The witching hour

Forty-two

TWELVE O’CLOCK. WHY did that seem the right time? Maybe because Pierce and Clancy had stayed so late, and she had needed this hour of quiet? It was only ten o’clock in California, but Michael had already called, and, worn out after the long flight, he had probably already fallen asleep.

He’d sounded so excited about the fact that everything looked so unappetizing and he was so eager to come home. Excruciating to miss him so much already, to be lying alone in this large and empty bed.

But the other waited.

As the soft chimes of the clock died away, she got up, put on the silk peignoir over her nightgown, and the satin bedroom slippers, and went out and down the long stairs.

And where do we meet, my demon lover?

In the parlor amid the giant mirrors, with the draperies drawn over the light from the street? Seemed a better place than most.

She walked softly over the polished pine floor, her feet sinking into the Chinese carpet as she moved towards the first fireplace. Michael’s cigarettes on the table. A half-drunk glass of beer. Ashes from the fire she had made earlier, on this her first bitter cold night in the South.

Yes, the first of December, and the baby has its little eyelids now inside her, and its ears have started to form.

No problems at all, said the doctor. Strong healthy parents, disease-free, and her body in excellent condition. Eat sensibly and by the way what do you do for a living?

Tell lies.

Today she’d overheard Michael talking to Aaron on the phone. “Just fine. I mean surprisingly well, I guess. Completely peaceful. Except of course for seeing that awful vision of Stella the day of the wedding. But I could have imagined that. I was drunk on all that champagne. [Pause] No. Nothing at all.”

Aaron could see through the lie, couldn’t he? Aaron knew. But the trouble with these dark inhuman powers was that you never knew when they were working. They failed you when you most counted upon them. After all the random flashing and decidedly unwelcome insights into the thoughts of others, suddenly the world was filled with wooden faces and flat voices. And you were alone.

Maybe Aaron was alone. He had found nothing helpful in the old notebooks of Julien’s. Nothing in the ledgers in the library, except the predictable economic records of a plantation. He had found nothing in the grimoires and demonologies collected over the years, except the published information on witchcraft which anyone could obtain.

And now the house was beautifully finished, without dark or unexplored corners. Even the attics were shining clean. She and Michael had gone up to approve the last work, before he left for the airport. Everything in order. Julien’s room just a pretty workroom now for Michael, with a drawing table and files for blueprints and the shelves full of his many books.

She stood in the center of the Chinese carpet. She was facing the fireplace. She had bowed her head and made a little steeple with her hands, and pressed her fingers to her lips. What was she waiting for? Why didn’t she say it: Lasher. Slowly she looked up and into the mirror over the mantel.

Behind her, in the keyhole doorway, watching her, the light from the street all she needed to see him as it shone through the glass on either side of the front door.

Her heart was pounding, but she didn’t move to turn around. She gazed at him through the mirror-calculating, measuring, defining-trying to grasp with all her powers, human and inhuman, what this creature was made of, what this body was.

“Face me, Rowan.” Voice like a kiss in the darkness. Not a command, or a plea. Something intimate like the request from a lover whose heart will be broken if he is refused.

She turned around. He was standing against the door frame, his arms folded. He wore an old-fashioned dark suit, much like the ones Julien wore in the portraits of the 1890s, with the high white collar and silk tie. A beautiful picture. And in such lovely contrast were his strong hands, like Michael’s, and the large, strong features of his face. The hair was streaked with blond, and the skin slightly darker. She thought of Chase, her old policeman lover, when she looked at him.

“Change what you will,” he said gently.

And before she could respond, she saw the figure altering itself, saw it like a soundless boiling in the shadows, as the hair grew even lighter, more completely blond, and the skin took on the bronzed quality of Chase’s skin. She saw the eyes brighten; Chase for one instant, perfectly realized; then another strain of human characteristics infused it, altering it again, until it was the same man who had appeared to her in the kitchen-possibly the same man who had appeared to all of them over the centuries-except that he was taller, and still had Chase’s high dramatic coloring.

She realized she had moved closer. She was standing only a few feet away. She was not afraid so much as powerfully excited. Her heart was still pounding, but she wasn’t trembling. She reached out as she had that night in the kitchen and felt his face.

Stubble of beard, skin; but it wasn’t skin. The keen diagnostic sense told her it was not, and there were no bones inside this body; no internal organs. This was a shell for an energy field.

“But in time there will be bones, Rowan, in time, all miracles can be performed.”

The lips had barely moved with the words; and the creature was already losing its shape. It had exhausted itself.

She stared hard at it, striving to hold it, and she saw it grow solid again.

“Help me smile, beautiful one,” said the voice, with no movement of the lips this time. “I would smile on you and your power if I could.”

Now she was trembling. With every fiber of her body she concentrated upon it, upon infusing the facial features with life. She could almost feel the energy flowing from her, feel it gathering the strange material substance and shaping it; it was purer and finer than her conception of electricity. And a great warmth enveloped her as she saw the lips begin to smile.

Serene, subtle, like the smile of Julien in the photographs. The large green eyes were filled with light. The hands rose and they reached out for her now, and she felt a delicious warmth as they came closer, almost touching the sides of her face.

Then the image shimmered, and suddenly disintegrated, and the blast of heat was so great she stepped backwards, her arm up to shield her eyes as she turned away.

The room was seemingly empty. The draperies had moved and they were still dancing soundlessly. And only very gradually did the room grow cold again.

She felt cold all over suddenly. She felt exhausted. And when she looked at her hand, she realized it was still shaking. She went over to the fireplace, and sank down on her knees.

Her mind was swimming. For a moment she was almost dizzy and unable to locate herself in relation to what had just happened. Then gradually her head cleared.

She laid some kindling into the small grate, and put a few sticks and a small log on top of it, then struck a long match and lighted the fire. In a second, the kindling was popping and snapping. She stared down into the flames.

“You’re here, aren’t you?” she whispered, staring into the fire as it grew stronger and brighter, tongues of flame licking at the dried bark of the log.

“Yes, I’m here.”

“Where?”

“Near you, around you.”

“Where is your voice coming from? Anyone could hear you now. You’re actually speaking.”

“You will understand how this is done better than I.”

“Is that what you want of me?”

He gave a long sigh. She listened. No sound of breathing, merely the sound of a presence. Think of all the times you’ve known someone else was near you, and it’s not because you heard a heartbeat or a footfall or a breath. You heard something softer, more subtle. This is the sound.

“I love you,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because you are beautiful to me. Because you can see me. Because you are all the things in a human being which I myself desire. Because you are human and warm and soft. And I know you, and have known the others before you.”

She said nothing. He went on:

“Because you are Deborah’s child, and the child of Suzanne, and Charlotte, and all the others whose names you know. Even if you will not take the emerald which I gave to my Deborah, I love you. I love you without it. I have loved you since the first time I knew of your coming. I see far. I saw you coming from afar. I loved you in probability.”

The fire was blazing strongly now, the delicious aroma comforting her, as the big thick log was engulfed in bright orange flames. But she was in a form of delirium. Even her own breathing seemed slow to her and strange. And she wasn’t sure now that the voice was audible, or would be to others if they were here.

It was clear to her, however, and richly seductive.

Slowly she sat down on the warm floor beside the hearth and leaned against the marble, which was also warming, and she peered into the shadows beneath the arch in the very center of the room.

“Your voice is soothing to me, it’s beautiful.” She sighed.

“I want it to be beautiful for you. I want to give you pleasure. That you hated me made me sad.”

“When?”

“When I touched you.”

“Explain it all to me, everything.”

“But there are many possible explanations. You shape the explanation by the question you ask. I can talk to you of my own volition, but what I tell you will have been shaped by what I have been taught through the questions of others over the centuries. It is a construct. If you want a new construct, ask.”

“When did you begin?”

“I don’t know.

“Who first called you Lasher?”

“Suzanne.”

“Did you love her?”

“I love Suzanne.”

“She still exists.”

“She is gone.”

“I’m beginning to see,” she said. “There is no physical necessity in your world, and consequently no time. A mind without a body.”

“Precisely. Clever. Smart.”

“One of those words will do.”

“Yes,” he said agreeably, “but which one?”

“You’re playing with me.”

“No. I don’t play.”

“I want to get to the bottom of this, to understand you, your motives, what you want.”

“I know. I knew before you spoke,” he said in the same kind, seductive manner. “But you are clever enough to know that in the realm in which I exist there is no bottom.” He paused and then went on slowly as before. “If you prod me to speak to you in complete and sophisticated sentences, and to allow for your persistent misconceptions, mistakes, or crude distinctions, I can do it. But what I say may not be as near to truth as you might like.”

“But how will you do it?”

“Through what I’ve learned of human thinking from other humans, of course. What I am saying is, choose-begin at the beginning with me if you want pure truth. You will receive enigmatic and cryptic answers. And they may be useless. But they will be true. Or begin in the middle and you will receive educated and sophisticated answers. Either way, you will know of me what I learn of myself from you.”

“You’re a spirit?”

“What you call a spirit, I am.”

“What would you call yourself?”

“I do not.”

“I see. In your realm you have no need of a name.”

“No understanding even of a name. But in truth just no name.”

“But you have wants. You want to be human.”

“I do.” Something like a sigh followed, eloquent of sadness.

“Why?”

“Wouldn’t you want to be human if you were me, Rowan?”

“I don’t know, Lasher. I might want to be free.”

“I crave it in pain,” said the voice, speaking slowly and sorrowfully. “To feel heat and cold; to know pleasure. To laugh-ah, what would it be to laugh? To dance and sing, and to see clearly through human eyes. To feel things. To exist in necessity and in emotions and in time. To have the satisfaction of ambition, to have distinct dreams and ideas.”

“Ah, yes, I’m understanding it all right.”

“Don’t be too sure.”

“You don’t see clearly?”

“Not the same.”

“When you looked through the eyes of the dead man, did you see clearly?”

“Better, but not clear, and death was on me, hanging on me, around me, and moving fast. Finally I went blind inside.”

“I can imagine. You went into Charlotte’s father-in-law while he lived.”

“Yes. He knew I was there. He was weak, but happy to walk, and to lift things with his hands again.”

“Interesting. What we call possession.”

“Correct. I saw distinct things through his eyes. I saw brilliant colors and smelled flowers and saw birds. I heard birds. I touched Charlotte with a hand. I knew Charlotte.”

“You can’t hear things now? You can’t see the light of this fire?”

“I know all about it. But I do not see or hear or feel it the way you do, Rowan. Though when I draw near to you, I can see what you see, I know you and your thoughts.”

She felt a sharp throb of fear. “I’m getting the hang of it.”

“You think you are. But it’s bigger and longer.”

“I know. I really do.”

“We know. We are. But from you we have learned to think in a line, and we have learned time. We have also learned ambition. For ambition one must know concepts of past and present and future. One must plan. And I speak only of those of us who want. Those of us who do not want, do not learn, for why should they? But to say ‘us’ is to approximate. There is no ‘us’ for me because I am alone and turned away from the others of me and see only you and your kind.”

“I understand. When you were in the dead bodies … the heads in the attic … ”

“Yes.”

“Did you change the tissues of those heads?”

“I did. I changed the eyes to brown. I changed the hair in streaks. This took great heat from me and concentration. Concentration is the key to all I do. I draw together.”

“And in your natural state?”

“Large, infinite.”

“How did you change the pigment?”

“Went into the particles of flesh, altered the particles. But your understanding of this is greater than mine. You would use the word mutation. I know no better words, you know scientific words. Concepts.”

“What stopped you from taking over the entire organism?”

“It was dead. It gradually finished and was heavy and I was blind and dumb. I could not bring the spark of life back to it.”

“I see. In Charlotte’s father-in-law, did you change his body?”

“That I could not do. I did not know to try to do it. And I cannot do it now if I were there then. You see?”

“Yes, I do. You’re constant, yet we’re in time. I see. But you are saying that you cannot change living tissue?”

“Not of that man. Not of Aaron when I am in him.”

“When are you in Aaron?”

“When he sleeps. That is the only time I can get in.”

“Why do you do it?”

“To be human. To be alive. But Aaron is too strong for me; Aaron organizes and commands the tissues of Aaron. Same with Michael. Same with almost all. Even the flowers.”

“Ah, yes, the flowers. You mutated the roses.”

“I did. For you, Rowan. To show you my love and my power.”

“And to show me your ambition?”

“Yes … ”

“I don’t want you ever to go into Aaron. I don’t want you ever to hurt him or Michael.”

“I will obey you, but I would like to kill Aaron.”

“Why?”

“Because Aaron is finished, and Aaron has much knowledge and Aaron lies to you.”

“How so, finished?”

“He has done what I saw that he would do and wanted for him to do. So I say finished. Now he may do what I can see and do not want him to do, which goes against my ambition. I would kill him, if it would not make you bitter and full of hate for me.”

“You can feel my anger, can’t you?”

“It hurts me deeply, Rowan.”

“I would he in a rage of pain and anger if you hurt Aaron. But let’s talk further about Aaron. I want you to spell this out for me. What did you want Aaron to do that he’s done?”

“Give you his knowledge. His words written in a straight line of time.”

“You’re speaking of the Mayfair chronology.”

“Yes. The history. You said spell it out so I didn’t use the word ‘chronology.’ ”

She laughed softly. “You don’t have to spell it out that much,” she said. “Go on.”

“I wanted you to read this history from him. Petyr saw my Deborah burn, my beloved Deborah. Aaron saw my Deirdre weep in the garden, my beautiful Deirdre. Your responses and decisions are inestimably assisted by such history. But this task of Aaron has been completed.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Beware.”

“Of thinking I understand?”

“Precisely. Keep asking. Words like ‘responses’ and ‘inestimably’ are vague. I would keep nothing from you, Rowan.”

She heard him sighing again, but it was long, and soft, and became slowly a different sound. It was like the wind sighs. She continued to rest against the fireplace, basking in the heat of the fire, her eyes wide as she stared into the shadows. It seemed she had been here forever speaking to him, this disembodied yet softly resonant voice. The sound of the sigh had almost touched her all over like the wind.

She gave a little soft laugh of delight. She could see him in the room if she tried, see a rippling in the air, something swelling and filling the room.

“Yes … ” he said. “I love your laughter. I cannot laugh.”

“I can help you learn to do it.”

“I know.”

“Am I the doorway?”

“You are.”

“Am I the thirteenth witch?”

“You are.”

“Then Michael was correct in his interpretation.”

“Michael is seldom ever wrong. Michael sees clearly.”

“Do you want to kill Michael?”

“No. I love Michael. I would walk and talk with Michael.”

“Why, why Michael of all people?”

“I do not know.”

“Oh, you must know.”

“To love is to love. Why do you love Michael? Is the answer the truth? To love is to love. Michael is bright and beautiful. Michael laughs. Michael has much of the invisible spirit in him, infusing his limbs and his eyes and voice. Do you see?”

“I think I do. It’s what we call vitality.”

“Exactly,” he said.

But had the word ever been said with such meaning?

He went on.

“I saw Michael from the beginning. Michael was a surprise. Michael sees me. Michael came to the fence. Also Michael has ambition and is strong. Michael loved me. Now Michael fears me. You came between me and Michael, and Michael fears that I will come between him and you.”

“But you won’t hurt him.”

No answer.

“You won’t hurt him.”

“Tell me not to hurt him and I will not hurt him.”

“But you said you didn’t want to! Why do you make it go like this in a circle?”

“This is no circle. I told you I didn’t want to kill Michael. Michael may be hurt. What am I to do? Lie? I do not lie. Aaron lies. I do not lie. I do not know how.”

“That I don’t believe. But maybe you believe it.”

“You hurt me.”

“Tell me how this will end.”

“What?”

“My life with you, how will it end?”

Silence.

“You won’t tell me.”

“You are the doorway.”

She sat very still. She could feel her mind working. The fire gave off its low crackling, and the flames danced against the bricks, and the motion seemed entirely too slow to be real. Again the air shimmered. She thought she saw the long crystal teardrops of the chandelier moving, turning, gathering tiny fragments of light.

“What does it mean to be the doorway?”

“You know what it means.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You can mutate matter, Dr. Mayfair.”

“I’m not sure that I can. I’m a surgeon. I work with precise instruments.”

“Ah, but your mind is ever more precise.”

She frowned; it was bringing back that strange dream, the dream of Leiden …

“In your time you have stanched bleeding,” he said, taking his time with his soft, slow words. “You have closed wounds. You have made matter obey you.”

The chandelier gave off a low tinkling music in the silence. It caught the glint of the dancing flames.

“You have slowed the racing hearts of your patients; you have opened the clogged vessels of their brains.”

“I wasn’t always aware … ”

“You have done it. You fear your power but you possess it. Go out into the garden in the night. You could make the flowers open. You can make them grow longer as I did.”

“Ah, but you did it with dead flowers only.”

“No. I have done it with the living. With the iris you saw, though this exhausted me and hurt me.”

“And then the iris died and fell from its stem.”

“Yes. I did not mean to kill it.”

“You took it to its limits, you know. That’s why it died.”

“Yes. I did not know its limits.”

She turned to the side; she felt she was in a trance, yet how perfectly clear was his voice, how precise his pronunciation.

“You did not merely force the molecules in one direction or another,” she said.

“No. I pierced the chemical structure of the cells, just as you can do it. You are the doorway. You see into the kernel of life itself.”

“No, you overestimate my knowledge. No one can do it.”

The atmosphere of the dream came back, everyone gathered at the windows of the University of Leiden. What was that mob in the street? They thought Jan van Abel was a heretic.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” she said.

“I know. I see far. You have given me the metaphors and the terms. Through your books, I too have absorbed the concepts. I see to the finish. I know. Rowan can mutate matter. Rowan can take the thousands upon thousands of tiny cells and reorganize them.”

“And what is the finish? Will I do what you want?”

Again, he sighed.

Something rustling in the corners of the room. The draperies swayed violently. And the chandelier sang softly again, glass striking glass. Was there a layer of vapor rising to the ceiling, stretching out to the pale peach-colored walls? Or just the firelight dancing in the corner of her eye?

“The future is a fabric of interlacing possibilities,” he said. “Some of which gradually become probabilities, and a few of which become inevitabilities, but there are surprises sewn into the warp and the woof, which can tear it apart.”

“Thank God for that.” she said. “So you can’t see to the finish.”

“I do and do not. Many humans are entirely predictable. You are not predictable. You are too strong. You can be the doorway if you choose.”

“How?”

Silence.

“Did you drown Michael in the sea?”

“No.”

“Did anyone do it?”

“Michael fell off a rock into the sea because he was careless. His soul ached and his life was nothing. All this was written in his face, and in his gestures. It would not take a spirit to see it.”

“But you did see it.”

“I saw it long before it happened, but I did not make it happen. I smiled. Because I saw you and Michael come together. I saw it when Michael was small and saw me and looked at me through the garden fence. I saw the death and rescue of Michael by Rowan.”

“And what did Michael see when he drowned?”

“I don’t know. Michael was not alive.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was dead, Dr. Mayfair. You know what dead is. Cells cease to divide. The body is no longer under one organizing force or one intricate set of commands. It dies. Had I gone into his body, I could have lifted his limbs and heard through his ears, because his body was fresh, but it was dead. Michael had vacated the body.”

“You know this?”

“I see it now. I saw it before it happened. I saw it when it occurred.”

“Where were you when it occurred?”

“Beside Deirdre, to make Deirdre happy, to make her dream.”

“Ah, so you do see far.”

“Rowan, that is nothing. I mean I see far in time. Space is not a straight line for me, either.”

She laughed softly again. “Your voice is beautiful enough to embrace.”

“I am beautiful, Rowan. My voice is my soul. Surely I have a soul. The world would be too cruel if I did not.”

She felt so sad hearing this that she could have cried. She was staring at the chandelier again, at the hundreds of tiny reflected flames in the crystal. The room seemed to swim in warmth.

“Love me, Rowan,” he said simply. “I am the most powerful being imaginable in your realm and there is but one of me for you, my beloved.”

It was like a song without melody; it was like a voice made up of quiet and song, if such a thing can be imagined.

“When I am flesh I shall be more than human; I shall be something new under the sun. And far greater to you than Michael. I am infinite mystery. Michael has given you all that he can. There will be no great mystery any longer with your Michael.”

“No, that can’t be true,” she whispered. She realized that she’d closed her eyes; she was so drowsy. She forced herself to look at the chandelier again. “There is the infinite mystery of love.”

“Love must be fed, Rowan.”

“You are saying I have to choose between you and Michael?”

Silence.

“Did you make the others choose?” She thought of Mary Beth in particular, and Mary Beth’s men.

“I see far as I told you. When Michael stood at the gate years ago in your time, I saw that you would make a choice.”

“Don’t tell me any more of what you saw.”

“Very well,” he said. “Talk of the future always brings unhappiness to humans. Their momentum is based upon the fact that they cannot see far. Let us talk about the past. Humans like to understand the past.”

“Do you have another tone of voice other than this beautiful soft tone? Could you have spoken those last few words sarcastically? Is that how they were meant to sound?”

“I can sound any way that I like, Rowan. You hear what I feel. I do feel in my thoughts, in what I am, pain and love. Emotions.”

“You’re speeding up your words a little.”

“I am in pain.”

“Why?”

“To end your misunderstandings.”

“You want me to make you human?”

“I want to have flesh.”

“And I can give you flesh?”

“You have the power. And once such a thing is achieved, other such things may be achieved. You are the thirteenth, you are the door.”

“What do you mean, ‘other such things’?”

“Rowan, we are talking of fusion; of chemical change; the structural reinvention of cells, of matter and energy in a new relationship.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Then you know, as with fission, if it is achieved once, it can be achieved again.”

“Why couldn’t anyone else do it before me? Julien was powerful.”

“Knowledge, Rowan. Julien was born too soon. Allow me once more to use the word fusion and in a slightly different fashion. We have spoken so far of fusion within cells. Let me now talk of a fusion between your knowledge of life, Rowan, and your innate power. That is the key; that is what enables you to be the doorway.

“The knowledge of your era was unimaginable even to Julien, who saw in his time inventions that seemed purely magical. Could Julien have foreseen a heart opened on an operating table? A child conceived in a test tube? No. And there will come after you those whose knowledge is great enough even to define what I am.”

“Can you define yourself to me?”

“No, but I am certainly definable, and when I am defined by mortals, then I shall be able to define myself. I learn all things from you which have to do with such understanding.”

“Ah, but you know something of yourself which you can tell me now in precise language.”

“-that I am immense; that I must concentrate to feel my strength; that I can exert force; that I can feel pain in the thinking part of me.”

“Ah, yes, and what is that thinking part? And whence comes the force you exert? Those are the pertinent questions.”

“I do not know. When Suzanne called to me I came together. I drew myself up small as if to pass through a tunnel. I felt my shape, and spread out like the five-pointed star of the pentagram which she drew, and each one of these points I elongated. I made the trees shiver and the leaves fall, and Suzanne called me her Lasher.”

“And you liked what you did.”

“Yes, that Suzanne saw it. And that Suzanne liked it. Or else I would never have done it again and not even remembered it.”

“What is there in you that is physical, apart from energy?”

“I do not know!” The voice was soft yet full of despair. “Tell me, Rowan. Know me. End my loneliness.”

The fire was dying in the grate, but the warmth had spread all through the room, and it surrounded her and held her like a blanket. She felt drowsy but sharply alert.

“Let’s return to Julien. Julien had as much power as I have.”

“Almost, my beloved. But not quite. And there was in Julien a playful and blasphemous soul that danced back and forth in the world, and liked to destroy as much as to build. You are more logical, Rowan.”

“That is a virtue?”

“You have an indomitable will, Rowan.”

“I see. Not broken with humor as Julien’s will could be broken.”

“Pree-cisely, Rowan!”

She laughed again under her breath. Then she fell quiet, staring at the shimmering air.

“Is there a God, Lasher?”

“I do not know, Rowan. In time I have formed an opinion and it is yes, but it fills me with rage.”

“Why?”

“Because I am in pain and if there is a God, he made this pain.”

“Yes, that I understand perfectly, Lasher. But he made love, too, if he exists.”

“Yes. Love. Love is the source of my pain,” he said. “It is the source of all my moving into time and ambition and plans. All my desires spring from love. You might say that what I was-when I was only what I am-that I was poisoned by love, that in the call of Suzanne I was awakened to love, and to the nightmare of want. But I saw. And I loved. And I came.”

“You make me sad,” she said suddenly.

“Love mutated me, Rowan. It created my first dissatisfaction.”

“Yes.”

“And now I seek to mutate into flesh, and that shall be the consummation of my love. I have waited so long for you. I have seen such suffering before you, and if I had had tears to shed, they would have been shed. God knows, for Langtry I made an illusion of myself weeping. It was a true image of my pain. I wept not merely for Stella, but for all of them-my witches. When Julien died, I was in agony. So great was my pain then, that I might have moved away, back to the realm of the moon and the stars and the silence. But it was too late for me. I could not bear my loneliness. When Mary Beth called, I came back to her. Quickening. I looked into the future. And I saw the thirteenth again. I saw the ever increasing strength of my witches.”

She had closed her eyes again. The fire was gone out. The room was full of the spirit of Lasher. She could feel him against her skin though he did not move, and the fabric of him lay as lightly as the air itself.

“When I am truly flesh,” he said, “the tears and the laughter will come from me by reflex, as they come in you, or in Michael. I shall be a complete organism.”

“But not human.”

“Better than human.”

“But not human.”

“Stronger, more enduring, for I shall be the organizing intelligence, and I have great power, greater than the power inside any existing human. I shall be a new thing, as I told you. I shall be a species which as of now does not exist.”

“Did you kill Arthur Langtry?”

“Not necessary. He was dying. What he saw hastened his death.”

“But why did you show yourself to him?”

“Because he was strong and he could see me, and I wanted to draw him in so that he might save Stella, for I knew Stella was in danger. Carlotta was the enemy of Stella. Carlotta was as strong as you are, Rowan.”

“Why didn’t Arthur help Stella?”

“You know the history. It was too late. I am as a child at such moments in time. I was defeated by simultaneity because I was acting in time.”

“I don’t follow.”

“While I appeared to Langtry, the shots were fired into the brain of Stella, and brought about instant death. I see far, but I cannot see all the surprises.”

“You didn’t know.”

“And Carlotta tricked me. Carlotta misled me. I am not infallible. In fact, I am confused with amazing ease.”

“How so?”

“Why should I tell you? So you may all the better control me? You know how. You are as powerful a witch as Carlotta. It was through emotions. Carlotta conceived of the killing as an act of love. She schooled Lionel in what he was to think as he took the gun and fired at Stella. I was not alerted by hatred, or malice. I paid no attention to the love thoughts of Lionel. Then Stella lay dying, calling to me silently, with her eyes open, wounded beyond hope of repair. And Lionel fired the second shot which drove the spirit of Stella up and out of the body forever.”

“But you killed Lionel. You drove him to his death.”

“I did.”

“And Cortland? You killed Cortland.”

“No. I fought with Cortland. I struggled with him, and he sought to use his strength against me, and he failed, and fell in his struggle. I did not kill your father.”

“Why did you fight?”

“I warned him. He believed he could command me. He was not my witch. Deirdre was my witch. You are my witch. Not Cortland.”

“But Deirdre didn’t want to give me up. And Cortland was defending her wishes.”

“For his own aims.”

“Which were what?”

“That is old now, unimportant. You went to freedom, so that you could be strong when you returned. You were freed from Carlotta.”

“But you saw to it, and this was against the wishes of both Deirdre and Cortland.”

“For your sake, Rowan. I love you.”

“Ah, but you see, there’s a pattern here, isn’t there? And you don’t want me to understand it. Once the child is born, you are for the child and not the mother. That’s what happened with Deborah and Charlotte, isn’t it?”

“You misjudge me. When I act in time, sometimes I do what is wrong.”

“You went against the wishes of Deirdre. You saw to it I was taken away. You advanced the plan of the thirteen witches, and that was for your own aims. You have always worked for your own aims, haven’t you?”

“You are the thirteenth and the strongest. You have been my aim, and I will serve you. Your aims and my aims are identical.”

“I think not.”

She could feel his pain now, feel the turbulence in the air, feel the emotion as if it were the low strum of a harp string, playing upon her unconscious ear. Song of pain. The draperies swayed again in a warm draft and both of the chandeliers of the double parlors danced in the shadows, full of splinters of white light, now that the fire had died and taken with it the colors.

“Were you ever a living human being?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you remember the first time you ever saw human beings?”

“Yes.”

“What did you think?”

“That it was not possible for spirit to come from matter, that it was a joke. What you would call preposterous or a blunder.”

“It came from matter.”

“It did indeed. It came out of the matter when the organization reached the appropriate point for it to emerge, and we were surprised by this mutation.”

“You and the others who were already there.”

“In timelessness already there.”

“Did it draw your attention?”

“Yes. Because it was a mutation and entirely new. And also because we were called to observe.”

“How?”

“The newly emerging intelligences of man, locked in matter, nevertheless perceived us, and thereby caused us to perceive ourselves. Again, this is a sophisticated sentence and therefore partially inaccurate. For millennia, these human spiritual intelligences developed; they grew stronger and stronger; they developed telepathic powers; they sensed our existence; they named us and talked to us and seduced us; if we took notice we were changed; we thought of ourselves.”

“So you learned self-consciousness from us.”

“All things from you. Self-consciousness, desire, ambition. You are dangerous teachers. And we are discontent.”

“Then there are others of you with ambition.”

“Julien said, ‘Matter created man and man created the gods.’ That is partially correct.”

“Did you ever speak to a human being before Suzanne?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I saw and heard Suzanne. I loved Suzanne.”

“I want to go back to Aaron. Why do you say Aaron tells lies?”

“Aaron does not reveal the whole purpose of the Talamasca.”

“Are you certain of this?”

“Of course. How can Aaron lie to me? I knew of Aaron’s coming before there was Aaron. Arthur Langtry’s warnings were for Aaron, when he did not even know about Aaron.”

“But how does Aaron lie? When, and in regard to what, did he lie?”

“Aaron has a mission. So do all the brothers of the Talamasca. They keep it secret. They keep much knowledge secret. They are an occult order, to use words you would understand.”

“What is this secret knowledge? This mission?”

“To protect man from us. To make sure there are no more doorways.”

“You mean there have been doorways before now?”

“There have. There have been mutations. But you are the greatest of all doorways. What you can achieve with me shall be unparalleled.”

“Wait a minute. You mean other discarnate entities have come into the realm of the material?”

“Yes.”

“But who? What are they?”

“Laughter. They conceal themselves very well.”

“Laughter. Why did you say that?”

“Because I am laughing at your question, but I don’t know how to make the sound of laughter. So I say it. I laugh at you that you don’t think this would have happened before. You, a mortal, with all the stories of ghosts and monsters of the night, and other such horrors. Did you think there was not even a kernel of truth to these old tales? But it is not important. Our fusion shall be more nearly perfect than any in the past.”

“Aaron knows this, that’s what you’re saying, that others have come through.”

“Yes.”

“And why does he want to stop me from being the doorway?”

“Why do you think?”

“Because he believes you’re evil.”

“Unnatural, that is what he would say, which is foolish, for I am as natural as electricity, as natural as the stars, as natural as fire.”

“Unnatural. He fears your power.”

“Yes. But he is a fool.”

“Why?”

“Rowan, as I have told you before, if this fusion can be achieved once, it can be achieved again. Do you not understand me?”

“Yes, I understand you. There are twelve crypts in the graveyard and one door.”

“Aye, Rowan. Now you are thinking. When you first read your books of neurology, when you first stepped into the laboratory, what was your sense? That man had only begun to realize the possibilities of the present science, that new beings might be created by means of transplants, grafts, in vitro experimentation with genes and cells. You saw the scope of the possibilities. Your mind was young, your imagination enormous; you were what men fear-the doctor with the vision of a poet. And you turned your back on your visions, Rowan. In the laboratory of Lemle, you could have created new beings from the parts of existent beings. You reached for brutal tools because you feared what you could do. You hid behind the surgical microscope and substituted for your power the crude micro tools of steel with which you severed tissues, rather man creating them. Even now you act from fear. You will build hospitals where people are to be cured, when you could create new beings, Rowan.”

She sat still and quiet. No one had ever spoken to her about her innermost thoughts with greater accuracy. She felt the heat and size of her own ambition. She felt the amoral child in her who had dreamed of brain grafts and synthetic beings, before the adult put out the light.

“Haven’t you a heart to understand why, Lasher?”

“I see far, Rowan. I see great suffering in the world. I see the way of accident and blundering, and what it has created. I am not blinded by illusions. I hear the cries everywhere of pain. And I know my own loneliness. I know my own desire.”

“But what will you give up when you become flesh and blood? What’s the price for you?”

“I do not shrink from the price. A fleshly pain could be no worse than what I have suffered these three centuries. Would you be what I am, Rowan? Drifting, timeless and alone, listening to the carnal voices of the world, apart, and thirsting for love and understanding?”

She couldn’t answer.

“I have waited for all eternity to be incarnate. I have waited beyond the scope of memory. I have waited until the fragile spirit of man has finally attained the knowledge so that the barrier can come down. And I shall be made flesh, and it shall be perfect.”

Silence.

“I see why Aaron is afraid of you,” she said.

“Aaron is small. The Talamasca is small. They are nothing!” The voice grew thin with anger. The air in the room was warm and moving like the water in a pot moves before it boils. The chandeliers moved yet they made no sound, as if the sound were carried away by the currents in the air.

“The Talamasca has knowledge,” he said, “they have power to open doorways, but they refuse to do so for us. They are the enemy of us. They would keep the world’s destiny in the hands of the suffering and the blind. And they lie. All of them lie. They have maintained the history of the Mayfair Witches because it is the history of Lasher, and they fight Lasher. That is their avowed purpose. And they trick you with their attention to the witches. It is Lasher whose name should be emblazoned on the covers of their precious leather-bound files. The file is in a code. It is the history of the growing power of Lasher. Can you not see through the code?”

“Don’t harm Aaron.”

“You love unwisely, Rowan.”

“You don’t like my goodness, do you? You like the evil.”

“What is evil, Rowan? Is your curiosity evil? That you would study me as you have studied the brains of human beings? That you would learn from my cells all that you could to advance the great cause of medicine? I am not the enemy of the world, Rowan. I merely wish to enter into it!”

“You’re angry now.”

“I am in pain. I love you, Rowan.”

“To want is not to love, Lasher. To use is not to love.”

“No, don’t speak these words to me. You hurt me. You wound me.”

“If you kill Aaron, I will never be your doorway.”

“Such a small thing to affect so much.”

“Lasher, kill him and I will not be the doorway.”

“Rowan, I am at your command. I would have killed him already were I not.”

“Same with Michael.”

“Very well, Rowan.”

“Why did you tell Michael that he couldn’t stop me?”

“Because I hoped that he could not and I wanted to frighten him. He is under the spell of Aaron.”

“Lasher, how am I to help you come through?”

“I will know when you know, Rowan. And you know. Aaron knows.”

“Lasher, we don’t know what life is. Not with all our science and all our definitions do we know what life is, or how it began. The moment when it sprang into existence from inert materials is a complete mystery.”

“I am already alive, Rowan.”

“And how can I make you flesh? You’ve gone into the bodies of the living and the dead. You can’t anchor there.”

“It can be done, Rowan.” His voice had become as soft as a whisper. “With my power and your power, and with my faith, for I must yield to achieve the bond, and only in your hands is the full merging possible.”

She narrowed her eyes, trying to see shapes, patterns in the airy dark.

“I love you, Rowan,” he said. “You are weary now. Let me soothe you, Rowan. Let me touch you.” The resonance of the voice deepened.

“I want-I want a happy life with Michael and our child.”

Turbulence in the air, something collecting, intensifying. She felt the air grow warmer.

“I have infinite patience. I see far. I can wait. But you will lose your taste for others now that you have seen and spoken to me.”

“Don’t be so certain, Lasher. I’m stronger than the others. I know much more.”

“Yes, Rowan.” The shadowy turbulence was growing denser, like a great wreath of smoke, only there was no smoke, circling the chandelier, moving out. Like cobwebs caught in a draft.

“Can I destroy you?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Rowan, you torture me.”

“Why can’t I destroy you?”

“Rowan, your gift is to transmute matter. I have no matter in me for you to attack. You may destroy the matter I bring into organization to make my image, but then I do this myself when I disintegrate. You have seen it. You could hurt my transitory image at such a moment of materialization, and you have already done so. When I first appeared to you. When I came to you near the water. But you cannot destroy me. I have always been here. I am eternal, Rowan.”

“And suppose I told you it was finished now, Lasher, that I would never recognize you again. That I would not be the doorway. That I am the doorway for the Mayfairs into the future centuries, the doorway for my unborn child, and for things of which I dream with my ambition.”

“Small things, Rowan. Nothing compared to the mysteries and possibilities which I offer you. Imagine, Rowan, when the mutation is complete and I have a body, infused with my timeless spirit, what you can learn from this.”

“And if it’s done, Lasher, if the doorway is opened, and the fusion is effected, and you stand before me, flesh and blood, how will you treat me then?”

“I would love you beyond all human reason, Rowan, for you would be my mother and my creator, and my teacher. How could I not love you? And how tragic my need of you will be. I will cleave to you to learn how to move with my new limbs, how to see, how to speak and laugh. I will be as a helpless infant in your hands. Can’t you see? I would worship you, my beloved Rowan. I would be your instrument in anything that you wished, and twenty times as strong as I am now. Why do you cry? Why are there tears in your eyes?”

“It’s a trick, it’s a trick of sound and light, the spell you induce.”

“No. I am what I am, Rowan. It’s your reason which weakens you. You see far. You always have. Twelve crypts and one doorway, Rowan.”

“I don’t understand. You play with me. You confuse me. I can’t follow anymore.”

Silence and that sound again, as if the whole air were sighing. Sadness, sadness enveloping her like a cloud, and the undulating layers of smoky shadow moving the length of the room, weaving through and around the chandeliers, filling the mirrors with darkness.

“You’re all around me, aren’t you?”

“I love you,” he said, and his voice was low again as a whisper and close to her. She thought she felt lips touch her cheek. She stiffened, but she had become so drowsy.

“Move away from me,” she said. “I want to be left alone now. I have no obligation to love you.”

“Rowan, what can I give you, what gift can I bring?”

Again, something brushed her face, something touched her, bringing the chills up over her body. Her nipples were hard beneath the silk of the nightgown, and a low throbbing had started inside her, a hunger she could feel all through her throat and her chest.

She tried to clear her vision. It was dark in here now. The fire had burnt down. But only moments ago it had been a blaze.

“You’re playing tricks on me.” The air seemed to be touching her all over. “You’ve played tricks on Michael.”

“No.” It was a soft kiss against her ear.

“When he was drowned, the visions. You made them!”

“No, Rowan. He was not here. I could not follow him to where he went. I am of the living only.”

“Did you make the ghosts he saw when he was alone here that night, when he went alone into the pool?”

“No.”

She shivered all over, her hands up to brush away the sensations as if she’d been caught in cobwebs.

“Did you see the ghosts Michael saw?”

“Yes, but through Michael’s eyes, I saw them.”

“What were they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you know?”

“They were images of the dead, Rowan. I am of this earth. I do not know the dead. Do not talk to me of the dead. I do not know of God or of anything which is not of the earth.”

“God! But what is this earth?” Something touching the back of her neck, gently lifting the tendrils of her hair.

“Here, Rowan, the realm in which you exist and the realm in which I exist, parallel and intermingled yet separate, in the physical world. I am physical, Rowan-natural as anything else which is of the earth. I burn for you, Rowan, in a purity in which fire has no end, in this our world.”

“The ghosts Michael saw on our wedding night,” she said, “in this very room. You made him see them.”

“No.”

“Did you see them?” Like a feather stroking her cheek.

“Through Michael’s eyes. I do not have all the answers you demand of me.”

Something touching her breasts, something stroking her breasts and her thighs. She curled her legs back under her. The hearth was cold now.

“Get away from me!” she whispered. “You are evil.”

“No.”

“Do you come from hell?”

“You play with me. I am in hell, desiring to give you pleasure.”

“Stop. I want to get up now. I’m sleepy. I don’t want to stay here.”

She turned and looked at the blackened fireplace. There were no embers anymore. Her eyes were heavy and so were her limbs. She struggled to her feet, clinging to the mantel. But she knew she could not possibly reach the steps. She turned, and sank down again on her knees and stretched out on the soft Chinese rug. Like silk beneath her, and the hardness and the cool air felt so good to her. She felt she was dreaming when she looked up into the chandelier. The white plaster medallion appeared to be moving, its acanthus leaves curling and writhing.

All the words she’d heard were suddenly swimming in her brain. Something touching her face. Her nipples throbbed and her sex throbbed. She thought of Michael miles and miles away from her, and she felt anguish. She had been so wrong to underestimate this being.

“I love you, Rowan.”

“You’re above me, aren’t you?” She stared up into the shadows, thankful for the coolness, because she was burning as if she’d absorbed all the heat of the fire. She could feel the moisture pumping between her legs, and her body was opening like a flower. Stroking the inside of her thighs where the skin was always softest and had no down, and her legs were turning outward like petals opening.

“I’m telling you to stop, that I’ll hate it.”

“Love you, my darling.” Kissing her ears, and her lips, and then her breasts. The sucking came hard, rhythmic, teeth grazing her nipples.

“I can’t stand it,” she whispered, but she meant the very opposite, that she would cry out in agony if it stopped.

Her arms were flung out, and the nightgown was being lifted off her. She heard the silk tearing and then the cloth was loose and she was sweetly, deliciously naked lying there, the hands stroking her sex, only they weren’t hands. It was Lasher, Lasher sucking her and stroking her, lips on her ears, on her eyelids, all of his immense presence wrapped around her, even under her, stroking the small of her back, and parting her backside and stroking the nether mouth.

Yes, opening, like the dark purple iris in the garden. Like the roses exploding on the ends of their coarsened and darkened stems and the leaves with so many points and tiny veins to them. She tossed and twisted on the carpet.

And when she writhed like a cat in heat … Go away, old woman, you are not here! This is my time now.

“Yes, your time, our time.”

Tongues licked her nipples, lips closing on them, pulling them, teeth scratching her nipples.

“Harder, rougher. Rape me, do it! Use your power.”

He lifted her so that her head fell backwards, her hair tumbling down beneath her, her eyes closed, hands parting her sex, parting her thighs.

“Come in to me, hard, make yourself a man for me, a hard man!”

The mouths drew harder on her nipples, the tongues lapping at her breasts, her belly, the fingers pulling at her backside and scratching at her thighs. “The cock,” she whispered, and then she felt it, enormous and hard, driving into her. “Yes, do it, tear me, do it! Override me, do it!” Her senses were flooded with the smell of clean, hard flesh and clean hair, as the weight bore down on her and the cock slammed into her, yes, harder, make it rape. Glimpse of a face, dark green eyes, lips. And then a blur as the lips opened her lips.

Her body was pinned to the carpet, and the cock burned her as it drove inside her, scraping her clitoris, plunging deeper into her vagina. I can’t stand it, I can’t bear it. Split me apart, yes. Laid waste. The orgasm flooded through her, her mind blank except for the raging flow of colors like waves as the rollicking sensation washed up through her belly, and her breast and her face, and down through her thighs, stiffening her calves, and through the muscles of her feet. She heard her own cries, but they were far away, unimportant, flowing out of her mouth in a divine release, her body pumping and helpless and stripped of will and mind.

Again and again, it exploded in her, scalding her. Over and over, until all time, all guilt, all thought was burnt away.

Morning. Was there a baby crying? No. Only the phone ringing. Unimportant.

She lay in the bed, beneath the covers, naked. The sun was streaming in the windows on the front of the house. The memory of it came back to her, and a hurtful throbbing started in her. The phone, or was it a baby crying? A baby somewhere far off in the house. Half in dream she saw its little limbs working, bent knees, chubby little feet.

“My darling,” he whispered.

“Lasher,” she answered.

The sound of the crying had died away. Her eyes closed on the vision of the shining windowpanes and the tangle of the oak limbs over the sky.

When she opened them again, she stared up into his green eyes, into his dark face, exquisitely formed. She touched the silk of his lip with her finger, all his hard weight pressed down on her, his cock between her legs.

“God, yes, God, you are so strong.”

“With you, my beauty.” The lips revealed the barest glint of white teeth as the words were formed. “With you, my divine one.”

Then came the blast of heat, the hot wind blowing her hair back, and the whirlwind scorching her.

And in the clean silence of the morning, in the light of the sun pouring through the glass, it was happening all over again.

At noon, she sat outside by the pool. Steam was rising from the water into the cold sunlight. Time to turn off the heater. Winter was truly here.

But she was warm in her wool dress. She was brushing her hair.

She felt him near her; and she narrowed her eyes. Yes, she could see the disturbance in the air again, very clearly actually, as he surrounded her like a veil being slowly wound around her shoulders and arms.

“Get away from me,” she whispered. The invisible substance clung to her. She sat upright, and hissed the words at it this time. “Away, I told you!”

It was the shimmer from a fire in sunlight, what she saw. And then the chill afterwards as the air regained its normal density, as the subtle fragrances of the garden returned.

“I’ll tell you when you may come,” she said. “I will not be at the mercy of your whims or your will.”

“As you wish, Rowan.” It was that interior voice she’d heard once before in Destin, the voice that sounded like it was inside her head.

“You see and hear everything, don’t you?” she asked.

“Even your thoughts.”

She smiled, but it was a brittle, fierce smile. She pulled the long loose hairs out of her hairbrush. “And what am I thinking?” she asked.

“That you want me to touch you again, that you want me to surround you with illusions. That you would like to know what it is to be a man, and for me to take you as I would a man.”

The blood rose to her cheeks. She matted up the little bit of blond hair from the brush and dropped it into the ferny garden beside her, where it vanished among the fronds and the dark leaves.

“Can you do that?” she asked.

“We can do it together, Rowan. You can see and feel many things.”

“Talk to me first,” she said.

“As you wish. But you hunger for me, Rowan.”

“Can you see Michael? Do you know where he is?”

“Yes, Rowan, I see him. He is in his house, sorting through his many possessions. He is swimming in memories and in anticipation. He is consumed with the desire to return to you. He thinks only of you. And you think of betraying me, Rowan. You think of telling your friend Aaron that you have seen me. You dream of treachery.”

“And what’s to stop me if I want to speak to Aaron? What can you do?”

“I love you, Rowan.”

“You couldn’t stay away from me now, and you know it. You’ll come if I call you.”

“I want to be your slave, Rowan, not your enemy.”

She stood up, staring up into the soft foliage of the sweet olive tree, at the bits and pieces of pale sky. The pool was a great rectangle of steaming blue light. The oak beyond swayed in the breeze, and once again she felt the air changing.

“Stay back,” she said.

There came the inevitable sigh, so eloquent of pain. She closed her eyes. Somewhere very far away a baby was crying. She could hear it. Had to be coming from one of these big silent houses, which always seemed so deserted in the middle of the day.

She went inside, letting her heels sound loudly on the floor. She took her raincoat from the front hall closet, all the protection she needed against the cold, and she went out the front door.

For an hour she walked through the quiet empty streets. Now and then a passerby nodded to her. Or a dog behind a fence would approach to be petted. Or a car would roar past.

She tried merely to see things-to focus upon the moss that grew on the walls, or the color of the jasmine twined still around a fence. She tried not to think or to panic. She tried not to want to go back into the house. But at last her steps took her back that way, and she was standing at her own gate.

Her hand was trembling as she put the key in the lock. At the far end of the hall, in the door to the dining room, he stood watching her.

“No! Not until I say!” she said, and the force of her hate went before her like a beam of light. The image vanished; and a sudden acrid smell rose to her nostrils. She put her hand over her mouth. All through the air she saw the faint wave-like movement. And then nothing, and the house was still.

That sound came again, the baby crying.

“You’re doing it,” she whispered. But the sound was gone. She went up the stairs to her room. The bed was neatly made now, her night things put away. The draperies drawn.

She locked the door. She kicked off her shoes, and lay down on the counterpane beneath the white canopy, and closed her eyes. She couldn’t fight it any longer. The thought of last night’s pleasure brought a deep charring heat to her, an ache, and she pressed her face into the pillow, trying to remember and not to remember, her muscles flexing and then letting go.

“Come then,” she whispered. At once, the soft eerie substance enclosed her. She tried to see what she was feeling, tried to understand. Something gossamer and immense, loosely constructed or organized to use its own word, and now it was gathering itself, making itself dense, the way steam gathers itself when it turns to water, and the way water gathers itself when it turns to ice.

“Shall I take a shape for you? Shall I make illusions?”

“No, not yet,” she whispered. “Be as you are, and as you were before with all your power.” She could already feel the stroking on her insteps, and on the undersides of her knees. Delicate fingers sliding down into the tender spaces between her toes, and then the nylon of her hose snapping, and torn loose, pulled off her and the skin breathing and tingling all over on her naked legs.

She felt her dress opening, she felt the buttons slipped out of the holes.

“Yes, make it rape again,” she said. “Make it rough and hard, and slow.”

Suddenly she was flung over on her back, her head was forced to one side against the pillow; the dress was ripping, and the invisible hands were moving down her belly. Something like teeth grazed her naked sex, fingernails scraping her calves.

“Yes,” she cried, her teeth clenched. “Make it cruel.”