Blood Canticle Page 0,50

and started beating him about the head and shoulders with the pages, and kicking him with her high-heel shoes. He laughed under his breath and carelessly defended himself with one arm. "Look, it's better than crying!" he said.

"You hopeless Boy," she declared, erupting in streaks of laughter. "You hopeless, egregious Boy! You are patently unworthy of all the philosophical considerations I have positively lavished upon you! And what, I ask, have you written since your Blood Baptism, why, the very ink has dried up in the circuits of your cruel little preternatural brain."

"Wait a minute, quiet," I said. "Someone's arguing with the guards at the gate." I was on my feet.

"My God, it's Rowan," said Mona. "Damn, I should never have called her on her cell."

"Cell?" I asked. But it was very much too late.

"Caller ID," Quinn murmured as he rose and took Mona in his arms.

It was Rowan, most assuredly-breathless and frantic, and, followed by both guards, who were protesting heavily, she came racing back the carriageway and stopped dead, facing Mona across the courtyard.

Chapter 12

12

THE SHOCK OF SEEING MONA, of apprehending her in the light that fell from the upstairs windows and the inevitable light from the glowing sky, was such that Rowan was stopped as if she'd struck an invisible wall.

Michael at once caught up with her, and he too experienced a similar immense surprise.

As they stood baffled, not knowing what to make of the evidence of their senses, I told the guards to back off and leave the matter to me.

"Come on up into the flat," I said. I gestured towards the iron stairs.

It was useless to say anything at this juncture. It wasn't a vampire that they'd just seen. They knew and suspected nothing of supernatural origin here. It was Mona's spectacular "recovery" which had them in total disbelief.

It was in essence a scary moment. Because though a big frank smile of undisguised jubilance had broken out over Michael Curry's face, Rowan's scowling countenance was full of something akin to wrath. All her personal history was coiled behind that wrath, and I was fascinated by it as I'd been by all her emotions before.

Only reluctantly, and somewhat in the manner of a sleepwalker, Rowan let me take her arm. Her entire body was tense. Nevertheless, I led her to the iron steps, and then I went before her, in order to lead the whole party. And Mona gestured for Rowan to follow me, and Mona, tossing her hair back over her shoulders, looking miserable, followed her.

The back parlor was best for such gatherings, having no bookshelves and a deep velvet sofa and lots of tolerable Queen Anne chairs. Of course there was ormolu and inlaid wood everywhere, and a blazing new wallpaper of wine and beige stripes, and the garlands of flowers in the carpet seemed to be having convulsions, and the Impressionist paintings on the wall in their thick encrusted frames were like windows into a far far better, sun-filled universe, but it was a good room.

I shut off the overhead chandelier immediately and switched on two of the smaller corner lamps. It was softly dim now, but not uncomfortably so, and I directed everyone to sit down.

Michael beamed at Mona and said at once, "Darling, you look absolutely beautiful," as if he was uttering a prayer. "My lovely, lovely girl."

"Thank you, Uncle Michael, I love you," Mona answered tragically, and wiped at her eyes fiercely as though these people were somehow going to return her to her wretched mortal state.

Quinn was petrified. And his worst suspicion was rightly directed at Rowan.

She too appeared paralyzed except for her eyes, breaking away from Mona suddenly and fastening on me.

This had to be quick.

"All right, you see for yourself," I said, my eyes moving from Rowan to Michael and back again. "Mona's cured of whatever was wrong with her, and the entire wasting sickness has been reversed. She's utterly self-sufficient and whole. If you think that I am going to explain to you how this was done, or anything about it, you're wrong. You can call me Rasputin or worse names. I don't care."

Rowan's eyes quivered but her face did not change. The turbulence inside her was unreadable, indeed, unknowable, and if I caught anything definitive it was a high pitch of terror that hearkened back to things which had befallen her in the past. I couldn't fathom it, there wasn't time for such mental mining, and her confusion was putting up too much of