from New Orleans. “Like what moral technicality?” asked Mary Jane. “This is a question of safety, you know, and what do you mean, ‘take over’?”
“Well, I’m talking about something inevitable,” said Morrigan, “but let me break it to you in stages.” Mona laughed.
“Ah, you see, Mother is smart enough to know, of course, to see the future as a witch might, I suppose, but you, Mary Jane, persist in being a cross between a disapproving aunt and the devil’s advocate.”
“You sure you know the meaning of all those words?”
“My dear, I have imbibed the entire contents of two dictionaries. I know all the words my mother knew before I was born, and a great many my father knew. How else would I know what a socket wrench is, and why the trunk of this car contains an entire set of them?
“Now back to the crisis of the moment: Where do we go, which house? And all of that nonsense?”
Immediately she answered her own questions.
“Well, my thinking is that whose house we go to is not all that fired important. Amelia Street would be a bad idea, simply because it is loaded with other people, as you have thrice described, and though it may be Mother’s house in a sense, it truly belongs to Ancient Evelyn. Fontevrault is too far away. We are not going back, I don’t care what happens! An apartment is a hideout which I cannot, in my anticipatory anxiety, abide! I will not choose some small impersonal lodgings obtained under false pretenses. I cannot live in boxes. First Street does belong to Michael and Rowan, that’s true, but Michael is my father! What we need is at First Street. I need Mona’s computer, her records, the papers Lasher scribbled out, any notes my father has made in his copy of his famous Talamasca file, everything which is presently in that house, and to which Mona has acknowledged access. Well, not Lasher’s scribblings, but again, that is a technicality. I claim the rights of breed to take those notes. And I do not have a single scruple about reading Michael’s diary if I do find it. Now don’t start screaming, both of you!”
“Well, just slow down for one thing!” shouted Mary Jane. “And I get a creepy feeling in my bones from the way you say those words, ‘take over.’ ”
“And let’s think this out a little further,” said Mona.
“You have reminded each other enough in my presence that the name of the game is survival,” Morrigan replied. “I need this knowledge—diaries, files, records—for survival. And First Street is empty now, we know that, and we can make our preparations in peace for Michael and Rowan’s homecoming. So I will make the decision here and now that that is where we go, at least until Michael and Rowan have returned and we have apprised them of the situation. If my father then wishes to banish me from the house, we seek an appropriate dwelling, or put into operation Mother’s plan to obtain funds for the complete restoration of Fontevrault. Now, do you have all this in your memories?”
“There are guns in that house,” said Mary Jane, “she has told you that. Guns upstairs, downstairs. These people are going to be scared of you. This is their house. They’re going to start screaming! Don’t you understand? They think that Taltos are evil beings, evil! Trying to take over the world!”
“I am a Mayfair!” declared Morrigan. “I am the daughter of my father and my mother. And the hell with guns. They are not going to aim a gun at me. That’s perfectly absurd, and you are forgetting that they are not expecting me to be there at all, and will be utterly unprepared when you search them for guns, as if they would be carrying guns at all, and furthermore you will be there, both of you, to protect me, and speak for me, and to issue dire warnings that they are not to harm me, and please remember for more than five consecutive minutes at a stretch that I have a tongue in my mouth with which to protect myself, that nothing in this situation is analogous to any that existed before, and that it is best to settle in there, where I can examine everything I should examine, including this famous Victrola, and the backyard—there you go, stop screaming, both of you!”
“Just don’t dig up the bodies!” Mona cried.
“Right, leave those bodies under the tree!” declared Mary