Again, I had enjoyed our sense of purpose, our commitment—that we were the inviolate Talamasca, that we cared for the outcast, that we harbored the sorcerer and the seer, that we had saved witches from the stake and reached out even to the wandering spirits, yes, even to the shades whom others fear. We had done it for well over a thousand years.
"But these little treasures—your family, your heritage," I'd hastened to explain. "They matter to us because they matter to you. And they will always be yours."
She'd nodded. I had got it right.
"Witchcraft's my calling card, Mr. Talbot," she'd said shrewdly, "but all this comes with me too." I had enjoyed the. fleeting enthusiasm which had illuminated her face.
And now, some twenty years after, what had I done, seeking her out, finding her old house in New Orleans deserted, and spying upon her at Oak Haven, walking the broad upstairs galleries of Oak Haven like an old Penny Dreadful Vampire, looking into her very bedroom until she sat up and spoke my name in the darkness. I had done her evil, I knew it, and it was exciting, and I needed her, and I was selfish, and I missed her, and it was as plain as that.
It had been only a week ago that I wrote to her.
Alone in the town house in the Rue Royale, I'd written by hand in a style that hadn't changed with my fortunes:
Dear Merrick,
Yes, it was I whom you saw on the porch outside your room.
It was not my intention to frighten you but merely to solace myself by looking at you, playing the guardian angel, I must confess, if you will forgive me, as I hovered outside the window for the better part of the night. I have a request for you, which I make from my soul to yours. I cannot tell you what it is in this letter. I ask that you meet me in some place that is public, where you will feel safe from me, a place that you yourself choose. Answer at this post box, and I'll be prompt in replying. Merrick, forgive me. If you advise the Elders or the Superior General of this contact, they will in all likelihood forbid you to meet with me. Please give me this little while to speak with you before you take such a step.
Yours in the Talamasca forever,
David Talbot.
What audacity and egoism to have written such a note and delivered it into the iron mailbox at the end of the drive in the hours before dawn.
She'd written back, a note rather tantalizing in its details, full of undeserved affection.
I cannot wait to talk with you. Be assured, whatever shocks this meeting will hold in store for me, I seek you inside the mystery--David, whom I have always loved. You were my Father when I needed you, and my friend ever after. And I have glimpsed you since your metamorphosis, perhaps more often than you know.
I know what happened to you. I know of those with whom you live. The Café of the Lion. Rue St. Anne. Do you remember it? Years ago, before we ever went to Central America, we ate a quick lunch there. You were so wary of us setting out for those jungles. Do you remember how you argued? I think I used a witch's charms to persuade you. I always thought you knew. I'll come early each evening for several nights in hopes that you'll be there.
She had signed the note exactly as I had signed my own:
"Yours in the Talamasca forever."
I had put myself before my love of her, and my duty to her. I was relieved that the deed was done. Back then, when she'd been the orphan in the storm, such a thing had been unthinkable. She was my duty, this little wanderer who had come so surprisingly, on her own, one evening to knock on our door.
"Our motives are the same as your motives," Aaron had said to her most directly on that long ago night at Oak Haven. He'd reached out and lifted her soft brown hair back from her shoulder, as if he were her elder brother. "We want to preserve knowledge. We want to save history. We want to study and we hope to understand." He had made another soft sigh, so unlike him.
"Ah, those white cousins, the Garden District Mayfairs, as you called them, and most correctly, yes, we know of them," he had admitted, surprising me, "but we keep our secrets unless prompted by duty to reveal them. What is their long history to you just now? Their lives are interconnected like thorny vines forever circling and recircling the same tree. Your life might have nothing to do with that bitter struggle. What concerns us here now is what we can do for you. I don't speak idle words when I tell you that you may rely upon us forever. You are, as David has said, our own." She had reflected. It had not been simple for her to accept all of this, she was too used to being alone with Great Nananne—yet something strong had impelled her to trust us before she'd ever come.
"Great Nananne trusts you," she had said, as if I'd asked her. "Great Nananne said that I was to come to you. Great Nananne had one of her many dreams and woke up before daylight and rang her bell for me to come. I was sleeping on the screen porch and I came in and found her standing up in her white flannel gown. She's cold all the time, you know; she always wears flannel, even on the hottest night. She said for me to come sit down and listen to what she had dreamed."
"Tell me about it, child," Aaron had asked. Had they not spoken of this completely before I'd come?
"She dreamed of Mr. Lightner, of you," she'd said, looking to Aaron, "and in the dream you came to her with Oncle Julien, white Oncle Julien from the clan uptown. And the two of you sat by her bed.
"Oncle Julien told her jokes and stories and said he was happy to be in her dream. She said that. Oncle Julien said that I was to go to you, you here, Mr. Lightner, and that Mr. Talbot would come. Oncle Julien spoke French and you yourself were sitting in the cane-backed chair and smiling and nodding to her, and you brought her in a cup of coffee and cream the way she likes it, with half a cup of sugar and one of her favorite silver spoons. In and out of her dreams, Great Nananne has a thousand silver spoons." The dream continued:
"You sat on her bed, finally, on her best quilt beside her, and you took her hand, and she had all her best rings on her hand, which she doesn't wear anymore, you know, and you said in the dream, 'You send me little Merrick,' and you said you'd take care of me, and you told her that she was going to die."
Aaron had not heard this strange recounting, and he'd seemed quite taken, amazed. Lovingly, he'd answered:
"It must have been Oncle Julien who said such a thing in the dream. How could I have known such a secret?" I'd never forgotten his protest, because it had been very unlike him to commit himself even to ignorance, and to press so hard upon such a point.
"No, no, you told her," the fairy child had said. "You told her the day of the week and the hour of the clock, and it's yet to come." She had looked thoughtfully once more at her pictures. "Don't worry about it. I know when it's going to happen." Her face had been suddenly full of sadness. "I can't keep her forever. Les mystères will not wait." Les mystères. Did she mean the ancestors, the Voodoo gods, or merely the secrets of fate? I'd been unable to penetrate her thoughts to any degree whatsoever.
"St. Peter will be waiting," she'd murmured as the visible sadness had slowly receded behind her veil of calm. Quite suddenly, she'd flashed her glance on me and murmured something in French. Papa Legba, god of the crossroads in Voodoo, for whom a statue of St. Peter with his keys to Heaven might do quite well. I had noted that Aaron could not bring himself to question her further on the matter of his role in the dream, the date of Great Nananne's imminent death. He had nodded, however, and once again, with both hands he'd lifted her hair back from her damp neck where a few errant tendrils had clung to her soft creamy skin.
Aaron had regarded her with honest wonder as she had gone on with her tale.