Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(148)
Author: Anne Rice

Out from under the tree in the dark, walk again as if death were a part of the tale you could have erased, as if those fatal moments could be omitted forever. No stumbling in this wilderness. No false steps.

Hold you in my arms.

Her hands were splayed out on the cold glass of the case. Her forehead pressed against it. The light made two crescent moons in her eyes. The long mohair tresses lay flat and heavy against the silk of her dress, as if they were moist with the dampness of the earth, the dampness of the grave perhaps.

Where was the key? Had he worn it on a chain around his neck? She couldn’t remember. She longed to open the door, to take the doll in her arms. To hold it tight for one moment against her breast.

What happens when grief is this mad, when grief has blotted out all other thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams, wonder?

Finally exhaustion comes. The body says return to sleep, lie down now to rest, not torment. Nothing’s changed. The dolls stare as the dolls will always stare. And the earth eats at what is buried inside of it as it always has. But a kind weariness overtakes the soul, and it seems possible, just possible, to wait to weep, to wait to suffer, to wait to die and lie down with them, to have it finished, because only then is all guilt gone, washed away, when you are as dead as they are.

He was there. He was standing before the glass. You couldn’t mistake him for anyone else. There is no one else that tall, and even if it weren’t for that, she knew his face too well now, the line of his profile.

He’d heard her in the dark, walking back down the corridor. But he didn’t move. He was just leaning there against the window frame and watching the light gather outside, watching the blackness fade and turn to milk and the stars dissolve as though melted in it.

What did he think? That she’d come to seek him out?

She felt shattered inside, weak. Unable to reason what to do, needing perhaps to walk across the floor, to stand beside him and look down on the smoky gloom of early roofs and towers, on lights twinkling along hazy streets, and smoke rising and curling from a hundred stacks and chimneys.

She did this. She stood beside him. “We love each other now,” he said. “Don’t we?” His face was so sad. It hurt her. It was a fresh hurt, touching her right in the midst of the old pain, something immediate that could bring the tears where before there had only been something as black and empty as horror.

“Yes, we do, we love each other,” she said. “With our whole hearts.”

“And we will have that,” he said. “Won’t we?”

“Yes, always. For as long as we live. We are friends and we will always be, and nothing, nothing will ever break the promises between us.”

“And I’ll know you’re there, it’s as simple as that.”

“And when you don’t want to be alone anymore, come. Come and be with us.”

He turned for the first time, as if he had not really wanted to look at her. The sky was paling so fast, the room just filling up and opening wide, and his face was weary and only slightly less than perfect.

One kiss, one chaste and silent kiss, and no more, just a tight clasp of fingers.

And then she was gone, drowsy, aching, glad of the day spilling down over the soft bed. Now I can sleep, daylight at last, now I can sleep, tumbling under the soft covers, next to Michael again.

Thirty-two

IT WAS TOO cold to be out, but winter would not let go its hold upon New York. And if the little man wanted to meet at the Trattoria, so be it.

Ash didn’t mind the walk. He did not want to be alone in his lonely tower rooms, and he was fairly certain that Samuel was on his way, and could not be persuaded to return.

He enjoyed the crowds on Seventh Avenue rushing in the early dusk, bright shop windows full of lavishly colored Oriental porcelains, ornate clocks, bronze statues, and rugs of wool and silk—all the gift merchandise sold in this part of midtown. Couples were hurrying to dinner so that they might make the curtain at Carnegie Hall for a young violinist who was causing a worldwide sensation. Lines at the ticket office were long. The fancy boutiques had not yet closed; and though the snow fell in tiny little flakes, it could not possibly cover either asphalt or sidewalks due to the continuous thunder of human feet.

No, this is not a bad time to be walking. This is a bad time for trying to forget that you have just embraced your friends, Michael and Rowan, for the last time until you hear from them.

Of course they don’t know that that is the rule of the game, the gesture his heart and his pride would require, but more than likely, they would not have been surprised. They had spent four days, all told, with him. And he was as unsure of their love now as he had been the very first moment in London when he had laid eyes on them.

No, he did not want to be alone. Only problem was, he should have dressed for anonymity and the freezing wind, but he had dressed for neither. People stared at a seven-foot-tall man with dark wavy hair who wore a violet silk blazer in such weather. And the scarf was yellow. How mad of him to have thrown on these decidedly private-realm clothes and then rushed out into the street wearing them.

But he had changed before Remmick gave him the news: Samuel had packed and gone; Samuel would meet him at the Trattoria. Samuel had left behind the bulldog, that it might be his New York dog, if Ash didn’t mind. (Why would Ash mind a dog that both drooled and snored, but then Remmick and the young Leslie undoubtedly would be the ones to endure the brunt of this. The young Leslie was now a permanent fixture in the tower offices and rooms, much to her glee.) Samuel would get another dog in and for England.

The Trattoria was already packed, he could see this through the glass, patrons shoulder to shoulder along its winding bar and at its innumerable little tables.

But there was Samuel, as promised, puffing on a small damp cigarette (he murdered them the way Michael did), and drinking whiskey from a heavy little glass, and watching for him.

Ash tapped on the window.

The little man took him in, head to toe, and shook his head. The little man himself was spruce in his new style, tweed with waistcoat, brand-new shirt, shoes shined like mirrors. There was even a pair of brown leather gloves lying like two ghost hands, all collapsed and mashed, on the table.

It was impossible to know what feelings were concealed behind the folds and wrinkles of Samuel’s flesh, but the neatness and style of the overall figure argued for something other than the bleary, drunken, grumbling melodrama of the last forty-eight hours.

That Michael had found Samuel so amusing was a blessing. Indeed, one night they had drunk each other under the table, telling jokes, while Rowan and Ash had only smiled indulgently, to be left at last with the awful tension of knowing that if they went to bed more would be lost than gained—unless Ash thought of himself, and only himself entirely.