The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,433

you mean. But I think he does understand.”

“But still he’s wary. This thing—this charming brown-haired apparition, or whatever he is—really tried to hurt him, you know.”

“I know.”

“But I tried to make him understand how grateful I was. That I wasn’t challenging him in any way. Two days ago I was a person without a past or a family. And now I have both of those things. The most agonizing questions of my life have been answered. I don’t think the full meaning of if has really sunk in. I keep thinking of my house in Tiburon and each time I realize ‘You don’t have to go back mere, you don’t have to be alone there anymore.’ And it’s a wonderful shock all over again.”

“I never dreamed you’d respond that way. I have to confess. I thought you’d be angry, maybe even offended.”

“Michael, I don’t care what Aaron did to get the information. I don’t care what his colleagues did, or what they’ve done all along. The point is, the information wouldn’t be there in any form whatsoever if he hadn’t collected it. I’d be left with that old woman, and the vicious things she said. And all the shiny-faced cousins, smiling and offering sympathy, and incapable of telling the whole story because they don’t know it. They only know little glittering parts.” She took a deep breath. “You know, Michael, some people can’t receive gifts. They don’t know how to claim them and make use of them. I have to learn how to receive gifts. This house is a gift. The history was a gift. And the history makes it possible for me to accept the family! And God, they are the greatest gift of all.”

Again he was relieved, profoundly relieved. Her words held a charm for him. Nevertheless he could not get over his surprise.

“What about the part of the file on Karen Garfield?” he asked. “And Dr. Lemle? I was so afraid for you, reading that.”

The flash of pain in her face this time was stronger, brighter. Instantly he regretted his bluntness. It seemed suddenly unforgivable to have blurted out these words.

“You don’t understand me,” she said, her voice as even as before. “You don’t understand the kind of person I am. I wanted to know whether or not I had that power! I went to you because I thought if you touched me with your hands you could tell me if this power was really there. Well, you couldn’t. But Aaron has told me. Aaron has confirmed it. And nothing, nothing could be worse than suspecting it and being unsure.”

“I see.”

“Do you?” She swallowed, her face working hard suddenly to preserve its expression of tranquillity. And then her eyes went dull for a moment, and only brightened again with an obvious act of will. In a dry whisper, she said, “I hate what happened to Karen Garfield. I hate it. Lemle? Lemle was sick already. He’d had a stroke the year before. I don’t know about Lemle, but Karen Garfield … that was my doing, all right, and Michael, it was because I didn’t know!”

“I understand,” he said softly.

For a long moment, she struggled silently to regain her composure. When she spoke again, her voice was weary and a little frayed.

“There was still another reason I had to see Aaron.”

“What?”

She thought for a moment, then:

“I’m not in communication with this spirit, and that means I can’t control it. It hasn’t revealed itself to me, not really. And it may not.”

“Rowan, you’ve already seen it, and besides—it’s waiting for you.”

She was pondering, her hand playing idly with a little thread on the edge of her shirt.

“I’m hostile to it, Michael,” she said. “I don’t like it. And I think it knows. I’ve been sitting here for hours alone, inviting it to come, yet hating it, fearing it.”

Michael puzzled over this for a moment.

“It may have overplayed its hand,” she said.

“You mean, the way it touched you … ”

“No. I mean in me, it may have overplayed its hand. It may have helped to create the very medium who can’t be seduced by it, or driven crazy by it. Michael, if I could kill a flesh and blood human being with this invisible power of mine, what do you think my hostility feels like to Lasher?”

He narrowed his eyes, studying her. “I don’t know,” he confessed.

Her hand shook just a little as she swept her hair back out of her face, the sunlight catching it for one moment and