Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(154)
Author: Anne Rice

Once again the light changed, darkening, and the trees expanded, crowding out the sky and breaking it into tiny glowing fragments. The Garden District. First Street. And wonder of wonders, the house on the comer of Chestnut, amid its spring banana trees and ferns, and azaleas in bloom, waiting for them.

“Pierce, you must come in.”

“No, they’re waiting for me downtown. You rest. Call us when you need us.” He had already slipped out to lend a manly hand as Rowan climbed from the car. And then his key was in the gate, and he was waving goodbye to them.

A uniformed guard walked along the side fence, disappearing discreetly around the end of the house.

The silence was healed, the car slipping off in light and shadow, noiseless, removed, the dying afternoon burnished and warm and without the slightest resistance. The scent of the sweet olive hung over the whole yard. And tonight he’d smell the jasmine again.

Ash had said that fragrance was the sharpest trigger of memory, a transport into forgotten worlds. And he had been so right, and what did it do to you, to be taken away from all the fragrances you needed to breathe?

He opened the front door for his wife, and felt a sudden impulse to carry her over the threshold. Hell, why not!

She gave a little unrestrained cry of delight, clutching his neck as he scooped her up.

The thing about gestures like this was not to drop the lady in question.

“And now, my dear, we are home,” he growled against her soft neck again, forcing her head back as he kissed her beneath her chin, “and the smell of the sweet olive gives way to Eugenia’s ever-present wax, and the scent of the old wood, and something musty and expensive and delicious to breathe.”

“Amen,” she said.

As he went to put her down, she clung to him for a moment. Ah, that was nice! And his aging, battered heart had not begun to pound. She would hear it, wouldn’t she, with a doctor’s ear? No, he stood hale and quiet, holding her against him, smelling her clean soft hair, and gazing down the polished hall, past the great soaring white doorway, at the distant murals of the dining room, touched still by the afternoon sun. Home. Here. Now, as it has never, never been for either of us.

At last she slipped from him, landing on her feet. The tiniest frown came to her forehead. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she said. “Only certain memories will die hard, you know. But then I think of Ash, and that is something to contemplate rather than all the sad things.”

He wanted to answer, he wanted to say something about his own love for Ash, and something else, something else that was almost torturing him. It would be better to leave it alone, that’s what others would advise, if ever he asked them. But he couldn’t. He looked into her eyes, opening his own very wide, perhaps wide enough to look angry when he didn’t mean to at all.

“Rowan, my love,” he said. “I know you could have stayed with him. I know you made a choice.”

“You’re my man,” she said with a soft explosion of breath, “my man, Michael.”

Nice to carry her up the stairs, but he’d never make it, not all twenty-nine steps, and where were the young ladies, and Granny, the resurrected one? No, they could not shut themselves away now, unless by some luck the entire tribe had gone out for an early dinner.

Closing his eyes, he kissed her again. Nobody could stop him from doing that at least a dozen times. Kiss. And when he looked up again, he saw the red-haired beauty at the end of the hall, two in fact, one very, very tall, and that mischievous Mary Jane, blond braids on top of her head again, three of the most gorgeous necks in the universe, young girls like that are swans. But who was this new beauty who stood incredibly tall, and looked, why, she looked exactly like Mona!

Rowan turned, staring back down the hall.

The Three Graces, they were, against the dining room door, and Mona’s face seemed to occupy two different places. This wasn’t resemblance, it was duplication, and why did they stand so still, all of them in their cotton dresses, merely staring as if from a painting?

He heard Rowan gasp. He saw Mona break into a run, and then rush towards him across the polished floor.

“No, you can’t do anything. You can’t. You have to listen.”

“Dear God,” Rowan said, her weight falling heavily against him, her body shaking.

“She’s my child,” Mona said. “My child and Michael’s, and you won’t hurt her.”

Suddenly it struck him, as things often do, in a rush of different stages, all clattering together to take his breath away. The baby is this young woman. The giant helix produced this. This is a Taltos as surely as Ash is a Taltos, as surely as those two under the tree are Taltos. Rowan is going to faint, she is going to go down, and the pain in my chest is killing me.

He clutched for the newel post.

“Tell me now, neither of you will hurt her.”

“Hurt her? How could I do that?” Michael said.

And then Rowan began to cry, blubbering hopelessly against her clasped hands. “Oh God.”

The tall girl had taken a shaky step and then another. And now would that helpless voice come out, the child voice he’d heard from the other before the shot was fired? He felt dizzy. The sun was dying as if on cue, the house returning to its natural darkness.

“Michael, sit down, sit down there on the step,” said Mona.

“Dear God, he’s sick,” said Mary Jane. And Rowan, snapping to, wrapped her long wet fingers around his neck.

And the tall one said:

“Well, I know this is a dreadful shock for you both, and Mother and Mary Jane have worried for days, but I myself am relieved to see you at last, and force a decision as to whether I can remain beneath this roof, as they say, your child as well as Mona’s child. As you can see here, she has placed the emerald around my neck, but I bow to your decision.”

Rowan was speechless. So was he. It would have been Mona’s voice except it sounded older, and a little less strong, as though chastened already by the world.

He looked up to see her standing there, big spill of vivid red locks, woman’s br**sts and long curved legs, and her eyes, her eyes like green fire.

“Father,” she whispered, dropping to her knees. Her long fingers shot out and clasped his face.

He closed his eyes.

“Rowan,” she said. “Love me, please, and then maybe he will.”

Rowan cried, her fingers tightening on his neck. His heart was thudding in his ears, thudding as if it were growing bigger and bigger.

“Morrigan is my name,” she said.