The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,486

the jewel and wound the two strands of broken chain around it carefully. Seemed dreadful to have broken those fragile antique links.

“But you were stupid to do this,” she whispered. “I’ll never put it on now, not of my own free will.”

With a low creak of the springs, Michael turned over in the bed. Had he whispered something? Her name maybe?

She crept silently back into the bedroom, and dropping to her knees, found her purse in the corner of the closet and put the necklace into the side zipper pocket.

She wasn’t shaking now. But her fear had alchemized perfectly to rage. And she knew she couldn’t sleep any more.

Sitting alone in the living room as the sun rose, she thought of all the old portraits at the house, the ones she’d been going through, and wiping clean, and preparing to hang, the very old ones she could identify which no one else in the family could. Charlotte with her blond hair, so deeply faded beneath the lacquer that she seemed a ghost. And Jeanne Louise, with her twin brother standing behind her. And gray-haired Marie Claudette with the little painting of Riverbend on the wall above her.

All of them wore the emerald. So many paintings of that one jewel. She closed her eyes and dozed on the velvet couch, wishing for coffee, yet too sleepy to make it. She’d been dreaming before this happened, but what was it all about—something to do with the hospital and an operation, and now she couldn’t remember. Lemle there. Lemle whom she hated so much .…

And that dark-mouthed iris that Lasher had made .…

Yes, I know your tricks. You made it swell and break from its stem, didn’t you? Oh, nobody really understands how much power you have. To make whole leaves sprout from the stem of a dead rose. Where do you get your handsome form when you appear, and why won’t you do it for me? Are you afraid I’ll scatter you to the four winds, and you’ll never have the strength to gather yourself together?

She was dreaming again, wasn’t she? Imagine, a flower changing like that iris, altering before her eyes, the cells actually multiplying and mutating …

Unless it was just a trick. A trick like putting the necklace on her in her sleep. But wasn’t everything a trick?

“Well, boys and girls,” said Lark once as they stood over the bed of a comatose and dying man, “we’ve done all our tricks, haven’t we?”

What would have happened if she had tried a couple of her own? Like telling the cells of that dying man to multiply, to mutate, to restructure, and seal off the bruised tissue. But she hadn’t known. She still didn’t know how far she could go.

Yes, dreaming. Everyone walking through the halls at Leiden. You know what they did to Michael Servetus in Calvinist Geneva, when he accurately described the circulation of the blood in 1553, they burnt him at the stake, and all his heretical books with him. Be careful, Dr. van Abel.

I am not a witch.

Of course, none of us are. It’s a matter of constantly reevaluating our concept of natural principles.

Nothing natural about those roses.

And now the air in here, moving the way it was, catching the curtains and making them dance, stirring the papers on the coffee table in front of her, even lifting the tendrils of her hair, and cooling her. Your tricks. She didn’t want this dream anymore. Do the patients at Leiden always get up and walk away after the anatomy lesson?

But you won’t dare show yourself, will you?

She met Ryan at ten o’clock and told him all about the plans for the marriage, trying to make it matter-of-fact and definite, so as to invite as few questions as possible.

“And one thing I wish you could do for me,” she said. She took the emerald necklace out of her purse. “Could you put this in some sort of vault? Just lock it away, where no one can possibly get at it.”

“Of course, I can keep it here at the office,” he said, “but Rowan, there are several things I ought to explain to you. This legacy is very old—you have to have a little patience now. The rules and rubrics, so to speak, are quaint and bizarre, but nevertheless explicit. I’m afraid you’re required to wear the emerald at the wedding.”

“You don’t mean this.”

“You understand, of course, these small requirements are probably quite vulnerable to contest or revision in a court