Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 3)

Not you, Morrigan, don't you worry, baby girl!

"Long story, no time for it," she said to Mary Jane.

"I know who Lasher is," said Mary Jane. "I know what happened. Granny told me. The others didn't come right out and say he was killing the women. They just said Granny and I had to come to New Orleans and stay with everybody else. Well, you know? We didn't do it and nothing happened to us!"

She shrugged and shook her head.

"That could have been a terrible mistake," said Mona. The cream gravy tasted wonderful with the rice. Why all this white food, Morrigan?

The trees were filled with apples, and their meat was white, and the tubers and roots we pulled from the earth were white and it was paradise. Oh, but look at the stars. Was the unspoiled world really unspoiled, or were the everyday menaces of nature so terrible that everything was just as ruined then as it was now? If you live in fear, what does it matter....

"What's the matter, Mona?" said Mary Jane. "Hey, snap out of it."

"Oh, nothing, actually," said Mona. "I just had a flash of the dream I had out there in the garden. I was having a hell of a conversation with somebody. You know, Mary Jane, people have to be educated to understand one another. Like right now, you and I, we are educating each other to understand each other, you get what I mean?"

"Oh yeah, exactly, and then you can pick up your phone and call me down at Fontevrault and say, 'Mary Jane, I need you!' and I'd just leap up and get in the pickup and take off and be at your side."

"Yes, that's it, exactly, you know I really, really meant it, you'd know all kinds of things about me, and I'd know all kinds of things about you. It was the happiest dream I ever had. It was such a ... such a happy dream. We were all dancing. A bonfire that big would normally scare me. But in the dream I was free, just perfectly free. I didn't care about anything. We need another apple. The invaders didn't invent death. That's a preposterous notion, but one can see why everybody thought that they had ... well, sort of, everything depends on perspective, and if you have no sure concept of time, if you don't see the basic relevance of time, and of course hunter-gatherer people did and so did agricultural people, but perhaps those in tropical paradises don't ever develop that kind of relationship because for them there are no cycles. The needle's stuck on heaven. You know what I mean?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, pay attention, Mary Jane! And you'll know! It was that way in the dream, the invaders had invented death. No, I see now, what they had invented was killing. That's a different thing."

"There's a bowl full of apples over there, you want me to get you an apple?"

"Right, later. I want to go upstairs to Rowan's room."

"Well, lemme finish my meal," pleaded Mary Jane. "Don't go without me. Matter of fact, I don't know if we have any right to go up there at all."

"Rowan won't mind, Michael might mind. But you know???" said Mona, imitating Mary Jane. "It doesn't matter???"

Mary Jane nearly fell out of the chair laughing. "You are the worst child," she said. "Come on. Chicken's always better cold, anyway."

And the meat from the sea was white, the meat of the shrimps and the fishes, and of the oysters and the mussels. Pure white. The eggs of gulls were beautiful, because they were all white outside, and when you broke them open one great golden eye stared at you, floating in the clearest fluid.

"Mona?"

She stood still in the door to the butler's pantry. She closed her eyes. She felt Mary Jane grip her hand.

"No," she said with a sigh, "it's gone again." Her hand moved to her belly. She spread her fingers out over the rounded swelling, feeling the tiny movements within. Beautiful Morrigan. Hair as red as my hair. Is your hair so very red, Mama?

"Can't you see me?"

In Mary Jane's eyes I see you.

"Hey, Mona, I'm going to get you a chair!"

"No, no, I'm okay." She opened her eyes. A lovely surge of energy shot through her. She stretched out her arms and ran, through the pantry and the dining room and down the long hall, and then up the stairway.

"Come on, let's go!" she was shouting.

It felt so good to run. That's one of the things she missed from childhood, and she hadn't even known it, just running, running all the way down St. Charles Avenue as fast as she could with her arms out. Running upstairs two at a time. Running around the block just to see if you could do it without stopping, without fainting, without having to throw up.

Mary Jane came pounding after her.

The door to the bedroom was closed. Good old Ryan. Probably locked it.

But no. When she opened it, the room was dark. She found the light switch, and the overhead chandelier went on, pouring a bright light over the smooth bed, the dressing table, the boxes.

"What's that smell?" asked Mary Jane.

"You smell it, don't you?"

"Sure do."

"It's Lasher's smell," she whispered. "You mean it?"

"Yes," said Mona. There was the pile of brown cardboard boxes. "What's it like to you, the smell?"

"Hmmmm, it's good. Kind of makes you want butterscotch or chocolate or cinnamon, or something like that. Wooof. Where's it coming from? But you know what?"

"What?" asked Mona, circling the pile of boxes.

"People have died in this room."

"No kidding. Mary Jane, anybody could have told you that."

"What do you mean? About Mary Beth Mayfair, and Deirdre and all that. I heard all that when Rowan was sick in here, and Beatrice called down to get Granny and me to come to New Orleans. Granny told me. But somebody else died in here, somebody that smelled sort of like him. You smell it? You smell the three smells? The one smell is the smell of him. The other smell is the smell of the other one. And the third smell is the smell of death itself."

Mona stood very still, trying to catch it, but for her the fragrances must have been mingled. With a sharp, nearly exquisite pain, she thought of what Michael had described to her, the thin girl that was not a girl, not human. Emaleth. The bullet exploded in her ears. She covered them.

"What's the matter, Mona Mayfair?"

"Dear God, where did it happen?" Mona asked, still holding tight to her ears and squinching her eyes shut, and then opening them only to look at Mary Jane, standing against the lamp, a shadowy figure, her eyes big and brilliantly blue.

Mary Jane looked around, mostly with her eyes, though she did turn her head a little, and then she began to walk along the bed. Her head looked very round and small beneath her soft, flattened hair. She moved to the far side of the bed, and stopped. Her voice was very deep when she spoke.

"Right here. Somebody died right here. Somebody who smelled like him, but wasn't him."

There was a scream in Mona's ears, so loud, so violent it was ten times as terrible as the imagined gunshot. She clutched her belly. Stop it, Morrigan, stop it. I promise you ...

"Goodness, Mona, you going to be sick?"

"No, absolutely not!" Mona shuddered all over. She began to hum a little song, not even asking herself what it was, just something pretty, something perhaps that she made up.

She turned and looked at the heap of irresistible boxes.

"It's on the boxes, too," said Mona. "You smell it real strong here? From him. You know, I have never gotten another single member of this family to admit that they could smell that smell."

"Well, it's just all over the place," said Mary Jane. She stood at Mona's side, annoyingly taller, and with more pointed breasts. "It's more all over these boxes, too, you're right. But look, all these boxes are taped up."

"Yes, and marked in neat black felt-tip pen, by Ryan, and this one, conveniently enough, says, 'Writings, Anonymous.' " She gave a soft laugh, nothing as giddy as before. "Poor Ryan. 'Writings, Anonymous.' Sounds like a psychology support group for books who don't know their authors."

Mary Jane laughed.

Mona was delighted, and broke into giggles. She went round the boxes, and eased down on her kn

ees, careful not to shake the baby. The baby was still crying. The baby was flip-flopping like crazy. It was the smell, wasn't it? As much as all the foolish talk and imagining and picturing. She hummed to the baby ... then sang softly:

" 'Bring flowers of the fairest, bring flowers of the rarest, from garden and woodland and hillside and dale!' " It was the gayest, sweetest hymn she knew, one that Gifford had taught her to sing, the hymn from the Maytime. " 'Our full hearts are swelling, our glad voices telling the tale of the loveliest rose of the dale!' "