Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [17]
Besides, I was curious about the creatures in the double parlor, these intrepid psychics who fooled the mortals around them as surely as we vampires did, pretending to be wholesome and regular human beings while they contained a host of secrets.
I hurried down the circular stairs, grabbed up tiny Jerome with his big tennis shoes off the banister just in time to save his life as he nearly fell some ten feet to the marble tile floor below, and put him in the waiting arms of a very anxious Jasmine; and then, gesturing to her that everything would be all right, I went into the cooler air of the front room.
Dr. Rowan Mayfair, founder and head of Mayfair Medical, was seated in one of the mahogany chairs (picture nineteenth-century Rococo, black lacquer and velvet), and her head turned sharply as if jerked by a cord when I entered.
Now, we had seen each other before, as I noted, at Aunt Queen’s funeral Mass in St. Mary’s Assumption Church. In fact, I’d sat dangerously close to her, being in the pew right in front of her. But I’d been better camouflaged at the time by ordinary clothes and sunglasses. What she saw now was the Brat Prince in his frock coat and handmade lace, and I’d forgotten to put on my sunglasses, which was just a stupid mistake.
I hadn’t had a really good look at her at all. Now I found myself instantly fascinated, which wasn’t too comfortable since it was my role to fascinate as our conversation went on.
Her lean oval face was delicately sculpted and as clean as a little girl’s and needed nothing in the way of paint to make it remarkable, with its huge gray eyes and cold flawless mouth. She wore a severe, gray wool pants suit, with a red scarf wrapped around her neck and tucked down into her lapels, and her short ash blond hair appeared to curl under naturally just below the soft line of her jaw.
Her expression was intensely dramatic, and I sensed an immediate and sweeping probe of my mind, which I locked up tight. I felt chills down my backbone. She was creating this.
She had fully expected to read my thoughts and she couldn’t. And she was blocked from knowing what was going on upstairs. She didn’t like it. But to put it more Biblically, she was deeply grieved.
And being shut out, she tried to make sense of my appearance, not at all concerned with the superficial eccentricity of the frock coat and my messy hair, but of elements which were more purely vampiric—the subtle sheen of my skin and the electric blue of my eyes.
I had to start talking quickly, but let me fill you in first on my instantaneous take on the other Mayfair—Fr. Kevin—who was standing at the far mantel, the only other occupant of the room.
Nature had dealt him the same cards as Mona—deep green eyes and red hair. In fact, he could have been her big brother, the genes were so close, and he was my height, six feet, and well built. He wore clerical black with the white Roman collar. And he was not the witch Rowan was, but he was more than slightly psychic, and I could read him easily: he thought I was weird and he was hoping Mona was already dead.
I sparked off the memory of him at Mass in his Gothic robes holding the chalice in his hands. This is my blood. And for reasons I couldn’t possibly explain, I was taken slap back to my village childhood in France, to the ancient church and the village priest saying those very same words, chalice in hand, and for a moment I lost my perspective on everything. Other mortal memories threatened, perfected in color and lucidity. I saw the monastery where I’d studied, so happy, where I’d so wanted to be a monk. Oh, this was sickening.
And with another decided chill, I realized that Dr. Mayfair had caught these images out of my mind before I closed it up again.
I shook it off, annoyed for a moment that the double parlor was so crowded with shadow. Then my eyes latched on to the stark, don’t belong, figure of Oncle Julien, three-dimensional and exquisitely solid in a slim gray suit, standing in the far corner, arms folded, eying me with calculating opposition.