"Mona, honey, we don't know where Morrigan is," said Michael.
Mona leaned against Quinn and he put his arm around her shoulder.
"Tell us, Rowan, tell us what you have to say," I said. "I want to hear it. "
"Oh, yeah, yeah," said Mona, "go on with the Saga of Rowan. "
"Mona," I whispered, leaning to clasp her head and draw her to me, my lips at her ear: "these are mortals and with mortals we have a certain eternal patience. Nothing is as it was. Curb your strength. Curb your old mortal envy and spite. They have no place here. Don't you realize the power you have now to search for Morrigan? What's at stake here is the rest of your family. "
Reluctantly she nodded. She didn't understand. Her mortal sickness had divided her from these people. I was only now realizing the extent of it. Though they'd come into her hospital room probably every day and all day, she'd been drugged, full of pain, alone.
A soft rustling sound broke my concentration. The person in the servants' quarters had awakened, and was rushing down the wooden steps. The screen door banged shut, and there came the skittering feet through the rattling foliage.
It might have been a tiny gnome, this creature that emerged from the elephant ears and the ferns, but it was simply a very old woman-a tiny bit of a thing with a small completely wrinkled face, black eyes and
white hair in two long neat braids tied at the ends with pink ribbon. She was dressed in a stiff flowered robe, and clumsy padded fuzzy pink slippers.
Mona rushed to greet her, crying out: "Dolly Jean!" and picked up the bit of a creature in her arms and spun around with her.
"Lord, God in Heaven," cried out Dolly Jean, "but it's true, it's Mona Mayfair. Child of Grace, you set me down right now and tell me what's gotten into you. Look at those shoes. Rowan Mayfair, why didn't you tell me this child was here, and you, Michael Curry, giving me that rum, you think your mother in Heaven doesn't know the things you do, you thought you had me down for the count, I know, don't think I don't, and look at Mona Mayfair, what did you pump into her?"
Mona had no awareness that with her vampiric strength she was holding the woman in the air, and how perfectly abnormal it looked.
The spectators were speechless.
"Oh, Dolly Jean, it's been so long, so terribly long," Mona sobbed. "I can't even remember the last time I saw you. I was all locked up and taped up and dreaming. And when they told me Mary Jane Mayfair had run away again I think I just went into a stupor. "
"I know, my baby," said Dolly Jean, "but they wouldn't let me in the room, they had their rules, but don't you think for a moment I wasn't saying the rosary every day for you. And one of these bright days Mary Jane'll run out of money and come home, or turn up dead in the morgue with a tag on her toe, we'll find her. "
By this time we had all risen, except for Rowan, who remained sunk in her thoughts as if none of this was taking place, and Michael quickly took the apparently weightless Dolly Jean from Mona and set her in a chair between himself and Rowan.
"Dolly Jean, Dolly Jean!" Mona sobbed as Quinn led her back to her place at the table.
Rowan had never once even looked at either Mona or Dolly Jean. She was murmuring, her narrative moving along in her head, unbroken, and her eyes probing the dark for nothing.
"All right, settle down Dolly Jean, and you too Mona, and let Rowan talk," said Michael.
"Who in the world are you!" Dolly Jean demanded of me. "Holy Mother of God, where did you come from?"
Rowan turned suddenly and stared at Dolly Jean with apparent wonder. Then she turned back into her solitude and crowded reminiscence.
The old woman went quiet and still. Then muttered: "Oh me, poor Rowan, she's off again. " Then, staring at me again, she let out a huge gasp and cried: "I know who you are!"
I smiled at her. I couldn't help it.
"Please, Dolly Jean," said Michael, "there are issues we have to settle here. "
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" cried Dolly Jean, staring this time at Mona, who was hastily wiping away her latest tears. "My baby, Mona Mayfair, is a Blood Child!" Then her eyes discovered Quinn, and there came another huge gasp, and she cried out, "It's the black-haired one!"
"No, it's not!" Rowan declared in a furious rasping whisper, turning to the old woman again. "It's Quinn Blackwood. You know he's always loved Mona. " She said it as if it was the answer to every question in the universe.
Dolly Jean made a jerky little turn in her chair, and with two dips or bobs of her head made a thorough examination of Rowan, who was looking at her with gleaming eyes as if she hadn't even seen her before.
"Oh, my girl, my poor girl," Dolly Jean said to Rowan. She put her tiny hands on Rowan and smoothed her hair. "My darling girl, don't you be so sad, always so sad on account of everybody. That's my girl. "
Rowan stared at her for a long moment as though she didn't understand a word Dolly Jean spoke, and then she looked away again at nobody, half dreaming, half thinking.
"At four o'clock this very afternoon," Dolly Jean said, still stroking Rowan's hair, "this poor little soul was digging her own grave in this very yard. I noticed how well you covered it up, Michael Curry, you think you can cover everything up, and when I came down here to ask her what she was doing standing in a hole of wet mud she asked me to pick up the shovel and bury her while she was still breathing. "