The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

"Michael, we're dealing with something that knows what we're saying to each other even now."

"Oh, God!"

"There isn't any place we can hide from this being," said Aaron. "Except perhaps in the sanctuary of our own minds. Rowan said many things to me. But the crux of it is that this entire battle is now in Rowan's hands."

"Aaron, there must be something we can do. We knew it would happen; we knew it would come to this. You knew before you ever laid eyes on me that it would come to this."

"Michael, that's just the point. She is the only one who can do anything. And in loving her, and staying close to her, you are using the age-old tools at your command."

"That can't be enough!" He could hardly stand this. He stood up, paced for a minute, and then wound up with his hands on the mantel, staring down into the fire. "You should have called me, Aaron. You should have told me."

"Look, take your anger out on me if it makes you feel better, but the fact is, she forbade my contacting you with a threat. She was full of threats. Some of these threats were made in the guise of warnings--that her invisible companion wanted to kill me and would soon do it--but they were genuine threats."

"Christ, when did this happen?"

"Doesn't matter. She told me to go back to England while I still had time."

"She told you this? What else did she tell you?"

"I chose not to do it. But what more I can do here, I don't honestly know. I know that she wanted you to remain in California because she felt you were safe there. But you see, this situation has become too complicated for simple or literal interpretation of the things she said."

"I don't know what you mean. What is a literal interpretation? What other kind of interpretation is there? I don't get it."

"Michael, she talked in riddles. It wasn't communication so much as a demonstration of a struggle. Again, I have to remind you, this being, if he chooses, can be here with us in this room. We have no safe place in which we can plot aloud against him. Imagine a boxing match if you can, in which the opponents can read each other's minds. Imagine a war, where every conceivable strategy is known telepathically from the start."

"It ups the stakes, ups the excitement, but it isn't impossible."

"I agree with you, but it serves no purpose for me to tell you everything that Rowan said to me. Suffice it to say, Rowan is the most able opponent this being has ever had."

"Aaron, you warned her long ago not to let this thing take her away from us. You warned her that it would seek to divide her from those she loved."

"I did. And I am sure she remembers it, Michael. Rowan is a human being upon whom almost nothing is lost. And believe me, I have argued with her since. I have told her in the plainest language why she must not allow this being to mutate. But the decision is in her hands."

"You're saying in effect that we have to just wait and let her fight this alone."

"I'm saying in effect that you're doing what you were meant to do. Love her. Stay near her. Remind her by your very presence of what is natural and inherently good. This is a struggle between the natural and the unnatural, Michael. No matter what that being is made of, no matter what he comes from--it's a struggle between normal life and aberration. Between evolution on the one hand and disastrous intervention on the other. And both have their mysteries and their miracles, and nobody knows that better than Rowan herself."

He stood up and put his hand on Michael's shoulder. "Sit down and listen to what I'm saying," he said.

"I have been listening," said Michael crossly. But he obeyed. He sat on the edge of the chair, and he couldn't stop himself from making his right hand into a fist and grinding it into his left palm.

"All her life, Rowan has confronted this split between the natural and the aberrant," said Aaron. "Rowan is essentially a conservative human being. And creatures like Lasher don't change one's basic nature. They can only work upon the traits which are already there. No one wanted that lovely white-dress wedding more than Rowan did. No one wants the family more than Rowan. No one wants that child inside her more than she."

"She doesn't even talk about the baby, Aaron. She hasn't even mentioned its existence since I came home. I wanted to tell the family tonight at the party, but she doesn't want me to do it. She says she's not ready. And this party, I know it's an agony for her. She's just going through the motions. Beatrice put her up to it."

"Yes, I know."

"I talk about the baby all the time. I kiss her and call it Little Chris, the name I gave it, and she smiles, and it's like she's not Rowan. Aaron, I'm going to lose her and the baby if she loses her battle with him. I can't think past that. I don't know anything about mutations and monsters and ... and ghosts that want to be alive."

"Go home, and stay there with her. Stay near her. That's what they told you to do."

"And don't confront her? That's what you're saying?"

"You'll only force her to lie, if you do that. Or worse."

"What if you and I were to go back there together and try to reason with her, try to get her to turn her back on it?"

Aaron shook his head. "She and I have had our little showdown, Michael. That's why I made my excuses for this evening to Bea. I'd be challenging her and her sinister companion if I came there. But if I thought it would do any good, I'd come. I'd risk anything if I thought I could help. But I can't."

"But Aaron, what makes you so certain?"

"I'm not one of the players now, Michael. I didn't see the visions. You saw them. Julien and Deborah spoke to you. Rowan loves you."

"I don't know if I can stand this."

"I think you can. Do what you have to do to stand it. And remain close to her. Tell her in some way--silent or otherwise--that you are there for her."

Michael nodded. "All right," he said. "You know it's like she's being unfaithful."

"You mustn't see it like that. You mustn't become angry."

"I keep telling myself the same thing."

"There's something else I have to say to you. It probably won't matter in the final analysis. But I want to pass it along. If anything happens to me, well, it's something that I'd like you to know for what it's worth."

"You don't think anything is going to happen?"

"I don't honestly know. But listen to what I have to say. For centuries, we've puzzled over the nature of these seeming discarnate entities. There isn't a culture on earth which doesn't recognize their existence. But nobody knows what they really are. The Catholic Church sees them as demons. They have elaborate theological explanations for their existence. And they see th

em all as evil and out to destroy. Now all that would be easy to dismiss, except the Catholic Church is very wise about the behavior and the weaknesses of these beings. But I'm straying from the point.

"The point is, that we in the Talamasca have always assumed that these beings were very similar to the spirits of the earth-bound dead. We believed or took for granted that both were essentially bodiless, possessed of intelligence, and locked in some sort of realm around the living."

"And Lasher could be a ghost, that's what you're saying."

"Yes. But more significantly, Rowan seems to have made some sort of breakthrough in discovering what these beings are. She claims that Lasher possesses a cellular structure, and that the basic components of all organic life are present in him."

"Then he's just some sort of bizarre creature, that's what you're saying."

"I don't know. But what has occurred to me is that maybe the so-called spirits of the dead are made of the same components. Maybe the intelligent part of us, when it leaves the body, takes some living portion with it. Maybe we undergo a metamorphosis, rather than a physical death. And all the age-old words--etheric body, astral body, spirit--are just terms for this fine cellular structure that persists when the flesh is gone."

"It's over my head, Aaron."

"Yes, I am being rather theoretical, aren't I? I suppose the point I'm trying to make is ... that whatever this being can do, maybe the dead can also do. Or perhaps, even more important--even if Lasher possesses this structure, he could still be a malevolent spirit of someone who once lived."

"That's for your library in London, Aaron. Some day, maybe, we can sit by the fire in London and talk about it together. Right now I'm going to go home, and I'm going to stay with her. I'm going to do what you've told me to do, and what they've told me to do. Because that's the best thing I can do for her. And for you. I can't believe she's going to let that thing hurt you, or hurt me, or hurt anyone. But like you said, the best thing I can do is be near at hand."

"Yes, you're right," Aaron said. "But I can't stop thinking about what those old men said. About being saved. Such a strange legend."

"They were wrong about that part. She's the doorway. I knew it somehow or other when I saw that family tomb."

Aaron only sighed and shook his head. Michael could see that he was dissatisfied, that there were more things he wanted to consider. But what did they matter now? Rowan was alone in that house with that being, and the being was stealing her away from Michael, and Rowan knew all the answers now, didn't she? The being was telling her the meaning of everything, and Michael had to go home to her.