Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [32]
“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