by Rice, Anne
“I think I should go after her,” Quinn said. He followed me, taking in everything reverently, mind on Mona, no doubt monitoring her every move.
Front parlor. Piano. There was no piano now. I should tell them to get a piano. Hadn’t we passed an antique piano in a window? I had a sudden urge to play the piano—to use my vampiric gift to rip at the keys. It was that Bartók concerto still assaulting my mind, and the picture of those two macabre dancers accentuating the music.
Oh, give me all things human.
“I think I should go get her,” Quinn said.
“Listen, I’m not one to talk much about gender,” I said, flopping down in my favorite of the velvet wing chairs and throwing one foot up on the chair before the desk, “but you have to realize that she’s experiencing a freedom you and I don’t appreciate as men. She’s walking in the darkness and she’s afraid of nothing, and she loves it. And just maybe, just maybe she wants to taste a little mortal blood and she’s willing to take the risk.”
“She’s a magnet,” he whispered. He stood at the window, his hand pulling gently at the lace. “She doesn’t know I’m tracking her. She isn’t that far away. She’s taking her time. I hear her idle thoughts. She’s walking too fast. Somebody’s going to notice—.”
“Why are you suffering, Little Brother?” I asked. “Do you hate me for bringing her over? Do you wish it hadn’t been done?”
He turned and looked at me as though I’d grabbed him by the arm.
“No,” he said. He walked away from the window and sort of tumbled into the chair in the far corner opposite me, diagonally, his long legs sprawling as though he wasn’t sure what to do with them. “I would have tried it if you hadn’t come,” he admitted. “I couldn’t have watched her die. At least I don’t think so. But I am suffering, you’re right. Lestat, you can’t leave us. Lestat, why are those guards outside the house?”
“Did I say I would leave you?” I countered. “I hired those guards after Stirling came here,” I said. “Oh, it’s not that I think any of the Talamasca will come back here. It’s just that if Stirling could walk right in here, then somebody else might.”
(Flash on the Talamasca: Order of Psychic Detectives. Don’t know their own Origins. At least a thousand years old, maybe much older. Keep records on all sorts of paranormal phenomena. Reach out to the telepathically gifted and isolated. Know about us.)
Quinn and I had visited with Stirling at the Oak Haven Retreat House of the Talamasca right after the exorcism of Goblin, and the immolation of Merrick Mayfair. Merrick Mayfair had grown up in the Talamasca. Stirling had a right to know she was no longer one of the (sigh) Undead. The Retreat House was an immense square plantation house on the River Road just outside of town.
Stirling Oliver had not only been a friend of Quinn’s during his mortal years, but he was a friend of Mona’s as well. The Talamasca knew much more about the entire Mayfair family than they knew about me.
It gave me no pleasure to think of Stirling now, much as I admired him and liked him. Stirling was about sixty-five years old and very dedicated to the highest principles of the Order, which for all its avowed secularity might have been Roman Catholic with its strictures against meddling in the affairs of the world or using supernatural persons or forces for one’s own ends. If the Order hadn’t been so fabulously and mysteriously and undeniably wealthy, I would probably have been a patron of it.
(I am also fabulously and mysteriously and undeniably wealthy, but who cares?)
I felt compelled to go see Stirling at the Retreat House and tell him what had happened with Mona. But why?
Stirling wasn’t Pope Gregory the Great, for the love of Heaven, and I wasn’t Saint Lestat. I didn’t have to go to Confession for what I’d done to Mona, but a terrible Contrition settled over me, a profound awareness that all my powers were dark powers and all my talents evil talents, and nothing could come from me but evil no matter what I did.
Besides, hadn’t Stirling told Quinn last night that Mona was dying? What had been the meaning of that information? Wasn’t he in some way in collusion with what had happened? No. He wasn’t. Quinn hadn’t left him last night to seek out Mona. Mona had come to Blackwood Manor on her own.
“Sooner or later, I’ll explain all this to Stirling,” I said under my breath. “It’s as though Stirling will absolve me but that just isn’t true.” I looked at Quinn. “Can you still hear her?”
He nodded. “She’s just walking, looking at things,” he said. He was distracted, the pupils in his eyes dancing slowly. “Why tell Stirling?” he asked. “Stirling can’t tell the Mayfairs. Why burden him with the secret?” He sat forward. “She’s wandering along Jackson Square. A man’s following her. She’s leading him. He senses something isn’t right with her. And she’s on to him. She knows what he wants. She’s luring him. She’s certainly having a great time in Aunt Queen’s high-heel shoes.”
“Stop watching her,” I said. “I mean it. Let me tell you something about your little girl. She’s going to make herself known to the Mayfairs very soon on her own. Nothing’s going to stop her. There are things she wants to know from the Mayfairs. I had a sense of it when—.”
The room was empty. No Quinn. I was talking to all the furniture.
I heard the back door open and close, it was that fast.
I stretched out and scrunched down and put my head back and drifted, eyes shut at once.
I was half dreaming. Why the Hell hadn’t I fed? Of course I didn’t need to feed every night or even every month, but when you work the Dark Trick, no matter who you are, you must feed afterwards, you’re giving from the very sap stream of your life. All is vanity. All is vanity under the sun and under the moon.
I’d been in a weakened state when I’d gone down to deal with Rowan Mayfair, that was my problem, that was why the creature obsessed me. Never mind.
Someone pushed my foot off the desk chair. I heard a woman’s piercing laugh; I heard dozens of people laughing. Heavy cigar smoke. Glass breaking. I opened my eyes. The flat was full of people! Both windows to the front balcony were open and it was jammed with people, women in long low-cut sparkling dresses, men in fine black dinner jackets with flashing black satin lapels, the roar of conversation and merriment almost deafening, but deafening to whom, and a tray went by, held high by a waiter in a white coat who all but tripped over my legs, and there sat a child on the desk, a rosy child, staring at me, a dainty girl with quick black eyes and beautifully waved black hair, seven or eight, enchanting, precious.
“Ducky, I’m sorry!” she said, “but you’re in our world now, I do hate to say it. We have you!” She was mocking up a British accent. She had on a little sailor dress, white with blue trim, and high white socks and little black Mary Janes. She drew up her knees. “Lestat,” she laughed. She pointed at me.
Then, down into the desk chair facing me, slipped Oncle Julien, dressed for the party, white tie, white cuffs, white hair. The crowd pressed in on him. Someone was shouting from the balcony.
“She’s right, Lestat,” Oncle Julien said in flawless French, “we have you in our world now, and I must say you have a divine apartment here, and I so admire the paintings which have only just come from Paris, you and your friends are so very clever, and the furniture, there is so much of it, yes, it seems you’ve crammed every nook and cranny, yet who could have asked for anything finer?”
“But I thought we were mad at him, Oncle Julien,” said the little girl in English.
“We are, Stella,” he said in French, “but this is Lestat’s house, and whether we are angry or not we are Mayfairs first and foremost, and Mayfairs are always polite.”
This sent little Stella into a regular riot of laughter, and she gathered up her little self—soft cheeks, sailor suit, socks, shiny shoes—and leapt from the desk right into my lap, plop.
“I’m so glad,” she said, “because you are so absolutely dandy; don’t you think, Oncle Julien, he’s too beautiful to be a man, oh, I know, Lestat,
you’re not one to talk about gender—.”
“Stop it!” I roared. A flashing, cleansing power went out of me, flushing against the walls.
Dead quiet.
Mona stood there, eyes wide, wrapper gone, sleek silk, Quinn right beside her, towering over her, face full of concern.
“Lestat, what is it?” asked Mona.
I got up, I staggered into the hallway. Why was I walking like this? I glanced back at the room. All the furniture had been moved—just a little. Things were askew! The doors were open to the balcony!
“Look at the smoke,” I whispered.
“Cigar smoke,” said Quinn questioningly.
“What is it, Boss?” asked Mona again. She came up to me and put her arms around me and kissed me on the cheek. I kissed her forehead, smoothed back her hair.
I didn’t answer her.
I didn’t tell them. Why didn’t I tell them?
I showed them the bedroom with the sealed-up window that was painted to look like a window. I showed them the steel plating on the door and the lock. I told them about the human guards twenty-four hours. They were to pull the curtains around the bed, and sleep in each other’s arms. No ray of the sun, no immortal, no mortal intruder, no one would bother them here. Of course they had a long time before sunrise. Talk, talk, yes. They could wander. But no spying on the Mayfairs, no. No probing for secrets, no. No searching for a lost daughter yet, no. No going home to Blackwood Manor, no. I told them I would meet them tomorrow at dusk.
Now I had to leave, had to.
Had to get out of here. Had to get out of there. Had to get out of everywhere.
The open country.
Near the Talamasca Retreat House.
Distant rumble of trucks on the River Road. Smell of the River. Smell of the Grass. Walking. Grass wet.
Field of scattered oaks. White clapboard house tumbling to ruin, the way they do in Louisiana, swaying walls and caving roof embraced and held suspended by the vines.
Walking.
I spun around.
He was there. Technicolor ghost, black tailcoat, walking as I had been, through the grass, tossing aside the champagne glass, coming on. Stopped. I lunged at him, grabbed him before he could vanish, had him by the throat, fingers dug into what sought to be invisible, holding him, hurting what would be immaterial. Yeah, got you! You impudent phantom, look at me!
“You think you can haunt me!” I growled. “You think you can do that to me!”
“I know I can!” he said in caustic English. “You took her, my child, my Mona!” He struggled to dissolve. “You knew I was waiting for her. You could have let her come to me.”
“And just what crazy half-illuminated Afterlife are you from!” I demanded. “What are your half-baked mystical promises! Yeah, come on, what Other Side are you hawking, yeah, spill it, let’s hear about Julien’s Summerland, yeah, testify, how many ectoplasmic angels are on your side, give me the splendiferous images of your famous fabulous friggin’ self-created self-sustained astral plane! Where the Hell were you going to take her! You’re going to tell me some Lord of the Universe sends spooks like you to take little girls to Heaven!”
I was clutching nothing.
I was all alone.
It was sweetly warm and there was a numbing quiet in the vibration of the distant trucks, a winking beauty in the passing headlights.
Who missed the deep silence of so many past centuries? Who missed the deep darkness of the long ago pre-electric nights? Not me.
When I reached the Talamasca Retreat House, Stirling was standing on the terrace. Loose gray hair mussed, cotton pajamas, sashed robe, bare feet. A mortal couldn’t have discovered him, standing in the shadows, waiting. An empathetic face, patient celibate alertness.
“I brought her over,” I said.
“I know,” he answered.
“I kissed Rowan Mayfair.”
“You did what?” he answered.
“They’re after me, the Mayfair ghosts.”
He didn’t respond, except for a small scowl and an undisguised look of wonder.
I scanned the Retreat House. Empty. Maid out in the back cottages. One postulant out there writing in a notebook by a gooseneck lamp. Saw her in her self-conception. Hungered for her. Had no intention of feeding on her. Ridiculous idea. Absolutely verboten.
“Give me a bedroom, please,” I asked. “Just a room in which heavy draperies can be drawn.”
“Of course,” he said.
“Ah, the Talamasca, ready again to count upon my honor.”
“I can depend upon it, can I not?”
I followed him into the front hallway and then up the broad staircase. How curious it was, to be his guest, to be walking on this wool carpet as if I were a mortal. Sleeping under the roof that wasn’t mine. Next I’d be doing it at Blackwood Farm. This could get out of hand. Please let it get out of hand.
And here the fragrant and cozy bedroom with all its inevitable details. Pineapples carved into the four posts of the bed, canopy of hand-worked lace through which you could peer at the faint water stains on the ceiling, loving, caring, patchwork quilt of loops and circles and careening colors, parchment lamp shades, dark clots breaking through the old mirrors, needlepoint tiptoe chairs.
“What Mayfair ghosts are after you?” he asked softly. It was respectful, his manner. “What have you seen?” And when I didn’t answer, “What have they done?”
“Mona gave birth long ago to a daughter,” I whispered. Yes, he knew all about it, didn’t he? “But you can’t tell me, can you, what you know?”
“No, I can’t,” he replied.
“She wants to find that child,” I said.
“Does she,” he said politely. He was afraid.
“Sleep well,” I said and turned to the bed.
He left me. But he knew the child’s name. That much I’d filched from him. He knew its name and its nature but he couldn’t tell.
10
I knew that Rowan Mayfair was in the Retreat House when I opened my eyes. Heavy. Somebody who loved her was with her, somebody who knew all about her too. Way heavy. And Stirling in a state of angst.
I went to the right front window and drew back the velvet drape. The sky was scarlet over the distant levee. Oak tree branches filled the top of my view. It would have been a cinch to open this window and slip out onto the porch and disappear from this place quietly.
But I wasn’t going to do it. Why give up an opportunity to see her again? There wasn’t any harm in just seeing her. Maybe I could figure out the source of her power over me. Maybe I could nullify it. And if nothing else, I could give them some platitudes about Mona.
I stopped in front of the old mirror over the dresser to comb my hair. My black frock coat looked all right. So did the lace at my collar and cuffs. More than a bit of vanity there, and I knew it. So what? Have I ever said I wasn’t vain? I have lifted vanity to a poetical level, have I not? I have transmuted vanity into the spiritual, have I not?
My body had fully restored itself from bestowing the Dark Gift, but my thirst was strong, rather in the style of a craving than a physical need. Was that because of her? Certainly not! I would repair to the first floor to discover this woman was an ordinary woman and nothing more and I would then come to my senses! How’s that for a stiff upper lip!
I paused to close in on New Orleans, scanning for the Romantic Couple. They were just rising, crawling out from among the velvet pillows, Long Tall Quinn still groggy, rambunctious Mona already on the prowl. Caught clear images of her through Quinn’s overprotective mind. She wasn’t sobbing. She was taking stock of the paintings, still wearing that dashing feather-trimmed wrapper with flair. This augured very well for the next hundred years.
Suddenly they were both talking at each other in rapid rips and slashes of life story and love professions. Hunt and feed now or later? Little Drink or something serious. Where was the Boss? I sent a swift silent message to Quinn.
Yo, Little Brother. You’re the tea
cher for now. The Little Drink is the name of the lesson. I’ll be with you soon enough.
I went out into the hallway of the Retreat House, where the sconces were already lighted, and sweet yellow and red flowers adorned the demi-lune tables, and made my way slowly down the main stairs. Saint Juan Diego, please preserve the Mayfairs from me.
Hum of heavy anxious mortal conversation below. Deep scent of mortal blood. Worry about the mortal Mona. Stirling intensely miserable, struggling to veil his conflicted heart. It takes the skills of a priest and a lawyer to be an effective member of the Talamasca.
All this coming from a garden room on the back of the house, just off the dining room, on the right side proper.
I made my way there. Real Rembrandts on these walls. A Vermeer. I took my time. Temples throbbing. Mayfairs, yes, witches again, yes. Why walk right into it? Nothing could have stopped me.
The furnishings of the dining room were regal and faintly charming. I saw the fine leavings of a recent meal on the long black granite table, with a mess of linen and heavy old silver. I stopped to examine the silver carefully.
Flash of Julien opposite in his everyday gray suit, eyes black. Hadn’t they been gray before? “Enjoyed your rest?” he asked. He vanished. I caught my breath. I think you’re a cowardly ghost. You can’t handle a sustained discourse. I personally despise you.
Stirling called my name.
I moved towards the rear double doors.
The little conservatory was octagonal Victorian style, everything trimmed in white, and the wicker was white, and the floor was pink flagstone, and the whole was three steps down.
They were closely gathered at a round glass-top wicker table, far more cheerful than the dining room could ever have been, with lighted candles nestled among the countless flower pots, the sky already going dark beyond the glass walls and glass roof.
A lovely place to be. Scent of blood and flowers. Scent of burning wax.