Free Lasher by Anne Rice Page B

The woman gave in. They always gave in. It was almost a cowardly thing, to make themdo her bidding, staring them down this way. But she had to do it.
    Eugenia lowered her gaze uncertainly and hurried from the room, with a crazy, twisted neurotic gait, and went rustling up the stairs. What a surprise that she could do it so fast.
    And there was Michael sitting back on the sofa, staring at her with his eyes narrow now, and very calm, as though trying to recall what happened, blinking a little to show his confusion. “Christ, Mona,” he whispered.
    “It’s done, Uncle Michael,” she said. And suddenly her voice failed her! Her strength was failing her. She heard the catch as she spoke again, she felt the quaver. “Now, let me go up to bed with you,” she said, almost breaking down. “Because I am really really sort of scared.”
    They lay in the big bed in the dark. She was staring at the pleated satin of the half tester, wondering what pattern Mary Beth had once looked at. He was quiet beside her, druggy and worn out. The door was locked.
    “You awake?” she whispered. She wanted so badly to ask him what he had seen. But she didn’t dare. She held the picture of the double parlor in her mind, like a sacred sepia photograph—hadn’t she seen such pictures, with the gasoliers, and those very chairs?
    “Can’t happen again, honey,” he said groggily. “Never, never again.” He nestled her close to him, but he was very sleepy, and his heart was laboring just a little now, just a little but it was OK.
    “If you say so, Uncle Michael,” she whispered. “But I wish I had something to say about it.”
In Mary Beth’s bed, in Deirdre’s bed
. She snuggled close, feeling the warmth of his hand now, lying idly on her breast.
    “Honey,” he whispered. “What was that waltz? Was that Verdi?
La Traviata?
It sounded like it was but…” and then he was gone.
    She lay there smiling in the darkness. He’d heard it! He’d been there with her. She turned to him and kissed his cheek, carefully so he didn’t waken, and then she slept against his chest, one arm slipped beneath his shirt against his warm skin.

Three
    A DREARY ENDLESS winter rain poured down on San Francisco, gently flooding the steep-sloped streets of Nob Hill and veiling in mist its curious mixture of buildings—the gray ghostlike Gothic facade of Grace Cathedral, the heavy imposing stucco apartment houses, the lofty modern towers rising from the old structure of the Fairmont Hotel. The sky was darkening heavily and quickly, and the five o’clock traffic was about as unpleasant as it could get.
    Dr. Samuel Larkin drove slowly past the Mark Hopkins, though whatever they called that hotel now he didn’t know, and down California Street, crawling patiently behind a noisy crowded cable car, wondering vaguely at the perseverance of the tourists who clung to it, in the dark and in the cold, their clothes soaked. He was careful not to skid on the car tracks—the bane of out-of-town drivers—and he gave the cable car a head start as the light changed.
    Then he made his descent towards Market Street, block after block, past the pretty exotic wooden entrance to Chinatown, a route which he always found slightly frightening and very beautiful, and which often reminded him of his first years in this city, when one could ride the cable car to work with ease, and the Top of the Mark had indeed been the highest point in the city, and none of these Manhattan skyscrapers were here at all.
    How could Rowan Mayfair have ever left this place? he thought. But then Lark had only been to New Orleans a couple of times. Nevertheless, it had been like turning your back on Paris for the provinces, and it was only one part of Rowan’s story that he did not understand.
    He almost went by the unobtrusive gates of the Keplinger Institute. He made a sharp turn, plunged a little too fast down the driveway and into the dry darkness of the underground garage.It was now five-ten. And