21

BLACKWOOD MANOR WAS LIT UP like a lantern in the rural dark, doors thrown open on the front porch, floodlights on, Jasmine sitting on the steps crying with a white handkerchief, knees up, black heels, navy blue sheath, chocolate skin and bleached curls looking lovely as was routine, her crying brokenhearted and exhausting and terribly sad.

"Oh, Les-Dot, help me, help me!" she cried. "Where is Quinn? Where is Little Boss? I need him. I'm going out of my mind! And that boy's running rampant. Nash doesn't believe in ghosts, Tommy's scared to death of them, and Grandma's sending for the priest to drive the Devil out of me! As if it was my doing!"

I walked up to her, picked her up, with her utter soft silky willingness, and carried her inside. She lay her head against my chest.

The front room was full of people.

"The car's turning into the drive," I said, "what's wrong?"

We sat down on the living room couch, me with her in my lap. I patted her. She was really drained and

miserable.

"I'm so glad you're here," she cried, "we've been so alone out here."

Little Tommy Blackwood, aged thirteen, Quinn's uncle by blood, sat in one of the chairs opposite and watched me in a really formal sort of way, his fingers on one arm of the chair. He was a truly marvelous young man, much as Quinn had described, and from his travels with Aunt Queen and the all too human Quinn in Europe, he had imbibed an entire attitude towards life which would stand him in good stead always.

Cool to see him again.

Nash Penfield, his tutor, was there also, attired in an impeccable herringbone suit, a man who seemed born to have a calming effect on others, though why he could not calm Jasmine I wasn't certain. He seemed puzzled as he stood near to Tommy's chair, eying Jasmine with profound concern, and nodding to me respectfully.

Big Ramona, Jasmine's grandmother, sat glowering near the couch, in a somber wine-colored gabardine dress with an ornate diamond pin just below her right shoulder. Big Ramona's hair was brushed back artfully to a twist on the back of her head, and she was wearing stockings and fancy black shoes.

"Oh hush up, girl," Big Ramona said at once to Jasmine, "you're just drawing attention to yourself. Sit up straight! Stop talking like a fool!"

Two of the Shed Men, still in their work clothes, were standing awkwardly behind her. One of them was cheerful Allen, with the round face and white hair. I didn't know the name of the other one. Correct. Yes I did. Joel.

And nobody said anything after Big Ramona bawled out Jasmine.

Before I could begin a mind search, Quinn came into the room, and Mona, the sequined harpy, went on back the hall like a streak of silver light, and into Aunt Queen's bedroom. Aunt Queen's bedroom was the only bedroom on the main floor.

A ripple of interest and wonder went through the assembly as to Mona's presence and Mona's appearance, but nobody had gotten a really good look at her. The insolent little monster.

It was Quinn who mattered here. He sat opposite me just inside the huge hallway door. His characteristic innocence slowly alchemized into a gentlemanly air of command as he scanned the gathering. Then he rose to his feet quickly as Cyndy, the Nurse, came in, looking quite lovely in her starched white uniform, also quite tearful and sad, and took a chair far away, by the piano.

Next there appeared the sheriff, a rotund and jocular human being whom I'd met the night of Aunt Queen's death, followed by a person whom I identified at once as Grady Breen, the family lawyer, aged, portly and stuffed into a three-piece pinstriped suit, whom Quinn had described to me when he'd been telling me his life story.

"Whoa, this is quite serious," I said under my breath.

Jasmine was shuddering against me, and clinging to me. "Don't you let me go, Lestat," she said. "Don't you let me go. You don't know what's after me."

"Honey bunch, nothing can get you when you're with me," I whispered. With loving hands I tried to distract her from the fact that my body feels like a chunk of marble.

"Jasmine, get off that man's lap," whispered Big Ramona, "and start behaving like the Head Housekeeper here, where you are supposed to be! I tell you, the only thing holding some people back is their own selves!"

Jasmine did not obey.

The two official gentlemen found chairs in the shadows rather close to Cyndy, the Nurse, as though they didn't want to invade the family circle. The sheriff's belly poured over his belt, which was laden with weapons and a crackling walkie-talkie, which he silenced with embarrassed suddenness.

Jasmine put her left arm around me and hung on as though I were trying to release her, which I wasn't. I stroked her back and kissed her head. She was a delicious little person. Her long silky legs were stretched out to my left.

The fact that Quinn had once made love to her, fathered little Jerome by her, was suddenly uppermost in my heated evil ever-churning half-human half-vampiric mind. Indeed people's charms should not go to waste, that is my motto, may it never have dire consequences for the mortal world.

"If only I hadn't been so mean to her," Jasmine said. "She's never going to leave me alone." She ground her forehead against my chest. She tightened her grip. I closed my arm completely around her.

"You're just fine, honey bunch," I said.

"What in the world do you mean?" asked Quinn. He was deeply distressed to see Jasmine suffering. "Jasmine, what's going on? Somebody please bring me up to speed."

"So there's news of Patsy?" I asked. For that was clearly everybody's concern, and I was getting it in sputters and waves, whether I searched for it or not.

"Well, seems so," said Grady Breen. "But it seems to me that Big Ramona, well, what with Jasmine unable to talk, maybe you should tell the story."

"Who says I'm unable to talk!" Jasmine cried, head still bowed, body shuddering. "You think I can't tell you what I saw with my own eyes, coming right to the window of my bedroom, all soaked and wet and streaming with duckweed and swamp water; you think I don't know what I saw, that it was Patsy, you think I don't know Patsy's voice, when she said, 'Jasmine, Jasmine,' over and over again? You think I don't know it was a dead person who said, 'Jasmine, Jasmine,' over and over again? And me in that bed with little Jerome, and me scared to death he would wake up, and her clawing at the window with her red fingernails, saying, 'Jasmine, Jasmine,' in that pitiful voice?"

Quinn went bloodless with shock.

Cyndy, the Nurse, burst into tears. "She has to be buried in consecrated ground, I don't care what anyone says."

"Buried in consecrated ground!" said Big Ramona. "All we have of her is some of her hair pulled out of her hairbrush, what are you talking about, Cyndy? Are we going to bury a hairbrush, for the love of Heaven?"

Nash Penfield was so frustrated, I could feel it. I didn't have to read it from his thoughts. He had wanted to take charge for some time, for the sake of everyone. But he felt he had no authority to speak here.

Mona came clicking down the marble-tiled hall and appeared in the door, soberly dressed in a high-neck black dress with long sleeves and tight cuffs and a high hem, and black heels, calves once again flexed magnificently. She took a place to the left of Quinn. Her face was very sweet and serious, the little dissembler.

Everyone looked at her at once, even Jasmine, with a covert turn of her head, but no one knew what to make of it. I refused to even give her a glance. I have excellent peripheral vision.

"When did this ghost appear to you?" I asked at once to distract everyone from Mona and the inevitable questions about her transformation.

"Now tell the story from the start," said earnest and forthright Grady Breen, "as we are dealing with what constitute legal documents."

"What legal documents?" said Quinn patiently.

"Well," said Big Ramona, moving just a little bit forward in her chair, her dark face very commanding, "I think that everybody present knows that for years the ghost of William Blackwood has appeared often in this very room, pointing at that French desk there between the windows, and no one has ever known what

to make of it. Quinn, you saw that ghost plenty times, and Jasmine, you did too. And I have to confess, as God is my witness, so did I, though I always said a Hail Mary and the ghost went away like that, just like pinching out a candle flame. And when we opened up that desk, well, we always found nothing. Just nothing. And we put the key back into the cup in the kitchen, though why we so carefully kept locking up nothing I'm not the one to explain.

"But what you don't know is that right after you took Mona Mayfair out of here, Quinn, that is, right after your mother went missing, leaving all her medicine behind, the ghost started to appear again night and day! I'm telling you, all I had to do was to walk in this room and there was Grandpa William standing there pointing at that desk! And same held true for my grandchild Jasmine. Jasmine, sit up straight!"

(The desk in question was fancy Louis XV, with one central drawer, cabriole legs and much ornate ormolu.)

"Well, finally, Jasmine says to me she just can't stand this any longer, and she couldn't reach Quinn and she couldn't do her work, and neither could I, and then my boy Clem comes in here and even he sees this ghost, and so we decided, well, we were going to search that desk one more time, whether Quinn was here or not to give his permission. But before we had made up our minds that we were going to do this, Jasmine is laying up in the bed asleep with her blessed little boy, Jerome, and up to her window out there comes Patsy, yes, I'm telling you, Patsy, all full of swamp water and crying, 'Jasmine, Jasmine,' and scratching at the glass with her long painted fingernails, and Jasmine grabs up little Jerome and runs out of the house screaming!"

Jasmine nodded furiously, making of herself a tiny ball in my lap.

"Fact was," said Big Ramona, "Jasmine was the only one on this property who was ever kind to Patsy! Except for you, Cyndy, honey, but you didn't live here! And how's Patsy's ghost gonna crawl out of the swamp and find you all the way over in Mapleville? And then we told Grady Breen we were opening that desk, he best come on over here, because it was locked and the key was not in the cup in the kitchen after all these years of that key being in that cup in the kitchen, and we had to use a knife to get the desk open."

"That makes perfect sense," said Quinn agreeably.

Big Ramona cast her eyes in the direction of Grady Breen, a most respectful man, who now drew from his brown leather briefcase what appeared to be a sheaf of handwritten papers in a clear plastic folder.

"And when we opened the drawer of the desk," Big Ramona proceeded, "what did we find but Patsy's handwritten letters, saying that 'by the time you find this I will be dead,' and then going on to describe how she meant to go out into Sugar Devil Swamp and lean over the edge of the pirogue and shoot herself in the right side of her head so she'd fall in the water, and that not one scrap of her remains would be left to put in the family tomb next to her father on account of her hating him, which we all knew that she did."

"She was so sick," cried Cyndy, the Nurse. "She was in pain. She didn't know what she was doing, God help her."

"Yes, indeed," said Grady, "and fortunately, well, no, not fortunately, but, conveniently, well, no, not conveniently, but coincidentally, Patsy had been arrested many times for drug possession and her fingerprints were on file, and so we were able to match up the prints on these pages with her prints, and also this is her handwriting-." Grady rose and hurried across the room and presented the plastic cache to a stunned and silent Quinn-"and she did write about ten drafts of her letter, as she apparently wasn't satisfied, even with the very last, when she apparently jumped the . . . I mean when she finally decided to go out there and execute her plan."

Quinn held the packet as though it was about to explode, merely staring at the letter that he could see through the plastic, and then he reached out and laid the packet on the famous haunted desk in which it had been discovered.

He said softly, "That's her handwriting."

Everybody nodded, mumbled, concurred, the Shed Men murmuring that Patsy was a great one for scribbling notes saying, "Have my van gassed-up right now!" and "Wash my car and do it right," and they knew that that was her writing too.

Then the hefty sheriff, a devoutly ignorant man, cleared his throat and announced: "And then of course we found the conclusive evidence in the pirogue."

"Which was what?" asked Quinn with a small frown.

"Her hair," said the sheriff, "which matched right up to the hair on her brushes upstairs, and everybody knew Patsy'd never gone out there for any other reason, so it had to be she shot herself out there, 'cause why else would she come to be in the pirogue?"

"You've made a DNA match this quickly?" asked Quinn coldly.

"We didn't have to. Everybody could see it was the same hair all stuck with her hairspray, you could smell it," said the sheriff, "but the DNA will be coming if you mean to bury the strands in that little cemetery of yours where you like to bury things and hold s¨¦ances with big fires and such!"

"Sheriff, please be kind to this boy," said Cyndy, the Nurse, in a sweet voice, "we are talking about his mother."

"Yes, please, if we could stick to the facts at hand," said Nash Penfield, in his deep authoritative voice. His frustration had gotten the better of him. He felt protective of just about everyone, but especially Tommy.

"So the coroner is satisfied?" asked Quinn. "And has ruled it suicide?"

"Well, yes, he would be!" declared the sheriff, "if you'd stop going around the house saying you murdered your mother and threw her to the gators, Quinn Blackwood! And Jasmine here would stop telling everybody Patsy's come a-crawling up to her window, all full of swamp weed, crying for help, for the love of the Lord in Heaven."

"She did, she did," gasped Jasmine under her breath. "Lestat, don't you let me go!"

"I won't," I whispered. "No ghost is going to get you, Jasmine."

"But Jasmine," said Quinn, "when did you see this ghost? Was it after you all found this note?"

"No, Grandma just told you, I saw her before I even knew about the letters, she came to the window, crying and clawing. And she's done it again! And I'm scared even to go to sleep out there. I don't know what she wants, Little Boss, what can I do for her? Little Jerome is upstairs in Tommy's room playing video games right now, I'm scared to even let him stay in the back house, what can I do? Quinn, you've got to hold another s¨¦ance for Patsy!"

Suddenly Mona spoke up, and it was as if a light had gone on in that corner of the room.

"The poor creature probably doesn't know she's dead," Mona said tenderly. "Someone has to tell her. She needs to be guided into the Light. This often happens to people, especially if they die suddenly. I can tell her."

"Oh, please, could you do that?" said Jasmine. "That's it, you got it, she doesn't know, and she's wandering around, all forsaken and lost, coming out of the swamps back of my house and doesn't know what's happened to her."

The sheriff was smirking and raising his eyebrows and squinting his eyes. Nash was becoming extremely uncomfortable as he watched the man.

"That's what happened with Goblin, wasn't it?" Big Ramona asked. "You all told him he was dead and he went on. Well, you all have to do it again, you just got to."

"Yes, it was," said Quinn. "I'll tell her to go on. I don't mind doing it. I don't think it will require an entire s¨¦ance."

"Well, you people ought to do that right away," said the sheriff, now on his feet and primed to depart, tugging at his heavy belt, "but I must tell you, it is the darnedest thing that every time you have a death out here you have a ghost right smack dab in the middle of it. Sure enough! Do you see the ghost of Miss

McQueen carrying on like this? No, you do not! She's not scratching at any windowpane. Now that was a great lady!"

"What are you talking about!" Quinn demanded in a low voice. He looked up angrily at the sheriff. I'd never seen Quinn take on such an expression. I'd never heard Quinn talk in such a voice. "You trying to give us a lecture on who's a good dead person and who's not? Seems like you should wait outside of Jasmine's window and give that lecture to Patsy. Or why don't you just go back to your office and dictate a book on manners for the lately dead?"

Big Ramona chuckled under her breath. I swallowed my laughter. Nash was greatly worried. Tommy was afraid.

"Don't you talk that way to me!" the sheriff said, leaning over Quinn. "You're nothing but a crackpot kid, Tarquin Blackwood. It's the scandal of the parish that you've inherited Blackwood Farm! It's the end for this place out here and everybody knows it. And there's other things you've done that are the scandal of the parish, and now you go around saying you murdered your mother. I ought to run you in."

A cold rage came over Quinn. I could see it happening.

"I did murder her, Sheriff," he said in an iron voice. "I snatched her up from her couch upstairs, broke her neck, carried her out into the pirogue and went deep, deep into the dark swamp until I saw the backs of the gators in the light of the moon, and then I threw her body into the muck. And I said, 'Eat up Mother.' That's what I did."

The entire room was thrown into consternation, with Big Ramona and Jasmine crying No no no, and Nash murmuring desperate confidential reassurance to Tommy, and Tommy glaring at Quinn, and one of the Shed Men laughing, and Cyndy the Nurse avowing that Quinn would never really do such a thing. Grady Breen was speechless, shaking his head and shuffling papers in his briefcase uselessly, and even Mona was shocked, staring at Quinn with her glassy green eyes in vague wonder.

"You going to run me in, Sheriff?" asked Quinn, looking icily up at the man.

The room fell silent.

The sheriff was squint-eyed and speechless.

Nash was fearful and poised to act.

Quinn uncoiled from the chair and rose to his full height and looked down on the sheriff. The combination of Quinn's youthful face and imposing height alone was frightening, but the menace flowing from him was palpable.

"Go on, Big Boy," Quinn said in a stage whisper. "Put those handcuffs on me."

Silence.

The sheriff froze, then turned his head away, backed up two feet, and sidled towards the door and went off into the hall and out the front, muttering that nobody at Blackwood Farm had a lick of sense, and, it was such a crying shame that the house would now go to rack and ruin, yes, indeed, RACK AND RUIN! Slam went the door. No more sheriff.

"Well, I think I'd better be going along," said Grady Breen in a cheery loud voice, "and I'll get you a copy of the coroner's report first thing." He made for the front door so quickly that he might have suffered a heart attack later in his car. (But he did not.)

Meantime, Tommy ran to Quinn and threw his arms around him. Nash looked on helplessly.

This caught Quinn very much off guard. But he at once reassured the boy.

"Don't you worry about anything," he said. "You go on back to Eton. And when you come home, Blackwood Farm will be here, always, safe and sound and beautiful as it is now, and making lots of people happy, with Jasmine and Big Ramona and everybody, the same as it is today."

The Shed Men murmured that that was certainly the case. And Cyndy the Nurse said it was true. Big Ramona said, "Yes, Lawd."

Now Jasmine saw that she was needed, and, giving her face a final wipe with her handkerchief, she released her grip on me, received a little torrent of my kisses and went to put her arms around Tommy.

"You come on in the kitchen with me, Tommy Blackwood," she said. "You too, Nash Penfield, I've got a pot of stewed chicken on the stove; you too, Cyndy . . ."

"Youhave a pot of chicken on the stove? Who is this 'You'?" asked Big Ramona, "that'smy pot of stewed chicken. And just look at this Mona Mayfair, why the child's totally recovered."

"No, no, you all go on," said Mona, rising and gesturing for them to leave us. "Quinn and Lestat and I have to talk."

"Little Boss," said Jasmine, "I'm not sleeping downstairs in that house. I've moved upstairs with Jerome and Grandma, and I'm locking the shutters over the windows. Patsy's after me."

"I'll find her out there," said Quinn. "Don't worry."

"Does she come at any certain time?" Mona asked very kindly.

" 'Bout four in the morning," said Jasmine. "I know 'cause she stops the clock."

"That's about right," said Quinn.

"Now, don't you start again with that!" Jasmine rebuked him. "Now they found all those letters and they think she shot herself, you're off the hook, now cool it!" And she pulled Tommy away with her.

"But wait a minute," said Tommy, at once clabbering up and losing a little of his manly dignity in the pure sadness of a child. "I really want to know." He swallowed. "Quinn, you didn't kill her, did you?" It was heartbreaking.

For a long moment everyone was silent, and then Quinn said:

"No, Tommy, I didn't. It's important that you believe me, that I would never do a thing like that. It's just, I wasn't kind to her. And now she's gone. And I feel sad about it. And as for the sheriff, I don't much care for him, and so I said mean things to him."

It was the most perfect of lies, executed with such determination that it shone in the darkness of Quinn's thoughts as it was uttered. It was inflamed with the vibrant love that Quinn felt for Tommy. His hatred of Patsy was as intense as ever. That her ghost was on the prowl infuriated him.

"That's right," said Jasmine. "We just all wish we'd treated her better. She was an independent person, wouldn't you say now, Little Boss, and sometimes we didn't understand her."

"Very well put," said Quinn. "We didn't try hard enough to understand her ways."

"Of course Tommy understands," said Nash. "We all understand. Perhaps I can explain this a little better, if Quinn will allow. Come, Tommy, let's have some supper in the kitchen. Now that Quinn's here, there's nothing to worry about any longer, and Miss Mayfair, if you'll allow me to say, you do look absolutely lovely. It's marvelous to see you again, and so fit."

"Thank you, Mr. Penfield," said Mona, as if she wasn't a wild beast.

But Quinn's face was very dark, and as soon as the room was empty except for the three undercover monsters, we drew together.

"Let's go upstairs," said Quinn, "I really need your advice just now, Lestat. I have to figure out some things. I have some ideas."

"You know I'll do anything I can," I responded.

I calculatedly ignored Mona in her penitential black, who led the way up the circular staircase.