Keenly, I felt her need of me, as vividly as if I'd never felt it before.
"I love you too much to leave you," I said quickly, the words rolling from me before I thought of precisely what they meant. And then as suddenly: "I'll never leave you, I swear it."
"My dear, my lovely dear," she said, musing, her left hand playing with the cameos, lining up Rebecca at the Well, one, two, three, four and five.
"They have no taint, Aunt Queen," I said looking at those particular cameos, remembering discordantly but quite definitely that a ghost can wear a cameo. I wondered, Did a ghost have a choice? Did a ghost pillage its trunks in the attic?
Aunt Queen nodded and smiled. "My boy, my beautiful Little Boy," she said. Then she looked to Lestat again. His demeanor, his kindliness towards her had not changed one jot.
"You know, Lestat, I can't travel anymore," she said quite seriously, her words saddening me. "And sometimes I have the horrid thought that my life is finished. I must realize that I'm eighty-five. I can't wear my beloved high heels any longer, at least not out of this room."
She looked down at her feet, which we could still plainly see, at the vicious sequined shoes of which she was so proud.
"It's even an undertaking to go into New Orleans to the jewelers who know I'm a collector," she pressed on. "Though I have out back at all times the biggest stretch limousine imaginable, certainly the biggest limousine in the parish, and gentlemen to drive me and accompany me and Jasmine, darling Jasmine of course. But where are you these days, Quinn? It seems if I do wake at a civil hour and make some appointment you can't be found."
I was in a haze. It was a night for shame and more shame. I felt as cut off from her as I was near to her, and I thought of Stirling again, of the taste of his blood and how close I had come to swallowing his soul, and I wondered again if Lestat had worked some magic on both of us -- Aunt Queen and me -- to make us feel so totally without guile.
But I liked it. I trusted Lestat, and a sudden mad thought came to me, that if he was going to hurt me, he would never have gone so far in listening to Aunt Queen.
Aunt Queen went on with a lovely animation, her voice more pleasant though the words were still sad.
"And so I sit here with my little talismans," she said, "and I watch my old movies, hoping that Quinn will come, but understanding if he doesn't." She gestured to the large television to our left. "I try not to think bitterly about my weaknesses. Mine has been a rich, full life. And my cameos make me happy. The pure obsession with them makes me happy. It always has, really. I've collected cameos since that long-ago day. Can you see what I mean?"
"Yes," said Lestat, "I understand you perfectly. I'm glad that I met you. I'm glad to be received in your house."
"That's a quaint way to put it," she said, obviously charmed by him, and her smile brightened and so did her deep-set eyes. "But you are most graciously welcome here."
"Thank you, Madam," Lestat replied.
"Aunt Queen, my darling," she pressed.
"Aunt Queen, I love you," he responded warmly.
"You go now, both of you," she said. "Quinn, put the chairs back because you're big and strong, and Jasmine will have to drag them over the carpet, and you are free, both of you, my young ones, and I am so put out that I have ended this spirited conversation on a sad note."
"On a grand note," said Lestat, rising, as I took both the chairs easily and returned them to the writing table. "Don't think I haven't been honored by your confidences," he went on. "I've found you a grand lady, if you'll forgive me, an entrancing lady indeed."
She broke into a delighted riff of laughter, and as I came around in front of the table again and saw her shoes glittering there as if her feet were immortal and could carry her anywhere, I suddenly detached from all decorum and went down on my knees and bent my lips to kiss her shoes.
This I had done often with her; in fact, I had caressed her shoes and kissed them to tease her, and liked the feel of her arch in them, and I kissed that too, the thin nylon-covered skin, often and now, but for me to do it in front of Lestat was outrageously amusing to her. And on and on she laughed in a lovely soft high laugh that made me think of a crowded silver belfry against the blue sky gone quite wild.
As I climbed to my feet, she said:
"You go on now. I officially release you from attendance. Be off."
I went to kiss her again, and her hand on my neck felt so delicate. A ripping sense of mortality weakened me. The words she'd spoken about her age echoed in my ears. And I was aware of a hot mixture of emotions - -that she had always made me feel safe, but now I didn't feel that she herself was safe, and so my sadness was strong.
Lestat made her a little bow, and we left the room.
Jasmine was waiting in the hallway, a warm patient shadow, and she asked where in the house I might be. Her sister, Lolly, and their grandmother Big Ramona, were in the kitchen, ready to prepare anything we might want.
I told her we didn't need anything just now. Not to worry. And that I was going up to my rooms.
She confirmed for me that Aunt Queen's nurse would come later, a ray of sunshine with a blood-pressure cup by the name of Cindy, with whom Aunt Queen would probably watch the movie of the night, which had already been announced as Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott. Jasmine, Lolly and Big Ramona would of course watch the movie as well.
If Aunt Queen had her way, and there was no reason to think she couldn't, there might be another couple of nurses in the room for the movie too. It was her habit to make fast friends of her nurses, to inspect photographs of their children, and receive birthday cards from them, and to gather as many such young attendants around her as she could.
Naturally, she had her own friends, scattered about through the woods and up and down the country roads, in town and out of it, but they were as old as she was and could hardly come out to spend the night with her in her room. Those ladies and gentlemen she met at the country club for luncheon. The night belonged to her and her court.
That I had been a constant courtier before the Dark Blood was a fact. But since that time I'd come and gone irregularly, a monster among innocents, beleaguered and angered by the scent of blood.
And so Lestat and I left her, and the night -- though I had almost murdered Stirling, and had fed without conscience on an anonymous woman, and had attended Aunt Queen in her storytelling -- was actually quite young.
Lestat and I approached the staircase and he made a sign for me to lead the way.
For a moment I thought I heard the rustle of Goblin. I thought I felt his indefinable presence. I stood stock-still, wishing with all my heart for him to get away from me, as far away from me as if he were Satan.
Were the curtains of the parlor moving? I thought I heard the faint music of the baubles of the chandeliers. What a concert they could make if they all shivered together. And he had done such tricks, perhaps without deliberation, because he who had once been so silent now came and went with a bit of clumsiness, perhaps more than he could ever know.
Whatever the case, he was not near me now.
No spirits, no ghosts. Only the clean cooled air of the house as it came through the vents with the soft sound of a low breeze.
"He's not with us," said Lestat quietly.
"You know that for certain?" I asked.
"No, but you do," he replied.
He was right.
I led the way up the curving staircase. I felt sharply that for better or worse, I would now have Lestat to myself.
6
THE UPPER HALL HAD three doors on the right wall, and, due to the staircase rising against the left wall, only two on that side. The first door on the left led into my apartment, which was two rooms deep, and the last door on the left led to the bedroom on the rear of the house.
Lestat asked if he might see any rooms, and I told him that he could see most of them. Two of the three bedrooms on the right were uninhabited right now --one belonging to my little Uncle Tommy, who was away at boa
rding school in England, and the other always reserved for his sister Brittany -- and were kind of fancy showpieces, each with its ornate nineteenth-century four-poster bed, ritual baldachin, velvet or taffeta hangings and comfortable though fancy chairs and couches, much like those in Aunt Queen's bedroom downstairs.
In the third room, which was off limits, there hovered my mother, Patsy, whom I hoped we would not see.
Each marble mantelpiece -- one snow white and the other of black and gold -- had its distinct detail, and there were gilded mirrors wherever one turned, and those huge proud portraits of ancestors -- William and his wife, pretty Grace; Gravier and his wife, Blessed Alice; and Thomas, my Pops, and Sweetheart, my grandmother, whose real name had been Rose.
The ceiling lights were gasoliers, with brass arms and cut crystal cups for their bulbs, more ordinary yet more atmospheric than the sumptuous crystal chandeliers of the first floor.
As to the last bedroom on the left, it too was open and neatened and fine, but it belonged to my tutor, Nash Penfield, who was presently completing some work for his Ph.D. in English at a university on the West Coast. He had always cooperated with the four-poster bed and its ruffles of blue silk, his desk was clean and bare and waiting for him and his walls, very much like mine, were lined with books. His fireplace, like mine, had a pair of damask chairs facing each other, elegant and well worn.
"The guests were always on the right side of the hallway," I explained, "in the old hotel days, and here in Nash's room, my grandparents slept -- Sweetheart and Pops. Nash and I spent the last year or so reading Dickens to each other. I tread anxiously with him, but so far things have worked out."
"But you love this man, don't you?" Lestat asked. He followed me into the bedroom. He politely inspected the shelves of books.
"Of course I love him. But he may sooner or later know something's very wrong with me. So far I've had very good luck."
"These things depend a lot on nerve," said Lestat. "You'd be amazed what mortals will accept if you simply behave as if you're human. But then you know this, don't you?"
He returned to the bookshelves respectfully, removing nothing, only pointing.
"Dickens, Dickens and more Dickens," he said, smiling. "And every biography of the man ever written, it seems."
"Yes," I said, "and I read him aloud to Nash, novel after novel, some right there by the fireplace. We read them all through, and then I would just dip down into any book -- The Old Curiosity Shop or Little Dorrit or Great Expectations -- and the language, it was delicious, it would dazzle me, it was like you said to Aunt Queen. You said it so very right. It was like dipping into a universe, yes, you had it." I broke off. I realized I was still giddy from being with Aunt Queen, from the way he had been in attendance on her; and as for Nash, I missed him and wanted him so to come back.
"He was a superb teacher," ventured Lestat gently.
"He was my tutor in every subject," I confessed. "If I can be called a learned man, and I don't know that I can, it's on account of three teachers I've had -- a woman named Lynelle and Nash and Aunt Queen. Nash taught me how to really read, and how to see films, and how to see a certain wonder even in science, which I in fact fear and detest. We seduced him away from his college career, with a high salary and a grand tour of Europe, and we're much better off for it. He used to read to Aunt Queen, which she just loved."
I went to the window, which looked out on the flagstone terrace behind the house and the distant two-story building that ran some two hundred feet across. A porch ran along the upper story of the building, with broadly positioned colonettes supporting it from the ground floor.
"Out there's the shed, as we call it," I explained, "and we call our beloved farmhands the Shed Men. They're the handymen and the errand men, the drivers, and the security men, and they hang out back there in their own den.
"There's Aunt Queen's big car, and my car -- which I don't use anymore. I can hear the Shed Men now. I'm sure you can. There're always two on the property. They'll do anything in this world for Aunt Queen. They'll do anything in this world for me."
I continued:
"Upstairs, you see the doors, those are small bedrooms, small compared to these, I mean, though just as well furnished with the four-poster beds and antique chests and Aunt Queen's adored satin chairs. Guests used to stay out there too in the old days, for less of course than they paid to stay in the big house.
"And that's where my mother, Patsy, used to stay when I was growing up. Patsy lived out there ever since I could remember. Down below is where she first practiced her music, over to the left side, that was her garage -- Patsy's studio -- but she doesn't practice anymore and she's in the front bedroom now just down the hall. She's rather sick these days."
"You don't love her, do you?" Lestat asked.
"I'm very afraid of killing her," I said.
"Come again?" he asked.
"I'm very afraid of killing her," I said. "I despise her, and I want to kill her. I dream about it. I wish I didn't. It's just a bad thought that's come into my head."
"Then come, Little Brother, take me to where you want to talk," he said, and I felt the soft squeeze of his fingers on my arm.
"Why are you so kind to me?" I asked him.
"You're used to people being paid to do it, aren't you?" he asked. "You've never been too sure about Nash, have you? Whether he would love you half so much if he weren't paid?" His eyes swept the room as though the room were talking to him about Nash.
"A big salary and benefits can confuse a person," I said. "It doesn't always bring out the best, I don't think. But in Nash's case? I think it did. It's taken him four years to write his dissertation, but it's a fine one, and after he passes his examinations he'll be satisfied." My voice was quavering. I hated it. "He'll feel that he's independent of us, and that will be good. He'll come back and be Aunt Queen's companion and escort. He'll read to her again. You know she can't really read now. She'll adore it. I can't wait for it to happen for her sake. He'll take her anywhere she wants to go. It's all for her sake. He's a handsome man."
"You're facing mighty temptations," Lestat said, his eyes narrowing as he appraised me.
"Mighty temptations?" I asked. I was shocked and even a little revolted. "You don't think I'd feed off those I love, do you? I mean, I know I made this colossal mistake with Stirling, it was god-awful what I did; Stirling came within a hairsbreadth, but I was caught off guard and I was frightened, frightened that Stirling knew what I was, and knew me, you understand, and that Stirling understood --." Off guard. Bloody wedding dress, bloody bride. You fool, you're not supposed to kill them when they're innocent, and on this her wedding night. She's the only bride you'll ever have.
"That wasn't my meaning," Lestat replied. He brought me back to myself, out of my anguish.
"Come. To your room now, correct, Little Brother? Where we can talk. And you have a two-room apartment against the stairs."
A calm came over me along with a quiet happy expectation, as though he had enforced it.
He led the way and I came quietly behind.
We went into my sitting room, which was on the front of the house, and we had a good view of my bedroom through the open sliding double doors, and there was my enormous and regal bed, the baldachin padded in red satin, and the matching red chairs, thick and inviting, scattered from bedroom to sitting room, and between the front windows of the sitting room, my computer and desk. The giant television, to which I was as addicted as anybody, was catercorner, near the inside wall.
Beneath the gasolier stood the center table with its two chairs facing each other, and this was where I often sat, upright and very comfortable, to read. I wrote here in my diary while I was watching television with one eye. This was where I wanted to be with Lestat. Not in the two chairs by the fireplace, which was dead this time of year.
I saw at once that my computer had been turned on.
Lestat sensed that I was alarmed and then he too saw the message floating in green bl
ock type on the black monitor:
NO LESTAT.
The very sight of it sent a jolt through me, and I went at once to the machine and turned it off.
"From Goblin," said Lestat, and I nodded, as I stood sentinel waiting for the machine to be switched on again, but it was not.
A violent series of chills passed over me. I turned around. I was vaguely aware that Lestat stood on the opposite side of the center table and that he was watching me, but I could scarcely pay any attention. The heavy draperies of the front windows were swaying, and the gasolier above me had started to move. There was that faint tinkling music from the glass cups and their baubles. My vision was clouded.
"Get away from me," I whispered. "I won't see you, I'll shut my eyes, I swear it." And I did it, screwing my eyes tight as any little child pretending to sleep, but I lost my balance and I had to open my eyes before I fell.
I saw Goblin standing to my right, opaque, detailed, my duplicate -- and the computer was on and the keyboard was clicking, and a series of nonsense syllables were jabbering across the monitor while a vague rumble came from the small computer speakers.
I tried to shut my eyes again, but I was too seduced by him, his total double of me, even to my leather coat and black pants, and his crazed expression which surely didn't reflect mine. His eyes were glittering viciously and triumphantly, and his smile was like that of a clown.
"I'm telling you, go, Goblin," I said, but this only redoubled his power, and then the image began to thin and to expand.
"Let me hurt him!" Lestat said urgently. "Give me the permission."
In confusion, I couldn't answer, even though I heard Lestat plead with me again. I felt the tight grip all around me, as though a boa constrictor had me, or so I imagined, and my vision had left me, melting into the violent chills that I couldn't shake. I felt the tiny pinpricks all over my face and the backs of my hands, and I tried to lift my hands to ward them off but my hands hurt. Every bit of my bare flesh hurt, even to the back of my neck.
Rice, Anne - Vampire Chronicles 11 - Blackwood Farm (v3.0) Page 8