Again came the ghostly laughter.
"Your hospitality is wretched!" said Oncle Julien. "Jasmine has not even offered them a cracker and glass of water. I am appalled. "
I was bitterly amused by that, and I doubted the truth of it. I found myself worrying about it and became incensed! And at the same time I heard something, something nobody in the room could hear, except perhaps the laughing ghost. It was the sound of Mona crying, nay, sobbing. I had to go back to Mona.
All right, Lestat, be a monster. Throw the most interesting woman you've ever met out of the house.
"Listen to me, both of you," I said, fixing Rowan in my gaze, and then flashing on Fr. Kevin. "I want you to go home. Mona's as psychic as you are. It distresses her dreadfully that you're down here. She senses it. She feels it. It adds to her pain. " (All this was true, wasn't it?) "I gotta go back up there now and comfort her. Please leave. That's what she wants. That's what gave her the strength to drive here. Now I promise you I will contact you when it's all over. Please go. "
I rose, and I took Rowan's arm and all but lifted her out of the chair.
"You are a perfect lout," said the ghost, disgustedly.
Fr. Kevin was on his feet.
Rowan stared at me, transfixed. I guided her into the hallway and to the front door, and the priest followed. Trust in me. Trust that it's what Mona wants.
Could they hear Mona's sobs now?
Without taking my eyes off Rowan's eyes, I opened the front door. Blast of summer heat, scent of flowers. "You go now," I said.
"But the oxygen, the morphine," said Rowan. Whiskey voice, they called it. It was so seductive. And behind her delicate probing frown was this conflict, this unadmitted and sinful power. What was it?
We stood on the front porch, like dwarves underneath the columns. The purple light was suddenly soothing and the moment lost its proportions. It was like eternal dusk here in the country. I could hear the birds of the night, the distant unquiet waters of the swamp.
Fr. Kevin instructed the orderlies. They brought in the supplies.
I couldn't break away from this woman. What had I been saying to her? The ghost was laughing. I was getting confused.
What is your secret?
I felt a physical push, as though she had stretched out her two hands and laid them on my chest and tried
to move me back from where I stood. I saw the ghost over her shoulder. It came from her, the push. It had to come from her.
Her face was engraved with a hostile beauty.
She tossed her hair just slightly, let it stroke her cheeks.
She narrowed her eyes. "Take care of Mona for me," she said. "I love her with all my heart. You cannot know what it means to me that I failed with her-that all my gifts, all my resources-. "
"Of course. I know how you love her," I said. "I love her and I hardly know her. " This was babble. This woman was suffering. Was I suffering? The ghost was accusing me. A tall man right behind her but she had no sense of him.
What was it that was slipping out of her conscious to me? Something so very dreadful that it had shaped her entire existence; and she felt it keenly at this moment. I have taken life.
I shuddered. Her eyes wouldn't let me move.
I have taken life again and again.
The orderlies swept by with more equipment. Cool air flooded out of the open front door. Jasmine was there. The ghost stood firm. It seemed to me that the curve of the limbs of the pecan trees marching down the gravel drive meant something, a secret communication from the Lord of the Universe, but what?
"Come to me," I said to Rowan. A life founded upon suffering, upon reparation. I couldn't bear it, I had to touch it, enclose it, save it.
I took her in my arms, Dear God Forgive Me, kissing her cheeks and then her mouth. Don't fear for Mona.
"You don't understand," she whispered. In a scalding moment I saw the hospital room, a torture cell of machines and pulsing numbers, glistening plastic bags feeding into dangling tubes, and Mona sobbing, sobbing the way she was now, and Rowan standing in the doorway. Almost used the power, almost killed-.
"I see, I do," I said. "And it was not the right time and she wanted to come to Quinn," I whispered the words in her ear.