The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

2) The man's background is remarkable, especially his formal education. Gander confirms background in history, especially European history. We need that kind of person, desperately.

He is weak in languages, but everyone today is weak in languages.

3) But the main question regarding Curry is this: How do I get to see him? I wish the entire Mayfair family would go away for a while. I don't want to think of Rowan while I am on Curry ...

Michael quickly leafed through the rest of the last folder. All articles on him, and articles he had read before. Two large glossy United Press International photographs of him. A typewritten biography of him, compiled mostly from the attached materials.

Well, he knew the file on Michael Curry. He put all this aside, lighted a fresh cigarette, and returned to the handwritten account of Aaron's meeting in the Parker Meridien with the doctor.

It was very easy to read Aaron's fine script. The descriptions of Lasher's appearances were neatly underlined. He finished the account, agreeing with Aaron's remarks.

Then he got up from the porch chair, taking the folder with him, and went inside, to the desk. His leather-covered notebook lay there where he'd left it. He sat down, staring blindly at the room for a moment, not really seeing that the river breeze was blowing the curtains, or that the night was utter blackness outside. Or that the supper tray lay on the ottoman before the wing chair, just as it had since it arrived, with the food beneath its several silver-domed covers untouched.

He lifted his pen and began to write:

"I was six years old when I saw Lasher in the church at Christmas behind the crib. That would have been 1947. Deirdre would have been the, same age, and she might have been in the church. But I have the strongest feeling that she wasn't there.

"When Lasher showed himself to me in the Municipal Auditorium, she might have been there too. But again--we can't know, to quote Aaron's favorite clause.

"Nevertheless the appearances per se have nothing to do with Deirdre. I have never seen Deirdre in the garden of First Street, nor anywhere, to my knowledge.

"Undoubtedly Aaron has already written up what I've told him. And the same suggestion is relevant: Lasher appeared to me when he was not in the vicinity of the witch. He can probably materialize where he wants to.

"The question is still why. Why me? And other connections are even more tantalizing and nerve-racking.

"For example--this may not matter much--but I know Rita Mae Dwyer Lonigan. I was with her and Marie Louise on the riverboat the night she got drunk with her boyfriend, Terry O'Neill. For that she was sent to St. Ro's, where she met Deirdre Mayfair. I remember Rita Mae going to St. Ro's.

"Does this mean nothing?

"And something else too. What if my ancestors worked in the Garden District? I don't know that they did or didn't. I know my father's mother was an orphan, reared at St. Margaret's. I don't think she had a legal father. What if her mother had been a maid in the First Street house ... but my mind is just going crazy.

"After all, look what these people have done in terms of breeding. When you do this with horses and dogs, it's called inbreeding or line breeding.

"Over and over again, the finest male specimens have inbred with the witches, so that the genetic mix is strengthened in terms of certain traits, undoubtedly including psychic traits, but what about others? If I read this damn thing properly, Cortland wasn't just the father of Stella and Rowan. He could have been the father of Antha too, though everybody thought it was Lionel.

"Now if Julien was Mary Beth's father, ah, but they ought to do some kind of computer thing just on that aspect of it, the inbreeding. Make a chart. And if they have the photographs, they can get into more genetic science. But I have to tell all this to Rowan. Rowan will understand all this. When we were talking Rowan said something about genetic research being so unpopular. People don't want to admit what they can determine about human beings genetically. Which brings me to free will, and my belief in free will is part of why I'm going crazy.

"Anyway, Rowan is the genetic beneficiary of all this--tall, slim, sexy, extremely healthy, brilliant, strong, and successful. A medical genius with a telekinetic power to take life who chooses instead to save life. And there it is, free will, again. Free will.

"But how the hell do I fit in with my free will intact, that is? I mean what is 'all planned' to use Townsend's words in the dream. Christ!

"Am I perhaps related somehow to these people through the Irish servants that worked for them? Or is it simply that they outcross when they need stamina? But any of Rowan's police/fire fighter heroes would have done the job. Why me? Why did I have to drown, if indeed, they accomplished the drowning, which I still don't believe they did--but then Lasher was revealing himself alone to me all the way back to my earliest years.

"God, there is no one way to interpret any of this. Maybe I was destined for Rowan all along, and my drowning wasn't meant, and that's why the rescue happened. If the drowning was meant, I can't accept it! Because if that was meant, then too much else could be meant. It's too awful.

"I cannot read this history and conclude that the terrible tragedies here were inevitable--Deirdre to die like that.

"I could write on like this for the next three days, rambling, discussing this point or that. But I'm going crazy. I still haven't a clue to the meaning of the doorway. Not a single thing in what I've read illuminates this single image. Don't see any specific number involved in this either. Unless the number thirteen is on a doorway, and that has some meaning.

"Now the doorway may simply be the doorway to First Street; or the house itself could be some sort of portal. But I'm reaching. There is no feeling of rightness to what I say.

"As for the psychometric power in my hands, I still don't know how that is to be used, unless I am to touch Lasher when he materializes, and thereby know what this spirit really is, whence he comes and what he wants of the witches. But how can I touch Lasher unless Lasher chooses to be touched?

"Of course I will remove the gloves and lay my hands on objects related to this history, to First Street, if Rowan, who is now the mistress of First Street, will allow. But somehow the prospect fills me with terror. I can't see it as the consummation of my purpose. I see it as intimacy with countless objects, surfaces, and images ... and also ... for the first time I'm afraid of touching objects which belonged to the dead. But I must attempt it. I must attempt everything!

"Almost nine o'clock. Still Aaron isn't here. And it's dark and creepy and quiet out here. I don't want to sound like Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, but the crickets make me nervous in the country too. And I'm jumpy in this room, even with its nice brass lamps. I don't want to look at the pictures on the wall, or in the mirrors for fear something's going to scare me.

"I hate being scared.

"And I can't stand waiting here. Perhaps it's unfair to expect Aaron to arrive the minute I finish reading. But Deirdre's funeral is over, and here I sit waiting for Aaron, with Mayfairs on the brain and pressing on my heart, but I wait! I wait because I promised I would, and Aaron hasn't called, and I have to see Rowan.

"Aaron is going to have to trust me on this, he really is. We'll talk tonight, tomorrow, and the next day, but tonight I am going to be with Rowan!

"One final note: if I sit here and close my eyes, and I think back on the visions. If I evoke the feeling, that is, for all the facts are gone, I still find myself believing that the people I saw were good. I was sent back for a higher purpose. And it was my choice--free will--to accept that mission.

"Now I cannot attach any negative or positive feeling to the idea of the doorway or the number thirteen. And that is distressing, deeply distressing. But I continue to feel that my people up there were good.

"I don't believe Lasher is good. Not at all. The evidence seems incontrovertible that he has destroyed some of these women. Maybe he has destroyed everyone who ever resisted him. And Aaron's question, What is the agenda of this being? is the pertinent one. This creature does th

ings on his own. But why am I calling him a creature? Who created him? The same person who created me? And who is that, I wonder. Go for entity.

"This entity is evil.

"So why did he smile at me in the church when I was six? Surely he can't want me to touch him and discover his agenda? Or can he?

"Again the words 'meant' and 'planned' are driving me mad. Everything in me revolts against such an idea. I can believe in a mission, in a destiny, in a great purpose. All those words have to do with courage and heroism, with free will. But 'meant' and 'planned' fill me with this despair.

"Whatever the case, I don't feel despair right now. I feel crazed, unable to stay in this room much longer, desperate to reach Rowan. And desperate to put all these pieces together, to fulfill the mission I was given out there, because I believe that the best part of me accepted that mission.

"Why do I hear that guy in San Francisco, Gander or whatever his name was, saying, 'Conjecture!'