The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

"I do want to understand," she said. "I do. But that wouldn't keep me here by itself. Besides, it doesn't matter to this being whether or not we're in Montcleve, France, or Tiburon, California, or Donnelaith, Scotland. And as for what matters to those beings you saw, they're going to have to come back and tell you what matters! You don't know."

She paused, deliberately and obviously trying to soften her words as if she feared she'd become too sharp.

"Michael," she said, "if you want to stay, make up your mind based on something else. Like maybe wanting to be here for me or because it's where you were born, or because you think you'd be happy here. Because it was the first place you loved, this neighborhood, and maybe you could love it again."

"I never stopped loving it."

"But don't do anything else to give in to them! Do things in spite of them."

"Rowan, I'm here now in this room because of them. Don't lose sight of that fact. We did not meet at the yacht club, Rowan."

She let out a long breath.

"I insist on losing sight of it," she said.

"Did Aaron talk to you about all this? Was this his advice to you?"

"I didn't ask him for his advice," she said patiently. "I met with him for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to talk with him again, and confirm for myself that he was an honest man."

"And?"

"He's everything you said he was. But I had to see him again, really talk to him." She paused. "He's a bit of a spellbinder, that man."

"I know."

"I felt this when I saw him at the funeral; and there was the other time, when I met him at Ellie's grave."

"And you feel all right about him now?"

She nodded. "I know him now," she said. "He's not so different from you and me."

"How do you mean?"

"He's dedicated," she said. She gave a little shrug. "Just the way I'm a dedicated surgeon, and you're dedicated when you're bringing a house like this back to life." She thought for a minute. "He has illusions, the way you and I have illusions."

"I understand."

"The second thing was--I wanted to tell him that I was grateful for what he'd given me in the history. That he didn't have to worry about resentment or a breach of confidence from me."

He was so relieved that he didn't interrupt her, but he was puzzled.

"He filled in the largest and the most crucial blank in my life," she said. "I don't think even he understands what it meant to me. He's too wary. And he doesn't really know about loneliness. He's been with the Talamasca ever since he was a boy."

"I know what you mean. But I think he does understand."

"But still he's wary. This thing--this charming brown-haired apparition, or whatever he is--really tried to hurt him, you know."

"I know."

"But I tried to make him understand how grateful I was. That I wasn't challenging him in any way. Two days ago I was a person without a past or a family. And now I have both of those things. The most agonizing questions of my life have been answered. I don't think the full meaning of if has really sunk in. I keep thinking of my house in Tiburon and each time I realize 'You don't have to go back mere, you don't have to be alone there anymore.' And it's a wonderful shock all over again."

"I never dreamed you'd respond that way. I have to confess. I thought you'd be angry, maybe even offended."

"Michael, I don't care what Aaron did to get the information. I don't care what his colleagues did, or what they've done all along. The point is, the information wouldn't be there in any form whatsoever if he hadn't collected it. I'd be left with that old woman, and the vicious things she said. And all the shiny-faced cousins, smiling and offering sympathy, and incapable of telling the whole story because they don't know it. They only know little glittering parts." She took a deep breath. "You know, Michael, some people can't receive gifts. They don't know how to claim them and make use of them. I have to learn how to receive gifts. This house is a gift. The history was a gift. And the history makes it possible for me to accept the family! And God, they are the greatest gift of all."

Again he was relieved, profoundly relieved. Her words held a charm for him. Nevertheless he could not get over his surprise.

"What about the part of the file on Karen Garfield?" he asked. "And Dr. Lemle? I was so afraid for you, reading that."

The flash of pain in her face this time was stronger, brighter. Instantly he regretted his bluntness. It seemed suddenly unforgivable to have blurted out these words.

"You don't understand me," she said, her voice as even as before. "You don't understand the kind of person I am. I wanted to know whether or not I had that power! I went to you because I thought if you touched me with your hands you could tell me if this power was really there. Well, you couldn't. But Aaron has told me. Aaron has confirmed it. And nothing, nothing could be worse than suspecting it and being unsure."

"I see."

"Do you?" She swallowed, her face working hard suddenly to preserve its expression of tranquillity. And then her eyes went dull for a moment, and only brightened again with an obvious act of will. In a dry whisper, she said, "I hate what happened to Karen Garfield. I hate it. Lemle? Lemle was sick already. He'd had a stroke the year before. I don't know about Lemle, but Karen Garfield ... that was my doing, all right, and Michael, it was because I didn't know!"

"I understand," he said softly.

For a long moment, she struggled silently to regain her composure. When she spoke again, her voice was weary and a little frayed.

"There was still another reason I had to see Aaron."

"What?"

She thought for a moment, then:

"I'm not in communication with this spirit, and that means I can't control it. It hasn't revealed itself to me, not really. And it may not."

"Rowan, you've already seen it, and besides--it's waiting for you."

She was pondering, her hand playing idly with a little thread on the edge of her shirt.

"I'm hostile to it, Michael," she said. "I don't like it. And I think it knows. I've been sitting here for hours alone, inviting it to come, yet hating it, fearing it."

Michael puzzled over this for a moment.

"It may have overplayed its hand," she said.

"You mean, the way it touched you ... "

"No. I mean in me, it may have overplayed its hand. It may have helped to create the very medium who can't be seduced by it, or driven crazy by it. Michael, if I could kill a flesh and blood human being with this invisible power of mine, what do you think my hostility feels like to Lasher?"

He narrowed his eyes, studying her. "I don't know," he confessed.

Her hand shook just a little as she swept her hair back out of her face, the sunlight catching it for one moment and making it truly blond.

"My dislikes run very deep. They always have. They don't change with time. I feel an inveterate dislike for this thing. Oh, I remember what you said last night, about wanting to talk to it, reason with it, learn what it wants. But the dislike is what's strongest right now."

Michael watched her for a long silent moment. He felt a curious, near inexplicable, quickening of his love for her.

"You know, you're right in what you said before," he said. "I don't really understand you, or what kind of person you are. I love you, but I don't understand you."

"You think with your heart," she said, touching his chest gently with her left fist. "That's what makes you so good. And so naive. But I don't do that. There's an evil in me equal to the evil in people around me. They seldom surprise me. Even when they make me angry."

He didn't want to argue with her. But he was not naive!

"I've been thinking for hours about all this," she said. "About this power to rupture blood vessels and aortas and bring about death as if with a whispered curse. If this power I have is good for anything, maybe it's good for destroying this entity. Maybe it can act on the energy controlled by him as surely as it acts upon flesh and blood cells."

"That never even c

rossed my mind before."

"That's why we have to think for ourselves," she said. "I'm a doctor, first and foremost. Only a woman and a person, second. And as a doctor, it's perfectly easy for me to see that this entity is existing in some continuous relationship with our physical world. It's knowable, what this being is. Knowable the way the secret of electricity was knowable in the year 700 though no one knew it."

He nodded. "Its parameters. You used that word last night. I keep wondering about its parameters. If it's solid enough when it materializes for me to touch it."

"Right. Exactly. What is it when it materializes? I have to learn its parameters. And my power also works according to the rules of our physical world. And I have to learn the parameters of my power, too."

The pain came back into her face, again like a flash of light, somehow distorting her expression, and then broadening until her smooth face threatened to rumple like that of a doll in a flame. Only gradually did she go blank again, calm and pretty and silent. Her voice was a whisper when she resumed.

"That's my cross, the power. Just as your cross is the power in your hands. We'll learn to control these things, so that we decide when and where to use them."

"Yeah, that's exactly what we have to do."

"I want to tell you something about that old woman, Carlotta, and about the power ... "

"You don't have to, if you don't want to."