Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [39]
“I brought her over,” I said.
“I know,” he answered.
“I kissed Rowan Mayfair.”
“You did what?” he answered.
“They’re after me, the Mayfair ghosts.”
He didn’t respond, except for a small scowl and an undisguised look of wonder.
I scanned the Retreat House. Empty. Maid out in the back cottages. One postulant out there writing in a notebook by a gooseneck lamp. Saw her in her self-conception. Hungered for her. Had no intention of feeding on her. Ridiculous idea. Absolutely verboten.
“Give me a bedroom, please,” I asked. “Just a room in which heavy draperies can be drawn.”
“Of course,” he said.
“Ah, the Talamasca, ready again to count upon my honor.”
“I can depend upon it, can I not?”
I followed him into the front hallway and then up the broad staircase. How curious it was, to be his guest, to be walking on this wool carpet as if I were a mortal. Sleeping under the roof that wasn’t mine. Next I’d be doing it at Blackwood Farm. This could get out of hand. Please let it get out of hand.
And here the fragrant and cozy bedroom with all its inevitable details. Pineapples carved into the four posts of the bed, canopy of hand-worked lace through which you could peer at the faint water stains on the ceiling, loving, caring, patchwork quilt of loops and circles and careening colors, parchment lamp shades, dark clots breaking through the old mirrors, needlepoint tiptoe chairs.
“What Mayfair ghosts are after you?” he asked softly. It was respectful, his manner. “What have you seen?” And when I didn’t answer, “What have they done?”
“Mona gave birth long ago to a daughter,” I whispered. Yes, he knew all about it, didn’t he? “But you can’t tell me, can you, what you know?”
“No, I can’t,” he replied.
“She wants to find that child,” I said.
“Does she,” he said politely. He was afraid.
“Sleep well,” I said and turned to the bed.
He left me. But he knew the child’s name. That much I’d filched from him. He knew its name and its nature but he couldn’t tell.
10
I KNEW that Rowan Mayfair was in the Retreat House when I opened my eyes. Heavy. Somebody who loved her was with her, somebody who knew all about her too. Way heavy. And Stirling in a state of angst.
I went to the right front window and drew back the velvet drape. The sky was scarlet over the distant levee. Oak tree branches filled the top of my view. It would have been a cinch to open this window and slip out onto the porch and disappear from this place quietly.
But I wasn’t going to do it. Why give up an opportunity to see her again? There wasn’t any harm in just seeing her. Maybe I could figure out the source of her power over me. Maybe I could nullify it. And if nothing else, I could give them some platitudes about Mona.
I stopped in front of the old mirror over the dresser to comb my hair. My black frock coat looked all right. So did the lace at my collar and cuffs. More than a bit of vanity there, and I knew it. So what? Have I ever said I wasn’t vain? I have lifted vanity to a poetical level, have I not? I have transmuted vanity into the spiritual, have I not?
My body had fully restored itself from bestowing the Dark Gift, but my thirst was strong, rather in the style of a craving than a physical need. Was that because of her? Certainly not! I would repair to the first floor to discover this woman was an ordinary woman and nothing more and I would then come to my senses! How’s that for a stiff upper lip!
I paused to close in on New Orleans, scanning for the Romantic Couple. They were just rising, crawling out from among the velvet pillows, Long Tall Quinn still groggy, rambunctious Mona already on the prowl. Caught clear images of her through Quinn’s overprotective mind. She wasn’t sobbing. She was taking stock of the paintings, still wearing that dashing feather-trimmed wrapper with flair. This augured very well for the next hundred years.
Suddenly they were both talking