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  She slumped against the iron post of the gate. Her eyes moved over the grass again and up over the thick black arms of the oak. The new leaves burst forth in brilliant mint-green clusters. The old leaves looked dusty and dark and ready perhaps to dry up and drop away. The oaks of New Orleans were never, really barren, thank heaven. But in spring they were reborn.

  She turned around and looked to her right, towards the very front of the property. Flash of a blue shirt beyond the front fence. It was more quiet than she’d ever known it to be. Possibly even Eugenia had gone to Aaron’s funeral. She hoped so.

  “No ghosts, no spirits,” she said. “No whispers from Aunt Gifford.” Did she really want there to be any? Suddenly, for the first time in her life, she wasn’t so sure. The whole prospect of ghosts and spooks confused her.

  Must be the baby, she thought, and one of those mysterious mental changes that comes over you, even this early, guiding you to a sedentary, unquestioning existence. Spirits were not the thing, now. The baby was everything. She’d read plenty on these physical and mental changes last night in her new books on pregnancy, and she had plenty more to read.

  The breeze stole through the shrubbery as it always had, grabbing loose petals and leaves and little blossoms here and there, and tumbling them across the purple flags, then dying away to nothing. A slow warmth rose from the ground.

  She turned and walked back inside, and through the empty house to the library.

  She sat down at the computer and began to write.

  “You would not be human if you did not have these doubts and suspicions. How can you not wonder whether or not the baby is all right, under these circumstances? Undoubtedly, this fear has some hormonal origin, and it is a survival mechanism. But you are not a mindless incubator. Your brain, though flooded with new chemicals and combinations of chemicals, is still your brain. Look at the facts.

  “Lasher guided the earlier disaster from the beginning. Without the intervention of Lasher, Rowan might have had a completely healthy and beautiful …”

  She stopped. But what did that mean, Lasher’s intervention?

  The phone rang, startling her, even hurting her a little. She reached for it hastily, not wanting it to ring again.

  “Mona here, start talking,” she said.

  There was a laugh on the other end. “That’s a hell of a way to answer, kid.”

  “Michael! Thank God. I am pregnant, Dr. Salter says there is absolutely no doubt.”

  She heard him sigh. “We love you, sweetheart,” he said.

  “Where are you?”

  “We’re in some frightfully expensive hotel in a French-style suite full of fruitwood chairs standing on tiptoe. Yuri is well, and Rowan is examining this gunshot wound of his. It’s become infected. I want you to wait on talking to Yuri. He’s overexcited, and talking out of his head a little, but otherwise OK.”

  “Yeah, sure. I don’t want to tell him now about this baby.”

  “No, that wouldn’t be good at all.”

  “Give me your number.”

  He gave her the number.

  “Honey, are you okay?”

  Here we go again, even he can tell that you’re worried about it. And he knows why you might be worried. But don’t say anything! No, not one word. Something inside her closed up, fearful suddenly of Michael, the very person she’d wanted so to talk to, the very person, along with Rowan, whom she’d felt she could trust.

  Play this carefully.

  “Yeah, I’m fine, Michael. Ryan’s office has your number?”

  “We’re not going to disappear, honey.”

  She realized she was staring at the screen, at the questions she had so intelligently and logically listed:

  How fast did Rowan’s pregnancy progress? Were there signs of accelerated development?

  Michael would know these answers. No, don’t let on.

  “I’m going to go, honey. I’ll call you later. We all love you.”

  “ ’Bye, Michael.”

  She hung up the phone.

  She sat quiet for a long time, then began to type rapidly: “It is too early to ask them stupid questions about this baby, too early to have fears which may affect your health and your peace of mind, too early to worry Rowan and Michael, who have on their minds much more 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 tak
en 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 of proportion. His strength seemed supernatural. That was not accurate. These creatures were not all-powerful. She tried to banish these jarring memories, of Lasher’s fingers bruising her arms, and the back of his hand striking her so hard that she lost consciousness. She could feel that moment of disconnection, and the moment of awakening, when, stunned, she’d found herself trying to crawl, for safety, under the bed. But she had to snap out of this, had to concentrate and make Yuri concentrate.

  “Yuri,” she said in her most quiet and unobtrusive authoritarian manner, “describe the Little People again. Are you certain-”

  “The Little People are a wild race,” said Yuri, words coming in a rush as he pivoted, hands out, as if to hold a magic glass in which he saw the images of all that he described. “They’re doomed, said Samuel. They have no women anymore. They have no future. They will die out, unless a female Taltos comes among them, unless some female of their kind is found in some other remote part of Europe or the British Isles. And this happens. Mark my words, it happens. Samuel told me. Or a witch, don’t you see? A witch? The wise women in those parts never go near the glen. The tourists and the archaeologists go and come in groups and by day.”

  They had been over this, but Rowan had begun to realize that each time he told it, he added something, threw in some new and possibly important detail.

  “Of course, Samuel told me all this when he thought I was going to die in that cave. When the fever broke, he was as surprised as I was. And then Ash. Ash has no duplicity in him whatsoever. You cannot imagine the candor or simplicity of this being. Man, I want to say man. Why not man, as long as you remember that he is a Taltos? No human could be so direct, unless he was an idiot. And Ash is not an idiot.”

  “Then he wasn’t lying when he told you he wanted to help you,” said Rowan, watching him keenly.

  “No, he wasn’t lying. And he wants to protect the Talamasca, why I can’t tell you. It all has to do with the past, and perhaps the archives, the secrets, though what is really in those archives nobody knows now. Oh, if I could only trust that the Elders were not part of it. But a witch, don’t you see, a witch of Mona’s power is simply too valuable to Ash and to Samuel. I should never, never have told them about Mona. Oh, I was a fool to tell them all about the family. But you see, this Samuel, he saved my life.”

  “But did this Taltos say he had no mate?” asked Michael. “If ‘mate’ is the proper word?”

  “That was plainly obvious. He came here because Samuel told him that a Taltos-Lasher, with you, Rowan! — had appeared at Donnelaith. Ash came immediately from someplace far off, I don’t know where. Ash is rich. He has bodyguards, attendants, he travels in a little motorcade, so Samuel tells me. Samuel talks too freely, really, for his own good.”

  “But he didn’t mention a female Taltos?”

  “No. Both of them gave me the distinct impression that they did not know of the existence of a female Taltos! Rowan, don’t you see, the Little People are dying, and the Taltos is damned near extinct. God, Ash could be the only one living, now that Lasher is gone. Imagine it! You see what Mona means to these two?”

  “All right, you want my opinion?” asked Michael. He reached for the coffeepot on the tray beside him and refilled his cup, holding it like a mug, without the saucer. “We’ve done all we can about Ashlar and Samuel.” He looked at Rowan as he spoke. “There is a one-in-ten chance, perhaps, that we can locate them at Claridge’s even-”

  “No, you must not approach them,” said Yuri. “You must not even let them know mat you are here. Especially not you.”

  “Yeah, I understand,” said Michael, nodding, “but-”

  “No, you don’t understand,” said Yuri, “or you don’t believe me. Michael, these creatures can tell a witch when they see it, male or female. They know. They do not require modern medical tests to know that you have the chromosomes which are so precious to them. They know you, by scent perhaps, and surely by sight.”

  Michael gave a little shrug, as if to say he was reserving judgment, but he wouldn’t push this now.

  “Okay, so I don’t go over there to Claridge’s right now. But it’s awfully hard not to do that, Yuri. I mean, you’re saying that Ash and Samuel are only five minutes away from this hotel.”

  “God, I hope they are gone. And I hope they are not gone to New Orleans. Why did I tell them? Why was I not more clever? Why was I so foolish in my gratitude and in my fear?”

  “Stop blaming yourself for this,” said Rowan.

  “The guards are quadrupled in New Orleans,” said Michael. His relaxed posture hadn’t changed. “Let’s just leave the subject of Ashlar and Samuel for a moment, and go back to the Talamasca. Now, we were making a list of the oldest members in London, ones who could either be trusted or must surely have smelled a rat.”

  Yuri sighed. He was very near to a small satin chair by the window, one dressed in the same high-pitched moiré as the draperies, so that it was scarcely visible at all. He flopped down on the edge of it, putting his hands over his mouth. He let out his breath again slowly. His hair was rumpled.

  “Okay,” said Yuri. “The Talamasca, my refuge, my life. Ah, the Talamasca.” He counted now upon his right fingers. “We had Milling, he’s bedridden, there’s no way to get to him. I don’t want to call him and agitate him. Then there was … there was …”

  “Joan Cross,” said Michael. He picked up the yellow pad from the coffee table. “Yeah, Joan Cross. Seventy-five years old, invalid. Wheelchair. Declined to be appointed Superior General due to crippling arthritis.”

  “Not the devil himself could subvert Joan Cross,” said Yuri, words tumbling faster than ever. “But Joan is too self-absorbed. She spends all her time in the archives. She wouldn’t notice now if the members were running around naked.”

  “Then the next one, Timothy Hollingshed,” said Michael, reading it from the pad.

  “Yes, Timothy, if only I knew him better. No, the one we should select is Stuart Gordon. Did I say Stuart Gordon? I said Stuart Gordon before, didn’t I?”

  “No, you didn’t, but it’s quite all right to say it now,” said Rowan. “Why Stuart Gordon?”

  “He’s eighty-seven and he still teaches, at least within the Order itself. Stuart Gordon’s closest friend was Aaron! Stuart Gordon may know all about the Mayfair witches. Why, he almost certainly knows! I remember him telling me once in passing, last year it was, that Aaron had been near to the family too long. I swear on my soul that nothing could corrupt Stuart Gordon. He’s the man we should take into our confidence.”

  “Or at least draw out,” said Rowan under her breath.

  “You have another name here,” said Michael. “Antoinette Campbell.”

  “She’s younger, much younger. But if Antoinette is corrupt, then so is God. But Stuart-if there is anyone on that list who may be an Elder, and we never know who they are, you see, it would be Stuart Gordon! That’s our man.”

  “We’ll save the other names. We shouldn’t contact more than one of these people at a time.”

  “So what do you lose by contacting Gordon now by telephone?” asked Michael.

  “He lets them know he’s alive,” said Rowan. “But perhaps that’s inevitable.” She was watching Yuri. How would he ever handle a key phone conversation with anyone in this state? Indeed, the sweat had broken out on him again. He was shaking. She’d gotten him clean clothes, but they were already soa
ked with sweat.

  “Yes, it’s inevitable,” said Yuri, “but if they don’t know where I am, there’s no danger. I can get more out of Stuart in five minutes than anyone else I can think of, even my old friend Baron in Amsterdam. Let me make this call.”

  “But we cannot forget,” said Rowan, “that he may be in on the conspiracy. It may be the entire Order. It may be all of the Elders.”

  “He would rather die than hurt the Talamasca. He has a pair of brilliant novices who might even help us. Tommy Monohan, he’s some sort of computer genius. He might be of great assistance in tracing down the corruption. And then there’s the other one, the blond one, the pretty one, he has a strange name, Marklin, that’s it, Marklin George. But Stuart must judge this situation.”

  “And we are not to trust Stuart until we know that we can.

  “But how will we know?” Yuri looked at Rowan.

  “There are ways to know,” she said. “You’re not going to call from here. And when you do, I want you to say certain things. You cannot open up to this man, you understand, no matter how much you trust him.”

  “Tell me what to say,” said Yuri. “But you realize Stuart may not talk to me. No one may talk to me. I am excommunicated, remember? Unless, of course, I appeal to him as Aaron’s friend. That’s the key with Stuart! He loved Aaron so much.”

  “Okay, the phone call is a crucial step,” said Michael, “we’ve got that. Now the Motherhouse, can you draw a plan of the house, or give me the info and I’ll draw the plan for your approval? What do you think?”

  “Yes, that is an excellent idea,” said Rowan. “Draw a plan. Show us the location of the archives, the vaults, the exits, everything.”

  Yuri was on his feet again, as though someone had shoved him forward. He was looking around.

  “Where is the paper? Where is the pencil?”

  Michael picked up the phone and asked for the front desk.