Mona’s second cousin and Dolly Jean’s granddaughter, she is a descendant of Tobias Mayfair. Blonde and blue-eyed, Mary Jane is a “wanderer, buccaneer, seer, and genius,” and, at the age of nineteen, one of the most powerful Mayfair witches. Resembling Evelyn as a girl, Mary Jane was born with a sixth finger on both hands, although her mother hired a witch doctor in Mexico to cut off the extra finger. Mona views Mary Jane as a “challenging combination of the mundane and the mysterious,” and a “noble savage decked out in the Wal-mart denim skirt.” Beatrice describes her as a “Mayfair’s Mayfair.” Mary Jane was discovered to be a part of the family as a result of the widespread genetic testing. Although she has been poor much of her life, she knows about stocks and she invests money in them so that one day she can raise Fontevrault from the swamps and restore it.
Mary Jane knows the family history from Tobias and Ancient Evelyn, and from writings on the walls of Fontevrault. She lives in the ruins of Fontevrault with her grandmother, Dolly Jean, and educates herself. Her method involves cutting out words from a large-print dictionary, rolling them into balls, putting them into a hat, and picking them out one at a time to systematically learn them. She tosses out those that seem impractical. Having been dragged across the country to California by her alcoholic mother, Mary Jane learned nursing at a commune, gourmet cooking chef, and truck driving. She also killed a man in San Francisco who shot her up with heroin by pushing him from a fire escape.
Although Mona feels threatened at first by Mary Jane’s brains and beauty, she soon appreciates Mary Jane as the ideal cousin. When Mary Jane arrives at First Street, Mona is pregnant with a Taltos. Mary Jane senses that something is different about Mona’s baby. She reads through Lasher’s writings and concludes that Mona needs a safe place to have her baby, so she takes her to Fontevrault and assists in Morrigan’s delivery. Then, substituting Morrigan with someone else’s newborn from the Bayou, she brings a doctor to write out a birth certificate. When Morrigan insists that they all return to First Street, Mary Jane goes along. When Mary Jane confides her desire to raise Fontevrault, Morrigan, the new designee, establishes funds for it from the legacy.
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