The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,425

She jotted down the number.

She went into the small kitchen, found a pot, and coffee, and made it herself, and then went back and carefully shut the bedroom door, and the door to the little hallway between the bedroom and the living room.

Where was the File on the Mayfair Witches? What had Michael done with the briefcase he’d taken from the car?

She searched the little living room with its skirted chairs and couch. She searched the small den and the closets and even the kitchen. Then she slipped back into the hallway and watched him sleeping there in the light from the window. Curly hair on the back of his neck.

In the closet, nothing. In the bathroom nothing.

Clever, Michael. But I’m going to find it. And then she saw the very edge of the briefcase. He had slipped it behind the chair.

Not very trusting, but then I’m doing just what I more or less promised I wouldn’t, she thought. She drew it out, stopping to listen to the pace of his deep breathing, and then she shut the door, and tiptoed down the hall and shut the second door, and laid the briefcase on the coffee table in the light of the lamp.

Then she got her coffee, and her cigarettes, and sat down on the couch and looked at her watch. It was four fifteen. She loved this time, absolutely loved it. It was a good time to read. It had been her favorite time, too, for driving to the hospital, running one red light after another in the great quiet vacuum, her mind filled with orderly and detailed thoughts of the operations waiting for her. But it was an even better time to read.

She opened the briefcase and removed the great stack of folders, each of which carried the curious title: The File on the Mayfair Witches. It made her smile.

It was so literal. “Innocent,” she whispered. “They are all innocent. The man in the attic probably innocent. And that old woman, a witch to the core.” She paused, taking her first drag off the cigarette and wondering how she understood it so completely, and why she was so certain that they—Aaron and Michael—did not.

The conviction remained with her.

Flipping quickly through the folders, she sized up the manuscript, the way she always did the scientific texts she wanted to devour in one sitting, and then she scanned one page at random for the proportion of abstractions to concrete words, and found it very comfortable, the latter outnumbering the former to an extremely high degree.

A snap to cover this in four hours. With luck, Michael would sleep that long. The world would sleep. She snuggled back on the couch, put her bare feet against the rim of the coffee table, and began to read.

At nine o’clock, she walked slowly back First Street until she reached the corner of Chestnut. The morning sun was already high in the sky, and the birds were singing almost furiously in the leafy canopy of branches overhead. The sharp caw of a crow cut through the softer chorus. Squirrels scurried along the thick heavy branches that reached out low and far over the fences and the brick walls. The clean swept brick sidewalks were deserted; and the whole place seemed to belong to its flowers, its trees, and its houses. Even the noise of the occasional traffic was swallowed by the engulfing stillness and greenness. The clean blue sky shone through the web of overhead foliage, and the light even in the shade seemed somehow bright and pure.

Aaron Lightner was already waiting for her at the gate, a small-boned man in light, tropical clothing, with a prim British look to him, even to the walking stick in his hand.

She had called him at eight and asked for this appointment, and she could see even from a distance that he was deeply worried about her reaction to what she’d read.

She took her time crossing the intersection. She approached him slowly, her eyes lowered, her mind still swimming with the long story and all the detail which she’d so quickly absorbed.

When she found herself standing in front of him, she took his hand. She had not rehearsed what she meant to say. It would be an ordeal for her. But it felt good to be here, to be holding his hand, pressing it warmly, as she studied the expression on his open and agreeable face.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice sounding weak and inadequate to her. “You’ve