Blood Canticle Page 0,48

to her. I should care? I don't need to live with them the way Quinn lives with his family. I realize that now. It's impossible. I can't do what Quinn did. I need a legal name. I need some money. . . ."

"Think about it a little longer," I said. "There's no need to make such a decision right now. I got clear of Rowan and Michael tonight rather than disturb them, rather than create doubts that could harm them. It was hard. I wanted to ask them questions. But I had to give it up."

"Why do you care so much?" she asked.

"Because I care about you and Quinn," I said. "You offend me. Don't you know that I love you? I wouldn't have made you if I couldn't love you. Quinn told me so much about you before I ever saw you and then I fell in love with you, of course."

"I have to know things from them," she said. "Things they're holding back, and then I have to findmy daughter on my own. But I can't talk about it just yet."

"Your daughter?" Quinn asked.

"You mean the Woman Child, it's living-"

"Stop! Not now," said Mona. "Leave me to my philosophy, both of you!"

Huge shift of gears. Her eyes shot to the computer.

She went back to banging on the keys. "What's a better word than 'bequeathed'?"

"Bestowed," I responded.

Quinn came up behind her and fastened a cameo at her neck without interfering with her ferocious writing.

"You're not trying to make her into Aunt Queen, are you?" I asked. She went on hammering.

"She's Ophelia Immortal," he said. He didn't take offense.

We left her. We went down the passage and out onto the rear balcony and down into the courtyard and found a couple of iron chairs. I realized I'd never used these chairs.

They were pretty after a fashion, Victorian, ornate. I didn't own anything that wasn't pretty after a fashion, or downright beautiful, if I could help it.

The garden enclosed us with its high banana trees and its night-blooming flowers. The music of the water in the fountain mingled with the distant sound of Mona writing, and Mona whispering as she wrote. I could hear the whine of the nightclub bands on the Rue Bourbon. I could hear the whole damned city if I tried. The sky was a faint lilac color now, overcast and reflecting the city glow.

"Don't think that," said Quinn.

"What, Little Brother?" I woke from listening to distant sounds.

"I see her as Aunt Queen's heiress," he said, "don't you see? Everything that Aunt Queen wanted to give of her clothes, her jewelry, all those things, whatever she wanted to give to Jasmine she'd already given, and there's plenty enough in bank boxes for Tommy's wife of the future or whoever little Jerome marries (Jerome was Quinn's son by Jasmine, let me remind you). And so I make Mona an heiress to maybe a tenth of the most extreme silk dresses. Jasmine never wore the extreme silk dresses anyway. And the glitter shoes which nobody really wants. And the shell cameos, which are common.

"If Aunt Queen somehow knew what had really happened to me, what I'd become, as we always say so delicately; if she knew that Mona was with me, finally, that Heaven and Earth had been moved, and Mona was with me, she'd want me to give those things to Mona. She'd be pleased that Mona was tripping around in those shoes."

I listened to all this and I understood it. I should have understood it before. But Mona's daughter, who and what was Mona's daughter?

"The clothes and shoes make her very happy," I said. "Most likely she's been sick so long that all her own clothes are gone. Who knows?"

"What did you see in the Blood when you made her? What was this Woman Child?"

"That's what I saw," I responded. "A daughter of hers who was a full-grown woman, a monster in her own eyes. It had come from her. And it was torn from her. She loved it. She nursed it. I saw that. And then she lost it, just like she told you. It went away."

He was aghast. He'd caught nothing like this from her thoughts.

But in the Blood you go where nobody wants to go. That's the horror of it. That's the beauty of it.

"Could it really have been so freakish, so abnormal?" he asked. His eyes veered away. "You know, years ago, I told you . . . I went to dinner at