“You’re in love with Rowan. I saw it. It frightened me, really, really frightened me.”
Silence.
Inexpressible pain. No image of Rowan in my heart. Simply an emptiness, an acknowledgement that she was far, far away. Maybe forever.
“Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken.”
“Frightened?” I asked. “How so?”
“I wanted you to love me,” Mona said. “I wanted you to remain interested in me. I wanted you to be on my side. I . . . I didn’t want you to be swept away by her.” She faltered. “I was jealous. I was like a prisoner let out of a solitary confinement cell after two years, and having found riches all around me, I feared losing everything.”
Again I was secretly impressed.
“Nothing was at risk,” I responded. “Absolutely nothing.”
“But surely you understand,” said Quinn, “what it means for Mona to be deluged with our gifts and unable to modulate her feelings. There we were in that very garden behind the First Street house, the very place where the Taltos bodies had been buried.”
“Yes,” Mona said. “We were talking of things which had tortured me for years and I . . . I. . . .”
“Mona, you must trust in me,” I said. “You must trust in my principles. That’s our paradox. We do not leave behind the Natural Law when we receive the Blood. We are principled creatures. I never stopped loving you, not for an instant. Whatever I felt for Rowan at the family gathering in no way affected my feelings for you. How could it? I warned you twice to be patient with your family because I knew it was right for you to do so. Then the third time, all right, I went too far with a little mockery. But I was trying to curb your insults, and your abuse of those you loved! But you wouldn’t listen to me.”
“I will now, I swear it,” she said. Again, the assured voice, a voice I’d not heard last night or tonight earlier. “Quinn’s been instructing me for hours. He’s been cautioning me about the way I treat Rowan and Michael and Dolly Jean. He’s told me I can’t just blithely call them ‘human beings’ right in front of them. It’s ill-mannered for a vampire to do that.”
“Indeed,” I said witheringly. (You gotta be kidding.)
“He’s explained that we have to be patient with their ways, and I see that now, and I understand why Rowan had to talk as she did. Or that it wasn’t my place to interrupt her. I see it. I won’t make those blundering remarks anymore. I have to find my . . . my maturity in the Blood.” She paused and then: “A place where serenity and courtesy connect. Yes, that’s what it is. And I’m far from it.”
“True,” I said. I studied her, the picture she made. I wasn’t quite convinced by this perfect Act of Contrition. And how lovely her little wrists looked in the tight black cuffs, and of course the shoes, with their wicked heels and winding snakelike straps. But I liked her words: “A place where serenity and courtesy connect.” I liked them a lot, and I knew they’d come from her. All she had said had come from her, no matter what Quinn had taught her. I could tell by the way that Quinn responded to her.
“And about the sequined dress,” she said, startling me out of that line of thought. “I understand now.”
“You do?” I asked soberly.
“Of course,” she said with a shrug. “All males are obviously much more stimulated by what they see than females. And why should we people of the night be an exception?” Flash of big green eyes. Rosy mouth. “You didn’t want to be distracted anymore by all that skin and cleavage, and you were very honest about it.”
“I should have made my wishes known with more tact and respect,” I said in a dull monotone. “I will be gentlemanly in the future.”
“No, no,” she said with an honest shake of her red hair. “We all knew the dress was highfalutin trash, it was supposed to be. That’s why I wore it to the hotel terrace. It was deliberately seductive. That’s why when I walked into this house, I went right to change into something more presentable. Besides, you
are
the Maker. That’s the word that Quinn used. The Maker, or the Master. The Teacher. And you have the authority to say to me, ‘Take off that dress,’ and I knew what you were talking about.
“But you see—I’ve been sick for a very crucial part of my life. I never knew as a mortal girl what it was like to wear a dress like that. I was never a mortal woman, you see.”
A great sadness descended on me.
“I just went from being a kid to being an invalid,” she said. “And then this, this range of powers which you’ve entrusted to me. And what have I done but strike out at you because I thought you . . . thought you loved Rowan.” She stopped, puzzled, looking off. “I suppose I wanted to reveal to you . . . that I was a woman, too, in that dress. . . .” she said dreamily. “Maybe that was it. That I was a woman as much as she was.”
It struck me in the soul, her words. The soul I wasn’t supposed to have, the entangled soul.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” she said, her voice roughened by emotion, “what womanhood means. The power to mother, the power to seduce, the power to leave behind both, the power to. . . .” She shut her eyes. She whispered: “And that dress, such an outrageous badge of it!”
“Don’t battle with it anymore,” I said. It was the first warmth I’d shown to her. “You said it the first time around, really. You said it.”
She knew it. She looked up at me.
“Power Slut,” she whispered. “That’s what you called me, and right you were, I was drunk on the power, I was spinning, I was—.”
“Oh, no, don’t—.”
“And we can transcend, we are so blessed, even if it is a dark blessing, we are miracles, we are free in so many marvelous respects—.”
“It’s my task,” I said, “to guide you, instruct you, remain with you until you’re able to exist well on your own, and not to lose my temper as I did. I was in the wrong. I played out the power hand same as you did, baby. I should have had much more patience.”
Quiet. And this sorrow too will lift. It must.
“You do love Rowan, though, don’t you?” she asked. “You really really love her.”
“Accept what I’m saying to you,” I said. “I am a very mean guy. And I am being nice.”
“Oh, you’re not mean at all,” she said with a little laugh. She cleared her saddened face with the brightest smile. “I absolutely adore you.”
“No, I am mean,” I said. “And I expect to be adored. Remember your own words. I’m the teacher.”
“But why do you love Rowan?”
“Mona, let’s not delve into that too much,” said Quinn. “I think we’ve accomplished a great reconciliation here, and Lestat won’t leave us now.”
“I was never going to leave,” I said under my breath. “I would never abandon either of you. But now that we’re gathered together, I think we can move on. There are other matters on my mind.”
Quiet.
“Yes, we should move on,” said Mona.
“What other matters?” Quinn asked a little fearfully.
“Last night we talked about a certain quest,” I said. “I made a promise. And I mean to keep it. But I want to clarify certain things . . . about the quest and what we hope to gain from it.”
“Yes,” said Quinn. “I’m not sure I fully understand everything about the Taltos.”
“There’s too much for us to understand,” I said. “I’m sure Mona would agree with that.”
I saw the trouble come back into her bright face, the pucker of her eyebrows, the soft lengthening of her mouth. But even in this I saw a new maturity, a new self-confidence.
“I have some questions. . . .” I said.
“Yes,” said Mona. “I’ll try to answer them.”
I reflected, then plunged: “Are you absolutely certain that you do want to find these creatures?”
“Oh, I have to find Morrigan, you know that! Lestat, how could you, you said you—?”
“Let me phrase it differently,” I said, raising my hand. “Never mind whatever you’ve said in the past. Now that you’ve had time to think—to become more accustomed to what you are, now that you know that Rowan and Michael weren’t lying to you, that you do know everything, and that there’s nothing to know—do you want to search out Morrigan simply to know that she’s safe and sound, or to reveal yourself to her in a true reunion?”
“Yes, that is the essential question,” said Quinn. “Which is it?”
“Well, for a true reunion obviously,” she answered without hesitation. “I never thought of any other possibility.” She was bewildered. “I . . . I never considered just finding out if she was all right. I . . . always thought we’d be together. I want so much to put my arms around her, to hold her, to—.” Her face went blank with hurt. She fell silent.
“You do see,” I asked as tactfully as I could, “if she wanted that, she would have come back to you a long time ago.”
Surely such thoughts had occurred to her before. They must have. But as I watched her now I wondered. Maybe she had dwelt on fantasies and lies—that Rowan knew the whereabouts of Morrigan and kept it secret. That Rowan had smuggled her the magic milk and it did no good.
Whatever the case, she was shaken now. Badly shaken.
“Maybe she couldn’t come to me,” she whispered. “Maybe Ash Templeton wouldn’t let her.” She shook her head and put her hands to her forehead. “I don’t know what kind of creature he is! Of course Michael and Rowan thought Ash was a . . . hero, a great all-knowing, wise observer of the centuries. But what if—. I don’t know. I want to see her. I want to talk to her. I want to hear it from her, what she wants, don’t you see? Why she didn’t come to me all those years, why she didn’t even . . . Lasher, he was cruel, but he was an aberrant soul, a. . . .” She covered her mouth with her right hand, her fingers trembling.
Quinn was beside himself. He couldn’t bear to see her so unhappy.
“Mona, you can’t give her the Blood,” I said softly, “no matter what her circumstances. The Blood cannot be passed to this species of creature. It is too unknown for us even to consider such a thing. The Blood very likely can’t be passed on to them. But even if it could, we can’t make a new species of Immortal. Believe me when I say there are ancient ones of our kind who would never tolerate such a thing happening.”
“Oh, I know that, I haven’t asked for that, I wouldn’t—.” She went quiet, obviously unable to speak.
“You want to know she’s alive and well,” said Quinn in the gentlest manner. “That’s paramount, wouldn’t you say?”
Mona nodded, looking away. “Yes—that there’s a community of them somewhere, and they’re happy.” She frowned. She battled her pain. She drew in her breath, cheeks reddening. “It isn’t likely, is it?” She looked at me.
“No, it’s not,” I said. “That’s what Rowan and Michael were trying to tell us.”
“Then I have to know what happened to them!” she whispered bitterly. “I have to!”
“I’ll find out,” I said.
“You really mean that?”
“Yes,” I said. “I wouldn’t make a promise to you like that unless I meant it. I’ll find out, and if they have survived, if they do have a community somewhere, then you can decide whether or not you want to meet with them. But once a meeting occurs, they’ll know about you, what you are, everything. That is, if they have the powers that Rowan ascribed to them.”
“Oh, they have those powers,” Mona said. “They do.” She closed her eyes. She took a deep painful breath. “It’s an awful thing to admit,” she said, “but the things Dolly Jean said were all true. I can’t deny them. I can’t withhold the truth from you and Quinn. I can’t. Morrigan was . . . almost unbearable.”
“How so, unbearable?” asked Quinn.
I could see this was a radical admission. She had said things quite to the contrary.
Mona threw back her hair, her eyes searching the ceiling. She was facing something she had always denied.
“Obsessive, incessant, maddening!” she said. “She went on and on about her schemes and plans and dreams and memories, and she did say that Mayfairs would become a family of Taltos, and once she caught the scent of the Taltos male on Rowan and Michael, she was absolutely unendurable.” Mona closed her eyes. “The thought of a community of such creatures is—almost beyond my imagination. This old one, Ash Templeton, the one that Rowan and Michael knew—he had learned to pretend to be a human being, he had learned that centuries ago. That’s the thing. These creatures can live indefinitely! They are immortals! The species is utterly incompatible with humans. Morrigan was new and raw.” She looked imploringly at me.
“Take it slowly,” I said. I had never seen her suffering so. In all her bouts of tears there had been a generosity and selflessness that made them seem quite challengeable. As for her rage, she’d positively enjoyed it. But now she was truly in torment.
“It’s like me, don’t you see?” she said. “She was a newborn Taltos. And I’m a newborn Blood Child, or whatever you want to call me. And we share the same faults. She was unruly and crashing into everything around her! And that’s the way I’ve behaved, raving to you as I did about your written confessions, I . . . she . . . presuming, assuming, even rushing to the computer just the way she did, recording my responses the way she did, and going on and on the way she did, but she, she never stopped, she . . . I . . . she . . . I don’t know. . . .” Her tears came and she couldn’t talk anymore. “Oh, dear God in Heaven, what is the squalid secret behind all this?” she whispered. “What is it? What is it?”
Quinn’s face was torn.
“I know the secret,” I said. “Mona, you hated her as much as you loved her. How could you not? Accept it. And now you have to know what happened to her.”
She nodded, vigorously, but she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t look at me.
“And we have to go about this with great care,” I said, “this search for the Taltos, but I vow to you again that we will do it. And I will find them or find out what became of them.”
Quiet.
She finally looked at me.
A sorrowful motionlessness settled over her. She wasn’t trying to stare me down. I don’t think she even realized I was looking back at her. She looked at me for the longest time and her face grew soft and giving and tender.
“I’ll never be mean to you again,” she said.
“I believe you,” I said. “I took you to my heart the first moment I saw you.”
Quinn sat staring with patient eyes, the round mirror behind him like a great halo.