The Witching Hour: A Novel [Paperback]

Demonstrating once again her gift for spellbinding stoyrtelling, Anne Rice makes real a family of witches--a family given to poetry and incest, to murder and philsophy, a family that is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous and seductive being.
"Unfolds like a poisonous lotus blossom redolent with luxurious evil."
THE LOS ANGELES TIMESAnne Riceis the author of thirty-two books. She lives in Palm Desert, California.The doctor woke up afraid. He had been dreaming of the old house in New Orleans again. He had seen the woman in the rocker. He'd seen the man with the brown eyes.

And even now in this quiet hotel room above New York City he felt the old alarming disorientation. He'd been talking again with the brown-eyed man. Yes, help her.No, this is just a dream. I want to get out of it.

The doctor sat up in bed. No sound but the faint roar of the air conditioner. Why was he thinking about it tonight in a hotel room at the Parker Meridien? For a moment he couldn't shake the feeling of the old house. He saw the woman again--her bent head, her vacant stare. He could almost hear the hum of the insects against the screen in the old porch. And the brown-eyed man was speaking without moving his lips. A waxen dummy infused with life--

No, stop it.

He got out of bed and padded silently across the carpeted floor until he stood in front of the sheer white curtains, peering out at black sooty rooftops and dim neon signs flickering against brick walls. The early morning light showed behind the clouds above the dull concrete façade opposite. No debilitating heat here. No drowsing scent of roses, of gardenias.

Gradually his head cleared.

He thought of the Englishman at the bar in the lobby again. That's what had brought it all back--the Englishman remarking to the bartender than he'd just come from New Orleans, and that certainly was a haunted city. The Englishman, an affable man, a true Old World gelă*