Taltos (39 page)

Mona laughed and laughed. “Oncle Julien was a lion,” she said. “You know what male lions do, when they come to a new pride? They kill all the young, so that the females go into heat at once, and then they sire as many young as they can. It’s the survival of the genes. Oncle Julien knew. He was just improving the population.”

“Yeah, well, from what I heard, he was pretty picky about who got to survive. Granny told me he shot our great-great-great-grandfather.”

“I’m not sure that’s the right number of ‘greats.’ What else do all those papers say?”

“Well, sugar plum, to tell you the truth, I couldn’t have made this out if somebody hadn’t marked it. There’s just all kinds of things here. You know what this is like? It’s like the writing that people do when they’re high on drugs and they think they’re being brilliant and the next day, lo and behold, they look at the tablets and see they’ve written little bitty jagged lines, like the lines, you know??? That make up an electrocardiogram?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve been a nurse?”

“Yeah, for a while, but that was at this crazy commune where they made us all take an enema every day to get rid of the impurities in our system.”

Mona started to laugh again, a lovely sleepy laugh. “I don’t think a commune of the Twelve Apostles could have made me do that,” she said.

This chandelier was damned near spectacular. That she had lived this long without lying on the floor and looking up at one of these things was just inexcusable. The hymn was still going, only this time, miracle of miracles, it was being played on some instrument, like a harp perhaps, and each note merged with the next note. She could almost not feel the floor under her, when she concentrated on the music and on the lights above.

“You didn’t stay in that commune, did you?” she asked drowsily. “That sounds horrible.”

“Sure didn’t. I made my mother leave. I said, lookie, you leave with me or I cut out of here on my own. And as I was about twelve years old at the time, she wasn’t about to let that happen. Lookie, here’s Michael Curry’s name again. He drew a circle around it.”

“Lasher did? Or Ryan?”

“You got me. This is the Xerox, I can’t tell. No, I see, the circle’s drawn on the Xerox. Must have been Ryan, and this says something about ‘waerloga.’ Well, you know??? That probably means ‘warlock.’ ”

“Right you are,” said Mona. “That’s Old English. I have at one time or another looked up the derivation of every single word that pertains to witches and witchcraft.”

“Yeah, so have I. Warlock, right you are. Or it means, don’t tell me, it means somebody who knows the truth all the time, right?”

“And to think it was Oncle Julien who wanted me to do this, that’s the puzzle, but then a ghost knows his own business and Oncle Julien maybe didn’t know. The dead don’t know everything. The evil people do, whether they’re dead or alive, or at least they know enough to tangle us up in such a web we can never escape. But Julien didn’t know
that Michael was his descendant. I know he didn’t. He wouldn’t have told me to come.”

“To come where, Mona?”

“To this house on Mardi Gras night, to sleep with Michael, to make this baby that only Michael and I could have made, or maybe you too could have made it with Michael, perhaps, because you can smell that smell coming up out of these boxes, that smell of him?”

“Yeah, maybe I could, Mona. You never know.”

“Right, sweets, you never know. But I got him first. I got Michael while the door was open before Rowan came home. Just slipped through the cracks, and wham! This baby, this marvelous little baby.”

Mona turned over and lifted her head, resting her chin on her hands, elbows on the carpet.

“Mary Jane, you have to know everything.”

“Yeah, I do,” said Mary Jane. “I want to. I’m kind of worried about you.”

“Me? Don’t worry. I couldn’t be better. I’m thirsty for some more milk, but otherwise, I’m fine. Look, I can still lie on my belly, well, actually no.” She sat up. “That wasn’t so comfortable, guess I have to kiss that goodbye for a while, you know, sleeping on your stomach?”

Mary Jane’s brows had gone together in a very serious expression. She looked so cute! No wonder men were so damned patronizing to women. Did Mona look cute this way?

“Little witches!” said Mona in a hissing whisper, and she made her fingers flutter beside her hair.

Mary Jane laughed. “Yeah, little witches,” she said. “So it was the ghost of Oncle Julien told you to come up here and sleep with Michael, and Rowan was nowhere around.”

“Exactly, nowhere around. And Oncle Julien had more than a heavy hand in it, I tell you. The thing is, I fear he has gone to heaven and left us to our own devices, but then that is fine. I wouldn’t want to have to explain this to him.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“It’s a new phase, Mary Jane. You might say it’s witchcraft in our generation. It’s got nothing to do with Julien or
Michael or Rowan and the way that they would have solved things. It’s something else altogether.”

“Yeah, I see.”

“You do, don’t you?”

“Yep. You’re really sleepy. I’m going to go get you some milk.”

“Oh, that would be divine.”

“You just lie down and go on to sleep, darlin’. Your eyes look really bad. Can you see me at all?”

“Sure, I can, but you’re right. I’m just going to sleep right here. And, Mary Jane, take advantage of the situation.”

“Oh, you’re too young for that, Mona.”

“No, silly, I didn’t mean that,” said Mona, laughing. “Besides, if I’m not too young for men, I’m not too young for girls either. As a matter of fact, I’m curious about doing it with a girl, or a woman perhaps, a beautiful woman like Rowan. But what I meant was, the boxes are opened. Take advantage of that fact, and read what you can out of them.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll do that. I can’t really read his handwriting, but I can read hers. And she’s got stuff here.”

“Yeah, read it. If you’re going to help me, you have to read it. And down in the library, Mary Jane, the file on the Mayfair witches. I know you said you read it, but did you really read it?”

“You know, Mona? I’m not sure I really did.”

Mona turned over on her side, and closed her eyes.

And as for you, Morrigan, let’s go back, way, way back, none of this foolishness about invaders and Roman soldiers, way back to the plain, and tell me how it all began. Who is the dark-haired one that everyone so loves? “Good-night, Mary Jane.”

“Listen, before you fly away here, darlin’, who would you say is your very best trusted next of kin?”

Mona laughed. She almost forgot the question, then woke with a start.

“Aaah, you are, Mary Jane.”

“Not Rowan and Michael?”

“Absolutely not. They must now be perceived as the enemy. But there are things I have to ask Rowan, I have to
know from her, but she doesn’t have to know what’s going on with me. I have to think out the purpose for my questions. As for Gifford and Alicia, they’re dead, and Ancient Evelyn is too sick, and Ryan is too dumb. And Jenn and Shelby are too innocent. And Pierce and Clancy are simply hopeless, and why ruin normal life for them? Have you ever put much of a premium on normal life?”

“Never.”

“I guess I’m depending upon you, then, Mary Jane. ’Bye now, Mary Jane.”

“Then what you’re saying is, you don’t want me to call Rowan or Michael in London and ask their advice.”

“Good heavens, no.” Six circles had formed, and the dance was beginning. She didn’t want to miss it. “You mustn’t do that, Mary Jane. You absolutely mustn’t. Promise me you won’t, Mary Jane. Besides, it’s the middle of the night in London and we don’t know what they’re doing, do we? God help them. God help Yuri.”

Mona
was
floating away. Ophelia, with the flowers in her hair, moving steadily downstream. The branches of the trees came down to stroke her face, to touch the water. No, she was dancing in the circle, and the dark-haired one was standing in the very center and trying to tell them, but everyone was laughing and laughing. They loved him, but they knew he had a habit of going on and on, with such foolish worries….

“Well, I am worried about you, Mona, I should tell you …”

Mary Jane’s voice was very far away. Flowers, bouquets of flowers. That explains everything, why I have dreamed gardens all my life, and drawn pictures of gardens with crayons. Why are you always drawing gardens, Mona, Sister Louise asked me. I love gardens, and First Street’s garden was so ruined until they cleared it and changed it, and now, all clipped and kept, it harbors the worst secret of all.

No, Mother, don’t …

No, the flowers, the circles,
you talk!
This dream was going to be as good as the last one. “Mona?”

“Let me go, Mary Jane.”

Mona could barely hear her; besides, it didn’t make any difference what she said.

And that was a good thing, too, because this was what came out of Mary Jane’s mouth, far, far away … before Mona and Morrigan began to sing.

“… you know, Mona Mayfair, I hate to tell you this, but that baby’s grown since you went to sleep out by the tree!”

“I
 
THINK WE
should leave now,” said Marklin.

He lay on Tommy’s bed, his head resting on his clasped hands, studying over and over the knots in the wood of the bed’s coffered canopy.

Tommy sat at the desk, feet crossed on the black leather ottoman. This room was larger than Marklin’s, with a southern exposure, but he had never resented it. He had loved his own room. Well, he was ready now to get out of it. He had packed everything of importance in one suitcase, and hidden it under his own bed.

“Call it a premonition. I don’t want to stay here,” he said. “There’s no reason to stay longer.”

“You’re being fatalistic and a bit silly,” said Tommy.

“Look, you’ve wiped the computers. Stuart’s quarters are absolutely impenetrable, unless we want to risk breaking in the doors, and I don’t like being under a curfew.”

“The curfew is for everyone, may I remind you, and if we were to leave now, we wouldn’t make it to the door without a dozen questions. Besides, to walk out before the memorial service would be blatantly disrespectful.”

“Tommy, I can’t endure some tenebrious ceremony in the small hours of the morning, with a lot of preposterous speeches about Anton and Aaron. I want to go now. Customs; rituals. These people are fools, Tommy. It’s too late to be anything but frank. There are back stairs; there are side stairs. I’m for leaving here immediately. I have things on my mind. I have work to do.”

“I want to do what they asked us to do,” said Tommy, “which is what I intend to do. Observe the curfew they have asked us to observe. And go down when the bell is sounded. Now, please, Marklin, if you have nothing insightful or helpful to say, be quiet, will you?”

“Why should I be quiet? Why do you want to stay here?”

“All right, if you must know, we may have a chance during the memorial, or whatever it is, to find out where Stuart is keeping Tessa.”

“How could we find out that?”

“Stuart’s not a rich man, Marklin. He’s bound to have a home somewhere, a place we’ve never seen, some ancestral manse or something. Now, if we play our cards right, we can ask a few questions about this subject, out of concern, of course, for Stuart. Have you got a better idea?”

“Tommy, I don’t think Stuart would hide Tessa in a place that was known to be his home. He’s a coward, perhaps, a melodramatic lunatic even, but he’s not stupid. We are not going to find Stuart. And we are not going to find Tessa.”

“Then what do we do?” asked Tommy. “Abandon everything? With what we know?”

“No. We leave here. We go back to Regent’s Park. And we think. We think about something far more important to us now than anything the Talamasca can offer.”

“Which is?”

“We think, Tommy, about the Mayfair witches. We go over Aaron’s last fax to the Elders. And we study the File, we study it closely for every clue as to which of the clan is most useful for our purposes.”

“You’re going too fast,” said Tommy. “What do you mean to do? Kidnap a couple of Americans?”

“We can’t discuss it here. We can’t plan anything. Look, I’ll wait till the damned ceremony starts, but then I’m leaving. I’m stepping out at the first opportunity. You can come later if you like.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Tommy. “I don’t have a car. I have to go with you. And what if Stuart’s at the ceremony? Have you thought of that?”

“Stuart’s not coming back here. He has better sense.
Now, listen, Tommy. This is my final decision. I’ll stay for the beginning of the ceremony, I’ll pay my respects, chat with a few of the members, that sort of thing. And then I’m out of here! And on, on to my rendezvous with the Mayfair witches, Stuart and Tessa be damned.”

“All right, I’ll go with you.”

“That’s better. That’s intelligent. That’s my practical Tommy.”

“Get some sleep then. They didn’t say when they’d call us. And you’re the one who’s going to drive.”

T
HE TOPMOST ROOM
of the tower. Yuri sat at the round table, looking down into the cup of steaming Chinese tea before him.

The condemned man himself had made the tea. Yuri didn’t want to touch it.

All his life in the Talamasca, he had known Stuart Gordon. He had dined countless times with Gordon and Aaron. They had strolled the gardens together, gone to the retreats in Rome together. Aaron had talked so freely with Gordon. The Mayfair witches and the Mayfair witches and the Mayfair witches. And now it was Gordon.

Betrayed him
.

Why didn’t Ash kill him now? What could the man give that would not be contaminated, not perverted by his madness? It was almost a certainty that his helpers had been Marklin George and Tommy Monohan. But the Order would discover the truth on that score. Yuri had reached the Motherhouse from the phone booth in the village, and the mere sound of Elvera’s voice had brought him to tears. Elvera was faithful. Elvera was good. Yuri knew that the great chasm that had opened between him and the Talamasca had already begun to close. If Ash was right, that the conspiracy had been small, and indeed that seemed to be the case—that the Elders were not involved—then Yuri must be patient. He must listen to Stuart Gordon. Because Yuri had to take back to the Talamasca whatever he learned tonight.