“I know,” she said now, looking up at him, smiling sweetly and brightly, with a round and radiant face. “Stuart’s died now, and gone, perhaps to heaven.”
“She told you?”
“Yes, she did.”
Yuri looked out the window. He did not know what he actually saw in the darkness. Was it the gleaming water of the lake? He couldn’t tell.
But then, without mistake, he saw the headlights of a car moving away. Through the dark pockets of forest, the lights flashed and then the car disappeared.
For a moment he felt deserted, and horribly exposed. But they would make the call for him, of course they would. They were probably making the call right now. Then there would be no record on the phone here, connecting those who were to come, and those with whom he and the woman would go.
Suddenly he was so tired. Where was the bed in this place? He wanted to ask, but he didn’t. He stood merely watching her at her sewing, listening to her humming, and when finally she looked up, she smiled again.
“Oh, I knew it was coming,” she said. “I knew it every time I looked at him. I’ve never known it to fail with your kind. Sooner or later, you all grow weak and small and you die. It took me years to realize it, to realize that no one escaped it. And Stuart, poor dear, he was so very weak, I knew the death would come for him at any time.”
Yuri said nothing. He felt a powerful aversion to her, so powerful that he struggled with all his being to disguise it, lest she feel some chill, lest she be hurt. Dimly he thought of his Mona; he saw her aflame with human life, fragrant and warm and continuously surprising. He wondered, did the Taltos see humans that way? Rougher? Wilder? Were we coarse animals to them, animals perhaps of volatile and dangerous charm? Rather like lions and tigers are to us?
Mona. In his mind, he caught a handful of Mona’s hair. He saw her turn to look at him, green eyes, lips smiling, words coming rapidly with a lovely American vulgarity and charm.
He felt more certain than ever that he would never see Mona again.
He knew that that was what was meant for her, that her family enfold her, that someone of her own mettle, within her own clan, should be her inevitable love.
“Let’s not go upstairs,” Tessa said now in a confidential whisper. “Let’s let Stuart be dead by himself. It’s all right, don’t you think? After they’re dead, I don’t think they mind what you do.”
Slowly Yuri nodded, and looked back out into the secretive night beyond the glass.
Twenty
SHE STOOD IN the dark kitchen, deliciously full. All the milk was gone, every single drop of it, and the cream cheese, and the cottage cheese, and butter too. That’s what you call a clean sweep. Oops, forgot something, thin slices of yellow processed cheese, gag me with a spoon, full of chemicals and dye. Ugh, yuk. She chewed them up, gone, thank you.
“You know, darling, if you had turned out to be an idiot …” she said.
That was never a possibility, Mother, I am you and I am Michael. And in a very real way, I am everyone who has been speaking to you from the beginning, and I am Mary Jane.
She burst into laughter, all alone, in the dark kitchen, leaning against the refrigerator. What about ice cream! Shit, she almost forgot!
“Well, honey, you drew a good hand,” she said. “You couldn’t have drawn better. And am I to presume you did not miss a single syllable….”
Häagen-Dazs vanilla! Pints! Pints!
“Mona Mayfair!”
Who was that calling? Eugenia? Don’t want to talk to her. Don’t want her to disturb me or Mary Jane.
Mary Jane was still in the library, with the papers she’d sneaked out of Michael’s desk, or was it Rowan’s, now that Rowan was back in circulation? Never mind, it was all kinds of medical stuff and lawyer business, and papers relating to things that had happened only three weeks ago. Mary Jane, once introduced to the various files and histories, had proved insatiable. The history of the family was now her ice cream, so to speak.
“Now, the question is, do we share this ice cream with Mary Jane, in cousinly fashion, or do we gobble it?”
Gobble it.
It was time to tell Mary Jane! The time had come. When she’d