But here she was, cool and beautiful as always, sinking back and sighing luxuriously. “Isn’t this air-conditoning wonderful? The flight here was a nightmare! Maybe we should just drive around for a few minutes and enjoy all this nice cold expensive air.”
She smiled at Dylan, but her son noticed that she hadn’t given any command to the driver: he was already headed for the Lincoln Memorial. Whatever she had planned, and wherever they were going, had all been decided long before Dylan came onto the scene.
“Sure. Just remember—four o’clock.”
“Of course: Four o’clock!” Angelica repeated brightly. “Always time for tea!”
I raced downstairs to the guard’s desk.
“Did someone come here looking for Dylan Furiano?” I asked breathlessly.
Captain Wyatt, the security chief, smiled. “You mean some sweet young thing pretending to be his mother?”
I gritted my teeth. “That would be her.”
“Well, she came by, Katherine, but she didn’t sign in. He came on down here and went on out with her—” He gestured over his shoulder at the Constitution Avenue exit, then looked at me with raised eyebrows. “What, they leave without you?”
“No—yes, I don’t know,” I cried, and turned away. “If you see Dylan, tell him I’m looking for him. Tell him I want to know as soon as he gets back.”
Captain Wyatt nodded. As I left I could hear him saying, “I knew that wasn’t his momma.”
Once back in my office I called the carriage house. The line was busy. It stayed busy for nearly forty minutes, during which I thought alternately of jumping out the window or running home. But at last I got through, only to hear the answering machine kick in.
“Goddammit, somebody pick up!” I shouted when the recorded tape ended.
“Hey.” Annie’s voice came on, sounding a little sheepish. “I’m sorry, were you trying to call? I was talking to Helen—”
“Is Dylan there?”
“Dylan? No. Why?”
“You’re sure?”
“I think I’m sure. Dylan?” I heard her calling his name as she carried the cordless phone outside. “Dylan? Nope. Sorry, Sweeney. Why? You guys have a fight or something?”
“A fight? No, we didn’t have a fight—” I choked. Then I couldn’t help it: I broke down. “He’s—he’s gone, Annie! She came and he’s gone—”
“What do you mean, gone?”
I told her about the note, and in between sobs gasped out what I could remember of Fritz Kincaid’s impromptu history lesson. When I finished I sat with the phone pressed up so hard against my ear, I felt as though I’d been punched.
“Oh, man. Sweeney, this is bad.” I could only nod, my entire body trembling. “But let’s think, let’s think—”
I heard her crashing through the dried stalks of lilies by the front door. Then. “Okay. You’re still at the museum, and he said he’d be back there by four, right?”
“Th-that’s what his note said.”
“So maybe he’ll be back by four.”
I drew a shuddering breath. “You really think so?”
“No. But I think we better wait at least until then. You can’t file a missing persons report on someone who’s gone to lunch with his mother.”
“Okay.” Hearing Annie’s voice calmed me somewhat. “Okay—so, four o’clock. You’ll call me if he comes in? If he calls or—”
“Of course, Sweeney,” Annie said gently. “Of course.”
I could hear her moving back across the little patio, clonking into deck chairs. “It’s going to be all right, Sweeney. He’ll be okay, don’t worry. He’ll be fine—”
Just like your cousin and Oliver and Hasel and Baby Joe, I thought, and clenched my hands. “Okay. Four o’clock—” I whispered.
And waited.
Inside her hired car, Angelica Furiano looked down upon the sleeping figure of her son, sprawled across the pristine seat with one hand against his cheek and the other drooping to touch the floor. His chest rose and fell easily, his mouth was slightly parted where his fist was pressed against it. The same way he had slept as a child, his knuckles digging into the soft hollow of his cheek, his lovely face calm and dreaming as the moon’s.
Angelica sat—crouched, almost—in the corner of the seat farthest from her son. In front, the radio played softly as the driver hummed to himself. They were driving up Pennsylvania Avenue for the third time that afternoon, the car moving smoothly in and out of light traffic. But this time, when they reached Seventh Street, Angelica leaned forward and murmured, “Thank you, Bryant. I’d like you to take us to the University of Archangels now. It’s quickest if you go by Edgewood—”
The driver nodded, and without a word steered the car onto the narrow cross street. Angelica turned her gaze back to Dylan. The seat beside him was littered with small crushed pods—the dried seed heads of papaver somniferum, opium poppies. On some you could still see where, days before, she had used the lunula to make the neat incisions that allowed the flower’s blood to seep through and dry to a pale crust. Afterward she had carefully scraped off the opium paste, and with her hands formed it into a tiny cake. Kneading it carefully between her fingers, she added dittany of Crete and crushed roasted barley; then, in lieu of the sacred mentha pulegium, an aromatic mint that brings delirium, she added salvia divinorum, the diviner’s sage that she herself had smuggled from the Sierra Mazateca to grow at Huitaca. At the last she flavored it with honey and dried orange peel, cardamom and coriander seed. Then she had wrapped the little square with gold tissue paper and a tiny white raffia ribbon, as a present.
“Here, sweetheart.”
Dylan had gazed suspiciously at the gold-wrapped lozenge sitting in her palm.
“This isn’t more jewelry, is it?” His mother was prone to giving him extravagant and unwearable gifts, ruby and emerald earring studs, a Rolex watch eminently unsuited for a college freshman.
“No, silly. Open it,” she urged, leaning back in the seat. He peeled the tissue off with some difficulty, the paper catching on the sticky cake inside.
“Gee, Mom.” Dylan stared at the gritty little cube. It looked like a caramel that had been dropped in the dirt. “You shouldn’t have.”
Angelica gave her rich throaty laugh. “Silly! It’s a special herbal thingie I had the apothecary make up for you at the Body Shop. It’s supposed to bring—well, you know, strength and long life and all that good stuff. For your birthday.” She kissed him, tousling his hair. “And you better eat it, Dylan—it cost a fortune.”
Dylan rolled his eyes. “I bet.” He grimaced, then popped the cube into his mouth. “Bleagh—”
“Oh, come on, it can’t be that bad. It has honey and stuff in it.”
“It tastes like dirt,” Dylan said thickly, chewing. “Ugh. Dirt and perfume.” After a minute he swallowed, then reached for Angelica and gave her a kiss. “Well, thanks. I hope it works. But listen, Mom—next time, just give me a new car, okay?”
That had been over an hour ago. It hadn’t taken long for the opium to have its effect. Just a few minutes, its power enhanced by the roasted barley and salvia divinorum.
“I think I’m getting carsick.” Dylan had turned from the window to stare blearily at her, his face pale. He looked distinctly queasy; his eyes were glassy, his voice thick, childlike. “Mom…?”
“Shhh. Lie back, darling. Put your head down and rest, you’re just sleepy…”
Her voice soothed him; he lay across the seat and within minutes was snoring. Since then his breathing had grown softer as he plunged more deeply under the poppies’ spell, though his face remained pale as new milk. Beside him Angelica sat and with one hand stroked his hair. Her other hand absently traced the silver curve upon her breast as she whispered,
My days are run. No servant I
Nor initiate; where Iakos lies
Upon the threshold I shall greet
You, having completed his red and bleeding feast.
I have held the Gr
eat Mother’s mountain flame.
I am set free. I have given thee
Robes of pure white, libation of honey-cake, in anticipation
of the joy of the bright red fountains, Hye kye! Beloved!
I come now unto the place allowed.
Dylan moaned. Angelica’s hand lingered on his brow; then she leaned down to kiss him, very gently, on the lips.
You are the word unspoken:
Haïyo! Othiym Lunarsa.
She lifted her head to gaze outside. Overhead, the storm clouds hung so low that she could see threads of lightning racing across their undersides, like flames seeking purchase on damp wood. She could feel a faint throbbing at her temples; but Angelica felt no pain. She herself had eaten a cake similar to Dylan’s, with mentha pulegium added to it. But for several weeks now she had been readying herself for this: each night swallowing a tiny spoonful of the aromatic paste, until now, while she could feel it flowing through her, the opium did not cloud her thoughts so much as color them, an antique palette of blues and soft golds and reds, like a crumbling skyphos…
The car made a quick turn. Angelica steadied herself, her fingers clutching at a brass handrail.
“Not many people here this time of year,” the driver called back to her as the car shot onto North Capitol Street. Behind them the Capitol grew smaller and smaller, until it disappeared into the haze.
“We’re almost there.” Angelica rested one hand protectively upon Dylan’s breast. “Dylan—”
And then in front of them, rising from the city’s smoke and filth, the domes and minarets of the Shrine of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine came into view. Slowly, like varicolored dyes bleeding into a piece of linen, cobalt blue and saffron yellow, ruddy ocher and that pale silvery gold that she had only ever seen here, where the gilded stars marked out their own strange constellations on the lapis dome: slowly as in a dream, as though called from the thick haze by the sound of Angelica’s voice, it all came back to her. Drooping oaks and elms, dun-colored grass that even the Divine’s corps of gardeners had not been able to save from the terrible heat; the cornices and towers of all the gaunt Gothic buildings faded to bluish grey and bluish green in the suffering late afternoon light.
And above them all the Shrine, with its stained glass windows like sheets of hot copper, its triad of defiant angels with hands raised above the great oaken doors. Upon every turret and spire and building, angels; angels everywhere.
“Hah!” Angelica said triumphantly, her son forgotten. Her face grew taut as she stared out at the monstrous building, the few small figures walking slowly down the steps to the waiting tour buses. “At last.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am?” the driver called.
Angelica started, looked at him and smiled. “Nothing, Bryant. I think if you pull up over there—”
She cocked her head to where a door stood open at the side of the Shrine.
“—right there, and if you don’t mind waiting here a few minutes.”
The driver brought the car up to where she had directed. “Man, I never knew a place for the kind of trouble we’ve had this summer. Guns and weather and everything else,” he sighed, running his hand across his forehead. “And the thing is, it just keeps getting worse and worse, and nobody ever does anything about it.”
Angelica nodded. “Quis iniquæ tam patiens urbis, ut teneat se?”
Bryant shook his head. “What’s that?”
Angelica smiled. “Just something someone said a long time ago—
“Who can have the patience, in this wicked city, to restrain his indignation?”
“You can say that again,” the driver agreed, and he reached to turn up the air-conditioning.
I thought I would go mad. Afraid to leave my office, because I might miss Dylan if he returned. Afraid to stay, because every minute that passed meant he was going farther and farther away, he was almost gone now, I was losing him, he was gone…
“Oh, god,” I cried, and laid my head on my desk. I stared at my watch, the numbers blurring: 3:45, 3:54, 3:57…
Four o’clock.
No Dylan.
Four-fourteen; four-thirty; four thirty-five. I called Annie.
“He’s not here,” she said. She sounded as though she had been crying. “Sweeney. I think you better come home.”
I have never felt anything like the air that afternoon: so moist and suffocating it was like being covered with hot wet plaster. The sky was the baleful color of lichen or tamarack. But dark as it was, the light stung my eyes, as though there was some subtle toxin in the haze, something that sapped the spirit and gave everything the livid bruised glow of a corpse. My nostrils burned; the air smelled of harsh smoke and something more organic, algae or decaying wood. I thought of the legendary swamp the city was said to have been built on—the buried River Tiber, somewhere below us the bones of people whose cemeteries had been covered over by cement and limestone and marble.
There were hardly any cars on the street. I paced nervously back and forth, looking for a cab, and had already started walking when one finally appeared.
“I’m going to Ninth Street, up by Eastern Market,” I said, and flung myself into the seat.
“You live in Northeast?” the driver asked. She was a small grey-haired woman with a ring in her nose. “You know there’s no power there, right?”
I shook my head. “No, I hadn’t heard—”
She nodded. “No power. They had to shut down the Library of Congress and the Post Office. Some people got stuck in an elevator there, a guy had a heart attack. I guess the heat. Yeah, power’s out all across Northeast. Metro’s down, everything’s off in Brookland, parts of Southeast, over in Maryland…”
The cab had no a/c, but I rolled up my window anyway. I couldn’t stand to breathe that soupy air. I couldn’t stand to think about what the driver was telling me; I couldn’t stand anything.
“Yeah,” the driver went on, wiping her face with a bandanna. “Me, I’m going home now, you’re my last fare. They’re talking about riots, you know? Power goes down, everybody takes to the street, you’re looking at some trouble, sister. This whole place up in flames before you know it. You got a boyfriend?”
I tried to say something, but all that came out was a groan.
‘“Cause you know, us ladies probably shouldn’t be out alone if something like that comes down. All this heat, makes people crazy. That’s why I’m going home now. You’re my last fare…”
There were no people on the sidewalks. No one sitting on the stoops, no one hanging out on street corners. From far away I heard a siren, but I didn’t see any police cars. I didn’t see anyone. My chest felt heavy, crushed between my fear for Dylan and this new horror: was it really as simple as this? A few weeks of terrible weather, a gathering storm; then pull the plug on the air-conditioning and subway, and the city goes up in flames?
“Yeah, I was listening to WMAL, they got an emergency generator or something I guess. They said everybody should just stay indoors. Like if you got no air-conditioning and it’s a hundred degrees out, you want to stay indoors…”
The woman gave a last harsh laugh and fell silent.
When we reached Dr. Dvorkin’s house I shoved a handful of dollar bills into the driver’s hand and stumbled from the cab. I shoved open the ramshackle door that led through the breezeway, my heart beating so hard it was as if it didn’t belong to me anymore, it was like something trying to get in. Then I was running across the patio, and then I was at the carriage house.
Annie met me at the door. Her face was beet red and wet, from crying or from the heat I couldn’t tell. “Sweeney. I tried to call but you’d already left your office…”
“Dylan?” I shouted, pushing her aside. “Dylan—”
Sitting on the couch, atop Annie’s crumpled sheets and pillows, were two men. They wore faded khakis and their shirtsleeves were rolled, their heads bowed so at first I didn’t recognize them.
Then the taller of the two looked up an
d saw me.
“Katherine,” he said, starting to his feet. The man beside him looked up hesitantly; then he stood as well.
“This guy said he was your landlord,” Annie said, cocking her thumb at Robert Dvorkin.
“He is,” I said numbly, but I hardly glanced at him. My eyes were fixed on Balthazar Warnick.
“Sweeney,” he said. “The time has come that we must ask for your help.”
“Help?” I shook my head, dumfounded. “You want my help? Where’s Dylan? What are you doing here?” My voice rose as my confusion boiled into anger. “What the hell is going on?”
“Please, Katherine.” Dr. Dvorkin’s tone was calm but edgy. “You must understand. We need you—”
I stared at him: so thin and worn-looking in his faded clothes, his eyes bright and desperate.
“No. Robert—you’re not…”
But of course he was. This wasn’t the Robert I had known and worked with all those years, not the neighbor and friend I had sat with in the hidden garden, drinking wine and talking of nothing at all. This was someone else entirely. This was one of the Benandanti.
“You’re—you’re one of them.”
He nodded. “Yes. But surely you knew?”
“I—I guess I did,” I said slowly. “I guess maybe I just didn’t want to.” I turned from him to Balthazar Warnick. “Why are you here? Where’s Dylan?”
My hands bunched into fists; I started to move closer to them but Annie stopped me. “If you’ve hurt him—”
“We have not hurt him,” said Balthazar Warnick quietly. “Angelica has taken her son.”
Waking the Moon Page 54
