The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

"Like a private club," Michael whispered. It was almost comical to him, the occasional person seated deep in a tapestried chair who did not even glance up from a book or a paper as they glided soundlessly past. But the overall atmosphere was unmistakably inviting. He felt good here. He liked the quick smile of the woman who passed him on the staircase. He wanted to find a chair himself at some time or other in the library. And through all the many French doors, he caught the greenery outside, a great sprawling net swallowing up the blue sky.

"Come, we'll take you to your room," Aaron said.

"Aaron, I'm not staying. Where's the file?"

"Of course," Aaron said, "but you must have quiet to read as you like."

He led Michael along the upper corridor to the front bedroom on the eastern side of the house. Floor-length windows opened onto both the front and the side galleries. And though the carpet was as dark and thick as everywhere else, the decor had yielded to the plantation tradition with a couple of marble-top bureaus and one of those overpowering poster beds which seemed made for this kind of house. Several layers of handmade quilts covered its shapeless feather mattress. No carvings ornamented its eight-foot-high posts.

But the room had a surprising array of modern conveniences, including the small refrigerator and television fitted into a carved armoire, and a chair and desk nestled in the inside corner, so that they faced both the front windows and those to the east. The phone was covered with buttons and tiny carefully inscribed numerals for various extensions. A pair of Queen Anne wing chairs stood on tiptoe before the fireplace. A door was open to an adjoining bath.

"I'm moving in," Michael said. "Where's the file?"

"But we should have lunch."

"You should. I can get a sandwich and eat it while I'm reading. Please, you promised. The file."

Aaron insisted that they go at once to a small screened porch off the back of the second story, and there, overlooking a formal garden with gravel paths and weathered fountains, they sat down to eat. It was an enormous southern breakfast, complete with biscuits, grits, and sausage; and plenty of chicory cafe au lait to drink.

Michael was ravenous. Again, he had that feeling he'd had with Rowan--good to be off the booze. Good to be clear-headed, looking out on the green garden with the branches of the oaks dipping down to the very grass. Divine to be feeling the warm air again.

"This has all happened so fast," Aaron said, passing him the basket of steaming biscuits. "I feel I should say something more, yet I don't know what I can say. We wanted to approach you slowly, we wanted to get to know you and for you to know us."

Michael couldn't stop thinking about Rowan suddenly. He resented it powerfully that he couldn't call Rowan. Yet it seemed useless to try to explain to Aaron how worried about Rowan he was.

"If I had made the contact I hoped to make," said Aaron, "I would have invited you to our Motherhouse in London, and your introduction to the order might have been slow and graceful there. Even after years of fieldwork, you would not have been asked to undertake a task as dangerous as intervention with regard to the Mayfair Witches. There is no one in the order even qualified to undertake such a task except for me. But you are involved, to use the simple modern expression."

"In it up to the eyeballs," Michael said, eating steadily as he listened. "But I hear what you're saying. It would be like the Catholic church asking me to participate in an exorcism when they knew I wasn't an ordained priest."

"Very nearly so," he said. "I sometimes think that on account of our lack of dogma and ritual, we are all the more stringent. Our definition of right and wrong is more subtle, and we become more angry with those who don't comply."

"Aaron, look. I won't tell a blessed soul in Christendom about that file, except for Rowan. Agreed?"

Aaron was thoughtful for a moment. "Michael," he said, "when yoy've read the material we must talk further about what you should do. Wait before you say no. At least commit yourself to listening to my advice."

"You're personally afraid of Rowan, aren't you?"

Aaron drank a swallow of coffee. He stared at the plate for a moment. He had eaten nothing but half a biscuit. "I'm not sure," he answered. "My one meeting with Rowan was very peculiar. I could have sworn ... "

"What?"

"That she wanted desperately to talk to me. To talk to someone. And then again, there was a hostility I perceived in her, a rather generalized hostility, as if the woman were superhuman and bristled with something instinctively alien to other human beings. Oh, I know that sounds farfetched. Of course she isn't superhuman. But if we think of these psychic powers of ours as mutations, then we can begin to think of a creature like Rowan as something different, as one species of bird is different from another. I felt her differentness, so to speak."

He paused. He seemed to notice for the first time that Michael was wearing his gloves as he ate. "Do you want to try it without those? Perhaps I can teach you how to block the images. It isn't really as difficult as you ... "

"I want the file," said Michael. He wiped his mouth with the napkin and swallowed the rest of his coffee.

"Of course you do, and you shall have it," said Aaron with a sigh.

"Can I go to my room now? Oh, and if they could manage another pot of this lovely black syrupy coffee and hot milk ... "

"Of course."

Aaron led Michael out of the breakfast room, stopping only to give the order for the coffee, and then he led Michael back down the broad central hallway to the front bedroom.

The dark damask drapes covering the front floor-length windows had been opened, and through every pane of glass shone the gentle summer light, filtered through the trees.

The briefcase with the bulging file in its leather folder lay on the quilt-covered four-poster bed.

"All right, my friend," Aaron said. "They'll bring in the coffee without knocking so as not to disturb you. Sit out on the front gallery if you like. And please read carefully. There's the phone if you need me. Dial the operator and ask for Aaron. I'm going to be down the hall, a couple of doors, catching a little sleep."

Michael took off his tie and his jacket, went into the bathroom and washed his face, and was just getting his cigarettes out of his suitcase when the coffee arrived.

He was surprised and a little disturbed to see Aaron reappear, with a troubled expression on his face. Scarcely five minutes had passed, or so it seemed.

Aaron told the young boy servant to set the tray down on the desk facing out from the corner, and then he waited for the boy to leave.

"Bad news, Michael."

"What do you mean?"

"I just called London for my messages. Seems they tried to reach me in San Francisco to tell me Rowan's mother was dying. But we failed to connect."

"Rowan will want to know this, Aaron."

"It's over, Michael. Deirdre Mayfair died this morning, around five A.M." His voice faltered slightly. "You and I were talking at the time, I believe."

"How awful for Rowan," said Michael. "You can't imagine how this will affect her. You just don't know."

"She's coming, Michael," said Aaron. "She contacted the funeral parlor, and asked them to postpone the Services. They agreed. She inquired about the Pontchartrain Hotel when she called. We'll check, of course, to see whether or not she's made reservations. But I believe we can count on her arriving very soon."

"You're worse than the Federal Bureau of Investigation, you know it?" Michael said. But he wasn't angry. This was precisely the information he wanted. With a bit of relief he reviewed in his mind the time of his arrival, his visit to the house, and his waking afterwards. No, there was nothing he could have done to effect a meeting with Rowan and her mother.

"Yes, we are very thorough," said Aaron sadly. "We think of everything. I wonder if God is as indifferent as we are to the proceedings we watch." His face underwent a distinct change, as he appeared to draw inward. Then he moved to leave, apparently without another word.

"You actuall

y knew Rowan's mother?" Michael asked.

"Yes, I knew her," said Aaron bitterly, "and I was never able to do a single solitary thing to help her. But that's often how it is with us, you see. Perhaps this time things will be different. And then again, perhaps not." He turned the knob to go. "It's all there," he said pointing to the folder. "There's no time anymore for talk."

Michael watched helplessly as he left in silence. The little display of emotion had surprised him completely, but it had also reassured him. He felt sad that he had been unable to say anything comforting. And if he started to think of Rowan, of seeing her and holding her, and trying to explain all this to her, he would go crazy. No time to lose.