Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(160)
Author: Anne Rice

Once all dwellings were small and shut up, windowless, fortified. And you couldn’t see the beings within. But now it was different. One could gaze upon a perfect life as if peering at a painting. Sheer glass was enough to shut one out, and demarcate the secret turf of each one’s love. But the gods were kind, and you could peep inside. You could see those you missed.

It will be enough. Do it. And they’d never know. He wouldn’t frighten them.

The car was ready. Remmick had sent the bags down. “Must be good to be going south, sir,” he said.

“Yes, to summerland,” he replied.

“That’s what Somerset means, sir, in England.”

“Yes, I know,” he said. “I’ll see you soon. Keep my rooms warm. Call me at once if … Well, don’t hesitate if there is anything.”

A speaking twilight, a city so wooded still that the creatures of the air sang the songs of dusk. He slipped out of the car blocks from the house. He knew the way. He had checked his map, and now he walked past the iron picket fences, and vines of florid pink trumpet flower. Windows were already full of light, yet the sky stretched radiant and warm in all directions. Listen to the cicadas’ song, and are those starlings who swoop down as if to plant a kiss, when it is simply to devour?

He walked faster and faster, marveling at the uneven sidewalks, the buckling flags, the moss-covered bricks, so many many beautiful things to touch and to see. And at last he came to their corner.

There stood the house where a Taltos had been born. Grand for these times, with its stucco walls made to look like stone, and chimneys rising high into the clouds.

His heart beat too fast. His witches.

Not to disturb. Not to beg. Merely to see. Forgive me that I walk along the fence, under the bending boughs of these flowered trees, that here suddenly in this deserted street, I climb the fence and slip down into the moist shrubbery.

No guards around this place. Does that mean you trust me, that I would never come, in stealth, unbidden, unexpected? I don’t come to steal. I come only to take what anyone can have. A look from afar, we take nothing from those who are watched.

Take care. Keep to the hedges and the tall shiny leafed trees swaying in the wind. Ah, the sky is like the moist soft sky of England, so near, so full of color!

And this, was it the crape myrtle tree, beneath which their Lasher had stood, frightening a small boy, beckoning Michael to the gate, Michael a witch child whom a ghost could spot, passing in the real world through zones of enchantment.

He let his fingers touch the waxy bark. The grass was deep beneath his feet. The fragrance of flowers and green things, of living things and breathing soil, was everywhere. A heavenly place.

Slowly he turned and looked at the house. At the iron lace porches stacked one upon the other. And that had been Julien’s room up there, where the vines groped with helpless tendrils in the empty air. And there, beyond that screen, the living room.

Where are you? Dare I come just a little closer? But to be discovered now would be so tragic, when the evening is descending in this raiment of violet, and the flowers glow in their beds, and once again the cicadas sing.

Lights went on in the house. Behind lace curtains. Illuminating paintings on the walls. Was it so simple that, veiled in the dark, he could draw near to those windows?

The murals of Riverbend, wasn’t that what Michael had described, and might they be gathering this soon for their meal? He walked as lightly as he could across the grass. Did he look like a thief? Rosebushes shielded him from those behind the glass.

So many. Women old and young, and men in suits, and voices raised in controversy. This was not my dream. This was not my hope. But, eyes fastened to the portal, he couldn’t step away. Just give me one glimpse of my witches.

And there Michael was, like the direct answer to his prayer, gesticulating in a little fury it seemed, with others who pointed their fingers and talked, and then all on cue sat down, and the servants glided through the room. He could smell the soup, the meat. Alien food.

Ah, his Rowan, coming into the room, and insisting upon something as she looked at the others, as she argued, as she made the men again take their seats. A white napkin had dropped to the floor. The murals blazed with perfect summer skies. If only he could have moved closer.

But he could see her clearly and him too, and hear the noises of spoons against plates. Scent of meat, of humans, scent of …?

That had to be his error! But the scent was so sharp and old and tyrannical that it took hold and the moment slipped right out of his hands. Scent of the female!

And just when he was telling himself again, It cannot be, when he was searching for the little red-haired witch, there came into the room the Taltos.

He closed his eyes. He listened to his heart. He breathed her scent as it emanated through brick walls, out of seams and cracks around glass, seeping from God knows where, to stir the organ between his legs, to make him stand back, breathless, wanting to flee, and absolutely immovable.

Female. Taltos. There. And her red hair all aflame beneath the chandelier and the arms out as she spoke, rapid, anxious. He could hear the bare high notes of her voice. And, oh, the look on her face, her newborn face, her arms so delicate in her sheer dress of Point d’Esprit and her sex, deep underneath, pulsing with the scent, a flower opening in darkness and alone, the scent penetrating to his brain.

My God, and they have kept this from him! Rowan! Michael!

She is there, and they have not told him, and would that he never knew. His friends, you witches!

Coldly, shivering, maddened by the scent and drugged, he watched them through the glass. Humankind, not his kind, shutting him out, and the lovely princess standing there, and was she crying out, was she ranting, were those tears in her eyes? Oh, splendid, beautiful creature.

He moved out from behind the shrubbery, not by will but by simple allowance. Behind the slim wooden post he stood, and now he could hear her plaintive cries.

“It was on the doll, the same scent! You threw away the wrapping, but I smelled it on the doll. I smell it in this house!” Bitterly she wailed.

Oh, newborn baby.

And who was this august council that would not answer her plea? Michael gestured for calm. Rowan bowed her head. One of the other men had risen to his feet.

“I’ll break the doll if you don’t tell me!” she screamed.

“No, you won’t do that,” Rowan cried out, and now it was she who rushed to the girl. “You won’t, you won’t, Michael, get the Bru, stop her!”

“Morrigan, Morrigan …”