Mona was simply getting used to it. She took a deep slow breath; it was so rich, so sensuous, so delicious. But what was it?
She pushed through the double doors into the ward. The smell grew stronger. But there were the three nurses, sitting, writing away, in an island of light surrounded by high wooden counters, one of them whispering on a phone as she wrote, the others seemingly in deep concentration.
No one noticed as Mona walked past the station and passed into the narrow corridor. The smell was very strong here.
“Jesus Christ, don’t tell me this,” Mona whispered. She glanced at the doors to her left and her right But the smell told her before she even saw the chart that said “Alicia (CeeCee) Mayfair.”
The door was ajar, and the room was dark; its one window opened upon an airwell. Blank wall stared in through the glass at the still woman, lying with her head to the wall, beneath the white covers. A small digital machine recorded the progress of the IV-a plastic sack of glucose, clear as glass, feeding down through a tiny tube into the woman’s right hand, beneath a mass of tape, the hand itself flat on the white blanket.
Mona stood very still, then pushed open the door. She pushed it all the way back, so that she could see into the open bathroom to the right Porcelain toilet Empty shower stall. Quickly, she examined the rest of the room, and then turned back to the bed, confident that she and her mother were alone.
Her mother’s profile bore a remarkable resemblance to that of her sister, Gifford, in the coffin. All points and angles, the emaciated face sunk into the large, softly yielding pillow.
The covers made a mound over the body. All white except for a small irregular blotch of red in the very center of the covers, very near to where the hand lay with its tape and its tubing and needle.
Mona drew closer, clamped her left hand on the chrome bar of the bed, and touched the red spot. Very wet Even as she stared at it the blotch grew bigger. Something seeping up through the covers from below. Roughly Mona pulled the blanket down from under Alicia’s limp arm. Her mother didn’t stir. Her mother was dead. The blood was everywhere. The bed was soaked with it
There was a sound behind Mona; and then a female voice spoke in a rasping, unfriendly whisper.
“Don’t wake her up, dear. We had a hell of a time with her this morning.”
“Check her vital signs lately?” Mona asked, turning to the nurse. But the nurse had already seen the blood. “I don’t think there’s much chance of waking her up. Why don’t you call my cousin Anne Marie? She’s down in the lobby. Tell her to come up here immediately.”
The nurse was an old woman; she picked up the dead woman’s hand. At once she set it down, and then she backed away from the bed, and out of the room.
“Wait a minute,” said Mona. “Did you see anybody come in here?”
But in an instant she knew the question was pointless. This woman was too afraid of being blamed for this to even respond. Mona followed her, and watched her rush down to the station, walking about as fast as a person can walk without running. Then Mona went back to the bed.
She felt the hand. Not ice-cold. She gave a long sigh; she could hear footsteps in the corridor, the muffled sound of rubber-soled shoes. She leaned over the bed, and brushed her mother’s hair back from her face, and kissed her. The cheek held only a tiny bit of fading warmth. Her forehead was already cold.
She thought sure her mother would turn her head and look up at her and shout out: “Be careful what you wish for. Didn’t I tell you? It might come true.”
Within minutes the room was filled with staff. Anne Marie was in the hallway, wiping her eyes with a paper handkerchief. Mona backed off.
For a long time she stood at the nurses’ station just listening to everything. An intern had to be called to say that Alicia was legally dead. They had to wait for him, and that would take twenty minutes. It was past eight o’clock. Meantime the family doctor had been summoned. And Ryan, of course. Poor Ryan. Oh, God help Ryan. The phone was ringing now continuously. And Lauren? What shape was she in?
Mona walked off down the hall. When the elevator door opened, it was the young intern who came out-a kid who didn’t look old enough to know if somebody was dead. He passed her without even looking at her.
In a daze Mona rode down to the lobby and walked out the doors. The hospital was on Prytania Street, only one block from Amelia and St. Charles, where Mona lived. She walked slowly along the pavement, under the lunar light of the street lamps, thinking quietly to herself.
“I don’t mink I want to wear dresses like this anymore.” She said it out loud when she stood on the corner. “Nope, it’s time to dump this dress and this ribbon.” Across the street, her home was brightly lighted for once. There were people climbing out of cars. All the crisp excitement already begun.
Several Mayfairs had seen her; one was pointing to her. Someone was walking to the corner to reach out towards her as if that might mean she might not be run down as she crossed the street.
“Well, I don’t think I like these clothes anymore,” she said under her breath as she walked fast before the distant oncoming traffic. “Nope, sick of it Won’t do it anymore.”
“Mona, darling!” said her cousin Gerald.
“Yeah, well, it was just a matter of time,” said Mona. “But I sure didn’t count on both of them dying. No, didn’t see that coming at all.” She walked past Gerald, and past the Mayfairs assembled around the gate and the path to the steps.
“Yeah, OK,” she said to those who tried to speak to her. “I’ve got to get out of these ridiculous clothes.”
Fourteen
IT IS NOT the story of my life which you require, but let me explain how I came upon my various secrets. As you know I was born in the year 1828, but I wonder if you realize what this means. Those were the very last days of an ancient way of life-the last decades in which the rich landowners of the world lived pretty much as they had for centuries.
We not only knew nothing of railroads, telephones, Victrolas, or horseless carriages. We didn’t even dream of such things!
And Riverbend-with its vast main house crammed with fine furniture and books, and all its many outbuildings sheltering uncles and aunts and cousins, and its fields stretching as far as the eye could see from the riverbank, south, and east and west-truly was Paradise.
Into this world I slipped almost without notice. I was a boy child, and this was a family that wanted female witches. I was a mere Prince of the Blood, and the court was a loving and friendly place, but no one observed that a little boy had been born who possessed probably greater witches’ gifts than any man or woman ever in the family.
In fact, my grandmother Marie Claudette was so disappointed that I was not a girl child that she stopped speaking to my mother, Marguerite. Marguerite had already given birth to one male, my older brother, Remy, and now, having had the audacity to bring another into the world, she crashed down completely from favor.
Of course Marguerite rectified this mistake as soon as possible, giving birth in 1830 to Katherine, who was to become her heiress and designee of the legacy-my darling little sister. But a coldness by then existed between mother and daughter, and was never healed in Marie Claudette’s lifetime.
Also I personally suspect that Marie Claudette took one look at Katherine and thought, “What an idiot,” for that is just what Katherine turned out to be. But a female witch was needed, and Marie Claudette would lay eyes upon a granddaughter before she died, so on to this little witless baby who was bawling in the cradle Marie Claudette passed the great emerald.
Now as you know, by the time Katherine was a young woman I had come into my own as a family influence, was much valued as a carrier of witches’ gifts, and it was I who fathered, by Katherine, Mary Beth Mayfair, who was the last in fact of the great Mayfair Witches.
I fathered Mary Beth’s daughter Stella, as I am sure you also know, and fathered by Stella her daughter, Antha.
But let me return to the perilous times of my early childhood, when men and women both warned me in
