The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,432

want to hear their voices and know their faces, and learn what they have to teach. And also, I know I wouldn’t be able to forget that old woman and what I did to her no matter where I went.” She stopped, a flash of sudden emotion transfiguring her face for a second, then gone again, leaving it taut and cool. She folded her arms lightly, one foot up on the edge of the small coffee table. “Are you listening?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“OK, I want you to stay here, too. I hope and pray you will stay here. But not because of this pattern or this web or whatever it is. Not because of these visions or because of the man. Because there is absolutely no way to figure out what these things mean, Michael, or what’s meant, to use the word you wrote in your notes, or why you and I were thrown together. There is no way to know.”

She paused, her eyes scanning him intently. Then she went on:

“So I’ve made my decision,” she said, her words coming more slowly, “based on what I can know, and what I can see, and what I can define and understand, and that is, that this place is where I belong, because I want to belong.”

He nodded. “I hear you,” he said.

“What I’m saying is that I’m staying here in spite of this man and this seeming pattern, this coincidence of me pulling you up out of the ocean and you being what you are.”

He nodded again, a little hesitantly, and then sat back taking a deep breath, his eyes not letting go of hers. “But you can’t tell me,” he said, “that you don’t want to communicate with this thing, that you don’t want to understand the meaning of all this … ”

“I do want to understand,” she said. “I do. But that wouldn’t keep me here by itself. Besides, it doesn’t matter to this being whether or not we’re in Montcleve, France, or Tiburon, California, or Donnelaith, Scotland. And as for what matters to those beings you saw, they’re going to have to come back and tell you what matters! You don’t know.”

She paused, deliberately and obviously trying to soften her words as if she feared she’d become too sharp.

“Michael,” she said, “if you want to stay, make up your mind based on something else. Like maybe wanting to be here for me or because it’s where you were born, or because you think you’d be happy here. Because it was the first place you loved, this neighborhood, and maybe you could love it again.”

“I never stopped loving it.”

“But don’t do anything else to give in to them! Do things in spite of them.”

“Rowan, I’m here now in this room because of them. Don’t lose sight of that fact. We did not meet at the yacht club, Rowan.”

She let out a long breath.

“I insist on losing sight of it,” she said.

“Did Aaron talk to you about all this? Was this his advice to you?”

“I didn’t ask him for his advice,” she said patiently. “I met with him for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to talk with him again, and confirm for myself that he was an honest man.”

“And?”

“He’s everything you said he was. But I had to see him again, really talk to him.” She paused. “He’s a bit of a spellbinder, that man.”

“I know.”

“I felt this when I saw him at the funeral; and there was the other time, when I met him at Ellie’s grave.”

“And you feel all right about him now?”

She nodded. “I know him now,” she said. “He’s not so different from you and me.”

“How do you mean?”

“He’s dedicated,” she said. She gave a little shrug. “Just the way I’m a dedicated surgeon, and you’re dedicated when you’re bringing a house like this back to life.” She thought for a minute. “He has illusions, the way you and I have illusions.”

“I understand.”

“The second thing was—I wanted to tell him that I was grateful for what he’d given me in the history. That he didn’t have to worry about resentment or a breach of confidence from me.”

He was so relieved that he didn’t interrupt her, but he was puzzled.

“He filled in the largest and the most crucial blank in my life,” she said. “I don’t think even he understands what it meant to me. He’s too wary. And he doesn’t really know about loneliness. He’s been with the Talamasca ever since he was a boy.”

“I know what