Blood Canticle Page 0,37

on the Mayfairs, no. No probing for secrets, no. No searching for a lost daughter yet, no. No going home to Blackwood Manor, no. I told them I would meet them tomorrow at dusk.

Now I had to leave, had to.

Had to get out of here. Had to get out of there. Had to get out of everywhere.

The open country.

Near the Talamasca Retreat House.

Distant rumble of trucks on the River Road. Smell of the River. Smell of the Grass. Walking. Grass wet.

Field of scattered oaks. White clapboard house tumbling to ruin, the way they do in Louisiana, swaying walls and caving roof embraced and held suspended by the vines.

Walking.

I spun around.

He was there. Technicolor ghost, black tailcoat, walking as I had been, through the grass, tossing aside the champagne glass, coming on. Stopped. I lunged at him, grabbed him before he could vanish, had him by the throat, fingers dug into what sought to be invisible, holding him, hurting what would be immaterial. Yeah, got you! You impudent phantom, look at me!

"You think you can haunt me!" I growled. "You think you can do that to me!"

"I know I can!" he said in caustic English. "You took her, my child, my Mona!" He struggled to dissolve. "You knew I was waiting for her. You could have let her come to me."

"And just what crazy half-illuminated Afterlife are you from!" I demanded. "What are your half-baked mystical promises! Yeah, come on, what Other Side are you hawking, yeah, spill it, let's hear about Julien's Summerland, yeah, testify, how many ectoplasmic angels are on your side, give me the splendiferous images of your famous fabulous friggin' self-created self-sustained astral plane! Where the Hell were you going to take her! You're going to tell me some Lord of the Universe sends spooks like you to take little girls to Heaven!"

I was clutching nothing.

I was all alone.

It was sweetly warm and there was a numbing quiet in the vibration of the distant trucks, a winking beauty in the passing headlights.

Who missed the deep silence of so many past centuries? Who missed the deep darkness of the long ago pre-electric nights? Not me.

When I reached the Talamasca Retreat House, Stirling was standing on the terrace. Loose gray hair

mussed, cotton pajamas, sashed robe, bare feet. A mortal couldn't have discovered him, standing in the shadows, waiting. An empathetic face, patient celibate alertness.

"I brought her over," I said.

"I know," he answered.

"I kissed Rowan Mayfair."

"You did what?" he answered.

"They're after me, the Mayfair ghosts."

He didn't respond, except for a small scowl and an undisguised look of wonder.

I scanned the Retreat House. Empty. Maid out in the back cottages. One postulant out there writing in a notebook by a gooseneck lamp. Saw her in her self-conception. Hungered for her. Had no intention of feeding on her. Ridiculous idea. Absolutely verboten.

"Give me a bedroom, please," I asked. "Just a room in which heavy draperies can be drawn."

"Of course," he said.

"Ah, the Talamasca, ready again to count upon my honor."

"I can depend upon it, can I not?"

I followed him into the front hallway and then up the broad staircase. How curious it was, to be his guest, to be walking on this wool carpet as if I were a mortal. Sleeping under the roof that wasn't mine. Next I'd be doing it at Blackwood Farm. This could get out of hand. Please let it get out of hand.

And here the fragrant and cozy bedroom with all its inevitable details. Pineapples carved into the four posts of the bed, canopy of hand-worked lace through which you could peer at the faint water stains on the ceiling, loving, caring, patchwork quilt of loops and circles and careening colors, parchment lamp shades, dark clots breaking through the old mirrors, needlepoint tiptoe chairs.

"What Mayfair ghosts are after you?" he asked softly. It was respectful, his manner. "What have you seen?" And when I didn't answer, "What have they done?"

"Mona gave birth long ago to a daughter," I whispered. Yes, he knew all about it, didn't he? "But you can't tell me, can you, what you know?"

"No, I can't," he replied.

"She wants to find that child," I said.

"Does she," he said politely. He was afraid.

"Sleep well," I said and turned to the bed.

He left me. But he knew the child's name. That much I'd filched from him. He knew its name and its nature but he couldn't tell.

Chapter 10

10

I KNEW that Rowan Mayfair was in the Retreat House when I opened my eyes. Heavy. Somebody who