Blackwood Farm (The Vampire Chronicles 9)

"At some point while all this was going on -- my valiant struggle to get them to believe and investigate and their pleading with me not to make a fool of myself -- Pops walked in and I reiterated the whole story for him.

"He sat at the corner of the table listening with his dull eyes, and then said under his breath that he'd go back there to this island with me if I wanted, and when I said I did want this, that it was exactly what I wanted, he seemed surprised.

"All the while, Goblin stood over by the sink listening to this conversation and looking from one to another of the crowd at the table as this or that one spoke. Then he came over and started pulling on my right shoulder.

"I said, 'Goblin, get away, I've got no time for you now. ' And with a profound will I pushed at him mentally, and to my amazement he was gone.

"Then Patsy imitated my voice and what I'd just said, making fun of me, and gave a low sneering laugh. 'Goblin, get away,' she repeated, 'and now you're telling us there's a marble table out there and a gold chair. ¡¯

"I fired back at her that those details were of the least importance and then I positively demanded to see the sheriff and tell him what I had seen.

"Pops said No, not until he'd gone out there with me, and that if this woman had been rotting for over a hundred years a day or two wouldn't matter now.

" 'But somebody's living there, Pops,' I said. 'Somebody who must know these chains are up there and must have seen the skull! We have a dangerous situation here. ¡¯

"Patsy snickered. 'It's a damned good thing that you believe yourself, Quinn, because nobody else does. You've been crazy since you were born. ¡¯

"Aunt Queen did not look at her. It struck me for the first time in my life that Aunt Queen didn't like Patsy any more than Pops did.

" 'So what was your dream, Patsy?' I asked, trying not to bristle at her insults. 'Jasmine told me you came home today because you had a dream. ¡¯

" 'Oh, it can't compare to your story,' she said ironically and coldly, her blue eyes hard as glass. 'I just woke up all scared for you. There was somebody who was going to hurt you, and Blackwood Manor was burning, and this group of people -- they had you and they were going to hurt you, and Virginia Lee was in the dream and she told me, "Patsy, get him away. " She was real clear, she was sitting with her embroidery, and you know all the embroidery we still have that she did, and there she was in the dream, embroidering, and she put it aside and told me what I just said. It's all fading now. But Blackwood Manor was on fire. I woke up scared. ¡¯

"I looked at Pops and Jasmine. They hadn't told her anything about Rebecca or the oil-lamp scare, I knew by their faces. I looked up at Goblin, who was standing in the corner to my far left, and Goblin was looking at Patsy, and he seemed thoughtful if not a little scared himself.

"At this point, Aunt Queen called for the end of the Kitchen Committee Confab. We did have guests coming in, supper had to be prepared, Lolly and Big Ramona were waiting for us to clear out, and Aunt Queen wanted to talk to me later in her room. We'd eat supper in there, just the two of us.

"Nobody was calling the sheriff until Pops had gone to the island with me. And Pops said he wasn't feeling very good, he had to go lie down. The heat was bad and he'd been working on the flower patches in the full sun; he didn't feel good at all.

"I insisted on placing the earrings and brooch in a plastic bag so that any residue of tissue clinging to them could be analyzed, and then I went up to my room to shower, realizing I was starving to death.

"It was maybe six o'clock when I sat down to supper with Aunt Queen. Her room had just been redone in golden yellow taffeta, and we were at the small round table against the back windows of the house at which she frequently took her meals.

"We devoured one of her favorite dishes -- scrambled eggs with caviar and sour cream, along with her favorite champagne.

"She was wearing silver spike heels and a loose-fitting silk-and-lace dress. She had a cameo at her throat, centered perfectly on her collar -- Jasmine must have helped her -- and we had the earrings and the cameo brooch from the island with us.

"The brooch was 'Rebecca at the Well,' the earrings were tiny heads, as is usually the case with small cameos.

"I began by telling her all about Rebecca's trunk in the attic, and then Rebecca's ghost and what had happened, and then I went over again everything that was on the island and how perfectly strange it was out there, and that there was clear evidence of murder on the second floor of the house.

" 'All right,' she said. 'You've heard many a story of Manfred, and you know now that after Virginia Lee died and left him a widower he was considered a madman in these parts. ¡¯

"I nodded for her to go on. I also took no

te that Goblin was right behind her, some distance from her, just watching me with a kind of abstracted expression on his face. He was also leaning against the wall kind of casually, and something about that struck a bad note with me -- that he would present such an image of comfort, but my mind was really not on Goblin but on Rebecca and Aunt Queen.

"Aunt Queen went on with her tale.

" 'But what you don't know,' she said, 'is that Manfred brought women here to Blackwood Manor, always claiming they were governesses for William and Camille, when in fact they were nothing more than playthings for him -- starry-eyed Irish girls he got from Storyville, the red-light district in New Orleans -- whom he kept for as long as it suited his purposes, and then from the picture they were abruptly erased. ¡¯

" 'God, you're telling me he killed more than one of them?' I asked.

" 'I don't know that he did any such thing,' said Aunt Queen. She went on. 'It's your story about this island that has put it in my mind that perhaps he did murder them. But no one knew what became of them, and it was an easy thing to get rid of a poor Irish girl in those days. You simply dropped her down in the middle of New Orleans. What more need be done?¡¯

" 'But Rebecca, did you hear tell of Rebecca?¡¯

" 'Yes, indeed, I did,' said Aunt Queen. 'You know I did. I heard plenty tell of her. And I'm telling you now. Now let me go on in my fashion. Some of these Irish girls were kind to little William and Camille, but in the main they didn't bother with them one way or another, and so they don't come down to us with any names or faces, or even mysterious trunks in the attic, though that would have been a significant clue. ¡¯