The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

"Your voice is soothing to me, it's beautiful." She sighed.

"I want it to be beautiful for you. I want to give you pleasure. That you hated me made me sad."

"When?"

"When I touched you."

"Explain it all to me, everything."

"But there are many possible explanations. You shape the explanation by the question you ask. I can talk to you of my own volition, but what I tell you will have been shaped by what I have been taught through the questions of others over the centuries. It is a construct. If you want a new construct, ask."

"When did you begin?"

"I don't know.

"Who first called you Lasher?"

"Suzanne."

"Did you love her?"

"I love Suzanne."

"She still exists."

"She is gone."

"I'm beginning to see," she said. "There is no physical necessity in your world, and consequently no time. A mind without a body."

"Precisely. Clever. Smart."

"One of those words will do."

"Yes," he said agreeably, "but which one?"

"You're playing with me."

"No. I don't play."

"I want to get to the bottom of this, to understand you, your motives, what you want."

"I know. I knew before you spoke," he said in the same kind, seductive manner. "But you are clever enough to know that in the realm in which I exist there is no bottom." He paused and then went on slowly as before. "If you prod me to speak to you in complete and sophisticated sentences, and to allow for your persistent misconceptions, mistakes, or crude distinctions, I can do it. But what I say may not be as near to truth as you might like."

"But how will you do it?"

"Through what I've learned of human thinking from other humans, of course. What I am saying is, choose--begin at the beginning with me if you want pure truth. You will receive enigmatic and cryptic answers. And they may be useless. But they will be true. Or begin in the middle and you will receive educated and sophisticated answers. Either way, you will know of me what I learn of myself from you."

"You're a spirit?"

"What you call a spirit, I am."

"What would you call yourself?"

"I do not."

"I see. In your realm you have no need of a name."

"No understanding even of a name. But in truth just no name."

"But you have wants. You want to be human."

"I do." Something like a sigh followed, eloquent of sadness.

"Why?"

"Wouldn't you want to be human if you were me, Rowan?"

"I don't know, Lasher. I might want to be free."

"I crave it in pain," said the voice, speaking slowly and sorrowfully. "To feel heat and cold; to know pleasure. To laugh--ah, what would it be to laugh? To dance and sing, and to see clearly through human eyes. To feel things. To exist in necessity and in emotions and in time. To have the satisfaction of ambition, to have distinct dreams and ideas."

"Ah, yes, I'm understanding it all right."

"Don't be too sure."

"You don't see clearly?"

"Not the same."

"When you looked through the eyes of the dead man, did you see clearly?"

"Better, but not clear, and death was on me, hanging on me, around me, and moving fast. Finally I went blind inside."

"I can imagine. You went into Charlotte's father-in-law while he lived."

"Yes. He knew I was there. He was weak, but happy to walk, and to lift things with his hands again."

"Interesting. What we call possession."

"Correct

. I saw distinct things through his eyes. I saw brilliant colors and smelled flowers and saw birds. I heard birds. I touched Charlotte with a hand. I knew Charlotte."

"You can't hear things now? You can't see the light of this fire?"

"I know all about it. But I do not see or hear or feel it the way you do, Rowan. Though when I draw near to you, I can see what you see, I know you and your thoughts."

She felt a sharp throb of fear. "I'm getting the hang of it."

"You think you are. But it's bigger and longer."

"I know. I really do."

"We know. We are. But from you we have learned to think in a line, and we have learned time. We have also learned ambition. For ambition one must know concepts of past and present and future. One must plan. And I speak only of those of us who want. Those of us who do not want, do not learn, for why should they? But to say 'us' is to approximate. There is no 'us' for me because I am alone and turned away from the others of me and see only you and your kind."

"I understand. When you were in the dead bodies ... the heads in the attic ... "

"Yes."

"Did you change the tissues of those heads?"

"I did. I changed the eyes to brown. I changed the hair in streaks. This took great heat from me and concentration. Concentration is the key to all I do. I draw together."

"And in your natural state?"

"Large, infinite."

"How did you change the pigment?"

"Went into the particles of flesh, altered the particles. But your understanding of this is greater than mine. You would use the word mutation. I know no better words, you know scientific words. Concepts."

"What stopped you from taking over the entire organism?"

"It was dead. It gradually finished and was heavy and I was blind and dumb. I could not bring the spark of life back to it."

"I see. In Charlotte's father-in-law, did you change his body?"

"That I could not do. I did not know to try to do it. And I cannot do it now if I were there then. You see?"

"Yes, I do. You're constant, yet we're in time. I see. But you are saying that you cannot change living tissue?"

"Not of that man. Not of Aaron when I am in him."

"When are you in Aaron?"

"When he sleeps. That is the only time I can get in."