Read Online Taltos by Anne Rice - Free Book Online Page B

calling Mary Jane by name, doing everything but eating Mary Jane up with a spoon. If this didn’t snap Rowan to, then a tornado wouldn’t do it.
    “Well, Michael Curry, come to find out they’d been calling that dead lady Dolly Jean for some time before she passed on. Wasn’t anybody in that place with a lick a’ sense, if you ask me. I think one night they just started putting Granny in the wrong bed, and what do you know, the old lady in Granny’s bed died, and there you have it. They buried some poor old stranger in the Mayfair grave!”
    At that point Mary Jane had flashed her eyes on Rowan.
    “She’s listening!” Mary Jane had cried. “Yes, she is, swear to God. She’s listening.”
    If it was true, no one else could see it or sense it. Rowan had remained oblivious to the eyes turning to her. Michael had flushed as though hurt by the kid’s outburst. And Celia had studied Rowan, doubting, and grim.
    “There’s nothing wrong with her,” Mary Jane had declared. “She’ll snap right out of it, you watch. People like her, they talk when they want to. I can be like that.”
    Mona had wanted to say, Why don’t you start now?
    But in truth, she had wanted to believe that Mary Jane was right. This girl might just be some powerful witch after all, Mona had figured. If Mary Jane wasn’t, she would still make it, somehow or other.
    “Don’t you worry none now about Granny,” she said as she was “fixin’ to go.” She’d smiled and slapped her naked brown thigh. “Let me tell you something, it may have turned out for the best.”
    “Good Lord, how?” Bea had asked.
    “Well, in all those years in that home, you know, they said she never said much of anything, just sort of talked to herself and acted like people were there who weren’t and all that, and well now?? She knows who she is, you know??? She talks to me and she watches the soaps, and never misses ‘Jeopardy’ or ‘Wheel of Fortune’?? I think it was all that commotion as well as anything else, and coming back to Fontevrault and finding things up in the attic? Did you know she could climb those steps?? Listen, she’s fine, don’t you worry about her, I’m getting cheese and graham crackers for her when I get home, and her and me will watch the late show, or the country-western channel, she likes that too, you know, ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ and all that stuff. Why, she can sing those songs. Never you mind. She’s terrific.”
    “Yes, precious, but really …”
    Mona had even sort of liked her for five minutes, a kid who could take care of an old woman like that, making it up every day with Band-Aids and hot wires.
    Mona had walked out to the front with her, and watched her hop in her pickup truck, which had bare springs sticking out of the passenger seat, and roar off in a cloud of blue exhaust.
    “We’ve got to take care of her,” Bea had said. “We’ve got to sit down and talk about the Mary Jane situation very soon.”
    True, Mona had agreed. The Mary Jane Situation was a good label for it.
    And though this girl clearly had evinced no remarkable powers on the spot, there was something exciting about her.
    Mary Jane was spunky and there was something irresistible about the idea of showering her with Mayfair money and benefits, and trying to improve her. Why couldn’t she come in and study with this tutor who was going to free Mona from the boredom of regular school forever? Beatrice had been chomping at the bit to buy Mary Jane some clothes before she left town, and no doubt had been sending her the crème de la crème of once-worn hand-me-downs.
    And there was one other little secret reason why Mona liked Mary Jane, a reason which nobody would ever understand. Mary Jane had been wearing a cowboy hat. It was small and made of straw, and she’d let it fall down behind her shoulders on its strings, but it had been there for two minutes when she first walked up. And she’d popped it back on her head before she pulled hard on the