael.
"Is Mona afraid of us?" Rowan whispered. The anguish inside her defeated her anger. She drew close to
me. "She's afraid of us now, isn't she?" She and Mona, a shared history of horrors. Yes, an unbreakable link. Child. Woman Child. Morrigan. No admissions and explanations. Just an image. The same image I'd seen in the Blood. Woman Child. "I demand that you tell me! Is she afraid!"
"No," I said. I reached forward right through the aura of palpable power that surrounded her. I put my hands on her arms. Vague binding shock. To Hell with Michael. But Michael didn't stop me. "Not anymore," I said, peering into Rowan's eyes. "Mona's not afraid of anything. Oh, if only I could give you some peace of mind. I wish I could. Please, please wait for her to call you, and don't think about her anymore."
I felt her strength recede, and her eyes misted. A great glowing fire was quelled, and I had done it, and an ever present grief enfolded it. A protective surge rose in me and the wild fantasies reigned again inside of me as if no one else was present.
I let her go.
I turned and I left the company.
Behind me the ghost whispered contemptuously, "You're not a gentleman, you never were!"
I muttered all the obscenities I knew in French and English in a tight whisper.
I walked a little too fast for Stirling. But we came together at the front doors of the house.
Rush of sweet warm air. The night was purring and grinding with the tree frogs and the cicadas. I defy a
ghost to distract me from this! The sky was rosey and it would be all night. I closed my eyes and let the
warm air hold me close and lovingly and totally.
The warm air didn't care whether or not I was a gentleman, which I was not.
"What are you doing with Rowan?" Stirling demanded.
"What are you, her older brother?" I shot back.
We walked across the paved porch and onto the drive. Fragrance of grass. Roar of the River Road traffic
as sweet as the roar of water.
"Perhaps I am her brother," he said shortly, "but I mean it. What are you doing?"
"Good God, man," I replied. "Night before last you told Quinn that Mona was dying. What was your
motive? Weren't you tempting him to go to her? He didn't, as it turned out, but you were tempting him,
goading him to use his power, to bring her over. Don't deny it. You provoked him. You with all your
records. Your volumes. Your studies. Quinn had fed on you, almost taken you. I saved your life, man.
You who knew. And now you question me for a little word game with a mortal who detests me?"
"All right," he said, "so in the back of my mind I abhorred the fact that Mona was dying, that Mona was
desperate, and that Mona was so young, and I believed in sinister fairy tales and magic blood! But that
woman is not dying. She is the magnate of her family. And she knows something's profoundly wrong
with you. And you're playing with her."
"Not so! Leave me alone!"
"I will not. You can't entice her-."
"I'm not enticing her!"
"Did you see Stella?" he asked. "Is that who's haunting you?"
"Don't go back to a civil tone with me," I scolded. "Yes, I saw Stella. Did you think that was all part of a
game? I saw her in the little sailor dress and she jumped into my lap. They were in my town house in the Rue Royale, both of them, Julien and Stella, with a whole crowd of people. Julien was out there in your fine little conservatory, taunting me. But in my flat last night, they said threatening things to me. Threatening things! Oh, I don't know why I'm telling you."
"Yes, you do," he answered.
"I've got to get back to the intrepid wanderers," I said. I took a deep breath.
"Threatening things?" he asked. "What threatening things did they say to you?"
"Oh, God in Heaven!" I said. "If only I were Juan Diego."
"Who is Juan Diego?" he asked.
"Maybe nobody," I said sadly. "But then again, maybe somebody, maybe somebody very very
important!" and I went away.
I WENT UP HIGH in the air. I traveled fast-faster than a ghost, or so I figured. I drifted above the city of New Orleans, lulled by its lights and its voices. I wondered how Mona would handle this power, if she'd be weeping again. I let myself believe there were no ghosts who could touch me up here or anywhere if I used all my considerable powers, no ghosts who could make me afraid.
I said No to hunger. I said to thirst Be still.
I slipped down silently into the realm of my fellow creatures.
I caught sight of Quinn in the Rue Royale, pulling behind him a pile of suitcases, all dependent upon one huge rectangular bag equipped with excellent little wheels. He was whistling a melody by Chopin and walking very briskly, and I fell into stride beside him.
"You're the most dashing man on the street, Little Brother," I said. "What's with all the suitcases?"
"Are you going to let us stay at the flat, Beloved Boss?" he asked. His eyes were fired with love. In our short acquaintance, I'd never seen him so happy. In fact, I'd never seen him happy before at all. "What do you think?" he asked. "Do we crowd you? Do you want us out?"
"Not at all, I want you there," I replied. "I should have told you." We walked along together, me trying to keep up with his long legs. "I'm the worst of hosts and Coven Masters, to use the old lingo. Not a gentleman. A thoroughgoing Rasputin. Settle in. You had Clem bring clothes to the Ritz? (Yes.) Clever. Where's Princess Mona right now?"
"In the bedroom, working on the computer we bought at sunset, first thing she had to have," he said with an airy gesture. "She's recording every experience, every sensation, every subtle distinction, every revelation-."
"I get it," I said. "Hmmm. You've both fed."
He nodded. "Greedily, among despicable wretches, though I had to oversee the operation somewhat. She falls into states of utter paralysis. Perhaps if I wasn't there she wouldn't. Physically she's stronger than I am. I think it confuses her. It was a couple bums back of town, both drunk, nothing to it."
"But it was her first human victim," I said. "Particulars."
"The men were unconscious, it was a cinch for her. She's yet to confront the living breathing struggling type."
"All right, th
at can wait. As regards her being stronger than you, you know I can level the playing ground," I said quietly. "I don't share the gift of my blood with many. But I'll share it again with you." Was there anything in the world I wouldn't have done for Quinn?
"I know that," he answered. "God, I love her. I love her so much it's overtaken everything else in my mind. I don't even think about Goblin being gone. I thought when Goblin was actually gone I'd suffer some crippling emptiness. I was sure of it. It seemed bound to happen. But Mona's the partner of my soul, Lestat, just the way I used to dream it would be when we first met, when we were both kids, before the Blood ever came between us."
"That's the way it's supposed to work, Quinn," I said. "And Blackwood Farm? Have you any news?"
It was fun walking along the street again. Feet on the summer pavements with the heat of the sun still rising from them.
"Perfect," said Quinn. "Tommy's staying the week. I'll be able to see him before he goes back to England. I wish he didn't have to go to school in England. Of course, they're making calls to anyone or everyone connected to Patsy. It's the damned medicine. I should have gathered up her medicine and thrown it in the swamp with her. Then they would have assumed that she'd run away. I told them again that I murdered her. Jasmine just laughed. She said she wished she could murder Patsy right now. I think the only one who loves her, really loves her, is Cyndy, the Nurse."
I pondered the matter, perhaps for the first time since Quinn had done it only a few nights before. A body couldn't survive being dumped in Sugar Devil Swamp. Too many gators. It made me smile bitterly to remember that once others had tried to dispose of me in just the same way. But poor dead Patsy had lacked my resources when she tumbled down into the darkness. Her soul had fled to the Totality of Salvation, of course.
We walked on together through a crush of valiant tourists. The town was drippingly hot.
Last week at this very time I'd been a wanderer, hopelessly without companions, and then Quinn had come into my life, with a letter in his pocket, needing my help, and Stirling had tiptoed into my flat, daring me to discover him, and soon all of Blackwood Manor had materialized around me, Stirling became a player in my life, Aunt Queen had been cruelly lost on the very night I'd made her acquaintance, and then our beloved Merrick, gone from us, and now I was being drawn into the knowledge of the Mayfairs, and I was what? Scared?
Come on, Lestat. You can tell me the truth. I'm your own self, remember? I was darkly and passionately thrilled by all this, and I felt those chills again, merely thinking of Rowan berating me with all that heat only an hour ago.
And then there was Julien, who just wasn't going to appear right now and run the risk of Quinn seeing him too. I searched the early evening crowds. Where are you, you wretched coward, cheap second-rate phantom, accused blunderer?
Quinn turned his head just a little, never breaking his stride. "What was that? You were thinking about
Julien."
"I'll tell you all of it later," I said, and I meant it. "But let me ask you, you know, about the time you saw
the ghost of Oncle Julien?"
"Yeah?"
"What vibe did you get in your secret soul? Good ghost? Bad ghost?"
"Hmmm, well, good, obviously. Trying to tell me I had Mayfair genes. Trying to save Mona from me,
trying to keep us from breeding some awful mutation, which occurs now and then in the Mayfair family.
A benign ghost. I've told you the whole story."
"Yes, of course," I replied. "A benign ghost and an awful mutation. Has Mona mentioned the mutation?
The lost child?"
"Beloved Boss, what's bothering you?"
"Nada," I said.
Now just wasn't the time to tell him. . . . We reached the town house. The guards gave us a friendly nod. I gave them a generous tip. It was, for
mortal men in long-sleeved shirts, quite unbearably hot.
We could hear the clacking of the computer keys as we went up the iron stairs. Then the low chatter of
the printer.
Mona came charging out of the bedroom clothed in last night's white duds, page in hand.
"Listen to this," she said. " 'Though this experience is undeniably evil, in that it involves predation upon
other human beings, it is without question a mystical experience.' So, what do you think?"
"That's all you've written?" I asked. "That's one paragraph. Write some more."
"Okay." She ran back into the bedroom. Clack went the keys. Quinn followed her with the luggage. He winked at me, smiling.
I went into my bedroom, which was opposite theirs, shut the door, hit the button for the overhead light, and peeled off all my clothes with a shudder of utter disgust, threw them into the bottom of the armoire, put on a brown cotton turtleneck, black pants, and a lightweight black silk and linen jacket with a highly visible weave, a pair of completely smooth black shoes which had never been worn and looked like a modern sculpture, combed my hair until there was no dust in it and then stood there, awash in a moment of total stillness.
Then I stretched out on my bed. Satin tufted tester above me. Satin counterpane below. Fairly shadowy. I turned my face into the down pillows, of which I always had a sizable heap, and with all my muscles sort of scrunched up against the modern world.
Not a masculine thing to do, not a macho posture, not a show of strength to otherworldly entities, not a take-charge attitude at all.
I was comforted by the sound of Mona's clicking away, the low note of Quinn's voice. Footsteps on the boards.
But nothing could take the edge off Rowan's angry words, those eyes like hematite, her entire frame trembling with her passion as she accused me. How could Michael Curry stay so close to that blaze and not get scorched?
Suddenly, there was an agitation in me so great that only lying alone, scrunched up on the bed, could comfort me. Sleep. Sleep, but I could not. They weren't wicked enough for me, Quinn and Mona. No one was. I wasn't wicked enough for me!
And I had to see if the ghosts would come.
A clock ticked somewhere. A clock with a painted face and curlicue hands. Not a huge clock. A clock that with its whole soul knew only how to tick and might tick for centuries, maybe had ticked for centuries, a clock to which people would look, and which people would dust, and which people wound with a key, and which people might come to love; a clock somewhere in this flat, perhaps in the back parlor, the only piece of all this furniture that could talk. I heard it. I knew what it was saying. Its code was lovely to me.
There was a knock at the door. Funny. It sounded as if it was right by my ear.
"Come in," I said. Damn fool that I am. But I wasn't fooled by the sounds I heard. That wasn't the door
opening. That wasn't the door being clicked shut.
Julien stood at the foot of the bed. He came walking up along the side. Julien in his downtown black
tailcoat and white tie, hair very white under the chandelier. His eyes were black. I'd thought they were
gray.
"Why did you knock?" I asked. "Why don't you just tear my world to pieces instead?"
"I didn't want you to forget your manners again," he said in perfect French. "You're atrocious when you're
ill-mannered."
"What do you want? To make me suffer? Join the crowd. I've been tormented by much stronger creatures
than you."
"You haven't begun to understand what I can do," he said.
"You made a 'disastrous mistake.' What was it?" I asked. "I wonder: do you even know?"
He paled. His placid face became visibly enraged.
"Who sends you here to play with the living?"
"You're not the living!" he said.
"Temper, temper," I said mockingly.
He was too angry to speak. It made him all the more vivid, blanched though he was with anger. Or was it
sorrow? I couldn't bear the thought of sorrow. I had enough sorrow.
"You want her?" I
asked. "Then tell her yourself."
He didn't reply.
I shrugged as best I could, being all snuggled up on the counterpane.
"I can't tell her," I said. "Who am I to say, 'Julien says you should expose yourself to the sun and thereby
enter into the Totality of Salvation.' Or is it possible that my questions of last night were more than pertinent and you don't know where you come from? Maybe there is no Totality of Salvation. No Saint Juan Diego. Maybe you just want her with you in a spirit world where you wander, waiting for somebody who can see you, somebody like Quinn or even Mona herself or me. Is that it? She's supposed to want to be a ghost? I am showing you my best manners. This is my most polite voice. My mother and father would be pleased."
There was a real knock on the door.
He vanished. I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Had Stella been sitting to my left all this time?Mon Dieu! I was going mad all right.
"Coward," I whispered.
I sat up and crossed my legs, Indian style. "Come in," I said.
Mona burst into the room, dressed in a fresh long-sleeved rose-colored silk dress and rose satin stacked heels, a quivering page of paper once more held aloft.
"Hit me with it," I declared.
" 'It is my ultimate goal to transmute this experience into a level of life participation which is worthy of the immense powers that have been bequeathed to me by Lestat, a level of life experience which knows no moral shrinking from the most obvious yet painful theological questions which my transfigured state has made utterly inescapable, the first of which is, obviously, How does God view my essential being? Am I human and vampire? Or vampire only? That is, is damnation, and I speak now not of a literal Hell with flames, but of a state which is defined by the absence of God-is damnation implicit and inherent in what I am, or do I still exist in a relativistic universe in which I may attain grace on the same terms as humans can attain it, by participating in the Incarnation of Christ, an historical event in which I totally believe, in spite of the fact that it is not philosophically fashionable, though what questions of fashion have to do with me now in this transcendent and often luminous condition is moot.' " She looked at me. "What do you think?"
