Blood Canticle (9 page)

“You think you can haunt me!” I growled. “You think you can do that to me!”

“I know I can!” he said in caustic English. “You took her, my child, my Mona!” He struggled to dissolve. “You knew I was waiting for her. You could have let her come to me.”

“And just what crazy half-illuminated Afterlife are you from!” I demanded. “What are your half-baked mystical promises! Yeah, come on, what Other Side are you hawking, yeah, spill it, let’s hear about Julien’s Summerland, yeah, testify, how many ectoplasmic angels are on your side, give me the splendiferous images of your famous fabulous friggin’ self-created self-sustained astral plane! Where the Hell were you going to take her! You’re going to tell me some Lord of the Universe sends spooks like you to take little girls to Heaven!”

I was clutching nothing.

I was all alone.

It was sweetly warm and there was a numbing quiet in the vibration of the distant trucks, a winking beauty in the passing headlights.

Who missed the deep silence of so many past centuries? Who missed the deep darkness of the long ago pre-electric nights? Not me.

When I reached the Talamasca Retreat House, Stirling was standing on the terrace. Loose gray hair mussed, cotton pajamas, sashed robe, bare feet. A mortal couldn’t have discovered him, standing in the shadows, waiting. An empathetic face, patient celibate alertness.

“I brought her over,” I said.

“I know,” he answered.

“I kissed Rowan Mayfair.”

“You did what?” he answered.

“They’re after me, the Mayfair ghosts.”

He didn’t respond, except for a small scowl and an undisguised look of wonder.

I scanned the Retreat House. Empty. Maid out in the back cottages. One postulant out there writing in a notebook by a gooseneck lamp. Saw her in her self-conception. Hungered for her. Had no intention of feeding on her. Ridiculous idea. Absolutely verboten.

“Give me a bedroom, please,” I asked. “Just a room in which heavy draperies can be drawn.”

“Of course,” he said.

“Ah, the Talamasca, ready again to count upon my honor.”

“I can depend upon it, can I not?”

I followed him into the front hallway and then up the broad staircase. How curious it was, to be his guest, to be walking on this wool carpet as if I were a mortal. Sleeping under the roof that wasn’t mine. Next I’d be doing it at Blackwood Farm. This could get out of hand. Please let it get out of hand.

And here the fragrant and cozy bedroom with all its inevitable details. Pineapples carved into the four posts of the bed, canopy of hand-worked lace through which you could peer at the faint water stains on the ceiling, loving, caring, patchwork quilt of loops and circles and careening colors, parchment lamp shades, dark clots breaking through the old mirrors, needlepoint tiptoe chairs.

“What Mayfair ghosts are after you?” he asked softly. It was respectful, his manner. “What have you seen?” And when I didn’t answer, “What have they done?”

“Mona gave birth long ago to a daughter,” I whispered. Yes, he knew all about it, didn’t he? “But you can’t tell me, can you, what you know?”

“No, I can’t,” he replied.

“She wants to find that child,” I said.

“Does she,” he said politely. He was afraid.

“Sleep well,” I said and turned to the bed.

He left me. But he knew the child’s name. That much I’d filched from him. He knew its name and its
nature
but he couldn’t tell.

10

I
KNEW
that Rowan Mayfair was in the Retreat House when I opened my eyes. Heavy. Somebody who loved her was with her, somebody who knew all about her too. Way heavy. And Stirling in a state of angst.

I went to the right front window and drew back the velvet drape. The sky was scarlet over the distant levee. Oak tree branches filled the top of my view. It would have been a cinch to open this window and slip out onto the porch and disappear from this place quietly.

But I wasn’t going to do it. Why give up an opportunity to see her again? There wasn’t any harm in just seeing her. Maybe I could figure out the source of her power over me. Maybe I could nullify it. And if nothing else, I could give them some platitudes about Mona.

I stopped in front of the old mirror over the dresser to comb my hair. My black frock coat looked all right. So did the lace at my collar and cuffs. More than a bit of vanity there, and I knew it. So what? Have I ever said I wasn’t vain? I have lifted vanity to a poetical level, have I not? I have transmuted vanity into the spiritual, have I not?

My body had fully restored itself from bestowing the Dark Gift, but my thirst was strong, rather in the style of a craving than a physical need. Was that because of her? Certainly not! I would repair to the first floor to discover this woman was an ordinary woman and nothing more and I would then come to my senses! How’s that for a stiff upper lip!

I paused to close in on New Orleans, scanning for the Romantic Couple. They were just rising, crawling out from among the velvet pillows, Long Tall Quinn still groggy, rambunctious Mona already on the prowl. Caught clear images of her through Quinn’s overprotective mind. She wasn’t sobbing. She was taking stock of the paintings, still wearing that dashing feather-trimmed wrapper with flair. This augured very well for the next hundred years.

Suddenly they were both talking at each other in rapid rips and slashes of life story and love professions. Hunt and feed now or later? Little Drink or something serious. Where was the Boss? I sent a swift silent message to Quinn.

Yo, Little Brother. You’re the teacher for now. The Little Drink is the name of the lesson. I’ll be with you soon enough.

I went out into the hallway of the Retreat House, where the sconces were already lighted, and sweet yellow and red flowers adorned the demi-lune tables, and made my way slowly down the main stairs. Saint Juan Diego, please preserve the Mayfairs from me.

Hum of heavy anxious mortal conversation below. Deep scent of mortal blood. Worry about the mortal Mona. Stirling intensely miserable, struggling to veil his conflicted heart. It takes the skills of a priest and a lawyer to be an effective member of the Talamasca.

All this coming from a garden room on the back of the house, just off the dining room, on the right side proper.

I made my way there. Real Rembrandts on these walls. A Vermeer. I took my time. Temples throbbing. Mayfairs, yes, witches again, yes. Why walk right into it? Nothing could have stopped me.

The furnishings of the dining room were regal and faintly charming. I saw the fine leavings of a recent meal on the long black granite table, with a mess of linen and heavy old silver. I stopped to examine the silver carefully.

Flash of Julien opposite in his everyday gray suit, eyes black. Hadn’t they been gray before? “Enjoyed your rest?” he asked. He vanished. I caught my breath.
I think you’re a cowardly ghost. You can’t handle a sustained discourse. I personally despise you.

Stirling called my name.

I moved towards the rear double doors.

The little conservatory was octagonal Victorian style, everything trimmed in white, and the wicker was white, and the floor was pink flagstone, and the whole was three steps down.

They were closely gathered at a round glass-top wicker table, far more cheerful than the dining room could ever have been, with lighted candles nestled among the countless flower pots, the sky already going dark beyond the glass walls and glass roof.

A lovely place to be. Scent of blood and flowers. Scent of burning wax.

All three mortals, who sat in comfortable wicker chairs virtually surrounded by magnificent tropical plants, had known I was coming. Conversation had stopped. All three mortals were watching me with a wary politeness now.

Then the two men shot to their feet as if I were the Crown Prince of England, and Stirling, being one of them, presented me to Rowan Mayfair as if I’d never met her, and then to Michael Curry, “Rowan’s husband,” and gestured for me to take the empty wicker chair. I did.

Rowan struck me immediately as uncalculatedly lovely, colorless and svelte in a short skirted gray silk suit and leather pumps. There came the chills again as I looked at her, in fact, an utter weakness. I wondered if she knew her dress matched her eyes and even the gray streaks in her dark hair. She was positively ablaze with an inner concentration of power.

Stirling wore a white vintage linen jacket with faded blue jeans and his pale yellow shirt open at the neck. I sparked off the linen jacket suddenly. It had belonged to someone who died of old age. It had been worn in the South Seas. Packed away for years. Rediscovered, loved by Stirling.

My eyes settled on Michael Curry. This was simply one of the most alluring mortal males whom I have ever struggled to describe.

First off, he was reacting powerfully to my own apparent physical gifts without even being aware of that dimension of himself, which always confuses and excites me, and secondly he had the exact attributes of Quinn—black curly hair and vivid blue eyes—in a heavier, stronger, more physically comfortable frame. Of course he was much older than Quinn. He was in fact much older than Rowan. But age doesn’t really mean anything to me. I found him irresistible. Whereas Quinn’s features were elegant, this man’s were large and almost Graeco-Roman. The gray hair at his temples drove me crazy. The sunburnt tan of his skin was wonderful. And then there was the easy smile on his lips.

He was wearing something, I suppose. What was it? Oh, yeah, the de rigueur New Orleans white linen three-piece suit.

Suspicion.
I caught it from both Michael and Rowan. And I knew that Michael was as strong a witch as she was, though in wholly different ways. I knew too that he had taken life. She’d done it with the force of her mind. He’d done it with the strength of his fist. It seemed that other invaluable secrets were going to slip right through his gaze when suddenly he closed himself off from me artfully yet completely naturally. And he began to speak.

“I saw you at the funeral for Miss McQueen,” he said. New Orleans Irish voice. “You were with Quinn and Merrick Mayfair. You’re Quinn’s friend. You have a beautiful name. It was a lovely service, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. “And I met Rowan yesterday at Blackwood Manor. I have news for you both. Mona’s doing well, but she doesn’t want to come home.”

“That’s not possible,” said Rowan before she could stop herself. “That simply can’t be.”

She was beyond exhaustion. She’d been crying and crying for Mona. I didn’t dare try to draw her in as I’d done yesterday, not in front of this man. The chills came again. A wild vision possessed me of snatching her up and away from this place, my teeth pressed to her tender neck, her blood mine, all the chambers of her soul yielding to me. I banished it. Michael Curry was watching me, but the man’s mind was on Mona.

“I’m happy for Mona,” he volunteered now, putting his hand over Rowan’s hand on the arm of the wicker chair. “Mona’s where she wants to be. Quinn’s strong. He always was. When that kid was eighteen, he had the poise of a full-grown man.” He laughed softly. “He wanted to marry Mona the first time he saw her.”

“She is doing better,” I insisted. “I swore I’d tell you if she needed you.” I gave Rowan my level gaze. “I will tell you. It makes her happy to be with Quinn.”

“I knew it would,” said Rowan, “but she can’t survive off dialysis.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what dialysis was. Oh, I’d heard the word, but I really didn’t know enough about it to bluff.

Standing behind her, indeed behind the cluster of flowers just over her shoulder, was the figure of Julien, with a grim smile on his lips, taking visible pleasure in my confusion.

A little shock went through me when my eyes met his, and suddenly Michael Curry turned and looked in that direction, but the figure had vanished. Hmmm. So this mortal sees ghosts. Rowan was unchanged. Rowan was examining me all too closely.

“Who is Stella?” I asked, looking again into Rowan’s eyes. My only hope was to keep her talking. She was staring at my hand. I didn’t like it.

“Stella? You mean Stella Mayfair?” she asked. Her low voice was sultry in spite of herself. She was feverish. She needed sleep in a cold room. Involuntary flash of the sorrow inside her, the knot of secrets. “What do you want to know about Stella Mayfair?”

Stirling was very uneasy. He felt deceitful but there was nothing I could do about it. So he was the confidant of the family, of course.

“A little girl,” I said, “who calls people Ducky, and has black wavy hair. Picture her in a little white sailor dress trimmed in blue, with high socks and Mary Janes. Does it ring a bell?”

Michael Curry let out a genial laugh. I looked at him.

“You’re describing Stella Mayfair all right. One time Julien Mayfair told me this story—Julien was one of the mentors of the Mayfair family—the story was all about Julien taking little Stella downtown with him, Stella and her brother Lionel Mayfair—he’s the one who shot and killed Stella—but in the story Stella was wearing a sailor dress and Mary Janes. Oncle Julien described it. At least I think he did. No. He didn’t describe it. But I saw her that way. Yeah, I saw her that way. Why in the world would you ask such a question? Of course I’m not referring to the living breathing Julien. But that’s another tale.”

“Oh, I know you’re not. You’re referring to his ghost,” I answered. “But tell me, I’m just curious, I don’t mean any disrespect, but what sort of ghost was Julien? Can you interpret? Was he good or was he bad?”

“My God, that’s a strange question,” said Michael. “Everybody idolizes Oncle Julien. Everybody takes him so for granted.”

“I know Quinn saw Oncle Julien’s ghost,” I went on. “Quinn told me all about it. He’d come to see you and Rowan and Mona, and Oncle Julien let him in to the First Street property, or whatever you call it, and Quinn talked with Oncle Julien for a long time. They drank hot chocolate together. They sat in a rear garden. He thought Oncle Julien was alive, naturally, and then you guys discovered him back there all alone and there was no hot chocolate. Not that the absence of hot chocolate means anything metaphysically, of course.”

Michael laughed. “Yeah, Oncle Julien’s big on long conversations. And he really outdid himself with the hot chocolate. But a ghost can’t do something like that unless you give him the strength to do it. Quinn’s a natural medium. Oncle Julien was playing off Quinn.” He went sad. “Now, when the time comes, for Mona I mean, well, Oncle Julien will come and take her to the other side.”

“You believe in that?” I asked. “You believe in the other side?”

“You mean you don’t?” asked Michael. “Where do you think Oncle Julien comes from? Look, I’ve seen too many ghosts not to believe in it. They have to come from somewhere, don’t they?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “There’s something wrong with the way ghosts act. And the same holds true for angels. I’m not saying there isn’t an afterlife. I’m only maintaining that those entities who come down here so beneficently to meddle with us are more than a little cracked.” I was really getting heated. “You’re not really sure, yourself, are you?”

“You’ve seen angels?” asked Michael.

“Well, let’s just say, they claimed to be angels,” I responded.

Rowan’s eyes were moving sluggishly and rudely over me. She didn’t care what I asked about Julien or what Michael said. She was back in that terrible moment when she’d come into the hospital room, the death room, to bring death, and Mona had been frightened. Back there and here studying me. Why couldn’t I just hold her for a moment, comfort her, vanish with her into a bedroom upstairs, tear this house apart, fly with her to another part of the world, build her a palace deep in the Amazon jungles?

“Why don’t you try!” said Oncle Julien. He stood behind her again, arms folded, sneering insofar as it didn’t mar his charm. “You’d like nothing better than to get your hands on her. She’d be such a prize!”

“Kindly go to Hell!” I said. And to myself, Snap out of it.

“Who are you talking to?” asked Michael, turning in his chair as before. “What are you seeing?”

Julien was gone.

“Why are you asking about Stella?” Rowan murmured, but she was hardly thinking of it. She was thinking only of Mona and of me, and of that ghastly moment. She was noticing my hair and the way that it curled, and the way that the candlelight played on it. And then the grief over Mona again,
almost killed her.

Michael fell into deep absorption, as if nobody was there. There was something defenseless about the guy. Stirling was studying me with a sharp angry expression on his face. So what?

Michael was plainly much more forthright than Rowan, more conventionally innocent. A woman like Rowan had to have a husband like Michael. If he’d known how I’d kissed her yesterday in that greedy fashion he’d be wounded. She hadn’t told him. Not even he could roll with a punch like that. When a woman of that age lets you kiss her it means something entirely different from what it means with a young girl. Even I knew that and I’m not human.

“You can’t figure it with Julien,” Michael said, suddenly emerging from his thought. “He makes mistakes—sometimes absolutely awful mistakes.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Julien appeared once, trying to help me, I think, yes, it had to be,” said Michael. “But it didn’t work out. It led to a disaster. A total disaster. But he had no way of knowing. Absolutely no way at all. I suppose that’s what I’m trying to say, that ghosts don’t know everything. Of course, Mona has that old saying that a ghost just knows his own business, you know—and I guess that covers it, but there’s more to it than that. Don’t speak of it to Mona. Whatever you do, don’t ask Mona these questions. I wouldn’t . . . I mean, Julien made a dreadful mistake.”