Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [109]
Quinn’s face was torn.
“I know the secret,” I said. “Mona, you hated her as much as you loved her. How could you not? Accept it. And now you have to know what happened to her.”
She nodded, vigorously, but she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t look at me.
“And we have to go about this with great care,” I said, “this search for the Taltos, but I vow to you again that we will do it. And I will find them or find out what became of them.”
Quiet.
She finally looked at me.
A sorrowful motionlessness settled over her. She wasn’t trying to stare me down. I don’t think she even realized I was looking back at her. She looked at me for the longest time and her face grew soft and giving and tender.
“I’ll never be mean to you again,” she said.
“I believe you,” I said. “I took you to my heart the first moment I saw you.”
Quinn sat staring with patient eyes, the round mirror behind him like a great halo.
“You really do love me,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“What can I do to prove that I love you?” she asked.
I thought for a long moment, sealed off from her and from Quinn. “You don’t have to do anything,” I said. “But there is one small favor I might ask.”
“Anything,” she answered.
“Never mention my love for Rowan again,” I said.
She locked on me, eyes so full of anguish that I could hardly bear it. “Only one more time, to say this,” she said. “Rowan walks with God. And Mayfair Medical is her sacred mountain.”
“Yes,” I said with a sigh. “You are so very right. And don’t ever think that I don’t know it.”
24
AN HOUR BEFORE the first light.
Mona and Quinn had already retired into Quinn’s bedroom.
It was confirmed that I would take the bedroom of Aunt Queen whenever I visited Blackwood Farm. As for Jasmine, she was so grateful to me for getting rid of the ghost of Patsy that she held me to be infallible and was overjoyed with the arrangement.
It was a sin, my taking that room! But I did it. And Jasmine had already closed Aunt Queen’s daytime curtains on the coming sun, and turned down the covers, and tucked under the pillow as always the copy of Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop, as Quinn had said to do.
Enough on that.
I stood alone in the little Blackwood Farm cemetery. Did I like being alone? I hated it. But the cemetery drew me, as they always do.
I called to Maharet, as I had done earlier on this same evening. I didn’t even know if it was night where she was. I knew only that she was very far away, and that I needed her. Once again I poured out with all my strength the tale of the tall children and the young ones I couldn’t name, and how much I needed Maharet’s wisdom and guidance.
As the dawn came near to the moist Louisiana sky, I felt a vague forboding. Find the Taltos on my own? Yes, I could do that. But what would happen?
I was about to retire, so that I could enjoy the process of falling asleep instead of blanking out like a smashed light bulb, when I heard a car turn on the pecan-tree drive and head steadily and confidently for the front of the house.
As I mounted the rise of the lawn, I saw it was an antique roadster, a venerable English MG TD, one of those irresistible cars you don’t see anymore except at car shows. Real low-slung, British Racing Green, bumpy canvas top, and the person who pulled it to a halt was Stirling Oliver.
Being only slightly less telepathic than a fledgling vampire, he saw me immediately, and we moved to greet each other.
The morning light was still well behind the horizon.
“I thought you once promised me to keep away from here,” I said, “and to leave Quinn alone.”
“I’ve kept that promise,” he said. “I’m here to see you, and if I’d missed