The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,356

New Orleans? What did we, and what did I, really want?

“We want to know you!” I said, rather surprised myself to hear it come out. “To know you because we know so much about you and yet we don’t know anything at all. We want to tell you what we know about you—all the bits and pieces of information we’ve collected, what we know about the deep past! We want to tell you all we know about the whole mystery of who you are and what he is. And we wish you would talk to us. We wish you would trust us and let us in! And lastly, we want to reach out to Deirdre Mayfair and say, ‘There are others like you, others who see spirits. We know you’re suffering, and we can help you. You aren’t alone.’ ”

He studied me, eyes seemingly open, his face quite beyond dissembling. Then pulling back and glancing away, he tapped off the ash of his cigarette and motioned for another drink.

“Why don’t you drink the bourbon?” I asked. “I haven’t touched it.” Again, I had surprised myself. But I let the question stand.

He looked at me. “I don’t like bourbon,” he said. “Thank you.”

“What did you put in it?” I asked.

He shrank back into his thoughts. He appeared just a little miserable. He watched as the boy set down his drink. Sherry as before, in a crystal glass.

“This is true,” he asked, looking up at me, “what you wrote in your letter, about the portrait of Deborah Mayfair in Amsterdam?”

I nodded. “We have portraits of Charlotte, Jeanne Louise, Angélique, Marie Claudette, Marguerite, Katherine, Mary Beth, Julien, Stella, Antha, and Deirdre … ”

He made a sudden impatient motion for me to stop.

“Look, I came here because of Deirdre,” I said. “I came because she’s going mad. The girl I spoke to in Texas is on the edge of breakdown.”

“Do you think you helped her?”

“No, and I deeply regret that I didn’t. If you don’t want contact with us, I understand. Why the hell should you? But we can help Deirdre. We really can.”

No answer. He drank the sherry. I tried to see this from his point of view. I couldn’t. I’d never tried to poison someone. I didn’t have the faintest idea of who he really was. The man I’d known in the history wasn’t this man.

“Would your father, Julien, have spoken to me?” I asked.

“Not a chance of it,” he said, looking up as though awakening from his thoughts. For a moment he looked deeply distressed. “But don’t you know from all your observations,” he asked, “that he was one of them?” Again, he seemed completely earnest, his eyes searching my face as if to assure himself that I was earnest too.

“And you’re not one of them?” I asked.

“No,” he said with great quiet emphasis, slowly shaking his head. “Not really. Not ever!” He looked sad suddenly, and when he did he looked old. “Look, spy on us if you wish. Treat us as if we were a royal family … ”

“Exactly.”

“You’re historians, that’s what my contacts in London tell me. Historians, scholars, utterly harmless, completely respectable … ”

“I’m honored.”

“But leave my niece alone. My niece has a chance for happiness now. And this thing must come to an end, you see. It must. And perhaps she can see to it that it does.”

“Is she one of them?” I asked, echoing his early intonation.

“Of course she isn’t!” he said. “That’s just the point! There is no one of them now! Don’t you see that? What’s been the theme of your study of us? Haven’t you seen the disintegration of the power? Stella wasn’t one of them either! The last one was Mary Beth. Julien—my father, that is—and then Mary Beth.”

“I’ve seen it. But what about your spectral friend? Will he allow it to come to a finish?”

“You believe in him?” He cocked his head with a faint smile, his dark eyes creasing at the edges with silent laughter. “Really, now, Mr. Lightner? Do you believe in Lasher yourself?”

“I saw him,” I said simply.

“Imagination, sir. My niece told me it was a very dark garden.”

“Oh, please. Have we come this far to say such things to each other? I saw him, Cortland. He smiled when I saw him. He made himself very substantial and vivid indeed.”

Cortland’s smile became smaller, more ironic. He raised his eyebrows and gave a little sigh. “Oh, he would like your choice of words, Mr. Lightner.”

“Can Deirdre make him