Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [8]
Interior? What Americans call giant rooms. Dustless, manicured. Full of mantel clocks, mirrors, portraits and Persian rugs, and the inevitable mélange of nineteenth-century mahogany furniture that people mix with new reproductions of classic Hepplewhite and Louis XIV styles to achieve the look they call Traditional or antique. Eh? And all pervaded by the inevitable drone of massive air-conditioning, which not only cooled the air magically but provided the Privacy of Sound, which has so transformed the South in this day and age.
I know, I know. I should have described the scene before I described the people. So what? I wasn’t thinking logically. I was pondering fiercely. I couldn’t quite leave behind the fate of Merrick Mayfair.
Of course Quinn had claimed that he saw the Light of Heaven receiving both his unwanted ghost and Merrick, and for him the scene in this cemetery had been a theophany—something very different from what it was for me. All I saw was Merrick immolating herself. I had sobbed, screamed, cursed.
Okay, enough about Merrick. But keep her in mind, because she will definitely be referred to later. Who knows? Maybe I’ll just bring her up anytime I feel like it. Who’s in charge of this book anyway? No, don’t take that seriously. I promised you a story, you’ll get one.
The point is, or was, that on account of what was going on in the Big House right now, I didn’t have time for all this moping. Merrick was lost to us. The vibrant and unforgettable Aunt Queen was lost. It was grief behind me and grief before me. But a huge surprise had just occurred, and my precious Quinn needed me without delay.
Of course nobody was making me take an interest in things here at Blackwood Farm.
I could have just cut out.
Quinn, the fledgling, had called on Lestat the Magnificent (yeah, I like that title) to help him get rid of Goblin, and technically, since Merrick had taken the ghost with her, I was finished here and could go riding off into the summer dusk with all the staff hereabouts saying, “Who was that dashing dude, anyway?” but I couldn’t leave Quinn.
Quinn was in a real snare with these mortals. And I was greatly in love with Quinn. Quinn, aged twenty-two when Baptized in the Blood, was a seer of visions and a dreamer of dreams, unconsciously charming and unfailingly kind, a suffering hunter of the night who thrived only on the blood of the damned, and the company of the loving and the uplifting.
(The loving and the uplifting??? Like me, for instance??? So the kid makes mistakes. Besides, I was so in love with him that I put on a damned good show for him. And can I be damned for loving people who bring out the love in me? Is that so awful for a full-time monster? You will shortly come to understand that I am always talking about my moral evolution! But for now: the plot.)
I can “fall in love” with anybody—man, woman, child, vampire, the Pope. It doesn’t matter. I’m the ultimate Christian. I see God’s gifts in everyone. But almost anybody would love Quinn. Loving people like Quinn is easy.
Now, back to the question at hand: Which brings me back to Quinn’s bedroom, where Quinn was at this delicate moment.
Before either of us had risen tonight—and I had taken the six-foot-four inches tall, blue-eyed black-haired boy to one of my secret hiding places with me—a mortal girl had arrived at the Manor House and affrighted everybody.
This was the matter that had Clem looking up the steps, and Big Ramona muttering, and Jasmine worried sick as she went about in her high-heel pumps, wringing her hands. And even little Jerome was excited about it, still dashing up and down the circular stairs. Even Tommy and Nash had broken off their mourning laments earlier to have a glance at this mortal girl and offer to help her in her distress.
It was easy enough for me to