Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 3)

"Lasher guided the earlier disaster from the beginning. Without the intervention of Lasher, Rowan might have had a completely healthy and beautiful ..."

She stopped. But what did that mean, Lasher's intervention?

The phone rang, startling her, even hurting her a little. She reached for it hastily, not wanting it to ring again.

"Mona here, start talking," she said.

There was a laugh on the other end. "That's a hell of a way to answer, kid."

"Michael! Thank God. I am pregnant, Dr. Salter says there is absolutely no doubt."

She heard him sigh. "We love you, sweetheart," he said.

"Where are you?"

"We're in some frightfully expensive hotel in a French-style suite full of fruitwood chairs standing on tiptoe. Yuri is well, and Rowan is examining this gunshot wound of his. It's become infected. I want you to wait on talking to Yuri. He's overexcited, and talking out of his head a little, but otherwise OK."

"Yeah, sure. I don't want to tell him now about this baby."

"No, that wouldn't be good at all."

"Give me your number."

He gave her the number.

"Honey, are you okay?"

Here we go again, even he can tell that you're worried about it. And he knows why you might be worried. But don't say anything! No, not one word. Something inside her closed up, fearful suddenly of Michael, the very person she'd wanted so to talk to, the very person, along with Rowan, whom she'd felt she could trust.

Play this carefully.

"Yeah, I'm fine, Michael. Ryan's office has your number?"

"We're not going to disappear, honey."

She realized she was staring at the screen, at the questions she had so intelligently and logically listed:

How fast did Rowan's pregnancy progress? Were there signs of accelerated development?

Michael would know these answers. No, don't let on.

"I'm going to go, honey. I'll call you later. We all love you."

" 'Bye, Michael."

She hung up the phone.

She sat quiet for a long time, then began to type rapidly: "It is too early to ask them stupid questions about this baby, too early to have fears which may affect your health and your peace of mind, too early to worry Rowan and Michael, who have on their minds much more important things...."

She broke off.

There had been a whisper near her! It was like somebody right next to her. She looked around and then rose and walked across the room, looking back at it to make certain of what she already knew. There had been no one there, no wispy spooks, no shadows even. Her fluorescent desk lamp had taken care of that.

Guards outside on Chestnut? Maybe. But how could she hear them whispering through eighteen inches of solid brick?

Minutes ticked past.

Was she afraid to move? This is crazy, Mona Mayfair. Who do you think it is? Gifford, or your own mother? Oncle Julien come again? Doesn't he deserve a rest now? Maybe this goddamned house was just plain haunted, and always had been, by all kinds of spirits, like the ghost of the upstairs maid from 1859 or that of a coachman who fell to his death tragically from the roof in 1872. Could be. The family didn't write down everything that happened. She started to laugh.

Proletarian ghosts in the Mayfair house on First Street? Ghosts who weren't blood kin? Boy, what a scandal! Nah, there weren't any ghosts here at all.

She looked at the gilt frame of the mirror, the dark brown marble mantel, the shelves of old decaying books. A calm descended on her, kind of comfortable and nice. She loved this place best of all, she thought, and there wasn't any spirit gramophone playing, and no faces in the mirror. You belong here. You're safe. You're home.

"Yes, you and me, kid," she said, talking to the baby again. "This is our house now, with Michael and with Rowan. And I promise you, I will come up with an interesting name."

She sat down again, and began to type as fast as before: "Nerves on edge. Imagining things. Eat protein, vitamin C for nerves and for general overall condition. Hearing voices whispering in my ear, sounds like ... sounds like, unsure, but think it sounds like someone singing or even humming! Kind of maddening. Could be a ghost or a deficiency in vitamin B.

"Aaron's funeral is presently under way. This no doubt contributes to overall jumpiness."

Eleven

"YOU'RE CERTAIN THIS was a Taltos?" Rowan asked.

She had put away the bandages and the antiseptic, and washed her hands. She stood in the bathroom door of the suite, watching Yuri as he walked back and forth, a dark, gangly, and unpredictable figure against the carefully fringed silks and abundant ormolu of the room.

"Oh God, you don't believe me. It was a Taltos."

"This could have been a human who had a reason for deceiving you," she said. "The height alone does not necessarily mean--"

"No, no, no," Yuri said, in the same crazed and manic tone in which he'd been talking since he'd found them at the airport. "It wasn't human. It was ... it was beautiful and hideous. Its knuckles were enormous, and its fingers, they were so long. The face could have been human, certainly. Very, very handsome man, yes. But this was Ashlar, Rowan, the very one. Michael, tell her the story. St. Ashlar, from the oldest church in Donnelaith. Tell her. Oh, if only I had Aaron's notes. I know he made them. He wrote down the story. Even though we were excommunicated by the Order, he wouldn't have failed to write everything down."

"He did make notes, son, and we have them," said Michael. "And I've told her everything I know as well."

Michael had already explained this twice, if Rowan wasn't mistaken. The endless repetition and circumlocutions of the day had worn on her. She was badly jet-lagged. Her entire constitution had been aged and weakened, she knew that now, if there had ever been any real hope to the contrary. Thank God she had slept on the plane.

Michael sat against the arm of the fancy French couch, with his socked feet crossed on the gold pillows. He had taken off his jacket, and his chest, in the turtleneck sweater, looked massive, as though it housed a heart that would beat triumphantly for another fifty years. He shot a secretive, commiserating glance at Rowan.

Thank God y

ou are here, she thought. Thank God. Michael's calm voice and manner were beyond reassuring. She could not imagine herself here without him.

Another Taltos. Another one of them! God, what secrets does this world harbor, what monsters are camouflaged amid its forests, its big cities, its wilderness, its seas? Her mind played tricks on her. She could not clearly picture Lasher. The figure was all out of proportion. His strength seemed supernatural. That was not accurate. These creatures were not all-powerful. She tried to banish these jarring memories, of Lasher's fingers bruising her arms, and the back of his hand striking her so hard that she lost consciousness. She could feel that moment of disconnection, and the moment of awakening, when, stunned, she'd found herself trying to crawl, for safety, under the bed. But she had to snap out of this, had to concentrate and make Yuri concentrate.

"Yuri," she said in her most quiet and unobtrusive authoritarian manner, "describe the Little People again. Are you certain--"

"The Little People are a wild race," said Yuri, words coming in a rush as he pivoted, hands out, as if to hold a magic glass in which he saw the images of all that he described. "They're doomed, said Samuel. They have no women anymore. They have no future. They will die out, unless a female Taltos comes among them, unless some female of their kind is found in some other remote part of Europe or the British Isles. And this happens. Mark my words, it happens. Samuel told me. Or a witch, don't you see? A witch? The wise women in those parts never go near the glen. The tourists and the archaeologists go and come in groups and by day."

They had been over this, but Rowan had begun to realize that each time he told it, he added something, threw in some new and possibly important detail.

"Of course, Samuel told me all this when he thought I was going to die in that cave. When the fever broke, he was as surprised as I was. And then Ash. Ash has no duplicity in him whatsoever. You cannot imagine the candor or simplicity of this being. Man, I want to say man. Why not man, as long as you remember that he is a Taltos? No human could be so direct, unless he was an idiot. And Ash is not an idiot."

"Then he wasn't lying when he told you he wanted to help you," said Rowan, watching him keenly.

"No, he wasn't lying. And he wants to protect the Talamasca, why I can't tell you. It all has to do with the past, and perhaps the archives, the secrets, though what is really in those archives nobody knows now. Oh, if I could only trust that the Elders were not part of it. But a witch, don't you see, a witch of Mona's power is simply too valuable to Ash and to Samuel. I should never, never have told them about Mona. Oh, I was a fool to tell them all about the family. But you see, this Samuel, he saved my life."