The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,417

emerald necklace that is lying right here in this box. It passed along with the spirit, to Charlotte.

“All the Mayfairs since are Charlotte’s descendants. And in each generation of those descendants down to the present time at least one woman has inherited the powers of Suzanne and Deborah, which included, among other things, the ability to see this brown-haired man, this spirit. And they are what the Talamasca calls the Mayfair Witches.”

She made a little sound, half amazement, half nervous amusement. She drew herself up in the chair, and watched the little changes in his face, as he silently sorted all the things he wanted to tell. Then she decided to say nothing.

“The Talamasca,” he said, choosing his words with care. “They’re scholars, historians. They’ve documented a thousand sightings of that brown-haired man in and around this house. Three hundred years ago in Saint-Domingue, when Petyr van Abel went there to talk to his daughter Charlotte, this spirit drove him mad. It eventually killed him.”

He took another drag off the cigarette, eyes moving around the room again, but not seeing it this time, rather seeing something else, and then returning to her.

“Now as I explained before,” he said, “I’ve seen that man since I was six years old. I saw him every time I ever passed this house. And unlike the countless people interviewed by the Talamasca over the years, I’ve seen him other places. But the point is … the other night when I came back here, after all these years, I saw that man again. And when I told Aaron what I saw, when I told him that I’d been seeing that man since I was yea high, and when I told him that it was you who rescued me, well, then he showed me the Talamasca’s file on the Mayfair Witches.”

“He hadn’t known I was the one who pulled you out of the ocean?”

Michael shook his head. “He’d come to San Francisco to see me because of my hands. That’s their territory, so to speak, people who have special powers. It was routine. He was reaching out to me, as routinely perhaps as Petyr van Abel went to try to intervene in the execution of Suzanne Mayfair. And then he saw you outside my house. He saw you come to pick me up, and do you know he thought you’d hired me to come back here? He thought you’d hired a psychic to come back here and investigate your background.”

He took a final drag off the cigarette and pitched it into the grate. “Well, for a while anyway, he thought that. Until I told him why you’d really come to see me, and how you’d never seen this house, or even seen a picture of it. But there you have it, you see.

“And what you have to do now is read the File on the Mayfair Witches. But there’s more to it … as far as I’m concerned, I mean more to it that has to do with me.”

“The visions.”

“Exactly.” He smiled, his face warm and beautiful. “Exactly! Because you remember I told you I saw a woman and there was a jewel … ”

“And you’re saying it’s the emerald.”

“I don’t know, Rowan. I don’t know. And then I do know. I know as surely as I know I’m sitting here that it was Deborah Mayfair I saw out there, Deborah, and she was wearing the emerald around her neck, and I was sent here to do something.”

“To fight that spirit?”

He shook his head. “It’s more complicated. That’s why you have to read the File. And Rowan, you have to read it. You have to not be offended that such a file exists. You have to read it.”

“What does the Talamasca get from all this?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he answered. “To know. Yes, they’d like to know. They’d like to understand. It’s like, you know, they’re psychic detectives.”

“And filthy rich, I suppose.”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Filthy rich. Loaded.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, they’ve got money like you’ve got. They’ve got money like the Catholic Church has got. Like the Vatican. Look, it’s got nothing to do with their wanting anything from you … ”

“OK, I believe it. It’s just you’re naive, Michael. You really are. You really are naive.”

“What in the hell makes you say that, Rowan! Christ, where do you get the idea that I am naive! You said this before and this is really crazy!”

“Michael, you are. You really are. OK, tell me the truth, do you still believe