The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

"And you have your key, Eugenia, you just come on over tomorrow, you come in as you always did, if you need or want anything. Now, honey, do you need any money?"

"I got my pay, Mr. Mike. Thank you, Mr. Mike."

"Thank you, Mr. Curry," said the younger black man. Smooth, educated voice.

The older policeman came back. He must have been in the very front hall because she could barely hear him. "Yeah, Townsend."

" ... passport, wallet, everything right there in the shirt."

Doors closed. Darkness. Quiet.

Michael coming back the hallway.

And now we are two, and the house is empty. He stood in the dining room doorway looking at her.

Silence. He drew a cigarette out of his pocket, mashing the pack back into it. Couldn't be easy with the gloves, but they did not seem to slow him down.

"What do you say?" he asked. "Let's get the hell out of here for tonight." He packed his cigarette on the face of his watch. Explosion of a match, and the flash of light in his blue eyes as he looked up, taking in the dining room again, taking in the murals.

There are blue eyes and blue eyes. Could his black hair have grown so much in such a short time? Or was it just the moisture in the warm air that made it so thick and curly?

The silence rang in her ears. They were actually all gone.

And the whole place lay empty and vulnerable to Rowan's touch, with its many drawers and cabinets and closets and jars and boxes. Yet the idea of touching anything was repugnant. It wasn't hers, it was the old woman's, all of it. Dank and stale, and awful, like the old woman. And Rowan had no spirit to move, no spirit to climb the stairs again, or to see anything at all.

"His name was Townsend?" she asked.

"Yeah. Stuart Townsend."

"Who the hell was he, do they have any idea?"

Michael thought for a moment, flicked a tiny bit of tobacco off his lip, shifted his weight from one hip to another. Pure beefcake, she thought. Downright pornographic.

"I know who he was," he said with a sigh. "Aaron Lightner, you remember him? He knows all about him."

"What are you talking about?"

"You want to talk here?" His eyes moved over the ceiling again, like antennae. "I've got Aaron's car outside. We could go back to the hotel, or downtown somewhere."

His eyes lingered lovingly on the plaster medallion, on the chandelier. There was something furtive and guilty about the way he was admiring it in the middle of this crisis. But he didn't have to hide it from her.

"This is the house, isn't it?" she asked. "The one you told me about in California."

His eyes homed to her, locked.

"Yeah, it's the one." He gave a little sad smile and a shake of his head. "It's the one all right." He tapped the ash into his cupped hand, and then moved slowly away from the table towards the fireplace. The heavy shift of his hips, the movement of his thick leather belt, all distractingly erotic. She watched him tip the ashes into the empty grate, the invisible little ashes that probably would have made no difference at all, had they been allowed to drift to the dusty floor.

"What do you mean, Mr. Lightner knows who that man was?"

He looked uncomfortable. Extremely sexy and very uncomfortable. He took another drag off the cigarette, and looked around, figuring.

"Lightner belongs to an organization," he said. He fished in his shirt pocket, and drew out a little card. He placed it on the table. "They call it an order. Like a religious order, but it isn't religious. The name of it is the Talamasca."

"Dabblers in the black arts?"

"No."

"That's what the old woman said."

"Well, that's a lie. Believers in the black arts, but not dabblers or practitioners."

"She told a lot of lies. There was truth in what she said, too, but every damned time it was entangled with hate, and venom and meanness, and awful awful lies." She shuddered. "I'm hot and I'm cold," she said. "I saw one of those cards before. He gave one to me in California. Did he tell you that? I met him in California."

Michael nodded uneasily. "At Ellie's grave."

"Well, how is that possible? That you're his friend, and that he knows all about this man in the attic? I'm tired, Michael. I feel like I might start screaming and never be able to stop. I feel like if you don't start telling me ... " She broke off, staring listlessly at the table. "I don't know what I'm saying," she said.

"That man, Townsend," said Michael apprehensively, "he was a member of the order. He came here in 1929 trying to make contact with the Mayfair family."

"Why?"

"They've been watching this family for three hundred years, compiling a history," Michael said. "It's going to be hard for you to understand all this ... "

"And just by coincidence, this man's your friend?"

"No. Slow down. None of it was coincidence. I met him outside this house the first night I got here. And I saw him in San Francisco, too, you saw him, remember, the night you picked me up at my place, but we both thought he was a reporter. I had never spoken to him, and before that night I'd never seen him before."

"I remember."

"And then outside this house, he was there. I was drunk, I'd gotten drunk on the plane. Remember I promised you I wouldn't, well, I did. And I came here, and I saw this ... this other man in the garden. Only it wasn't a real man. I thought it was, and then I realized it wasn't. I'd seen that guy when I was a kid. I'd seen him every time I ever passed this house. I told you about him, do you remember? Well, what I have to somehow explain is ... he's not a real man."

"I know," she said. "I've seen him." The most electrical feeling passed through her. "Keep talking. I'll tell you about it when you finish, please."

But he didn't keep talking. He looked at her anxiously. He was frustrated, worried. He was leaning on the mantel, looking down at her, the light from the hallway half illuminating his face, his eyes darting over the table, and finally returning to her. It aroused a complete tenderness in her to see the protectiveness in him, to hear in his voice the gentleness and the fear of hurting her.

"Tell me the rest," she said. "Look, don't you understand, I have some terrible things I have to tell you because you're the only one I can tell. So you tell me your story because you're actually making it easier for me. Because I didn't know how I was going to tell you about seeing that man. I saw him after you left, on the deck in Tiburon. I saw him at the very moment my mother died in New Orleans, and I didn't know she was dying then. I didn't know anything about her."

He nodded. But he was still confused, stymied.

"If I can't trust you, for what it's worth, I don't want to talk to anybody. What are you holding back? Just tell me. Tell me why that man Aaron Lightner was kind to me this afternoon at the funeral when you weren't there? I want to know who he is, and how you know him. Am I entitled to ask that question?"

"Look, honey, you can trust me. Don't get mad at me, please."

"Oh, don't worry, it takes more than a lover's quarrel for me to blow somebody's carotid artery."

"Rowan, I didn't mean ... "

"I know, I know!" she whispered. "But you know I killed that old woman."

He made a small, forbidding gesture. He shook his head.

"You know I did." She looked up at him. "You are the only one who knows." Then a terrible suspicion came into her mind. "Did you tell Lightner the things I told you? About what I could do?"

"No," he said, shaking his head earnestly, pleading with her quietly and eloquently to believe him. "No, but he knows, Rowan."

"Knows what?"

He didn't answer. He gave a little shrug, and drew out another cigarette, and stood there, staring off, considering, apparently, as he pulled out his matchbook, and without even noticing it, did that wonderful one-handed match trick of bending out one book match, and closing the book and then bending that match and striking it and putting the flame to the cigarette.

"I don't know where to begin," he said. "Maybe at the beginni

ng." He let out the smoke, resting his elbow on the mantel again. "I love you. I really do. I don't know how all this came about. I have a lot of suspicions and I'm scared. But I love you. If that was meant, I mean destined, well, then I'm a lost man. Really lost, because I can't accept the destined part. But I won't give up the love. I don't care what happens. Did you hear what I said?"