The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

When Miss Nancy died last year, Rita said she was going to the funeral. "It's for Deirdre's sake."

"But, honey," Jerry had said, "Deirdre won't know you're doing this." Deirdre hadn't spoken a single syllable in all these years.

But Rita didn't care. Rita was going.

As for Jerry, he didn't want to have anything to do with the Mayfairs. He missed his daddy more than ever.

"Why the hell can't they call some other funeral home?" he had said under his breath. Other people did it now that his daddy was dead and gone. Why didn't the Mayfairs follow suit? He hated the old families.

"Least this is a natural death, or so they tell me," he said.

Now that really startled Rita. "Well, weren't Miss Belle and Miss Millie 'natural deaths'?" she asked.

After he'd finished work that afternoon on Miss Nancy, he told Rita it had been terrible going into that house to get her.

Right out of the old days, the upstairs bedroom with the draperies drawn and two blessed candles burning before a picture of the Mother of Sorrows. The room stank of piss. And Miss Nancy dead for hours in that heat before he got there.

And poor Deirdre on the screen porch like a human pretzel, and the colored nurse holding Deirdre's hand and saying the rosary out loud, as if Deirdre even knew she was there, let alone heard the Hail Marys.

Miss Carlotta didn't want to go into Nancy's room. She stood in the hallway with her arms folded.

"Bruises on her, Miss Carl. On her arms and legs. Did she have a bad tumble?"

"She had the first attack on the stairs, Mr. Lonigan."

But boy, had he wished his dad was still around. His dad had known how to handle the old families.

"Now, you tell me, Rita Mae. Why the hell wasn't she in a hospital? This isn't 1842! This is now. Now I'm asking you."

"Some people want to be at home, Jerry," Rita said. Didn't he have a signed death certificate?

Yes, he did. Of course he did. But he hated these old families.

"You never know what they're going to do," he swore. "Not just the Mayfairs, I mean any of the old ones."

Sometimes the relatives trooped into the viewing room and started right in working on the corpse with their own powder and lipstick. Now, nobody with any sense did that kind of thing anymore.

And what about those old Irish guys who'd laugh and joke while they were acting as pallbearers. One would let his end of the coffin go just so his brother would get the full weight of it--prancing around on the graveyard path like it was Mardi Gras.

And the stories the old ones told at the wake could make you sick. Old Sister Bridget Marie the other night downstairs telling about coming over on the boat from Ireland: The mama said to the baby in the bassinet, "If you don't stop crying, I'll throw you overboard." Then she tells her little boy to watch the baby. Little while she comes back. The baby's gone out of the bassinet. The little boy says, "He started crying again. So I threw him overboard."

Now, what kind of a story is that to tell when you're sitting right beside the coffin?

Rita smiled in spite of herself. She had always liked old Sister Bridget Marie.

"The Mayfairs aren't Irish," she said. "They're rich and rich people don't carry on like that."

"Oh, yes they are Irish, Rita Mae. Or Irish enough anyway to be crazy. It was the famous Irish architect Darcy Monahan who built that house, and he was the father of Miss Mary Beth. And Miss Carl is the daughter of Judge McIntyre and he was Irish as they come. Just a real old-timer. Sure they're Irish. As Irish as anybody else around here in this day and age."

She was amazed that her husband was talking this much. The Mayfairs bothered him, that was clear enough, just as they had bothered his daddy, and nobody had ever told Rita the whole story.

Rita went to the Requiem Mass at the chapel for Miss Nancy. She followed the procession in her own car. It went down First Street to pass the old house, out of respect for Deirdre. But there was no sign Deirdre even saw all those black limousines gliding by.

There were so many Mayfairs. Why, where in the world did they come from? Rita recognized New York voices and California voices and even southern voices from Atlanta and Alabama. And then all the ones from New Orleans! She couldn't believe it when she went over the register. Why, there were Mayfairs from uptown and downtown, and Metairie, and across the river.

There was even an Englishman there, a white-haired gentleman in a linen suit who actually carried a walking stick. He hung back with Rita. "My, what a dreadfully warm day this is," he said in his elegant English voice. When Rita had tripped on the path, he'd steadied her arm. Very nice of him.

What did all these people think of that awful old house, she wondered, and of the Lafayette Cemetery with all the moldering vaults. They were crowded all through the narrow aisles, standing on tiptoe trying to see over the high tombs. Mosquitoes in the high grass. And there was one of the tour buses stopped at the gates right now. Those tourists sure loved it, all right. Well, get an eyeful!

But the big shock was the cousin who'd taken Deirdre's baby. For there she was, Ellie Mayfair from California. Jerry pointed her out while the priest was saying the final words. She had signed the register at every funeral for the last thirty years. Tall, dark-haired woman in a sleeveless blue linen dress, with beautiful suntanned skin. She wore a big white hat. like a sunbonnet, and a pair of dark glasses. Looked like a movie star. How they gathered around her. People clasping her hand. Kissing her on her powdered cheek. When they bent real close, were they asking her about Deirdre's daughter?

Rita wiped her eyes. Rita Mae, they're going to take my baby. Whatever had she done with that little fragment of white card with the word Talamasca on it? Was probably right here in her prayer book somewhere. She never threw anything away. Maybe she should speak to that woman, just ask her how to get in touch with Deirdre's daughter. Maybe some day that girl ought to know what Rita had to tell. But then what right had she to meddle like that? Yet if Deirdre died before Rita did, and Rita saw that woman again, well, then she'd go and ask. Nothing would stop her.

She had almost broken down right then and there, and imagine, people would have thought she was crying for old Miss Nancy. That was a laugh. She had turned around, trying to hide her face and then she'd seen that Englishman, that gentleman, staring at her. He had a real strange expression on his face, like he was worried about her crying, and then she did cry and she made a little wave to him to say, It's all right. But he came over to her anyway.

He gave her his arm, the way he had before, and helped her to walk just a little ways away and there was one of those benches so she sat down on it. When she looked up, she could have sworn Miss Carl was staring at her and at the Englishman, but Miss Carl was real far away, and the sun was shining on her glasses. Probably couldn't see them at all.

Then the Englishman had given her a little white card and said he would like to talk to her. Whatever about, she had thought, but she took the card and put it in her pocket.

It was late that night when she found it again. She had been looking for the prayer card from the funeral. And there it was, that little card from the man and there were the same names after all these years--Talamasca and Aaron Lightner.

For a minute Rita Mae thought she was going to faint dead away. Maybe she'd made a big mistake. She hunted through her prayer book for the old card or what was left of it. Sure enough, they were the same, and on this new one, the Englishman had written in ink the name of the Monteleone Hotel downtown and his room number.

Rita found Jerry sitting up late, drinking, at the kitchen table.

"Rita Mae, you can't go talking to that man. You can't tell him anything about that family."

"But Jerry, I have to tell him what happened before, I have to tell him that Deirdre tried to get in touch with him."

"That was years and years ago, Rita Mae. That baby is grown up. She's a doctor, did you know that? She's going to be a surgeon, that's what I heard."

"I don't care,

Jerry." Then Rita Mae had broken down, but even through her tears, she was doing a strange thing. She was staring at that card and memorizing everything on it. She memorized the room number of the hotel. She memorized the phone number in London.