companions, and then Quinn had come into my life, with a letter in his pocket, needing my help, and Stirling had tiptoed into my flat, daring me to discover him, and soon all of Blackwood Manor had materialized around me, Stirling became a player in my life, Aunt Queen had been cruelly lost on the very night I'd made her acquaintance, and then our beloved Merrick, gone from us, and now I was being drawn into the knowledge of the Mayfairs, and I was what? Scared?
Come on, Lestat. You can tell me the truth. I'm your own self, remember? I was darkly and passionately thrilled by all this, and I felt those chills again, merely thinking of Rowan berating me with all that heat only an hour ago.
And then there was Julien, who just wasn't going to appear right now and run the risk of Quinn seeing him too. I searched the early evening crowds. Where are you, you wretched coward, cheap second-rate phantom, accused blunderer?
Quinn turned his head just a little, never breaking his stride. "What was that? You were thinking about Julien."
"I'll tell you all of it later," I said, and I meant it. "But let me ask you, you know, about the time you saw the ghost of Oncle Julien?"
"Yeah?"
"What vibe did you get in your secret soul? Good ghost? Bad ghost?"
"Hmmm, well, good, obviously. Trying to tell me I had Mayfair genes. Trying to save Mona from me, trying to keep us from breeding some awful mutation, which occurs now and then in the Mayfair family. A benign ghost. I've told you the whole story."
"Yes, of course," I replied. "A benign ghost and an awful mutation. Has Mona mentioned the mutation? The lost child?"
"Beloved Boss, what's bothering you?"
"Nada," I said.
Now just wasn't the time to tell him. . . .
We reached the town house. The guards gave us a friendly nod. I gave them a generous tip. It was, for mortal men in long-sleeved shirts, quite unbearably hot.
We could hear the clacking of the computer keys as we went up the iron stairs. Then the low chatter of the printer.
Mona came charging out of the bedroom clothed in last night's white duds, page in hand.
"Listen to this," she said. " 'Though this experience is undeniably evil, in that it involves predation upon other human beings, it is without question a mystical experience.' So, what do you think?"
"That's all you've written?" I asked. "That's one paragraph. Write some more."
"Okay." She ran back into the bedroom. Clack went the keys. Quinn followed her with the luggage. He winked at me, smiling.
I went into my bedroom, which was opposite theirs, shut the door, hit the button for the overhead light, and peeled off all my clothes with a shudder of utter disgust, threw them into the bottom of the armoire, put on a brown cotton turtleneck, black pants, and a lightweight black silk and linen jacket with a highly visible weave, a pair of completely smooth black shoes which had never been worn and looked like a modern sculpture, combed my hair until there was no dust in it and then stood there, awash in a moment of total stillness.
Then I stretched out on my bed. Satin tufted tester above me. Satin counterpane below. Fairly shadowy. I turned my face into the down pillows, of which I always had a sizable heap, and with all my muscles sort of scrunched up against the modern world.
Not a masculine thing to do, not a macho posture, not a show of strength to otherworldly entities, not a take-charge attitude at all.
I was comforted by the sound of Mona's clicking away, the low note of Quinn's voice. Footsteps on the boards.
But nothing could take the edge off Rowan's angry words, those eyes like hematite, her entire frame trembling with her passion as she accused me. How could Michael Curry stay so close to that blaze and not get scorched?
Suddenly, there was an agitation in me so great that only lying alone, scrunched up on the bed, could comfort me. Sleep. Sleep, but I could not. They weren't wicked enough for me, Quinn and Mona. No one was. I wasn't wicked enough for me!
And I had to see if the ghosts would come.
A clock ticked somewhere. A clock with a painted face and curlicue hands. Not a huge clock. A clock that with its whole soul knew only how to tick and might tick for centuries, maybe had ticked for centuries, a clock to