"You really mean that?"
"Yes," I said. "I wouldn't make a promise to you like that unless I meant it. I'll find out, and if they have survived, if they do have a community somewhere, then you can decide whether or not you want to meet with them. But once a meeting occurs, they'll know about you, what you are, everything. That is, if they have the powers that Rowan ascribed to them. "
"Oh, they have those powers," Mona said. "They do. " She closed her eyes. She took a deep painful breath. "It's an awful thing to admit," she said, "but the things Dolly Jean said were all true. I can't deny them. I can't withhold the truth from you and Quinn. I can't. Morrigan was . . . almost unbearable. "
"How so, unbearable?" asked Quinn.
I could see this was a radical admission. She had said things quite to the contrary.
Mona threw back her hair, her eyes searching the ceiling. She was facing something she had always denied.
"Obsessive, incessant, maddening!" she said. "She went on and on about her schemes and plans and dreams and memories, and she did say that Mayfairs would become a family of Taltos, and once she caught the scent of the Taltos male on Rowan and Michael, she was absolutely unendurable. " Mona closed her eyes. "The thought of a community of such creatures is-almost beyond my imagination. This old one, Ash Templeton, the one that Rowan and Michael knew-he had learned to pretend to be a human being, he had learned that centuries ago. That's the thing. These creatures can live indefinitely! They are immortals! The species is utterly incompatible with humans. Morrigan was new and raw. " She looked imploringly at me.
"Take it slowly," I said. I had never seen her suffering so. In all her bouts of tears there had been a generosity and selflessness that made them seem quite challengeable. As for her rage, she'd positively enjoyed it. But now she was truly in torment.
"It's like me, don't you see?" she said. "She was a newborn Taltos. And I'm a newborn Blood Child, or whatever you want to call me. And we share the same faults. She was unruly and crashing into everything around her! And that's the way I've behaved, raving to you as I did about your written confessions, I . . . she . . . presuming, assuming, even rushing to the computer just the way she did, recording my responses the way she did, and going on and on the way she did, but she, she never stopped, she . . . I . . . she . . . I don't know. . . . " Her tears came and she couldn't talk anymore. "Oh, dear God in Heaven, what is the squalid secret behind all this?" she whispered. "What is it? What is it?"
Quinn's face was torn.
"I know the secret," I said. "Mona, you hated her as much as you loved her. How could you not? Accept it. And now you have to know what happened to her. "
She nodded, vigorously, but she couldn't speak. She couldn't look at me.
"And we have to go about this with great care," I said, "this search for the Taltos, but I vow to you again that we will do it. And I will find them or find out what became of them. "
Quiet.
She finally looked at me.
A sorrowful motionlessness settled over her. She wasn't trying to stare me down. I don't think she even realized I was looking back at her. She looked at me for the longest time and her face grew soft and giving and tender.
"I'll never be mean to you again," she said.
"I believe you," I said. "I took you to my heart the first moment I saw you. "
Quinn sat staring with patient eyes, the round mirror behind him like a great halo.
"You really do love me," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"What can I do to prove that I love you?" she asked.
I thought for a long moment, sealed off from her and from Quinn. "You don't have to do anything," I said. "But there is one small favor I might ask. "
"Anything," she answered.
"Never mention my love for Rowan again," I said.
She locked on me, eyes so full of anguish that I could hardly bear it. "Only one more time, to say this," she said. "Rowan walks with God. And Mayfair Medical is her sacred mountain. "
"Yes," I said with a sigh. "You are so very right. And don't ever think that I don't know it. "
Chapter 24
24
AN HOUR BEFORE the first light.