by Jenn Bennett
The door swung open. I saw half a second of glistening naked male flesh. Mostly chest—holy crap, better than I remembered—and the vague promise of other alluring body parts in my peripheral vision.
For the love of God. Didn’t this place have towels?
Just because I’d gotten naked for research didn’t mean all bets were off. Rattled, I held out Wildeye’s torn notebook page in front of me to block the view.
He cleared his throat. “Repeat what you just said.”
I tapped the paper with my index finger. “This is in Pasadena. Rooke Gardens. It’s a private botanical garden owned by Karlan Rooke.”
“And I should recognize that name because . . . ?”
“He used to be a high-ranking member of the E∴E∴, but he quit when . . . well, I was about Jupe’s age, I guess. Caused a big hubbub at a national occult convention in Florida. He hated my parents. Hated.”
Lon made a small noise. “Interesting.”
“He was grandmaster of the Pasadena lodge, but when he quit the order, the lodge fell apart and eventually shut down altogether.” A droplet of water fell from Lon’s wet hair and plopped on his shoulder. Very distracting. I forced myself to look away and refocus on Wildeye’s notes. “Those words, ‘Naos Ophis,’ were scribbled below the address. Can’t find anything at all on that exact phrase—”
“I remembered in the shower,” Lon said. “Ophis is Greek for ‘serpent.’ ”
A dreadful chill ran through me. The hand holding up the torn paper fell to my side. “Temple of the Serpent.”
“Was that the name of the Pasadena lodge that disbanded?” Lon asked.
Each E∴E∴ lodge had a different name. Seventeen lodges in total, but the Pasadena lodge had been named Astera, and none of the other lodges was named after snakes or serpents. No dragons or lizards, either. “Naos Ophis definitely isn’t an E∴E∴ lodge.”
“A rival order’s lodge? The Luxe, maybe?”
I thought for a second, just to be sure. “No. Not Luxe. Not any of the other orders. I would remember.” Hard to forget when your parents made a habit of murdering other orders’ leaders.
“Maybe this Karlan Rooke started his own order.”
“It’s possible. Oh! And there’s something else—his father was one of Aleister Crowley’s secret bastards.”
Lon’s eyes narrowed. “Very interesting.”
“No proof, of course. But everyone in my order seemed to think it was true. I remember my parents talking trash about him, saying that he was no better than a commoner with no magical skills. Calling him slurs like ‘half-breed,’ that sort of thing.”
Lon grunted. “Wish we had a better idea of what we’d be walking into.”
“I could contact the E∴E∴, see if someone will talk to me about Rooke.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea. The fewer people who know where you are, the better. Your order may rise to the occasion and help you—”
“But with the caliph gone . . .”
“Let’s not sound an alarm just yet. I say we follow this independently until we’re forced to ask for help.”
He was probably right. I just wished I knew whether Rooke would see me as friend or foe now that I knew the truth about my parents. He had to be in his seventies by now, which meant he knew a hell of a lot more about E∴E∴ politics than I did. And that made me both nervous and curious. Mostly nervous.
Lon’s fingers curved around the back of my neck, as though I were a wilting tomato bush needing a support stake. “Let me call Jupe,” he said in a soft voice. “I’ll tell him we’ll be driving to Pasadena later tonight.”
Jupe stepped off the Morella city bus and squinted into the morning sun, trying to get his bearings. This wasn’t the nicest neighborhood. Lots of warehouses and trashy cars lining the curbs and a bunch of old, ratty houses at the bottom of the hill. Not exactly the kind of place he’d imagined when he pictured Cady’s occult order. Then again, she never really talked about it. Guess it brought back a lot of bad memories.
He checked his phone. Crap. It was already eleven. It took him half an hour to walk from his junior high to the Village, then another two hours on the bus. Ditching school was a lot of work, and things only got harder once he made it to the city. Mission Station—where the La Sirena bus dropped him off in Morella—was crowded with weirdos and smelled like sweaty balls. And deciphering the Metro schedule was beyond ridiculous. If it weren’t for the lady at the information kiosk, he might be in Reno by now.
Kar Yee was right: public transportation sucked, big-time.
On top of all that, his dad had called in the middle of all this, forcing Jupe to lie: no, that wasn’t a car engine, it was, uh, the school janitor polishing the floors. So lame, but it was all he could think of in the moment. At least his dad’s knack didn’t work over the telephone.
He surveyed nearby warehouses for a street address while he waited for the GPS on his phone to show him which way to walk. Looked like he was three blocks away—not too far, thank God. His feet hurt, and it was chilly. He flipped up the collar of his jacket and followed the arrow on his phone.
The GPS pointed him to a run-down building next to a pest-control company. Two straggly palm trees flanked the main door, where a silver hexagram was painted. Surely this wasn’t the Bull and Scorpion Lodge—the name listed on the website for the local chapter. Jupe had envisioned a spooky-looking temple. Maybe some flashy occult artwork of a bull fighting a giant magical scorpion, Clash of the Titans style. But this place looked like it existed just to provide homeless people with shelter from the wind.
The front door opened, and a Hispanic girl about his age stepped onto the covered stoop. She was dressed in jeans and a pink hoodie, and her dark brown hair was twisted into two messy buns on either side of her head. When she saw him, she stilled. Big brown eyes blinked at him over the apple she was eating.
“Hi,” Jupe said.
She disengaged her teeth from the apple and wiped her mouth on her hoodie sleeve. “Hi.”
“Is this the Bull and Scorpion?”
She blinked again and gave a suspicious glance up and down the sidewalk. “Yeah.”
“You should have a sign.”
“We don’t need one. This isn’t a grocery store. We don’t need to attract customers.”
Kind of snotty, jeez. Jupe was ready to fire back with something just as smart-ass, but his gaze dropped to her boobs, and he got a little discombobulated. Half the girls in his class were flat-chested. This girl . . . was not. She was a little bit round everywhere, now that he was looking closer. Not fat, exactly. Just sort of cushiony. Folded arms suddenly blocked his view. He glanced back up at her face. Uh-oh. She wasn’t happy.
“What do you want?”
At that moment, Jupe had no freaking idea. It felt like someone had scooped out his brain and replaced it with marshmallows. He tried to smile. A lot of girls at school would get all weird and spacey when he smiled at them. Unfortunately, this girl did not. He cleared his throat. “I’m Jupiter—Jupe. Uh, you can call me Jupe, I mean. My last name’s Butler.”
“Do you go to St. Pius?”
“Church?”
“Private school.”
“I go to La Sirena Junior High.”
One dark brow arched. “What are you doing out here in Morella, then? Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“I could say the same about you.”
“I am in school. My mom brought me here during lunch to help with some stuff.” She gestured with the apple toward some unspecific place down the street. “I go to Pacific Bay.”
Jupe shook his head in confusion. “I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s a middle school two blocks from here. My mom teaches drama.”
“I’m in eighth grade,” Jupe said stupidly.
She blinked a few more times and uncrossed her arms. “Me, too.”
“What’s your name?”
She opened her mouth to answer but seemed to
change her mind. “Why do you want to know?”
“Because it’s polite to ask?” God. What was her problem? “Or don’t tell me. I don’t care. I didn’t ditch school to shoot the shit. I’m here to get some information.”
“You ditched school to come here?”
“That’s none of your business.” Ugh. Now she was making him cranky. He waved her to the side. “If you’ll please move, Miss No-Name. I have important business.”
She didn’t budge. “It’s not open.”
“But you just came out of there,” he protested.
“My mom’s the grandmaster, which means I can come here whenever I please. It’s not open to the public today.”
“Grandmaster? What’s that? Is that like a caliph?”
There went that brow again, sliding halfway up her forehead. “How do you know about the caliph?” she asked.
Oh, now he had her attention. Best to play it cool. He leaned back against one of the palm trees. “I know a lot of stuff. My dad’s girlfriend is a magician.”
She didn’t seem as impressed as she should have been. “Is she a member?”
“Just of the main lodge in Florida.”
“Hmph. My mom’s the head of the Bull and Scorpion. That’s what grandmaster means, since you didn’t seem to know.”
“I thought you said your mom taught drama class.”
“She does.”
“Both?”
“Why is that so strange?”
He shrugged. Cady had a normal job, too. So he guessed it wasn’t. If his weirdo drama teacher back in La Sirena was a magician, it might actually make monologues from Macbeth more interesting. “Look, I just need to talk to someone about helping me out with a project.”
She took another bite of her apple. “What kind of project are you talking about?”
“I need some information.”
“What kind of information?” she asked
“Lodge secrets.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“How do I know I can trust you?” he asked. “I don’t even know your name.”
A muffled voice called out from the other side of the door. “Coming, Mama,” the girl shouted over her shoulder before turning back to Jupe. “Sorry. Lunch break’s over, and I’ve gotta walk back to school before the bell rings.”
“Wait!” Jupe detached himself from the tree. “I’m being serious about needing help. It took me two hours to get out here.”
She hesitated. “You’ll have to come back when the lodge is open to the public.”
“Which is when?”
“Sophic Mass is tomorrow at seven p.m. And that’s seven p.m. sharp—if you’re even ten seconds late, they won’t let you in. They lock the doors. So don’t be late.” She tossed her half-eaten apple into a trash can and opened the door.
“Mass? What the hell is that? Do I have to dress up?”
“It’s a public ritual to raise energy. Bring ten dollars for a donation. We have dinner afterward. It’ll be good. My dad grills out back. And it’s casual dress. I just wear whatever I had on at school that day.”
“Seven tomorrow,” he said, more to himself than to her. How the hell was he going to catch another bus out here? He’d have to think of a good story to tell the Holidays, which made his stomach hurt a little, because he didn’t really like lying to them.
The girl slipped inside the door and turned around to look at him one last time. “I like your jacket,” she said in a softer voice, gesturing toward the monster patches on his sleeves. “A lot of old movies are better than new ones, but I usually like books the best.”
Oh.
Wow.
Jupe had a lot to say about that, but he couldn’t seem to get the words out. His mouth went all dry, and his heart was beating like he’d been running.
“By the way, my name is Leticia Vega,” she said from the shrinking darkness of the closing door, pronouncing her name with a rich, rolling accent. Le-ti-ci-a. “And if you ever call me ‘Letty,’ I’ll lay a hex on you that’ll make all your teeth fall out.”
If Lon intended to give me another chance to see him naked, I missed it. He called Jupe and the Holidays to report in, and I fell asleep before he’d even finished his phone call. When I woke to the sound of our dueling cell-phone alarms, he was in the other bed, and it was half an hour before sunset. We quickly packed up and began the five-hour drive to Pasadena, trading barren wild coast for the sprawl of Southern California.
And the landscape wasn’t the only thing changing: my unexplained strength had abandoned me. Whether it was time or sleep that erased it, I didn’t know. But when I tested it on a metal letter opener I found in the motel desk drawer, all I got was a hand cramp.
“Had to be a side effect of your transmutation that first night,” Lon said as night settled across the Pacific Coast Highway.
“Almost makes me want to try shifting again if that’s the freebie I get for the effort.”
“Nothing’s ever free.”
True. And my eyes were still a little silvery. Not noticeable enough to have to wear sunglasses, so that was something. But deep down, I was still worried the whole thing was a bad omen.
I spent the first couple of hours of our trip chasing broadband signals as I searched for any information I could find on Karlan Rooke. He was in his early seventies, a wealthy man who’d traveled around the world collecting plants for a twelve-acre private estate, which he opened up to the public in the 1980s. It was one of several botanical gardens in the City of Roses, and although it was not as vast as the gardens at the Huntington Library, it was successful because of its niche collection of unusual plants and had earned a quirky nickname.
The Witches’ Garden.
Seemed Rooke displayed plants prized for their medicinal value to occultists and magick workers. Some of them were run-of-the-mill herbs. Sage, pennyroyal, mandrake root, and belladonna. But there were also unusual things, such as bloodvine and valrivia—prized by Earthbounds but not typically featured in a botanical garden.
Magus Rooke had been busy.
And although I was able to find the occasional reference to both his time spent in the E∴E∴ and his alleged Crowley lineage, it was only speculation; one of the articles pointed out that although these salacious tidbits often popped up in his Wikipedia entry, they were almost immediately removed.
For all appearances, he was just an eccentric old rich guy, one who was inaccessible to the general public. He was said to live in a private house on the estate and only occasionally spoke at fund-raisers or lectured at local universities on the history of magical herbs. But I didn’t have time to contact the Rooke Foundation and formally request a meeting with the man. And after Lon and I discussed the pros and cons, I decided to do something I hadn’t done in years. I decided to use my magical pedigree.
As I’ve said, only a few people in the E∴E∴ knew I was still alive. It was risky to expose myself outside of that circle, especially to someone who’d publicly declared himself an enemy of my parents. But because it was starting to look as if it might be easier to contact the spirit of Howard Hughes than to get an appointment with Karlan Rooke, I figured a spectacle might get his attention.
Lon was still adamant that it wasn’t wise to open up a direct channel to the Æthyr with my Heka signature all over it—my mother might pick up on it—so instead of calling Priya directly, I had Jupe send my guardian out to greet Rooke.
Hermeneus spirits had been used as messengers for centuries. In fact, it was the preferred method of long-distance communication between magicians before there were telegrams or telephones or e-mails or texts. Not every magician had a Hermeneus at his or her beck and call, and the ones who did merely heard their Æthyric carrier pigeon, because they couldn’t see supernatural things such as halos and Heka lines and guardian-spirit projections.
But Priya was no projection; he was solid flesh.
And his appearance in Rooke’s bedroom proved to be the at
tention grabber I’d hoped. Priya reported back that the man was, indeed, shocked to see my guardian, but when Priya pointed out that he hadn’t set off the man’s house wards and therefore was not hostile, the elderly magician listened to Priya’s message and agreed to meet with me.
We arrived at the entrance to Rooke Gardens just before midnight. Down a gated road to our right, lights shone in the windows of a grand mansion that overlooked the grounds from a sloping hill separating the private part of the property from the public gardens. It probably said something about Rooke’s trust in our intentions that he didn’t welcome us into his home with open arms, but I didn’t care.
An old Victorian carriage house served as the public gateway to the gardens. Its Green Man drinking fountain and gargoyle-tipped gutters were pretty charming. Seemed silly to knock, so I ignored both the OPEN EVERY DAY 8 AM TO DUSK sign and the white Heka glow of the low-key protective ward and pushed open the main door into the lobby.
A large mosaic pentagram sparkled over the granite floor. To one side of it sat a quaint ticket booth. On the other was a gift shop, where whimsical esoteric souvenirs filled the windows: kitchen witches, gnomes, and wooden garden signs that encouraged visitors to relax for a “spell” and have a “magical” day.
We didn’t get a chance to do either.
A buxom beauty with black hair and a golden tan appeared from a dark hallway. She might have been Lon’s age, perhaps a little younger, and she gave off a soft-focus centerfold vibe.
“Hello,” she said coolly, heels clicking on the pentagram as she swayed toward us in black slacks and a tomato-red top that showed enough cleavage to make me stare. “I’m Karlan’s daughter, Evie Rooke. You are Sélène Duval?”
Always weird to hear my real name on a stranger’s lips. And she was just that, a stranger. I couldn’t remember ever meeting her or her boobs when I knew her father.
But I extended my hand and said, “Thank you for meeting me on such short notice.”
She nodded curtly and eyed Lon. If she was reserved with me, she thawed for him, projecting a little extra warmth in her smile. This made the muscles in my neck tighten uncomfortably. “I apologize for the urgency of my request,” I said when she’d finished looking him over. “But I’m hoping your father can help me.”
