12

THE SHOCK OF SEEING MONA, of apprehending her in the light that fell from the upstairs windows and the inevitable light from the glowing sky, was such that Rowan was stopped as if she'd struck an invisible wall.

Michael at once caught up with her, and he too experienced a similar immense surprise.

As they stood baffled, not knowing what to make of the evidence of their senses, I told the guards to back off and leave the matter to me.

"Come on up into the flat," I said. I gestured towards the iron stairs.

It was useless to say anything at this juncture. It wasn't a vampire that they'd just seen. They knew and suspected nothing of supernatural origin here. It was Mona's spectacular "recovery" which had them in total disbelief.

It was in essence a scary moment. Because though a big frank smile of undisguised jubilance had broken out over Michael Curry's face, Rowan's scowling countenance was full of something akin to wrath. All her personal history was coiled behind that wrath, and I was fascinated by it as I'd been by all her emotions before.

Only reluctantly, and somewhat in the manner of a sleepwalker, Rowan let me take her arm. Her entire body was tense. Nevertheless, I led her to the iron steps, and then I went before her, in order to lead the whole party. And Mona gestured for Rowan to follow me, and Mona, tossing her hair back over her shoulders, looking miserable, followed her.

The back parlor was best for such gatherings, having no bookshelves and a deep velvet sofa and lots of tolerable Queen Anne chairs. Of course there was ormolu and inlaid wood everywhere, and a blazing new wallpaper of wine and beige stripes, and the garlands of flowers in the carpet seemed to be having convulsions, and the Impressionist paintings on the wall in their thick encrusted frames were like windows into a far far better, sun-filled universe, but it was a good room.

I shut off the overhead chandelier immediately and switched on two of the smaller corner lamps. It was softly dim now, but not uncomfortably so, and I directed everyone to sit down.

Michael beamed at Mona and said at once, "Darling, you look absolutely beautiful," as if he was uttering a prayer. "My lovely, lovely girl."

"Thank you, Uncle Michael, I love you," Mona answered tragically, and wiped at her eyes fiercely as though these people were somehow going to return her to her wretched mortal state.

Quinn was petrified. And his worst suspicion was rightly directed at Rowan.

She too appeared paralyzed except for her eyes, breaking away from Mona suddenly and fastening on me.

This had to be quick.

"All right, you see for yourself," I said, my eyes moving from Rowan to Michael and back again. "Mona's cured of whatever was wrong with her, and the entire wasting sickness has been reversed. She's utterly self-sufficient and whole. If you think that I am going to explain to you how this was done, or anything about it, you're wrong. You can call me Rasputin or worse names. I don't care."

Rowan's eyes quivered but her face did not change. The turbulence inside her was unreadable, indeed, unknowable, and if I caught anything definitive it was a high pitch of terror that hearkened back to things which had befallen her in the past. I couldn't fathom it, there wasn't time for such mental mining, and her confusion was putting up too much of a fight.

I had to go on.

"You're not going to walk away from here with any answers," I proceeded. "Get angry at me. Go ahead. Some night, many years from now, maybe Mona will choose to explain what happened, but for now you have to accept what you've seen. You no longer need to worry about Mona. Mona is on her own."

"It's not that I'm ungrateful," Mona said, her voice thick and her eyes filming red. She blotted them at once with her handkerchief. "You know I'm grateful. It just feels so good to be free."

Rowan fixed again on her. If Rowan found the slightest virtue in this miracle, it wasn't rising to the forefront of her mind.

"Your voice isn't the same," said Rowan. "Your hair, your skin-." She looked back to me. "Something's wrong." She stared at Quinn.

"This meeting's over," I said. "I don't mean to be harsh, truly I don't. But you know what you need to know. Obviously you know the phone number here, that's how you found us. You know where we are."

I rose to my feet.

Quinn and Mona followed but Rowan and Michael didn't move. Michael was taking his lead from Rowan, but then he reluctantly stood up, because Rowan or no Rowan, it was the courteous thing to do. This man was so lovable that even under these circumstances he didn't want to offend anyone, least of all Mona, and cause anyone any discomfort at all.

He simply did not see us the way Rowan did. He didn't look at people. He looked into their eyes. He studied Quinn's expression but not the physicality of Quinn. He didn't even care that Quinn was so tall. He scouted for the kindness in people and invariably found it, and his own kindness invested his entire being, infusing his considerable physical gifts. It was a rugged beauty he possessed, and he put behind him a calm self-assurance that can only arise from immense strength.

"Honey, do you need anything?" he asked Mona.

"I'm going to need some money," said Mona. She ignored Rowan's fixed stare. "Of course I'm not the Heiress anymore. Nobody wanted to talk about that when I was dying, but I've known that for years. And I'd retire now anyway, if it wasn't the case. The Heiress to the Mayfair fortune has to bear a child. We all know that I can't do that anymore. But I want to ask for a settlement. Nothing like the billions of the Legacy. Nothing like that at all. I mean, just a settlement so that I won't be poor. That's no problem, is it?"

"No problem at all," said Michael with a very loving smile to her and a shrug. The man was totally appealing. He wanted to hug her. But he took his lead from Rowan, and Rowan had not moved from the chair. "It's no problem, is it, Rowan?" he asked. His eyes swept the room a bit uneasily. He fixed for a few seconds on the brilliant Impressionist painting above the sofa in front of which I stood. He looked genially at me.

He couldn't begin to guess what had transformed Mona. But he never dreamt of anything sinister or evil. It was amazing the degree with which he accepted it, and only as I searched his mind now, in this moment when he was confused by Rowan and without his habitual defenses, only in this moment did I understand. He accepted Mona as she was because he wanted so very much for her recovery to be true. He'd thought Mona was doomed. Now a miracle had happened to Mona. He didn't need to know who'd worked the miracle. Saint Juan Diego? Saint Lestat? Whatever! It was fine with him.

I could have told him a harebrained story about us pumping her full of lipids and spring water and he would have bought it wholesale. He had flunked "Science" in school.

But Rowan Mayfair couldn't escape being a scientific genius. She couldn't ignore the fact that Mona's recovery was a physical impossibility. And in her mind were memories so painful they had no pictures or people to them; they had only dark inchoate feelings and awesome guilt.

She sat silent and motionless in the chair. Her eyes moved accusingly and wrathfully from Mona to me and back again and round once more.

I had a sense, perhaps flawed, that she was moving towards a brave curiosity, but . . .

Mona approached her. Not a great idea.

I signaled Quinn, and Quinn tried to stop Mona but Mona shook him off. Mona was determined.

Yet Mona appeared wary, as if Rowan was an animal that could scratch. I didn't like this at all. Mona stood between Rowan and everybody else in the room. I could no longer see Rowan, but I knew that Mona was only inches from Rowan and this was not good at all.

Mona bent down with her arms out. She apparently meant to kiss or embrace Rowan.

Rowan moved back so fast to get away from Mona that she knocked over the chair in which she'd been sitting and the table and lamp beside it, crash, thump, bang, shuffle, and plastered herself against the wall.

Michael went on full alert, shooting to her side. But what was there to see?

Mona stepped back to the center of the room, whispering "Oh, my God," under her breath, and Quinn took hold of her from behind and held her and kissed her cheek.

Rowan couldn't move. Her heart was pounding and her mouth was open and she shut her eyes as if she were about to scream. She had passed right through terror. It was utter revulsion, as if she'd seen a giant insect. It was the most explosive reaction on the part of a mortal to a vampire that I'd ever seen. It was panic.

I knew I could charm her because I'd done it before, crossed the barrier between the species without ever evoking that panic, and I determined to cross the barrier now with all my nerve. And this did take tremendous nerve.

"Very well, darling, very well, sweetheart," I said, advancing on Rowan as fast as I dared. "My precious, my darling," I said, as I slipped my arms behind her and under her, and caught her up and carried her past an astonished Michael, towards the door. Her body grew soft. (Thank Heaven.) "I have you, my sweetheart," I said to her, crooning in her ear, kissing her ear, "I'm holding you, precious darling," as I carried her out and down the steps, her body now completely limp, "I have you, my sweetheart, nothing can hurt you, yes, yes," her head falling against my chest and her hand clawing weakly at my shirt. She was gasping. "I understand, my precious," I said. "But you're safe, you're really safe, I would never let anything bad happen to you, I promise you, that's my promise, and Michael's here, he's with you, it's all right, darling, you know I'm telling you the truth, that these things are truly all right."

I could see these words sinking down, down into her mind, through the levels of guilt and remembrance and flight from the present, and what she'd sensed and couldn't deny and could only retreat from, and all the truths she had feared.

Michael was right behind me, and as soon as we reached the flagstones he took her from me effortlessly, and she fell into his arms in the same way.

Boldly I kissed her cheek, my lips lingering, and her hand found mine and her fingers coiled around mine. Behold, thou art fair my love, thou art fair. Her panic was still so great that she couldn't speak.

" 'A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.' " I whispered in her ear. I kissed her again and again on her soft cheek. I stroked her hair. Her fingers gripped me, but the grip had softened, as she was softened.

"I've got you, darling," Michael said in exactly the same tone. "Rowan, my sweetheart, I have you, honey, I'll take you home."

As I backed off his eyes looked at me searchingly, and without enmity. I sensed something about his love for her, that it was immense and beyond pettiness, and that he claimed no dominion over her, that he adored her. It was difficult for me to really accept.

Rowan lost consciousness. Her head fell forward and against Michael. He realized it with total alarm.

"It's all right," I said. "Just take her home and lie down beside her and don't leave her alone."

"But what the Hell happened?" he whispered to me as he cuddled her.

"Doesn't matter," I said. "Remember that. It doesn't matter. What matters is that Mona has been saved."

I went back upstairs.

Of course Mona was sobbing.

She lay across the bed in their room where the computer purred, and she was sobbing, and Quinn sat by her, as was becoming the custom.

"What did I do wrong?" Mona asked. She looked up at me. "Tell me, what did I do wrong?"

I sat at the computer desk.

She sat up, cheeks streaked with blood.

"I can't live with them the way Quinn lives at Blackwood Manor; you see it, don't you? I didn't do anything wrong."

"Oh, stop lying to yourself," I said. "You know very well you're angry with her, deeply angry. Your intentions weren't pure when you approached her. She's done something to you, deceived you, something, something you can't forgive. You practically told us right here in this room. You had to show her your power, you had to push it-."

"You really think so?" she asked.

"I know so," I said.

"You think she's kept secrets from you. Magic secrets, secrets you haven't explained to Quinn and to me.

You've resented her all these years as the doctor, the mad scientist, yes, right, the mad scientist, the keeper of the keys to the magic, coming in and out of your death chamber, ordering this medication and that medication and never really telling you what was happening, but other secrets, darker secrets, secrets that you and she and Michael know, not so?"

"I love her."

"And now here you knew you had the powerful magic. You had the keys to a powerful secret. You condescended to her. And so she saw through this duplicity, this display of patronizing affection, and she was panic-stricken when she realized you weren't alive anymore, just as you wanted her to be. You wanted her to acknowledge your power, that next to you, the way you are, she was nothing."

"You really think so?" Tears. Sniffles.

"I know so. And you're not finished with her. Not at all."

"Hold on, Lestat," said Quinn, "you're being unfair. Mona confessed that they had a score to settle. But surely she wasn't thinking of all those things, not when she went towards Rowan."

"Yes, she was," I insisted.

"You've fallen in love with her," said Quinn.

"In love with who? Mona? I told you I love both of you."

"No," said Quinn. "You know I don't mean Mona. You've fallen completely in love with Rowan in a way that's not like your infatuation with us. You've connected with something deep inside of Rowan and we can't compete with it. It started last night. But you can't have Rowan. You just can't."

"Mon Dieu!" I whispered.

I crossed the hall, went into my bedroom and shut and locked the door.

There stood Julien in his natty white-tie regalia, arms folded smugly as he gazed at me, leaning against the tall mahogany headboard of the bed.

"That's right, you can't have her," he said, laughing under his breath. "I watched you slip into it like the fly into the honey. I loved it. Her taking you so unawares, oh yes, your tasting that kernel of evil with your oh-so-refined senses, kisses in the shadows, yes, and falling so blithely in love with her, so tenderly for you with all your loathsome powers. And you cannot have her. No, never. Not Rowan Mayfair. Never ever. Not the Magnate, not the Creator of the greatest family enterprise, not the champion of the family's public dreams, the family's philanthropic wonder, the family's guiding star! You can't ever have her. And

you shall have all the fun of watching her from afar and never knowing what might happen to her. Old age, sickness, accident, tragedy. Won't it be something to behold! And you can't ever interfere. You don't dare!"

There stood beside him little Stella, aged eight or nine, in a lovely white dress, drop waist style, a white bow in her black hair.

"Don't be so mean to him, Oncle Julien!" she said. "Poor darling."

"Oh, but he is a mean creature, Stella dearest," said Julien. "He took our beloved Mona. He deserves nothing but the worst."

"Listen to me, you cheap backstairs ghost," I said. "I'm no sentimental rake out of a bad Byronic poem. I'm not in love with your precious Rowan Mayfair. The love I feel for her is something you can't know in your shallow wanderings. And Rowan's in more trouble than you can ever imagine. Now why don't you tell me what disastrous mistake you made with all your clever machinations and visitations? Or shall I get it out of Mona or Rowan or Michael? You haven't been an angelic success, have you? Take your little girl in your arms and get out of my sight. Is God giving you the power to writhe and spit with anger?"

Pounding on the door. Mona calling my name over and over again.

They were gone, the ghosts.

She came into my arms. "But I can't bear it if you're angry with me, tell me you're not, I love you with my whole soul."

"No, no, never angry," I said. "Let me hold you tight, my fledgling, my darling, my newborn one. I adore you. We'll fix everything. We'll make everything perfect for everyone. Somehow."