The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,510

wanted, no, the very opposite. Maybe it would have been better if they had said nothing at all. If Gifford had had her way and they had gone on in their airy sunlighted dream, talking of the house and the wedding.

“Michael,” said Aaron in his characteristically calm voice. “He taunts and he lies. What right has he to prophesy? And what purpose could he have other than to try through his lies to make his prophecies come true?”

“Where the hell is he?” demanded Michael. “Aaron, maybe I’m grasping at straws. But that first night when I went to the house, would he have spoken to me if you hadn’t been there? Why did he show himself only to vanish like so much smoke?”

“Michael, I could give you several explanations for every single appearance he has made. But I don’t know that I’m right. The important thing is to maintain a sane course, to realize he’s a trickster.”

“Exactly,” said Rowan.

“God, what kind of a game is it?” whispered Michael. “They give me everything I ever wanted—the woman I love, my home again, the house I dreamed of when I was a little boy. We want to have a child, me and Rowan! What kind of a game is it? He speaks and the others who came to me are silent. God, if only I could lose the feeling that it’s all planned, like Townsend said in your dream, all planned. But who’s planning it?”

“Michael, you’ve got to get a grip on yourself,” Rowan said. “Everything is going beautifully, and we are the ones who made it that way. It has gone beautifully since the day after the old woman died. You know, there are times when I think I’m doing what my mother would have wanted. Does that sound crazy? I think I’m doing what Deirdre dreamed of all those years.”

No answer.

“Michael, didn’t you hear what I said to the others?” she asked. “Don’t you believe in me?”

“Just promise me this, Rowan,” he said. He grabbed her hand and slipped his fingers between hers. “Promise me if you see that thing, you won’t keep it secret. You’ll tell me. You won’t keep it back.”

“God, Michael, you’re acting like a jealous husband.”

“Do you know what that old man said?” Michael asked. “When I helped him to the car?”

“You’re talking about Fielding?”

“Yeah. This is what he said. ‘Be careful, young man.’ What the hell did he mean by that?”

“The hell with him for saying that,” she whispered. She was suddenly in a rage. She pulled her hand free from Michael. “Who the hell does he think he is, the old bastard! How dare he say that to you. He doesn’t come to our wedding. He doesn’t come through the front gate—” She stopped, choking on the words. The anger was too bitter. Her trust in the family had been so total, she’d been just lapping it all up, the love, and now she felt as if Fielding had stabbed her, and she was crying again, goddamn it, and she didn’t have a handkerchief. She felt like … like slapping Michael. But it was that old man she’d like to belt. How dare he?

Michael tried to take her hand again. She pushed him away. For a moment, she was so angry, she couldn’t think at all. And she was furious that she was crying.

“Here, Rowan, please,” Aaron said. He put his handkerchief into her hand.

She was barely able to whisper thank you. She used the handkerchief to cover her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Rowan,” Michael whispered.

“The hell with you too, Michael!” she said. “You’d better stand up to them. You’d better stop spinning like a goddamned top every time another piece of the puzzle falls into place! It wasn’t the Blessed Virgin Mary you saw out there in your visions! It was just them and all their tricks.”

“No, that’s not true.”

He sounded sad and contrite, and really raw. It broke her heart to hear it, but she wouldn’t give in. She was afraid to say what she really thought—Listen, I love you, but did it ever occur to you that your role in this was only to see that I returned, that I remained, and that I have a child to inherit the legacy? This spirit could have staged your drowning, your rescue, the visions, the whole thing. And that was why Arthur Langtry came to you, that was why he warned you to get away before it was too late.

She sat there holding it in,