Taltos

Seventeen

EVERYTHING WAS CHANGED. Everything was easier. She lay in Morrigan’s arms and Morrigan lay in hers and-

It was evening when she opened her eyes.

What a great dream that had been. It was as if Gifford and Alicia and Ancient Evelyn had been with her, and there was no death and no suffering, and they had been together, dancing even, yes, dancing, in a circle.

She felt so good! Let it fade; the feeling remained with her. The sky was Michael’s violet.

And there was Mary Jane standing over her, looking so goddamned cute with her flaxen yellow hair.

“You’re Alice in Wonderland,” said Mona, “that’s who you are. I should nickname you Alice.”

Going to be perfect, I promise you.

“I cooked the supper,” said Mary Jane. “I told Eugenia to take the night off, hope you don’t mind, when I saw that pantry I went crazy.”

“ ’Course I don’t mind,” said Mona. “Help me up, you’re a real cousin.”

She jumped up refreshed, feeling so light and free, like the baby tumbling inside, the baby with its long red hair swishing in the fluid, like a teeny rubbery doll with the teensiest little knobby knees….

“I cooked yams, rice, and baked oysters in cheese, and broiled chicken with butter and tarragon.”

“Wherever did you learn to cook like that?” asked Mona. Then she stopped and threw her arms around Mary Jane. “There’s nobody like us, is there? I mean, you know your blood, don’t you?”

Mary Jane beamed at her. “Yeah, it’s just wonderful. I love you, Mona Mayfair.”

“Oh, I’m so glad to hear it,” said Mona.

They had reached the kitchen doors, and Mona peered inside.

“God, you did cook a big supper.”

“You better believe it,” said Mary Jane proudly, again displaying her perfect white teeth. “I could cook when I was six years old. My mama was living with this chef then?? You know?? And then later on, I worked in a fancy restaurant in Jackson, Mississippi. Jackson’s the capital, remember? This was a place where the senators ate. And I told them, ‘You want me to work here, then you let me watch when the cook’s doing things, you let me learn what I can.’ What do you want to drink?”

“Milk, I’m starving for it,” said Mona. “Don’t run inside yet. Look, it’s the magic time of twilight. This is Michael’s favorite time.”

If only she could remember in the dream who had been with her. Only the feeling of love lingered, utterly comforting love.

For a moment she worried fiercely for Rowan and Michael. How would they ever solve the mystery of who killed Aaron? But together they could probably defeat anybody, that is, if they really cooperated, and Yuri, well, Yuri’s destiny had never been meant to involve itself with hers.

Everybody would understand when the time came.

The flowers had begun to glow. It was as if the garden were singing. She slumped against the door frame, humming with the flowers, humming as if the song were being made known to her by some remote part of her memory where beautiful and delicate things were never forgotten, but only securely stored. She could smell some perfume in the air-ah, it was the sweet olive trees!

“Honey, let’s eat now,” said Mary Jane.

“Very well, very well!” Mona sighed, threw up her arms and said farewell to the night, and then went inside.

She drifted into the kitchen, as if in a delicious trance, and sat down at the lavish table that Mary Jane had set for them. She’d taken out the Royal Antoinette china, the most delicate pattern of all, with fluted and gilded edges to the plates and saucers. Clever girl, such a wonderful clever girl. How unboring of her to have found the very best china by instinct. This cousin opened up a whole vista of possibilities, but how adventuresome was she, really? And how naive of Ryan to have dropped her off here, and left the two of them alone!

“I never saw china like that,” Mary Jane was saying, bubbling away. “It’s just like it’s made of stiff starch cloth. How do they do it?” Mary Jane had just come back with a carton of milk and a box of powdered chocolate.

“Don’t put that poison in the milk, please,” said Mona, as she snatched the carton, tore it open, and filled her glass.

“I mean, how can they make china that’s not flat, I don’t get it, unless the china’s soft like dough before they bake it, but even then-”

“Haven’t the faintest idea,” said Mona, “but I have always adored this pattern. Doesn’t look good in the dining room. It’s overshadowed by the murals. But looks absolutely splendid on this kitchen table, and how smart of you to have found the Battenburg lace table mats. I’m starving again, and we just had lunch. This is glorious, let’s pig out now.”

“We didn’t just have lunch, and you didn’t eat a thing,” said Mary Jane. “I was scared to death you might mind me touching these things, but then I thought, ‘If Mona Mayfair minds, I’ll just slap-bang put them all away, like I found them.’ ”

“My darling, the house is ours for now,” said Mona triumphantly.

God, the milk was good. She’d splashed it on the table, but it was so good, so good, so good.

Drink more of it.

“I am, I’m drinking it,” she said.

“You’re telling me,” said Mary Jane, sitting down beside her. All the serving bowls were full of delectable and scrumptious things.

Mona heaped the steaming rice on her plate. Forget the gravy. This was wonderful. She began to eat it, not waiting for Mary Jane to serve herself, who was too busy dropping spoon after spoon of dirty chocolate powder into her own milk.

“Hope you don’t mind. I just love chocolate. I can’t live for too long without chocolate. There was a time when I made chocolate sandwiches, you know???? You know how to do that? You slap a couple Hershey bars between white bread, and you put sliced bananas and sugar too, and I’m telling you, that’s delicious.”

“Oh, I understand, might feel the same way if I wasn’t pregnant. I once devoured an entire box of chocolate-covered cherries.” Mona ate one big forkful of the rice after another. No chocolate could equal this. The chocolate-covered cherries had faded to an idea. And now the funniest thing. The white bread. It looked good too. “You know, I think I need complex carbohydrates,” she said. “That’s what my baby is telling me.”

Laughing, or was it singing?

No problem; this was all so simple, so natural; she felt in harmony with the whole world, and it wouldn’t be difficult to bring Michael and Rowan in harmony also. She sat back. A vision had taken hold of her, a vision of the sky speckled with all the visible stars. The sky was arched overhead, black and pure and cold, and people were singing, and the stars were magnificent, simply magnificent.

“What’s that song you’re humming?” asked Mary Jane.

“Shhh, hear that?”

Ryan had just come in. She could hear his voice in the dining room. He was talking to Eugenia. How marvelous to see Ryan. But he sure as hell wasn’t taking Mary Jane out of here.

As soon as he stepped in the kitchen, Mona felt so sorry for him with his tired expression. He was still wearing his somber funeral suit. Ought to wear seersucker, the way the other men did this time of year. She loved the men in their seersucker suits in summer, and she loved the old ones who still wore the straw hats.

“Ryan, come join us,” she said, chewing another huge mouthful of rice. “Mary Jane’s cooked a feast.”

“Just you sit right down here,” said Mary Jane, hopping to her feet, “and I’ll serve your plate, Cousin Ryan.”

“No, I can’t, dear,” he said, being punctiliously polite to Mary Jane, because she was the country cousin. “I’m rushing. But thank you.”

“Ryan is always rushing,” said Mona. “Ryan, before you go, take a little walk outside, it’s simply beautiful. Look at the sky, listen to the birds. And if you haven’t smelled the sweet olives, it’s time to do it now!”

“Mona, you’re stuffing yourself with that rice. Is this going to be that kind of pregnancy?”

She tried not to go into spasms of laughter.

“Ryan, sit down, have a glass of wine,” she said. “Where’s Eugenia? Eugenia! Don’t we have some wine?”

“I don’t care for any wine, Mona, thank you.” He made a dismissing gesture to Eugenia, who appeared for one moment in the lighted door, gnarled, angry, disapproving, and then slipped away.

Ryan looked so handsome in spite of his obvious crossness-a man who’d been polished all over with a big rag. She started to laugh again. Time for a gulp of milk, no, drink the whole glass. Rice and milk. No wonder people from Texas ate these two things together.

“Cousin Ryan, won’t take a second-” said Mary Jane. “Just you let me fill you a plate.”

“No, Mary Jane, thank you. Mona, there’s something I have to tell you.”

“Right now, during dinner? Oh, well, shoot. How bad can it be?” Mona poured some more milk from the carton, slopping a bit on the glass table. “After everything that’s already happened? You know, the problem with this family is entrenched conservatism. I wonder if that is redundant. What do you think?”

“Miss Piggy,” said Ryan dourly, “I am talking to you.”

Mona went into hysterics. So did Mary Jane.

“I think I got a job as a cook,” said Mary Jane, “and all I did to that rice was throw in some butter and garlic.”

“It’s the butter!” declared Mona, pointing at Mary Jane. “Where’s the butter? That’s the secret, slop butter on everything.” She picked up a slice of ordinarily pukey white bread, and carved out a glomp of oozy warm butter slowly melting on the saucer.

Ryan was looking at his watch, the infallible signal that he would remain in this spot no more than four more minutes. And God bless us all, he had not said one word about taking Mary Jane away.

“What is it, big boy?” asked Mona. “Hit me with it. I can take it.”

“I don’t know if you can,” he said in a low voice.

That sent her into another reel of laughter. Or maybe it was the blank expression on Ryan’s face. Mary Jane couldn’t stop giggling. She stood beside Ryan, with her hand over her mouth.

“Mona, I’m off,” he said, “but there are several boxes of papers up in the master bedroom. These are things that Rowan wanted, writings that came out of her last room in Houston.” He gave a pointed look to Mary Jane, as if to say, She is not to know about all that.

“Oh yeah, writings,” said Mona. “I heard you talking about it last night. You know, I heard a funny story, Ryan, that when Daphne du Maurier, you know who she was?”

“Yes, Mona.”

“Well, when she was writing Rebecca, it began as an experiment to see how long she could go on without naming her first-person narrator. Michael told me this. It’s true. And you know by the end of the book the experiment didn’t matter. But you never do know the name of Maxim de Winter’s second wife in that novel, or in the movie. Did you see the movie?”

“What’s the point?”

“Well, you’re like that yourself, Ryan, you’re going to go to the grave without ever saying Lasher’s name.” Again, she broke into laughter.

Mary Jane laughed and laughed as though she knew everything.

There is nothing funnier than someone laughing at a joke, except for someone who does not even crack a smile and stares at you with a face full of outrage.

“Don’t touch the boxes,” said Ryan solemnly. “They belong to Rowan! But there is something I must tell you, about Michael, something I found in a genealogy in those papers. Mary Jane, please do sit down and eat your supper.”

Mary Jane sat down.

“Right, genealogies,” said Mona. “Wow, maybe Lasher knew things we didn’t know. Mary Jane, genealogy is not a special interest with this family, it’s a full-time obsession. Ryan, your four minutes are nearly up.”

“What four minutes?”

She was laughing again. He had to leave. She was going to get sick, laughing like this.

“I know what you’re gonna say,” said Mary Jane, who jumped up again out of her chair, as though for truly serious conversations she had to be standing. “You’re going to say Michael Curry is a Mayfair. I told you!”

All the vitality drained out of Ryan’s face.

Mona drank down the fourth glass of milk. She had finished her rice, and lifting the serving bowl, she tipped it and let a new little mountain of soft, steaming rice grains fall on her plate.

“Ryan, stop staring at me,” she said. “What is it about Michael? Is Mary Jane right? Mary Jane said Michael was a Mayfair the first time she met him.”

“He is,” declared Mary Jane. “I saw the resemblance right away, and you know who he looks like? He looks like that opera singer.”

“What opera singer?” asked Ryan.

“Yeah, what opera singer?”

“Tyrone MacNamara, the one that Beatrice has pictures of, you know????? Those engravings on her wall???? Julien’s father???? Well, Ryan, he must be your great-grandfather. I saw a passel a’ cousins at the genealogical laboratory looked like that, Irish as can be, you never noticed? Of course you didn’t, but then y’all have got Irish blood, French blood-”

“And Dutch blood,” said Ryan in a terse, uncomfortable little voice. He looked at Mona, and then back at Mary Jane. “I have to go.”

“Wait a second, is that it?” Mona demanded. She gulped down her mouthful of rice, took another drink of milk. “Is that what you were going to tell me? Michael is a Mayfair?”

“There is a mention,” Ryan said, “in those papers, that apparently pertains to Michael, explicitly.”

“God damn, you don’t mean it,” said Mona.

“You all are sooooo divinely inbred!” said Mary Jane. “It’s like royalty. And here sits the Czarina herself!”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” said Ryan. “Mona, have you taken any medicine?”

“Certainly not, would I do that to my daughter?”

“Well, I have no choice but to go,” he said. “Do try to behave yourselves. Remember the house is surrounded by guards. I don’t want you going out, and please don’t devil Eugenia!”

“Shucks,” said Mona. “Don’t leave. You’re the life of the party. What do you mean ‘devil Eugenia’?”

“When you’ve returned to your senses,” said Ryan, “would you please call me? And what if this child is a boy? Certainly you aren’t going to risk his life with one of those tests to determine gender.”

“He’s not a boy, silly,” said Mona. “She’s a girl and I’ve already named her Morrigan. I’ll call you. Okay? Okay.”

And away he went, hurrying in his own special quiet way of hurrying. Kind of like the way nuns hurry, or doctors. With a minimum of sound and fuss.

“Don’t touch those papers,” he called out from the butler’s pantry.

Mona relaxed, took a deep breath. That was the last adult scheduled to be looking in on them, as far as she knew.

And what was this about Michael? “God, you think it’s true? Hey, Mary Jane, when we’re finished, let’s go up and look at those papers.”

“Oh, Mona, I don’t know, he just said those were Rowan’s papers, didn’t he just say that? ‘Don’t touch those papers.’ Mona, have some cream gravy. Don’t you want the chicken? That’s the best chicken I ever fixed.”

“Cream gravy! You didn’t say it was cream gravy. Morrigan doesn’t want meat. Doesn’t like meat. Look, I have a right to look at those papers. If he wrote things, if he left anything in writing.”

“Who’s he?”

“Lasher. You know who he is. Don’t tell me your Granny didn’t tell you.”

“She told me, all right, you believe in him?”

“Believe in him, dollface, he almost attacked me. I almost became a statistic like my mother and Aunt Gifford and all those other poor dead Mayfair women. Of course I believe in him, why he’s …” She caught herself pointing to the garden, in the direction of the tree. No, don’t tell her that, she’d sworn to Michael, never tell anyone, buried out there, and the other one, the innocent one, Emaleth, the one that had to die, though she’d never done anything to anyone ever.

Not you, Morrigan, don’t you worry, baby girl!

“Long story, no time for it,” she said to Mary Jane.

“I know who Lasher is,” said Mary Jane. “I know what happened. Granny told me. The others didn’t come right out and say he was killing the women. They just said Granny and I had to come to New Orleans and stay with everybody else. Well, you know? We didn’t do it and nothing happened to us!”

She shrugged and shook her head.

“That could have been a terrible mistake,” said Mona. The cream gravy tasted wonderful with the rice. Why all this white food, Morrigan?

The trees were filled with apples, and their meat was white, and the tubers and roots we pulled from the earth were white and it was paradise. Oh, but look at the stars. Was the unspoiled world really unspoiled, or were the everyday menaces of nature so terrible that everything was just as ruined then as it was now? If you live in fear, what does it matter….

“What’s the matter, Mona?” said Mary Jane. “Hey, snap out of it.”

“Oh, nothing, actually,” said Mona. “I just had a flash of the dream I had out there in the garden. I was having a hell of a conversation with somebody. You know, Mary Jane, people have to be educated to understand one another. Like right now, you and I, we are educating each other to understand each other, you get what I mean?”

“Oh yeah, exactly, and then you can pick up your phone and call me down at Fontevrault and say, ‘Mary Jane, I need you!’ and I’d just leap up and get in the pickup and take off and be at your side.”

“Yes, that’s it, exactly, you know I really, really meant it, you’d know all kinds of things about me, and I’d know all kinds of things about you. It was the happiest dream I ever had. It was such a … such a happy dream. We were all dancing. A bonfire that big would normally scare me. But in the dream I was free, just perfectly free. I didn’t care about anything. We need another apple. The invaders didn’t invent death. That’s a preposterous notion, but one can see why everybody thought that they had … well, sort of, everything depends on perspective, and if you have no sure concept of time, if you don’t see the basic relevance of time, and of course hunter-gatherer people did and so did agricultural people, but perhaps those in tropical paradises don’t ever develop that kind of relationship because for them there are no cycles. The needle’s stuck on heaven. You know what I mean?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, pay attention, Mary Jane! And you’ll know! It was that way in the dream, the invaders had invented death. No, I see now, what they had invented was killing. That’s a different thing.”

“There’s a bowl full of apples over there, you want me to get you an apple?”

“Right, later. I want to go upstairs to Rowan’s room.”

“Well, lemme finish my meal,” pleaded Mary Jane. “Don’t go without me. Matter of fact, I don’t know if we have any right to go up there at all.”

“Rowan won’t mind, Michael might mind. But you know???” said Mona, imitating Mary Jane. “It doesn’t matter???”

Mary Jane nearly fell out of the chair laughing. “You are the worst child,” she said. “Come on. Chicken’s always better cold, anyway.”

And the meat from the sea was white, the meat of the shrimps and the fishes, and of the oysters and the mussels. Pure white. The eggs of gulls were beautiful, because they were all white outside, and when you broke them open one great golden eye stared at you, floating in the clearest fluid.

“Mona?”

She stood still in the door to the butler’s pantry. She closed her eyes. She felt Mary Jane grip her hand.

“No,” she said with a sigh, “it’s gone again.” Her hand moved to her belly. She spread her fingers out over the rounded swelling, feeling the tiny movements within. Beautiful Morrigan. Hair as red as my hair. Is your hair so very red, Mama?

“Can’t you see me?”

In Mary Jane’s eyes I see you.

“Hey, Mona, I’m going to get you a chair!”

“No, no, I’m okay.” She opened her eyes. A lovely surge of energy shot through her. She stretched out her arms and ran, through the pantry and the dining room and down the long hall, and then up the stairway.

“Come on, let’s go!” she was shouting.

It felt so good to run. That’s one of the things she missed from childhood, and she hadn’t even known it, just running, running all the way down St. Charles Avenue as fast as she could with her arms out. Running upstairs two at a time. Running around the block just to see if you could do it without stopping, without fainting, without having to throw up.

Mary Jane came pounding after her.

The door to the bedroom was closed. Good old Ryan. Probably locked it.

But no. When she opened it, the room was dark. She found the light switch, and the overhead chandelier went on, pouring a bright light over the smooth bed, the dressing table, the boxes.

“What’s that smell?” asked Mary Jane.

“You smell it, don’t you?”

“Sure do.”

“It’s Lasher’s smell,” she whispered. “You mean it?”

“Yes,” said Mona. There was the pile of brown cardboard boxes. “What’s it like to you, the smell?”

“Hmmmm, it’s good. Kind of makes you want butterscotch or chocolate or cinnamon, or something like that. Wooof. Where’s it coming from? But you know what?”

“What?” asked Mona, circling the pile of boxes.

“People have died in this room.”

“No kidding. Mary Jane, anybody could have told you that.”

“What do you mean? About Mary Beth Mayfair, and Deirdre and all that. I heard all that when Rowan was sick in here, and Beatrice called down to get Granny and me to come to New Orleans. Granny told me. But somebody else died in here, somebody that smelled sort of like him. You smell it? You smell the three smells? The one smell is the smell of him. The other smell is the smell of the other one. And the third smell is the smell of death itself.”

Mona stood very still, trying to catch it, but for her the fragrances must have been mingled. With a sharp, nearly exquisite pain, she thought of what Michael had described to her, the thin girl that was not a girl, not human. Emaleth. The bullet exploded in her ears. She covered them.

“What’s the matter, Mona Mayfair?”

“Dear God, where did it happen?” Mona asked, still holding tight to her ears and squinching her eyes shut, and then opening them only to look at Mary Jane, standing against the lamp, a shadowy figure, her eyes big and brilliantly blue.

Mary Jane looked around, mostly with her eyes, though she did turn her head a little, and then she began to walk along the bed. Her head looked very round and small beneath her soft, flattened hair. She moved to the far side of the bed, and stopped. Her voice was very deep when she spoke.

“Right here. Somebody died right here. Somebody who smelled like him, but wasn’t him.”

There was a scream in Mona’s ears, so loud, so violent it was ten times as terrible as the imagined gunshot. She clutched her belly. Stop it, Morrigan, stop it. I promise you …

“Goodness, Mona, you going to be sick?”

“No, absolutely not!” Mona shuddered all over. She began to hum a little song, not even asking herself what it was, just something pretty, something perhaps that she made up.

She turned and looked at the heap of irresistible boxes.

“It’s on the boxes, too,” said Mona. “You smell it real strong here? From him. You know, I have never gotten another single member of this family to admit that they could smell that smell.”

“Well, it’s just all over the place,” said Mary Jane. She stood at Mona’s side, annoyingly taller, and with more pointed breasts. “It’s more all over these boxes, too, you’re right. But look, all these boxes are taped up.”

“Yes, and marked in neat black felt-tip pen, by Ryan, and this one, conveniently enough, says, ‘Writings, Anonymous.’ ” She gave a soft laugh, nothing as giddy as before. “Poor Ryan. ‘Writings, Anonymous.’ Sounds like a psychology support group for books who don’t know their authors.”

Mary Jane laughed.

Mona was delighted, and broke into giggles. She went round the boxes, and eased down on her knees, careful not to shake the baby. The baby was still crying. The baby was flip-flopping like crazy. It was the smell, wasn’t it? As much as all the foolish talk and imagining and picturing. She hummed to the baby … then sang softly:

“ ‘Bring flowers of the fairest, bring flowers of the rarest, from garden and woodland and hillside and dale!’ ” It was the gayest, sweetest hymn she knew, one that Gifford had taught her to sing, the hymn from the Maytime. “ ‘Our full hearts are swelling, our glad voices telling the tale of the loveliest rose of the dale!’ ”

“Why, Mona Mayfair, you’ve got a voice.”

“Every Mayfair has a voice, Mary Jane. But really I haven’t. Not like my mother did, or Gifford. You should have heard them. They were real sopranos. My voice is low.”

She hummed the tune now without the words, picturing the forests, and the green land, and flowers. “ ‘Oh, Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today, queen of the angels, queen of the May. Oh, Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today….’ ”

She rocked on her knees, her hand on her belly, the baby rocking gently with the music, her red hair all around her now, looking magnificent in the water of the womb, as if it were orange ink dropped into water, billowing out, that weightless, that translucent, that beautiful. Such tiny feet and tiny fingers. What color are your eyes, Morrigan?

I can’t see my eyes, Mama, I can see only what you see, Mama.

“Hey, wake up, I’m scared you’re gonna fall.”

“Oh yes. I’m glad you called me back, Mary Jane, you did right to call me back, but I pray to heaven and the Blessed Mary Ever Virgin that this baby has green eyes like mine. What do you think?”

“Couldn’t be a better color!” Mary Jane declared.

Mona laid her hands on the cardboard box in front of her. This was the right one. It reeked of him. Had he written these sheets in his own blood? And to think his body was down there. I ought to dig up that body. I mean, everything is changed now, Rowan and Michael are going to have to accept that, either that or I’m simply not going to tell them, I mean, this is an entirely new development and this one concerns me.

“What bodies are we going to dig up?” asked Mary Jane with a puckered frown.

“Oh, stop reading my mind! Don’t be a Mayfair bitch, be a Mayfair witch. Help me with this box.”

Mona ripped at the tape with her fingernails and pried back the cardboard.

“Mona, I don’t know, this is somebody else’s stuff.”

“Yesssss,” said Mona. “But this somebody else is part of my heritage, this somebody else has her own branch on this tree, and up through the tree from its roots runs this potent fluid, our lifeblood, and he was part of it, he lived in it, you might say, yes, ancient, and long-lived and forever, sort of like trees. Mary Jane, you know trees are the longest-lived things on earth?”

“Yeah, I know that,” she said. “There’s trees down near Fontevrault that are so big???? I mean there’s cypress trees down there with knees sticking up out of the water?”

“Shhhh,” said Mona. She had pushed back all the brown wrapping-this thing was packed like it had to carry the Marie Antoinette china all the way to Iceland-and she saw the first page of a loose stack covered in a thin plastic, and bound with a thick rubber band. Scrawl, all right, spidery scrawl, with great long l’s and t’s and y’s, and little vowels that were in some cases no more than dots. But she could read it.

She made her hand a claw and tore the plastic. “Mona Mayfair!”

“Guts, girl!” said Mona. “There’s a purpose to what I do. Will you be my ally and confidante, or do you wish, right now, to abandon me? The cable TV in this house gets every channel, you can go to your room, and watch TV, if you don’t want to be with me, or take a swim outside, or pick flowers, or dig for bodies under the tree-”

“I want to be your ally and confidante.”

“Put your hand on this, then, country cousin. You feel anything?”

“Oooooh!”

“He wrote it. You are looking at the writing of a certified nonhuman! Behold.”

Mary Jane was kneeling beside her. She had her fingertips on the page. Her shoulders were hunched, her flaxen hair hanging down on both sides of her face, spectacular as a wig. Her white eyebrows caught the light against her bronzed forehead, and you could practically see every hair. What was she thinking, feeling, seeing? What was the meaning of the look in her eyes? This kid is not stupid, I’ll say that for her, she’s not stupid. Trouble is …

“I’m so sleepy,” Mona said suddenly, realizing it as soon as she said it. She put her hand to her forehead. “I wonder if Ophelia went to sleep before she drowned.”

“Ophelia? You mean Hamlet’s Ophelia?”

“Oh, you know what I mean,” she said. “That’s just great. You know, Mary Jane, I just love you.”

She looked at Mary Jane. Yes, this was the Ultimate Cousin, the Cousin who could be a Great Friend, the Cousin who could know everything that Mona knew. And nobody, really, nobody knew everything that Mona knew.

“But I’m so drowsy.” She let herself fall gently to the floor, stretching out her legs and then her arms until she lay flat, looking up at the bright, pretty chandelier. “Mary Jane, would you go through that box? If I know Cousin Ryan, and I do, the genealogy is marked.”

“Yeah,” said Mary Jane.

How refreshing that she had stopped arguing.

“No, I’m not arguing, I figure we’ve gone this far, and beings this is the writing of a certified nonhuman being, beings we’ve gone this far … well, the point is, I can put it all back when we’re through.”

“Precisely,” said Mona, laying her cheek against the cool floor. The smell was very strong in the floorboards! “And beings,” she said, imitating Mary Jane, but without malice, no, no malice whatsoever, “and beings that knowledge is precious, one has to get it where one can.”

Wow, the most incredible thing had happened. She’d closed her eyes and the hymn was singing itself. All she had to do was listen. She wasn’t pushing these words out, these notes, it was just unfolding, like she was in one of those brain experiments where they zap part of your brain with an electrode and wham, you see visions, or you smell the creek on the hill behind your house when you were a little kid!

“That’s what both of us have to realize, that witchcraft is an immense science,” she said drowsily, talking easily over the pretty hymn, since it sang itself now. “That it is alchemy and chemistry and brain science, and that those things collected make up magic, pure lovely magic. We haven’t lost our magic in the age of science. We have discovered a whole new bunch of secrets. We’re going to win.”

“Win?”

Oh Mary we crown thee with blossoms today, queen of the angels, queen of the May, oh Mary we crown thee … “Are you reading the pages, Mary Jane?”

“Well, hey, lookie, he has a whole folder here of Xerox copies. ‘Inventory in Progress: Relevant Pages, incomplete genealogy.’ ”

Mona rolled over on her back again. For a moment she didn’t know where they were. Rowan’s room. There were tiny prisms in the crystal baubles above. The chandelier that Mary Beth had hung there, the one from France, or had it been Julien? Julien, where are you? Julien, how did you let this happen to me?

But the ghosts don’t answer unless they want to, unless they have a reason of their own.

“Well, I’m reading this here incomplete genealogy.”

“You got it?”

“Yeah, the original and a Xerox. Everything here is in duplicate. Original and Xerox. Little packets like. What he’s got circled here is Michael Curry, all right, and then all this stuff about Julien sleeping with some Irish girl, and that girl giving up her baby to Margaret’s Orphanage, and then becoming a Sister of Mercy, Sister Bridget Marie, and the baby girl, the one in the orphanage, marrying a fireman named Curry, and him having a son, and then him, something, Michael! Right here.”

Mona laughed and laughed. “Oncle Julien was a lion,” she said. “You know what male lions do, when they come to a new pride? They kill all the young, so that the females go into heat at once, and then they sire as many young as they can. It’s the survival of the genes. Oncle Julien knew. He was just improving the population.”

“Yeah, well, from what I heard, he was pretty picky about who got to survive. Granny told me he shot our great-great-great-grandfather.”

“I’m not sure that’s the right number of ‘greats.’ What else do all those papers say?”

“Well, sugar plum, to tell you the truth, I couldn’t have made this out if somebody hadn’t marked it. There’s just all kinds of things here. You know what this is like? It’s like the writing that people do when they’re high on drugs and they think they’re being brilliant and the next day, lo and behold, they look at the tablets and see they’ve written little bitty jagged lines, like the lines, you know??? That make up an electrocardiogram?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve been a nurse?”

“Yeah, for a while, but that was at this crazy commune where they made us all take an enema every day to get rid of the impurities in our system.”

Mona started to laugh again, a lovely sleepy laugh. “I don’t think a commune of the Twelve Apostles could have made me do that,” she said.

This chandelier was damned near spectacular. That she had lived this long without lying on the floor and looking up at one of these things was just inexcusable. The hymn was still going, only this time, miracle of miracles, it was being played on some instrument, like a harp perhaps, and each note merged with the next note. She could almost not feel the floor under her, when she concentrated on the music and on the lights above.

“You didn’t stay in that commune, did you?” she asked drowsily. “That sounds horrible.”

“Sure didn’t. I made my mother leave. I said, lookie, you leave with me or I cut out of here on my own. And as I was about twelve years old at the time, she wasn’t about to let that happen. Lookie, here’s Michael Curry’s name again. He drew a circle around it.”

“Lasher did? Or Ryan?”

“You got me. This is the Xerox, I can’t tell. No, I see, the circle’s drawn on the Xerox. Must have been Ryan, and this says something about ‘waerloga.’ Well, you know??? That probably means ‘warlock.’ ”

“Right you are,” said Mona. “That’s Old English. I have at one time or another looked up the derivation of every single word that pertains to witches and witchcraft.”

“Yeah, so have I. Warlock, right you are. Or it means, don’t tell me, it means somebody who knows the truth all the time, right?”

“And to think it was Oncle Julien who wanted me to do this, that’s the puzzle, but then a ghost knows his own business and Oncle Julien maybe didn’t know. The dead don’t know everything. The evil people do, whether they’re dead or alive, or at least they know enough to tangle us up in such a web we can never escape. But Julien didn’t know that Michael was his descendant. I know he didn’t. He wouldn’t have told me to come.”

“To come where, Mona?”

“To this house on Mardi Gras night, to sleep with Michael, to make this baby that only Michael and I could have made, or maybe you too could have made it with Michael, perhaps, because you can smell that smell coming up out of these boxes, that smell of him?”

“Yeah, maybe I could, Mona. You never know.”

“Right, sweets, you never know. But I got him first. I got Michael while the door was open before Rowan came home. Just slipped through the cracks, and wham! This baby, this marvelous little baby.”

Mona turned over and lifted her head, resting her chin on her hands, elbows on the carpet.

“Mary Jane, you have to know everything.”

“Yeah, I do,” said Mary Jane. “I want to. I’m kind of worried about you.”

“Me? Don’t worry. I couldn’t be better. I’m thirsty for some more milk, but otherwise, I’m fine. Look, I can still lie on my belly, well, actually no.” She sat up. “That wasn’t so comfortable, guess I have to kiss that goodbye for a while, you know, sleeping on your stomach?”

Mary Jane’s brows had gone together in a very serious expression. She looked so cute! No wonder men were so damned patronizing to women. Did Mona look cute this way?

“Little witches!” said Mona in a hissing whisper, and she made her fingers flutter beside her hair.

Mary Jane laughed. “Yeah, little witches,” she said. “So it was the ghost of Oncle Julien told you to come up here and sleep with Michael, and Rowan was nowhere around.”

“Exactly, nowhere around. And Oncle Julien had more than a heavy hand in it, I tell you. The thing is, I fear he has gone to heaven and left us to our own devices, but then that is fine. I wouldn’t want to have to explain this to him.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“It’s a new phase, Mary Jane. You might say it’s witchcraft in our generation. It’s got nothing to do with Julien or Michael or Rowan and the way that they would have solved things. It’s something else altogether.”

“Yeah, I see.”

“You do, don’t you?”

“Yep. You’re really sleepy. I’m going to go get you some milk.”

“Oh, that would be divine.”

“You just lie down and go on to sleep, darlin’. Your eyes look really bad. Can you see me at all?”

“Sure, I can, but you’re right. I’m just going to sleep right here. And, Mary Jane, take advantage of the situation.”

“Oh, you’re too young for that, Mona.”

“No, silly, I didn’t mean that,” said Mona, laughing. “Besides, if I’m not too young for men, I’m not too young for girls either. As a matter of fact, I’m curious about doing it with a girl, or a woman perhaps, a beautiful woman like Rowan. But what I meant was, the boxes are opened. Take advantage of that fact, and read what you can out of them.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll do that. I can’t really read his handwriting, but I can read hers. And she’s got stuff here.”

“Yeah, read it. If you’re going to help me, you have to read it. And down in the library, Mary Jane, the file on the Mayfair witches. I know you said you read it, but did you really read it?”

“You know, Mona? I’m not sure I really did.”

Mona turned over on her side, and closed her eyes.

And as for you, Morrigan, let’s go back, way, way back, none of this foolishness about invaders and Roman soldiers, way back to the plain, and tell me how it all began. Who is the dark-haired one that everyone so loves? “Good-night, Mary Jane.”

“Listen, before you fly away here, darlin’, who would you say is your very best trusted next of kin?”

Mona laughed. She almost forgot the question, then woke with a start.

“Aaah, you are, Mary Jane.”

“Not Rowan and Michael?”

“Absolutely not. They must now be perceived as the enemy. But there are things I have to ask Rowan, I have to know from her, but she doesn’t have to know what’s going on with me. I have to think out the purpose for my questions. As for Gifford and Alicia, they’re dead, and Ancient Evelyn is too sick, and Ryan is too dumb. And Jenn and Shelby are too innocent. And Pierce and Clancy are simply hopeless, and why ruin normal life for them? Have you ever put much of a premium on normal life?”

“Never.”

“I guess I’m depending upon you, then, Mary Jane. ’Bye now, Mary Jane.”

“Then what you’re saying is, you don’t want me to call Rowan or Michael in London and ask their advice.”

“Good heavens, no.” Six circles had formed, and the dance was beginning. She didn’t want to miss it. “You mustn’t do that, Mary Jane. You absolutely mustn’t. Promise me you won’t, Mary Jane. Besides, it’s the middle of the night in London and we don’t know what they’re doing, do we? God help them. God help Yuri.”

Mona was floating away. Ophelia, with the flowers in her hair, moving steadily downstream. The branches of the trees came down to stroke her face, to touch the water. No, she was dancing in the circle, and the dark-haired one was standing in the very center and trying to tell them, but everyone was laughing and laughing. They loved him, but they knew he had a habit of going on and on, with such foolish worries….

“Well, I am worried about you, Mona, I should tell you …”

Mary Jane’s voice was very far away. Flowers, bouquets of flowers. That explains everything, why I have dreamed gardens all my life, and drawn pictures of gardens with crayons. Why are you always drawing gardens, Mona, Sister Louise asked me. I love gardens, and First Street’s garden was so ruined until they cleared it and changed it, and now, all clipped and kept, it harbors the worst secret of all.

No, Mother, don’t …

No, the flowers, the circles, you talk! This dream was going to be as good as the last one. “Mona?”

“Let me go, Mary Jane.”

Mona could barely hear her; besides, it didn’t make any difference what she said.

And that was a good thing, too, because this was what came out of Mary Jane’s mouth, far, far away … before Mona and Morrigan began to sing.

“… you know, Mona Mayfair, I hate to tell you this, but that baby’s grown since you went to sleep out by the tree!”