She put on a pair of slightly scuffed little white slippers, the kind you can buy in any drugstore, the ones she'd obviously worn over here, and after she put her head back and tossed her hair, she was almost complete. It was vampire hair now, and it needed no real brushing, each strand fighting with the strand next to it, the whole voluminous and gleaming, her forehead high and well proportioned, with eyebrows divinely set, and then she flashed on me. I'm still here, guys.
"It's tricky," she said gently, as if she didn't want to be rude to me. "He knows you have a cameo in your pocket, and so I know because I can read his thoughts. "
"Oh, so that's what I've done here," I said, laughing under my breath. "I forgot about the cameo. " I gave it to Quinn. I could foresee this triangular telepathy being something of a nightmare.
Yes, I'd wanted them free to read each other's thoughts, so why the Hell was I jealous?
Towering over her, he pinned the cameo carefully in the center of the embroidered white collar. It looked old and fine.
Then in an anxious whisper he put a question to her.
"You wouldn't wear Aunt Queen's high-heel shoes, would you?"
She went into a riot of soft laughter. So did I.
Till her dying day, Aunt Queen had apparently gone about in breakneck high heels with ankle straps and open toes, some covered in rhinestones or, for all I knew, real diamonds. She'd had on such wondrous shoes when I made her acquaintance.
One of the enduring ironies of her death was that she had been in her bare stocking feet when she suffered the fall that killed her. But that was the evildoing of Goblin, who had deliberately startled her and even pushed her.
So the shoes were innocent and there were probably piles of them in her closets downstairs.
But slap together the image of Mona, the tramp kid, in saddle oxfords, and any vision of Aunt Queen's heels, and it was uproariously funny. Why would Mona do such a thing as that to herself? And if you knew how much Quinn noticed women's high heels-namely Jasmine's and Aunt Queen's, it was twice as uproariously funny.
Mona was stuck someplace between vampire trance and total love, gazing into Quinn's earnest face trying to figure this.
"All right, Quinn, I'll try her shoes," she said, "if you want me to. " Now that was pure transnatural female.
He was on the phone to Jasmine in an instant. Bring upstairs Aunt Queen's finest big white satin wrapper- one of the full-length articles with the ostrich feather trim, and a pair of her new heels, very glittery, and hurry.
It didn't require a vampire's hearing to pick up Jasmine's answer:
"Lawd! You're going to make that sick girl put on those things? Have you lost your mind, Little Boss! I'm coming up there! And Cyndy, the Nurse, is here and she is as shocked as I am, and
she's coming with me, and you better leave that child alone. Lawd! I mean Lawd! You can't go undressing her like a doll, Taw- quin Blackwood, you lunatic! Is that child dead already? Is that what you're trying to tell me? Answer me, Taw-quin Blackwood, this is Jasmine talking to you! Do you even know that Patsy's run off and left all her medicines, and nobody knows where the Hell she's gone? Now, I don't blame you for not caring about Patsy but somebody's got to think of Patsy, and Cyndy's crying her eyes out down here over Patsy-. "
"Jasmine, calm down," Quinn said. He went on in the most courteous and calm manner. "Patsy's dead. I killed her night before last. I broke her neck and dumped her in the swamp and the alligators ate her. You don't have to worry about Patsy anymore. Throw her medicines in the trash. Tell Cyndy, the Nurse, to have some supper. I'm coming down for Aunt Queen's shoes and negligee myself. Mona is completely better. " He put down the phone and went straight out the door. "Latch this after me. "
I obliged.
Mona looked at me searchingly.
"He was telling the truth about Patsy, wasn't he?" she asked. "And Patsy's his mother ???"
I nodded. I shrugged.
"They'll never believe him," I said, "and it was the smartest thing for him to do. He can repeat that confession until doomsday. But when you know more about Patsy, you'll understand. "
She looked horrified, and the Blood was intensifying it.
"Which was the smartest thing?" she asked. "Killing Patsy or telling them that?"
"Telling them is what I meant," I pursued. "Killing her only Quinn can explain. Patsy hated Quinn, I can attest to that, and she was a hard merciless woman. She was dying of AIDS. She didn't have much time on the mortal clock. The rest he can answer. "
Mona was aghast, a virgin vampire about to faint from moral shock.
"In all the years I've known him, he has never mentioned Patsy to me or even answered by E-mail one single solitary question about his mother. "
I shrugged again. "He has his secrets as you have. I know the name of your child. Morrigan. But he doesn't. "