The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,491

Rowan’s soft little laugh. “You know, you are cute when you’re angry,” she said. “But there’s probably a perfectly good explanation for how the flower got here.”

“Yeah, that’s what they always say in the movies,” he said. “And the audience knows they’re crazy.”

He took the lily into the bathroom and dropped it into the trash. It really was withering. No waste, wherever the hell it came from, he figured.

She was waiting for him when he came out, her arms folded, looking very serene and inviting. He forgot all about his books in the living room.

The next evening he walked over alone to First Street. Rowan was out with Cecilia and Clancy Mayfair, making the rounds of the city’s fashionable malls.

The house was hushed and empty when he got there. Even Eugenia was out tonight, with her two boys and their children. He had it all to himself.

Though the work was progressing wonderfully, there were still ladders and drop cloths virtually everywhere. The windows were still bare, and it was too soon to clean them. The long shutters, removed for sanding and painting, lay side by side like great long planks on the grass.

He went into the parlor, stared for a long time at his own shadowy reflection in the mirror over the first fireplace, the tiny red light of his cigarette like a firefly in the dark.

A house like this is never quiet, he thought. Even now he could hear a low singing of creaks and snaps in the rafters and the old floors. You could have sworn someone was walking upstairs, if you didn’t know better. Or that far back in the kitchen, someone had just closed a door. And that funny noise, it was like a baby crying, far far away.

But nobody else was here. This wasn’t the first night he’d slipped away to test the house and test himself. And he knew it wouldn’t be the last.

Slowly he walked back through the dining room, through the shadowy kitchen and out the French doors. A flood of soft light bathed the night around him, pouring from the lanterns on the freshly restored cabana, and from the underwater lights of the pool. It shone on the neatly trimmed hedges and trees, and on the cast-iron furniture, all sanded and newly painted, and arranged in little groups on the clean-swept flagstones.

The pool itself was completely restored, and filled to the brim. Very glamorous it seemed, the long rectangle of deep blue water, rippling and shining in the dusk.

He knelt down and put his hand in the water. A little too hot really for this early September weather, which was no cooler than August when you got right down to it. But good for swimming now in the dark.

A thought occurred to him. Why not go into the pool now? It seemed wrong somehow without Rowan—that the first splash was one of those moments that ought to be shared. But what the hell? Rowan was having a good time, no doubt, with Cecilia and Clancy. And the water was so tempting. He hadn’t swum in a pool in years.

He glanced back up at the few lighted windows scattered throughout the dark violet wall of the house. Nobody to see him. Quickly he peeled off his coat, shirt and trousers, his shoes and his socks. He stripped off his shorts. And walking to the deep end, he dove in without another thought.

God! This was living! He plunged down until his hands touched the deep blue bottom, then turned over so that he could see the light glittering on the surface above.

Then he shot upwards, letting his natural buoyancy carry him right through that surface, shaking his head and treading water, as he looked up at the stars. There was noise all around him! Laughter, chatter, people talking in loud, animated voices to one another, and underneath it all, the fast-paced wail of a Dixieland band.

He turned, astonished, and saw the lawn strung with lanterns and filled with people; everywhere young couples were dancing on the flagstones or even right on the grass. Every window in the house was lighted. A young man in a black dinner jacket suddenly dove into the pool right in front of him, blinding him with a violent splash of water.

The water suddenly filled his mouth. The noise was now deafening. At the far end of the pool stood an old man in a tailcoat and white tie, beckoning to him.

“Michael!” he shouted. “Come away at once, man,