I looked up, expecting to see Annie’s mocking gaze or worse, her anger. Instead she was staring at me as though she’d somehow walked into a stranger’s carriage house; which, I guess, she had.
“You said you’d marry him. Too much. And obviously he doesn’t know who his real father is,” she mused. “Which is probably for the best…
“Well. He sounds nice,” she said after a long silence had passed. “Really, he does. I guess it’s just that—well, some kind of intense stuff has happened to me in the last couple of months.”
“Like what?”
She shifted uncomfortably on the couch, finally curled up into the corner facing me. “Well, like—like I guess maybe I’ll have to wait a few minutes before getting into it. This is a lot to think about, after all this time. Right here—”
She gestured at me, then at the little room around us, with its ancient beams and slate floor and books and rose petals strewn everywhere.
“All this, and you, and him.” She was quiet, and stared thoughtfully out the front window; then she asked in a low voice, “Don’t take this the wrong way, Sweeney, but—well, are you sure it’s Dylan you’re in love with? I mean, you really used to bang your head against the wall over Oliver—”
“I’m sure,” I said curtly. “I haven’t thought about Oliver in years and years.”
Which was a lie, of course. Annie didn’t seem to believe it for an instant.
“Really? I have,” she said, almost dreamily. “I thought about him, and you, and Angie, all the time. All the time. Especially Angie.”
She pulled a pillow into her lap and kneaded it, and I was shocked to see her eyes were red. “I thought about Angie for years. Fucking years, girl. Did you know we slept together?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said awkwardly. “But—well, I’m not surprised. You probably weren’t the only one.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Annie’s face twisted, and she held the pillow so tightly her fingers were white.
“But I wanted to be the only one! I was so gone over her, I was insane for her. That time I found you in the room—I wanted to kill you, Sweeney, I mean, really kill you. It was like when I found out about what happened to my cousin Lisa—”
“But you know it didn’t mean anything, Annie! I was drunk, that was such a horrible night, and she—”
“I know what she did. She did the same thing to you that she did to me, that she did to everyone. She used you, Sweeney. She used us all.”
Annie’s expression was so vehement, her eyes so black with rage that I moved a little closer to my end of the couch.
“Annie,” I said gently, trying to be careful with my words, “I’m sure Angelica didn’t mean to hurt you. I don’t think she meant to hurt anyone. Things were different then, you remember what it was like—lots of people slept with their friends. We didn’t know.” It was like letting something go, that had been caged inside of me. “We were just kids, Annie. That was all. Besides—”
I pointed at the ring on her right hand. “You’re a big star now. You can’t be living alone.”
“I’m not.” Annie straightened, tilting her chin defiantly. “My lover, Helen—we’ve been together for almost eight years now. Shit,” she added under her breath, “I think our anniversary’s coming up, too, I got to remember that. But that’s not what I meant, anyway.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“I mean that she used us. Really used us—starting with me, and you, and Baby Joe, and Hasel, and then Oliver…”
My heart clenched, but I only nodded. “And Oliver.”
“And I don’t know who else, over the years.” She pulled the pillow to her chest. “Have you been following Angelica, Sweeney?”
“You mean, watching her career?” I shook my head. “No. I never heard from her, after—after what happened. Until this summer, as a matter a fact. I saw her on TV about five or six weeks ago, I guess it was right before I met Dylan. But he’s told me about her, so I know about her from him. Why?” I asked guardedly. “Have you been in touch with her?”
Annie let her breath out in a long low whoosh. “I have been doing everything on god’s green earth not to be in touch with her.”
She stood and crossed the room to stare at the sea urchin lamp. When she turned back to me she was pale but very calm.
“I don’t know exactly what she is, Sweeney, but Angelica is dangerous. I mean fatal. She killed Baby Joe, and she killed Hasel; she’s killed people we’ll never know about, hundreds of them—thousands, maybe. Homeless people, runaways, people nobody would ever miss—you ever seen statistics on how many people just disappear, like that?”
She snapped her fingers and I jumped. “You know, I’ve known people who’ve seen snuff movies—movies where people literally get fucked to death, and someone’s there behind the camera watching it all, and someone else is out there to market the stuff, and someone else is there to buy it… You like to think something that horrible could never happen, that it couldn’t be real; but it is, Sweeney. It is.”
Her eyes grew wide and unfocused. “It’s like we spend our whole lives walking on this little rind that covers the world, this little crust that’s got flowers on it, and dirt and houses and families and—and then one day, you break through, you just fall right through, and you see there’s something else there. The real world, the world that was there a million years ago, the world you see when you’re a kid alone in the dark; the world that fills your worst dreams until you can’t even wake up screaming from it, you can’t wake up at all…
“I’ve seen it, Sweeney,” she whispered. I swallowed, thinking back to Balthazar Warnick’s room at the Orphic Lodge, hobbled creatures whirling ecstatically around a single thin flame. “I’ve seen it, and you’ve seen it, Sweeney—that world is real. It’s real, and Angelica’s tapped into it. Whatever she is, whatever she’s made herself into—she’s found a way into that place. She’s found a way to bring it here—”
Her hand slashed through the shadows. “To make it here. And she’s doing it by feeding off all of us. It’s like she set out to be some kind of crazy goddess of love, Ishtar or Mary Magdalene or whatever the hell she thought she was—but somehow she’s really done it. She has turned into a goddess. She’s got her bible, and her cult, she’s got some kind of fucking black angels picking off kids from here to Seattle—”
“Annie!” I was shaking my head furiously. “No—”
“Listen to me, Sweeney!” She was kneeling in front of me, her hands on my knees. “She killed them! I know she killed them, because she tried to kill me—”
And then she told me about what she had seen: about the girls who would turn up at her shows, with their lunar tattoos and ominous chanting; about the sacrificial murder at Herring Cove, and the monstrously beautiful creature she had seen there; about the flowers left with Helen, and the strange woman who had saved her from becoming the next offering to Othiym. She told me that the same day he died, she had met Baby Joe alone at a strip club. But at that part of her story her voice faltered, and I knew she was keeping something from me.
Whatever it was, it could wait. My heart was racing; I felt as though the temperature had plummeted fifty degrees in five minutes.
“But why?” I said at last in a whisper. “If this is all true—”
“You don’t believe me? Don’t tell me that, Sweeney! I don’t know what happened to Oliver at the Orphic Lodge that night, but you saw it—you and Hasel and Baby Joe, you saw it—”
“No,” I said, pulling away from her. “I—I do believe you. Baby Joe sent me Hasel’s letter, and an article about Angelica’s bodyguard…”
I told what I had read about Potnia a few weeks before, and about the odd news item that evening, with Professor Warnick and the Benandanti seemingly under fire. Then, somewhat reticently, I told her what Dylan had said about his mother and the earthquake in Los Angeles, about the deaths of Rinaldo Furiano and Luciano di Rienzi in a freak storm in the Sea of Crete.<
br />
“But that’s just—well, it’s got to be coincidence,” I finished. “I mean, something’s got to be coincidence, right? We can’t blame everything on Angelica.”
I stood and went to the front door and looked outside, hugging my arms to my chest. I was surprised, almost unnerved, to see how quickly night had come. “It’s dark already,” I said mechanically. I felt almost calm now, as though I was dreaming.
“Not any cooler, though,” Annie said softly.
“You know, the weather’s been so horrible this summer that if D.C. had been a factory, OSHA would have shut it down.”
Annie nodded. “Yeah. But it’s not the heat. It’s the humidity.” She stepped up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder. “Sweeney. Listen to me—
“I’m glad for you, about Dylan. You deserve to be happy, Sweeney, you really do. I know we didn’t know each other that well, and it was so long ago, but—you mattered to me anyway. You matter to me now.”
“Even if I slept with Angelica that once?”
She grinned wryly. “Probably especially since you slept with Angelica. You mattered, and Baby Joe of course, and poor Hasel. Even Oliver… I guess what really used to bother me about Oliver, and about Angelica and that guy Francis, about all of them with their secret society or whatever the hell it is, was that even if they seemed to be like us—you know, just kids in college getting high or whatever—well, they weren’t. They could just do whatever they wanted and not get caught, not get hurt or anything. People like Lisa, or you—they just threw you away,” she said bitterly. “The rest of them, though, they were always working with a net. No matter what they did up there, if they fell, somebody would catch them.”
“Oliver fell, Annie,” I whispered. “Oliver fell, and nobody caught him.”
An odd look crossed her face and I thought she was going to tell me something, something about Oliver, but the moment passed.
“Well, Dylan sounds like a prize, at any rate. I guess if you get ‘em that young, they’re easier to train, huh?”
I couldn’t keep from grinning. “Guess so.”
“And if you love him—well, that’s great, Sweeney. It’s hard to find someone, to find anyone, and I hope it works out for you. I mean it.”
Then, surprisingly, she took my chin in her hand. She turned my head, until I was looking down into her dark eyes. “But Sweeney—I came here because I was scared—for you, and me. And for Baby Joe, though it’s too late for him—”
I swallowed. “And now?” I asked.
Annie tilted her head toward the soft darkness occluding the garden, the velvety chiaroscuro of leaves and brick and the first faint threads of lightning, like cracks in a lovely old fresco. “Now I’m scared worse than before.”
“Because of Dylan?”
She nodded. Her gaze remained fixed on the sky, but her husky voice trembled. “And you, Sweeney. Especially you…
“Because if something really has happened to Angelica—if all this somehow means something—if she’s turned herself into some kind of a, a goddess, or demon, or whatever the hell she is—well, what does that make Dylan?”
She turned and stared at me, her eyes emptied of anything but fear. “And Sweeney?—
“What does that make you?”
Dylan came home not long after that. He seemed quieter than usual, but I was too drained really to pay attention.
“Hey, Dylan, I’d like to hang with you some tomorrow. Maybe after work, okay?” Annie croaked as she came out of the shower. She walked over to the couch in her soaked T-shirt, leaving puddles on the slate floor. “I’m just too beat now to appreciate how wonderful you are. I think I’m gonna crash. That okay with you, Sweeney?”
“Sure.” I leaned against Dylan, sighing, and he kneaded my shoulders. “I’m exhausted. You ready to turn in, kiddo?”
He smiled. “Sure.”
We said good night to Annie, then crept up the creaking stairs to the tiny bedroom. We fell asleep immediately, despite the ungodly heat. Just before dawn we woke tangled in one another’s arms, the sheets beneath us soft and damp as new green leaves, and made love without a sound, so as not to disturb Annie.
“Happy birthday, Dylan,” I murmured, letting my fingers catch in his damp hair. I kissed him, my tongue lingering on his mouth so I could taste him, all sweat and my own salt honey. “Nineteen: it’s all downhill from here.”
Afterward we showered and dressed quickly. I left a note for Annie, telling her to call me at work so we could arrange to meet later. Just as the sun was rising, Dylan and I left for the museum. We stopped for bagels and iced coffee, then walked down Pennsylvania Avenue together. There were already a surprising number of joggers out on the Capitol grounds, like us trying to beat the heat, but it was hopeless. By seven-thirty the sky was the color of a spoiled egg yolk. An unbroken mass of clouds stretched from above the Hill out past the Tidal Basin, dark lowering clouds that seemed low enough to snag upon the drab blade of the Washington Monument. The air smelled awful, like kerosene and rotting vegetation. Inside the museum it wasn’t much better. The air-conditioning was working fitfully, so it was cooler than outside, but even the upstairs curatorial wing reeked of a million sweaty tourists and greasy fast-food from the cafeteria.
“Listen,” Dylan said, leaning into the door of my office. “I really need to finish up that Kroeber stuff today. So maybe you and your friend should just meet for lunch, and then you and me can leave early.”
“Sounds good.”
“You remember the champagne?”
“I remembered the champagne.”
“So I’ll come by around four, how’s that?”
I stood on tiptoe to kiss his chin. “Sounds great. Later.”
“Ciao, baby.”
A few minutes after he left Annie called.
“I think I might just crash here today,” she said. I could hear her gulping coffee. “If that’s okay with you. It’s so hot, and I’m kinda into keeping a low profile right now, if you know what I mean. I figured I’d sit out in the garden later. At least it looks cool there.”
“Sure. Uh, listen, Annie—today’s Dylan’s birthday, and we had sort of planned an evening together—”
“Oops.” A clink as her coffee mug knocked into the phone. “Say no more. I’ll find something to do. Check out a movie. Maybe The Sorrow and the Pity’s playing at the Biograph.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Heck no.”
“Thanks, Annie,” I said, relieved. “I feel bad, but we had this all planned and—”
“Like, no problemo, Sweeney.”
“Okay. We should be home by four-thirty or so. I’ll give you a key and you can just let yourself in, then maybe tomorrow we can—”
Annie cut me off. “Sweeney?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t you have work to do?”
“Right. Later, Annie.”
The problem was, I didn’t have work to do. Because of the terrible weather and air quality both inside and out, the museum had put its Liberal Leave policy into effect; the place was almost deserted. With the Aditi gone, I couldn’t even kill a few hours with some Pink Pelican, and I knew Dylan had been feeling guilty about not getting the Kroeber project wrapped up before now.
I really wished I could just go back home. But Annie was there, and Annie’s arrival had me on edge. Everything had me on edge. I felt the way I did when Oliver and I used to drop acid: the same queasy mixture of terror and exhilaration, compounded when the drug started to kick in and everything got a little blurry around the edges. Only now it was a combination of not enough sleep, too much alcohol, too much heat, and far too many ghosts popping up. Like the end of a Restoration comedy, when all at once everyone shows up onstage, fools and diviners and soldiers and lovers and cuckolds, until you wonder whether the whole rickety platform will just collapse beneath them.
I wandered out into the corridor. Laurie wasn’t at her desk, and I figured she’d probably just left early for Hat
teras. I went by Robert Dvorkin’s office, thinking I might grill him about what I’d seen on the news last night, but of course he wasn’t in.
“Okay,” I said out loud. There wasn’t anyone around to hear me. “Time for Classics.”
Classics was an expanse of brightly lit offices on the side of the museum abutting the dome. Fritz Kincaid was the chief of Hellenic Stuthes, a rosy-cheeked red-haired man of fifty who played squash on his lunch hour and lived in a houseboat tethered on the Potomac. I knew he’d be in because Fritz was always in. He was the kind of museum curator beloved of old movies and local news stations: photogenic, partial to polka-dot bow ties and cheerfully eccentric headgear, and most of all a terrific source of Strange but True (and often disgusting) Facts regarding the Ancients.
“Katherine Cassidy! Queen of the Interactive Video Display!” he crowed when he saw me peeking through the door. “What brings you to visit this old fossil?”
“You’re the only old fossil here today,” I said. “Actually, I saw the news last night, about all those artifacts at the University of the Archangels, and I thought of you.”
Fritz rolled his eyes. “Oh, yes: Potnia. Just what we need in these troubled times, a revival of the ancient matristic societies of the Aegean.” He turned and gave me a quizzical look. “Oh, but I forgot—your young friend Tristan—”
“Dylan.”
“Yes, of course, I’m sorry—Dylan. His mother’s the writer, isn’t she? The one we have to thank for all this nice publicity.”
He grimaced, then added, “Please, Katherine—come in, have a seat. Would you like some coffee?”
“No thanks. But are you busy? I wanted to pick your brain for a few minutes.”
Fritz shook his head solemnly. “I am never too busy for lovely young ladies. Entrez—”
I walked around the perimeter of the long library table that took up most of his office. It held an exquisite scale model of the Acropolis and the Athenian Agora, constructed of paper and cardboard and balsa wood, with matchstick triremes in the distance that glowed against the painted sea. The model had been constructed for an exhibit dismantled years ago, but Fritz never had the heart to get rid of it. It made a nice backdrop when he was visited by local news crews, especially since he’d improved the Acropolis by adding several troll dolls and plastic velociraptors.
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