Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [23]
She was beautifully built, and her skin was a lovely color of milk chocolate and her eyes were hazel and her hair extremely woolly, and always beautifully bleached yellow and close-cropped to her very round head.
“Ah, that’s my Little Boss,” she said as she hugged me in return. We were in the shadows of the hallway. “My mysterious Little Boss,” she went on, pressing me tight against her bosom so that her head was against my chest. “My wandering Little Boy, whom I scarcely ever see at all.”
“You’re my girlfriend forever,” I whispered, kissing the top of her head. In this close company, the blood of the dead was serving me well. And besides, I was hopeful and slightly crazy.
“You come in here, Quinn,” called out Aunt Queen, and Jasmine softly let me go and she went towards the rear door.
“Ah, you have a friend with you,” said Aunt Queen as I obeyed her, Lestat at my side. The room was warmer than the rest of the house.
Aunt Queen’s voice was ageless, if not actually youthful, and she spoke with a clear commanding diction.
“I’m so pleased you have company,” she said. “And what a fine strapling of a youth you are,” she said to Lestat, satirizing herself ever so delightfully. “Come here so I can see you. Ah, but you are handsome. Come into the light.”
“And you, my dear lady, are a vision,” Lestat said, his French accent thickening just a tiny bit as if for emphasis, and, leaning over the marble table with its random cameos, he bent to kiss her hand.
She was a vision, there was no doubt of it, her face warm and pretty for all its years. It wasn’t gaunt so much as naturally angular, and her thinning lips were neatly brightened with rose lipstick, and her eyes, in spite of the fine wrinkles around them, were still vividly blue. The diamonds and pearls on her breast were stunning, and she wore several rich diamond rings on her long hands.
The jewels as always seemed part of her power and dignity, as if age had given her strong advantage, and a sweet femininity seemed to characterize her as well.
“Over here, Little Boy,” she said to me.
I went to her side and bent down to receive her kiss on my cheek. That had been my custom ever since I’d grown to the staggering height of six foot four, and she often took hold of my head and teasingly refused to let me go. This time, she didn’t do it. She was too distracted by the alluring creature standing before her table, with his cordial smile.
“And look at your coat,” she said to Lestat, “how marvelous. Why, it’s a wide-skirted frock coat. Wherever did you get it, and the cameo buttons, how perfect. Will you come here this very minute and let me see them? You can see that I’ve a positive mania for cameos. And now as the years have gone by, I think of little else.”
Lestat came round the table as I moved away. I was frightened suddenly, very frightened, that she would sense something about him, but no sooner had this thought gripped me than I realized he had the situation entirely under his command.
Hadn’t another Blood Drinker, my Maker, charmed Aunt Queen in the same manner? Why the hell should I be so afraid?
As she examined the buttons, remarking that each was a different muse of the Grecian Nine Muses, Lestat was beaming down on her as if he were genuinely smitten, and I loved him for it. Because Aunt Queen was the person I loved most in all the world. Having the two of them together was a little more than I could bear.
“Yes, a real true frock coat,” she said.
“Well, I’m a musician, Madam,” Lestat said to her. “You know in this day and age a rock musician can wear a frock coat if he wishes, and so I indulge myself. I’m theatrical and incorrigible. A regular beast when it comes to the exaggerated and the eccentric. I like to clear all obstacles when I enter a room, and I have a perfect mania for antique things.”
“Yes, you’re so right to have it,” she said, exulting in him obviously, as he stepped back and joined me where I stood before the table. “My two handsome boys,” she remarked. “You do know that Quinn’s mother is a singer, though what kind of a singer I