The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

Applause rose all around her, and looking up she was amazed to see that they were all Dutchmen here, gathered at Leiden; even she wore the big black hat and the gorgeous thick sleeves, and this was a painting by Rembrandt, of course, The Anatomy Lesson, and that is why the body looked so perfectly neat, though it hardly explained why she could see through it.

"Ah, but you have the gift, my child, you are a witch," said Lemle.

"That's right," said Rembrandt. Such a sweet old man. He sat in the corner, his head to one side, his russet hair wispy now in old age.

"Don't let Petyr hear you," she said.

"Rowan, take the emerald off," Petyr said. He stood at the foot of the table. "Take it off, Rowan, it's around your neck. Remove it!"

The emerald?

She opened her eyes. The dream lost its vibrancy like a taut veil of silk suddenly torn free and furling. The darkness was alive around her.

Very slowly the familiar objects came to light. The closet doors, the table by the bed, Michael, her beloved Michael, sleeping beside her.

She felt the coldness against her naked breast, she felt the thing caught in her hair, and she knew what it was.

"Oh God!" She covered her mouth with her left hand but not before that little scream had escaped, her right hand snatching the thing off her neck as if it had been a loathsome insect.

She sat up, hunched over, staring at it in the palm of her hand. Like a clot of green blood. Her breath caught in her throat, and she saw that she had broken the old chain, and her hand was shaking uncontrollably.

Had Michael heard her cry out? He didn't move even as she leaned against him.

"Lasher!" she whispered, her eyes moving up as if she could find him in the shadows. "Do you want to make me hate you!" Her words were a hiss. For one second the fabric of the dream was clear again, as if the veil had once more been lowered. All the doctors were leaving the table.

"Done, Rowan. Magnificent, Rowan."

"A new era, Rowan."

"Very simply miraculous, my dear," said Lemle.

"Cast it away, Rowan," said Petyr.

She flung the emerald over the foot of the bed. Somewhere in the small hallway it struck the carpet, with a dull impotent little sound.

She put her hands to her face, and then feverishly, she felt of her neck, felt of her breasts as if the damnable thing had left some layer of dust or grime on her.

"Hate you for this," she whispered again in the dark. "Is that what you want?"

Far off it seemed she heard a sigh, a rustling. Through the far hallway door, she could just barely make out the curtains in the living room against the light of the street, and they moved as if ruffled by a low draft, and that was the sound she heard, wasn't it?

That and the slow measured song of Michael's breathing. She felt foolish for having flung the stone away. She sat with her hands over her mouth, knees up, staring into the shadows.

"Well, didn't you believe the old tales? Why are you shaking like this? Just one of his tricks, and no more difficult for him than making the dance of the wind in the trees. Or making that iris move in the garden. Move. It did more than move, though, didn't it? It actually ... And then she remembered those roses, those strange large roses on the hall table. She had never asked Pierce where they had come from. Never asked Gerald.

Why are you so frightened?

She got up, put on her robe, and walked barefoot into the hall, Michael sleeping on, undisturbed, in the bed behind her.

She picked up the jewel and wound the two strands of broken chain around it carefully. Seemed dreadful to have broken those fragile antique links.

"But you were stupid to do this," she whispered. "I'll never put it on now, not of my own free will."

With a low creak of the springs, Michael turned over in the bed. Had he whispered something? Her name maybe?

She crept silently back into the bedroom, and dropping to her knees, found her purse in the corner of the closet and put the necklace into the side zipper pocket.

She wasn't shaking now. But her fear had alchemized perfectly to rage. And she knew she couldn't sleep any more.

Sitting alone in the living room as the sun rose, she thought of all the old portraits at the house, the ones she'd been going through, and wiping clean, and preparing to hang, the very old ones she could identify which no one else in the family could. Charlotte with her blond hair, so deeply faded beneath the lacquer that she seemed a ghost. And Jeanne Louise, with her twin brother standing behind her. And gray-haired Marie Claudette with the little painting of Riverbend on the wall above her.

All of them wore the emerald. So many paintings of that one jewel. She closed her eyes and dozed on the velvet couch, wishing for coffee, yet too sleepy to make it. She'd been dreaming before this happened, but what was it all about--something to do with the hospital and an operation, and now she couldn't remember. Lemle there. Lemle whom she hated so much ....

And that dark-mouthed iris that Lasher had made ....

Yes, I know your tricks. You made it swell and break from its stem, didn't you? Oh, nobody really understands how much power you have. To make whole leaves sprout from the stem of a dead rose. Where do you get your handsome form when you appear, and why won't you do it for me? Are you afraid I'll scatter you to the four winds, and you'll never have the strength to gather yourself together?

She was dreaming again, wasn't she? Imagine, a flower changing like that iris, altering before her eyes, the cells actually multiplying and mutating ...

Unless it was just a trick. A trick like putting the necklace on her in her sleep. But wasn't everything a trick?

"Well, boys and girls," said Lark once as they stood over the bed of a comatose and dying man, "we've done all our tricks, haven't we?"

What would have happened if she had tried a couple of her own? Like telling the cells of that dying man to multiply, to mutate, to restructure, and seal off the bruised tissue. But she hadn't known. She still didn't know how far she could go.

Yes, dreaming. Everyone walking through the halls at Leiden. You know what they did to Michael Servetus in Calvinist Geneva, when he accurately described the circulation of the blood in 1553, they burnt him at the stake, and all his heretical books with him. Be careful, Dr. van Abel.

I am not a witch.

Of course, none of us are. It's a matter of constantly reevaluating our concept of natural principles.

Nothing natural about those roses.

And now the air in here, moving the way it was, catching the curtains and making them dance, stirring the papers on the coffee table in front of her, even lifting the tendrils of her hair, and cooling her. Your tricks. She didn't want this dream anymore. Do the patients at Leiden always get up and walk away after the anatomy lesson?

But you won't dare show yourself, will you?

She met Ryan at ten o'clock and told him all about the plans for the marriage, trying to make it matter-of-fact and definite, so as to invite as few questions as possible.

"And one thing I wish you could do for me," she said. She took the emerald necklace out of her purse. "Could you put this in some sort of vault? Just lock it away, where no one can possibly get at it."

"Of course, I can keep it here at the office," he said, "but Rowan, there are several things I ought to explain to you. This legacy is very old--you have to have a little patience now. The rules and rubrics, so to speak, are quaint and bizarre, but nevertheless explicit. I'm afraid you're required to wear the emerald at the wedding."

"You don't mean this."

"You understand, of course, these small requirements are probably quite vulnerable to contest or revision in a court of law, but the point of following them to the letter is--and has always been--to avoid even the remotest possibility of anyone ever challenging the inheritance at any point in its history, and with a personal fortune of this size and this ... "

And on and on he went in familiar lawyerly fashion, but she understood. Lasher had won this round.