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Now, Michael was her goal. To hell with Uncle Randall. Uncle Randall had been interesting because he was so old, and there is a way a really old man looks at a young girl which she found very exciting. But Uncle Randall wasn't a kind man. And Michael was. And Mona liked kindness. She'd isolated that trait in herself a long time ago. Sometimes she divided the world between kind and unkind--fundamentally speaking.

Well, tomorrow she would get to the stocks.

Tomorrow, or the next day, maybe she'd work up the actual portfolio for Mona One, based on the top stock performers for the last five years. It was so easy for her to be carried away, with visions of Mona One becoming so large she had to clone it with a second mutual fund called Mona Two and then Mona Three, and traveling all over the world in her own plane to meet the CEOs of the companies in which she invested.

She'd check out factories in Mainland China, offices in Hong Kong, scientific research in Paris. She pictured herself wearing a cowboy hat when she did this. She didn't actually have a cowboy hat right now. Her bow was her thing. But somehow or other she always had the hat on as she stepped off the imaginary plane. And all this was coming. She knew it.

Maybe it was time she showed Uncle Ryan the printout of the stocks she'd tracked last year. If she'd really had money in them, she'd have her own fortune. Yes, got to boot that file and print that out.

Ah, but she was wasting the moment.

Tonight she was here, with her most important goal in mind. The conquest of the hunk known as Michael. And the finding of the mysterious Victrola.

The gilt fauteuils gleamed in the shadows, graceful straight-backed chairs. Tapestried pillows lay higgledy-piggledy in the deep damask sofa. A veil of stillness lay over all, as if the world beyond had gone up in smoke. Dust on the piano. That poor old Eugenia, she wasn't much good, was she? And Henri was probably too good to dust or mop or sweep. And in their midst was Michael, too sick and indifferent to care what they did.

She left the double parlor, and moved to the foot of the stairs. Very dark up there, as it ought to be, like a ladder to a heaven of shadows. She touched the newel post, and then began her ascent. In the house, in it, wandering, free and in the dark alone! "Oncle Julien, I'm here," she sang in a tiny whisper. When she reached the top she saw that Aunt Viv's room stood empty, just as she had expected.

"Poor Michael, you're all mine," she said softly. And when she turned she saw that the door of the master bedroom was open, and the weak illumination of a little night-lamp poured out into the high narrow hall.

So you're alone in there, big boy, she thought. Not scared to be in the very room where Deirdre died. And let's not forget Great-aunt Mary Beth and all the people who saw the ghosts around her when she lay in that very same bed, and who knows what went on before that?

Gifford had thought it a deplorable decision for Michael to move back into that accursed room. But Mona understood. Why would he want to stay in the bridal chamber after Rowan had left him? Besides, it was the prettiest and fanciest room in the house, the north master bedroom. He himself had restored the plaster ceiling and the medallion. He had polished the enormous half tester bed.

Oh, she understood Michael. Michael liked darkness too, in his own way. Why else would anyone have married into this family? she thought. Something in him was seduced by darkness. He felt good in the twilight and good in the dark, just like she did. She knew that when she watched him walk in the nighttime garden. His thing. If he liked the early morning at all, which she doubted, it was only because it was dim and distorting.

"He is simply too good." Oncle Julien's words came back to her. Well, we'll see.

She crept to the doorframe and saw the tiny night-light, plugged directly into the outlet over on the far wall. The light of the street lamps filtered softly through the lace curtains, and there lay Michael, his head turned away from her, in his immaculate white cotton pajamas, pressed so carefully by Henri that they had a perfect seam down the arm. Michael's hand lay half open on the top of the comforter as though ready to accept a gift. She heard him take a long, raw and uneasy breath.

But he hadn't heard her. He was dreaming. He turned on his side away from her, and sank deeper into a murmuring sleep.

She slipped into the room.

His diary was on the bedside table.

She knew it by the cover; she had seen him writing in it this very night. Oh, it was unconscionable to look into it. She couldn't do it, but how she wanted just to glimpse a few words.

What if she just took a little peek?

Rowan, come back to me. I'm waiting. With a silent sigh she let it close.

Look at all the bottles of pills. They were bombing him with this stuff. She knew most of the names because they were common and other old Mayfairs had taken them often enough. Blood pressure medicines mostly, and then Lasix, that evil diuretic which probably pulled all the potassium out of him the way it had out of Alicia, when she'd straightened up and tried to lose weight, and three other dangerous-sounding potions that were probably what made him look all the time like he was trying to wake up.

Ought to do you a big favor and throw this junk in the garbage for you, she thought. What you need is Mayfair Witches' Brew. When she got home, she'd look up all these drugs in one of the big pharmaceutical books she had in her library. Ah, look, Xanax. That could make anyone into a zombie. Why give him that four times a day? They'd taken Xanax away from her mother, because Alicia took it in handfuls with her wine and her beer.

Hmmm, this did feel like a very unlucky room. She liked the fancy decorative work above the windows, and the chandelier, but it was an unlucky room. And that smell was in here too.

Very faint, but it was here, the delicious smell, the smell that didn't belong in the house, and had something to do with Christmas.

She came close to the bed, which was very high like so many old-fashioned beds, and she looked at Uncle Michael lying there, his profile deep in the snow-white cotton cover of the down pillow, dark lashes and eyebrows surprisingly distinct. Very much a man, just a smidgen more testosterone and you would have had a barrel-chested ape with bushy eyebrows. But there had not been the smidgen. Perfection had been the result.

" 'O brave new world,' " she whispered, " 'that has such people in't!' "

He was drugged, all right. Totally out of it.

That was probably why he'd lost that gift with his hands. He'd worn gloves most of th

e time up till Christmas, telling people his hands were very sensitive. Oh, Mona had tried hard to get to talk to him about that! And tonight, he'd remarked several times he didn't need the gloves anymore at all. Well, of course not if you were taking two milligrams of Xanax every four hours on top of all this other crap! That's how they'd shut down Deirdre's powers, drugging her. Oh, so many opportunities had passed by. Well, this opportunity wouldn't.

And what was this cute little bottle, Elavil? That had a sedative effect too, didn't it? And wow, what a dose. It's a wonder Michael had been able to come downstairs tonight. And to think he'd held her on his shoulders for Comus. Poor guy. This was damn near sadistic.

She touched his cheek lightly. Very clean-shaven. He didn't wake. Another long deep breath came out of him, almost a yawn, sounding very male.

She knew she could wake him, however, he wasn't in a coma after all, and then the most disturbing thought came to her! She'd been with David already tonight! Damn! It had been safe, sanitary but still messy. She couldn't wake Michael, not till she'd sunk down into a nice warm bath.

Hmmm. And she hadn't even thought of that till now. Her clothes were still soiled. That was the whole trouble with being thirteen. Your brilliance was uneven. You forgot enormous things! Even Alicia had told her that.

"One minute, dear, you are a little computer whiz, and the next moment, you're screaming 'cause you can't find your dolls. I told you your dolls are in the cabinet. Nobody took your damned dolls! Oh, I'm so glad I don't ever have to be thirteen again! You know I was thirteen when you were born!"

Tell me about it. And you were sixteen when I was three and you left me downtown in Maison Blanche and I was lost there for two hours! "I forgot, OK! Like I don't take her downtown that much!" Who else but a sixteen-year-old mother would give an excuse like that? It wasn't so bad. Mona had ridden the escalators up and down to her heart's content.

"Take me in your arms," she prayed, looking down at Michael. "I've had a terrible childhood!" But on he slept as if he'd been touched by the witch's wand.