Free Blackwood Farm by Anne Rice

light.”
    â€œAnd you, my dear lady, are a vision,” Lestat said, his French accent thickening just a tiny bit as if for emphasis, and, leaning over the marble table with its random cameos, he bent to kiss her hand.
    She was a vision, there was no doubt of it, her face warm and pretty for all its years. It wasn’t gaunt so much as naturally angular, and her thinning lips were neatly brightened with rose lipstick, and her eyes, in spite of the fine wrinkles around them, were still vividly blue. The diamonds and pearls on her breast were stunning, and she wore several rich diamond rings on her long hands.
    The jewels as always seemed part of her power and dignity, as if age had given her strong advantage, and a sweet femininity seemed to characterize her as well.
    â€œOver here, Little Boy,” she said to me.
    I went to her side and bent down to receive her kiss on my cheek. That had been my custom ever since I’d grown to the staggering height of six foot four, and she often took hold of my head and teasingly refused to let me go. This time, she didn’t do it. She was too distracted by the alluring creature standing before her table, with his cordial smile.
    â€œAnd look at your coat,” she said to Lestat, “how marvelous. Why, it’s a wide-skirted frock coat. Wherever did you get it, and the cameo buttons, how perfect. Will you come here this very minute and let me see them? You can see that I’ve a positive mania for cameos. And now as the years have gone by, I think of little else.”
    Lestat came round the table as I moved away. I was frightened suddenly, very frightened, that she would sense something about him, but no sooner had this thought gripped me than I realized he had the situation entirely under his command.
    Hadn’t another Blood Drinker, my Maker, charmed Aunt Queen in the same manner? Why the hell should I be so afraid?
    As she examined the buttons, remarking that each was a different muse of the Grecian Nine Muses, Lestat was beaming down on her as if he were genuinely smitten, and I loved him for it. Because Aunt Queen was the person I loved most in all the world. Having the two of them together was a little more than I could bear.
    â€œYes, a real true frock coat,” she said.
    â€œWell, I’m a musician, Madam,” Lestat said to her. “You know in this day and age a rock musician can wear a frock coat if he wishes, and so I indulge myself. I’m theatrical and incorrigible. A regular beast when it comes to the exaggerated and the eccentric. I like to clear all obstacles when I enter a room, and I have a perfect mania for antique things.”
    â€œYes, you’re so right to have it,” she said, exulting in him obviously, as he stepped back and joined me where I stood before the table. “My two handsome boys,” she remarked. “You do know that Quinn’s mother is a singer, though what kind of a singer I’m not quite prepared to say.”
    Lestat didn’t know, and he gave me a curious glance and a slight teasing smile.
    â€œCountry music,” I said quickly. “Patsy Blackwood is her name. She’s got a powerful voice.”
    â€œVery much diluted country music,” said Aunt Queen with a vague tone of disapproval. “I think she calls it country pop, and that can account for a lot. She has a good voice, however, and she writes occasional lyrics that aren’t too bad. She’s good at a sort of mournful ballad, almost Celtic, though she doesn’t know it—but you know, a little minor-key bluegrass sound is what she really likes to do, and if she did what she likes to do rather than what she thinks she ought to do she might have the very fame she so desires.” Aunt Queen sighed.
    I marveled, not only at the wisdom of what she’d said, but at the curious disloyalty, because Aunt Queen was never one to criticize her own flesh and blood. But something seemed to have been