The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

I stared at the fresh bourbon and water. And was suddenly struck by the position of his hand on his gold cigarette case only an inch from the glass. I knew, absolutely knew, this man meant to do me harm. How unexpected. I had thought it was Carlotta all along.

"Oh, excuse me," he said with a sudden look of surprise as though he had just remembered something. "A medicine I have to take, that is, if I can find it." He felt of his pockets, then drew something out of his coat. A small bottle of tablets. "What a nuisance," he said, shaking his head. "Have you enjoyed your stay in New Orleans?" He turned and asked for a glass of water. "Of course you've been to Texas to see my niece, I know that. But you've been touring the city as well, no doubt. What do you think of this garden here?" He pointed to the courtyard behind him. "Quite a story about that garden. Did they tell you?"

I turned in my chair and glanced over my shoulder at the garden. I saw the uneven flagstones, a weathered fountain, and beyond, in the shadows, a man standing before the fanlight door. Tall thin man, with the light behind him. Faceless. Motionless. The chill which ran down my back was almost delicious. I continued to look at the man, and slowly the figure melted completely away.

I waited for a draft of warm air, but I felt nothing. Perhaps I was too far from the being. Or perhaps I was altogether wrong about who or what it had been.

It seemed an age passed. Then, as I turned around, Cortland said, "A woman committed suicide in that little garden. They say that the fountain turns red with her blood once a year."

"Charming," I said under my breath. I watched him lift his glass of water and drink half the contents. Was he swallowing his tablets? The little bottle had disappeared. I glanced at my bourbon and water. I would not have touched it for anything in this world. I looked absently at my pen, lying there beside my diary, and then placed it in my pocket. I was so utterly absorbed in everything that I saw and heard that I felt not the slightest urge to speak a word.

"Well, then, Mr. Lightner, let's get to the point." Again that smile, that radiant smile.

"Of course," I said. What was I feeling? I was curiously excited. I was sitting here with Julien's son, Cortland, and he had just slipped a drug, no doubt lethal, into my drink. He thought he was going to get away with this. The whole dark history glittered suddenly in my mind. I was in it. I wasn't reading about it in England. I was here.

Perhaps I smiled at him. I knew that a crushing misery would follow this curious peak of emotion. The damned son of a bitch was trying to kill me.

"I've looked into this matter, the Talamasca, etcetera," he said in a bright, artificial voice. "There's nothing we can do about you people. We can't force you to disclose your information about our family because apparently it's entirely private, and not intended for publication or for any malicious use. We can't force you to stop collecting it either as long as you break no laws."

"Yes, I suppose that's all true."

"However we can make you and your representatives uncomfortable, very uncomfortable; and we can make it legally impossible for you to come within so many feet of us and our property. But that would be costly to us, and wouldn't really stop you, at least not if you are what you say you are."

He paused, took a draw off his thin dark cigarette, and glanced at the bourbon and water. "Did I order the wrong drink for you, Mr. Lightner?"

"You didn't order any drink," I said. "The waiter brought another of what I had been drinking all afternoon. I should have stopped you. I've had quite enough."

His eyes hardened for a moment as he looked at me. In fact, his mask of a smile vanished completely. And in a moment of blankness and lack of contrivance he looked almost young.

"You shouldn't have made that trip to Texas, Mr. Lightner," he said coldly. "You should never have upset my niece."

"I agree with you. I shouldn't have upset her. I was concerned about her. I wanted to offer my help."

"That's very presumptuous of you, you and your London friends." Touch of anger. Or was it simply annoyance that I wasn't going to drink the bourbon. I looked at him for a long moment, my mind emptying itself until there was no sound intruding, no movement, no color--only his face there, and a small voice in my head telling me what I wanted to know.

"Yes, it is presumptuous, isn't it?" I said. "But you see, it was our representative Petyr van Abel who was the father of Charlotte Mayfair, born in France in 1664. When he later journeyed to Saint-Domingue to see his daughter, he was imprisoned by her. And before your spirit, Lasher, drove him to his death on a lonely road outside of Port-au-Prince, he coupled with his own daughter Charlotte, and thereby became the father of her daughter, Jeanne Louise. That means he was grandfather of Angelique and the great-grandfather of Marie Claudette, who built Riverbend, and created the legacy which you administer for Deirdre now. Do you follow my tale?"

Clearly he was utterly incapable of a response. He sat still looking at me, the cigarette smoking in his hand. I caught no emanation of malice or anger. Watching him keenly, I went on:

"Your ancestors are the descendants of our representative, Petyr van Abel. We are linked, the Mayfair Witches and the Talamasca. And then there are other matters which bring us together after all these years. Stuart Townsend, our representative who disappeared here in New Orleans after he visited Stella in 1929. Do you remember Stuart Townsend? The case of his disappearance was never solved."

"You are mad, Mr. Lightner," he said with no perceptible change of expression. He drew on his cigarette and crushed it out though it was not half spent.

"That spirit of yours, Lasher--he killed Petyr van Abel," I said calmly. "Was it Lasher whom I saw only a moment ago? Over there?" I gestured to the distant garden. "He is driving your niece out of her mind, isn't he?" I asked.

A remarkable change had now come over Cortland. His face, beautifully framed by his dark hair, looked totally innocent in its bewilderment.

"You're perfectly serious, aren't you?" he asked. These were the first honest words he'd spoken since he came into the bar.

"Of course I am," I said. "Why would I try to deceive people who can read other people's thoughts? That would be stupid, wouldn't it?" I looked at the glass. "Rather like you expecting me to drink this bourbon and succumb to the drug you put into it, the way Stuart Townsend did, or Cornell Mayfair after that."

He tried to shroud his shock behind a blank, dull look. "You are making

a very serious accusation," he said under his breath.

"All this time, I thought it was Carlotta. It was never Carlotta, was it? It was you."

"Who cares what you think!" he whispered. "How dare you say such things to me." Then he checked his anger. He shifted slightly in his chair, his eyes holding me as he opened the cigarette case and withdrew another cigarette. His whole demeanor changed suddenly to one of honest inquiry. "What the hell do you want, Mr. Lightner!" he asked, dropping his voice earnestly. "Seriously now, sir, what do you want?"

I reflected for a moment. I had been asking myself this very question for weeks on end. What did I mean to accomplish when I went to New Orleans? What did we, and what did I, really want?

"We want to know you!" I said, rather surprised myself to hear it come out. "To know you because we know so much about you and yet we don't know anything at all. We want to tell you what we know about you--all the bits and pieces of information we've collected, what we know about the deep past! We want to tell you all we know about the whole mystery of who you are and what he is. And we wish you would talk to us. We wish you would trust us and let us in! And lastly, we want to reach out to Deirdre Mayfair and say, 'There are others like you, others who see spirits. We know you're suffering, and we can help you. You aren't alone.' "

He studied me, eyes seemingly open, his face quite beyond dissembling. Then pulling back and glancing away, he tapped off the ash of his cigarette and motioned for another drink.

"Why don't you drink the bourbon?" I asked. "I haven't touched it." Again, I had surprised myself. But I let the question stand.

He looked at me. "I don't like bourbon," he said. "Thank you."

"What did you put in it?" I asked.

He shrank back into his thoughts. He appeared just a little miserable. He watched as the boy set down his drink. Sherry as before, in a crystal glass.

"This is true," he asked, looking up at me, "what you wrote in your letter, about the portrait of Deborah Mayfair in Amsterdam?"

I nodded. "We have portraits of Charlotte, Jeanne Louise, Angelique, Marie Claudette, Marguerite, Katherine, Mary Beth, Julien, Stella, Antha, and Deirdre ... "