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  “Let’s get out of here, please,” said Rowan Mayfair.

  “Yes, all of us, come.” Ash turned and dragged Stuart, stumbling, off the sidewalk.

  As soon as the back door of the car was open, he flung the helpless Gordon into the backseat. He slipped in beside him, forcing him to the far side. Michael Curry had slipped in the front, beside the driver, and Rowan climbed in now across Ash, her skin burning him as it touched his leg, and took the jumpseat opposite, as Yuri collapsed beside her. The car lurched, then took off.

  “Where shall I take you, sir?” the driver called out. The glass panel was sliding down. Now it had vanished into the back of the front seat and Michael Curry had turned and was peering past Yuri, right into Ash’s eyes.

  These witches, their eyes, thought Ash desperately.

  “Just get out of here,” said Ash to the driver.

  Gordon reached for the door handle.

  “Lock the doors,” said Ash, but he didn’t wait for the familiar electronic click. He clamped his right hand on Gordon’s right arm.

  “Let go of me, you bastard!” declared Gordon, with low, thundering authority.

  “You want to tell me the truth now?” asked Ash. “I’m going to kill you the way I killed your henchman Marcus. What can you tell me that will prevent me from doing it?”

  “How dare you, how can you …” Stuart Gordon began again.

  “Stop lying,” said Rowan Mayfair. “You’re guilty, and you didn’t accomplish this alone. Look at me.”

  “I will not!” said Gordon. “The Mayfair witches,” he said bitterly, all but spitting out the words. “And this thing, this thing you’ve conjured from the swamps, this Lasher, is it your avenger, your Golem?”

  The man was suffering exquisitely. His face was white with shock. But he was far from defeated.

  “All right,” said Ash quietly. “I’m going to kill you, and the witches can’t stop me. Do not think that they can.”

  “No, you won’t!” said Gordon, turning so that he might face Ash as well as Rowan Mayfair, his head back against the upholstered corner of the car.

  “And why is that?” asked Ash gently.

  “Because I have the female!” whispered Gordon.

  Silence.

  Only the sounds of traffic around them as the car moved speedily and belligerently ahead.

  Ash looked at Rowan Mayfair. Then at Michael Curry, peering back at him from the front seat. And finally at Yuri, across from him, who seemed unable to think or to speak. Ash let his eyes return to Gordon.

  “I’ve always had the female,” said Gordon, in a small, heartfelt, yet sardonic voice. “I did this for Tessa. I did it to bring the male to Tessa. That was my purpose. Now let go of me, or you will never lay eyes on Tessa, any of you. Especially not you, Lasher, or Mr. Ash, whoever you may be. Whatever you call yourself! Or am I tragically mistaken, and do you have a harem of your own?”

  Ash opened his fingers, stretching them, letting them frighten Gordon, and then withdrawing them and laying his hand in his lap.

  Gordon’s eyes were red and teary. Still stiff with outrage, he pulled out a huge, rumpled handkerchief and blew his tender-looking beak of a nose.

  “No,” said Ash quietly. “I’m going to kill you now, I think.”

  “No! You’ll never see Tessa!” snapped Gordon.

  Ash leaned over him, very close to him. “Then take me to her, please, immediately, or I will strangle you now.”

  Gordon was silent, but only for a moment.

  “Tell your driver to go south,” he said. “Out of London, towards Brighton. We’re not going to Brighton, but that will do for now. It’s an hour and a half.”

  “Then we have time to talk, don’t we?” asked the witch, Rowan. Her voice was deep, almost husky. She made a dazzle in Ash’s vision, glinting slightly in the dark car. Her breasts were small but beautifully shaped beneath the black silk lapels of the deep-cut jacket. “Tell me how you could do it,” she said to Gordon. “Kill Aaron. You’re a man like Aaron, yourself.”

  “I didn’t do it,” said Gordon bitterly. “I didn’t want it done. It was a stupid, stupid, and vicious thing to do. And it happened before I could stop it. Same with Yuri and the gun. I had nothing to do with it. Yuri, in the coffee shop, when I told you I was concerned for your life, I meant it. There are some things which are simply beyond my control.”

  “I want you to tell us everything now,” said Michael Curry. He looked at Ash as he spoke. “We really can’t restrain our friend here. And we wouldn’t even if we could.”

  “I’m not telling you anything more,” said Gordon.

  “That’s foolish,” said Rowan.

  “No, it isn’t,” said Gordon. “It’s the only move I have. Tell you what I know before you reach Tessa, and when you have her, you’ll do away with me at once.”

  “I’ll probably do it anyway,” said Ash. “You are buying a few hours of life.”

  “Not so quick. There are many things I can tell you. You have no idea. You’ll need much more than a few hours.”

  Ash didn’t reply.

  Gordon’s shoulders slumped. He took a deep breath, eyeing his captors one by one again, and then returning to Ash. Ash had drawn back until he too was in the corner. He did not wish to be near this human, this feisty and vicious human whom he knew that he would eventually kill.

  He looked at his two witches. Rowan Mayfair sat with her hand on her knee, much as Ash did, and she raised her fingers now in a rolling gesture, begging him, perhaps, to be patient.

  The snap of a lighter startled Ash.

  “Mind if I smoke, Mr. Ash, in your fancy car?” asked Michael Curry from the front seat. His head was already bowed over the cigarette and the tiny flame.

  “Please, do what you wish,” said Ash with a cordial smile.

  To his amazement, Michael Curry smiled back at him.

  “There’s whiskey in this car,” said Ash. “There is ice and water. Would any of you care for a drink?”

  “Yeah,” said Michael Curry with a little sigh, exhaling the cigarette. “But in the name of virtue, I’ll wait till after six.”

  And this witch can father the Taltos, Ash thought, studying Michael Curry’s profile and his slightly crude but charmingly proportioned features. His voice had a lust in it that surely extended to many things, thought Ash. Look at the way he is watching the buildings as we pass them. He misses nothing.

  Rowan Mayfair continued to look only at Ash.

  They had just left the city proper.

  “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 way girls were almost never brought up.

  Ryan promised to be there within ten minutes.

  Mona sat against the pillows, looking out again at the Resurrection ferns and the bits and pieces of blue sky beyond. The house was silent all around her, Eugenia having disappeared. She crossed her bare legs, the shirt easily covering her knees with its thick lace hem. The sleeves were horribly rumpled, true, but so what? They were sleeves fit for a pirate. Who could keep anything like that neat? Did pirates? Pirates must have gone about rumpled. And Beatrice had bought so many of these things! It was supposed to be “youthful,” Mona suspected. Well, it was pretty. Even had pearl buttons. Made her feel like a … a little mother!

  She laughed. Boy, this apple was good.

  Mary Jane Mayfair. In a way, this was the only person in the family that Mona could possibly get excited about seeing, and on the other hand, what if Mary Jane started saying all kinds of wild and witchy things? What if she started running off at the mouth irresponsibly? Mona wouldn’t be able to handle it.

  She took another bite of the apple. This will help with vitamin deficiencies, she thought, but she needed the supplements Annelle Salter had prescribed for her. She drank the rest of the milk in one Olympian gulp.

  “What about ‘Ophelia’?” she said aloud. Would that be right, to name a girl child after poor mad Ophelia, who had drowned herself after Hamlet’s rejection? Probably not. Ophelia’s my secret name, she thought, and you’re going to be called Morrigan.

  A great sense of well-being came over her. Morrigan. She closed her eyes and smelled the water, heard the waves crashing on the rocks.

  *

  A sound woke her, abruptly. She’d been asleep and she didn’t know how long. Ryan was standing beside the bed, and Mary Jane Mayfair was with him.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Mona, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and coming round to greet them. Ryan was already backing out of the room.

  “I presume you know,” he said, “that Michael and Rowan are in London. Michael said he would call you.” Then he was off, headed down the stairs.

  Here stood Mary Jane.

  What a change from the afternoon she’d come sprouting diagnoses of Rowan. But one had to remember, thought Mona, that those diagnoses had been correct.

  Mary Jane’s yellow hair was hanging loose and splendid, like flax, over her shoulders, and her big breasts were poking against the tight fit of a white lace dress. There was a little mud, from the cemetery, probably, on her beige high-heeled shoes. She had a tiny, mythical Southern waist.

  “Hey there, Mona, I hope this doesn’t hang you up, my being here,” she said, immediately grabbing Mona’s right hand and pumping it furiously, her blue eyes glittering as she looked down at Mona from her seemingly lofty height of about five foot eight inches in the heels. “listen, I can cut out of here any time you don’t want me. I’m no stranger to hitchhiking, I can tell you. I’ll get to Fontevrault just fine. Hey, lookie, we’re both wearing white lace, and don’t you have on the most darlin’ little smock? Hey, that’s just adorable, you look like a white lace bell with red hair. Hey, can I go out there on the front porch?”

  “Yeah, sure, I’m glad to have you here,” said Mona. Her hand had been sticky from the apple, but Mary Jane hadn’t noticed.

  Mary Jane was walking past her.

  “You have to push up that window,” said Mona, “then duck. But this is really not a dress, it’s some kind of shirt or something.” She liked the way it floated around her. And she loved the way that Mary Jane’s skirts flared from that tiny waist.

  Well, this was no time to be thinking about waists, was it?

  She followed Mary Jane outside. Fresh air. River breeze.

  “Later on, I can show you my computer and my stock-market picks. I’ve got a mutual fund I’ve been managing for six months, and it’s making millions. Too bad I couldn’t afford to actually buy any of the picks.”

  “I hear you, darlin’,” said Mary Jane. She put her hands on the front porch railing and looked down into the street. “This is some mansion,” she said. “Yeah, it sure is.”

  “Uncle Ryan points out that it is not a mansion, it is a town house, actually,” said Mona.

  “Well, it’s some town house.”

  “Yeah, and some town.”

  Mary Jane laughed, bending her whole body backwards, and then she turned to look at Mona, who had barely stepped out on the porch.

  She looked Mona up and down suddenly, as if something had made an impression on her, and then she froze, looking into Mona’s eyes.

  “What is it?” asked Mona.

  “You’re pregnant,” said Mary Jane.

  “Oh, you’re just saying that because of this shirt or smock or whatever.”

  “No, you’re pregnant.”

  “Well, yeah,” said Mona. “Sure am.” This girl’s country voice was infectious. Mona cleared her throat. “I mean, everybody knows. Didn’t they tell you? It’s going to be a girl.”

  “You think so?” Something was
making Mary Jane extremely uneasy. By all rights, she should have enjoyed descending upon Mona and making all kinds of predictions about the baby. Isn’t that what self-proclaimed witches did?

  “You get your test results back?” asked Mona. “You have the giant helix?” It was lovely up here in the treetops. Made her want to go down into the garden.

  Mary Jane was actually squinting at her, and then her face relaxed a little, the tan skin without a single blemish and the yellow hair resting on her shoulders, full but sleek.

  “Yeah, I have the genes all right,” said Mary Jane. “You do too, don’t you?”

  Mona nodded. “Did they tell you anything else?”

  “That it probably wouldn’t matter, I’d have healthy children, everybody always did in the family, ’cept for one incident about which nobody is willing to talk.”

  “Hmmmmm,” said Mona. “I’m still hungry. Let’s go downstairs.”

  “Yeah, well, I could eat a tree!”

  Mary Jane seemed normal enough by the time they reached the kitchen, chattering about every picture and every item of furniture she saw. Seemed she’d never been in the house before.

  “How unspeakably rude that we didn’t invite you,” said Mona. “No, I mean it. We weren’t thinking. Everybody was worried about Rowan that afternoon.”

  “I don’t expect fancy invitations from anybody,” said Mary Jane. “But this place is beautiful! Look at these paintings on the walls.”

  Mona couldn’t help but take pride in it, the way Michael had refurbished it, and it occurred to her suddenly, as it had upwards of fifty million times in the last week, that this house would someday be hers. Seemed it already was. But she mustn’t presume on that, now that Rowan was OK again.

  Was Rowan ever going to be really OK? A flash of memory came back to her, Rowan in that sleek black silk suit, sitting there, looking at her, with the straight dark eyebrows and the big, hard, polished gray eyes.

  That Michael was the father of her baby, that she was pregnant with a baby, that this connected her to both of them-these things suddenly jarred her.