Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(11)
Author: Anne Rice

“Why did they do that?” asked Mona.

“Hush up, dear,” said Beatrice. “Mary Jane is a Mayfair’s Mayfair. Darling Mary Jane, you ought to bring your grandmother up here immediately. I’m serious, child. We want you to come. We have an entire list of addresses, both temporary and permanent.”

“I know what she means,” Celia had said. She’d been sitting beside Rowan, and was the only one bold enough to wipe Rowan’s face now and then with a white handkerchief. “I mean about the Mayfairs with no chins. She means Polly. Polly has an implant. She wasn’t born with that chin.”

“Well, if she has an implant,” declared Beatrice, “then Polly has a visible chin, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah, but she’s got the slanty eyes and the tipped nose,” said Mary Jane.

“Exactly,” said Celia.

“You all afraid of the extra genes?” Mary Jane had thrown her voice out like a lasso, catching everybody’s attention. “You, Mona, you afraid?”

“I don’t know,” said Mona, who was in fact not afraid.

“Of course, it’s nothing that’s even remotely likely to happen!” Bea said. “The genes. It’s purely theoretical, of course. Do we have to talk about this?” Beatrice threw a meaningful look at Rowan.

Rowan had stared, as she always did, at the wall, maybe at the sunshine on the bricks, who could possibly know?

Mary Jane had plunged ahead. “I don’t think anything that wild will ever happen to this family again. I think the moment for that kind of witchcraft is past, and another eon of new witchcraft—”

“Darling, we really don’t take this entire witchcraft thing too seriously,” said Bea.

“You know the family history?” Celia had asked gravely.

“Know it? I know things about it you don’t know. I know things my granny told me, that she heard from Old Tobias, I know things that are written on the walls in that house, still. When I was a little child, I sat on Ancient Evelyn’s knee. Ancient Evelyn told me all kinds of things that I remember. Just one afternoon, that’s all it took.”

“But the file on our family, the file by the Talamasca …” Celia had pressed. “They did give it to you at the clinic?”

“Oh, yeah, Bea and Paige brought that stuff to me,” said Mary Jane. “Look here.” She pointed to the Band-Aid on her arm that was just like the Band-Aid on her knee. “This is where they stuck me! Took enough blood to sacrifice to the devil. I understand the entire situation. Some of us have a whole string of extra genes. You breed two close kins with the double dose of double helix, and wham, you’ve got a Taltos. Maybe! Maybe! After all, think about it, how many cousins have married and married, and it never happened, did it, till … Look, we shouldn’t talk about it in front of her, you’re right.”

Michael had given a weary little smile of gratitude.

Mary Jane again squinted at Rowan. Mary Jane blew a big bubble with her gum, sucked it in, and popped it.

Mona laughed. “Now that’s some trick,” she said. “I could never do that.”

“Oh, well, that might be a blessing,” said Bea.

“But you did read the file,” Celia had pressed. “It’s very important that you know everything.”

“Oh, yeah, I read every word of it,” Mary Jane had confessed, “even the ones I had to look up.” She slapped her slender, tanned little thigh and shrieked with laughter. “Y’all talking about giving me things. Help me get some education, that’s about the only thing I could really use. You know, the worst thing that ever happened to me was my mama taking me out of school. ’Course, I didn’t want to go to school then. I had much more fun in the public library, but—”

“I think you’re right about the extra genes,” Mona said. And right about needing the education.

Many, many of the family had the extra chromosomes which could make monsters, but none had ever been born to the clan, no matter what the coupling, until this terrible time.

And what of the ghost this monster had been for so long, a phantom to drive young women mad, to keep First Street under a cloud of thorns and gloom? There was something poetic about the strange bodies lying right here, beneath the oak, under the very grass where Mary Jane stood in her short denim skirt with her flesh-colored Band-Aid on her little knee, and her hands on her little hips, and her little filthy white patent leather buckle shoe rolled to one side and smeared with fresh mud—with her little dirty sock half down in her heel.

Maybe Bayou witches are just plain dumb, Mona thought. They can stand over the graves of monsters and never know it. Of course, none of the other witches in this family knew it either. Only the woman who won’t talk, and Michael, the big hunk of Celtic muscle and charm standing beside Rowan.

“You and I are second cousins,” Mary Jane had said to Mona, renewing her approach. “Isn’t that something? You weren’t born when I came to Ancient Evelyn’s house and ate her homemade ice cream.”

“I don’t recall Ancient Evelyn ever making homemade ice cream.”

“Darlin’, she made the best homemade ice cream that I ever tasted. My mama brought me into New Orleans to—”

“You’ve got the wrong person,” said Mona. Maybe this girl was an impostor. Maybe she wasn’t even a Mayfair. No, no such luck on that. And there was something about her eyes that reminded Mona a little of Ancient Evelyn.

“No, I got the right person,” Mary Jane had insisted. “But we didn’t really come on account of the ice cream. Let me see your hands. Your hands are normal.”

“So what?”

“Mona, be nice, dear,” said Beatrice. “Your cousin is just sort of outspoken.”

“Well, see these hands?” said Mary Jane. “I had a sixth finger when I was little, on both hands? Not a real finger? You know? I mean just a little one. And that’s why my mother brought me to see Ancient Evelyn, because Ancient Evelyn has just such a finger herself.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” asked Mona. “I grew up with Ancient Evelyn.”

“I know you did. I know all about you. Just cool off, honey. I’m not trying to be rude, it’s just I am a Mayfair, same as you, and I’ll pit my genes against your genes anytime.”

“Who told you all about me?” Mona asked.