Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [22]
“And you, you do see the ghosts,” he said.
“Yes,” I answered. “Most of the ghosts are weak things, hardly more than vapor, but there are exceptions. . . .” I hesitated. I was lost for a moment. I felt my words might trigger some awful apparition, but I wanted so to confide in him. Stumbling, I went on:
“Yes, extraordinary exceptions . . .” I broke off.
“I want you to tell me,” he said. “You have a room upstairs, don’t you? A quiet place where we can talk. But I sense someone else in this house.”
He glanced towards the hallway.
“Yes, Aunt Queen in the back bedroom,” I said. “It won’t take more than a moment for me to see her.”
“That’s a curious name, Aunt Queen,” he remarked, his smile brightening again. “It’s divinely southern, I think. Will you take me to see her as well?”
“Absolutely,” I answered, without the hesitation of common sense. “Lorraine McQueen is her name, and everyone hereabouts calls her Miss Queen or Aunt Queen.”
We went into the hallway together and once again he glanced up at the curving stairs.
I led him back past it, his boots sounding sharp on the marble, and I brought him to the open door of Aunt Queen’s room.
There she was, my darling, quite resplendent, and very busy, and not in the least disturbed by our approach.
She sat at her marble table just to the right of her dressing table, the whole making the L in which she was most happy. The nearby floor lamp as well as the frilly lights on the dressing table illuminated her wonderfully, and she had her dozens of cameos out before her on the marble and her bone-handled magnifying glass in her right hand.
She seemed dreadfully frail in her white quilted satin robe, with its buckled belt around her tiny waist, her throat wrapped well in a white silk scarf tucked into her lapels, over which rested her favorite necklace of diamonds and pearls. Her soft gray hair was curled naturally around her face, and her small eyes were full of an exuberant spirit as she studied the cameos at hand. Under the table, and where her robe was parted, I could see that she wore her perilous pink-sequined high-heeled shoes. I wanted to lecture. Ever a danger, those spike-heeled shoes.
Aunt Queen seemed the perfect name for her, and I felt an instinctive pride in her, that she had been the guardian angel of my life. I had no fear of her recognizing anything abnormal in Lestat, what with his tanned skin, except perhaps his excessive beauty. And I was happy with the moment beyond words.
The whole room made a lovely picture as I tried to see it the way that Lestat must see it, what with the canopied bed to the far left. It had only recently been redone in scallops of rose-colored satin, ornamented with darker braid, and it was made up already, which wasn’t always the case, with the heavy satin cover and pillow shams and other decorative pillows in a heap. The rose damask couch and scattered armchairs matched the hangings of the bed.
Jasmine was there in the shadows, our lifelong housekeeper, whose silky dark skin and fine features made her a special beauty, just as surely as Aunt Queen. She looked uncommonly sharp in her red sheath dress and high heels, with a string of pearls around her neck. I’d given her those pearls, hadn’t I?
Jasmine gave me a little wave, and then went back to straightening small items on the bedside table, and as Aunt Queen looked up and greeted me, crying “Quinn!” with a little touch of ecstasy, Jasmine stopped her work and came forward, slipping right past us out of the room.
I wanted to hug Jasmine. It had been nights since I’d seen her. But I was afraid. Then I thought, no, I’m going to do it for as long as I can do it, and I’ve fed and I’m warm. A greedy sense of goodness overcame me, that I wasn’t damned. I felt too much love. I stepped back and caught Jasmine