“It’s too late, Francis.”
I looked back to see the two men trapped in the banister’s curve as in an embrace. Francis looked sick with fury, but Professor Warnick’s expression was subdued, almost tranquil—except for his eyes, which were the deep burning blue of the winter sky showing through a storm. A hungry, almost expectant, expression, but also somewhat dazed, like a fierce well-fed dog that has had its supper snatched away.
“Swee-ney!”
Angelica’s nails dug into my arm. With a very slight, ironic smile, Balthazar Warnick waggled his finger at me scoldingly. Then I lost sight of him. Angelica and I were running, running down the hillside, stones flying up around us and branches slashing at our cheeks. There was the sound of distant traffic and sulfurous light everywhere, light and drunken laughter and people crying out as we raced like mad things away from Garvey House.
CHAPTER 8
Twilight at the Orphic Lodge
I SLEPT WITH ANGELICA that night. Lying in her bed with my arms tight around her, not saying anything, hardly even moving except when a bolt of fear would tear her from some feverish half dream. Then I would gently stroke her hair, and let my tongue linger upon the sweet-scented arch of her neck. Once I felt the curved amulet that lay there against her skin, its smooth curve icy beneath my lips, and cried out softly as its keen edge bit into me. At last I must have dozed off. Much later I woke to Angelica’s muttering in her sleep. Nonsense words, or perhaps not, perhaps only something I could not understand. I kissed her, my hands cradling her face. Her pale eyes opened, widening in fear, then grew soft as the mumbled words became my name.
Near dawn I woke again, to find that she had slipped from my arms. On the other side of the narrow bed she sat with her back to me, her tangled hair massed about her shoulders. Violet light from the room’s high arched window made her look like a woman made of amethyst. In the night sky hung the new moon, its crescent distorted by the window’s greenish panes so that it appeared to be a globe floating in deep water, one of those bubbles of rainbow-colored glass escaped from a fishing boat a thousand miles away and tossed about like a stray thought by the waves. Angelica had a globe like that on her desk, alongside an erubescent sea urchin twice the size of my fist and a small wooden garuda with a lizard’s crest and baleful onyx eyes. Her room’s guardians, she told me, to keep her safe from demons.
But in that room there was another moon, too, a slivered crescent nestled in Angelica’s throat, rising and falling as she breathed, lost on another sea. She sat and stared up at the sky, arms extended before her with her hands curled upward, the fingers opening as though to receive some benison. When the sky grew light she turned to me, not smiling, not saying anything at all, her hair falling across her shoulders in a dark stream, and drew me to her. Afterward I slept again, fitfully as before, and dreamed of angels with the wings of locusts, of hail and hammered silver blades clashing against stone in the night.
It was almost evening when I woke, really woke, with a hangover and raging headache and the ominous feeling of having slept with someone when I was too drunk to know better.
“Wait! Don’t move, I want to take a picture: you can be this year’s AA poster girl.”
I groaned and sat up, blinking, and saw Annie Harmon perched on a chair. She was barefoot, still wearing the same plaid flannel shirt and fatigues. She smiled at my rueful expression, but her brown eyes were humorless. She looked pale and tired, and when I glanced over at her bed I saw it was neatly made with a worn log cabin quilt and Snoopy pillow.
“I slept at the library,” she said in her husky voice. “I didn’t want to intrude—”
I groaned. “Oh, shit, Annie, it wasn’t like that—”
“Oh no?” Her eyes narrowed. “Well, then, please tell me what it was like.”
“Annie. Give me a break.” I ran my hands through my hair, grimacing. I was still wearing my rank T-shirt; my hands smelled faintly of sandalwood. “Where’s Angelica?”
“At class. You didn’t think she was going to wait for you, did you? She never misses a beat, our girl. You got to get up pretty early in the morning to fly with the angels. Pretty fucking early.” She glowered and slapped the edge of her chair.
I sighed. “Look, I didn’t mean to cause some kind of thing with your girlfriend. I didn’t even know she was your girlfriend—”
“And, speaking of early, it is now five o’clock, P.M. And Angelica, just in case you’re wondering, is meeting Oliver Wilde Crawford for dinner.”
“Oliver?” I felt as though I had been poisoned. Of course! The two of them had just taken off, leaving me here to deal with the murderously jealous lesbian roommate. I rubbed my throbbing forehead. “Ah, come on, Annie! It was a mistake, all right? Forget about it. Where’re my boots?”
It wasn’t until I stood, my bare feet smacking against the chilly floor, that everything else about the previous night rushed back to me.
“Oh, man.”
Annie tilted her head. “Feeling a wee bit foolish, are we—”
“Shut up, Annie, just shut up.” My voice was shaking; I thought I might throw up. I looked beneath the bed, saw my jeans and cowboy boots atop the torn remnants of Angelica’s dress. I grabbed my things and pulled them on hurriedly, hoping Annie couldn’t see how sick I felt, then headed for the door.
“Sweeney. Wait.”
I hesitated and looked back.
“Sit down,” she said in a softer voice, and patted the neat coverlet on her bed. “We have to talk.”
“Look, Annie—if this is about you and Angelica, I’m, uh, really not—”
“Will you just close the door and listen to me?”
I put down the urge to storm into the hall. Instead I shut the door and leaned sullenly against Angelica’s desk. “I’m sorry, okay? I was drunk, and there was all this—well, this crazy shit—”
Annie crossed to the door, drew the bolt, and pulled the chain tight. “I know,” she said. “I mean I know about the crazy shit. That’s what I want to talk to you about, Sweeney. Listen—
“Angelica told me about what happened last night—don’t look at me like that, I’m her roommate, okay? You were passed out—”
“I was exhausted—”
Annie rolled her eyes. “Well, when I came back this morning you were making like the living dead over there, and Angie had to talk to someone. So she told me.”
“What did she tell you?” I asked guardedly.
“About that necklace. And Magda Kurtz—”
Her face was so pale that her freckles stood out like soot. “Sweeney, you guys are in big trouble. I told Angelica, but she never listens to me. I told her she oughta ditch that thing and get the hell out of Dodge—”
“Did she? Did she give it back?”
“Give it back? To who? No, Angelica didn’t give it back. She’s never gonna take it off. She’s wearing it right now. Like a fucking sign around her neck—”
“Shut up, Annie.” I sank to the floor with my head in my hands. I felt sick and angry and embarrassed, and totally, totally screwed up. What was I doing, sleeping with someone I hardly knew, sleeping with a girl I hardly knew; and at the same time mooning over some guy I’d just met the day before? “Please, shut up.”
“No! Listen to me, Sweeney—I don’t know what you think is going on, but you’re way out of your league here. So’s Angelica, and your friend Oliver—”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about all this—”
She stalked to the window and gestured furiously toward the Shrine, the neat white paths winding along the Strand. “And if you really don’t know what’s going on, you better start learning. Fast—”
She paced over to her desk and picked up a folded newspaper, stared broodingly at it before handing it to me. “Here.”
It was that afternoon’s Washington Star, opened to the Metro section. I glanced at it and frowned: the usual accounts of petty theft, local politics, urban renaissance, an
d decay. But then Annie jammed a finger at a small item on the bottom of the page.
“Check it out,” she said, and I began to read.
6 KILLED WHEN PLANE CRASHES IN W VA. MOUNTAINS
A chartered Beechcraft 640 bound for Philadelphia crashed in the West Virginia wilderness today, killing all on board. Two crew members and four passengers died when the aircraft plowed into a mountainside in dense fog. Bad weather hampered rescue efforts until early this morning. Among the dead was renowned archaeologist Magda Whitehead Kurtz, who had been returning from a summer appointment at the University of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine. In an official statement, EAA officials said that…
I read the story again, and again. At last I folded it back up and returned it to Annie.
“I don’t understand.” I gazed up at Angelica’s desk, the bulging red eyes of her little carven garuda. “How did Magda Kurtz get away?”
Annie slapped my arm with the newspaper. “You idiot! She didn’t. Don’t you get it? It’s a setup—all those other people died, just so there’d be an alibi for why Magda Kurtz is missing!”
“No.”
“Yes! Sweeney, you have have to listen to me—I know about this stuff, I’ve seen it all before.”
I said nothing, just stared at the desk. Angelica’s sea urchin, Angelica’s neat stack of marbleized stationery. A little Art Nouveau perfume flask, its blue crystal stopper shaped like a dolphin. Angelica’s scent. Angelica and Oliver…
“…told her when we met that…”
My head pounded, there was a roaring in my ears that nearly drowned out Annie’s voice.
“…Benandanti, the whole thing all over again, your scholars and people like Oliver—that’s who killed Lisa.”
“Lisa?” Groggily I got to my feet. “Who’s Lisa? I thought we were talking about Magda Kurtz—”
Annie smacked me again with the newspaper. “My cousin. Aren’t you listening?”
“Ouch! Well, yeah, but—” I rubbed my arm and wished I didn’t feel like throwing up. “Your cousin? Jeez, Annie, this is all a little too weird for me…”
“No shit, Sherlock! But that’s what happens when you crash the wrong party.” She strode back to her own desk and pulled open a drawer. I had a glimpse of papers rolled up with rubber bands, sheet music, some old magazines. Then, very carefully, she withdrew from the mess of pages a manila envelope and gave it to me.
“Okay, look at this—be careful, it’s starting to fall apart.”
I peered warily into the envelope and pulled out a wadded newspaper clipping. When I pried it open flecks of yellowed paper spilled down the front of my T-shirt.
CENTRAL PLAINS ADVOCATE
Weekly News from the Five Towns
I saw a small, badly reproduced yearbook photo of a misty-eyed girl smiling into the distance, her long straight hair parted in the middle and barely brushing her shoulders. Around her neck glinted a tiny cross on a chain.
“Lisa Harmon,” said Annie bitterly. “Lisa Nobody, now. My cousin.”
“Your cousin.”
She nodded, and carefully I smoothed out the page.
COLLEGE STUDENT A SUICIDE
University Denies Involvement with Satanists, Blames Drugs
Surprise, Nebraska April 11—19-year-old Lisa Marie Harmon, home from college on spring break, was found dead in her parents’ house here Friday evening after apparently taking a deadly overdose of sleeping pills. Grief-stricken relatives and friends expressed shock, stating that the popular student had never been involved with drugs and had “every reason to live.”
Harmon was a sophomore at the University of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine in Washington, D.C., where she was studying Comparative Religion and Music Therapy. Parents and guidance counselors at Raymond Jollie High School remembered a girl who was treasurer of the SERVE Club and played guitar at folk masses at Our Lady of Good Hope.
But a high school friend of Harmon’s, who refused to be identified, alleged that at college the former A-student had gotten involved with “some kind of coven.” University officials, however, denied all charges of occult activity at the school. A fellow student there recalled another girl, one who had taken to dabbling in narcotics and who over the course of several months had repeatedly sought help from the school’s counseling program.
This afternoon, relatives from across the county gathered to mourn and…
I stared at the girl in the yearbook photo, then glanced at Annie. There was the same determined chin and dark eyes, though the pixie smile was conspicuously absent from Annie’s face.
“I’m sorry, Annie. When did it—”
“Two years ago.”
I continued to stare stupidly at the page. Finally Annie took it back. I coughed and turned to look out the window. Beneath a cloudless twilit sky the Shrine’s dome glowed blue as the heart of a flame, and the golden stars painted upon it seemed to flicker and burn. At the foot of one of its narrow stairways a boy and a girl sat with their arms around each other and stared up at the gleaming monolith. A terrible longing swept over me: to be that girl; to have Oliver be that boy; to have that huge and lovely presence overseeing my life…
Behind me a drawer slammed shut, and Annie thumped onto her bed. I sighed and left the window to join her, moving her Snoopy pillow out of the way.
“Really, Annie. I’m sorry about your cousin.” I patted her back awkwardly, wondering when Angelica would return, and if Oliver would be with her. “It—it must have been horrible for you.”
She drew her knees up to her chin. “It’s a fucking lie, is what it is. Lisa didn’t kill herself. She was a saint, she would never kill herself. And she would never take any kind of drugs. You know what they found in her room when she died?”
I shook my head.
“Dilaudid. You know what that is? No? Well, it sure isn’t sleeping pills—
“Dilaudid is like, synthetic heroin. Now you tell me how an altar girl in Nebraska gets her hands on that. The local police had never even seen it before—they had to bring in someone from the hospital in Lincoln to identify it. And Lisa was doing this stuff?” Her voice rose incredulously. “No way.”
“But then—”
But then why are you telling me this? I thought. Instead I leaned back on her pillow and asked, “But then how did it happen? How did she die?”
“They killed her. Them. Professor Warnick and his pals.”
I groaned. “Oh, come on—”
“They did. They planted it there. In the house, in her room. I don’t know how they got that shit into her, but they did.” Her brown eyes had gone quite wild. “Look, I know this sounds crazy, Sweeney, but it’s true. With Lisa it was just like with you. She made these friends, Molyneux scholars, they’d been chosen for that secret society of theirs. Then she and Frank started sleeping together and I guess he must have violated some vow of silence or something, because somebody decided she got too close. She told me about it when she was home at Christmas. All this weird shit…”
“What kind of weird shit?”
“Oh, man, things you wouldn’t believe! Visions and witchcraft, all this stuff about the Second Coming—”
“The Second Coming?”
“You know,” Annie said impatiently. “Like that poem. Weird things being reborn—”
“I know what it is! But—you really think Professor Warnick—”
“They got rid of Magda Kurtz, didn’t they? And Warnick didn’t do it alone. He had the Benandanti.” When I said nothing, she added disdainfully, “The Good Walkers. Those Who Do Well.”
I thought of Angelica’s casual mention of them upstairs at Garvey House, and Baby Joe—“Benandanti. Brujos. The Golden Ones…”
What are the Molyneux scholars?
They’re magicians.
I took in Annie’s grim look, and decided that this was not one of those times when pretending I knew about something would do me any good. “Okay. Benandanti. So what’s that?”
“I’m not sure. But I bet Oliver would be able to tell you.”
“Oliver?”
“Listen, Sweeney, I know what all this sounds like. But you saw yourself—well, whatever it was that you and Angelica saw last night. It was real, right?”
I nodded reluctantly.
“Well, you should have seen what I had to go through to get accepted here. It was like I was applying to the CIA or something. They know I’m related to Lisa, it wasn’t like it would be hard to find that out. And they didn’t want me here. For all I know they’ve got some kind of file on me or something…”
“But then why’d you come here? I mean, isn’t it dangerous? And why’d they let you in?”
She knotted her hands in her lap. “I don’t know why they let me in. Probably they need a few normal people to round out the campus profile. You know, so it’s not all people like Angie and Oliver. But Lisa was my cousin; she was my best friend. And they murdered her and got away with it. And I don’t want that to happen to Angelica. Or you.”
I swallowed nervously. “So what do we do?”
“I don’t know.” Elbows on her knees, chin in hand, she looked more like a bemused kid than ever. “I guess we stay in touch.” She glanced at me sideways and, for the first time, gave me a crooked grin. “I guess we’re all kinda stuck together now, huh?”
I stood and walked to the window. For a last long moment I stared down at the Strand, trying to find Oliver among the tiny figures wandering across the darkening lawns. Finally, “I guess we are,” I said, and left.
I went back to my room and locked myself inside, pushed a chair against the door, and bolted the window shut. Then I prised the wooden curtain rod from the closet and leaned it against my bed, beside every hardcover textbook I could find and my electric typewriter in its heavy melamite case. It crossed my mind that people who slipped Dilaudid to nosy college students and fed archaeologists to gigantic insects might not be too put off by someone beaning them with the third edition of the Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, but I didn’t care. I fell asleep with all the lights on, and slept for thirteen hours.
Waking the Moon Page 17
