The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

"I'm Guy Mayfair, Andrea's son, and this is my wife, Stephanie, she's Grady's daughter. She was Ellie's first cousin."

She wanted to respond, was clasping each hand enough, was nodding enough? Was kissing back the old woman who kissed her enough? Another man was talking to her but his voice was too soft. He was old, he was saying something about Sheffield. The coffin was twenty feet away at most. She didn't dare look up, or look away from them, for fear she'd see it accidentally.

But this is what you came for, and you have to do it. And they are here, hundreds of them ...

"Rowan," said someone to her left, "this is Fielding Mayfair, Clay's son." Such a very old man, so old she could see all the bones of his skull through his pale skin, see the lower and upper teeth and the ridges around his sunken eyes. They were holding him up; he couldn't stand by himself, and all this struggle, so that he might see her? She put out her hand. "He wants to kiss you, honey." She brushed his cheek with her lips.

His speech was low, his eyes yellowed as he looked up at her. She tried to hear what he was saying, something about Lestan Mayfair and Riverbend. What was Riverbend? She nodded. He was too old to be treated badly. She had to say something! He was too old to be struggling like this just to pay his respects to her. When she squeezed his hand, it felt so smooth and silky and knotted and strong.

"I think she's going to faint," someone whispered. Surely they weren't talking about her.

"Do you want me to take you up to the coffin?" The young man again, the handsome one, with the clean preppie face, and the brilliant eyes. "I'm Pierce, I met you just a second ago." Flash of perfect teeth. "Ellie's first cousin."

Yes, to the coffin. It's time, isn't it? She looked towards it, and it seemed that someone stepped back so that she might see, and then her eyes shifted instantly upwards, beyond the face on the propped-up pillow. She saw the flowers clustered about the raised lid, a whole jungle of flowers, and far to the right at the foot of the coffin a white-haired man she knew. The dark-haired woman beside him was crying, and saying her rosary, and they were both looking at her, but how in the world could she possibly know that man, or anyone here? But she knew him! She knew he was English, whoever he was, she knew just how his voice would sound when he spoke to her.

Jerry Lonigan helped her step forward. The handsome one, Pierce, was standing beside her. "She's sick, Monty," said the pretty old woman. "Get her some water."

"Honey, maybe you should sit down ... "

She shook her head, mouthing the word no. She looked at that white-haired Englishman again, the one with the woman who was praying. Ellie had wanted her rosary in the last week. Rowan had had to go to a store in San Francisco to buy one. The woman was shaking her head and crying, and wiping her nose, and the white-haired man was whispering to her, but his eyes were fixed on Rowan. I know you. He looked at her as if she'd spoken to him, and then it came to her--the cemetery in Sonoma County where Graham and Ellie were buried, this was the man she had seen that day by the grave. I know your family in New Orleans. And quite unexpectedly another piece of the same puzzle fell into place. This was the man who'd been standing outside Michael's house two nights ago on Liberty Street.

"Honey, do you want a glass of water?" said Jerry Lonigan.

But how could that be? How could that man have been there, and here, and what had all this to do with Michael, who had described to her the house with the iron roses in the railing?

Pierce said he would go get a chair. "Let her just sit right here."

She had to move. She couldn't just remain here staring at the white-haired Englishman, demanding of him that he explain himself, explain what he'd been doing on Liberty Street. And out of the corner of her eye, something she couldn't bear to see, something in the coffin waiting.

"Here, Rowan, this is nice and cold." Smell of wine. "Take a drink, darling."

I would like to, I really would, but I can't move my mouth. She shook her head, tried to smile. I don't think I can move my hand. And you are all expecting me to move, I really should move. She used to think the doctors who fainted at an autopsy were fools, really. How could such a thing affect one so physically? If you hit me with a baseball bat, I might pass out. Oh, God, what you don't know about life is really just beginning to reveal itself in this room. And your mother is in that coffin.

What did you think, that she would wait here, alive, until you came? Until you finally realized ... Down here, in this strange land! Why, this is like another country, this.

The white-haired Englishman came towards her. Yes, who are you? Why are you here? Why are you so dramatically and grotesquely out of place? But then again, he wasn't. He was just like all of them, the inhabitants of this strange land, so decorous and so gentle, and not a touch of irony or self-consciousness or false sentiment in his kindly face. He drew close to her, gently making the handsome young man give way.

Remember those tortured faces at Ellie's funeral. Not a one under sixty yet not a gray hair, not a sagging muscle. Nothing like this. Why, this is what they mean when they talk about "the people."

She lowered her eyes. Banks of flowers on either side of the velvet prie-dieu. She moved forward, her nails digging into Mr. Lonigan before she could stop herself. She struggled to relax her hand and to her utter amazement, she felt she was going to fall. The Englishman took hold of her left arm, as Mr. Lonigan held her by the right one.

"Rowan, listen to me." said the Englishman softly in her ear, in that clipped yet melodious accent. "Michael would be here if he could. I'm here in Michael's place. Michael will come tonight. Just as soon as he can."

She looked at him. shocked, the relief almost making her shudder. Michael was coming. Michael was somewhere close. But how could this be?

"Yes, very close, and unavoidably detained," he said, as sincerely as if he'd invented the words "and truly put out that he cannot be here ... "

She saw the dim dark featureless First Street house again, the house Michael had been talking about all that time. And when she'd first seen him in the water, he had looked like a tiny speck of clothes floating on the surface, that can't be a drowned man, not out here, miles and miles from the land ...

"What can I do for you now?" said the Englishman, his voice low and secretive and utterly solicitous. "Do you want to step up to the coffin?"

Yes, please, take me up. Please help me! Make my legs move. But they were moving. He had slipped his arm around her and he was guiding her, so easily, and the conversation had started up again, thank God, though it was a low respectful hum, from which she could extract various threads at will. " ... she just didn't want to come to the funeral parlor, that's the truth of it. She's furious that we're all here." "Keep quiet, she's ninety if she's a day and it's a hundred degrees outside." "I know, I know. Well, everyone can come to my place afterwards, I told you ... "

She kept her eyes down, on the silver handles, on the flowers, on the velvet kneeler right in front of her now. Sick again. Sick from the heat and this motionless cool air with the scent of the flowers hanging around her like an invisible mist. But you have to do this. You have to do it calmly and quietly. You cannot lose it. Promise me you'll never go back there, you'll never try to find out.

The Englishman was holding her, Michael will come, his right hand comfortingly against her arm, his left hand steadying her left wrist as she touched the velvet-covered side of the casket.

Slowly, she forced herself to look up from the floor, to raise her eyes until she saw the face of the dead woman lying right there on the satin pillow. And slowly her mouth began to open, to pull open, the rigidity shifting into a spasm. She struggled with all her strength to keep from opening her mouth. She clenched her teeth. And the shudder that passed through her was so violent that the Englishman tightened his grip. He too was looking down. He had known her!

Look at her. Nothing else matters now. It is not important to hurry, or to think of anything else, or to worry. Just look at her, look at her face with all its secrets

locked away now forever.

And Stella's face was so beautiful in the coffin. She had such beautiful black hair ...

"She is going to faint, help her! Pierce, help her."

"No, we have her, she's all right," said Jerry Lonigan.

So perfectly, hideously dead she looked, and so lovely. Groomed she was for eternity--with the pink lipstick gleaming on her shapely mouth and the rouge on the flawless girlish cheeks, and her black hair brushed out on the satin, like girl's hair, free and beautiful, and the rosary beads, yes, rosary beads, threaded through her fingers, which are like dough as they lie on her breast, not human hands at all, but something made crudely by a sculptor.

In all these years, Rowan had never seen such a thing. She had seen them drowned, and stabbed, and after they had died on the wards in their sleep. She had seen them colorless and pumped with chemicals, slit open after weeks and months and even years, for the anatomy lesson. She had seen them at the autopsy with the bloodred organs being lifted out in the doctor's gloved hands.

But never this. Never this dead and pretty thing in blue silk and lace, smelling of face powder, with her hands clasped over the rosary beads. Ageless she looked, almost like a giant little girl with her innocent hair, her face devoid of lines, even the shiny lipstick the color of rose petals.

Oh, if it were only possible to open her eyes! I wish I could see my mother's eyes! And in this room filled with the very old, she is so young still ...