Taltos by Anne Rice Read Free Book Online Page A

Michael had protested in vain, “I’m not a Mayfair.”
    “—and the ones with the red hair like her, only she’s just about the most pretty one I’ve seen. You must be Mona. You have the gleam and glow of somebody who’s just come into tons of money.”
    “Mary Jane, darling,” said Celia, unable to follow upwith an intelligent bit of advice or a meaningless little question.
    “Well, what does it feel like to be so rich?” Mary Jane asked, big, quivering eyes fastened still to Mona. “I mean really deep in here.” She pounded her cheap little gaping blouse with a knotted fist, squinting up her eyes again, and bending forward so that the well between her breasts was plainly visible even to someone as short as Mona. “Never mind, I know I’m not supposed to ask that sort of question. I came over here to see her, you know, because Paige and Beatrice told me to do it.”
    “Why did they do that?” asked Mona.
    “Hush up, dear,” said Beatrice. “Mary Jane is a Mayfair’s Mayfair. Darling Mary Jane, you ought to bring your grandmother up here immediately. I’m serious, child. We want you to come. We have an entire list of addresses, both temporary and permanent.”
    “I know what she means,” Celia had said. She’d been sitting beside Rowan, and was the only one bold enough to wipe Rowan’s face now and then with a white handkerchief. “I mean about the Mayfairs with no chins. She means Polly. Polly has an implant. She wasn’t born with that chin.”
    “Well, if she has an implant,” declared Beatrice, “then Polly has a visible chin, doesn’t she?”
    “Yeah, but she’s got the slanty eyes and the tipped nose,” said Mary Jane.
    “Exactly,” said Celia.
    “You all afraid of the extra genes?” Mary Jane had thrown her voice out like a lasso, catching everybody’s attention. “You, Mona, you afraid?”
    “I don’t know,” said Mona, who was in fact not afraid.
    “Of course, it’s nothing that’s even remotely likely to happen!” Bea said. “The genes. It’s purely theoretical, of course. Do we have to talk about this?” Beatrice threw a meaningful look at Rowan.
    Rowan had stared, as she always did, at the wall, maybe at the sunshine on the bricks, who could possibly know?
    Mary Jane had plunged ahead. “I don’t think anything that wild will ever happen to this family again. I think themoment for that kind of witchcraft is past, and another eon of new witchcraft—”
    “Darling, we really don’t take this entire witchcraft thing too seriously,” said Bea.
    “You know the family history?” Celia had asked gravely.
    “Know it? I know things about it you don’t know. I know things my granny told me, that she heard from Old Tobias, I know things that are written on the walls in that house, still. When I was a little child, I sat on Ancient Evelyn’s knee. Ancient Evelyn told me all kinds of things that I remember. Just one afternoon, that’s all it took.”
    “But the file on our family, the file by the Talamasca …” Celia had pressed. “They did give it to you at the clinic?”
    “Oh, yeah, Bea and Paige brought that stuff to me,” said Mary Jane. “Look here.” She pointed to the Band-Aid on her arm that was just like the Band-Aid on her knee. “This is where they stuck me! Took enough blood to sacrifice to the devil. I understand the entire situation. Some of us have a whole string of extra genes. You breed two close kins with the double dose of double helix, and wham, you’ve got a Taltos. Maybe! Maybe! After all, think about it, how many cousins have married and married, and it never happened, did it, till … Look, we shouldn’t talk about it in front of her, you’re right.”
    Michael had given a weary little smile of gratitude.
    Mary Jane again squinted at Rowan. Mary Jane blew a big bubble with her gum, sucked it in, and popped it.
    Mona laughed. “Now that’s some trick,” she said. “I could never do that.”
    “Oh, well, that might be a