Rowan revives drowned contractor Michael Curry, who finds that the near-death experience grants him unwanted extrasensory powers. Michael is also one of very few people who has seen the mysterious Lasher, a ghost who haunts the Mayfairs. Lasher is described as "a slim, pale, elegant figure with dark eyes and dark hair and a hypnotically seductive power over any [of the Mayfairs] reckless enough to entertain him." Lasher, whom Publishers Weekly describes as "devil, seducer, spirit", is a demon linked to the Mayfairs for generations. Summoned by Scottish witch Suzanne Mayfair in the 1600s, Lasher "goes on to bedevil her descendants down to the present day, seeing in them the means of fulfilling his ghastly and unnatural ambitions." Under Lasher's influence, the Mayfairs become an enormously wealthy family of witches, able to "attract and manipulate unseen forces." The demon seduces each new designee and orchestrates incestuous unions among the family, with ulterior motives. Rowan is the 13th such Mayfair designee, who Lasher believes will give him his chance to rejoin the living. Publishers Weekly called Lasher "both child and man at the same time", and Patrick McGrath suggested that Lasher is actually the protagonist of The Witching Hour. Lasher's plan comes to fruition at the end of The Witching Hour when he invades Rowan's unborn fetus and is reborn. The baby is genetically a non-human, ancient species called the Taltos, which is "the superhuman result of the crossbreeding of two human witches who possess an extra chromosome". The infant Lasher immediately grows to adulthood, and Publishers Weekly describes the creature as "almost a monster ... capable of beastly behavior fueled by an extraordinary sex drive." He rapes Rowan repeatedly in Lasher to create more Taltos, but the attempts end in violent miscarriages. Rowan finally conceives and gives birth to a Taltos daughter, Emaleth, but ultimately kills her. Michael fathers another Taltos with Rowan's cousin Mona Mayfair, a daughter she names Morrigan, in Taltos. Theroux wrote, "The Mayfair witches are easily the largest dysfunctional family on earth, and yet, perhaps not surprisingly, face the same soap-opera problems of any other extended family—jealousy, sex, drink, rape, revenge, inexplicable pregnancy, sudden death, crazed children and occasional murder." Of the extended Mayfair family, McGrath noted, "Mayfairs often come to bad ends, generally either burning to death or falling from high places, and we meet many members of many generations of them". Notable Mayfairs include: