right number of ‘greats.’ What else do all those papers say?”
“Well, sugar plum, to tell you the truth, I couldn’t have made this out if somebody hadn’t marked it. There’s just all kinds of things here. You know what this is like? It’s like the writing that people do when they’re high on drugs and they think they’re being brilliant and the next day, lo and behold, they look at the tablets and see they’ve written little bitty jagged lines, like the lines, you know??? That make up an electrocardiogram?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve been a nurse?”
“Yeah, for a while, but that was at this crazy commune where they made us all take an enema every day to get rid of the impurities in our system.”
Mona started to laugh again, a lovely sleepy laugh. “I don’t think a commune of the Twelve Apostles could have made me do that,” she said.
This chandelier was damned near spectacular. That she had lived this long without lying on the floor and looking up at one of these things was just inexcusable. The hymn was still going, only this time, miracle of miracles, it was being played on some instrument, like a harp perhaps, and each note merged with the next note. She could almost not feel the floor under her, when she concentrated on the music and on the lights above.
“You didn’t stay in that commune, did you?” she asked drowsily. “That sounds horrible.”
“Sure didn’t. I made my mother leave. I said, lookie, you leave with me or I cut out of here on my own. And as I was about twelve years old at the time, she wasn’t about to let that happen. Lookie, here’s Michael Curry’s name again. He drew a circle around it.”
“Lasher did? Or Ryan?”
“You got me. This is the Xerox, I can’t tell. No, I see, the circle’s drawn on the Xerox. Must have been Ryan, and this says something about ‘waerloga.’ Well, you know??? That probably means ‘warlock.’ ”
“Right you are,” said Mona. “That’s Old English. I have at one time or another looked up the derivation of every single word that pertains to witches and witchcraft.”
“Yeah, so have I. Warlock, right you are. Or it means, don’t tell me, it means somebody who knows the truth all the time, right?”
“And to think it was Oncle Julien who wanted me to do this, that’s the puzzle, but then a ghost knows his own business and Oncle Julien maybe didn’t know. The dead don’t know everything. The evil people do, whether they’re dead or alive, or at least they know enough to tangle us up in such a web we can never escape. But Julien didn’t know that Michael was his descendant. I know he didn’t. He wouldn’t have told me to come.”
“To come where, Mona?”
“To this house on Mardi Gras night, to sleep with Michael, to make this baby that only Michael and I could have made, or maybe you too could have made it with Michael, perhaps, because you can smell that smell coming up out of these boxes, that smell of him?”
“Yeah, maybe I could, Mona. You never know.”
“Right, sweets, you never know. But I got him first. I got Michael while the door was open before Rowan came home. Just slipped through the cracks, and wham! This baby, this marvelous little baby.”
Mona turned over and lifted her head, resting her chin on her hands, elbows on the carpet.
“Mary Jane, you have to know everything.”
“Yeah, I do,” said Mary Jane. “I want to. I’m kind of worried about you.”
“Me? Don’t worry. I couldn’t be better. I’m thirsty for some more milk, but otherwise, I’m fine. Look, I can still lie on my belly, well, actually no.” She sat up. “That wasn’t so comfortable, guess I have to kiss that goodbye for a while, you know, sleeping on your stomach?”
Mary Jane’s brows had gone together in a very serious expression. She looked so cute! No wonder men were so damned patronizing to women. Did Mona look cute this way?
“Little witches!” said Mona in a hissing whisper, and she made her fingers flutter beside her hair.
Mary Jane laughed. “Yeah, little witches,” she said. “So it was the ghost of Oncle Julien told you to come up here and sleep with Michael, and Rowan was nowhere around.”
“Exactly, nowhere around. And Oncle Julien had more than a heavy hand in it, I tell you. The thing is, I fear he has gone to heaven and left us to our own