Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [123]
Rolling sarcastic laughter. “Okay, Toots,” he said. “No more slips of the tongue. And you are gorgeous.”
He stood up and stretched like a cat. Gave her a warped smile.
“Have any of you brilliant and crafty and conscientious Blood Thieves lifted a cell phone off your human victims? I want to call Rowan Mayfair.”
“I have my own,” said Quinn. “And I did lift a couple. But it’s too early to call. Let’s move.”
“Well, come on, you little sugar pot,” Oberon said, offering Mona his hand. “Let’s go kill Rodrigo so he can be with his mother. And then we’ll come back for Saint Juan Diego.”
“Why do you like him so much?” I asked.
“Who, Rodrigo?” he asked. Big raise of his eyebrows. “I detest the man, I assure you.”
“No, Saint Juan Diego,” I said.
“Oh.” Laugh. “I told you. I went to the Cathedral. Besides, when Lucia told me he’d been made a saint, I prayed to him for a miracle.” Suddenly his eyes got wide. “Good Lord!” he said.
“What is it?” I asked. “Something has come as a surprise to the Cynic for All Seasons?”
“Don’t you see?” He was flabbergasted. “Saint Juan Diego answered my prayer! You’re the miracle!”
26
RODRIGO WASN’T A SLOB. The lobby was clean, not a scrap of paper on the desk or in it.
Nevertheless, the hotel had the air of a haunted place, having been robbed of its vitality and purpose.
Mammoth kitchen, machines grinding away, countertops clean except for fresh trays littered with fancy china, remnants of lobsters, glasses of milk, fish bones, etc.
No human presence.
“Don’t you see what that means?” Oberon said, staring at the plates. “That’s Taltos food, all white. They very well might be up there.” He was sloughing off his languor, growing even slightly excited.
I checked out the storage room, cases of powdered milk, some split open, powder on the floor, footprints, cans of condensed milk, empties in a pile.
“And explain that to me?” I asked.
He stared at it, shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “Unless one of them comes down here in the night and guzzles. It’s a possibility. You starve a Taltos for milk, and it will go after it. But let’s get upstairs, my sisters are here! I know it.”
“Hold on,” said Mona, her eyes rimmed in red, her voice still quavering. “This doesn’t prove a thing.”
The big central stairway led to the mezzanine floor and into the spacious rooms of what had once been the library. Litter of laptops, bigger computer stations, walls of books, maps, world globes, televisions, huge windows open to the sea. Dust everywhere, or was it sand? The music from above was extremely loud. The place looked uninhabited and untouched.
“This was Heaven here,” said Oberon, “you can’t imagine the hours of pleasure I spent in these rooms. Saints Preserve Us, I detest that music. Maybe we should hit the breaker box to shut that off.”
“Bad idea,” said Quinn.
Oberon held his gun with both hands, and he had dropped his disdainful demeanor altogether. He was almost what one would call enthusiastic. But the music was attacking him like a horde of mosquitoes. He shuddered over and over again.
“First thing I’m going to shoot is that speaker system,” he said.
Again we took the carpeted stairs. Scanning for humans. I caught the scent of one.
The suite was dead center and wide open to the broad iron-railed porch that looked down on the lobby, the emperor himself seated in a huge gold satin–sheeted bed to the right, bleached wood headboard carved with mermaids, talking rapidly into a phone, costume sleek leather pants, purple satin shirt open to reveal a chest of oiled muscles, lustrous short black hair brushed back from a polished brown face with extraordinarily pretty eyes.
Thick beige carpet, scattered chairs, lamps. Doors open to other rooms.
He clicked off the phone as soon as we entered.
“Oberon, my son, I wasn’t expecting you,” he said, musical voice barely accented with Spanish, drawing up one knee, eyes moving over the rest