The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,435

the time he’d spent in the darkened bedroom on Liberty Street, trying to remember, trying to understand. But here he was in this house at last and except for two instances last night—when he’d touched Townsend’s remains and when he’d touched the emerald—he hadn’t removed the gloves. The mere thought of it scared him. Touching the door frames and the tables and the chairs that had belonged to the Mayfairs, touching the older things, the trunk of dolls in the attic, which Rowan had described to him, and the jars, those stinking jars …

“We become passive and confused,” she said again, commanding his attention, “and we don’t think for ourselves, which is exactly what we must do.”

“I agree with you,” he said. “I only wish I had your calmness. I wish I could know all these half truths and not go spinning off into the darkness trying to figure things out.”

“Don’t be a pawn in somebody’s game,” she said. “Find the attitude which gives you the maximum strength and the maximum dignity, no matter what else is going on.”

“You mean strive to be perfect,” he said.

“What?”

“You said in California that you thought we should all aim to be perfect.”

“Yes, I did, didn’t I? Well, I believe that. I’m trying to figure the perfect thing to do. So don’t act like I’m a freak if I don’t burst into tears, Michael. Don’t think I don’t know what I did to Karen Garfield or Dr. Lemle, or that little girl. I know. I really do.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Oh, yeah, you did too,” she said with slight sharpness. “Don’t like me better when I cry than when I don’t.”

“Rowan, I didn’t—”

“I cried for a year before I met you. I started crying when Ellie died. And then I cried in your arms. I cried when the call came from New Orleans that Deirdre was dead, and I’d never even known her or spoken to her or laid eyes on her. I cried and I cried. I cried when I saw her in the coffin yesterday. I cried for her last night. And I cried for that old woman, too. Well, I don’t want to go on crying. What I have here is the house, the family, and the history Aaron has given me. I have you. A real chance with you. And what is there to cry about, I’d like to know.”

She was glaring at him, obviously sizzling with anger and with the conflict in herself, gray eyes flashing at him in the half light.

“You’re gonna make me cry, Rowan, if you don’t stop,” he said.

She laughed in spite of herself. Her face softened beautifully, her mouth twisting unwillingly into a smile.

“All right,” she said. “And there is one thing more that could make me cry. I should tell you that, in order to be perfectly truthful. And that is … I’d cry if I lost you.”

“Good,” he whispered. He kissed her quickly before she could stop him.

She made a little gesture for him to sit back, to stay serious, and to listen. He nodded and shrugged.

“Tell me—what do you want to do? I mean what do you want to do? I’m not talking about what these beings want you to do. What’s inside you now?”

“I want to stay here,” he said. “I wish to hell I hadn’t stayed away so long. I don’t know why I did.”

“OK, now you’re talking,” she said. “You’re talking about something real.”

“No doubt about it,” he said. “I’ve been walking—back there, in the old streets, where I grew up. It’s not the old neighborhood now. It was never beautiful, but it’s squalid and ruined and … all gone.”

He saw the concern in her eyes immediately.

“Yeah, well it’s changed,” he said with a little weary and accepting gesture. “But New Orleans never was just that neighborhood to me. It was, never Annunciation Street. It was here, the Garden District, and it was uptown, it was down in the French Quarter, it was all the other beautiful parts. And I love it. And I’m glad I’m back here. I don’t want to leave again.”

“OK,” she said. She smiled, the light glinting on the curve of her cheek and the edge of her mouth.

“You know, I kept thinking, I’m home. I’m home. And no matter what does happen with all the rest—I don’t want to leave home.”

“The hell with them, Michael,” she said. “The hell with them, whoever they are, until they give us some reason to feel otherwise.”

“Well put,” he