Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(24)
Author: Anne Rice

“I can see why.”

Yuri went on.

“The Taltos, Lasher, he seemed unsurprised by all this; he seemed to have figured it out. Even in his earlier incarnation, the Talamasca had tried to take him out of Donnelaith, perhaps to mate him with the female. But he didn’t trust them and he didn’t go with them. He was a priest in those days. He was believed to be a saint.”

“St. Ashlar,” said the dwarf more soberly, the voice seeming to rumble not from the wrinkles of his face but from his heavy trunk. “St. Ashlar, who always comes again.”

The tall one bowed his head slightly, his deep hazel eyes moving slowly back and forth across the carpet, almost as if he were reading the rich Oriental design. He looked up at Yuri, head bowed, so that his dark brows shadowed his eyes.

“St. Ashlar,” he said in a sad voice. “Are you this man?”

“I’m no saint, Yuri. Do you mind that I call you by name? Let’s not speak of saints, if you please….”

“Oh, please do call me Yuri. And I will call you Ash? But the point is, are you this same individual? This one they called the saint? You speak of centuries! And we sit here in this parlor, and the fire crackles, and the waiter taps at the door now with our refreshments. You must tell me. I can’t protect myself from my own brothers in the Talamasca if you don’t tell me and help me to understand what’s going on.”

Samuel slipped off the chair and proceeded towards the alcove. “Go into the bedroom, please, Yuri. Out of sight now.” He swaggered as he went past Yuri.

Yuri rose, the shoulder hurting him acutely for a moment, and he walked into the bedroom, closing the door behind him. He found himself in a shadowy stillness, with soft, loose curtains filtering the subdued morning light. He picked up the telephone; quickly he punched the direct-dial number, followed by the country code for the United States.

Then he hesitated, feeling wholly unable to tell the protective lies that he would have to tell to Mona, eager to speak to Aaron and tell him what he knew, and half afraid he would be momentarily stopped from calling anyone.

Several times on the drive down from Scotland, he had found himself at public phones, experiencing the same dilemma, when the dwarf had commanded him to get in the car now.

What to tell his little love? How much to tell Aaron in the few moments he might have to speak with him?

In haste, he punched in the area code for New Orleans, and the number of the Mayfair house on St. Charles and Amelia, and he waited, a little worried suddenly that it might be the very middle of the night in America, and then realizing suddenly that indeed it was.

Rude and terrible mistake, whatever the circumstances. Someone had answered. It was a voice he knew but could not place.

“I’m calling from England. I’m so sorry. I’m trying to reach Mona Mayfair,” he said. “I hope I haven’t waked the house.”

“Yuri?” asked the woman.

“Yes!” he confessed without obvious surprise that this woman had recognized his voice.

“Yuri, Aaron Lightner’s dead,” said the woman. “This is Celia, Beatrice’s cousin. Mona’s cousin. Everybody’s cousin. Aaron’s been killed.”

There was a long pause in which Yuri did nothing. He didn’t think or visualize anything or rush to any conclusion. His body was caught in a cold, terrible fear—fear of the implications of these words, that he would never, never see Aaron again, that they would never speak to each other, that he and Aaron—that Aaron was forever gone.

When he tried to move his lips, he found trouble. He did some senseless and stupid little thing with his hand, pinching the telephone cord.

“I’m sorry, Yuri. We’ve been worried about you. Mona’s been very worried. Where are you? Can you call Michael Curry? I can give you the number.”

“I’m all right,” Yuri answered softly. “I have that number.”

“That’s where Mona is now, Yuri. Up at the other house. They will want to know where you are and how you are, and how to reach you immediately.”

“But Aaron …” he said, pleadingly, unable to say more. His voice sounded puny to him, barely escaping the burden of the tremendous emotions that even clouded his vision and his equilibrium, his entire sense of who he was. “Aaron …”

“He was run over, deliberately, by a man in a car. He was walking down from the Pontchartrain Hotel, where he’d just left Beatrice with Mary Jane Mayfair. They were putting Mary Jane Mayfair up at the hotel. Beatrice was just about to go into the lobby of the hotel when she heard the noise. She and Mary Jane witnessed what happened. Aaron was run over by the car several times.”

“Then it was murder,” said Yuri.

“Absolutely. They caught the man who did it. A drifter. He was hired, but he doesn’t know the identity of the man who hired him. He got five thousand dollars in cash for killing Aaron. He’d been trying to do it for a week. He’d spent half the money.”

Yuri wanted to put down the phone. It seemed utterly impossible to continue. He ran his tongue along his upper lip and then firmly forced himself to speak. “Celia, please tell Mona Mayfair this for me, and Michael Curry too—that I am in England, I am safe. I will soon be in touch. I am being very careful. I send my sympathy to Beatrice Mayfair. I send to all … my love.”

“I’ll tell them.”

He laid down the phone. If she said something more, he didn’t hear it. It was silent now. And the soft pastel colors of the bedroom lulled him for a moment. The light filled the mirror softly and beautifully. All the fragrances of the room were clean.

Alienation, a lack of trust either in happiness or in others. Rome. Aaron coming. Aaron erased from life—not from the past, but utterly from the present and from the future.

He didn’t know how long he stood there.

It began to seem that he had been planted by the dressing table for a long, long time. He knew that Ash, the tall one, had come into the room, but not to detach Yuri from the telephone.

And some deep, awful grief in Yuri was touched suddenly, disastrously perhaps, by the warm, sympathetic voice of this man.

“Why are you crying, Yuri?”

It was said with the purity of a child.

“Aaron Lightner’s dead,” said Yuri. “I never called to tell him they’d tried to kill me. I should have told him. I should have warned him—”

It was the slightly abrasive voice of Samuel that reached him from the door.