“Healing crystals?” Tom asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Like the one I gave Jenna at the funeral. You’ve still got it on you, right?”
“Actually, I do,” I said, pulling it out of my purse where I’d promptly put it and then forgotten it existed. I held it up for her to see.
“Good,” she said. “You should carry it with you all the time.”
Before I could say anything else, Tom interrupted me. “Aren’t you supposed to be seeing Professor Martin?”
I glanced at my watch and realized that we’d been in the library for almost two hours. Where had the time gone? Professor Martin’s office hours were almost over!
“I’ve got to run if I’m going to catch Professor Martin,” I said. “Can we meet up later?”
“Sure,” Tom said. “Did you find what you needed?”
“A few leads,” I hedged, glancing at Kristen, “but nothing concrete.”
“Well, we’ll figure it out,” he said. “I’ll call you later.”
“And I can help, too!” Kristen said. “Maybe Atlantis would be a good project. Or the cults at King Solomon’s mines?”
“Maybe,” I said, shouldering my backpack. “We’ll talk later.”
“Later,” they said in unison.
As I jogged for the exit, I wondered how two people that were so different could sustain a relationship. Maybe there was something to the old cliche of opposites attracting.
I pushed against the door, and when it didn’t open, slammed into it hard enough to knock my head against the glass. “What the …” I mumbled, then shoved against it again.
Straining, I managed to get it open a crack and heard the high, thin whistle of the wind coming in. Looking out, I saw that many of the smaller trees on campus were bent over and clusters of clouds were racing across the gray sky. The wind had grown into a full force gale and created a vacuum on the door seals.
I shoved harder, and finally managed to get it open.
The wind caught me in its grasp, and it was all I could do to hold onto the door and not fly back into the building. Struggling, I forced myself to the opposite side of the door and let the wind shut it behind me. It slammed hard enough to rattle the glass in the windows.
I pushed forward, leaning against the freakishly strong wind and started toward the building where Professor Martin’s office was. It felt like I was walking in a wind tunnel … or reliving my dreams. Another shiver worked its way up my spine.
All around me, the air was filled with flying debris: dead leaves, papers, bits of trash all swirled through the air, caught briefly on light poles or statues, and then blown off again. Weather this severe was very odd for Miller’s Crossing, Ohio, but probably wouldn’t have been out of place in Nebraska or Kansas. From what I had been told, the wind there blew like this most every day, though that might have been an exaggeration.
I ducked as a gigantic wet leaf went twirling by my head and forced myself to hurry.
I needed Professor Martin’s advice about the Board, and no wind was going to keep me from getting there before he left.
4
“My lord, she is at the local college now. This may be our best opportunity. Also, she rebuffed Simon.”
“Did she? Our little pseudo-Keeper is stronger willed than I thought. Unless … yes, perhaps the Board has already begun speaking to her. Very interesting, indeed.”
“One of our contacts claims he can get the Board—today.”
“If he can, more power to him, then no one would even know that we were involved.”
Every college had at least one professor, I suspected, like Professor Martin. Well-traveled, intelligent, and very eccentric. His small office was overloaded with books on innumerable subjects and strange knickknacks from odd corners of the world he had visited. On one shelf, something floated in a jar of thick, clear liquid, while on another a small doll shared space with a strangely formed animal skull. Going into Professor Martin’s office was a little like visiting a zoo, a library, and an unorganized closet all at once.
I loved it. And I liked Professor Martin a lot. So far, all three classes I’d taken with him had been great. His door was open a crack and I knocked lightly on it.
“Come forth,” Professor Martin called out.
“Hello, Professor,” I said.
“Jenna!” he said. “What brings you here? I don’t have you in any of my classes right now, do I?” For a moment, I could see him trying to remember every face in each course he taught and failing miserably. He was a tall man, and underweight, with thinning blond hair and a style of dress Tom and I’d dubbed “Broke College Professor” soon after we’d started taking his Introduction to Ancient Cultures class. Tom was a computer science major, and didn’t think anthropology was even a proper science, but I’d managed to talk him into taking the course anyway.
I laughed. “No, not this semester,” I said. “Though I’m planning on taking the Arts & Icons of South America next semester.”
“Good,” he said. “You’ll add a lot to our discussions.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m looking forward to it. But I stopped by for another reason.”
“Oh?” he said, his eyebrows raised with curiosity. “What’s that?”
I pulled my backpack off my shoulder and removed the board case. “I was cleaning out my grandfather’s attic, and I found this.” I held out the case to him.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
The words were kind, but meaningless. His attention was riveted on the case. He moved his hands over it with gentle care, rubbing the burned-in symbols, his eyes wide with wonder.
“This is amazing,” he mumbled, then he opened the case.
His inhalation would have been audible in the hallway, even over the wind. “Fantastic!” he said. He removed the Board from its case and set it gently on the desk. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
“Oh,” I said. “I was hoping you knew what it was.”
He traced his fingers over the symbols on the Board. “I could make an educated guess,” he said. “But I’d rather be certain before I said too much of anything.” He pointed. “Some of these symbols are Babylonian, some of the others look more arcane than that.”
He gazed at me through the smudged lenses of his glasses. “Was your grandfather ever in the Middle East?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. And the Board belonged to my grandmother.”
“Hmm …” he said. “It’s quite a piece. Quite lovely … and the case! Do you know what it is?”
“I was told it was human skin,” I said, trying to repress another shudder.
“That’s exactly right,” Professor Martin said, his voice getting louder. “Incredibly rare and often associated with the black arts. Such perfect examples are almost never seen in this day and age.”
“It really is human skin?” I asked. “Who would do a thing like that?”
The professor shrugged. “I’ve read of ancient sorcerers who believed that human skin made the best leather, especially if it came from a willing sacrifice. In some cultures it was rumored that slaves could buy their freedom with the skin from their back. A horrid practice, to be sure, but fascinating.”
“I’d just call it disgusting,” I said. “Can you tell me anything else about it?”
Professor Martin shook his head. “Not off hand,” he said. “There’s something familiar about it, but I can’t quite seem to recall …” His voice trailed off, then he snapped his fingers. “Jenna, would you mind if I kept it for a short while—a day or two perhaps? I have a colleague who might be able to shed some light on this.”
My first thought was one of relief, that someone might know something about the Board … something that might explain why it was in my grandmother’s belongings to begin with. But before I could open my mouth to agree I felt an almost painful lurch in my stomach, and I thought I heard that voice again. “Shalizander.”
I looked
around the room, wondering if Professor Martin had heard it as well, but he just stared at me expectantly.
The Board was mine, and I couldn’t believe I’d even been considering letting him have it. “No,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t feel comfortable with that.”
His eyebrows arching, Professor Martin said, “I don’t understand, Jenna. I thought you wanted my help.”
“I do. I just … I don’t know … I don’t want … it’s important that I keep the Board with me.”
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “While it is certainly unique, I have no intention of keeping it from you. I merely wanted to show it to a colleague of mine in the hope that he might be able to offer more information.” He gestured at the case. “There are many occult societies, Jenna, that treasure such artifacts as this. There is even one associated with the symbol on your medallion.”
I remembered then that I was still wearing my grandmother’s necklace. “This?” I asked, pulling it out from beneath my hair. “What do you mean?”
“The Templar Knights used that very symbol as the marking of one of their secret societies. A sub-group, in fact, concerned with the worship of demons and the creation and acquisition of magical devices and relics. They were supposedly wiped out shortly after the death of one of their Grandmasters—a man named Jacques de Molay.”
For some reason, the name struck a chord within me. And Tom and I had seen that information online about the Templar Knights. Perhaps the man’s name had been mentioned in the text. “So you think my grandmother was in a secret society of Templar Knights?”
“Not at all,” Professor Martin said, laughing. “The symbol is very ornate and decorative. No doubt the jeweler who made the necklace had seen it somewhere, thought it pretty, and used it as a design without even knowing what it was.”
“Then why mention the Templars?”
“My friend,” he said, “is well-versed in such esoteric history. I hoped he might be able to give us a clue about the Board, perhaps because it might have been mentioned in one of the many texts he has studied.” He shrugged. “It was a suggestion.”
Once again, I thought of giving him the Board—he seemed so earnest, but … something wasn’t right. My grandfather had always told me that I had good instincts. I couldn’t explain it, but what I was feeling from Professor Martin wasn’t helpfulness, but longing. He wanted the Board for himself, and I didn’t know why. The way he continued to stroke the edges of it with his hands, and how his gaze kept returning to it while we talked … it felt as though he wasn’t really paying attention to me.
I shut the board case and stuffed it in my backpack. The sudden urge to flee from his office was overwhelming. “I’ll think about it, Professor,” I said. “I’ve got to go now.”
He stood up, his smile fading and his cheeks turning an ugly shade of red. “Jenna, I can’t help you if you act like this.”
His voice was almost patronizing, like he expected me to obey.
“Fine, Professor,” I snapped, just wanting to get away from him. “Then don’t help. Sorry I asked. I’ve to go.” I turned and almost ran out the door.
Behind me, I heard him yell, “Jenna! Come back!” But I kept running.
I crossed the parking lot, head down against the wind. A few other students crossed the campus as well, all of them struggling to either keep from being pushed forward or back by the gale. Voices and debris were torn away with equal ferocity, so I barely heard the sound of my name being called.
“Jenna! Jenna Solitaire!”
I turned around to see Simon Monk on the far side of the parking lot. Had he been following me? I made it to my car and managed to get the back door open enough to toss my pack in the backseat. He reached me just as I slammed the door shut and whirled around, my hair whipping across my face.
“Now what do you want?” I asked. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”
“I’m trying to help you, Jenna,” Simon said. “There are things you need to know.”
“I’m sure there are,” I said.
“Look, did you find the journal?”
“What journal?” I asked.
“According to my research, it’s sometimes called the Chronicle of the Keepers. It’s been around for as long as the Board, and it chronicles the history of the Board and those who have protected it.”
I nodded while slowly reaching for the door handle. This man may have been a priest, and he may even have worked for the Vatican, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t crazy.
“A book that’s as old as the Board? Nope, sorry, haven’t seen it.” I opened the door. “And now if you’ll excuse me …”
“Jenna, please,” Simon said, reaching out to touch my arm. I found myself caught in his gaze once more and fought to look away.
“The Board isn’t some toy you can just show off to your friends. It is a powerful artifact and many people would willingly kill for it.”
Kill for it? I shivered, remembering the way Professor Martin’s eyes kept shifting to the Board when we were talking. I held up my hand to forestall his next comment. “Listen, Simon, you seem like a pretty nice guy. A little crazy, but a nice guy. Now, I’m going to have to ask you to get out of the way and leave me the hell alone. Get it? Got it? Good.” I got into my car and shut the door.
For once, the engine started on the first try. I half-expected Simon to start pounding on the window and demanding I listen to more of his ranting, but he simply stood there in the wind and watched me drive away.
Heading home, I decided to do two things. First, the next time I saw Father Andrew, I was going to give him a piece of my mind—priest or not—for introducing me to a man who was obviously some kind of stalker. Possibly a crazed stalker. Second, I was going to get back up in the attic and see if I couldn’t find some more clues about the Board or why my grandmother had it in the first place.
Driving my little car through the wind and watching swollen banks of rain-laden clouds race overhead, I wondered if Simon might have been telling the truth. Was there a journal? For all that he was a borderline nutcase, he seemed to know a lot about the Board itself. Where would my grandmother have kept it?
And Professor Martin’s explanation of my grandmother’s medallion seemed a little too pat to me. Why would some jeweler put a design on it and not know what it meant? Did my grandmother know someone in this secret Templar Knight society? It hardly seemed plausible, and yet there had to be some reason for all of this.
My hands knew the way home, so I let my mind drift into memory, seeking any clue or hint that my grandmother had been anything other than what she had appeared: a sweet old lady who loved going to church and gardening. Turning onto my street, I shook my head. Nothing. Nada. Not even a hint of impropriety or weirdness that I could remember. And wouldn’t my grandfather have told me if he’d known? I thought so; it had been just the two of us for so long that keeping secrets from each other was difficult.
He’d known the first time I kissed a boy—Ricky Lynton from two blocks down the street—and the first time I’d fallen in love. He knew everything about me, and I knew everything about him; from how he loved to listen to baseball on the radio, but hated to watch it on television to his secret desire to write a spy novel set during the Korean conflict and his fascination with history. He would have told me something this … this extraordinary if he’d known about it. I was positive.
I pulled up to the house, grabbed my pack out of the backseat, and hurried inside. A brief lull in the wind made the walk less of a struggle. I unlocked the front door, stepped in, and closed it behind me. Listened to the silence and felt … safe. Yes, I had the Board with me and I was safe.
It was strange to realize that I’d become so attached to it. Perhaps it was the mystery of it all, of what my grandfather had or hadn’t known, of what my grandmother might have been doing with it in the first place. I took off my jacket and hung it in the hall, then went into the kitchen to start some fresh coffee. There was nothing like a hot
cup of gourmet coffee on a cold, windy, rainy day … and even though the chills I’d been feeling weren’t all related to the weather, the warmth would be nice.
I left my backpack and the Board on the kitchen table, and took my coffee mug into the one room of the house I almost never entered: my grandfather’s bedroom.
It was part of our living style that we did not enter the other person’s room without permission. Unfortunately, he wasn’t here to give me permission. I stood outside his door, which had been shut since the day he died, and worked myself up to opening it. In fact, I hadn’t been in this room in … at least a year. We had always believed that people needed a private space to call their own and tried to respect that as much as possible.
The house was quiet and empty. “Too much private space,” I said aloud. I felt a little like a thief, sneaking into his room when he wasn’t here to tell me not to. Yet, I had to know more about the Board, and going up to the attic again was an even less appealing prospect.
I reached out and opened the door to his room.
The shades were drawn and only a little light crept in from the two windows on the far side of the room. I flicked on the overhead switch. The bed was made up, a green quilt my grandmother had made years before folded and hung over the footboard. A masculine jewelry box sat on top of the antique dresser. A small reading lamp on the nightstand next to the bed was turned off, and next to it was the book my grandfather had been reading. The fading scent of his aftershave brought a sting to my eyes. He’d been wearing it for years, and I would probably always associate that warm, buttery smell with him and the safety of his arms.
Not really knowing where to start, I crossed the room and opened the shades. The gray light did little to cheer me, so I also turned on the reading lamp. Its warm yellow radiance drove back some of the shadows. I moved the book aside and saw that he had left his watch on the nightstand instead of putting it in the jewelry box on his dresser.
The nightstand had one drawer, and still feeling like a thief, I opened it. I consoled my conscience by reminding myself that I would have to go through his things eventually. The open space beneath the drawer was filled with books, and if my grandfather had hidden anything in his room, it would be in a drawer or his closet.
Keeper of the Winds Page 5
