“ ‘It’s a Mayfair marriage,’ she returned. ‘And Mayfairs like me always marry other Mayfairs. Now it’s a cinch that with his background and my background some of our children will be witches—.’

“ ‘There you go with that word again, Mona, what do you mean, “witches”? Does the whole family use that word? Does Fr. Kev use it?’

“She laughed the sweetest laugh. ‘Yeah, the whole family does use it but that’s probably on account of the Talamasca, and Aaron Lightner, a member of the Talamasca whom we all loved. We lost him. He died in a terrible accident. But Stirling is our friend now, and Stirling uses the word. You see, the Talamasca is this organization that for centuries watched our family without us ever knowing it. Well, no, that’s not entirely true. Sometimes our ancestors knew it. But anyway, the Talamasca made what they call the File on the Mayfair Witches, and after we all read that material we had a better understanding of our history, and yeah, we do refer to some of us as witches.’

“I was too intrigued to put another question. She took a big gulp of her café au lait and went on talking.

“(Jasmine had left us a pot of coffee on a small candle warmer and the warm milk in a pitcher and plenty of sugar, and that was a good thing because we kept drinking it and the littleness of the china cups was annoying.)

“ ‘A witch to us is what a witch is to the Talamasca,’ said Mona. ‘It’s a human being who can see and command spirits. You’re born a witch and Stirling Oliver has the theory that it has its origins in the physical brain, rather like a person’s ability to see fine gradations of color, for instance. But because we can’t study those receptors in the brain, because they can’t be isolated by science, it sounds mysterious.’

“ ‘In other words,’ I said, ‘Stirling thinks that someday one will be able to diagnose a witch in someone like you or me?’

“ ‘Exactly,’ said Mona, ‘and Rowan believes this too, and she is carrying out extensive research on this at Mayfair Medical. She has her own lab and she does pretty much what she pleases. I don’t want to make her sound like Dr. Frankenstein. What I mean is the Mayfair legacy is so big that she doesn’t need grant money, and so she doesn’t have to answer to anyone. And she does secret and mysterious research. God only knows all Rowan’s projects. I wish I knew what she was up to.’

“ ‘But what can she do if she can’t cut into actual brain tissue?’ I asked.

“Mona explained all the routine brain tests that could be run, and I explained that I had been through these and no abnormality had been found.