important things….”
She broke off.
There had been a whisper near her! It was like somebody right next to her. She looked around and then rose and walked across the room, looking back at it to make certain of what she already knew. There had been no one there, no wispy spooks, no shadows even. Her fluorescent desk lamp had taken care of that.
Guards outside on Chestnut? Maybe. But how could she hear them whispering through eighteen inches of solid brick?
Minutes ticked past.
Was she afraid to move? This is crazy, Mona Mayfair. Who do you think it is? Gifford, or your own mother? Oncle Julien come again? Doesn’t he deserve a rest now? Maybe this goddamned house was just plain haunted, and always had been, by all kinds of spirits, like the ghost of the upstairs maid from 1859 or that of a coachman who fell to his death tragically from the roof in 1872. Could be. The family didn’t write down everything that happened. She started to laugh.
Proletarian ghosts in the Mayfair house on First Street? Ghosts who weren’t blood kin? Boy, what a scandal! Nah, there weren’t any ghosts here at all.
She looked at the gilt frame of the mirror, the dark brown marble mantel, the shelves of old decaying books. A calm descended on her, kind of comfortable and nice. She loved this place best of all, she thought, and there wasn’t any spirit gramophone playing, and no faces in the mirror. You belong here. You’re safe. You’re home.
“Yes, you and me, kid,” she said, talking to the baby again. “This is our house now, with Michael and with Rowan. And I promise you, I will come up with an interesting name.”
She sat down again, and began to type as fast as before: “Nerves on edge. Imagining things. Eat protein, vitamin C for nerves and for general overall condition. Hearing voices whispering in my ear, sounds like … sounds like, unsure, but think it sounds like someone singing or even humming! Kind of maddening. Could be a ghost or a deficiency in vitamin B.
“Aaron’s funeral is presently under way. This no doubt contributes to overall jumpiness.”
Eleven
“YOU’RE CERTAIN THIS was a Taltos?” Rowan asked.
She had put away the bandages and the antiseptic, and washed her hands. She stood in the bathroom door of the suite, watching Yuri as he walked back and forth, a dark, gangly, and unpredictable figure against the carefully fringed silks and abundant ormolu of the room.
“Oh God, you don’t believe me. It was a Taltos.”
“This could have been a human who had a reason for deceiving you,” she said. “The height alone does not necessarily mean—”
“No, no, no,” Yuri said, in the same crazed and manic tone in which he’d been talking since he’d found them at the airport. “It wasn’t human. It was … it was beautiful and hideous. Its knuckles were enormous, and its fingers, they were so long. The face could have been human, certainly. Very, very handsome man, yes. But this was Ashlar, Rowan, the very one. Michael, tell her the story. St. Ashlar, from the oldest church in Donnelaith. Tell her. Oh, if only I had Aaron’s notes. I know he made them. He wrote down the story. Even though we were excommunicated by the Order, he wouldn’t have failed to write everything down.”
“He did make notes, son, and we have them,” said Michael. “And I’ve told her everything I know as well.”
Michael had already explained this twice, if Rowan wasn’t mistaken. The endless repetition and circumlocutions of the day had worn on her. She was badly jet-lagged. Her entire constitution had been aged and weakened, she knew that now, if there had ever been any real hope to the contrary. Thank God she had slept on the plane.
Michael sat against the arm of the fancy French couch, with his socked feet crossed on the gold pillows. He had taken off his jacket, and his chest, in the turtleneck sweater, looked massive, as though it housed a heart that would beat triumphantly for another fifty years. He shot a secretive, commiserating glance at Rowan.
Thank God you are here, she thought. Thank God. Michael’s calm voice and manner were beyond reassuring. She could not imagine herself here without him.
Another Taltos. Another one of them! God, what secrets does this world harbor, what monsters are camouflaged amid its forests, its big cities, its wilderness, its seas? Her mind played tricks on her. She could not clearly picture Lasher. The figure was all out