The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

She turned back, staring at the woman who sat at the end of the table. Her thick wavy hair looked very white in the dark, massed more softly around her face than before, and the candlelight made two distinct and frightening flames in her round glasses.

"Sit down, Rowan Mayfair," she said. "I have many things to say to you."

Was it stubbornness that caused her to take one last slow look around her, or merely her fascination which wouldn't be interrupted? She saw that the velvet curtains were almost ragged in some places, and the floor was covered with threadbare carpet. A smell of dust or mold rose from the upholstered seats of the carved chairs. Or was it from the carpet, perhaps, or the sad draperies?

Did not matter. It was everywhere. But there was another smell, another delicious smell that made her think of wood and sunlight, and strangely, of Michael. It smelled good to her. And Michael, the carpenter, would understand that smell. The smell of the wood in the old house, and the heat which had built up in it all day long. Faintly blended with the whole was the smell of the wax candles.

The darkened chandelier above caught the candlelight, reflecting it in hundreds of crystal teardrops.

"It takes candles," said the old woman. "I'm too old now to climb up to change them. And Eugenia is also too old. She can't do it." With a tiny gesture of her head, she pointed to the far corner.

With a start Rowan realized that a black woman was standing there, a wraith of a creature with scant hair and yellowed eyes and folded arms, seemingly very thin, though it was hard to tell in the dark. Nothing was visible of her clothes but a soiled apron.

"You can go now, dear," said Carlotta to the black woman. "Unless my niece would like something to drink. But you don't, do you, Rowan?"

"No. No thank you, Miss Mayfair."

"Call me Carlotta, or Carl if you will. It doesn't matter. There are a thousand Misses Mayfair."

The old black woman moved away, past the fireplace, and around the table and out the door into the long hall. Carlotta watched her go, as if she wanted to be completely alone before she said another word.

Suddenly there was a clanging noise, oddly familiar yet completely undefinable to Rowan. And then the click of a door being shut, and a dull deep throb as of a great motor churning and straining within the depths of the house.

"It's an elevator," Rowan whispered.

The old woman appeared to be monitoring the sound. Her face looked shrunken and small beneath the thick cap of her hair. The dull clank of the elevator coming to a halt seemed to satisfy her. She looked up at Rowan, and then gestured to a lone chair on the long flank of the table.

Rowan moved towards it, and sat down, her back to the windows that opened on the yard. She turned the chair so that she might face Carlotta.

More of the murals became visible to her as she raised her eyes. A plantation house with white columns, and rolling hills beyond it.

She looked past the candles at the old woman and was relieved to see no reflection any more of the tiny flames in her glasses. Only the sunken face, and the glasses gleaming cleanly in the light, and the dark flowered fabric of the woman's long-sleeved dress, and her thin hands emerging from the lace at the sleeves, holding with knotted fingers what seemed a velvet jewel box.

This she pushed forward sharply towards Rowan.

"It's yours," she said. "It's an emerald necklace. It's yours and this house is yours and the land upon which it stands, and everything of any significance contained in it. Beyond that, there is a fortune some fifty times beyond what you have now, perhaps a hundred times, though that is now beyond my reckoning. But listen to what I say before you lay claim to what is yours. Listen to all I have to tell you."

She paused, studying Rowan's face, and Rowan's sense of the agelessness of the woman's voice, indeed of her manner altogether, deepened. It was almost eerie, as if the spirit of some young person inhabited the old frame, and gave it a fierce contradictory animation.

"No," said the woman. "I'm old, very old. What's kept me alive is waiting for her death, and for the moment I feared above all, the moment of your coming here. I prayed that Ellie would live a long life, that Ellie would hold you close in those long years, until Deirdre had rotted in the grave, and until the chain was broken. But fate has dealt me another little surprise. Ellie's death. Ellie's death and not a word to tell me of it."

"It was the way she wanted it," Rowan said.

"I know." The old woman sighed. "I know what you say is true. But it's not the telling of it, it's the death itself that was the blow. And it's done, and couldn't be prevented."

"She did what she could to keep me away," Rowan said simply. "She insisted I sign a promise that I'd never come. I chose to break it."

The old woman was silent for a moment.

"I wanted to come," Rowan said. And then as gently, as imploringly as she could, she asked: "Why did you want me kept away? Was it such a terrible story?"

The woman sat silent regarding her. "You're a strong woman," she said. "You're strong the way my mother was strong."

Rowan didn't answer.

"You have her eyes, did they tell you that? Were there any of them old enough to remember her?"

"I don't know," Rowan answered.

"What have you seen with your eyes?" asked the old woman. "What have you seen that you knew should not be there?"

Rowan gave a start. At first she had thought she misunderstood the words; then in a split second she realized she had not, and she thought instantly of the phantom who had appeared at three o'clock, and confused with it suddenly and inexplicably was her dream on the plane of someone invisible touching her and violating her.

In confusion she saw the smile spread over the old woman's face. But it wasn't bitter or triumphant. It was merely resigned. And then the face went smooth again and sad and wondering. In the dim light, the old woman's head looked like a skull for a moment.

"So he did come to you," she said with a soft sigh, "and he laid his hands on you."

"I don't know," Rowan said. "Explain this to me."

But the woman merely looked at her and waited.

"It was a man, a thin elegant man. He came at three o'clock. At the hour of my mother's death. I saw him as plainly as I see you, but it was only for a moment."

The woman looked down. Rowan thought she had closed her eyes. Then she saw the little gleam of light beneath her lids. The woman folded her hands before her on the table.

"It was 'the man'," she said. "It was 'the man' who drove your mother mad, and drove her mother mad before her. 'The man' who served my mother who ruled all those around her. Did they speak of him to you, the others? Did they warn you?"

"They didn't tell me anything," she said.

"That's because they don't know, and at last they realize they don't know, and now they leave the secrets to us, as they should have always done."

"But what did I see? Why did he come to me?" Once again, she thought of the dream on the plane, and she could find no answer for connecting the two.

"Because he believes that you are his now," said the woman. "His to love and his to touch and his to rule with promises of servitude."

Rowan felt the confusion again, and a dull heat in her face. His to touch. The haunting ambience of the dream came back.

"He will tell you it's the other way around," said the old woman. "When he speaks into your ear so that no one can hear, he will say he is your slave, that he's passed to you from Deirdre. But it's a lie, my dear, a vicious lie. He'll make you his and drive you mad if you refuse to do his will. That is what he's done to them all." She stopped, her wrinkled brows tightening, her eyes drifting off across the dusty surface of the table. "Except for those who were strong enough to rein him in and make him the slave he claimed to be, and use him for their own ends ... " Her voice trailed off. "Their own endless wickedness."

"Explain it to me."

"He touched you, did he not?"

"I don't know."

"Oh yes you do. The

color flies into your cheeks, Rowan Mayfair. Well, let me ask you, my girl, my independent young girl who has had so many men of her own choice, was it as good as a mortal man? Think before you speak. He'll tell you that no mortal man could give you the pleasure he gives. But was it true? It carries a terrible price, that pleasure."

"I thought it was a dream."

"But you saw him."