The Witching Hour (154 page)

Destroy Lasher. Seduce him, yes, as he is trying to seduce you. Discover what he is and destroy him! And you’re the only one who can do it. Tell Michael or Aaron and he will retreat. You’ve got to deceive with a purpose and
do it.

Four
A.M.
She must have slept. The irresistible hunk was lying there against her, his big heavy arm cradling her, his hand hugging her breasts. And a dream was just winking out, all full of misery and those Dutchmen in their big black hats, and a mob outside screaming for the blood of Jan van Abel.

“I describe what I see!” he had said. “I am no heretic! How are we to learn if we do not throw out the dogmas of Aristotle and Galen?”

Right you are. But it was gone now, along with that body on the table with all the tiny organs inside like flowers.

Ah, she hated that dream!

She rose and walked across the thick carpet, and out on the wooden deck. Oh, was ever a sky more vast and clear, and full of tiny twinkling stars. Pure white the foam of the black waves. As white as the sand which glowed in the moonlight.

But far down on the beach stood a lone figure, a lean tall man, looking towards her.
Damn you.
She saw the figure slowly thin and then vanish.

Bowing her head, she stood trembling with her hands on the wooden rail.

You’ll come when I call you.

I love you, Rowan.

With horror she realized the voice came from no direction. It was a whisper inside of her, all around her, intimate and audible only to her.

I wait only for you, Rowan.

Leave me, then. Don’t speak another word or show yourself again, or I’ll never call for you.

Angry, bitter, she turned and went back into the darkened bedroom, the warm carpet soft under her feet, and climbed into the low bed beside Michael. She clung to him in the darkness, her fingers tight around his arm. Desperately she wanted to wake him, to tell him what had happened.

But this she had to do alone. She knew it. She’d always known.

And an awful fatality gripped her.

Just give me these last days before the battle, she prayed. Ellie, Deirdre, help me.

She was sick every morning for a week. Then the nausea left her, and the days after were glorious, as if mornings had been rediscovered, and being clearheaded was a gift from the gods.

He didn’t speak to her again. He didn’t show himself. When she thought of him, she imagined her anger like a withering heat, striking the mysterious and unclassifiable cells of his form, and drying them up like so many minuscule husks. But most of all when she thought of him she was fearful.

Meantime life went on because she kept the secret locked inside her.

By phone she made an appointment with an obstetrician back in New Orleans, who arranged to have the early blood work done right here in Destin, with the results to be sent on. Everything was normal as she expected.

But who could expect them to understand that with her diagnostic sense she would have known if the little tucker was in trouble?

The warm days were few and far between, but she and Michael had the dreamlike beach almost to themselves. And the pure silence of the isolated house above the dunes was magical. When the air was warm, she sat for hours on the beach beneath a big glamorous white umbrella, reading her medical journals and the various materials which Ryan sent out to her by messenger.

She read the baby books, too, that she could find in the local bookstores. Sentimental and vague, but fun nevertheless. Especially the pictures of babies, with their tiny expressive faces, fat wrinkly necks, and adorable little feet and hands. She was dying to tell the family. She and Beatrice spoke almost every other day. But it was best to keep the secret. Think of the hurt to her and Michael if something were to go wrong, and if the others knew, that would only make the loss worse for everyone.

They walked on the beach for hours, on those days when it was too cold to swim. They shopped and bought little things for the house. They loved its bare white walls and sparse furnishings. It was like a place to play after the seriousness of First Street, said Michael. He liked doing the cooking with Rowan—chopping, shredding, stir frying, barbecuing steaks. It was all easy and fun.

They dined at all the fine restaurants and took drives into the
pine woods, and explored the big resorts with their tennis courts and golf courses. But mostly they were happy in the house, with the endless sea so very near them.

Michael was pretty anxious about his business—he had a team working on the shotgun cottage on Annunciation Street, and he had opened up his new Great Expectations on Magazine, and he was having to handle all the little emergencies by phone. And of course there was the painting still going on at home, up in Julien’s old room, and the roof repairs in the back. The brick parking area behind the house wasn’t finished yet, and the old
garçonnière
was still being renovated—an excellent caretaker’s cottage, they figured—and he was antsy not being there himself.

He didn’t need a long honeymoon right now, that was perfectly obvious—especially not a honeymoon that was being extended day after day by Rowan.

But he was so agreeable. Not only did he do what she wanted, he seemed to have an endless capacity to make the most of the moment, whether they were strolling on the beach hand in hand, or enjoying a hasty seafood meal in a little tavern, or visiting the boats for sale in the marina, or reading in their various favorite corners of the spacious house, on their own.

Michael was a contented person by nature. She’d known that when she first met him; she’d understood why the anxiety was so terrible for him. And now it endeared him to her so much to see him lost in his own projects, drawing designs for the renovation of the little Annunciation Street cottage, clipping out pictures from magazines of little things he meant to do.

Aunt Viv was doing fine back in New Orleans. Lily and Bea gave her no peace, according to their own admission, and Michael felt it was the best thing in the world for her.

“She sounds so much younger when I talk to her,” he said. “She’s joined some garden club, and some committee to protect the oak trees. She’s actually having fun.”

So loving, so understanding. Even when Rowan didn’t want to go back to town for Thanksgiving, he gave in. Aunt Viv went to dinner at Bea’s, of course. And everybody forgave the wedding couple for staying in Florida, for it was their honeymoon after all, and they could take as long as they wished.

They had their own quiet Thanksgiving dinner on the deck over the beach. Then that night a cold, blustering lightning storm hit Destin. The wind shook the glass doors and windows. Up and down the coast, the power went out. It was an utterly divine and natural darkness.

They sat for hours by the fire, talking of Little Chris and which room would be the nursery, and how Rowan would not
let the Medical Center interfere in the first couple of years; she’d spend every morning with the baby, not going to work until twelve o’clock, and of course they’d get all the help they needed to make things run smoothly.

Thank God he did not ask directly whether or not she’d “seen that damn thing.” She did not know what she would do if forced to tell a deliberate lie. The secret was locked inside a little compartment in her mind, like Bluebeard’s secret chamber, and the key had been thrown down the well.

The weather was getting colder. Soon there wouldn’t be an excuse for remaining here. She knew they ought to go back.

What was she doing not telling Michael, and not telling Aaron? Running away like this, to hide?

But the longer she remained here, the more she began to understand her conflicts and her reasons.

She
wanted
to talk to the being. The memory of him in the kitchen flooded her with a powerful sense of him, all the more particular because she had heard the tender quality of his voice. Yes, she wanted to know him! It was exactly as Michael had predicted it that first awful night when the old woman had just died. What was Lasher? Where had he come from? What secrets lay beyond that flawless and tragic face? What would Lasher say about the doorway and the thirteen witches?

And all she had to do was call him, like Prospero calling to Ariel. Keep the secret, and say his name.

Oh, but you are a witch, she said to herself as her guilt deepened. And they all knew it. They knew it that afternoon you spoke to Gifford; they knew by the stark silvery power that came from you, what everybody thinks is coldness and cunning, but was never anything but unwelcome strength. The old man, Fielding, was right in his warnings. And Aaron knows, doesn’t he? Of course he knows.

Everybody but Michael, and Michael is so easy to deceive.

But what if she decided that she wouldn’t deceive anyone, that she wouldn’t play along? Maybe she was searching for the courage to make that decision. Or maybe she was simply resisting. Maybe she was making the demon thing wait the way he had made her wait.

Whatever the case, she no longer felt that aversion for him, that awful dislike which had followed the incident on the plane. She felt the anger still, but the curiosity and the ever increasing attraction were greater … 

It was the first really cold day, when Michael came out on the beach and sat down beside her and told her he had to go back.
She was enjoying the brisk air, actually, sunbathing in a heavy cotton sweater and long pants, the way she might have done in California on her windy deck.

“Look, this is what’s going down,” he said. “Aunt Viv wants her things from San Francisco and you know how old people can be. And, Rowan, there’s nobody to close up Liberty Street except me. I have to make some decisions about my old store out there, too. My accountant just called me again about somebody wanting to rent it, and I have to get back there and go through the inventory myself.”

He went on, about selling a couple of pieces of California property, shipping certain things, renting out his house, that sort of thing. And the truth was, he was needed in New Orleans. His new business on Magazine Street needed him. If this thing was going to work .… 

“Truth is, I’d rather fly out there now than later. It’s almost December, Rowan. Christmas is coming. You realize it?”

“Sure, I understand. We’ll drive back tonight.”

“But you don’t have to, babe. You can stay here in Florida till I come back, or as long as you want.”

“No, I’ll come with you,” she said. “I’ll come up and pack in a little while. Besides, it’s time to be leaving. It’s warm now but it was really chilly this morning when I first came out.”

He nodded. “Didn’t you hate it?”

She laughed. “Still not as cold as any summer day back in California,” she said.

He nodded. “I have to tell you something. It’s going to get even colder. A lot colder. Winter in the South is going to surprise you. They’re saying this may be a bad winter all over the southern states. In a way I just love it. First the dizzying heat and then the frost on the windows.”

“I know what you mean.”
And I love you. I love you more than anyone I’ve ever loved.

She sat back in the wooden beach chair as he walked away, and she let her head roll to the side. The Gulf was now a dull silver blaze before her, as often happened when the sun was at its height. She let her left hand fall down into the soft, sugary sand. She pushed her fingers into it, and picked up a handful of it, letting it run through her fingers. “Real,” she whispered. “So real.”

But wasn’t it just too neat that he had to leave now, and she’d be alone at First Street? Wasn’t it just like somebody had arranged things that way? And all this time she thought that she’d been calling the shots.

“Don’t overreach, my friend,” she whispered into the cool
Gulf breeze. “Don’t hurt my love, or I’ll never forgive you. See that he comes back to me, safe and sound.”

They didn’t leave till the following morning.

As they drove away, she felt the tiniest stab of excitement. In a flash, she pictured his face again as it had been in the darkened kitchen; she heard the soft resonant flow of his words. A caress. But she couldn’t bear to think of that part of it. Only after Michael had arrived safely in California, only when she was alone in the house … 

T
WELVE O’CLOCK
. W
HY
did that seem the right time? Maybe because Pierce and Clancy had stayed so late, and she had needed this hour of quiet? It was only ten o’clock in California, but Michael had already called, and, worn out after the long flight, he had probably already fallen asleep.

He’d sounded so excited about the fact that everything looked so unappetizing and he was so eager to come home. Excruciating to miss him so much already, to be lying alone in this large and empty bed.

But the other waited.

As the soft chimes of the clock died away, she got up, put on the silk peignoir over her nightgown, and the satin bedroom slippers, and went out and down the long stairs.

And where do we meet, my demon lover?

In the parlor amid the giant mirrors, with the draperies drawn over the light from the street? Seemed a better place than most.

She walked softly over the polished pine floor, her feet sinking into the Chinese carpet as she moved towards the first fireplace. Michael’s cigarettes on the table. A half-drunk glass of beer. Ashes from the fire she had made earlier, on this her first bitter cold night in the South.

Yes, the first of December, and the baby has its little eyelids now inside her, and its ears have started to form.

No problems at all, said the doctor. Strong healthy parents,
disease-free, and her body in excellent condition. Eat sensibly and by the way what do you do for a living?

Tell lies.

Today she’d overheard Michael talking to Aaron on the phone. “Just fine. I mean surprisingly well, I guess. Completely peaceful. Except of course for seeing that awful vision of Stella the day of the wedding. But I could have imagined that. I was drunk on all that champagne. [Pause] No. Nothing at all.”