Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(159)
Author: Anne Rice

Calm and collected, Rowan gave no sign that she might be thinking the very same thing. But surely she sensed something like danger.

“I can wait,” Morrigan said softly. “Write it in stone, his name, where he is. Carve it in the trunk of the funeral oak. Write it somewhere. Keep it from me, but keep it, keep it until a time comes. I can wait.”

Then she drew back and, making those same pirouettes, left the room, humming to herself, the humming higher and higher until it became like a whistle.

They sat in silence. Suddenly Dolly Jean said, “Oh!” She had fallen asleep, and now she was awake. “Well, what happened?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Rowan said.

She looked at Mona, and Mona looked at her, and something silent passed between them.

“Well, I better go watch her,” said Mary Jane, hurrying out of the room. “Before she goes and jumps in the swimming pool again with all her clothes, or lies down on the grass back there, trying to smell those two dead bodies.”

Mona sighed.

“So what does the mother have to say to the father?” Michael asked.

Mona thought for a long moment. “Watch. Watch and wait.” She looked at Rowan. “I know now why you did what you did.”

“You do?” Rowan whispered.

“Yeah,” Mona said. “Yeah, I know.” Slowly she climbed to her feet. She was leaving the room, when suddenly she turned. “I didn’t mean … I didn’t mean it was all right to hurt her.”

“We know that it’s not all right,” said Michael. “And she’s my child too, remember.”

Mona looked up at him, torn, helpless, as if there were a thousand things she wanted to say, to ask, to explain. And then she only shook her head and, turning her back on them, moved towards the door quietly. At the very last, she looked back, her face a radiant burst of light, of feeling. The little girl with the woman’s body beneath her fussy dress. And my sin has done this, my sin has unleashed this thing, as if from the heart and mind of Mona herself, he thought.

“I smell it too, the scent,” said Mona. “A living male. Can’t you wash it off? Scrub it off with soap. Then maybe, maybe she’ll calm down, she’ll stop thinking about it and talking about it, she’ll be all right. In the night, she may come into your room, you may wake up with her bending over you. She won’t hurt you. In a way you’ve got the upper hand.”

“How so?” Michael asked.

“If she doesn’t do everything we say, you’ll never tell her about the male. It’s simple.”

“Yes, it’s a means of control,” said Rowan.

“There are other means. She suffers so.”

“You’re tired, honey,” said Michael. “You should rest.”

“Oh, we will, in each other’s arms. It’s only when you wake and you see her sniffing at the clothes, don’t be frightened. It can look kind of terrible.”

“Yes,” said Rowan. “We will all be prepared.”

“But who is he?” Mona asked.

Rowan turned, as if to make sure she had heard this question right.

Dolly Jean, her head bowed, gave a sudden startling snore.

“Who is the male?” asked Mona, insistent, her eyes suddenly half-mast with exhaustion and slightly haunted.

“And if I tell you,” said Rowan, “then you must keep it from her. Let us be the strong ones on that score. Trust us.”

“Mother!” Morrigan called. A waltz had begun, Richard Strauss, strings, one of those lovely bland records that you can listen to for the rest of your life. He wanted to see them dancing, but in a way he didn’t.

“Do the guards know she’s not to go out?” Michael asked.

“Well, not really,” Mona said. “You know, it would be easier if you told them to go away. She … she upsets them. I can control her more easily if they’re gone. She won’t run away, not from her mother.”

“Yes,” Rowan said. “We’ll dismiss them.”

Michael was unsure.

But then he nodded. “We are in this … together.” The voice of Morrigan called out again. The music surged. Mona slowly turned and left them.

* * *

Late in the night, he could hear them laughing still, and the music now and then, or was it a dream of Stuart Gordon’s tower? Then the keys of the computer tapping away, and that laughter, and the soft rumble of their running feet on the stairs. And the sound of mingled voices, young and high and very sweet, singing that song.

Why try to sleep, but then he was gone, too tired, too needy of rest and of escape, too hungry for the simplicity of cotton sheets, and Rowan’s warm body against his. Pray, pray for her. Pray for Mona. Pray for them….

“Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come—”

His eyes opened wide. “Thy kingdom come. No.” The feeling of sudden distress was too vast, yet elusive. He was too tired. “Thy kingdom come.” He couldn’t think it out. He turned over and buried his face in the crook of Rowan’s warm neck and shoulder.

“Love you,” she whispered, a murmured prayer out of the depths of sleep, perhaps, more comforting than his prayer had been.

Thirty-four

THE CLEAN MONOTONY of snow, of meetings without end, of phone calls, of the sheets of faxes full of statistics, summaries, of the business of life which he himself had made, reaching for the gold and dreams.

At midday he put his head down on the desk. It had been a full five days since Michael and Rowan had gone home, and they had not called him, or written even a note. And now he wondered if his gifts had somehow made them sad or been the wrong thing, or if they were blotting him out the way he tried to blot out the memory of Tessa, of Gordon dead on the floor, of Yuri stammering and wringing his hands, of cold winter in the glen, and the jeers of Aiken Drumm.

What do we seek? What do we need? How can we know what will make us happy? It was a simple thing to pick up the phone, to call Rowan or Michael, to ask if they were all right, if they had recovered from their journey.

And what if their voices were brittle and indifferent, and he was left with the instrument in his hand, and the wire gone dead after careless farewells? No, that would have been worse than nothing.

Or more truly, it was not what he wanted.

Just go there. Just see them. Without lifting his head, he pressed the button. Prepare the plane. Fly away from the city of bitter cold, to the lost land of love. Just look at them, see their house with its warm lights, see through the windows they so lovingly described, and go away without a sound, without begging for their eyes to meet yours. Just look at them. There will be a comfort in that.