Taltos by Anne Rice

stay, Michael. I want to be alone for a while.’ ”
    “You’re sure that was the last thing she said?”
    “Absolutely. I wanted to call everyone, tell them she was all right. Maybe I scared her! I’m the one, making that suggestion. And after that, I was leading her around, and she wasn’t saying anything, and that’s the way it’s been since then.”
    He picked up what appeared to be a raw egg. He cracked it suddenly on the edge of the plastic blender and then pulled open the two halves of shell to let loose the icky white and yolk.
    “I don’t think you hurt her at all, Mona. I really, really doubt you did. I wish you hadn’t told her. If you must know, I could have done without your telling her that I committed statutory rape on the living room couch with her cousin.” He shrugged. “Women do that, you know. They tell afterwards.” He gave her a bright reproving look, the sunlight glinting in his eyes. “We can’t tell, but they can tell. But the point is, I doubt she even heard you. I don’t think … she gives a damn.” His voice trailed off.
    The glass was foamy and faintly disgusting-looking.
    “I’m sorry, Michael.”
    “Honey, don’t—”
    “No, I mean I’m okay. She’s not okay. But I’m okay. You want me to take that stuff to her? It’s gross, Michael, I mean gross. Like it is absolutely disgusting!”
    Mona looked at the froth, the unearthly color.
    “Gotta blend it,” he said. He put the square rubber cap on the container, and pressed the button. Then came the ghastly sound of the blades turning as the liquid jumped inside.
    Maybe it was better if you didn’t
know
about the egg.
    “Well, I put lots of broccoli juice in it this time,” he said.
    “Oh God, no wonder she won’t drink it. Broccoli juice! Are you trying to kill her?”
    “Oh, she’ll drink it. She always drinks it. She drinks anything I put before her. I’m just thinking about what’s in it. Now listen to me. If she wasn’t listening when you madeyour confession, I’m not sure it came as a surprise. All that time she was in the coma, she heard things. She told me. She heard things people said when I was nowhere about. Of course, nobody knew about you and me and our little, you know, criminal activity.”
    “Michael, for chrissakes, if there is a crime of statutory rape in this state, you’d have to get a lawyer to look it up to be sure. The age of consent between cousins is probably ten, and there may even be a special law on the books lowering the age to eight for Mayfairs.”
    “Don’t kid yourself, sweetheart,” he said, shaking his head in obvious disapproval. “But what I was saying is, she heard the things you and I said to each other when we sat by the bed. We’re talking about witches, Mona.” He fell into his thoughts, staring off, brooding almost, looking intensely handsome, beefcake and sensitive.
    “You know, Mona, it’s nothing anybody said.” He looked up at her. He was sad now, and it was very real, the way it is when a man of his age gets sad, and she found herself just a little frightened. “Mona, it was everything that happened to her. It was … perhaps the last thing that happened….”
    Mona nodded. She tried to picture it again, the way he’d so briefly described it. The gun, the shot, the body falling. The terrible secret of the milk.
    “You haven’t told anyone, have you?” he said in a serious whisper. God help her if she had, she thought, she would have died at this moment, the way he was looking at her.
    “No, and I never will,” she said. “I know when to tell and when not to tell, but …”
    He shook his head. “She wouldn’t let me touch the body. She insisted on carrying it down herself, and she could hardly walk. Long as I live, I’m not going to get that sight out of my mind, ever. All the rest of it—I don’t know. I can take it in stride, but something about the mother dragging the body of the daughter …”
    “Did you think of it that way,