The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,416

he knows, Rowan.”

“Knows what?”

He didn’t answer. He gave a little shrug, and drew out another cigarette, and stood there, staring off, considering, apparently, as he pulled out his matchbook, and without even noticing it, did that wonderful one-handed match trick of bending out one book match, and closing the book and then bending that match and striking it and putting the flame to the cigarette.

“I don’t know where to begin,” he said. “Maybe at the beginning.” He let out the smoke, resting his elbow on the mantel again. “I love you. I really do. I don’t know how all this came about. I have a lot of suspicions and I’m scared. But I love you. If that was meant, I mean destined, well, then I’m a lost man. Really lost, because I can’t accept the destined part. But I won’t give up the love. I don’t care what happens. Did you hear what I said?”

She nodded. “You have to tell me everything about these other people,” she said. But she also said without words, Do you know how much I love you and desire you?

She turned sideways in the chair, the better to face him. She rubbed the back of her arms, again, and hung the heel of her shoe on the chair rung. Looking up at him, she saw his hips again, the slant of his belt, the shirt tight across his chest. She couldn’t stop wanting him physically. Best to get it over with, wasn’t it? Oh, all right, let’s eat all this delicious ice cream just to get rid of it. And so you can tell me what you’re talking about with all this, and I can tell you. About the man on the plane. And the old woman’s question. Was it better than a mortal man?

His face darkened as he looked at her. Loved her. Yes. This man, just the best man she had ever known or touched or wanted ever. What would all this have been like without him?

“Michael, talk straight to me, please,” she said.

“Oh, yeah. But Rowan, don’t freak out on me. Just listen to what I have to say.”

He picked up one of the dining room chairs from along the wall, swung it around so that the back faced her, and straddled it cowboy style, folding his arms on the back of it, as he looked at her. That was pornographic too.

“For the last two days,” he said, “I’ve been holed up about sixty miles from here, reading the history of the Mayfair family compiled by these people.”

“The Talamasca.”

He nodded. “Now, let me explain to you. Three hundred years ago, there was this man named Petyr van Abel. His father had been a famous surgeon at the University of Leiden in Holland. There are books still in existence that were written by this doctor, Jan van Abel.

“I know who he is,” she said. “He was an anatomist.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Well, he’s your ancestor, babe. You look like his son. At least that’s what Aaron says. Now when Jan van Abel died, Petyr was orphaned and he became a member of the Talamasca. He could read minds, he could see ghosts. He was what other people might have called a witch, but the Talamasca gave him shelter. Eventually, he went to work for them, and part of his work was saving people accused in other countries of witchcraft. And if they had real gifts, you know, the gifts that I have and you have and Petyr van Abel had, well, he would help those people to reach the Motherhouse of the Talamasca in Amsterdam.

“Now, this Petyr van Abel went to Scotland to try to intervene in the trial of a witch named Suzanne Mayfair. But he came too late, and all he was able to do, which was plenty as it turned out, was take her daughter Deborah away from the town where she might eventually have been burnt too, and bring her to Holland. But before he did, he saw this man, this spirit. He saw too that the child Deborah saw it, and Petyr conjectured that Deborah had made it appear, which proved to be accurate.

“Deborah didn’t stay with the order. Eventually she seduced Petyr, and by him had a child named Charlotte. Charlotte went to the New World and it was she who founded the Mayfair family. But when Deborah died in France, a convicted witch, that brown-haired man, that spirit, went to Charlotte. So did this