“This is the right way,” said Gordon, in a thick voice. “Keep going until I tell you.”
The old man looked away as if he were merely checking their position, but then his forehead struck the window hard, and he began to weep.
No one spoke. Ash merely looked at his witches. Then he thought of the photograph of the red-haired one, and when he let his eyes drift to Yuri, who sat directly opposite, beside Rowan, he saw that Yuri’s eyes were closed. He had curled up against the side of the car, his head turned away from them, and he too was shedding tears, without making much of a sound.
Ash leant forward to lay a comforting hand on Yuri’s leg.
Fourteen
IT WAS ONE o’clock, perhaps, when Mona woke up in the upstairs front bedroom, her eyes turned towards the oaks outside the window. Their branches were filled with bright Resurrection ferns, once again green from the recent spring rain.
“Phone for you,” said Eugenia.
Mona almost said, God, I’m glad someone’s here. But she didn’t like admitting to anyone that she’d been spooked in the famous house earlier, and that her dreams had been deeply disturbing to her.
Eugenia looked askance at Mona’s big, billowy white cotton shirt. So what was wrong? It was loungewear, wasn’t it? In the catalogs, they called them Poets’ Shirts.
“Oughtn’t be sleepin’ in your pretty clothes!” declared Eugenia. “And look at those beautiful big sleeves all rumpled, and that lace, that delicate lace.”
If only she could say Buzz off. “Eugenia, it’s meant to be rumpled.”
There was a tall glass of milk, frosty, luscious looking, in Eugenia’s hand. And in the other, an apple on a small white plate.
“Who’s this from?” asked Mona, “the Evil Queen?”
Of course, Eugenia didn’t know what she was talking about, but it didn’t matter. Eugenia pointed to the phone again. Mona was about to pick up the phone when her mind, veering back to the dream, discovered the dream was gone. Like a veil snatched away, it left nothing but a faint memory of texture and color. And the very strange certainty that she must name her daughter Morrigan, a name she’d never heard before.
“And what if you’re a boy?” she asked.
She picked up the receiver.
It was Ryan. The funeral was over, and the Mayfair crowd was arriving at Bea’s house. Lily was going to stay there for a few days, and so would Shelby and Aunt Vivian. Cecilia was uptown, seeing to Ancient Evelyn, and was doing well.
“Could you offer some old-fashioned First Street hospitality to Mary Jane Mayfair for a while?” asked Ryan. “I can’t take her down to Fontevrault till tomorrow. And besides, I think it would be good if you got to know her. And naturally, she’s half in love with First and Chestnut and wants to ask you a thousand questions.”
“Bring her over,” said Mona. The milk tasted good! It was just about the coldest milk she’d ever tasted, which killed all the ickiness of it, which she had never much liked. “I’d welcome her company,” she went on. “This place is spooky, you are right.”
Instantly she wished she hadn’t admitted it, that she, Mona Mayfair, had been spooked in the great house.
But Ryan was off on the track of duty and organization and simply continued to explain that Granny Mayfair, down at Fontevrault, was being cared for by the little boy from Napoleonville, and that this was a good opportunity to persuade Mary Jane to get out of that ruin, and to move to town.
“This girl needs the family. But she doesn’t need any more of this grief and misery just now. Her first real visit has for obvious reasons been a disaster. She’s in shell shock from the accident. You know she saw the entire accident. I want to get her out of here—”
“Well, sure, but she’ll feel closer to everybody afterwards,” said Mona with a shrug. She took a big, wet, crunchy bite of the apple. God, was she hungry. “Ryan, have you ever heard of the name Morrigan?”
“I don’t think so.”
“There’s never been a Morrigan Mayfair?”
“Not that I remember. It’s an old English name, isn’t it?”
“Hmmm. Think it’s pretty?”
“But what if the baby is a boy, Mona?”
“It’s not, I know,” she said. And then caught herself. How in the world could she know? It was the dream, wasn’t it, and it also must have been wishful thinking, the desire to have a girl child and bring her up free and strong, the