Blood Canticle Page 0,43

I said. I stammered.

"Let me see you out," said Stirling. I felt his hand on my arm.

"You tell Mona we love her," said Michael.

"Is Mona afraid of us?" Rowan whispered. The anguish inside her defeated her anger. She drew close to me. "She's afraid of us now, isn't she?" She and Mona, a shared history of horrors. Yes, an unbreakable link. Child. Woman Child. Morrigan. No admissions and explanations. Just an image. The same image I'd seen in the Blood. Woman Child. "I demand that you tell me! Is she afraid!"

"No," I said. I reached forward right through the aura of palpable power that surrounded her. I put my hands on her arms. Vague binding shock. To Hell with Michael. But Michael didn't stop me. "Not anymore," I said, peering into Rowan's eyes. "Mona's not afraid of anything. Oh, if only I could give you some peace of mind. I wish I could. Please, please wait for her to call you, and don't think about her anymore."

I felt her strength recede, and her eyes misted. A great glowing fire was quelled, and I had done it, and an ever present grief enfolded it. A protective surge rose in me and the wild fantasies reigned again inside of me as if no one else was present.

I let her go.

I turned and I left the company.

Behind me the ghost whispered contemptuously, "You're not a gentleman, you never were!"

I muttered all the obscenities I knew in French and English in a tight whisper.

I walked a little too fast for Stirling. But we came together at the front doors of the house.

Rush of sweet warm air. The night was purring and grinding with the tree frogs and the cicadas. I defy a ghost to distract me from this! The sky was rosey and it would be all night. I closed my eyes and let the warm air hold me close and lovingly and totally.

The warm air didn't care whether or not I was a gentleman, which I was not.

"What are you doing with Rowan?" Stirling demanded.

"What are you, her older brother?" I shot back.

We walked across the paved porch and onto the drive. Fragrance of grass. Roar of the River Road traffic as sweet as the roar of water.

"Perhaps I am her brother," he said shortly, "but I mean it. What are you doing?"

"Good God, man," I replied. "Night before last you told Quinn that Mona was dying. What was your motive? Weren't you tempting him to go to her? He didn't, as it turned out, but you were tempting him, goading him to use his power, to bring her over. Don't deny it. You provoked him. You with all your records. Your volumes. Your studies. Quinn had fed on you, almost taken you. I saved your life, man. You who knew. And now you question me for a little word game with a mortal who detests me?"

"All right," he said, "so in the back of my mind I abhorred the fact that Mona was dying, that Mona was desperate, and that Mona was so young, and I believed in sinister fairy tales and magic blood! But that woman is not dying. She is the magnate of her family. And she knows something's profoundly wrong with you. And you're playing with her."

"Not so! Leave me alone!"

"I will not. You can't entice her-."

"I'm not enticing her!"

"Did you see Stella?" he asked. "Is that who's haunting you?"

"Don't go back to a civil tone with me," I scolded. "Yes, I saw Stella. Did you think that was all part of a game? I saw her in the little sailor dress and she jumped into my lap. They were in my town house in the Rue Royale, both of them, Julien and Stella, with a whole crowd of people. Julien was out there in your fine little conservatory, taunting me. But in my flat last night, they said threatening things to me. Threatening things! Oh, I don't know why I'm telling you."

"Yes, you do," he answered.

"I've got to get back to the intrepid wanderers," I said. I took a deep breath.

"Threatening things?" he asked. "What threatening things did they say to you?"

"Oh, God in Heaven!" I said. "If only I were Juan Diego."

"Who is Juan Diego?" he asked.

"Maybe nobody," I said sadly. "But then again, maybe somebody, maybe somebody very very

important!" and I went away.

Chapter 11

11

I WENT UP HIGH in the air. I traveled fast-faster than a ghost, or so I figured. I drifted above the city