Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [62]
“Morrigan,” I said. “Did you love this creature? Did she have intellect? Could she speak?”
“You can’t imagine what it’s like to give birth to one of these creatures,” said Mona. “They speak to you even from the womb, they know you, and you know them, and they’re hardwired with the knowledge of their kind—.” She broke off as if she’d shattered a vow.
I put my arm around her and I kissed her, and brushed the veil of hair back which separated us and kissed her cheek again. She quieted. I loved the texture of her skin. I loved the feel of her lips when my fingers touched them.
Quinn watched these things but he didn’t resent me any more than Michael had with Rowan. I withdrew.
“Do you want me to go there alone?” I asked.
“No, absolutely not,” cried Mona. “I want to see Rowan. I want to make her tell me. Is it true my child has never, never, ever tried to reach me? I have to know.”
“I think you’ve both told me what we’ll do,” I said soberly. “We’ll exchange secrets. That becomes the framework of our dialogue. We tell Rowan and Michael exactly what we are. And they tell us about the Woman Child and if they know anything at all to aid Mona in her search. They reveal to us the things that Mona can’t.”
Mona looked up. Her eyes appeared to focus more clearly. I looked at her.
“Are you willing, my darling one?” I asked.
“Yes,” Mona said. “It’s really their story, not mine.”
“Mona, you almost died in this story,” I said. “How could it not be yours as well?”
“Oh, I forced my way into it,” she said. “I wanted Michael. And she’d deserted him. All those nights in the hospital—I wondered, had she really forgiven me? And my child had lived and—.” She shook her head and raised her hand as though to banish a specter.
I stroked her hair back from her forehead. She inclined to me, and I kissed her forehead.
“We have to go there, Beloved Boss!” she whispered. “We promised Michael. She’s got to tell me the truth.”
“This is all wrong,” said Quinn. He shook his head. He clearly didn’t like the idea at all. No one at Blackwood Farm knew Quinn’s secrets. Even his clever Aunt Queen had died believing him her innocent boy.
“It’s the only way to save the sanity of Rowan Mayfair,” I said. “She knows but she doesn’t know for sure, and it will eat at her and it will obsess her, and on account of her bond with Mona, she and Michael will never let it go. The damage has been done. Only some form of truth will repair it.”
“You’re right,” said Mona. “But if they tell you and Quinn about the Taltos, if they take you into their trust, tell you things that even most all of the Mayfairs don’t know, there will be a bond, and maybe that bond can somehow save us all.”
Taltos.
So that was the name of this species. That was the name of the creature of the curious fragrance and the back-garden graves and the dying womb.
“Michael and Rowan have obviously kept one terrible set of secrets,” I said. “They’re fit to keep another. And the innocent Mayfairs will come to receive Mona. And her life won’t have to be of the shadows. She’ll come and go as you do, Quinn. That’s the way it will work.”
Quinn studied me silently, respectfully. Then he spoke up.
“Are you in love with Rowan?”
“Doesn’t matter one way or the other,” I said.
Mona flashed on me, the blood rising in her cheeks very hot, and her eyes quivering.
Intense, painful moment. Why was my soul not crusted over with barnacles for every life I’d taken? I spoke with the tongue of a mortal.
“We’re going there to save Rowan, are we not?” I said. “Quinn, call for a car, will you?”
I left them and opened the door and went out onto the rear balcony. The breeze had picked up. The banana trees were dancing against the brick walls. I could see the white roses in the dark. An illicit fire burnt inside me. “ ‘The rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys,’ ” I whispered. “ ‘Thou art all fair, my love, there is no spot in thee.’ ” How reverently the wind received these strange words.
I would have liked the long way—a walk uptown through streets narrow and wide, the open-mouthed roar of the streetcar