The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

He told them finally about Belle, and then exhausted from the telling, he sat there, wanting another beer, but afraid they'd think he was a drunk if he drank another, then giving in and getting up and getting it out of the refrigerator no matter what they thought.

"I don't know why I'm involved, any more than I did before," he said. "But I know they're there, in that house. You remember Cortland said he wasn't one of them. And Belle said to me she wasn't one of them ... if I didn't imagine it ... well, the others who are part of it are there! And that thing altered matter, just a little but it did it, it possessed the dead bodies and worked on the cells.

"It wants Rowan, I know it does. It wants Rowan to use her power to alter matter! Rowan has more of that power than any of the others before her. Hell, she knows what the cells are, how they operate, how they're structured!"

Rowan seemed struck by those words. Aaron explained that after Michael had gone to sleep, and Rowan was sure his pulse was normal, that she had called Aaron and asked him to come to the house. He'd brought crates of ice in which to pack the specimens in the attic, and together they had opened each jar, photographed the contents, and then packed it away.

The specimens were at Oak Haven now. They were frozen. They'd be shipped to Amsterdam in the morning, which was what Rowan wanted. Aaron had also removed Julien's books, and the trunk of dolls, and they too would go to the Motherhouse. But Aaron wanted to photograph the dolls first and he wanted to examine the books, and of course Rowan had agreed to all this, or it wouldn't have happened.

So far, the books appeared to be no more than ledgers, with various cryptic entries in French. If there was an autobiography such as Richard Llewellyn had indicated, it had not been in that attic room.

It gave Michael an irrational relief to know those things were no longer in the house. He was on his fourth beer now, as they sat together on the velvet couches. He didn't care what they thought about it. Just one night's peace, for Chrissakes, he thought. And he had to slow down his brain so he could think it through. Besides, he wasn't getting drunk. He didn't want to be drunk.

But what was one more beer now, and besides they were here where they were safe.

At last, they fell quiet. Rowan was staring at Michael, and suddenly for the whole disaster Michael felt mortally ashamed.

"And how are you, my dear?" asked Michael. "After all this madness. I'm not being very much help to you, am I? I must have scared you to death. Do you wish you'd followed your adoptive mother's advice and stayed in California?"

"You didn't scare me," she said affectionately, "and I liked taking care of you. I told you that once before. But I'm thinking. All the wheels in my head are turning. It's the strangest mixture of elements, this whole thing."

"Explain."

"I want my family," she said. "I want my cousins, all nine hundred of them or however many there are. I want my house. I want my history--and I mean the one Aaron gave to us. But I don't want this damned thing, this secret mysterious evil thing. I don't want it, and yet it's so ... so seductive!"

Michael shook his head. "It's like I told you last night. It's irresistible."

"No, not irresistible," she said, "but seductive."

"And dangerous?" Aaron suggested. "I think we are more certain of that now than ever. I think we know we are talking of a creature which can change matter."

"I'm not so sure," said Rowan. "I examined those stinking things as best I could. The changes were insignificant; they were changes in the surface tissue. But of course the samples were hopelessly old and corroded ... "

"But what about the one with the face like Lasher?" Michael asked. "The duplicate?"

She shook her head. "No evidence to indicate it wasn't a look-alike person," she said. "Julien looked like Lasher. Remarkably so. Again the changes may have been skin deep. Impossible to tell."

"OK, skin deep, but what about that?" Michael pressed. "You ever heard of a thing that could do that? We aren't talking about a blush, we're talking about something permanent! Something there after a century."

"You know what the mind can do," said Rowan. "I don't have to tell you that people can control their bodies to an amazing extent by thought. They can make themselves die if they want to. They've been known to make themselves levitate, if you believe the anecdotal evidence. Stilling heart rates, raising temperatures, that's all well documented. The saints in their trances could make the wounds of the stigmata open in their hands. They can also make these same wounds close. Matter is subject to mind, and we are only beginning to understand the extent of it. And besides, we know that when this thing materializes it has a solid body. At least it seems solid. So the thing changed the subcutaneous tissue of a corpse. What of it? It wasn't even a live body, from what you've told me. It's all rather crude and imprecise."

"You amaze me," said Michael almost coldly.

"Why?"

"I don't know. I'm sorry. But I have a horrible feeling it's all planned that you're who you are, that you're a brilliant doctor! It's all planned."

"Calm down, Michael. There are too many flaws in this whole story for everything to be planned. Nothing's planned in this family. Consider the history."

"It wants to be human, Rowan," said Michael, "that's the meaning of what it said to Petyr van Abel and to me. It wants to be human, and it wants you to help it. What did the ghost of Stuart Townsend say to you, Aaron. It said, 'It's all planned.' "

"Yes," said Aaron thoughtfully, "but it's a mistake to over-interpret that dream. And I think Rowan is right. You cannot assume that you know what is planned. And by the way, for what it's worth, I don't think this thing can become human. It wants to have a body, perhaps, but I don't think that it would ever be human."

"Oh, that's beautiful," said Michael, "just beautiful. And I do think it planned everything. It planned for Rowan to be taken away from Deirdre. That's why it killed Cortland. It planned for Rowan to be kept away until she'd become not only a witch, but a witch doctor. It planned the very moment of her return."

"But again," said Rowan, "why did it show itself to you? If you're to intervene, why did it show itself to you?"

He sighed. With a sinking heart he thought about his pleas to Deborah, about touching the old doll of Deborah, and not seeing her or hearing her voice. The delirium came back to him, the stench of the room, and the ugliness of the rotted specimens. He thought of the mystery of the doorway. Of the spirit's strange words, I see the thirteen.

"I'm going on with my own plan," said Rowan calmly. "I'm going to claim the legacy and the house, just as I told you. I still want to restore the house. I want to live in it. I won't be deterred from it." She looked at him, expecting him to say something. "And this being, no matter how mysterious he is, is not going to get in the way of that, if I have something to say about it. I told you it's overplayed its hand."

She looked at Michael, almost angrily. "Are you with me?" she demanded.

"Yes, I'm with you, Rowan. I love you! And I think you're right to go ahead. We can start on the house any damn time you want. I want that too."

She was pleased, immensely pleased, but still her calm distressed him. He looked at Aaron.

"What do you think, Aaron?" he asked. "About what the creature said, about my role in this? You have to have an interpretation."

"Michael, what's important is that you interpret. That you regain an understanding of what happened to you. I have no certain interpretation of anything.

"This may sound frightfully strange to you, but as a member of the Talamasca, as the brother of Petyr, and Arthur and Stuart, I've already accomplished my most important goals here.

I've made successful contact with both of you. The Mayfair history has been given to Rowan. And you have some knowledge now, fragmentary and biased as it may be to assist you."

"You guys are a bunch of monks," said Michael grumpily. He lifted his beer in a careless toast. " 'We watch, and we are always here.' Aaron, why did all this happen?"

Aaron laughed good-naturedly, but he shook his head. "Michael, Catholics always want us to offer the consolations of the church. We can't do it. I don't know why it's happened. I do know that I can teach you to control the power in your hands, to shut it off at will so it stops tormenting you."

"Maybe," said Michael wearily. "Right now I wouldn't take off these gloves to shake hands with the president of the United States."

"When you want to work with it," said Aaron, "I'm at your service. I'm here for both of you." He looked at Rowan for a long moment and then back to Michael. "I don't have to warn you to be careful, do I?"

"No," said Rowan. "But what about you? Has anything else happened since the traffic accident?"

"Little things," said Aaron. "They're not important in themselves. And it might very well be my imagination. I'm as human as the next man, as far as that goes. I feel I'm being watched however, and menaced in a rather subtle way."

Rowan started to interrupt, but he gestured for silence.

"I have my guard up. I've been in these situations before. And one very odd aspect of the whole thing is this: when I'm with you--either of you--I don't feel this ... this presence near me. I feel completely safe."

"If it harms you," said Rowan, "it makes its final tragic error. Because I shall never address it or recognize it in any way. I'll try to kill it when I see it. All its schemes will be in vain."

Aaron reflected for a moment.

"Do you think it knows that?" asked Rowan.

"Possibly," said Aaron. "But it's like everything else. A puzzle. A pattern can be a puzzle. It can involve great and intricate order; or it can be a labyrinth. I honestly don't know what it knows. I do believe that Michael is entirely right. It wants a human body. There seems no doubt of it. But what it knows and what it doesn't know ... I can't say. I don't know what it really is. I don't guess anyone knows."