as if she would faint, and let herself fall to the ground. Michael collected her and held her and she sank, crying, against his chest. Her hair fell in her eyes, and her hands were still reaching, trembling, like birds that couldn’t light.
The man in the ominous clothes was a policeman—Mona saw the gun and the shoulder holster—a Chinese American, with a tender and emotional face.
“I’m so sorry,” he said with a distinct New Orleans accent. Mona had never heard such an accent from such a Chinese face.
“They killed him?” Mona asked in a whisper, looking from the policeman to Michael, who was slowly soothing Bea with kisses and a gentle hand that straightened her hair. In all her life Mona had never seen Bea cry like this, and for one moment two thoughts collided in her: Yuri must be dead already; and Aaron had been murdered, and this meant perhaps that they were all in danger. And this was terrible, unspeakably terrible above all for Bea.
Rowan spoke calmly to the policeman, though her voice was hoarse and small in the confusion, in the clattering of emotion.
“I want to see the body,” said Rowan. “Can you take me to it? I’m a doctor. I have to see it. It will take me only a moment to dress.”
Was there time for Michael to be amazed, for Mona to be flabbergasted? Oh, but it made sense, didn’t it? Horrible Mary Jane had said, “She’s listening. She’ll talk when she’s ready.”
And thank God she had not sat still and silent through this moment! Thank God that she couldn’t or didn’t have to, and was with them now.
Never mind how fragile she looked, and how hoarse and unnatural her voice sounded. Her eyes were clear as she looked at Mona, ignoring the policeman’s solicitous answer that perhaps it was better she did not see the body, the accident having been what it was.
“Bea needs Michael,” said Rowan. She reached out and clasped Mona’s wrist. Her hand was cool and firm. “I need you now. Will you go with me?”
“Yes,” said Mona. “Oh yes.”
Three
HE HAD PROMISED the little man he would enter the hotel moments after. “You come with me,” Samuel had said, “and everyone will see you. Now keep the sunglasses on your face.”
Yuri had nodded. He didn’t mind sitting in the car for the moment, watching people walk past the elegant front doors of Claridge’s. Nothing had comforted him so much since he’d left the glen of Donnelaith as the city of London.
Even the long drive south with Samuel, tunneling through the night on freeways that might have been anywhere in the world, had unnerved him.
As for the glen, it was vivid in his memory and thoroughly gruesome. What had made him think it was wise to go there alone—to seek at the very roots for some knowledge of the Little People and the Taltos? Of course he had found exactly what he wanted. And been shot in the shoulder by a .38-caliber bullet in the process.
The bullet had been an appalling shock. He’d never been wounded before in such a fashion. But the truly unnerving revelation had been the Little People.
Slumped in the back of the Rolls, he suffered again a vivid memory of that sight—the night with its heavy rolling clouds and haunting moon, the mountain path wildly overgrown, and the eerie sound of the drums and the horns rising against the cliffs.
Only when he had seen the little men in their circle had he realized they were singing. Only then had he heard their baritone chants, their words thoroughly unrecognizable to him.
He wasn’t sure he had believed in them until then—
Round in the circle they went, stunted, humpbacked, lifting their short knees, rocking back and forth, giving forth rhythmic bursts in the chants, some drinking from mugs, others from bottles. They wore their gunbelts over their shoulders. They fired their pistols into the great windy night with the riotous hilarity of savages. The guns did not roar. Rather they went off in tight bursts, like firecrackers. Worse, by far, were the drums, the awful pounding drums, and the few pipes whining and struggling with their gloomy melody.
When the bullet struck him, he thought it had come from one of them—a sentry perhaps. He had been wrong.
Three weeks had passed before he’d left the glen.
Now Claridge’s. Now the chance to call New Orleans, to speak to Aaron, to speak with Mona, to explain why for so long he’d been silent.