The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches, #1)

by Anne Rice

And Michael couldn’t bear not to love his family. He couldn’t bear to be ashamed of them. He couldn’t bear the pettiness and the ingratitude of such a thing. He could hate the people down the block. That was fine. But he had to love, and be loyal to, and be in harmony with, those under his own roof.

Here, on an enormous college campus amid full-time students from all walks of life, Michael felt inconspicuous and powerful and ready to start his true education. It was like those old days in the library. Only now he got credit for what he read. He got credit for wanting to understand all the mysteries of life which had so provoked him in years past when he’d hidden his curiosity from those who might ridicule him.

In fact, ever after in California, Christmas Eve was the one day Michael held sacred. He always celebrated it as others celebrated New Year’s—for it was for him the symbol of a new beginning: of time redeeming you and all your failings so that you might start again.

None of this made sense to Michael. Death was better than abandonment? How could Judith feel guilt for giving it away, and no guilt at all for merely destroying it? Yes, both parents should want a child. But why should one parent have the right to say that it couldn’t come into the world? They weren’t poor, they weren’t diseased; this wasn’t a child of rape. Why, they were practically married and could certainly get married if Judith wanted! They had so much to give this baby. Even if it lived with others, think what they could do for it. Why the hell did the little thing have to perish, and stop saying it wasn’t a person, it was on track to be a person, or Judith wouldn’t want to be killing it. Was a newborn baby any more a person, for the love of God?

“We ought to aim to be perfect,” she said quietly. “I mean, why not?”

“A witch is a person who can attract and manipulate unseen forces,” said Aaron. “That’s our definition. It will suffice for sorcerer or seer, as well.

“We are dogmatic only when it comes to defending our lack of dogma.

“Yes, we are very thorough,” said Aaron sadly. “We think of everything. I wonder if God is as indifferent as we are to the proceedings we watch.”

“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.”

Love has been the definition of my ambition, they are one and the same with me,

“I can’t believe it because my reason tells me that such a system, in which anyone dictates our every move—be it a god, or a devil, or our subconscious mind, or our tyrannical genesis simply impossible. “Life itself must be founded upon the infinite possibility for choice and accident. And if we cannot prove that it is, we must believe that it is. We must believe that we can change, that we can control, that we can direct our own destinies.

“I believe in Free Will, the Force Almighty by which we conduct ourselves as if we were the sons and daughters of a just and wise God, even if there is no such Supreme Being. And by free will, we can choose to do good on this earth, no matter that we all die, and do not know where we go when we die, or if a justice or explanation awaits us. “I believe that we can through our reason know what good is, and in the communion of men and women, in which the forgiveness of wrongs will always be more significant than the avenging of them, and that in the beautiful natural world that surrounds us, we represent the best and the finest of beings, for we alone can see that natural beauty, appreciate it, learn from it, weep for it, and seek to conserve it and protect it. “I believe finally that we are the only true moral force in the physical world, the makers of ethics and moral ideas, and that we must be as good as the gods we’ve created in the past to guide us.

“And I suppose I do believe in the final analysis that a peace of mind can be obtained in the face of the worst horrors and the worst losses. It can be obtained by faith in change and in will and in accident; and by faith in ourselves, that we will do the right thing, more often than not, in the face of adversity. “For ours is the power and the glory, because we are capable of visions and ideas which are ultimately stronger and more enduring than we are.