The Witching Hour (117 page)

“Explain it to me.”

“He touched you, did he not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh yes you do. The color flies into your cheeks, Rowan Mayfair. Well, let me ask you, my girl, my independent young girl who has had so many men of her own choice, was it as good as a mortal man? Think before you speak. He’ll tell you that no mortal man could give you the pleasure he gives. But was it true? It carries a terrible price, that pleasure.”

“I thought it was a dream.”

“But you saw him.”

“That was the night before. The touching was in a dream. It was different.”

“He touched her until the very end,” said the woman. “No matter how much drugs they gave her. No matter how stupid her stare, how listless her walk. When she lay in bed at night he came, he touched her. Like a common whore she writhed on the bed, under his touch … ” She bit down on her words, then the smile came again playing on her lips, like the light. “Does that make you angry? Angry with me that I tell you this? Do you think it was a pretty sight?”

“I think she was sick and out of her mind, and it was human.”

“No, my dear, their intercourse was never human.”

“You want me to believe that this is a ghost I saw, that he touched my mother, that I have somehow inherited him.”

“Yes, and swallow back your anger. Your dangerous anger.”

Rowan was stunned. A wave of fear and confusion passed over her. “You’re reading my mind, you’ve been doing it all along.”

“Oh yes, as best as I can, I do. I wish I could read it better. Your mother was not the only woman in this house with the power. Three generations before I was the one meant for the necklace. I saw him when I was three years old, so clear and strong that he could slip his warm hand in mine, he could lift me in the air, yes, lift my body, but I refused him. I turned my back on him. I told him, You go back to the hell from which you came. And I used my power to fight him.”

“And this necklace now, it comes to me because I can see him?”

“It comes to you because you are the only girl child and choice is not possible. It would come to you no matter how weak your powers were. But that doesn’t matter. Because your powers are strong, very strong, and always have been.” She paused, considering Rowan again, her face unreadable for a moment, perhaps devoid of any specific judgment. “Imprecise, yes, and inconsistent, of course, and uncontrolled perhaps—but strong.”

“Don’t overestimate them,” said Rowan softly. “I never do.”

“Long ago, Ellie told me all about it,” said the old woman. “Ellie told me you could make the flowers wither. Ellie told me you could make the water boil. ‘She’s a stronger witch than ever Antha was, or Deirdre was,’ that’s what she told me, crying and begging me for advice as to what she could do! ‘Keep her away!’ I said. ‘See that she never comes home, see that she never knows! See that she never learns to use it.’ ”

Rowan sighed. She ignored the dull pain at the mention of Ellie, of Ellie speaking to these people about her. Cut off alone. And all of them here. Even this wretched old woman here.

“Yes, and I can feel your anger again, anger against me, anger for what you think you know that I did to your mother!”

“I don’t want to be angry with you,” said Rowan in a small voice. “I only want to understand what you’re saying, I want to know why I was taken away … ”

Again, the old woman lapsed into a thoughtful silence. Her fingers hovered over the jewel case and then folded down upon it and lay still, all too much like the flaccid hands of Deirdre in the casket.

Rowan looked away. She looked at the far wall, at the panorama of painted sky above the fireplace.

“Oh, but don’t these words bring you even the slightest consolation?
Haven’t you wondered all these years, were you the only one in the world who could read others’ thoughts, the only one who knew when someone near you was going to die? The only one who could drive a person back away from you with your anger? Look at the candles. You can make them go out and you can light them again. Do it.”

Rowan did nothing. She stared at the little flames. She could feel herself trembling.
If only you really knew, if only you knew what I could do to you now … 

“But I do, you see, I can feel your strength, because I too am strong, stronger than Antha or Deirdre. And that is how I have kept him at bay in this house, that is how I have prevented him from hurting me. That is how I have put some thirty years between him and Deirdre’s child. Make the candles go out. Light them again. I want to see you do it.”

“I will not. And I want you to stop playing with me. Tell me what you have to tell. But stop your games. Stop torturing me. I have never done anything to you. Tell me who he is, and why you took me from my mother.”

“But I have. I took you from her in order to get you away from him, and from this necklace, from this legacy of curses and wealth founded upon his intervention and power.” She studied Rowan, and then went on, her voice deepening yet losing nothing of its preciseness. “I took you away from her to break her will, and separate her from a crutch upon which she would lean, and an ear into which she would pour her tortured soul, a companion she would warp and twist in her weakness and her misery.”

Frozen in anger, Rowan gave no answer. Miserably, she saw in her mind’s eyes the black-haired woman in her coffin. She saw the Lafayette Cemetery in her mind, only shrouded with the night, and still and deserted.

“Thirty years you’ve had to grow strong and straight, away from this house, away from this history of evil. And what have you become, a doctor the like of which your colleagues have never seen, and when you’ve done evil with your power, you’ve drawn away in righteous condemnation of yourself, in shame that drove you on to greater self-sacrifice.”

“How do you know these things?”

“I see. What I see is imprecise, but I see. I see the evil, though I cannot see the acts themselves, for they’re covered up in the very guilt and shame that advertises them.”

“Then what do you want of me? A confession? You said yourself I turned my back on what I’ve done that was wrong. I sought
for something else, something infinitely more demanding, something finer.”

“ ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ ” whispered the woman.

A shock of raw pain passed through Rowan, and then in consternation she watched the woman’s eyes grow wide, mocking her. In confusion, Rowan understood the trick, and felt defenseless. For in a split second the woman had, with her utterance, provoked the very image in Rowan’s mind for which the old woman had been searching.

You have killed. In anger and rage, you have taken life. You have done it willfully. That is how strong you are.

Rowan sank deeper into herself, peering at the fiat round glasses as they caught the light and then let it go, and the dark eyes scarcely visible behind them.

“Have I taught you something?” the woman asked.

“You try my patience,” Rowan said. “Let me remind you that I have done nothing to you. I have not come to demand answers of you. I have made no condemnation. I haven’t come to claim this jewel or this house or anything in it. I came to see my mother laid to rest, and I came through that front door because you invited me to do so. And I am here to listen. But I won’t be played with much longer. Not for all the secrets this side of hell. And I don’t fear your ghost, even if he sports the cock of an archangel.”

The old woman stared at her for a moment. Then she raised her eyebrows and laughed, a short, sudden little laugh, that had a surprisingly feminine ring to it. She continued to smile. “Well put, my dear,” she said. “Seventy-five years ago, my mother told me he could have made the Greek gods weep with envy, so beautiful was he, when he came into her bedroom.” She relaxed slowly in her chair, pursing her lips, then smiling again. “But he never kept her from her handsome mortal men. She liked the same kind of men you do.”

“Ellie told you that too?”

“She told me many things. But she never told me she was sick. She never told me she was dying.”

“When people are dying, they become afraid,” said Rowan. “They are all alone. Nobody can die for them.”

The old woman lowered her eyes. She remained still for a long moment, and then her hands moved over the soft dome of the jewel box again, and grasping it, she snapped it open. She turned it ever so slightly so that the light of the candles blazed in the emerald that lay inside, caught on a bed of tangled golden chain. It was the largest jewel Rowan had ever seen.

“I used to dream of death,” Carlotta said, gazing at the stone.
“I’ve prayed for it.” She looked up slowly, measuring Rowan, and once again her eyes grew wide, the soft thin flesh of her forehead wrinkling heavily above her gray brows. Her soul seemed closed and sunk in sadness, and it was as if for a moment, she had forgotten to conceal herself somehow, behind meanness and cleverness, from Rowan. She was merely staring at Rowan.

“Come,” she said. She drew herself up. “Let me show what I have to show you. I don’t think there’s much time now.”

“Why do you say that!” Rowan whispered urgently. Something in the old woman’s change of demeanor terrified her. “Why do you look at me like that?”

The woman only smiled. “Come,” she said. “Bring the candle if you will. Some of the lights still burn. Others are burnt out or the wires have long ago frayed and come loose. Follow me.”

She rose from the chair, and carefully unhooked her wooden cane from the back of it, and walked with surprising certainty across the floor, past Rowan who stood watching her, guarding the tender flame of the candle in the curve of her left hand.

The tiny light leapt up the wall as they proceeded down the hallway. It shone for a moment on the gleaming surface of an old portrait of a man who seemed suddenly to be alive and to be staring at Rowan. She stopped, turning her head sharply to look up, to see that this had only been an illusion.

“What is it?” said Carlotta.

“Only that I thought … ” She looked at the portrait, which was very skillfully done and showed a smiling black-eyed man, most certainly not alive, and buried beneath layers of brittle, crazed lacquer.

“What?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Rowan said, and came on, guarding the flame as before. “The light made him look as though he’d moved.”

The woman looked back fixedly at the portrait as Rowan stood beside her. “You’ll see many strange things in this house,” she said. “You’ll pass empty rooms only to double back because you think you’ve seen a figure moving, or a person staring at you.”

Rowan studied her face. She seemed neither playful nor vicious now, only solitary, wondering and thoughtful.

“You aren’t afraid of the dark?” Carlotta asked.

“No.”

“You can see well in the dark.”

“Yes, better than most people.”

The woman turned around, and went on to the tall door at the foot of the stairs and pressed the button. With a muffled clank the elevator descended to the lower floor and stopped heavily and jerkily; the woman turned the knob, opening the door and revealing a gate of brass which she folded back with effort.

Inside they stepped, onto a worn patch of carpet, enclosed by dark fabric-covered walls, a dim bulb in the metal ceiling shining down on them.

“Close the doors,” said the woman, and Rowan obeyed, reaching out for the knob and then pushing shut the gate.

“You might as well learn how to use what is yours,” she added. A subtle fragrance of perfume rose from her clothes, something sweet like Chanel, mingled with the unmistakable scent of powder. She pressed a small black rubber button to her right. And up they went, fast, with a surge of power that surprised Rowan.

The hallway of the second floor lay in even thicker darkness than the lower corridor. The air was warmer. No open doorway or window gave even a seam of light from the street, and the candle light burst weakly on the many white-paneled doors and yet another rising stairway.

“Come into this room,” the old woman said, opening the door to the left and leading the way, her cane thumping softly on the thick flowered carpet.

Draperies, dark and rotting like those of the dining room below, and a narrow wooden bed with a high half roof, carved it seemed, with the figure of an eagle. A similar deeply etched symmetrical design was carved into the headboard.

“In this bed your mother died,” said Carlotta.

Rowan looked down at the bare mattress. She saw a great dark stain on the striped cloth that gave off a gleam that was almost a sparkling in the shadows. Insects! Tiny black insects fed busily on the stain. As she stepped forward, they fled the light, scurrying to the four corners of the mattress. She gasped and almost dropped the candle.

The old woman appeared wrapped in her thoughts, protected somehow from the ugliness of it.

“This is revolting,” said Rowan under her breath. “Someone should clean this room!”

“You may have it cleaned if you like,” said the old woman, “it’s your room now.”

The heat and the sight of the roaches sickened Rowan. She moved back and rested her head against the frame of the door. Other smells rose, threatening to nauseate her.

“What else do you want to show me?” she asked calmly.
Swallow your anger, she whispered within herself, her eyes drifting over the faded walls, the little nightstand crowded with plaster statues and candles. Lurid, ugly, filthy. Died in filth. Died here. Neglected.

“No,” said the old woman. “Not neglected. And what did she know of her surroundings in the end? Read the medical records for yourself.”

The old woman turned past her once more, returning to the hallway. “And now we must climb these stairs,” she said. “Because the elevator goes no higher.”

Pray you don’t need my help, Rowan thought. She shrank from the mere thought of touching the woman. She tried to catch her breath, to still the tumult inside her. The air, heavy and stale and full of the faintest reminders of worse smells, seemed to cling to her, cling to her clothes, her face.

She watched the woman go up, managing each step slowly but capably.

“Come with me, Rowan Mayfair,” she said over her shoulder. “Bring the light. The old gas jets above have long ago been disconnected.”