Anne Rice - Taltos

Eggs, orange juice, Michael’s concoction. Maybe there was a goodly supply.

The smell of fresh coffee surprised her. Immediately she took a black china mug from the cupboard and lifted the pot. Very black, espresso, Michael’s kind of coffee, the kind he’d loved in San Francisco. But she realized this wasn’t what she wanted at all. She craved something cool and good. Orange juice. Michael always had bottles of it, mixed and ready, in the refrigerator. She filled another cup with orange juice, and carefully capped the jug to keep all the vitamins from dying in the air.

Suddenly she realized she wasn’t alone.

Rowan was sitting at the kitchen table, watching her. Rowan was smoking a cigarette which she tapped now above a fine china saucer with flowers along the edge. She wore a black silk suit and pearl earrings, and there was a little string of pearls around her neck, too. It was one of those suits with a long curvaceous jacket, double-breasted and fully buttoned, with no blouse or shirt beneath it, only bare flesh to a discreet cleft.

“I didn’t see you,” Mona confessed.

Rowan nodded. “Do you know who bought these clothes for me?” The voice was as chocolaty and smooth as it had been last night, after all the soreness had gone away.

“Probably the same person who bought this dress for me,” said Mona. “Beatrice. My closets are bulging with stuff from Beatrice. And it’s all silk.”

“So are my closets,” said Rowan, and there came again that bright smile.

Rowan’s hair was brushed back from her face, but otherwise natural, curling loosely just above her collar; her eyelashes looked very dark and distinct, and she wore a pale violet-pink lipstick that carefully outlined a rather beautifully shaped mouth.

“You’re really OK, aren’t you?” asked Mona.

“Sit down here, will you?” said Rowan. She gestured to the chair at the other end of the table.

Mona obeyed.

An expensive fragrance emanated from Rowan, rather like citrus and rain.

The black silk suit was really terrific; in the days before the wedding, Rowan had never been seen in anything so deliberately sensual. Bea had a way of sneaking into people’s closets and checking their sizes, not just by label but with a tape measure, and then dressing them up the way that she, Beatrice, thought they ought to look.

Well, with Rowan she’d done well.

And I’ve destroyed this blue dress, thought Mona. Just not ready for this kind of thing. Or those high heels she’d kicked off on the living room floor.

Rowan lowered her head as she crushed out her cigarette. A deep forward curl of ash-blond hair fell into the hollow of her cheek. Her face looked lean and awesomely dramatic. It was as if sickness and sorrow had given her the very gauntness for which starlets and models starve themselves to death.

For this sort of beauty, Mona was no contender. It was red hair and curves with her, and always would be. If you didn’t like it, you wouldn’t like Mona.

Rowan gave a soft laugh.

“How long have you been doing it?” asked Mona, taking a deep gulp of her coffee. It had just reached the right temperature. Delicious. In two minutes it would be too cold to drink. “Reading my mind, I mean. It’s not consistent, is it?”

Rowan was caught off guard, but seemed faintly amused. “No, it’s not consistent at all. I’d say it happens in flashes when you’re sort of preoccupied, kind of slipping into your own reflections. It’s like you suddenly strike a match.”

“Yeah, I like that. I know what you’re saying.” Mona took a deep swallow of the orange juice, thinking how good it was, and how cold. For a moment her head hurt from the cold. She tried not to stare worshipfully at Rowan. This was like having a crush on a teacher, something that Mona had never known.

“When you look at me,” said Rowan, “I can’t read anything. Maybe it’s your green eyes blinding me. Don’t forget about them when you’re making your tally. Perfect skin, red hair to die for, long and outrageously thick, and enormous green eyes. Then there’s the mouth, and the body. No, I think your view of yourself is slightly blurred right now. Perhaps it’s only that you’re more interested in other things-the legacy, what happened to Aaron, when will Yuri come back?”

Clever words came to Mona’s mind and faded away instantly. She had never in her life lingered before a mirror more than necessary. She had not looked in one this morning at all.

“Look, I don’t have much time,” Rowan said. She clasped her hands on the table. “I need to talk to you straight.”

“Yes, do it,” said Mona. “Please.”

“I understand completely about your being the heiress. There is no malice between you and me. You’re the finest conceivable choice. I knew this myself in my own instinctive fashion as soon as I came to grasp what had been done. But Ryan cleared up the matter completely. The tests and the profile are complete. You are the gifted daughter. You have the intelligence, the stability, the toughness. You have the perfect health. Oh, the extra chromosomes are there, all right, but they’ve been there in Mayfair women and men for centuries. There’s no reason to expect that anything like what happened on Christmas will ever happen again.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figure,” said Mona. “Besides, I don’t have to marry anyone with the extra string, do I? I’m not in love with a member of the family. Oh, I know that’s bound to change, you’re thinking, but I mean at present there isn’t any kind of childhood-sweetheart syndrome with someone loaded with deadly genes.”

Rowan thought about this and then she nodded. She looked down into her coffee cup, then lifted it and took the last swallow and set the cup a little to the side.

“I don’t hold any malice against you for what happened with Michael. You must understand that too.”

“It’s hard to believe. Because I think what I did was so wrong.”

“Thoughtless perhaps, but not wrong. Besides, I think I understand just what happened. Michael doesn’t talk about it. I’m not referring to the seduction anyway. I’m talking about the effect.”

“If I did cure him, then I won’t go to hell after all,” said Mona. She pressed her lips together in a sad smile. There was more than a trace of guilt and self-loathing in her voice and face, and she knew it. But she was so relieved now, she couldn’t put that part into words.

“You cured him, and perhaps you were meant to do this. Someday maybe we can talk together about the dreams you had, and the Victrola that materialized in the living room.”

“Then Michael told you.”

“No, you told me. All the times you thought about it out there, remembering the waltz from La Traviata , and the ghost of Julien telling you to do it. But this isn’t important to me. It’s only important that you not worry about my hating you anymore. You have to be strong to be the heiress, especially the way things are now. You can’t be worried about the wrong things.”

“Yes, you’re right. You really don’t hold it against me. I know you don’t.”

“You could have known sooner,” said Rowan. “You’re stronger than I am, you know. Reading people’s thoughts and emotions, it’s almost a trick. I always hated it when I was a child. It frightened me. It frightens lots of gifted children. But later on, I learned to use it in a subtle, almost subconscious way. Wait a beat after someone speaks to you, especially if the words are confusing. Wait a beat and you’ll know what the person feels.”

“You’re right, it’s like that, I’ve tried it.”

“It gets better and stronger. I would think that knowing what you know-about everything-it would be easier for you. I was supposed to be disgustingly normal, an honors student with a passion for science, growing up with all the luxuries of a well-to-do only child. You know what you are.”