The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

He took a sip of his coffee and then moved the cup away. Then he looked at Rowan.

"There's no doubt it will approach you, of course. You realize this. This antipathy you feel won't keep it at bay forever. I doubt it's keeping it at bay now. It's simply waiting for a proper opportunity."

"God," Michael whispered. It was like hearing that an assailant would soon attack the person he loved most in all the world. He felt a crippling jealousy and anger.

Rowan was looking at Aaron. "What would you do if you were me?" asked Rowan.

"I'm not sure," Aaron answered. "But I cannot emphasize enough that it is dangerous."

"The history told me that."

"And that it's treacherous."

"The history told me that too. Do you think I should try to make contact with it?"

"No. I don't. I think letting it come to you is the wisest thing you can do. And for the love of God, try to remain in complete control always."

"There's no getting away from it, is there?"

"I don't think so. And I can make a guess as to what it will do when it approaches, you."

"What?"

"It will demand your secrecy and your cooperation. Or it will refuse to reveal itself or its purposes fully."

"It will divide you from us," said Michael.

"Exactly," Aaron went on.

"Why do you think it will do that?"

Aaron shrugged. "Because that is what I would do if I were it."

"What's the chance of driving it out? Of a straight-out exorcism?"

"I don't know," said Aaron. "Those rituals certainly do work, but I myself don't know how to make them work, and I don't know what the effect would be upon an entity this powerful. You see, that is the remarkable thing. This being is a monarch among its kind. A sort of genius."

She laughed softly.

"It's so cunning and unpredictable," Aaron said. "I'd be dead right now if it wanted me to be dead. Yet it doesn't kill me."

"For God's sake, Aaron," Michael said, "don't challenge it."

"It knows I would hate it," said Rowan, "if it hurt you."

"Yes, that may explain why it hasn't gone farther. But there we are again, at the beginning. Whatever you do, Rowan, never lose sight of the history. Consider the fate of Suzanne, and Deborah, and Stella, and Antha and Deirdre. Maybe if we knew the full story of Marguerite or Katherine, or Marie Claudette or the others from Saint-Domingue their stories would be just as tragic. And if any one character in the drama can be held responsible for so much suffering and death, it is Lasher."

Rowan seemed lost in her thoughts for a moment. "God, I wish it would go away," she murmured.

"That would be too much to ask for, I think," said Aaron. He sighed and took out his pocket watch, and then rose from the couch. "I'm going to leave you now. I'll be upstairs in my suite if you need me."

"Thank God you're staying," said Rowan. "I was afraid you'd go back to Oak Haven."

"No. I have Julien's books upstairs, and I think I should like to be in town just now. As long as I don't crowd you."

"You don't crowd us at all," said Rowan.

"Let me ask you one more thing," Michael said. "When you were in the house, what did it feel like?"

Aaron gave a little laugh and shook his head. He considered for a minute. "I think you can imagine," he said gently. "But one thing did surprise me--that it was so beautiful; so grand and yet so inviting, with all the windows opened and the sun coming in. I suppose I thought it would be forbidding. But nothing could have been farther from the truth."

This was the answer Michael had hoped to hear, but the mood was still on him from the long ordeal of the afternoon, and it failed to cheer him.

"It's a wonderful house," said Rowan, "and it's already changing. We're already making it ours. How long will it take, Michael, to bring it back to what it was meant to be?"

"Not long, Rowan, two, three months, maybe less. By Christmas it could be finished. I'm itching to do it. If I could just lose this feeling ... "

"What feeling?"

"That it's all planned."

"Forget about that," said Rowan crossly.

"Let me make a suggestion," Aaron said. "Get a good night's sleep, then proceed with what you really want to do--with the legal questions at hand, with the settling of the estate, with the house perhaps--all the good things you want to do. And be on guard. Be on guard always. When our mysterious friend approaches, insist upon your own terms."

Michael sat sullenly staring at the beer as Rowan walked Aaron to the door. She came back, settled down beside him, and slipped her arm around him.

"I'm scared, Rowan," he said, "and I hate it. Positively hate it."

"I know, Michael," she said, "but we're going to win."

*

That night, after Rowan had been asleep for hours, Michael got up, went into the living room, and took the notebook out of his valise which Aaron had given him at the retreat house. He felt normal now. And the abnormalities of the day seemed strangely distant. Though he was still sore all over, he felt rested. And it was comforting to know Rowan was only a few feet away, and that Aaron slept in the suite above.

Now Michael wrote down everything he had told them. He went through it in writing as he had gone through it in words, only more slowly, and perhaps more thoughtfully, and he talked about it with himself in the notebook as he would in a diary because that is what the notebook had become.

He wrote down all he could remember of the little fragments that had come back before he had taken off the gloves. And it was not surprising that he could remember almost nothing at all. And then the beginning of the catastrophe when he'd held Deirdre's nightgown in his hand:

"Same drums as the Comus Parade. Or any such parade. The point is, an awful frightening sound, a sound to do with some sort of dark and potentially destructive energy."

He stopped. Then went on. "I remember something else too, now. At Rowan's house in Tiburon. After we made love. I woke up thinking the place was on fire and there were all kinds of people downstairs. I remember now. It was the same ambience, the same lurid sort of light, the same sinister quality.

"And the fact of the matter was, that Rowan was just down there by the fire she'd lighted in the fireplace.

"But it was the same feeling. Fire and people there, many many people, crowded together, a commotion in the flickering light.

"And I had no sense of recognition when I saw Julien upstairs, or when I saw Charlotte, or Mary Beth, or Antha, poor, tragic Antha scrambling over that roof. To see something like that is to feel it; it swallows you. There's nothing left of you inside while you're seeing it. But they weren't in my visions. None of them. And Deborah was just a body crumpled on the pyre. She wasn't standing there with them. Now surely that means something in itself."

He reread what he had written. He wanted to add more but he was leery of embellishment. He was leery of logic. Deborah's not one of them? That's why she wasn't there?

He went on to describe the rest. "Antha was wearing a cotton dress. I saw the patent leather belt she wore. When she crawled across the roof, she tore her stockings. Her knees were bleeding. But her face, that was the unforgettable part, her eye torn out of the socket. And the sound of her voice. I'll carry that sound to the grave with me. And Julien. Julien looked as solid as she did while he was watching. Julien wore black. And Julien was young. Not a boy, by any means. But a vigorous man, not an old man. Even in the bed he wasn't old."

Again he paused. "And what else did Lasher say that was new. Something about patience, about waiting ... and then that mention of the thirteen.