Anne Rice - Taltos

Yuri had left his message at Amelia Street just before midnight, and Mona had experienced enough hate, love, grief, passion, regret, longing, and excruciating suspense to finally wear her out.

“I don’t have time to take these tests,” Rowan had been saying. “There are much more important things. For instance, what was found in Houston when you opened the room where Lasher had been keeping me?”

At that point Rowan had stopped because she’d seen Mona.

She’d risen to her feet as if she were greeting some important adult. Her eyes were brilliant now, and not so much cold anymore as serious, a real important distinction.

“I don’t mean to disturb you,” Mona had said. “I don’t want to go home to Amelia,” she’d said sleepily. “I was wondering if I could stay here-”

“I wish you would stay,” said Rowan without hesitation. “I’ve kept you waiting for hours.”

“Yes and no,” said Mona, who would rather have been here than home.

“It’s unforgivable,” said Rowan. “Can we talk in the morning?”

“Yeah, sure,” Mona had said, with an exhausted shrug. She’s talking to me like I’m a grown woman, thought Mona, which is more than anybody else around here ever does.

“You are a woman, Mona Mayfair,” Rowan had said, with a sudden, deeply personal smile. She’d immediately sat down again and resumed her conversation with Ryan.

“There should have been papers there, in my room in Houston, reams of scribbled writing. This was his writing, genealogies he had made before his memory deteriorated….”

Boy, Mona had thought, stepping away about as slowly as she could-she’s talking to Ryan of all people about Lasher, and Ryan still can’t say that name, and now Ryan has to deal with hard evidence of what he still won’t accept. Papers, genealogies, things written by the monster who killed his wife, Gifford.

But what Mona had realized in a flash was that she wasn’t necessarily going to be shut out of all this. Rowan had just spoken to her again as if she were important. Everything was changed. And if Mona asked Rowan tomorrow or the day after what those papers were-Lasher’s scribblings-Rowan might even tell her.

Incredible to have seen Rowan’s smile, to have seen the mask of cold power broken, to have seen the gray eyes crinkle and glisten for an instant, to have heard the deep chocolate voice take on that extra little warmth that a smile can give it-amazing.

Mona had finally hurried out of sight. Quit while you’re ahead. You’re too sleepy to be eavesdropping, anyway.

The last thing she’d heard was Ryan saying in a strained voice that everything from Houston had been examined and cataloged.

Mona could still remember when all of those things had reached Mayfair and Mayfair. She could still remember that scent of him that came from the boxes. She could still-occasionally-catch that scent in the living room, but it was almost gone now.

She had flopped on the living room couch, too tired to think about it all just now.

All the others had left by that time. Lily was sleeping upstairs near Beatrice. Michael’s Aunt Vivian had moved back to her own apartment on St. Charles Avenue.

The living room had been empty, the breeze floating in through the windows to the side porch. A guard had been walking back and forth out there, so Mona had figured, I don’t have to close those windows, and facedown on the couch she had crashed, thinking Yuri, then Michael, and pushing her face into the velvet and going sound asleep.

They said when you grew older you couldn’t sleep that way. Well, Mona was ready for it. That sort of blotto sleep always made her feel cheated, as if she’d checked out on the universe for a span of time that she herself could not control.

But at four o’clock she’d awakened, unsure of why.

The floor-length windows had been open still, and the guard was out there smoking a cigarette.

Sleepily she’d listened to the sounds of the night, the birds crying in the dark trees, the distant roar of a train along the waterfront, the sound of water splashing as in a fountain or a pool.

She must have listened for half an hour before the sound of the water began to prey on her. There was no fountain. Someone was swimming in the pool.

Half expecting to see some delicious ghost-poor Stella, for instance, or God only knew what other apparition-Mona had slipped out in her bare feet and crossed the lawn. The guard was nowhere in sight now, but that didn’t mean much on a property of this size.

Someone had been swimming steadily back and forth across the pool.

Through the gardenia bushes, Mona had seen that it was Rowan, naked, and moving with incredible speed through lap after lap. Rowan took her breaths regularly, head to the side, the way professional swimmers do it, or the way that athletic doctors do it, who want to work the body and condition it, and maybe even heal it and bring it back into prime form.

No time to disturb her, Mona had thought, still sleepy, longing for the couch again, in fact, so sluggish she might have fallen down on the cool grass. Something about the scene had disturbed her, however; maybe that Rowan was nude, or that she swam so rapidly and so steadily; or maybe just that the guard was around and might be a peeping Tom in the bushes right now, which Mona didn’t like.

Whatever, Rowan had known all about the guards on the property. She’d spent an hour with Ryan on that subject alone.

Mona had gone back to sleep.

Now, as she woke, it was Rowan she thought of, even before invoking the face of Yuri, or feeling routinely and religiously guilty about Michael, or at once reminding herself, rather like giving her own arm a cruel pinch, that Gifford and her mother were both dead.

She stared at the sunlight bathing the floor and the gold damask chair nearest the window. Maybe that was what this was all about. The lights had gone dim for Mona when Alicia and Gifford died, there was no doubt of it. And now, just because this woman was interested in her, this mysterious woman who meant so much to her for countless reasons, the lights were bright again.

Aaron’s death was terrible, but she could handle it. In fact, what she felt more than anything else was the same selfish excitement she’d known yesterday at Rowan’s first expression of interest, at her first confidential and respectful glance.

Probably wants to ask me if I want to go to boarding school, Mona thought. High heels lying there. She couldn’t put those on again. But it was nice to walk on the bare boards at First Street. They were always polished now, with the new staff. Yancy, the houseman, buffed them for hours. Even old Eugenia had been working more and grumbling less.

Mona rose, straightened out the silk dress which was perhaps ruined now, she wasn’t really sure. She walked over to the garden window and let the sun flood over her, warm and fresh, the air full of humidity and sweetness from the garden-all the things she usually took for granted, but which at First Street seemed doubly wonderful, and worth a moment’s meditation before rushing headlong into the day.

Protein, complex carbos, vitamin C. She was famished. Last night there had been the usual groaning sideboard, with all the family coming to put their arms around Beatrice, but Mona had forgotten to eat.

“No wonder you woke up in the night, you idiot.” When she failed to eat, she invariably had a headache. Now she thought again, suddenly, of Rowan swimming alone, and the thought disturbed her again-the nudity, the strange disregard for the hour and the presence of the guards. Hell, you idiot, she’s from California. They do stuff like that out there night and day.

She stretched, spread her legs apart, touched her toes with her hands, and then leaned backwards, shaking her hair from side to side till it felt loose and cool again, and then she walked out of the room and back the long corridor, through the dining room and into the kitchen.