by Lanyon, Josh
Silence.
“What friend?”
“Does it matter?”
He chuckled. “Maybe not. What did you have in mind?”
“Sex magick.”
I felt surprise in the static between us.
“You mean an initiation?”
Is that what I meant? “Right,” I said, with a certainty I didn’t feel.
Warily, he asked, “Are you craft?”
What did that mean? Was that like, are you a Top or a bottom? Did I see myself as an Art or a Craft? Or was he asking whether I was a witch? Or maybe he wanted to know if I was pro cheese-macaroni?
I fought a nervous desire to laugh and said, “No. I’m curious, and willing to pay to have my…itch scratched.”
I thought of Jake’s face if he were to overhear this conversation, closed my eyes to block the image.
“Wow,” Peter said. He sounded like he might laugh too. Probably not the desired reaction. “Well, I’ll tell you what. I’m booked through the holidays, but maybe I can fit you in after Candlemas.”
Candlemas? Wasn’t that in February? Maybe this kid really was worth pursuing.
I said, “That’s quite a wait. I’m impressed. I’m also impatient. Can you recommend someone else?”
Silence. He said at last, “Perhaps we can work it out. What did you say your name was?”
Good question. I opened my mouth. “Oxford,” I said at random. “Avery Oxford.”
“Where can I reach you, Avery?”
Another good question. Maybe I should have taken half a minute to inspect for rocks before I dived in head first. “I’ll call you,” I said curtly, and rang off.
“What an idiot!” I announced to the room at large. Shaking my head, I tucked the number in the Rolodex on my desk. I happened to notice the business card I had received from the Wiccans at Dragonwyck. I inspected the silver scripted numerals. Dial M for Magick.
Hadn’t I embarrassed myself enough for one day?
Any more of this and I’d believe some unseen hand was trying to give me a shove in the right direction. I practically felt the palm print between my shoulder blades — or maybe that was the lingering bruises from my visit to Hell’s Kitchen.
Which reminded me. Guy had lied about Peter Verlane being out of town.
* * * * *
I was having a BLT at Johnny Rocket’s when I happened to notice Jean Finch peering in the front window. When she saw me gazing back at her, she ducked away. Then she appeared in the window again, waved at me with frantic friendliness, and walked off hurriedly.
Holy moly.
Leisurely finishing my sandwich, I paid the bill and stepped outside into the gloomy afternoon. No sign of Jean. I started walking, stopping every so often to glance into a shop window.
I finally spotted her, lingering several yards behind me.
I started back toward her. She froze in panic, then looked around as though planning to flee. She didn’t flee, however; she stood her ground, practically trembling in her little white trench coat.
“Jean, what are you doing?” I asked as I reached her.
“N-nothing. I was Christmas shopping. I saw you at Johnny Rocket’s. Is the food good there? I’ve never been.”
“Where are your packages?”
“I haven’t bought anything yet.”
I met her gaze. She looked away. Now certain, I said, “You were following me.”
“I wasn’t!”
But she was. It was in her tone of voice, in her facial expression. If she wasn’t following me, she was sure guilty about something.
“Jean,” I said, “come off it. You’ve got a character in your book who looks like me and talks like me and dresses like me. Tuesday you had Avery Oxford following someone to the Biltmore Hotel. That’s a hefty coincidence. Next week are we going to read about Avery having lunch at Johnny Rocket’s and chasing someone through the Paseo?”
She shook her head, the black curls bouncing. She looked like a kid caught stealing the shoes off a rival’s Barbie. “We keep getting rejected,” she said disconsolately. “Agents, editors, even the writing group doesn’t like our book.”
I bit my lip.
She raised her eyes to mine. “I only thought…everyone you talk to, agents or publishers, they all want you to have a platform, and I thought…” she swallowed hard. “I thought our platform could be that our gay sleuth’s adventures are based on the real-life adventures of…you.”
My jaw dropped. “Are you out of your mind?” I got out at last.
“But you don’t understand, Adrien —”
“You’re right.”
“This kind of thing is so big right now, the novelization of people’s real-life adventures.”
If she said “real-life adventures” one more time, I was going to put her under the next passing bus.
“Jean…”
“Sherlock Holmes’s adventures were inspired by a Dr. Joseph Bell. And did you know there actually was a Gidget? All those movies and TV shows were based on the real-life ad —”
“Jean.”
She stopped, swallowing hard.
“Jean, you can’t follow me around. I don’t want you to write a roman à clef based on my life. Or what you imagine is my life.”
“But maybe I could help you,” she said eagerly. “I know you’re working a case. You’re trying to find out if Angus did kill those other students, aren’t you?”
I had this sudden vision of how Jake must have felt when I kept insisting on helping him.
“No, I’m not,” I said. “I’m leaving this to the police. You need to do the same.”
She looked away from me. “Okay.”
“I’m serious, Jean. This stuff is too dangerous.”
“Okay.”
I studied her mutinous profile.
“Okay,” I said. “But if I catch you following me again, I’m telling Ted.”
I had one fleeting look at her outraged expression before she stalked away down the street. I sighed and headed back for the shop.
The rest of the day passed in sales receipts and register rings.
At last I sat down at my desk, thumbed through my Rolodex, and removed the card the Dragonwyck proprietress had given me.
“A specialist,” she had said.
Would it do any harm to call?
I contemplated the silver numerals. The area code was 661. What was that, Bakersfield? Wasco? I didn’t think of Bakersfield as being a spiritual center.
I dialed the number, tried to imagine myself explaining my dilemma.
On the second ring, the phone picked up. A low, rather melodious voice spoke.
“Hello.”
Hello? I was expecting a “Merry Meet,” at the very least.
“Uh, hi. I got your number from the…ladies at Dragonwyck.”
“Yes?”
I couldn’t tell if that untroubled voice was male or female. I guess it didn’t really matter.
I took a deep breath. “I’m having this problem with…uh…well, it has to do with a demon. I was wondering if I could make an appointment?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Selene Wolfe lived in Palmdale.
To be exact, she lived in the Angeles National Forest on the Palmdale side of the San Gabriel Mountains. The light was failing by the time I left Pasadena. I did not look forward to the night’s return drive, dipping and winding through miles and miles of dense chaparral that slowly gave way to pine-studded peaks.
The traffic was surprisingly heavy, cars whipping around the narrow road with scant regard for the tumbling slopes below. For a time, I found myself one of a long line of cars trapped behind a yellow Celica with the bumper sticker Visualize World Peace.
I missed the turnoff and had to find a safe place to pull over, then double back. By the time I found the stone cairn mailbox with the correct house number, it was dark, and I was late.
The long dirt road had been graded, but that was the sole sign of civilization as I rol
led cautiously along, the headlights of the Forester occasionally pinpointing gleaming eyes in the darkness.
At last I saw lights. I pulled into the front yard of a small stone cabin. I parked and got out. Wood smoke drifted from the chimney. The night air was spicy with pines.
An old-fashioned lantern hung above the door. A dog barked from inside the cabin.
I knocked. Moments later the door opened. The woman who answered my knock was taller than I, lean, with a riot of salt and pepper hair. She wore jeans and a flannel shirt; she was barefoot despite the cold. A three-legged dog stood beside her, still muttering under its breath.
“Blessed be,” she said in that sexless, but soothing voice.
“Hi. I’m Adrien English.”
She moved aside. I stepped into a rustic, but comfortable-looking cabin. Nothing particularly weird or witchy about it. If there was a cauldron bubbling, it was being used for chicken soup.
“Would you like tea?” Selene Wolfe asked.
“Thanks. Yes.”
She gestured for me to sit at the table, and I did while she went into the kitchen. The three-legged dog planted himself between the two rooms, clearly determined to keep an eye on me.
One wall had been given over to bookshelves: Frazier’s Golden Bough, Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft, the Farrars’ Witches’ Bible. All the woo-woo classics as well as a lot of books on psychology and sociology. There were cheerful sprigged curtains covering the windows, thick woven rugs covering the stone floor. Fur brushed against my ankle. I glanced down to see a large white rabbit hopping beneath the table.
Selena returned carrying a tray with an earthenware teapot and mugs. She sat across from me. “Sugar? Cream?”
“Black.”
She nodded. Poured the tea, passed me the cup with a smile. “How can I help you, Adrien?”
I don’t know if it was that smile, which was warm and reassuring and genuinely interested, or the worn beauty of her face, but for the first time in a long time I felt myself relaxing.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t think there’s much you can tell me about this that I don’t already know.” I offered the well-handled photos of the inverted pentagram. “I have a feeling this is not your line.”
She took the photos, going through them slowly, without expression. Then she set them aside. “No, they’re not my line. Tell me what you know about them.”
I can’t explain why — maybe it was the profound peace of that isolated cabin or the grave serenity of the woman herself — but I found myself pouring out all my troubles.
I told her about the Scythe of Gremory and the three blades. I told her about Angus. I told her about Guy. I even told her about Jake. I probably would have blabbed all night if she hadn’t finally said, into one of my rare pauses for breath, “What do you think is behind these murders?”
“What or whom?”
“What.”
“You mean the motive?”
She smiled a little. “If you want to call it that.”
I stared at her bleakly. “I think Kinsey was killed because they wanted to frame Angus.”
“But to kill one of their own?” She spoke gently.
She was right. I hadn’t given much thought to motive — partly because Jake always said that if means and opportunity were there, motive would turn up. And partly because I had spent all my energy chasing demons, but the real demon of this case was named MacGuffin.
“She did something to turn the others against her,” I said slowly. What had Angus’s sin been? By attempting to leave the club, he had threatened disclosure, exposure, revelation. What he had threatened, Kinsey had unwittingly accomplished. “She came to the bookstore that day and tried to intimidate me. Until then, I didn’t know who any of them were. After that I had names, faces.”
Selene nodded, sipping her tea. “And so did the police — through your friend Jake. That was a serious miscalculation on her part. Whatever her previous ranking, and I imagine it was quite high for her to persuade the other girl to follow, she would have lost favor following her visit to you. Remember, in these groups there’s a good deal of rivalry and competition.”
“So someone aspiring to her position as…Adept…might have been willing to silence her?”
Her expression was grave. “It wouldn’t be the first time, would it? That’s what frightened your young assistant. Murder.”
I nodded. Drank more tea. It had an odd aftertaste, but it was good. I felt less weary, less depressed.
“The other two murders…” I had been thinking aloud. Selene was silent. “One kid disappeared in October. One kid disappeared in May. Those correspond with witches’ Sabbats, right?”
“Samhain and Beltane both fall in those months.”
“How many Sabbats are there?”
“Eight.”
“How many of the Sabbats require human sacrifice?”
She opened her mouth to object, I said, “I realize that Wicca doesn’t follow these old traditions, but you share the same Sabbats with the Satanists.”
“The four major Sabbats are Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas, and Samhain.”
“So there could be more deaths.”
She nodded.
“There might be more bodies out there.”
“It is possible.”
I reached for the photos. “Was this meant to scare me, or was this an actual death threat?”
“I think it was intended to frighten you. I can’t be sure. In any case, you’re more of a danger now than you were then.”
I considered this from a tired distance. It occurred to me that if I didn’t hit the road soon, I’d be asking for a place on her sofa.
I stood. “Thank you for your time. This was helpful.”
Selene rose also. The three-legged dog, still watching us from the doorway, made a determined hopping effort to get to its feet.
She walked outside with me, her bare feet seemingly impervious to the frost on the ground.
As I opened the car door, she touched my arm. “Adrien, you’re very tired. Be careful driving back.”
I looked at her in surprise. Took the hand she offered.
“Can I ask you a question? Do you make a living at this?” I gestured to the cabin, outlined in silver moonlight.
“You mean do I have a day job? Yes, I’m a criminal psychologist.”
She chuckled at my expression. I climbed into the Forester.
I caught a final glimpse of her standing in the cabin doorway, the dog beside her. The firelight seemed to form an aureole around her.
The next bend in the road took the cabin from sight. It was dark out here, deathly quiet. The headlights picked out the sign leading back to the main road.
High overhead, a wicked crescent moon shone like a crooked smile over the waves and waves of black pine trees. I clicked my high beams on.
After the earlier workday traffic, Angeles Crest Highway was startlingly empty. Miles ahead, I spotted a single pair of headlights winding their way toward me.
As I drove, the winding highway seemed to pick up a kind of hypnotic rhythm. Accelerate in, decelerate out, the road looped and rolled around the mountains, narrowing to a pass between hills that looked more like rockslides and then widening deceptively.
I passed the car I had seen miles below me, dimming my high beams briefly as we flashed past each other. Then nothing more but a long empty stretch of invisible road.
Selene Wolfe was right. I was tired. I had been sleeping badly. It was harder to avoid demons in dreams — especially when they were your own.
Shortly before he died at age eighty-one, Joseph Hansen started a blog called Lastwords. I’d found it once, surfing the ’Net. Three posts filled with the loneliness of having outlived pretty much everyone and everything that mattered. Three posts and about as many replies.
If Hansen was that forsaken at the end, what chance did the rest of us have, especially those who had never quite managed to find someone to share their life?
I tried to cheer myself by reflecting that with my heart there was no way I’d make it to eighty anyway. The problem was, I couldn’t imagine feeling much more alone than I did right then.
I blinked. My eyelids felt weighted. How could eyelashes be so heavy? I blinked again. The smart move would be to pull over and nap for five minutes, but I wanted to get home.
My God, it was a long way away. A long, unraveling way that kept rolling, winding through the empty blackness. On and on and on.
Easiest thing in the world to stop fighting sleepiness, to close my eyes for a moment, to let go.
It would be all over in two minutes. Slam. All she wrote. The end. Nobody left with anything to regret or be guilty about because anyone could have an accident on this road.
They probably wouldn’t find the car for days. The trees were so dense down that mountainside. Maybe they’d never find the car.
Wouldn’t it be a kind of relief? No more struggling against the tide. No more dead of night fears about winding up ill and helpless and alone. No more anything.
Gravel spat under the tires. I corrected quickly, instinctively.
As I merged onto the I-210 East heading toward Pasadena, I thought, I wish I’d known about the blog, Joe. I’d have written you.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Can I get off early tonight?” Velvet asked on Saturday morning. “I have a big party to go to.”
Bad timing. I had been hoping to slip out of there early myself, to get ready for Lisa’s shindig at Mondrian’s. But considering how much time Velvet had put in covering for my extracurricular activities, I could hardly say no.
Though this was the busiest shopping weekend before Christmas, the day passed without incident, which was saying something these days.
Velvet took off about three, and by the time I had dealt with the last customer, I was running late.
I went upstairs and dusted off (literally) the tuxedo. That’s one of the advantages of having a society dame for a mother: you don’t have to rent the monkey suit.
I showered, shaved, and spent about ten minutes chasing shirt studs. And another five minutes swearing over cufflinks. This is where another guy would come in useful. Or maybe just a valet.
