The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

"A body. Are you serious?"

"They need to take it out. Could you or Pierce go up there, see that they don't touch all those old records and things? Rowan's in there. She's exhausted. She can talk in the morning."

At once Pierce accepted the mission. Thunder of people going up the old staircase.

In hushed voices Ryan and Michael talked. Smell of cigarette smoke in the hall. Ryan came into the dining room and spoke to Rowan in a whisper.

"Tomorrow, I'll call you at the hotel. Are you sure you don't want to come with me and with Pierce out to Metairie?"

"Have to be close," she said. "Want to walk over in the morning."

"Your friend from California is a nice man, a local man."

"Yes. Thank you."

Even to old Eugenia, Michael had been the protector, putting his arm around her shoulder as he escorted her in to see "old Miss Carl" before Lonigan lifted the body from the rocker. Poor Eugenia who cried without making a sound. "Honey, do you want me to call someone for you? You don't want to stay tonight in the house alone, do you? You tell me what you want to do. I can get someone to come here and stay with you."

With Lonigan, his old friend, he fell right into stride. He lost all the California from his voice, and was talking just like Jerry, and just like Rita, who had come out with him in "the wagon." Old friends, Jerry drinking beer with Michael's father on the front steps thirty-five years ago, and Rita double-dating with Michael in the Elvis Presley days. Rita threw her arms around him. "Michael Curry."

Roaming to the front, Rowan had watched them in the glare of the flashing lights. Pierce was talking on the phone in the library. She had not even seen the library. Now a dull electric light flooded the room, illuminating old leather and Chinese carpet.

" ... well, now, Mike," said Lonigan, "you have to tell Dr. Mayfair this woman was ninety years old, the only thing keeping her going was Deirdre. I mean we knew it was just a matter of time once Deirdre went, and so she can't blame herself for whatever happened here tonight, I mean, she's a doctor, Mike, but she ain't no miracle worker."

No, not much, Rowan had thought.

"Mike Curry? You're not Tim Curry's son!" said the uniformed policeman. "They told me it was you. Well, hell, my dad and your dad were third cousins, did you know that? Oh, yeah, my dad knew your dad real well, used to drink beer with him at Corona's."

At last the body in the attic, bagged and tagged, was taken away, and the small dried body of the old woman had been laid on the white padded stretcher as if it were alive, though it was only being moved into the undertaker's wagon--perhaps to lie on the same embalming table where Deirdre had lain a day earlier.

No funeral, no interment ceremony, no nothing, said Ryan. She had told him that herself yesterday. Told Lonigan too, the man said. "There will be a Requiem Mass in a week," said Ryan. "You'll still be here?"

Where would I go? Why? I found where I belong. In this house. I'm a witch. I'm a killer. And this time I did it deliberately.

" ... And I know how terrible this has been for you."

Wandering back into the dining room, she heard young Pierce in the library door.

"Now, she isn't considering staying in this house, tonight, is she?"

"No, we're going back to the hotel," Michael said.

"It's just that she shouldn't be here alone. This can be a very unsettling house. A truly unsettling house. Would you think me crazy if I told you that just now when I went into the library there was a portrait of someone over the fireplace and that now there's a mirror?"

"Pierce!" said Ryan wrathfully.

"I'm sorry, Dad, but ... "

"Not now, son, please."

"I believe you," said Michael with a little laugh. "I'll be with her."

"Rowan?" Ryan approached her again carefully--she the bereaved, the victim, when in fact she was the murderer. Agatha Christie would have known. But then I would have had to do it with a candle stick.

"Yes, Ryan."

He settled down at the table, careful not to touch the dusty surface with the sleeve of his perfectly tailored suit. The funeral suit. The light struck his thoroughbred face, his cold blue eyes, much lighter blue than Michael's. "You know this house is yours."

"She told me that."

Young Pierce stood respectfully in the doorway.

"Well, there's a lot more to it," said Ryan.

"Liens, mortgages?"

He shook his head. "No, I don't think you'll ever have to worry about anything of that sort as long as you live. But the point is, that whenever you want you can come downtown and we'll go over it."

"Good God," said Pierce, "is that the emerald?" He

had spied the jewel case in the shadows at the other end. "And with all these people just trooping through there."

His father gave him a subdued, patient look. "Nobody's going to steal that emerald, son," he said with a sigh. He glanced anxiously at Rowan. He gathered up the jewel case and looked at it as if he didn't quite know what to do with it.

"What's wrong?" Rowan asked. "What's the matter?"

"Did she tell you about this?"

"Did anyone ever tell you?" she asked quietly, unchallengingly.

"Quite a story," he said, with a subtle, forced smile. He laid the jewel box down in front of her and patted it with his hand. He stood up.

"Who was the man in the attic, do they know?" she asked.

"They will soon. There was a passport, and other papers with the corpse, or what was left of it."

"Where's Michael?" she asked.

"Here, honey, over here. Look, you want me to leave you alone?" In the dark, his gloved hands were almost invisible.

"I'm tired, can we go back? Ryan, can I call you tomorrow?"

"When you want, Rowan."

Ryan hesitated at the door. Glanced at Michael. Michael made a move to leave. Rowan reached out and caught his hand, startled by the leather.

"Rowan, listen to me," said Ryan, "I don't know what the hell Aunt Carl told you, I don't know how that body got upstairs, or what that's about, or what she's told you about the legacy. But you have to clean out this old place, you've got to burn the trash up there, get people to come here, maybe Michael will help you, and throw things out, all those old books, those jars. You have to let the air in and take stock. You don't have to go through this place, examining every speck of dust and dirt and ugliness. It's an inheritance but it isn't a curse. At least it doesn't have to be."

"I know," she said.

Noise at the front door.

The two young black men who had come to collect Grandma Eugenia were now standing in the hallway. Michael went upstairs to help her. Ryan and then Pierce swept down to kiss Rowan on the cheek. Rather like kissing the corpse, it seemed to her suddenly. Then she realized it was the other way around. They kissed the dead people here the way they kissed the living.

Warm hands, and the parting flash of Pierce's smile in the dark. Tomorrow, phone, lunch, talk, et cetera.

Sound of the elevator making its hellish descent. People did go to hell in elevators in the movies.