Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 3)

"Tell your driver to go south," he said. "Out of London, towards Brighton. We're not going to Brighton, but that will do for now. It's an hour and a half."

"Then we have time to talk, don't we?" asked the witch, Rowan. Her voice was deep, almost husky. She made a dazzle in Ash's vision, glinting slightly in the dark car. Her breasts were small but beautifully shaped beneath the black silk lapels of the deep-cut jacket. "Tell me how you could do it," she said to Gordon. "Kill Aaron. You're a man like Aaron, yourself."

"I didn't do it," said Gordon bitterly. "I didn't want it done. It was a stupid, stupid, and vicious thing to do. And it happened before I could stop it. Same with Yuri and the gun. I had nothing to do with it. Yuri, in the coffee shop, when I told you I was concerned for your life, I meant it. There are some things which are simply beyond my control."

"I want you to tell us everything now," said Michael Curry. He looked at Ash as he spoke. "We really can't restrain our friend here. And we wouldn't even if we could."

"I'm not telling you anything more," said Gordon.

"That's foolish," said Rowan.

"No, it isn't," said Gordon. "It's the only move I have. Tell you what I know before you reach Tessa, and when you have her, you'll do away with me at once."

"I'll probably do it anyway," said Ash. "You are buying a few hours of life."

"Not so quick. There are many things I can tell you. You have no idea. You'll need much more than a few hours."

Ash didn't reply.

Gordon's shoulders slumped. He took a deep breath, eyeing his captors one by one again, and then returning to Ash. Ash had drawn back until he too was in the corner. He did not wish to be near this human, this feisty and vicious human whom he knew that he would eventually kill.

He looked at his two witches. Rowan Mayfair sat with her hand on her knee, much as Ash did, and she raised her fingers now in a rolling gesture, begging him, perhaps, to be patient.

The snap of a lighter startled Ash.

"Mind if I smoke, Mr. Ash, in your fancy car?" asked Michael Curry from the front seat. His head was already bowed over the cigarette and the tiny flame.

"Please, do what you wish," said Ash with a cordial smile.

To his amazement, Michael Curry smiled back at him.

"There's whiskey in this car," said Ash. "There is ice and water. Would any of you care for a drink?"

"Yeah," said Michael Curry with a little sigh, exhaling the cigarette. "But in the name of virtue, I'll wait till after six."

And this witch can father the Taltos, Ash thought, studying Michael Curry's profile and his slightly crude but charmingly proportioned features. His voice had a lust in it that surely extended to many things, thought Ash. Look at the way he is watching the buildings as we pass them. He misses nothing.

Rowan Mayfair continued to look only at Ash.

They had just left the city proper.

"This is the right way," said Gordon, in a thick voice. "Keep going until I tell you."

The old man looked away as if he were merely checking their position, but then his forehead struck the window hard, and he began to weep.

No one spoke. Ash merely looked at his witches. Then he thought of the photograph of the red-haired one, and when he let his eyes drift to Yuri, who sat directly opposite, beside Rowan, he saw that Yuri's eyes were closed. He had curled up against the side of the car, his head turned away from them, and he too was shedding tears, without making much of a sound.

Ash leant forward to lay a comforting hand on Yuri's leg.

Fourteen

IT WAS ONE o'clock, perhaps, when Mona woke up in the upstairs front bedroom, her eyes turned towards the oaks outside the window. Their branches were filled with bright Resurrection ferns, once again green from the recent spring rain.

"Phone for you," said Eugenia.

Mona almost said, God, I'm glad someone's here. But she didn't like admitting to anyone that she'd been spooked in the famous house earlier, and that her dreams had been deeply disturbing to her.

Eugenia looked askance at Mona's big, billowy white cotton shirt. So what was wrong? It was loungewear, wasn't it? In the catalogs, they called them Poets' Shirts.

"Oughtn't be sleepin' in your pretty clothes!" declared Eugenia. "And look at those beautiful big sleeves all rumpled, and that lace, that delicate lace."

If only she could say Buzz off. "Eugenia, it's meant to be rumpled."

There was a tall glass of milk, frosty, luscious looking, in Eugenia's hand. And in the other, an apple on a small white plate.

"Who's this from?" asked Mona, "the Evil Queen?"

Of course, Eugenia didn't know what she was talking about, but it didn't matter. Eugenia pointed to the phone again. Mona was about to pick up the phone when her mind, veering back to the dream, discovered the dream was gone. Like a veil snatched away, it left nothing but a faint memory of texture and color. And the very strange certainty that she must name her daughter Morrigan, a name she'd never heard before.

"And what if you're a boy?" she asked.

She picked up the receiver.

It was Ryan. The funeral was over, and the Mayfair crowd was arriving at Bea's house. Lily was going to stay there for a few days, and so would Shelby and Aunt Vivian. Cecilia was uptown, seeing to Ancient Evelyn, and was doing well.

"Could you offer some old-fashioned First Street hospitality to Mary Jane Mayfair for a while?" asked Ryan. "I can't take her down to Fontevrault till tomorrow. And besides, I think it would be good if you got to know her. And naturally, she's half in love with First and Chestnut and wants to ask you a thousand questions."

"Bring her over," said Mona. The milk tasted good! It was just about the coldest milk she'd ever tasted, which killed all the ickiness of it, which she had never much liked. "I'd welcome her company," she went on. "This place is spooky, you are right."

Instantly she wished she hadn't admitted it, that she, Mona Mayfair, had been spooked in the great house.

But Ryan was off on the track of duty and organization and simply continued to explain that Granny Mayfair, down at Fontevrault, was being cared for by the little boy from Napoleonville, and that this was a good opportunity to persuade Mary Jane to get out of that ruin, and to move to town.

"This girl needs the family. But she doesn't need any more of this grief and misery just now. Her first real visit has for obvious reasons been a disaster. She's in shell shock from the accident. You know she saw the entire accident. I want to get her out of here--"

"Well, sure, but she'll feel closer to everybody afterwards," said Mona with a shrug. She took a big, wet, crunchy bite of the apple. God, was she hungry. "Ryan, have you ever heard of the name Morrigan?"

&

nbsp; "I don't think so."

"There's never been a Morrigan Mayfair?"

"Not that I remember. It's an old English name, isn't it?"

"Hmmm. Think it's pretty?"

"But what if the baby is a boy, Mona?"

"It's not, I know," she said. And then caught herself. How in the world could she know? It was the dream, wasn't it, and it also must have been wishful thinking, the desire to have a girl child and bring her up free and strong, the way girls were almost never brought up.

Ryan promised to be there within ten minutes.

Mona sat against the pillows, looking out again at the Resurrection ferns and the bits and pieces of blue sky beyond. The house was silent all around her, Eugenia having disappeared. She crossed her bare legs, the shirt easily covering her knees with its thick lace hem. The sleeves were horribly rumpled, true, but so what? They were sleeves fit for a pirate. Who could keep anything like that neat? Did pirates? Pirates must have gone about rumpled. And Beatrice had bought so many of these things! It was supposed to be "youthful," Mona suspected. Well, it was pretty. Even had pearl buttons. Made her feel like a ... a little mother!

She laughed. Boy, this apple was good.

Mary Jane Mayfair. In a way, this was the only person in the family that Mona could possibly get excited about seeing, and on the other hand, what if Mary Jane started saying all kinds of wild and witchy things? What if she started running off at the mouth irresponsibly? Mona wouldn't be able to handle it.

She took another bite of the apple. This will help with vitamin deficiencies, she thought, but she needed the supplements Annelle Salter had prescribed for her. She drank the rest of the milk in one Olympian gulp.

"What about 'Ophelia'?" she said aloud. Would that be right, to name a girl child after poor mad Ophelia, who had drowned herself after Hamlet's rejection? Probably not. Ophelia's my secret name, she thought, and you're going to be called Morrigan.

A great sense of well-being came over her. Morrigan. She closed her eyes and smelled the water, heard the waves crashing on the rocks.

*

A sound woke her, abruptly. She'd been asleep and she didn't know how long. Ryan was standing beside the bed, and Mary Jane Mayfair was with him.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Mona, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and coming round to greet them. Ryan was already backing out of the room.