The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

Ah, such a romantic notion. A tough guy who loved beautiful houses, drew beautiful pictures. Maybe he listened to Vivaldi, this tough guy, maybe he really read Dickens. And what would it be like to have such a man in her bed, naked except for his soft black leather gloves?

Ah, fantasy. Rather like imagining that the fire fighters she brought home would turn out to be poets, that the policemen she had seduced would reveal themselves to be great novelists, that the forest ranger she'd met in the bar in Bolinas was truly a great painter, and that the husky Vietnam veteran who'd taken her to his cabin in the woods was a great motion picture director hiding from a demanding and worshipful world.

She did imagine those things, and they were entirely possible, of course. But it was the body that commanded preeminence--the bulge in the jeans had to be big enough, the neck powerful, the voice deep, and the coarsely shaven chin rough enough to cut her.

But what if?

But what if Curry had gone on to the South where he came from. That was probably exactly what had happened. New Orleans, the one place in all the world that Rowan Mayfair couldn't go.

The phone was ringing when she unlocked her office door.

"Dr. Mayfair?"

"Dr. Morris?"

"Yes, I've been trying to reach you. It's about Michael Curry."

"Yes, I know, Doctor. I got your message. I was just about to call."

"He wants to talk to you."

"Then he's still in San Francisco."

"He's hiding out in his own home on Liberty Street."

"I've seen it on the news."

"But he wants to meet with you. I mean, well, to put it bluntly, he wants to see you in person. He has this idea ... "

"Yes?"

"Well, you're going to think this madness is communicable, but I'm just relaying the message. Is there any chance you would meet with this guy on your boat--I mean it was your boat you were on the night you rescued him, wasn't it?"

"I'd be glad to take him back on the boat."

"What did you say?"

"I would be glad to see him. And I'll take him out on the boat if he wants to go."

"That is absolutely great of you, Doctor. But I have to explain a few things. I know this sounds absolutely bonkers, but he wants to take his gloves off and touch the boards of the deck where he was lying when you brought him around."

"Of course he can do that. I don't know why I didn't think of that myself."

"You're serious? God, you don't know how relieved I am. And Dr. Mayfair, let me tell you right now, this guy is just one very nice guy."

"I know."

"He is really suffering, this guy. He hit me with this idea last week. I hadn't heard from him in a month! He was drunk when he called. I thought he'd forget about it."

"It's a very good idea, Dr. Morris. You said the power in his hands was real."

"That's right, I did. And it is. And you are a very special doctor, Dr. Mayfair. But do you know what you're getting into? I begged him, I mean really begged him to come back in. Then he calls back last night, demanding I find you right this minute. He has to lay his hands on the boards of the deck, he's going nuts. I told him, 'Sober up, Michael, and I'll give it a shot.' Then he calls twenty minutes ago, right before I called you. 'I won't lie to you,' he says. 'I've drunk a case of beer today, but I haven't touched the vodka or the Scotch. I am as straight as I can possibly get.' "

She laughed softly. "I should weep for his brain cells," she said.

"I hear you. But what I'm getting to is the man is desperate. He isn't getting any better. And I would never ask this of you if he wasn't just one of the nicest--"

"I'll go get him. Can you call him and tell him that I'm on my way?"

"God, that's terrific. Dr. Mayfair, I can't thank you enough."

"No thanks is necessary. I want to see him."

"Look, strike a bargain with him, Doctor. You'll let him play psychic on the boat if he'll come in here and dry out."

"Call him now, Dr. Morris. Within the hour, I'll be at his front door."

She put down the phone and stood quite still staring at it for a moment. Then she removed her name tag, and stripped off her soiled white jacket, and slowly pulled the pins out of her hair.

Five

SO THEY HAD tried to put Deirdre Mayfair away again after all these years. With Miss Nancy gone and Miss Carl getting more feeble by the day, it was best. That was the talk, anyway. On August 13, they'd tried. But Deirdre had gone wild, and they had left her alone, and now she was going down badly, just real badly.

When Jerry Lonigan told his wife Rita, she cried.

It had been thirteen years since Deirdre came home from the sanitarium a mindless idiot who couldn't tell you her own name, but that didn't matter to Rita. Rita would never forget the real Deirdre.

Rita and Deirdre were sixteen when they went to boarding school at St. Rose de Lima's. It was an ugly old brick building, on the very edge of the French Quarter. And Rita was sent there because she was "bad," had been out drinking on the riverboat The President with boys. Her dad had said St. Ro's would straighten her out. All the girls slept in an attic dormitory. And they went to bed at nine o'clock. Rita had cried herself to sleep down there.

Deirdre Mayfair had been at St. Ro's for a long time. She didn't mind that it was old and gloomy and strict. But she held Rita's hand when Rita cried. She listened when Rita said it was like a prison.

The girls watched "Father Knows Best" on an old television set with a round six-inch screen, swear to God! And the creaky old wooden radio that stood on the floor under the window was no better. You couldn't get to the phonograph. The South American girls always had it, playing that awful "La Cucaracha," and doing those Spanish dances.

"Don't mind them," Deirdre said. She took Rita with her down to the play yard in the late afternoon. They swung on the swings under the pecan trees. You wouldn't think that was much fun for a sixteen-year-old girl, but Rita loved it when she was with Deirdre.

Deirdre sang when they were on the swings--old Irish and Scotch ballads, she called them. She had a real true soprano voice, delicate and high, and the songs were so sad. It gave Rita chills to hear them. Deirdre loved to stay out until the sun was gone and the sky was a "pure purple" and the cicadas were really going in the trees. Deirdre called it twilight.

Rita had seen that word written out, all right, but she'd never heard anyone really say it. Twilight.

Deirdre took Rita's hand and they walked along the brick wall, right under the pecan trees, so that they had to duck under the low leafy branches. There were places you could stand where you were completely hidden by the trees. It was crazy to describe it, but it had been such a strange and lovely time for Rita--standing there in the half dark with Deirdre, and the trees swaying in the breeze and the tiny leaves showering down on them.

In those days, Deirdre had looked like a real old-fashioned girl from a picture book, with a violet ribbon in her hair and her black curls tumbling down her back. She could have been real sharp if she'd wanted to be. She had the build for it, and new clothes in her locker she never bothered to try on. But it was easy to forget about things like that when you were with Deirdre. Her hair had been so soft. Rita had touched it once. So soft.

They walked in the dusty cloister beside the chapel. They peeped through the wooden gate into the nuns' garden. Secret place, Deirdre said, full of the loveliest flowers.

"I don't ever want to go home," Deirdre explained. "It's so peaceful here."

Peaceful! Alone at night, Rita cried and cried. She could hear the jukebox of the Negro bar across the street, the music rising over the brick walls and all the way up to the fourth-story attic. Sometimes when she thought everybody was asleep, she got up and went out on the iron balcony and looked towards the lights of Canal Street. There was a red glow over Canal Street. All New Orleans was having fun out there, and Rita was locked up, with a nun sleeping behind a curtain at either end of the dormitory. What would she do if

she didn't have Deirdre?

Deirdre was different from anybody Rita had ever known. She had such beautifully made things--long white flannel gowns trimmed in lace.

They were the same kind she wore now thirty-four years later on the side screen porch of that house where she sat "like a mindless idiot in a coma."

And she had showed Rita that emerald necklace she always wore now, too, right over the white nightgown. The famous Mayfair emerald necklace, though Rita had not heard of it then. 'Course Deirdre had not worn it at school. You couldn't wear jewelry at all at St. Ro's. And no one would have worn a big old-fashioned necklace like that anyway, except to a Mardi Gras ball perhaps.

It looked just awful now on Deirdre in her nightgown. All wrong, a thing like that on an invalid who just stared and stared through the screens of the porch. But who knows? Maybe somehow Deirdre knew it was there, and Deirdre sure had loved it.