Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [106]
Again I was secretly impressed.
“Nothing was at risk,” I responded. “Absolutely nothing.”
“But surely you understand,” said Quinn, “what it means for Mona to be deluged with our gifts and unable to modulate her feelings. There we were in that very garden behind the First Street house, the very place where the Taltos bodies had been buried.”
“Yes,” Mona said. “We were talking of things which had tortured me for years and I . . . I. . . .”
“Mona, you must trust in me,” I said. “You must trust in my principles. That’s our paradox. We do not leave behind the Natural Law when we receive the Blood. We are principled creatures. I never stopped loving you, not for an instant. Whatever I felt for Rowan at the family gathering in no way affected my feelings for you. How could it? I warned you twice to be patient with your family because I knew it was right for you to do so. Then the third time, all right, I went too far with a little mockery. But I was trying to curb your insults, and your abuse of those you loved! But you wouldn’t listen to me.”
“I will now, I swear it,” she said. Again, the assured voice, a voice I’d not heard last night or tonight earlier. “Quinn’s been instructing me for hours. He’s been cautioning me about the way I treat Rowan and Michael and Dolly Jean. He’s told me I can’t just blithely call them ‘human beings’ right in front of them. It’s ill-mannered for a vampire to do that.”
“Indeed,” I said witheringly. (You gotta be kidding.)
“He’s explained that we have to be patient with their ways, and I see that now, and I understand why Rowan had to talk as she did. Or that it wasn’t my place to interrupt her. I see it. I won’t make those blundering remarks anymore. I have to find my . . . my maturity in the Blood.” She paused and then: “A place where serenity and courtesy connect. Yes, that’s what it is. And I’m far from it.”
“True,” I said. I studied her, the picture she made. I wasn’t quite convinced by this perfect Act of Contrition. And how lovely her little wrists looked in the tight black cuffs, and of course the shoes, with their wicked heels and winding snakelike straps. But I liked her words: “A place where serenity and courtesy connect.” I liked them a lot, and I knew they’d come from her. All she had said had come from her, no matter what Quinn had taught her. I could tell by the way that Quinn responded to her.
“And about the sequined dress,” she said, startling me out of that line of thought. “I understand now.”
“You do?” I asked soberly.
“Of course,” she said with a shrug. “All males are obviously much more stimulated by what they see than females. And why should we people of the night be an exception?” Flash of big green eyes. Rosy mouth. “You didn’t want to be distracted anymore by all that skin and cleavage, and you were very honest about it.”
“I should have made my wishes known with more tact and respect,” I said in a dull monotone. “I will be gentlemanly in the future.”
“No, no,” she said with an honest shake of her red hair. “We all knew the dress was highfalutin trash, it was supposed to be. That’s why I wore it to the hotel terrace. It was deliberately seductive. That’s why when I walked into this house, I went right to change into something more presentable. Besides, you are the Maker. That’s the word that Quinn used. The Maker, or the Master. The Teacher. And you have the authority to say to me, ‘Take off that dress,’ and I knew what you were talking about.
“But you see—I’ve been sick for a very crucial part of my life. I never knew as a mortal girl what it was like to wear a dress like that. I was never a mortal woman, you see.”
A great sadness descended on me.
“I just went from being a kid to being an invalid,” she said. “And then this, this range of powers which you’ve entrusted to me. And what have I done but strike out at you because I thought you . . . thought you loved Rowan.” She stopped,