The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

As I pondered all these things, I also found myself thinking often of Petyr van Abel--Petyr whose father had been a great surgeon and anatomist in Leiden, a name in the history books to this day. I longed to tell Rowan Mayfair: "See that name, that Dutch doctor who was famous for his study of anatomy. That is your ancestor. His blood and his skill perhaps have come down to you through all the generations and the years."

These were my thoughts when in the fall of 1988 our investigators began to report some amazing findings regarding traumatic deaths in Rowan's past. It seems that a little girl fighting with Rowan on the playground in San Francisco had suffered a violent cerebral hemorrhage and died within a few feet of the hysterical Rowan before an ambulance could even be called.

Then in 1974, when Rowan was a teenager, she was saved from assault at the hands of a convicted rapist when the man suffered a fatal heart attack as Rowan struggled to fight him off.

In 1984, on the afternoon that he first complained of a severe headache, Dr. Karl Lemle of the Keplinger Institute told his secretary, Berenice, that he had just seen Rowan unexpectedly and that he could not understand the animosity she felt for him. She had become so angry when he tried to speak to her that she had cut him off in front of the other doctors at University. In fact, she'd given him a bad headache. He needed some aspirin. He was hospitalized for the first of his successive hemorrhages that night, and died within a matter of weeks.

That made five deaths from cerebrovascular or cardiovascular accident among Rowan's close associates. Three of these people had died while Rowan was present. Two had seen her within hours of taking ill.

I told my investigators to run an exhaustive check on every single one of Rowan's classmates or colleagues, and to check each and every name with the death records in San Francisco and in the city of the person's birth. Of course this would take months.

But within weeks, they had found yet another death. It was Owen Gander who called me, a man who has worked directly for the Talamasca for twenty years. He is not a member of the order, but he has visited the Motherhouse and he is one of our most trusted confidants, and one of the best investigators we have.

This was his report. At U.C. Berkeley in 1978, Rowan had had a terrible argument with another student over some laboratory work. Rowan felt that the girl had deliberately meddled with her equipment. Rowan had lost her temper--an extremely rare occurrence--and thrown a piece of equipment to the ground, breaking it, and then turned her back on the girl. The girl then ridiculed Rowan until other students came between them insisting that the girl stop.

The girl went home that night to Palo Alto, California, as the spring break began the following day. By the end of spring break she had died of a cerebrovascular hemorrhage. There was no indication from the record that Rowan ever knew.

When I read this, I called Gander immediately from London. "What makes you think Rowan didn't know?" I asked.

"None of her friends knew. After I found the girl's death in the Palo Alto records, I researched her with Rowan's friends. They all remembered the fight, but they didn't know what happened to the girl afterwards. Not a single one knew. I asked them pointedly. 'Never saw her again.' 'Guess she dropped out of school.' 'Never knew her very well. Don't know what happened to her. Maybe she went back to Stanford.' That's it. U.C. Berkeley is an enormous university. It could have happened like that."

I then advised the investigator to proceed with the utmost discretion to discover whether Rowan knew what had happened to Graham's mistress, Karen Garfield. "Call her some time in the evening. Ask for Graham Franklin. When she tells you Graham is dead, explain that you are trying to find Karen Garfield. But try to upset her as little as possible, and don't stay on the line very long."

The investigator called back the following evening.

"You're right."

"About what?" I asked.

"She doesn't know she's doing it! She doesn't have any idea that Karen Garfield is dead. She told me Karen lived somewhere on Jackson Street in San Francisco. She suggested I try Graham's old secretary. Aaron, she doesn't know."

"How did she sound?"

"Weary, faintly annoyed, but polite. She has a beautiful voice, really. Rather exceptional voice. I asked her if she'd seen Karen. I was really pushing it. She said that she didn't actually know Karen, that Karen had been a friend of her father's. I believe she was perfectly sincere!"

"Well, she had to know about her stepfather, and about the little girl on the playground. And she had to know about the rapist."

"Yes, but Aaron, probably none of them was deliberate. Don't you see? She was hysterical when that little girl died; she was hysterical after the rape attempt. As for the stepfather, she was doing everything she could to resuscitate him when the ambulance arrived. She doesn't know. Or if she does know, she can't control it. It might be scaring her half to death."

I told Gander to reconsider the matter of the young lovers in greater detail. Look for any relevant deaths among policemen or fire fighters in San Francisco or Marin County. Go back to the bars Rowan frequented; start a conversation with one of her former lovers; say you're looking for Rowan Mayfair. Has anybody seen her? Does anybody know her? Be as discreet and nondisruptive as possible. But dig.

Gander called four days later. There had been no such suspicious deaths among any young men in the departments who could conceivably be connected to Rowan. But one thing had emerged from the investigator's talks in the bar. One young fireman, who admitted to knowing Rowan and liking her, said she was no mystery to him, rather she was an open book. "She's a doctor; she likes saving people's lives and she hangs around with us because we do the same thing."

"Did Rowan actually say that to the young man?"

"Yes, she told him that. He made a joke about it. 'Imagine, I went to bed with a brain surgeon. She fell in love with my medals. It was great while it lasted. You think if I pull somebody out of a burning building, she'll give me another chance?' " Gander laughed. "She doesn't know, Aaron. She's hooked on saving people, and maybe she doesn't even know why."

"She has to know. She's too good a doctor not to know," I said. "Remember, this girl is a diagnostic genius. She must have known with the stepfather. Unless of course we're wrong about the whole thing."

"We're not wrong," said Gander. "What you've got here, Aaron, is a brilliant neurosurgeon descended from a family of witches, who can kill people just by looking at them; and on some level she knows it, she has to, and she spends every day of her life making up for it in the Operating Room, and when she goes out on the town it's with some hero who's just saved a kid from a burning attic, or a cop who's stopped a drunk from stabbing his wife. She's sort of mad, this lady. Maybe as mad as all the rest."

In December of 1988, I went to California. I had been to the States in January to attend the funeral of Nancy Mayfair, and I deeply regretted not having gone on to the coast at that time to try to get a glimpse of Rowan. But no one had an inkling, then, that both Ellie and Graham would be dead within six months.

Rowan was now all alone in the house in Tiburon. I wanted to have a look at her, even if it was from a distance. I wanted to make some appraisal which depended upon my seeing her in the flesh.

By that time, we had not--thank God--turned up any more deaths in Rowan's past. As the senior resident in neurosurgery, she was working a hectic if not inhuman schedule at the hospital, and I found it far more difficult to get a glimpse of her than I ever imagined. She left the hospital from a covered parking lot and drove into a covered garage at home. The Sweet Christine, moored at her very doorstep, was concealed entirely by a high redwood fence.

At last I entered University Hospital, sought out the doctors' cafeteria, and hovered near it in a small visitors' area for seven hours. To my knowledge Rowan never passed.

I resolved to follow her from the hospital only to discover that there was no way to discover when she might be leaving. When she arrived was also a mystery. There was no discreet way to press anyon

e for details. I could not risk hanging about in the area adjacent to the Operating Rooms. It wasn't open to the public. The waiting room for the family members of those having surgery was strictly monitored. And the rest of the hospital was like a labyrinth. I didn't know finally what to do.

I was thrown into consternation. I wanted to see Rowan, but I dreaded disturbing her. I could not bear the thought of bringing darkness into her life, of clouding the isolation from the past which seemed, on the surface, to have served her so well. On the other hand, if she was actually responsible for the deaths of six human beings! Well, I had to see her before I could make a decision. I had to see her.

Unable to come to any decision, I invited Gander for a drink at the hotel. Gander felt Rowan was deeply troubled. He had watched her off and on for over fifteen years. She had had the wind knocked out of her by the death of her parents, he said. And we could now pretty fairly well confirm that her random contact with the "boys in blue," as he called her lovers, had dropped off in the last few months.

I told Gander I would not leave California without a glimpse of her, if I had to hover in the underground parking lot near her car--the absolutely worst way possible to achieve a sighting--until she appeared.

"I wouldn't try that, old man," said Gander. "Underground parking lots are the spookiest places. Her little psychic antennae will pick you up instantly. Then she'll misinterpret the intensity of your interest in her, and you'll get a sudden stabbing pain in the side of your head. Next you'll suddenly ... "

"I follow the drift, Owen," I said dismally. "But I must get a good look at her in some public place where she isn't aware of me."

"Well, make it happen," said Gander. "Do a little witchcraft yourself. Synchronicity? Isn't that what they call it?"

The following day I decided to do some routine work. I went to the cemetery where Graham and Ellie were buried, to photograph the inscriptions on the stones. I had twice asked Gander to do this, but somehow he had never gotten around to it. I think he enjoyed the other aspects of the investigation much more.