by Melanie Rawn
“Let’s find out.”
Within the file were documents, clearly labeled, readily understandable: the months of the year were almost all the same in German as in English. Holly opened up November 2004, the month Westmoreland had opened for business.
There were six columns to the page. First came the day of the week, then the date. On some days there were no entries, but on others there were as many as a dozen. Each entry in the third column was a man’s full name, most of them obviously American—which meant everything from Smithfield to Valenzuela to Van Slyke to LaPierre to Goldberg. The ones that were not obviously American were the ones with three names—like the excruciatingly Russian Vladimir Vladimirovich Mironov—or the ones with the umlauts and tildes and circumflexes still attached. Most people who’d been in the United States for more than a generation, or who weren’t snottily precious about the ancestral spelling (Denise Josèphe came to mind), had discarded accent marks long ago. The fourth and fifth columns were numbers. The last was reserved for a given name only.
“Adela, Kurt, Evva, Sofiya, Franciszka, Katya, Ruzena, Vilmos—”
“Not a Chuck or Mary Jean in the lot.” Lulah shook her head. “Jurek, Magda, Raisa—am I being xenophobic, or am I hearing Eastern Europe in all these?”
“And the other names are all male, there’s not a woman on the—oh, Aunt Lulah, this can’t possibly be what it looks like.”
“Tell me what you think it looks like and I’ll tell you if I think it’s possible.”
Holly opened up more monthly records. “Here’s Bill Smithfield on November 8 and December 28, 2004. Evva, then Katya—” She flicked back and forth among documents, doing a find for Smithfield in each. “January, nothing . . . February 4, Katya again . . . skips March, but twice in April, Katya and then Raisa . . . May, June, July . . . here he is again in August of last year, with Katya.”
“Keep going,” Lulah said grimly. “Find another name.”
“Last year, Myron MacGowan in May with—with Kurt, in July with Vilmos, September—here’s a new name, Rafaello—how the hell did he get in here? MacGowan with Rafaello in October and again in November—what are the numbers for? Twenty-three-dash-twenty-four, twenty-dash-twenty-two—”
“Date, customer, girl—or boy—”
“And a time!” Holly exclaimed. “The dates are European style, month second—so the times must be on a twenty-four–hour clock!”
The two women looked at each other for a brief, silent moment. Then Holly went back to the book and picked out a name she recognized.
“Grant Newbury. September 24, 2004, Raisa, 21-22, which would be nine to ten in the evening, 105—”
“Room number?” Lulah hazarded. “Wait a minute—didn’t you go out with Grant Newbury in high school?”
Holly nodded. “A few times. Voice like an archangel. He soloed in the choir at St. Andrew’s.”
“Damn. All right, where were we? Room numbers?”
“If so, only six of them are used—the same numbers recur. Okay, Grant Newbury. October . . . November . . . the tenth, Magda, 23–24. Again in November, the thirtieth, 19–20. Nothing in December. Nothing in January. February 19, 2005, Adela, 17–19. May 22, Evva, 18–19. April 8, Evva again, 21–22.” It went on. And on. While tracing Grant Newbury she saw names she recognized from five different counties and as far away as Richmond and Washington. The foreign names—Dutch, French, Italian, German, Russian—she was willing to bet would line up with the guest register upstairs at the front desk, and the spa appointments book, and flights into and out of Shenandoah Airport.
But as she went through the months, something else began to niggle at her mind. Something about the dates. It wasn’t magic, it couldn’t be magic—she didn’t have any magic to quiver a warning or wave a red flag. It was just her brain making extra work for itself, grinding gears because she didn’t want to acknowledge what was becoming more and more obvious with every name she saw written over and over again.
“Pillars of the community,” she said at last, leaning back and folding her arms, glaring at the laptop screen. “Respectable, hard-working, church-going men—Cornell Hendricks, famed in song, story, and the Mormon Temple, on the same night and at the same time right next door to his good ol’ fishin’ buddy Norm Valenzuela—who went to Confession the next morning, I’ll bet you anything, and said his Hail Marys and heard Mass—”
“You can’t be forgiven if you haven’t sinned,” Lulah commented acidly. “Hasn’t been a real brothel in this county for fifty years. The men have to drive over to Miss Follett’s in Glenrose for their diversions.”
“Let’s get Louvena to print a special edition of the Record,” Holly suggested.
“And ruin how many marriages?”
“Like they don’t deserve it!”
“Their families don’t. Who says prostitution is a ‘victimless crime’? And what about these girls? Evva and Ruzena and Sofiya—not to mention Kurt and Vilmos. When they were little kids did they say, ‘My friends all want to be teachers or firemen or farmers when they grow up, but I want to be a whore’?”
“Oh, God,” Holly breathed. “Prostitution. The names. Eastern European names.” Something went very hollow inside her chest and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. “Lulah . . . Evan and I went to Reverend Deutschman’s meeting at Calvary Baptist. Remember we brought the flyers and handouts home with us?”
Holly could see the printed pages as if she held them once more in her hand. In the 1970s, human trafficking had focused on Southeast Asia, mostly Thai and Filipina women. The second wave, in the ’80s, had been centered in Ghana and Nigeria. Then had come Latin America’s turn, especially Colombia, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic. But these days the nations no longer behind the Iron Curtain, the places where free-market capitalism had replaced communism with often disastrous results, were prime hunting grounds for traffickers. The girls were young, comparatively well-educated, pretty, and with no future at all in their homelands. Easy prey for anyone willing to sell them—including the administrators of orphanages, the girls’ own relatives, and the village priest.
They vanished from Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Albania, the Czech Republic—with names like Evva, Ruzena, Sofiya, Kurt, Vilmos . . .
She didn’t believe it even when she said it aloud. “They’ve been trafficked. Like the ones the Calvary Baptist ladies found in New Orleans, and the ones Poppy was bringing back here.”
Calvary Baptist . . . second of the seven church fires . . . Poppy and the Calvary Baptist ladies had found trafficked children in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina . . . there were trafficked children here at Westmoreland . . . Grant Newbury, Hugh Chadwick, Norm Valenzuela . . . church-going men with wives and families . . . seven burned churches since last September . . . beginning with Old Believers right after Hurricane Katrina and then Calvary, before the Baptists had started the anti-trafficking campaign . . . and not all the churches had been Baptist . . . the Lutheran church in December, the Episcopalian in April . . . St. Andrew’s, where Grant sang in the choir. . . .
She knew then what had been gnawing around the edges of her mind. The twenty-four–hour clock times had addled her, but the connection had finally clicked. Stabbing at the keyboard now, she opened April 2005, and found the entries for the date St. Andrew’s had been torched.
Grant Newbury, nine to ten, 105, Evva.
“Lulah, is there any paper? Find some paper and write this down. Make columns for date, time, church—”
“Don’t you mean ‘customer’?”
“No. Just stay with me on this, Lulah, please—I think I might be right but I need you to see it, too. Date, time, church, ignition point. Another chart—date, time, and now a column for customer.”
She started with the Episcopalian fire in April. It was the only one with a narrow range for a starting time: between eight-thirty, when a Bible study group had gone home, and nine forty-five, when the call had come in to the fire department. The
ignition point was a cupboard where hymnals were stored.
“April 8, 2006,” Holly said again as Lulah started the second chart. “Nine to ten. Grant Newbury. You know what else? The Episcopalian wish list for tonight’s proceeds includes hymnals to replace the ones that burned—they were brand new the very day of the fire. Maybe Grant hands them out every Sunday, maybe he ordered them, or unpacked them, or pasted in the bookplates that say ‘Property of’—”
“Holly, honey, slow down.”
“Nobody turns out to be what you thought they’d be, do they?” she asked. “They always disappoint you. The fire at the choirboy’s church and his recreational hour with Evva coincide very nicely.” Holly pushed the cuffs of Cam’s shirt up toward her elbows. “God, how I hope the rest of these don’t match.”
“Let’s start with the first fire and see how it goes. September 9, 2005. Old Believers.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and visualized the reports Evan had strewn across their partners’ desk, swearing steadily as he tried in vain to make a pattern out of them. She pictured each one in her head, and rattled off the particulars of each. When all seven fires had been listed—including the Methodist, even though that one did not involve magic—she went through the files once more.
“September 9 last year was a real party,” she growled. “Chuck Driscoll was here from ten to eleven—”
“Peggy’s gonna pan-fry him with plum sauce.”
“I thought you didn’t want any of this known, so their families are spared?”
“I said I didn’t want Louvena to publish it,” Lulah corrected. “I didn’t say these men’s wives shouldn’t find out.”
Holly eyed her for a long moment. “Tallulah Eglantine McClure, are you going to use magic to out all these men to their wives?”
“If they went to one whorehouse, they’ve gone to others. That puts their wives at risk.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Noticed that, did you? Who was getting himself serviced that night?”
Holly returned to the screen. “Jacob Feuerstein, whom I don’t recognize but sure doesn’t sound like a Baptist-type name. Floyd Beaudry . . . no, he’s eight to ten, and Evan says the fire couldn’t have started before eleven.” She paused. “Although with magic, how could anybody tell? They’re going by how hot a fire usually burns when they estimate the time—Lulah, am I crazy to be thinking any of this? I mean, Grant may be a jerk, but—”
“Just keep going. September 9, 2005.”
“Judge Rausche—big surprise—from eight until ten. Hugh Chadwick, midnight to one in the morning.”
AFTER CHECKING OUT the other rooms and finding two more occupied—210 by a couple watching a movie while sharing champagne and chocolate truffles, 208 by a middle-aged man taking a shower—Nick told Cam to put the DVD player back where he’d found it. Not waiting to watch, he continued up the stairs. The part of his brain that craved logic and tidiness—that had kept thousands upon thousands of books organized for over forty years—told him that because the door into this place had been halfway up a flight of exterior stairs to the second floor, and this last landing had been the second they’d seen, they were inside the walls of the third floor. The part of his brain that was an accomplished practitioner of magic told him not to be an idiot. These steps would go where they had been spelled to go.
So he wasn’t all that surprised when a third landing appeared, with its now expected footstool and chest and flowers, and another flight rose above it. One more half-flight, one more landing—he stopped short.
End of the stairs.
“You don’t magic up something that goes nowhere,” Evan remarked.
“Maybe what they’re hiding is downstairs only,” Cam offered.
“Cam, you said the stairs weren’t originally magic?” Nick asked.
“No.” Cam was definite. “They’re built into the fabric of the house. It’s the ninth window that nobody notices because the architect was clever and who counts windows, anyway?”
“Ninth—?”
Evan said, “Eight to one side of the doors, nine to the other. The front suites have six windows—three for the sitting room, two for the bedroom, one for the bathroom.”
“And two for the main staircase,” Cam finished. “Which leaves this ninth one—” He pointed to the windows, one beneath the other, and very far away now that they were at the top of the stairs. “—to light this place.”
“But the magic is new?” Nicky persisted.
“Yeah. Before you ask—none of the Nevilles was a Witch, and none of them married into the local Witchly families. If there’d been any magic here before, somebody would’ve sensed it in the last two hundred or so years. I mean, it can’t have stayed hidden all that time.”
Evan was dividing a frown between the two side walls, with their cabinets and flowers. “Why do you build one of these, anyway? Aside from the fun of it.”
“Smuggling,” Cam said. “To hide money or moonshine, or some other contraband. I’d bet that guns and ammunition were hidden here during various wars—maybe soldiers, too.”
“And of course,” Nick added, “there’s always the simple desire to get into and out of one’s house without anyone’s knowing about it. That catch in the wainscoting can’t be original, though.”
“But the doorway was there, so they used it,” Cam replied. “Whatever mechanism was already there, I mean. Only they also disguised it with magic.”
“There must be at least one other way out,” Evan said, still scrutinizing the walls. “This has to lead somewhere besides two blank walls at the top.”
“Well, where are we right now? This has to be the attic. Same thing at Woodhush. There’s an entry there, so—”
“You’re applying logic to magic,” Nicky said with a tight smile. “You should know better than that.”
“But there is logic to it,” Cam protested. “Otherwise none of it would work!”
“Fascinating as this is,” Evan drawled, “it’s not getting us anywhere.”
Cam was peering down the stairs to where Jamey stood guard. “Maybe they sealed up the original entry to the attic. Maybe the important stuff that the magic is hiding really is downstairs, not up.”
“I repeat,” Lachlan said, “you don’t bother to spell something useless. That’s logic. Find the door, Cam.”
Reluctantly dragging his gaze to the walls, he started to explore as he had earlier. He had neither the bloodstone nor the holly-rowan talisman, but he knew now what to feel for. Or so Nicholas surmised—correctly, as it happened, for within a few minutes he had found a pressure-sensitive panel at a juncture of wallpaper stripes, and a quite ordinary door swung open.
“Cam, Evan—down the hall.”
The young men set off obediently, and Nick pondered the pleasures of being old enough to issue orders that were obeyed without question. He recalled very clearly a time when he and Alec had been the ones deferential to their elders—and how much trouble they sometimes got into when they weren’t. He looked out a dormer window that proved they were indeed in the attic, seeing but not hearing the rain. He missed his partner, missed the immediacy of their bond. There was a sense of Alec remaining, like a memory—nothing like the solid sense of his presence that Nick had known for so long that he had, he realized, become complacent. And he wondered, with a sudden unwelcome chill, if this was what it would be like if he outlived his lover.
“Uncle Nicky!” Cam was beckoning. “Man, you gotta see this.”
He left the dormer window and hurried down the hall. The room was painted in sunshine yellow and leaf green. A stationary bike, a treadmill; blue exercise mats rolled up against the wall; a soft-cushioned green chaise framed by a pair of sunlamps; a hospital bed; a crash cart.
Cam braced his fists on his hips, head cocked to one side. “What’re the statistics on people croaking during a stress-test?”
“I may become such a statistic if I don’t find something that makes sense,”
Nick snarled.
Evan spoke from down the hall. “You may want to check out who’s behind Door Number Two.”
“Don’t you mean ‘what’?”
“Come see for yourself.”
Two girls, maybe fourteen years old and maybe not, were sitting up in twin beds. Both had blond hair, blue eyes, and sharp, sloping Slavic cheekbones. They wore plain blue flannel nightgowns and their braided hair was tied with blue ribbons. Neither reacted to the appearance of three strangers in their doorway. They didn’t look as if someone had given them drugs. They looked as if someone had taken their souls.
HOLLY GLARED AT LULAH’S two charts, feeling as if someone had just told her the jigsaw puzzle had 1001 pieces. Hugh Chadwick was the right time for the fire at Old Believers, but after some thought Lulah recalled that he was heading up the rebuilding committee for Calvary Baptist. Tom Van Slyke, whose visit to Westmoreland coincided neatly with the Calvary Baptist fire, belonged to Old Believers.
They looked at each other with frustration carving identical furrows in their foreheads. Lulah yanked the clip from her ponytail and looked for a moment as if she might start kicking things. But all she did was begin gathering her gray-streaked russet hair up again to knot at the back of her head. “Start again,” she said.
“For the sixth time,” Holly muttered. “Old Believers. Wooden front door burns like a son of a bitch, the fire’s so hot that even the bricks melt—”
“Bricks?”
“Evan said they looked like clinkers—black, even shiny in places, like obsidian.”
“Hugh Chadwick,” Lulah declared.
“He’s Calvary.”
“What does he do for a living?”
Holly sighed. “Construction. He put in a bid for the brickwork at your house. Does that make a second connection, or—”
