The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,397

moment I feared above all, the moment of your coming here. I prayed that Ellie would live a long life, that Ellie would hold you close in those long years, until Deirdre had rotted in the grave, and until the chain was broken. But fate has dealt me another little surprise. Ellie’s death. Ellie’s death and not a word to tell me of it.”

“It was the way she wanted it,” Rowan said.

“I know.” The old woman sighed. “I know what you say is true. But it’s not the telling of it, it’s the death itself that was the blow. And it’s done, and couldn’t be prevented.”

“She did what she could to keep me away,” Rowan said simply. “She insisted I sign a promise that I’d never come. I chose to break it.”

The old woman was silent for a moment.

“I wanted to come,” Rowan said. And then as gently, as imploringly as she could, she asked: “Why did you want me kept away? Was it such a terrible story?”

The woman sat silent regarding her. “You’re a strong woman,” she said. “You’re strong the way my mother was strong.”

Rowan didn’t answer.

“You have her eyes, did they tell you that? Were there any of them old enough to remember her?”

“I don’t know,” Rowan answered.

“What have you seen with your eyes?” asked the old woman. “What have you seen that you knew should not be there?”

Rowan gave a start. At first she had thought she misunderstood the words; then in a split second she realized she had not, and she thought instantly of the phantom who had appeared at three o’clock, and confused with it suddenly and inexplicably was her dream on the plane of someone invisible touching her and violating her.

In confusion she saw the smile spread over the old woman’s face. But it wasn’t bitter or triumphant. It was merely resigned. And then the face went smooth again and sad and wondering. In the dim light, the old woman’s head looked like a skull for a moment.

“So he did come to you,” she said with a soft sigh, “and he laid his hands on you.”

“I don’t know,” Rowan said. “Explain this to me.”

But the woman merely looked at her and waited.

“It was a man, a thin elegant man. He came at three o’clock. At the hour of my mother’s death. I saw him as plainly as I see you, but it was only for a moment.”

The woman looked down. Rowan thought she had closed her eyes. Then she saw the little gleam of light beneath her lids. The woman folded her hands before her on the table.

“It was ‘the man’,” she said. “It was ‘the man’ who drove your mother mad, and drove her mother mad before her. ‘The man’ who served my mother who ruled all those around her. Did they speak of him to you, the others? Did they warn you?”

“They didn’t tell me anything,” she said.

“That’s because they don’t know, and at last they realize they don’t know, and now they leave the secrets to us, as they should have always done.”

“But what did I see? Why did he come to me?” Once again, she thought of the dream on the plane, and she could find no answer for connecting the two.

“Because he believes that you are his now,” said the woman. “His to love and his to touch and his to rule with promises of servitude.”

Rowan felt the confusion again, and a dull heat in her face. His to touch. The haunting ambience of the dream came back.

“He will tell you it’s the other way around,” said the old woman. “When he speaks into your ear so that no one can hear, he will say he is your slave, that he’s passed to you from Deirdre. But it’s a lie, my dear, a vicious lie. He’ll make you his and drive you mad if you refuse to do his will. That is what he’s done to them all.” She stopped, her wrinkled brows tightening, her eyes drifting off across the dusty surface of the table. “Except for those who were strong enough to rein him in and make him the slave he claimed to be, and use him for their own ends … ” Her voice trailed off. “Their own endless wickedness.”

“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