The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

But it was not appropriate to think of him in those terms, was it? She wasn't the doctor when she went hunting; she was Rowan wanting the anonymous partner and then sleep afterwards when the door had shut. It was the doctor, Rowan, who worried about him.

And who knew better than she did all the things that might have gone wrong in the chemistry of the brain during that crucial hour?

She called San Francisco General early the next morning when she brought the boat in. Dr. Morris, the chief resident there, was still on duty. "You have my complete sympathy," she'd said, briefly explaining her own position at University. She described the resuscitation, the instructions she'd given the paramedics about the hypothermia. Curry hadn't said anything, just mumbled something, she hadn't caught any distinct syllables. But she'd felt strongly that he was going to be all right.

"He is, he's fine, he's damned lucky," Dr. Morris told her. And yes, this call was doctor to doctor, completely confidential. All those jackals in the hall needed was to know that a lone female brain surgeon had reeled him in. Of course he was a bit out of it psychologically, talking on and on about visions he had out there, and there's something else happening with his hands, kind of extraordinary--

"His hands?"

"No paralysis or anything like that. Look, my beeper is going off."

"I can hear it. Listen, I'm in my last thirty days at University. Call me if you need me. I'll come."

She hung up. What the hell did he mean about hands? She remembered Michael Curry's grip, the way he had hung on, not wanting to let her go, his eyes fixed on hers. "I didn't screw up," she whispered. "There's nothing wrong with that guy's hands."

She understood about the hands the following afternoon when she opened the Examiner.

He had had a "mystical experience," he explained. From some place high above he'd seen his own body down there floating in the Pacific. A lot more had happened to him, but he couldn't recall it now and it was driving him out of his mind, this failure to remember.

As for the rumors flying around about his hands, well, yes, that was true, he was wearing black gloves now all the time because he saw images every time he touched things. He couldn't lift a spoon or touch a bar of soap, but that he didn't see some image connected to the last human being who'd handled it.

For the reporter he had touched the crucifix of her rosary, and told her it had been bought at Lourdes in 1939 and passed on to her by her mother.

This was absolutely accurate, the newspaper claimed, but there were now countless people on the staff of San Francisco General who could attest to Curry's new power.

He'd like to get out of the hospital, he really would. And he'd like this thing with his hands to go away, for his memory to come back of what had happened to him out there.

She studied the picture--a large clear black-and-white shot of him sitting up in bed. The proletarian charm was unmistakable. And his smile was simply wonderful. He even wore a little gold chain and cross around his neck, the kind that emphasized the muscularity of his shoulders. Lots of cops and fire fighters wore those kinds of chains. She adored them. Even when the little gold cross or medal, or whatever the hell it was, hung down in her face in bed, brushing her like a kiss on the eyelids.

But the black-gloved hands looked sinister in the picture, resting as they did on the white cover. Was it possible, what the article said? She did not for a moment doubt it. She had seen things stranger than that, oh, yes, much stranger.

Don't go see this guy. He doesn't need you, and you don't need to ask about the hands.

She tore out the story, folded it, and shoved it in her pocket. It was still there the following morning when she staggered into the coffee room after a full night of the Neurological Trauma Center and opened the Chronicle.

Curry was on page three, a good head shot, looking a little grimmer than before, perhaps a little less trusting. Dozens of people had now witnessed his strange psychometric power. He wished that people would understand it was nothing but a "parlor trick." He couldn't help them.

All that concerned him now was the forgotten adventure, that is, the realms he'd visited when he was dead. "There was a reason I came back," he said, "I know there was. I had a choice, and I made the decision to return. There was something very important that I had to do. I knew this, I knew the purpose. And it had something to do with a doorway, and a number. But I can't remember the number or what the number meant. Truth is, I can't recall any of it. It's as if the most important experience of my entire life has been wiped out. And I don't know any way to recover it."

They're making him sound crazy, she thought. And it was probably a routine "near death" experience. We know now that people have these all the time. What's wrong with the people around him?

As for his hands, she was a little too fascinated by that part, wasn't she? She perused the various witness accounts. She wished she had five minutes to look at the tests they'd run on him.

She thought again of him lying on the deck, of the firmness of his grip, of the expression on his face.

Had he felt something at that moment through his hand? And what would he feel now, were she to go there, tell him what she remembered about the accident, sit on the bed beside him, and ask him to do his parlor trick--in other words, barter her meager information for what everybody else wanted from him? No.

Repellent that she should make such a demand. Repellent that she, a doctor, should think not of what he might need, but of what she wanted. It was worse than wondering what it would be like to take him to bed, to drink coffee with him at the table in the little cabin at three in the morning.

She'd call Dr. Morris when she had time. See how he was, though when that would be, she couldn't say. She was the walking dead herself right now from lack of sleep, and she was needed right now in Recovery. Maybe she ought to leave Curry entirely alone. Maybe that was the best thing she could do for both of them.

At the end of the week the San Francisco Chronicle ran a long feature story

on the front page.

WHAT HAPPENED TO MICHAEL CURRY?

He was forty-eight, a contractor by profession, a specialist in renovating old Victorian houses, owner of a company called Great Expectations. Seems he was a legend in San Francisco for turning ruins into mansions, a stickler for authenticity right down to the wooden pegs and square nails. He owned a little shop in the Castro full of claw-foot tubs and pedestal lavatories. His detailed drawings for restorations were famous. In fact, a book of them had been published called Grand Victorian Inside and Out. He'd done the award-winning Barbary Coast Bed and Breakfast on Clay Street, and the Jack London Hotel on Buena Vista West.

But he wasn't doing anything now. Great Expectations was temporarily closed. Its owner was too busy trying to remember what had been revealed to him during that crucial hour when he'd been "dead in the water."

"It was no dream," he said. "I know that I talked to people. They explained what they meant for me to do, and I accepted, I asked to come back."

As for the new psychic ability, that had nothing to do with it, he maintained. It seemed to be no more than some accidental side effect. "Look, all I get is a flash--a face, a name. It's totally unreliable."

That night in the hospital coffee room, she caught him on the TV news--the vivid three-dimensional man. There were those unforgettable blue eyes again, and the wholesome smile. Something innocent about him, actually, his simple straightforward gestures indicative of one who has long ago given up on dishonesty, or of trying to fox the complications of the world in any way.

"I've got to go home," he said. Was it a New York accent? "Not home here, I mean, but home where I was born, back in New Orleans." (Ah, so that was the accent!) "I could swear it's got something to do with what happened. I keep getting these flashes of home." Again, he gave a little shrug. He seemed like a damned nice guy.

But nothing had come back to him as yet about the near death visions. The hospital hadn't wanted to release him, but they had to admit that he was physically fit.

"Tell us about the power, Michael."