She nodded. She was still crying and she licked the tears from her lips as they fell. But she couldn't take her eyes off his.

"Keep little Jerome close to you," said Lestat, his voice soft and persuasive. "This creature wants to hurt everyone dear to Quinn. See that everybody is on guard."

He kissed her forehead.

Quietly, we withdrew.

At last, Lestat and I were alone on Sugar Devil Island and I gave vent to my grief, sobbing like a child. "I can't imagine the world without her, I don't want the world without her, I hate him with my whole soul that he did it, how in the name of G.o.d did he get the power, she was too old, too fragile, how can we make him suffer, how can we make him suffer so much that he'll want to die, how can we send him to whatever h.e.l.l exists for him?"

On and on I raved. And then we went to our rest together.

45.

AT SUNSET I rose hungry and miserable, but I understood that Lestat had to leave me to my mortal commitments so that he could contact Merrick Mayfair and see if she would render me support.

As soon as I reached the big house I realized that Nash and Tommy were both there. Tommy 289.

had flown all day and some of the evening to get home from England, and Nash had just arrived much earlier from the West Coast. The look of grief on both their faces was dreadful, and I could scarcely hold back my tears.

In truth, I didn't want to hold them back but the fear of the blood made it absolutely essential, so I gave myself up to hugs and kisses and saw to it that I had at least three linen handkerchiefs, and, saying next to nothing, for what was there to say, we all piled into Aunt Queen's luxurious limousine and headed into New Orleans for Lonigan and Sons in the Irish Channel --back to the turf where Manfred Blackwood had owned his first saloon.

The crowd at the wake was already enormous when we arrived. Patsy was at the open door and very soberly dressed in black --which amazed me, as she was a great one for skipping funerals --and it was plain that she'd been crying.

She flashed a small square of folded pages at me.

"Photocopy of her will," she said in a tremulous voice. "She instructed Grady a long time ago not to keep us in suspense. She left me plenty. It was a d.a.m.n nice thing for her to do. He has a copy in his pocket for you."

I merely nodded. It was all too typical of Aunt Queen to have done this last little generous gesture, and over the evening I was to see Grady pa.s.sing the little folded photocopy packets to Terry Sue and Nash, among others.

Patsy went on out to smoke a cigarette and didn't seem to want to talk.

Jasmine, lovely in her blue suit and signature white blouse, and lamentably exhausted from the long day of picking out the coffin, the vault and the dress for Aunt Queen, was near to collapse.

"I brought her fingernail polish," she repeated to me three times. "They did a nice job. I told them to wipe off some of the rouge, but it was nice. A nice job. You want to bury her with the pearls?

Those are her pearls." Over and over she asked.

I said Yes.

Nash finally collected Jasmine and escorted her to one of the many little French chairs that lined the walls of the front parlor. Big Ramona was sitting in a chair simply crying, and Clem, having parked the limo, came in to stand over his mother and looked perfectly wretched.

Terry Sue was crying too as she held on to Tommy, who was sobbing. I wanted to comfort Tommy but I was so rattled by my own grief, and, holding back the blood tears, I couldn't do it. Brittany was white-faced and miserable.

Rowan Mayfair was there, which amazed me, looking softly delicate in her tailored suit with her carefully bobbed hair flattering her high cheekbones as always, and there was Michael Curry at her side, with a little more gray in his curly hair than I remembered, the two of them sharing a common radiance which alarmed me. Witches, yes. The Blood told me and they both nodded respectfully at me, suspecting nothing, and I veered away from them, wary of their power, with only a nod, as if I was too stricken to talk, which in fact was true.

There was no avoiding it: I had to approach the coffin. I had to look into it. I had to do it. And so I did.

There lay Aunt Queen in satin splendor, with ropes of pearls on her breast and a large rectangular cameo at her throat which I had never seen in her collection, and which for the moment I couldn't place. Then I recalled it. I had seen it on Petronia. Petronia had worn it when last I saw her at the Hermitage. And when last I saw her in Naples.

How did it get here? I had only to look up to see. There stood Petronia at the foot of the coffin, dressed all in dark blue with her glorious hair pulled back, looking sad and forlorn. In a swift motion that seemed no more than a blink of my eye she was beside me, and, curling her fingers gently around my upper arm, she whispered into my ear that Jasmine had allowed her to place the cameo on Aunt Queen and she had done it, and if I would allow it, it should remain.

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"That way, you can keep her special treasures," she said, "yet know she was buried with something worthy of her, something she would have admired."

"Very well and good," I said. Then Petronia was gone. I knew it without looking. I felt it. I felt it and I felt a strangeness at having seen her among so many mortals, and I felt a new confidence in my own abilities to dissemble, but more than anything I felt an overwhelming misery as I looked down at my beloved Aunt Queen.

Lonigan was an undertaker par excellence as everybody knew, but he had really outdone himself in capturing the pleasant, almost gay expression of Aunt Queen. She was almost smiling. And her gray hair was in perfect soft curls around her face. The rouge on her cheeks was subtle and the coral lipstick on her lips was perfect. She would have been most happy with all that had been done. Of course Jasmine had helped. But Lonigan had wrought the masterpiece, and Aunt Queen's generosity shone forth from his work.

As to the salmon-colored dress and the pearls which Jasmine had chosen, they were lovely, and the rosary in Aunt Queen's hands --it was the crystal rosary from her First Communion, which she had carried with her all through the great world.

I was so stricken with anguish that I couldn't move or speak. In desperation I wished that Petronia had lingered, and I found myself staring at the large rectangular cameo, with its little mythological figures --Hebe, Zeus, the raised cup --and the blood tears started to fill my eyes. I wiped furiously with the linen handkerchief.

Then quickly I withdrew. I went hurriedly through the crowded parlors and out into the hot evening and stood alone at the curb of the corner, looking up at the stars. Nothing would ever a.s.suage the grief I felt now. I knew it. I would carry it with me all my nights until whatever I was now had disintegrated, until Quinn Blackwood had become somebody or something other than what he was now.

My time of privacy lasted only a few seconds. Jasmine came to me and told me that many people wanted to express their condolences and were hesitant because I seemed so upset.

"I can't talk to them, Jasmine, you have to do it for me," I told her. "I have to go now. I know it seems hard and I seem the coward to you. But it's what I have to do."

"Is it Goblin?" she asked.

"It's the fear of him, yes," I said, lying just a little, more to console her than to cover my own shame. "When is the Ma.s.s? When is the interment?"

"The Ma.s.s is at eight p.m. tomorrow at St. Mary's, and then we go to Metairie Cemetery."

I kissed her. I told her I would see her at the church, and then I turned to go.

But as I glanced back at the crowd leaking out of the doorways onto the street, I saw yet another figure who astonished me --the figure of Julien Mayfair, in his fine gray suit, the suit he had worn the day he so regally entertained me with hot cocoa, standing as if he was merely taking the warm air with all the others, his eyes fixed casually on me.

He seemed as solid as every other person present, except that he was a faintly different color than everyone else, as though he had been painted in by another artist, and all the tones of his clothes and skin and hair were done in darker hues. Oh, such a fine and elegant ghost, come from who knows where, and who in the world thought that as a Blood Drinker I wouldn't see my spirits?

"Ah, yes, she was your daughter, of course," I said, and though there was a great distance between us, and Jasmine was looking up at me uncomprehending, he nodded and he made a very sad little smile.

"What are you saying, you crazy Little Boss?" said Jasmine. "You punchy as I am?"

"I don't know, darling," I answered. "I just see things, always have. Seems the living and the dead have turned out for Aunt Queen. Don't expect me to explain it. But it's fitting, all things considered, don't you think?"

291.

As I watched him, Julien's expression gradually changed, sharpening and strengthening and then becoming almost bitter. I felt the chills coming up my neck. He shook his head in a subtle but stern negation. I felt the words coming from him soundlessly over the distance. Never my beloved Never my beloved Mona. Mona.

I drew in my breath. A flood of a.s.surances came from that part of me which could reach him without words.

"Come around, Little Boss," said Jasmine. I felt her lips on my cheek and the hard press of her vigilant fingers.

I couldn't take my eyes off Julien, but his face was softening. It went blank.

He began to fade. And then dissolve just as Rowan and Michael, along with Dr. Winn Mayfair, came out of the nearest doorway. And who should be with them now but Stirling Oliver, Stirling who knew what I was, Stirling whom I had almost killed the night before, Stirling --gazing at me as if he accepted me when that was utterly morally impossible, Stirling whom I had so loved as my friend. I couldn't bear their scrutiny --any of them. I couldn't talk common talk of Mona, as if my soul didn't hunger for her, as if I didn't know that I could never see her again, even if they thought that I could, as if Julien's ghost hadn't just threatened me. I had to make a hasty exit.

And I did.

It was a night for a special killing. I pounded the hot pavements. I left the great trees of the Garden District behind me. I crossed the Avenue. I knew where to go.

I wanted a drug dealer, a wanton killer, a fine repast, and I knew where to find one; I had pa.s.sed his door on gentler nights. I knew his habits. I had saved him for a time of vengeance. I had saved him for now.

It was a big two-story house on Carondolet Street, shabby to the world and rich inside with his electronic gadgets and wall-to-wall carpets, a padded cell from which he ordered executions and purchases and even put the mark on children who refused to run deliveries for him, having their tennis shoes tied together and thrown up over the electric wires to let others know that they had been killed.

I didn't care what the world thought; I broke in on him and slaughtered his two drugged-up stumbling companions with rapid blows to the head. He scrambled for his gun. I had him by the throat, broke him open like a stem. At once I had the sweet sap of his monstrous self-love, poison plant in the garden of hate, lifting his symbolic fist against any a.s.sa.s.sin, believing to the last drop of blood that he would triumph, that somehow consciousness wouldn't betray him, until finally he was just spilling out the child soul, the early prayers, the images of mother and kindergarten, sunshine, and his heart stopped, and I drew back, licking my lips, glutted, angry, full.

I took his gun, the gun he had reached for to shoot me, and, taking the pillow from off his couch, I pressed pillow and gun to his head and put two bullets in him, and then I did the same to each of his companions. That would give the Coroner something he could understand. I wiped off the gun and left it there.

In a flash I saw Goblin, eyes full of blood, hands red with blood, then he shot towards me as if to grab my throat.

Burn, you devil, burn! I sent the fire into him as he surrounded me, as he sought to merge with me, and I felt the heat singe me, singe my hair, my clothes. I sent the fire into him as he surrounded me, as he sought to merge with me, and I felt the heat singe me, singe my hair, my clothes. You murdered Aunt Queen, you devil, burn! You murdered Aunt Queen, you devil, burn!

Burn if I have to burn with you. I fell to the floor, or rather the floor came up to take me, full of dust and filth, and I was sprawled out flat on the stinking carpet with him inside me, his heart thudding against my heart, and then the swoon --we were children, we were infants, we were in the cradle and someone was singing, and Little Ida said, Doesn't that baby have the most beautiful curly hair, oh so sweet to be with Little Ida, to hear her voice again, so sweet, so safe. Aunt Queen let the screen door bang behind her. "Ida, you darling, help me with this clasp. I swear I'm going to lose these pearls!" You You devil, you murdering spirit, I won't look at her, I won't feel it; I won't know it. devil, you murdering spirit, I won't look at her, I won't feel it; I won't know it. And I was with Goblin And I was with Goblin 292.

and loved Goblin and nothing else mattered --not even the tiny wounds all over me and the tug on my heart. "Get off me, you devil! I swear it, I'll put an end to you. I'll take you into the fire with me. Don't count me a liar!"

I rose to my hands and knees.

A gust of wind wrapped itself around me and then swept past the broken door. The panes of gla.s.s in the window shattered and clattered.

I was so full of hate I could taste it and it didn't taste like blood.

He was gone.

I was in the lair of the drug king, amid the rotting bodies. I had to get out.

And Aunt Queen was dead. She was absolutely dead. She was laid out on cream-colored satin with ropes of pearls. Someone remembered her little eyegla.s.ses with their sterling silver chain. And her Chantilly perfume. Just a little Chantilly perfume.

She is dead.

And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that I can do about it.

46.

THERE CAME into my heart some wild dream that Mona would be at the funeral Ma.s.s, but no such thing happened, though Fr. Kevin Mayfair was the celebrant, and though all the Mayfairs I knew - Rowan, Michael and Dr. Winn --were there as they had been at the wake the night before. They all shared that eerie glow which so unsettled me. Stirling Oliver was also with them, and they gave me their polite nods when our eyes met.

The same immense crowd was there, filling the central nave of St. Mary's a.s.sumption Church in a way I'd never witnessed at weekly Ma.s.s. In fact there were more people present because McQueens had flown in from far and wide who had not been able to reach New Orleans in time for the wake the night before.

It chilled me mercilessly to see the closed coffin lying on its bier in the main aisle, and since it was only just dark when I reached the church, I had been unable to see Aunt Queen before they shut her up for all time.

But I did not have to bear this misery alone, because both Lestat and Merrick Mayfair appeared at my side just as I was making my way past the Mayfairs and into the pew with Jasmine, Tommy and Nash.

This was so unexpected that for a moment I was shaken and had to be supported by Lestat, who took my arm firmly. He had trimmed his hair quite short, was wearing a pair of pale sungla.s.ses to blunt the effect of his iridescent eyes and was dressed very conservatively in a double-breasted blue jacket and khaki pants.

Merrick Mayfair, in a crisp white linen shirtwaist dress, had a white scarf wrapped around her face and neck and a large pair of sungla.s.ses that almost masked her face. But I was certain that it was she, and I wasn't surprised when Stirling Oliver, who was in the pew behind us, came up and spoke to her, whispering that he was glad to see her and hoped he might later have a word with her.

I could hear her plainly when she said she had many things on her mind but she would try to do what he wanted. It seemed then that she kissed Stirling on both cheeks, but I wasn't certain as her back was turned. I knew only that for Stirling this was a moment of incredible magnitude.

293.

Fr. Kevin Mayfair commenced the Requiem Ma.s.s with two altar boys. I hadn't been to church since the transformation and I was unprepared for the fact that he reminded me so very much of my red-haired Mona. I felt an ache just looking at him as he greeted us all and we returned the greeting. And then I realized I ached for him as I always had.

He believed completely in the sacred words he spoke. He was an ordained priest of G.o.d and the awareness of this permeated his entire being. The Blood revealed this to me. But even as a mortal I had never doubted it.

That Lestat and Merrick actually knelt beside me, making the Sign of the Cross and apparently praying in whispers, answering the anthems of the Ma.s.s, just as I did, was a shock but a pleasant one, as if the mad world in which I was lost could form its own flexible connective tissue.

When it came time to read a pa.s.sage from the Bible and to speak of Aunt Queen, Nash made a very solemn and proper speech about n.o.bility existing in Aunt Queen's eternal consideration of others, and Jasmine came forth shaking badly and spoke of Aunt Queen having been the guiding star of her life, and then others spoke --people I hardly knew --all saying kind things. And finally there was silence.

I remembered vividly how I had failed to speak at all the funerals of my life, in spite of my love for Lynelle and for Pops and for Sweetheart, and I found myself rising and coming forward to the microphone at the lectern just behind the altar rail. It seemed unthinkable that being what I was I would do this, but I was doing it and I knew that nothing would keep me from it.

Adjusting my voice for the microphone, I said that Aunt Queen had been the wisest person that I had ever known and that being possessed of true wisdom she had been gifted with perfect charity, and that to be in her presence was to be in the presence of goodness. Then I recited from the Book of Wisdom the description of the gift of wisdom, which I felt Aunt Queen possessed: "For wisdom is more active than all active things: and reacheth everywhere by reason of her purity.

For she is a vapour of the power of G.o.d, and a certain pure emanation of the glory of the almighty G.o.d: and therefore no defiled thing cometh into her.

For she is the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of G.o.d's majesty, and the image of his goodness.

And being but one, she can do all things: and remaining in herself the same, she reneweth all things. . ."

I broke off there. "No finer language can be used to describe Aunt Queen," I said. "And that she lived among us to be eighty-five years of age was a gift to all of us, a precious gift, and that death took her so abruptly must be seen as a mercy if we are to remain sane, and to think of her and what decrepitude might have meant to her. She is gone. She, the childless one who was a mother to all of us. The rest is silence."

Then, scarcely believing that I had stepped up to the sanctuary of the church to deliver these words before a human crowd at a Requiem Ma.s.s, I was about to return when suddenly Tommy rose and anxiously gestured for me to wait.

He came to speak, shaking violently, and he put his arm around me to steady himself, and I put my hand on his shoulder, and he said into the microphone: "She gave me the world. I traveled it with her. And everywhere we went, from Calcutta to Aswan to Rio to Rome to London, she gave me those places --in her words, in her enthusiasm, in her pa.s.sion, and in. . . in. . . showing me and telling me what I could make of my life. I'll never forget her. And though I hope to love other people as she taught me to love people, I'll never love anyone the way I loved her."

294.

Looking up at me to indicate he was finished, he clung to me as we made our way out of the sanctuary and back to the pew.

I was very proud of him and he took my mind off my own sins completely, and, as I sat down right beside Lestat I held Tommy's hand with my left hand and Lestat took my right.

When it came time to receive Communion, a great many people were moving out of the pews to get in line, and of course Tommy and Jasmine were going to do it. And on impulse I rose and went before them to get in line.

And to my utter shock, so did Merrick, and so did Lestat, following my example perhaps, or doing what they would have done in any case.

The three of us received the sacrament.

I took it in my hand as was my custom, then put it in my mouth. I don't know how they took it --whether in their hands or directly into their mouths. But they took it. I felt it dissolve on my tongue as always --such a tiny morsel of food not being repulsed by my body --and I prayed to the G.o.d who had come into me to forgive me everything I was. I prayed to Christ to redeem me from what I was. I prayed to know what I must do --if there was any way, honorable or decent or moral --for me to live.