The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,399

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