14

THE NEXT NIGHT I AWOKE to discover the National Catholic Reporter had arrived in the mail, and I tore it open for news of Saint Juan Diego.

There was great coverage, including a wonderful black and white photograph of the Pope in his white mitre, listing badly to the right proper but doing fine otherwise, watching "indigenous dancers" at the canonization Mass in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Huge crowd. Of course the article HAD to mention the fact that some people doubted that Juan Diego had ever existed!

But what did that matter to the faithful like me?

Only after I had devoured all the articles on the Pope's travels did I realize there was a note lying on the desk from one of the guards, saying that Michael Curry had come by in the afternoon and asked if I might call him. No one was answering the phone.

I'd come back so late last night that I had not seen Mona and Quinn, and they had not yet risen.

The flat was ominously quiet. Apparently it was too early for Julien and Stella as well. Or maybe my last speech had routed Julien for a while. But I didn't think so. He was, if anything, probably more energized and waiting for a moment in which to strike.

I was about to pick up the phone and call the number which Michael had given to the guard when I realized that Michael had just come to the carriageway below.

I went down to meet him. The evening was all aglow and full of the scent of the kitchens of the Quarter.

I motioned for the guards to let Michael come on back.

He was in a frantic state. He was wearing the same three-piece white suit as yesterday, shirt now open and tie gone, and he was all rumpled and smudged with dirt and his hair was mussed.

"What's the matter, man?" I asked, as I reached to take his arm.

He shook his head. He was choking on the words he wanted to say. His thoughts were scrambled. On some unconscious level he blocked me from reading him, while appealing to me at the same time.

I led him into the courtyard. He was sweating badly. The garden was just too hot. I had to take him in where the artificial winds blow.

"Come on," I said. "Let's go upstairs."

Mona appeared in the doorway just as we reached the back parlor, pretty blue silk dress, heels strapped at the ankles, just her hair tousled from bed.

"Uncle Michael, what's wrong!" She was instantly distraught.

"Hey, baby," Michael said weakly. "You're sure looking fine." He collapsed on the velvet sofa and he put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

"What is it, Uncle Michael?" she said, obviously shy of touching him, settling uncertainly on the edge of a nearby chair.

"It's Rowan," he said. "She's gone out of her mind, and I don't know if we can bring her back this time. It's worse than it ever was before."

He looked at me. "I came here to ask you point blank if you'd help. You have a power over her. You calmed her last night. You might be able to do it again."

"But what's happening to her?" Mona asked. "Is she catatonic like before?"

I caught only jumbled images from Michael's mind. He didn't appear to register Mona's question. I had to settle for his words.

"Stirling's with her now," Michael said, "but he's not getting through. This morning she insisted she wanted to go to Confession. I called Fr. Kevin. They were alone for about an hour. Of course he can't tell anybody what she said. You ask me, I think Fr. Kevin's on the brink too. You can't take a regular priest like Fr. Kevin and plunge him into a family like ours, and expect him to survive, expect him to represent something, expect him to exercise his priestly functions. It's not fair."

"Michael," I said. "What is Rowan doing?"

He didn't seem to hear me. He went on.

"Mayfair Medical, all her work on it has been frenetic, you know that, or at least you did know that-" he looked at Mona-"but nobody else really realizes it, that she works to the point of exhaustion so that there will be no inner life, no quiet life, no life of the mind other than that which is locked to Mayfair Medical, it's a complete vocation, yeah, marvelous, but it's also a complete escape."

"A mania," said Mona quietly. She was badly shaken.

"Right," said Michael. "Her public persona is the only persona she really has. The interior Rowan has utterly disintegrated. Or it has to do with the secrets of Mayfair Medical. And now this breakdown, this complete disconnection, this madness. Do you realize how many people are riding on her energy? Her example? She's created a world that's dependent upon her-members of the family from all over come here to study medicine, the new wing is under way at the hospital, there's the Brain Study Program, she's monitoring four research projects, I don't even know the half of it. You chuck my own selfish needs, and then there's all that-."

"What actually happened?" I pushed.

"Last night she lay on the bed for hours. She was whispering things. I couldn't hear her. She wouldn't talk to me. She wouldn't come out of it. She wouldn't dress for bed, or take anything to eat or drink. I lay beside her-what you told me to do. I held her. I even sang to her. Irish people do that, you know. We sing when we're melancholy. It's the strangest thing. I thought I was the only one. Then I realized all Mayfairs do it. That's the Tyrone McNamara blood down through Oncle Julien. I sang these melancholy songs to her. I fell asleep. When I woke up, she was gone.

"I found her in the back garden on the lawn under the oak. She was barefoot out there, in her pretty silk suit, digging, digging where the remains were." He looked at Mona. "She was in her bare feet and she was digging with one of the gardener's big shovels. She was talking to herself about Emaleth and Lasher

and she was cursing herself. When I tried to stop her, she hit me. I tried to remind her she'd had the remains removed. As soon as Mayfair Medical was complete, she had had a team out to scour for the remains."

"Emaleth and Lasher?" I asked.

"I remember," said Mona. "I was there when it happened."

"She was crazy that day," Michael said. "She kept repeating herself. She said that she belonged in the Talamasca. They sifted through that dirt like a pack of archaeologists. Yeah, you saw them, and that fragrance, it was so strong."

Mona was fighting back her usual tears. My heart went out to both of them. They were prisoners of these secrets.

"Go on," said Mona.

"I tried to tell her. They'd excavated the entire area. They'd brought everything to Mayfair Medical. She didn't seem to understand. I told her what she'd told me at the time. It was cartilage, cartilage of an infinitely more elastic species . . . that it wasn't even the scene of a crime! But she wasn't listening. She keeps pacing and talking to herself. She says I don't know who she is. She's always told me that. She started talking again about joining the Talamasca, retiring into the Order. As if it was a convent. She said she belonged there. In the Talamasca. In the old days, when women had done evil things they could be sent to monasteries. She said she would make a bequest to the Talamasca, and they would take her, they would take the Mad Scientist, because that's who she really was. Mona, she doesn't believe in my understanding. She doesn't believe in my power to forgive."

"I know, Uncle Michael."

"I'm a moral child in her mind," Michael said, his voice shaky. "And then she said the worst thing."

"What?" asked Mona.

"She said that you were . . . you were dead."

Mona didn't reply.

"I kept telling her you were fine. We'd just seen you. You were all right, you were cured. She kept shaking her head. 'Mona's not alive anymore.' That's what she said."

Michael looked at me. "Lestat, will you come?" he asked.

I was vaguely amazed. This man was highly intuitive, but he was seeing in me only what he wanted to see.

"Will you talk to her?" he asked. "You had such a soothing effect on her. I saw it with my own eyes. If you and Mona could come. Bring Quinn. Rowan loves Quinn. Rowan doesn't notice many people. But she's always loved Quinn. Maybe because Quinn can see spirits, I don't know. Maybe because Quinn and Mona love each other, I don't know. She loved Quinn from the first time he came to call on Mona years ago. She's always trusted in Quinn. But Lestat, if you could talk to her . . . and Mona, if you could come and show her that you're alive, show her that you're fine, just hold her. . . ."

"Michael, listen to me," I said. "I want you to go home. Quinn and Mona and I have to talk this over. We'll come to you or call you as soon as we can. Be assured, we're very concerned about Rowan. There's no other concern on our minds right now except Rowan."

He sat back on the couch, closed his eyes and took a long breath. He looked defeated. "I was hoping you'd come back with me," he said.

"Believe me," I said, "our little consultation won't take long. We have strong obligations. We'll call or come just as quickly as we can." I hesitated. "We love Rowan," I said.

He stood up, heaved a sigh and headed for the door. I asked if he needed a ride back home and he murmured that his car had brought him downtown.

He looked back at Mona. She'd stood up but she was afraid to embrace him, that was plain.

"Uncle Michael, I love you," she whispered.

"Oh, sweetheart," he said, "if I had my life to live over again and could just erase that one night."

"Don't think about it, Uncle Michael," she said. "How many times do I have to tell you? I climbed in the back window, for God's sakes. It was all my fault, from start to finish."

He was unconvinced. "I took advantage of you, baby," he whispered.

I was stunned.

"Michael, it was Oncle Julien too," Mona said. "It was Oncle Julien's spell. He made a big mistake. Besides, it doesn't matter now, don't you see?"

I was stunned again.

He stared at her, narrowing his eyes. I couldn't figure whether he wanted a blurred focus or a fine one. It was as though he saw her loveliness afresh.

"Oh, you do look so good," he sighed. "My sweetheart." He closed the gap between them and embraced her totally, a bear of a man enfolding her. "My darling girl," he said.

I was afraid.

They rocked together, his arms completely enclosing her. He suspected nothing. He drifted in a dream. And she, newborn thing that she was, felt like a peach.

At last he broke away and said wearily that he had to return to Rowan, and I told him again that we would call him very soon.

He looked at me for a long moment, as though he was seeing me with new eyes, but it was only his weariness. He was seeing what he wanted to see in me, and he thanked me again.

"She called you Rasputin when she was angry," he said. "Well, I tell you, Lestat, you do have that sort of power and it's a good thing. I can sense the good in you."

"How in the world can you do that?" I asked. To ask that honest question felt extraordinarily sweet. This was truly one of the most baffling mortals I'd ever met. And to think, he washer husband, and I'd thought him the perfect husband for her when we'd first met.

He reached out and took my hand before I could stop him. Couldn't he feel how hard it was? Only the thinnest layer of flesh was permeable. I was a monster. Yet he peered into my eyes as though plumbing for something separate from the Deadly Sins that prevailed within me.

"You're good," he said, confirming it for himself. "You think I'd let you hold my wife in your arms if I didn't sense it? You think I'd let you kiss her cheek? You think I'd come to plead with you to calm my wife when I couldn't if I didn't know you were good? I don't make mistakes of that order. I've been with the dead. The dead have come to me and surrounded me. They've talked to me. They've taught me things. I know."

I held fast. I nodded. "I've been with the dead too," I said. "They left me in confusion."

"Maybe you asked too much of them," he said gently. "I think when the dead come to us they are crippled creatures. They look to us for their completion."

"Yes," I said. "I think that's true. And without a doubt I failed them. But I was with angels too and they asked too much of me and I refused them."

A look of quiet shock passed over his face. "Yes, you said it before. Angels. I can't imagine being with angels."

"Never mind my words," I said. "I talk too much of my own wounds and failures. With Rowan, something can be done, and I promise you, we will see to it."

He nodded. "Just come to the house, please, all of you."

"Are you and Rowan alone there?" I asked.

"Stirling Oliver is there, but-," he said.

"That's fine. He can stay," I replied. "We'll be there very soon. Wait there for us."

He nodded with a half smile that was trusting and grateful and kind.

He went on out the door.

I stood trembling, listening to him make the stairs, and then the carriageway. I shut my eyes.

A solemn silence fell over the room. I knew Quinn had come to the door. I struggled to gain control of my heart. I struggled. Mona cried softly into her handkerchief.

"Mona of a Thousand Tears," I said. I fought them myself. I won. "How could he have so totally misunderstood me?"

"But he didn't," said Quinn.

"Oh, yes, he did," I insisted. "Sometimes I think the theologians have got it backwards. The big problem is not How to explain the existence of evil in this world. It's How to explain the existence of good."

"You don't believe that," said Quinn.

"Yes, I do," I said.

I fell into a sudden trance, thinking of the Pope in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City with the "Indigenous people" dancing in their feathered headdresses. I wondered if the Spaniards would have murdered those Indians in their feathered headdresses for doing that on consecrated ground two centuries ago or three or four. Well, Hell, it didn't matter. Saint Juan Diego would protect everyone now.

I shuddered in order to clear my mind.

I sat on the couch. I had to ponder what I'd learnt.

"So it was Michael who fathered your child," I said to Mona as gently as I could.

"Yes," she answered. She sat beside me. She put her hand over mine. "There are so many things I'm not free to tell. But at the time, Rowan wasn't there. Rowan . . . Rowan did a terrible thing. I can't tell what Rowan did. Rowan left Michael. Rowan was the thirteenth witch. I can't tell it. But Rowan left Michael on Christmas Day."

"Go on, you were talking about Michael," I said.

"It was weeks later. The house was all dark. I climbed in the window. Michael was supposed to be sick. He was grieving for Rowan. I crept up there to his room. I knew he wasn't sick as soon as I touched him."

Quinn sat down close to us. I realized he'd heard our conversation with Michael. He didn't care for what Mona was telling me. It came as a huge shock to him that Michael had fathered the child of which he knew so little. But he remained quiet.

"Then Oncle Julien cast a spell on both of us," said Mona. "He brought us together. He was trying to help Michael stop grieving over Rowan. He wanted to prove to Michael that Michael wasn't really sick. But I wanted it. I really wanted it. I was being the Wander Slut in those days. I kept a list on my computer of all the cousins I seduced. I seduced my cousin Randall, and I think he was eighty then. He nearly shot himself on account of it. Me being thirteen and all that. It was perfectly disgusting. I had to confess to my Aunt Bea that I'd seduced Randall and ask her to come bring the medics-Oh, never mind. But he's just fine now. Imagine. I like to think he's lived to be ninety, thanks to me."

"Yes, of course," said Quinn dryly. "But with Michael you conceived the child."

"Yes," said Mona. "The child that they took away from me."

"It was giving birth to the Woman Child," I said, "that brought on the wasting sickness, and the sickness wouldn't stop."

"Yes," Mona answered. "At first we didn't know what was happening. It came on very gradually. I had a little time. What good is it now to talk about these things? Rowan dug up the remains beneath the tree because she was trying to find something that might help me. At least in part that was the reason. But it doesn't matter now. What do we do?"

"But who were the creatures buried beneath the tree?" I asked. "Michael called them Emaleth and Lasher."

"Those are their secrets," Mona insisted. "Look, I escaped it all, on account of you, both of you. But there's no escape for Rowan, is there? Except Mayfair Medical. Except project after project. No. But I have to demand the truth from her. Did she try to find my child or not? Did she lie?"

"Why would she lie?" Quinn asked. "What would have been her motive? Don't you see, Mona, Lestat and I can't comprehend these things unless you tell us what they mean."

Mona's face grew dark. She was so pretty that it couldn't look sour, no matter how dreadful her thoughts. "I don't know," she said, tossing her hair. "I just had the feeling sometimes that if Rowan could get one of them . . . the mutation, the other species . . . she'd lock them up in Mayfair Medical until she'd run every test she could to see what their flesh or their breast milk or their blood could do for human beings."

"The other species?" I asked.

She sighed.

"Their breast milk in particular, it had curative properties. I used to lie there in the dark and imagine that my daughter was somewhere locked in the building. It was a fantasy. Rowan would force drinks on me. I'd imagine the breast milk of my daughter was mixed in it. It's all wrapped up in what the mutation is. But it doesn't matter now. What does matter is now we have to help Rowan, and I still have to get the truth from her-how I go about finding my daughter myself."

"You still want to find her?" Quinn repeated, as if he hadn't really understood. "Even now, after what's happened to you?"

"Yes," said Mona. "Especially now. I'm no longer human, am I? We're equals now, me and Morrigan, don't you see? Morrigan will live for centuries and so will I! That is-if Rowan's been telling the truth all these years, if she doesn't know where my daughter is, if my daughter's really still alive. . . ."

"Another species," I said, "not really a mutation. Babies that grow to maturity soon after birth."

"The curse of the family . . . I can't explain it-," Mona protested. "Don't you understand? Only a tiny number of the Mayfairs know what happened. All the rest live in blissful innocence! That's the irony. The family is so large and so good, so very good. They really have no idea what happened, they never saw, they never experienced, they never knew-."

"I understand your loyalty to them," I said. "But don't you see that Quinn and you and I are a family now?"

She nodded. "I'm a Mayfair," she said. "What can I do to change it? Nothing. Even the Dark Blood doesn't change it. I'm a Mayfair, and that's why we have to go there. I have no choice."

"When Oncle Julien appeared to Quinn," I said, "to tell Quinn that he had Mayfair blood in his veins, Oncle Julien knew about the species? He feared Quinn would have the genes for the species?"

"Please," said Mona. "Don't ask me any more questions. So many bad things happened! By that time Oncle Julien knew because we knew. He wanted to keep Quinn and me apart. But so much damage was done to me by Morrigan's birth it didn't matter. I couldn't have another child of any kind."

"Morrigan," I said. "Did you love this creature? Did she have intellect? Could she speak?"

"You can't imagine what it's like to give birth to one of these creatures," said Mona. "They speak to you even from the womb, they know you, and you know them, and they're hardwired with the knowledge of their kind-." She broke off as if she'd shattered a vow.

I put my arm around her and I kissed her, and brushed the veil of hair back which separated us and kissed her cheek again. She quieted. I loved the texture of her skin. I loved the feel of her lips when my fingers touched them.

Quinn watched these things but he didn't resent me any more than Michael had with Rowan. I withdrew.

"Do you want me to go there alone?" I asked.

"No, absolutely not," cried Mona. "I want to see Rowan. I want to make her tell me. Is it true my child has never, never, ever tried to reach me? I have to know."

"I think you've both told me what we'll do," I said soberly. "We'll exchange secrets. That becomes the framework of our dialogue. We tell Rowan and Michael exactly what we are. And they tell us about the Woman Child and if they know anything at all to aid Mona in her search. They reveal to us the things that Mona can't."

Mona looked up. Her eyes appeared to focus more clearly. I looked at her.

"Are you willing, my darling one?" I asked.

"Yes," Mona said. "It's really their story, not mine."

"Mona, you almost died in this story," I said. "How could it not be yours as well?"

"Oh, I forced my way into it," she said. "I wanted Michael. And she'd deserted him. All those nights in the hospital-I wondered, had she really forgiven me? And my child had lived and-." She shook her head and raised her hand as though to banish a specter.

I stroked her hair back from her forehead. She inclined to me, and I kissed her forehead.

"We have to go there, Beloved Boss!" she whispered. "We promised Michael. She's got to tell me the truth."

"This is all wrong," said Quinn. He shook his head. He clearly didn't like the idea at all. No one at Blackwood Farm knew Quinn's secrets. Even his clever Aunt Queen had died believing him her innocent boy.

"It's the only way to save the sanity of Rowan Mayfair," I said. "She knows but she doesn't know for sure, and it will eat at her and it will obsess her, and on account of her bond with Mona, she and Michael will never let it go. The damage has been done. Only some form of truth will repair it."

"You're right," said Mona. "But if they tell you and Quinn about the Taltos, if they take you into their trust, tell you things that even most all of the Mayfairs don't know, there will be a bond, and maybe that bond can somehow save us all."

Taltos.

So that was the name of this species. That was the name of the creature of the curious fragrance and the back-garden graves and the dying womb.

"Michael and Rowan have obviously kept one terrible set of secrets," I said. "They're fit to keep another. And the innocent Mayfairs will come to receive Mona. And her life won't have to be of the shadows. She'll come and go as you do, Quinn. That's the way it will work."

Quinn studied me silently, respectfully. Then he spoke up.

"Are you in love with Rowan?"

"Doesn't matter one way or the other," I said.

Mona flashed on me, the blood rising in her cheeks very hot, and her eyes quivering.

Intense, painful moment. Why was my soul not crusted over with barnacles for every life I'd taken? I spoke with the tongue of a mortal.

"We're going there to save Rowan, are we not?" I said. "Quinn, call for a car, will you?"

I left them and opened the door and went out onto the rear balcony. The breeze had picked up. The banana trees were dancing against the brick walls. I could see the white roses in the dark. An illicit fire

burnt inside me. " 'The rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys,' " I whispered. " 'Thou art all fair, my love, there is no spot in thee.' " How reverently the wind received these strange words.

I would have liked the long way-a walk uptown through streets narrow and wide, the open-mouthed roar of the streetcar or its heavy metal clatter through Chrondelet Street, the vision of the pilgrim oaks struggling on lower St. Charles Avenue, the festering flowers of the Garden District, and the glistening moss on the bricks.

But there was no time for that except in my memory. My heart was thudding. And in Quinn's heart my heart was on trial.

"You know," Mona said as we waited at the curb for the limousine. "I haven't seen the house on First and Chestnut for two years. The day the ambulance came I thought I'd be back in a week or two, like always. Hmmm. I wonder if Oncle Julien's on the prowl in the old rooms."

No, darling, I thought, though I didn't voice it. He's right across the street, in the shadows of a shop bolted for the night, the discredited spirit, glowering at me. Goddamn you! But who knows, maybe he'll come along.