Waking the Moon

CHAPTER 1 The Sign

I MET THEM IN Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion. A fitting place, that magician’s grove within the enchanted forest that was the Divine, where Balthazar Warnick presided at his podium and wore a hand-painted paisley tie and three-piece Fergus Corméillean worsted suit to every session—even though there were only seven of us students, and the dyspeptic rathators hissed as though black winter gnawed at the stained glass windows, instead of the city’s sultry Indian summer.

I had taken a seat at the very back of the room. It was my first day of classes, my first official day at the Divine. I had arrived the previous Friday, meekly following the Strong Suggestion listed in the Introductory Handbook—a slender volume printed by the University on heavy cream-colored paper meant to invoke the physical and intellectual weight of vellum.

At the top of every page glowered the University’s coat of arms, a Gryphon rampant and Pelican gules, the latter tearing at her own breast to feed her young. Beneath them was a motto—

—and the school’s name spelled out in glorious sweeps of gold and blue and crimson.

The Divine, as I learned to call it within a few hours of my arrival. School, my mother called it, as when after the five-hour drive she stood with me in my dormitory room, surrounded by overstuffed boxes, and said, “Well, good luck at School, Katie.”

The drive had been long and hot and anxious, my mother and father veering between elation and depression at seeing the last of their six children plummet from the nest. My parents had married for love, high school sweethearts from Astoria, Queens. My mother still had the accent—muted to be sure, but jarring, when you took in that delicate face beneath fiery curls. My mother was an Irish beauty of the old school. Not so my father, who stood six-foot-four in his bare and uncommonly ugly feet and—notwithstanding the degrees from Saint Bonaventure and Fordham and the elevated position at IBM—looked more like Victor McLaglen than Jack Kennedy. My two sisters were the beauties, my three brothers rebels who, as adults, made good.

Me? I was the smart one, the loner, the hapless rebel and youngest by many years. Katherine Sweeney Cassidy, named for my maternal grandmother Katherine Sweeney; with my mother’s grey eyes and my father’s feet, Katie to the family but Sweeney now to the world. Sweeney to the Divine.

After we carried my things into the dormitory we had a quick and uneasy lunch at the local Holiday Inn, where far jollier family groups yelled boisterously to new arrivals and where our waitress seemed to know every customer by name, except for us. Afterward, my parents departed almost immediately. My mother confessed years later that they had been too heart-stricken to stay, but I didn’t know that at the time. They kissed me, my father still smelling slightly of ketchup, and then climbed into the blue Volvo wagon that would bear them north again. I waved as the car shot with nervous speed back into the stream of traffic on North Capitol Street. Then I ran my damp palms across the front of the maroon floral skirt my mother had laid out on my bed the night before (newly purchased from Lord & Taylor for the occasion, it was the first and only time I ever wore it) and slowly walked back to the dorm.

This was the first time it struck me that there might be disadvantages to a happy childhood. Everywhere I looked there were people who belonged here. Longhaired sunburned girls in puckered cotton sundresses, stretched out on the grass and smoking black cigarettes. Long-haired boys who pulled clinking green bottles from a cooler and toasted each other in sure, joyous cadences. In the near distance, beneath the shadows of the immense and baroque Shrine itself, the tiny white-clad figures of nuns in their summer habits walked with heads thrown back, diamond light sparkling on their sunglasses. A heavyset man in a yarmulka stood on a set of curved steps that spiraled down from one of the Shrine’s promontories like a stairway in a Dr. Seuss book. As I watched he removed his yarmulka and absently patted his cheeks with it. The heat was intense. The oily scent of car exhaust wafting over from North Capitol Street vied with that of roses, which grew as profusely on the grounds of the Divine as within a public garden. My skirt hung limply about my knees, my long-sleeved cotton blouse felt heavy and moist as wet wool. As I dragged myself up the sidewalk to Rossetti Hall, a boy in a dashiki shirt bumped into me.

“Oops—sorry—” he mumbled, not even glancing aside as he hurried onto the lawn surrounding Rossetti Hall. Beneath one of its elaborate diamond-paned windows he stopped and bellowed “LINNNN—DDDDAA!” Above me windows flew open. Tanned faces stared down, laughing.

“Yo, Stephen,” a blond girl called lazily. “Like, shut up.”

No one took any notice of me at all. I flushed. My clothes burned against my skin. I looked away and ran up the steps and inside Rossetti Hall.

Somehow I got through that first weekend. My room turned out to be a surprisingly comforting haven, cool and quiet and mine alone. Like all of the buildings at the Divine, Rossetti Hall was a huge and Gothic edifice, vine-hung, sweet with the carnal scent of wisteria blossoms. Beneath its walls wandered a weird profusion of nuns and rabbis and sikhs and friars, and others of even more dubious spiritual provenance: Hare Krishnas, earnest Moonies, witches and druids nouveaux. The effect was superbly and spookily medieval, with color and comic relief thrown in by a small but noisy undergraduate population bearing the last battered standards of 1960s gambado. I was sorely aware of how drab I looked and felt.

My room was in a long corridor, cool and silent as an ice locker, even in these last weeks before autumn cast its phantom gold upon the city. I walked slowly down the hall, staring at my feet and trying to decipher the peculiar mosaic covering the floor. The tiles formed odd geometries in worn nursery colors, ducky yellow, little-boy blue, a nasty medicinal pink. The walls were a pale green that the years had treated more kindly, the plaster faded to a pleasant crème de menthe, with runnels of cream and chocolate where cracks had appeared. I spent a lot of time in that hall those first few days, waiting for someone to say hello, to invite me into another room. But the place remained strangely quiet. I was desperately lonely, my homesickness so intense I felt as though I’d been stabbed. Why hadn’t I wanted a roommate? Worse, it seemed that in spite of the Strong Suggestion in the orientation manual, I had arrived several days too early. The hall’s only other inhabitants were a trio of girls from Iran, distant relatives of the Shah, who were freshman engineering students. They spent their days brushing and plaiting one another’s long black hair, and their evenings on the floor’s single pay telephone, weeping and railing at the cruelty of their parents in sending them here.

I wished I could give myself over to such a luxury of grief. But when I called my parents I assured them all was well, school was great, my first class was Tuesday, Thanksgiving was not so far off, no really, everything was fine. Then I handed the phone back to the Iranians and returned to my room.

“Shit,” I said, and slouched into a chair.

It was a long and narrow room, with old wooden furniture that smelled of lemons and chalk. I shrugged out of my skirt and blouse, stood shivering while I tried to remember which bag held my clothes. Then I pulled on ripped jeans and black T-shirt, punted the skirt beneath the bed, and turned to survey my kingdom.

At the end of the room a huge arched window glowed whitish blue in the afternoon light. I stepped over a tangle of stereo wires and peered outside. The mullioned panes were of heavy whorled glass. The casements opened by means of an ornate cast-iron crank that shrieked when I tried to turn it, until I found and released the latch holding it closed. The window began to open, very slowly. Air heavy and thick and sweet as cane syrup flowed into the room. I leaned forward, my hands resting on the broad granite sill.

My room faced east and looked out over the Strand, the long sward of grass and trees that ran down the center of the campus. All the campus was spread before me like a huge board game tricked out in gold and green and marble. Archaic grey buildings and great spreading elms formed a gauzy tapestry in the late-summer light. The horizon was bounded by a heavily wooded hill, where the pale dome of another building poked through the greenery like the top of an observatory or the ruin of some ancient temple. Rows of tourist buses were parked beneath the trees. Directly beneath my window the students I had seen earlier still lolled in the grass and passed each other joints, while dogs rolled laughing and barking between them. Above everything loomed the Shrine, that brooding sphinx, wavering in the heat. The whole scene had the unreal aura of a tinted postcard of the World’s Fair. It never struck me that I could just have walked outside and been a part of it all.

But I could get a better look. I made certain the window was open as far as it would go. Then I swung out onto the ledge. For a perilous moment I crouched there like a gargoyle, until I caught my balance and scrunched up against one end of the window. My back butted up against something carved into uncomfortable points and angles. I wriggled until I felt more comfortable, then leaned forward to stare through the window and back into my room.

On the far wall hung a mirror. It showed me my reflection, a skinny figure like a goblin trapped in glass. Long legs in torn denim, bare ankles and feet betraying how unfashionably pale I was. Long arms with thin bony wrists, big hands, big feet, ragged fingernails. Limp shoulder-length black hair, straight and fine as a child’s. A wide milk white pixie face, distinguished mostly by large pale grey eyes and star-tilted nose, a few freckles, an engaging little gap between my two front teeth. Shanty Irish, my high school English teacher had once described me. I liked the description. At eighteen I fancied myself a spiritual daughter of Brendan Behan and Flann O’Brien, an able drinker and quoter of melancholy verse. My nose even had a nearly undetectable list to one side, where my brother Kevin had broken it during a childhood rout over Matchbox cars.

“Hey!”

I turned and looked down. Two boys throwing a Frisbee waved up at me. Clutching the edge of the window frame, I waved back.

“Come on down!” one shouted. I shook my head, yelled, “Later!”

Near them a girl reading a magazine flopped onto her side, shading her eyes until she sighted me, then waved languidly and looked away. The boys laughed, skimmed the Frisbee between them, and loped off across the grass.

So they were friendly; so there was hope. I sat there for the rest of the afternoon, my face tipped to the sun, daydreaming about my classes, trying to figure out how many days were left before Columbus Day weekend.

But finally the heat got to me. My shoulders hurt, too, from whatever the hell I was leaning against. I stretched, carefully so as not to fall, and crept back to the window. At the opening I hesitated, and craned my neck to see what made that damn wall so uncomfortable.

There was an angel there. No—two angels. One to each side of my window. They were so lifelike that I started, the glass shuddering behind me. For a sickening moment I thought I’d fall; then I grabbed onto the window frame and caught my balance. After a moment I calmed down.

They’re only angels, I thought, stone angels. Given the peculiar spiritual history of the Divine, not unusual at all. I just hadn’t noticed them before. I blew down the front of my T-shirt, trying to cool off. Then I took another look.

There were angels everywhere. They seemed to flank each window of Rossetti Hall, and for all I knew they were everywhere across the entire campus. Ten feet high, wings folded in close against their sides, their long legs and flanks straight and smooth as pillars. It was the curling ends of a wing that I had been leaning against, its feathers swept up like the crest of a wave. Their long slender hands were posed in different attitudes—prayerful, admonitory, threatening, placating—their faces serene, eyes closed, mouths set in thin, unsmiling lines.

What was so startling about them was that they were naked, and had no genitals. Their thighs formed an inverted V and cast charcoal shadows against the wall. Stretching my hand, I could just barely touch the outline of sinew in the granite, the curve where a tendon bulged in a knee; the tiny details of muscle and lineament so lovingly rendered they must have been drawn from life. They didn’t look desexed, or childlike, or like they were missing anything. They looked like they were supposed to look like that; like they were true androgynes. Real angels, turned to stone.

And staring up at the face of the one guarding my room, I thought that it had been very purposeful of the artist to depict it with eyes closed: because it would have been terrible to have one of those creatures gazing down at me.

Suddenly I felt cold. The blind faces were turned to where the Shrine’s shadows had begun to creep across the Strand. I started to shiver uncontrollably, and realized I must have gotten sunstroke. I clambered back inside, kicked among my clothes until I found an old grey cross-country sweatshirt, and pulled it on. It was after five o’clock. I could find dinner in the dining hall, and maybe company.

That same afternoon, the afternoon of Sweeney Cassidy’s arrival at the Divine, word of the Sign came to Balthazar Warnick.

He was in his study at the Orphic Lodge, the Benandanti’s retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains, nursing a brandy and making a halfhearted effort to repair the miniature orrery that stood in one of the many recessed windows that lined the room. Outside, rain lashed against gables and dormers, and sent the limbs of great oak trees rapping threateningly upon the mansion’s shingles and ancient panes of leaded glass. A late-summer storm had settled in during the night. While most of its fury was spent, frequent squalls and shrieks of wind still raged about the study’s turret.

“Well,” Balthazar said softly. The constant noise made it difficult to concentrate, but he wasn’t overinvolved in his task. Squinting, he adjusted his eyeglasses and peered at the instrument. “Now then.”

Between his long fingers the orrery looked like some giddily elaborate Christmas ornament, with its brass fittings and enameled representations of the planets dangling from orbits of gleaming wire, all of them rotating about the large golden image of the sun. Red, yellow, green, orange, white, blue, violet, black. His thumb and forefinger closed about the tiny whirling bead of emerald, pinched it until he could feel it grow hot beneath his touch.

And where is the world the Benandanti occupy? he thought, and Balthazar’s unlined face grew grim. Where was the world Balthazar himself lived, with its eternal rounds of meetings and retreats, its endless days and hours and decades of waiting? Without thinking, he pinched his fingers more tightly together. Threads of smoke rose from the little emerald globe, and glittering tufts of fire. The green planet third from the sun was in flames. Balthazar’s clouded expression suddenly grew calm. He leaned over the orrery, extinguishing the tiny blaze with a breath. The minute globe cooled, its smooth green surface uncharred, unchanged. Sighing, Balthazar set the orrery back upon its brass mount and turned to stare out the window.

Far below where the lodge perched atop Helstrom Mountain, the Agastronga River had flooded its banks. But above the line of mountains to the west the storm was finally starting to break up. On the easternmost rim of the horizon Balthazar gleamed a faint rind of gold, marking where the sun still shone. It would be unbearably hot in the capital today, at least until the storm moved in to cool things off. He winced at the thought. As though he had summoned it by this small action, a knock came at the door.

“Yes, Kirsten,” Balthazar called. “Come in.” For another moment he gazed out the window, then turned. “Yes, my dear?”

The Orphic Lodge’s housekeeper strode into the room, a bit of white paper fluttering in her hand. Balthazar’s heart sank.

“Excuse me, Professor Warnick. A telephone message.”

Kirsten crossed to the window, picking up the silver tray with the remains of Balthazar’s lunch, pickled herring and cornichons and a few crusts of pumpernickel bread. She handed him the slip of paper and took his brandy snifter, still half-full, and placed it on the tray. “Francis X. Connelly called. I wrote down the message.”

“Oh!” Balthazar nodded. He removed his glasses and squinted, trying to make out Kirsten’s spidery European hand.

Balthazar started as a gust of wind sent the casements clattering. He read the note again.

He rolled the paper into a little tube, carefully set it on the luncheon tray. He gazed wistfully out at the rain. “Well, I suppose I will be leaving, then.”

The housekeeper took the note and slipped it into her apron pocket. “Will you be back for supper, Professor?”

A Sign. Balthazar felt his heart beating a little faster. He jangled the keys in his pocket. Kirsten repeated her question.

“Dinner? Oh, well, no. I mean, I expect not—not if—well, if Francis has really—if there’s really something going on back at the Divine.”

Kirsten’s blue eyes narrowed very slightly. “I am making kalve frikadeller,” she said, holding the tray straight out in front of her as though it bore a ritual offering. Balthazar thought of the heads of certain saints and smiled weakly. “Veal, and chokoladebudding.”

His favorite dessert. Balthazar nodded, touched. “Yes. Well, I will certainly try to be back for dinner,” he said, and stood. He reached for the brandy glass, slowly drained it, and replaced it on the tray. “Thank you very much, Kirsten. Lunch was excellent, as always. I will—I will call you later, when I know what my plans are.”

The door groaned shut behind her. Kirsten’s heavy footsteps echoed down the hall. Balthazar drew the keys from his pocket and gazed at the orrery on its brass stand.

“Well,” he said, his voice thin and uneasy. “Well,” he repeated, and crossed the room.

There was a small door set between the bookshelves on that side of the study. It was made of mountain ash, the wood burnished to the color of pale ale. It held a small, old-fashioned keyhole. The lintel was formed of graceful Art Nouveau arabesques, rubbed with gilt paint that had nearly all flaked away with age, and surmounted by threadlike, almost invisible crimson letters.

Balthazar rested his palm upon the wood. For a moment he glanced over his shoulder, gazing longingly at the door leading into the hall. His car was still parked out front. It would take nearly four hours to drive back to Washington, by which time Francis would long since have lost all patience and stormed back to his room.

Or—what was far more likely-—Francis would come bursting through this little ashwood door, and forcibly drag Balthazar back with him. At the thought Balthazar sighed. With one quick motion he slid the key into the keyhole and turned it. The door shuddered, then flew open.

There was nothing there. Not the dim interior of a closet; not the cool watery sky, greenish-cast and storming. Nothing but a formless emptiness, neither dark nor light but somehow other, cold and rent by a high keening wail.

A Sign.

Without looking up, Balthazar took a step into the void. His foot fell through empty air and his chest tightened as he felt himself start to tumble forward. The last thing he heard was, very faintly, the sound of the wind slamming shut the door behind him.

At the top of the main steps of the Shrine Francis Xavier Connelly waited, just as impatiently as Balthazar had imagined, for his mentor to arrive. Below, the daily flood of tourists poured from a seemingly endless stream of buses, the women fanning themselves with folded maps and brochures, the men loosening ties and cuffs and gazing back yearningly at the air-conditioned vehicles. People still got all dressed up to visit the Shrine, although some of them would get no farther than the gift shop.

Watching them Francis snorted in annoyance and glanced at his watch. Nearly two o’clock. Someone bumped his elbow, apologizing in a shrill voice. Francis looked down to see a group of tourists armed with fearsome-looking cameras, trying vainly to encompass the vast expanse of domes and minarets and bell towers that made up the Shrine.

They don’t know the half of it, he thought. No one would ever know a fraction of what went on around and beneath—and above and below—the University of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine, and the Shrine that stood at its heart.

“Come on, Balthazar,” he said beneath his breath.

He turned and looked out to the long white driveway that led from North Capitol Street into the Shrine parking lot. A tiny utility building stood near the entrance, plywood and molded blue plastic. A Gray Line Tours bus pulled in from North Capitol and careened past the shed, trailing exhaust. When the smoke cleared a slender dark-haired man stood on the curb in front of the shed, coughing and flapping his hands.

“About time,” muttered Francis to himself. He leaned back on his heels and dug in his pockets for a cigarette. “About goddamn time.”

In the parking lot, Balthazar Warnick tried to catch his breath. He groaned and smoothed the front of his shirt, already damp and heavy with sweat, then crossed the parking lot and headed for the steps.

“Balthazar! Kirsten gave you my message, then.” Francis’s Harvard-Yard voice rang out stridently as Balthazar staggered the last few feet toward him. “I was starting to worry…”

“Ye-es!” gasped Balthazar. He stopped and dabbed at his face with his handkerchief, then, catching his breath, added, “Sorry to take so long. So damn hot—”

Francis nodded and peered irritably into the hazy air, as though waiting for someone more interesting to arrive, perhaps by helicopter. Looking up at him, Balthazar smiled wryly. His protégé was exceptionally, almost grotesquely, tall, big-boned, and stooped, with an air of supercilious hauteur that Balthazar associated with certain breeds of camel. Like Balthazar, he was terribly nearsighted, but too vain to wear glasses. So Francis was always peering impatiently into thin air and complaining about inattentive companions. His cigarette twitched between nervous fingers with nails bitten to the quick. He was one of the youngest of the Benandanti, and Balthazar’s most promising protégé—except for the archaeologist Magda Kurtz, who had first arrived at the Divine nearly a decade earlier and had long since left to pursue her career elsewhere. Though now Magda was back at the Divine for the summer, as a visiting scholar, and Francis had never left.

“It’s always hot,” Francis muttered, as though it were Balthazar’s fault. “Diplomats used to get paid hardship wages for being posted here.”

Balthazar smiled. As an undergraduate Francis had been Balthazar’s golden boy and, like Magda, an archaeology student, though Francis had never strayed from his original love of classical Greece and Mycenae into the muddier territory of Old Europe.

“Anyway, it’s not the heat that gets you,” Francis added. “It’s the humidity.”

Balthazar nodded, sighing. In addition to being head of the Divine’s renowned Department of Anthropology, his formal titles included that of Provost of Thaddeus College, as well as 144th Recipient of the Cape of the Living Flame of the Gjnarra of Transbaikalia in the Gobi Desert, a title that was less honorary than some of his colleagues in the Explorers’ Club might think.

And, of course, he was the chief of the Benandanti at the Divine. Here his duties consisted of a certain type of surveillance, an eternity of watching and waiting for an enemy who never seemed to arrive. An enemy who might no longer exist at all. Balthazar did not in fact like everything about his job, but the Benandanti were in some ways like the military. You were often born to the job, and once indoctrinated you were indentured for life, and presumably beyond. For the last six years, Francis had been as close to family as Balthazar had here: a melancholy thought.

Francis took another quick drag on his cigarette. “Thank you for coming, Balthazar,” he said. For the first time he grinned. “But wait till you see!” Turning, he gazed up at the bulk of the Shrine, his face shining. “It’s incredible, Balthazar, incredible—”

Balthazar shook his head and followed Francis’s gaze. “Well, perhaps you’d better show me,” he said mildly.

Above them reared the heart of the University—the Shrine of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine. A fabulously immense Byzantine folly, completed early in the twentieth century after nearly two hundred years of construction. Minarets and mosaics and Gothic sandstone buttresses, crenellated parapets and winding stairways that led to no visible doors: all of it surmounted by a dome of gold and lapis lazuli that threw back to the sky its own gilded map of the heavens. Seven different architects had designed and built disparate aspects of the Shrine. Inside, no less than fifty-seven chapels, some no larger than a closet, others the size of bowling alleys, had been consecrated to saints of varying rank and degree of holiness. The upper level alone was so crowded with ghosts that in the predawn hours the nave was filled with their hollow whispers. In the crypt chapel near the catacombs, icons routinely wept blood, and in dim corners lustful teenagers lagging behind on class trips often glimpsed Victor Capobianco, known as Damnatus, the Doomed Bishop, kneeling on the granite floor and weeping as he recited the Stations of the Cross. Francis’s Sign would have to be quite original to merit even this minor investigation.

For a moment Balthazar let his gaze rest upon the stone triad above the entry-way. Callow undergraduates had christened the trio The Supremes. They actually represented Michael and Gabriel and Raphael, the Archangels who guarded the Divine. Balthazar waited, just in case they had a message for him, but there was nothing.

“Come on.” Francis tugged at Balthazar’s elbow and steered him past a noisy flock of nuns. “You’ve got to see this.”

It was like stepping from a subway platform into the arcane circle of some immeasurable cavern. “I saw it in the Tahor Chapel,” said Francis. His voice, always too loud, boomed so thunderously that a number of tourists turned to stare. Balthazar followed him down one of the wide side aisles, stepping in and out of spectral pools where light poured from stained glass windows onto the floor. Everywhere banks of candles shimmered behind kneeling figures. As they passed, Balthazar could hear the soft sounds of weeping and whispered invocations.

Saint John, pray for us. Saint Blaise, pray for us. Saint Lucia, pray for us…

Balthazar paused as Francis raced by a tiny chapel, with a solitary penitent and single guttering candle. A painted statue stood in an alcove, its plaster robes flecked with dust: the image of a young woman holding out a gilt tray from which a pair of eyeballs peered mournfully. For a moment Balthazar stared at the disembodied eyeballs, then hurried on.

Wilting flowers, donated by wealthy alumnae and the grateful beneficiaries of successful cardiac bypasses, filled other alcoves in front of more exotic images of marble and glass and wood, steel and plaster and humble plastic. The main altar was a glowing curtain of gold and silver rippling in the distance. Balthazar followed Francis down a narrow staircase, around and around and around until finally they came out into a dimly lit indoor plaza. Everywhere you looked you saw high stone archways opening onto other corridors or chapels. Some were closed off by iron grilles, others guarded by still more statues or the occasional noisy air-conditioning unit.

“Almost there,” Francis sang out. “Here we go—”

Balthazar hoped there would be no one in the Tahor Chapel; and blessedly it was empty. They stepped inside. Francis pulled shut the high iron grille that served as door, and for good measure dragged out the CHAPEL CLOSED sign and set it behind the threatening spikes and bars. Then he fished a key from his pocket and locked the gate behind them.

“Okay,” said Francis. “Okay okay okay.”

His voice broke and he looked anxiously over his shoulder at Balthazar. “It’s—well, I was here this morning, and I saw it then, but—well, I hope—”

Balthazar made a dismissive motion with his hand. “Not to worry, Francis.” Smiling expectantly, he tilted his head. “Please—show me—”

The Tahor Chapel was a tiny L-shaped room, its walls of smooth black marble veined with gold and pale blue. Ambient light spilled from small recesses in the ceiling, but the prevailing illumination came from thick white candles set into crimson glass holders, dozens of them, flickering in front of a narrow stone altar. There was a faintly spicy smell, like scorched nutmeg. In spite of himself Balthazar felt his spine prickle.

“It was here this morning,” Francis repeated as they approached the altar. “Jeez, I hope…”

Atop the stone altar rested the chapel’s famous icon, the so-called “Black Madonna” of Tahor found in an Anatolian cave five centuries before. It was over a thousand years old, the image of its central figure dark and shiny as an eggplant. A halo of gold chips radiated from her head. Piled in front of the wooden likeness were heaps of rosary beads. Very carefully Francis removed them, the beads spilling from his fingers in jingling strands. Then, with exquisite caution, he took the icon itself and moved it to one side.

“Ahem,” said Balthazar. He wondered what had driven Francis to move the icon in the first place. This was forbidden, of course, and anyone besides a Benandanti who tried such a thing would have been quickly and quietly dispensed with. “Francis, is that really—”

But before he could say anything else Francis grabbed him and pulled him closer.

“Balthazar. Look—”

Inside the altar was a figure, thumb-sized and roughly thumb-shaped. Dull black and slightly gleaming, it appeared to be of stone, but it was not: it was carbonized wood smooth as a chunk of polished quartz. It had been discovered at the same time and in the same place as the Black Madonna, and from the first its significance was recognized by the Benandanti. For hundreds of years it had been closeted in Ravenna, and later in Avebury, in one of their countless holdings of rare and arcane objects. New initiates to the Benandanti often expressed amazement at the seemingly careless handling of such artifacts. But the Benandanti had many such secrets. And, as Balthazar had once told Francis, “These things have a way of looking after themselves.”

It was the figure of a woman. The very crudeness of its execution told how ancient it was. An eyeless, mouthless face; twin inverted triangles for breasts; a slit to indicate the vulva. A Goddess image, precious as the Venus of Willendorf or the Paphian Aphrodite. The Benandanti called it the Tahor Venus.

“Look,” Francis exclaimed. In the flickering light, the Venus cast an eerie shadow across the altar. From his breast pocket Balthazar withdrew his glasses. For a long moment he held them, as though unwilling to see what they might reveal; finally he slid them onto his nose. Beside him Francis pointed at the figure. “Balthazar!”

Balthazar nodded, his throat tight. He had seen the Venus before, had even handled it, for the sheer wonder of touching something that was twenty thousand years old. He would not touch it now.

From the breasts of the Tahor Venus, and from the nick between her stolid legs, sprigs of greenery protruded: brilliant as the first spears of hyacinths thrusting through the cold earth. At the end of each frond was a starburst of deep purple, tiny petals slender and frail as cilia. As Balthazar and Francis stared, the minute flower heads moved, so slightly they might have been stirred by their breathing. A moment later and a musky smell perfumed the air, the faintest breath of sandalwood and oranges.

“Francis,” Balthazar whispered. “Did you—what did you—”

The young man shook his head and stepped backward. “It didn’t do that this morning,” he said, his voice shaking. “I mean, that smell—”

From behind them echoed a dull clang, so loud they both jumped.

“When will it be open? Father—Father—?”

Turning, Balthazar saw a young woman in a nurse’s uniform peering at them through the locked gate.

“Damn,” Francis breathed, but Balthazar quickly ducked behind him, moving the image of the Black Madonna back into place and sweeping the heap of rosary beads in front of it.

“Yes—right now, we’ll be right out,” he called, pushing Francis in front of him. Just before they reached the gate Balthazar glanced back at the altar. Then, smiling apologetically, he fumbled for his keys and opened the door.

“Cleaning,” he explained, letting the young woman pass. She nodded, wiping her eyes with a tissue, and went inside. A moment later they heard a soft thump as she settled onto the kneeler in front of the altar.

“Well?”

They walked quickly, slowing only when they reached the main corridor. Balthazar stopped at a doorway and leaned against the wall, rubbing his forehead and trying to calm his thudding heart.

“It’s a Sign, isn’t it?” Francis was saying, his tone low and urgent. “I mean really, nobody will deny it—it’s a Sign, a real Sign! When you show the others, they’ll see—”

Balthazar took a deep breath, then nodded. “Yes. Of course: it’s a Sign, you were right, Francis, it’s a Sign. No doubt, no doubt at all.”

“Righto!” Francis exclaimed, his voice exploding with relief. He clapped his hand to his shirt pocket, and nodded to where a placard announced that the cafeteria was now open. “So now, now something’s happened, I mean all this time and now something, a Sign, they can’t deny that—”

Balthazar let his breath out in a long sigh and shook his head. “No, Francis, of course not, no—”

“But then—Balthazar, what does it mean?”

The hallway funneled into another corridor. Balthazar felt a familiar dull throbbing behind his temple, saw at the corners of his eyes the blurred lightning that always presaged a migraine. He bit his lip.

“Anything,” he said in a low voice, rubbing his temples. “It could mean anything.”

Francis lowered his head to whisper conspiratorially.

“But really,” he said. “We’ll know, right? What it means? What’s going to happen now?”

“We’ll know,” said Balthazar, plucking a tiny lozenge from the engraved silver pillbox he carried in his breast pocket, “when She—or Somebody—is ready for us to know.”

And silently they joined the line snaking into the cafeteria.

Everything about the Divine was turning out to be stranger than I had expected. The dining hall itself was a bizarre affair, another grey Gothic ivy-clad building with rows of gargoyles glaring down from parapets and turrets and balconies. The building would not have looked out of place in fourteenth-century Nîmes; its gargoyles had been created by the same master carvers who spent years working on the National Cathedral. Unfortunately, inside the place was much more mundane. I found a table in the dim far corner, across from the coffee machine. I sat and ate quickly, embarrassed to be alone but also terrified that one of the other students might engage me in unwanted conversation. When I finished I fled to my room.

Outside, the sun had dipped below the Shrine. It was my first night in the city; my first night away from home. The sky was glorious, indigo and violet and gold, and there was a warmth and sweetness to the air that I could taste in the back of my throat, burnt honey and car exhaust, and the damp promise of a thunderstorm charging it all. I walked slowly across the Mall, alone save for one or two hooded figures I glimpsed pacing the chestnut allées beneath the Shrine’s eastern tower. I finally halted atop a small hillock where a single oak sent shadows rippling across the grass.

From the Shrine’s bell tower came the first deep tones of the carillon calling the hour. I turned, and saw in the distance the domes and columns of the Capitol glimmering in the twilight, bone-colored, ghostly; and behind it still more ghostly buildings, their columned porticoes and marble arches all seeming to melt into the haze of green and violet darkness that descended upon them like sleep. City of Trees, someone had named it long ago; and as I gazed upon the far-off buildings and green-girt streets my heart gave a sudden and unexpected heave, as though someone nudged it.

I felt something then that has proved to be true. You have a first city as you have a first lover, and this was mine. I had read about the traffic, the poverty, the riots; the people living in boxes, the Dupont Circle crazies and the encampments of bitter veterans at Lafayette Park.

But nothing had prepared me for the rest of it. The tropic heat and humidity, so alien to me that I felt as though my northern blood was too thin and my grey eyes too pale to bear the burning daylight. The purple-charged dusk cut by heat lightning; the faint and antique glow of marble buildings.

And everywhere, everywhere, the trees. Crepe myrtles and cherries and white oaks, princess trees and hornbeams and pawpaws, horse chestnuts and trees of heaven and the humble flowering crabs, and the scent of magnolias mingling with that of burning paper and the soft white dust of the streets. For all its petty bureaucrats and burned-out storefronts, decaying warehouses turned to discos and the first yawning caverns that would soon be the city’s Underground: still it all had a queer febrile beauty, not haunting so much as haunted. As much as Delphi or Jerusalem or Ur, it was a consecrated place: its god had not yet come to claim it, that was all. And that first evening I was seeing it all for the first time. But I knew then, with that odd certainty that has come only a few times in my life—when I met Oliver, and years later when I first saw Dylan—that my life would change irrevocably when I walked away from the shadows of that tree and returned to my room. I recalled the words of the poet of another place—

But at that moment I hoped for nothing else, nothing but stars blurring through the violet smog and the faint echoing laughter that rang in my ears as I watched the Shrine fall into darkness, as the first tentative cries of students and locusts rang out to greet the night.

I returned to my room, exhilarated, no longer deviled by fear and loneliness. I bought two beers at the Rathskellar and carried them in paper cups to the dorm, drank them while sitting on my bed. Then I peeled off my sweaty clothes and wrapped myself in one of the new cotton sheets my mother had bought for me. Almost immediately I was asleep. I had no clock set up, and so didn’t know what time it was when I awoke in the middle of the night, too hot and terribly thirsty. I sat up, groggy and disoriented; then froze.

There was someone in the room with me. Two figures—I could see them standing by the door, tall black shadows with heads bowed and extraordinarily long arms raised to their chests, like praying mantis. They seemed to be hunched over. But even so they were tall, too tall to be anyone or anything even remotely human. They had been talking about me, their voices had awakened me. Now they were silent.

I was too terrified to move, only clutched the sheet to my breast and tried not to breathe. Behind me the window was open—I could feel a warm damp breeze stirring, and hear distant thunder—but I knew I had closed it before I went to bed. By the door the two figures remained still. I slitted my eyes, afraid that they would see that I was awake, be moved by the reflection of starlight in my pupils to reach for me with those horrible arms. Still they said nothing, only stood there unmoving, watching, waiting.

For hours I lay rigid, my breath coming hoarser and shallower as I tried not to breathe at all. Until finally I realized that somehow I must have fallen asleep again. I sat up, gasping, the sheet sliding through my fingers.

The figures were gone. Gone, gone; the window was closed, the hasp carefully in place as I had left it. From somewhere in the dorm came the smell of fresh coffee and the cheerful static of a radio. The night’s storm had passed; already sunlight turned the Shrine’s dome to flame. It had been a dream, of course. My first night alone, too much beer, not enough dinner. I shuddered, then began to move, very slowly, still holding the sheet close to my chest. My feet had barely grazed the cool floor when I stopped.

Beneath the window something moved. I bit my lip as I stared at it, knowing then that it was as I had thought: everything had changed, nothing would be the same again. Upon the grey tile floor lay a single feather, as long as my forearm and the color of blood. The downy vanes at its base trembled, as though something breathed upon them. Then very slowly it crept across the floor, borne by a silent breeze, until it rested cool and sharp as a blade against the side of my bare foot.

CHAPTER 2 Raising the Naphaïm

THAT SAME EVENING, IN a tower room on the other side of campus, the noted archaeologist Magda Kurtz sat cross-legged upon a worn oriental rug chased with the ancient Pasquar pattern known as Three Children. The room was in a building set aside for visiting scholars. Magda, whose term as visiting professor of European Archaeology had been for the summer only, would be leaving the day after tomorrow. From the dark corners of the turret her few belongings—mostly books and reams of curling dissertations—sent shadows straggling across the floor. The odor of singed hair overpowered the scents of wax and musty wool and her own faint musk of Joy perfume.

She was still a young woman, though Sweeney Cassidy wouldn’t have thought so. She had dark thoughtful eyes, a wry mouth, determined chin. Her brown hair was cut in a pageboy and was streaked with grey. She wore unfashionable clothes, baggy trousers of black linen and a Betsey Johnson blouse that had been le plus ultra when Magda herself was an undergraduate, but now was faded and somewhat shabby. More striking was Magda’s necklace: a crescent-shaped collar of beaten silver. At its widest point it was engraved with a triskele composed of three interlocking moons. The workmanship was exquisite, in the Celtic style favored by metalworkers in Bronze Age Europe. The lunar curves joined to form an abstract pattern of still more crescent moons, smaller or larger depending on how they caught the light. There was a gap in the collar, a hole where another, smaller, curve should fit. But ancient treasuries and burial sites are often raided or despoiled, by grave robbers and disinherited relatives and greedy priests.

The necklace was a lunula, sacred to the lunar goddess Othiym. Magda knew of only a handful like it which had ever been found—one, a mere fragment, had been discovered by her mentor and was now among the holdings of the National Museum. It was an object of great power, especially in the hands of a Benandanti like herself. Had it been whole, and not missing that curved spar from its center, it would have been unimaginably so.

Magda knew where that missing fragment was, but she had long ago decided not to retrieve it. Her West Coast mentor, the great June Harrington, had found a fragment of a lunula during one of her own early excavations, and (to her later regret) donated it to the National Museum of Natural History. She told Magda of glimpsing it there many years later in the museum archives, a sliver of light in a dusty glass case.

“I often think of it,” June had sighed, her gnarled hands opening and closing in her lap. “I could have just taken it back, you know. I could have just taken it, they never would have known.

“But I never did. And I never saw it again.”

Magda did not show her lunula to June Harrington. She did not show it to Balthazar Warnick, who had sponsored her within the Benandanti, or indeed to anyone at all. Had the Benandanti known she possessed it, they would almost certainly have tried to wrest it from her. But until now it had remained safely in Magda’s possession. The lunula—and its Mistress—protected its own.

“In hoc signo spes mea.”

Magda recited the words softly, her fingers brushing the edge of the silver collar upon her breast.

“Othiym, Anat, Innana, Kybele, Kali, Artemis, Athena, Hecate, Potnia, Othiym. In hoc signo vinces.” In this sign is my hope, in this sign thou shalt conquer. “In hoc signo spes mea: Othiym. Haïyo Othiym Lunarsa.”

Some years ago, Magda had been one of the first female students admitted to the Divine. She was still one of the few female Benandanti. Her career since then had been quietly triumphant. Early tenure at UC Berkeley, several major archaeological discoveries, a few token appearances on morning talk shows. She had written a work now commonly regarded as a classic text, the two-volume Daughters of the Setting Sun: The Attic Mystery Tradition in Anatolia, which her mentor, the eminent classicist June Harrington, had called “absolutely indispensable.” This past summer, Professor Kurtz’s lectures at the Divine had been crowded with undergraduates and doctoral students alike, and she had briefly considered staying on a little longer, to see the fall term begin. To see for herself the new crop of students and decide if there were any worth claiming.

But then she had learned of the Sign—learned just that morning, which left her precious little time for what she had to do. Because, while Magda had a long past history within the Benandanti and the Divine, her present loyalties lay elsewhere.

She knelt on the rough wool of the Pasquar rug. A round copper dish stood in front of her, and a tiny cloisonné casket filled with gold-tipped matches. Next to the casket gleamed a small silver bowl filled with water. Very carefully, Magda smoothed out a lock of her hair and plucked a single strand. She examined it, then placed it upon the surface of the silver bowl. She sat back, lips tight and eyes closed. After a moment she leaned forward.

In the copper dish was an object wrapped in newsprint. She began to unwrap it, until an untidy heap of old newspaper fluttered at her side and she held something slightly smaller than her own hand, swaddled in cloth. Magda grimaced as she unraveled the strands of rotting linen. Another smell overwhelmed the scent of burned hair: a smell of rot, but also of spices, acrid pepper and salt and the sweetish citric tang of vervain. She pushed aside the discarded wrappings, careful to keep the newspapers from coming too close to the candles in their heavy brass holders. Then she laid her prize upon the copper plate.

It was a hand. Perhaps three-quarters the size of her own, mummified and faintly green with mold, its flesh puckered and pocked with flecks of orange-and-white fungus. It had been dipped in wax, but much of that had cracked or turned to an oily scum upon the dried flesh. It sat upon the plate, fingers upcurled like the frozen appendages of a dead tarantula, fingernails furred with mold. Magda wiped her hands on a small towel and stared at it with distaste.

“Well.” She reached behind her for an unlit candle. Taking one of the gold-tipped matches, she lit it, then very slowly touched it to each of the fingers on the dead hand. A spurt of bluish flame. Black smoke thick as rope uncoiled from the fingertips and settled onto the floor. The room filled with the putrid smell of spoiled meat. Magda held her breath. After a moment the fingers began to glow with a faint yellow flame.

“Yes,” she murmured. She turned away, coughing delicately, and blew out me candle. The Hand of Glory burned with a steady, poisonous gleam, flames licking at its fingertips. Where the smoke touched the rug it left a heavy dark smear, like rancid fat.

She turned to the silver dish, where the single strand of hair floated, and spoke beneath her breath. The hair started to move. Magda Kurtz continued to murmur in the same quick, almost thoughtless manner; but her eyes were slitted with concentration.

Upon the surface of the water, patterns began to appear. Faint lines, dull red and black against the silvery surface. After a minute or so an image emerged. Blots of light and shadow that soon took on the contours of a face: a young man’s face. Magda fell silent. For a long time she stared at the image, her mouth tight. Then she breathed upon the water. The face disappeared into cloudy ripples. From the Hand of Glory came a spattering sound as a drop congealed upon the tip of one finger and burned in a small greasy cloud. Magda glanced aside, finally began speaking again.

Her words sounded no different this time, but the hair moved more slowly in response to her voice. It grew thicker, until it might have been a nematode squirming there, or some bloated larva. The water roiled and churned, and suddenly was still.

Within seconds the second image appeared: the face of a young woman with huge slanted eyes, their color unguessable, but an unmistakably beautiful girl. Magda gazed at the image thoughtfully. Finally she nodded and whispered.

“I thought as much.”

She held her hand above the bowl, touched the water with a finger. The hair writhed like a worm upon a hook, with a soft hiss disappeared into a thread of white smoke.

“So,” said Magda.

So this was what the Sign portended. She almost laughed, thinking of her old friend and mentor Balthazar Warnick. “All for naught…”

For millennia the Benandanti had watched and waited for the awakening of their ancient enemy. For a resurgence of old ways, old deities; half-hoping that when their Sign finally came it might presage not Her return, but the arrival of a Champion, a Hero, a Second Coming of a Great Good Man. Omnia Bona Bonis.

But was this what the loathsome Francis X. Connelly had glimpsed in the Tahor Chapel?

Magda laughed aloud. She had seen for herself who was to come. Not one person, but two. Not a hero of the Benandanti—politician or diplomat, or even a sturdy tenured classics professor—but a couple of kids. A young man and a woman—boy and girl, really—the oldest story in the book, and not at all what the Benandanti had been expecting.

Not quite what Magda herself had been expecting, either.

She frowned. The boy had taken her by surprise. And yet the Sign had been unmistakable. She had scried his face in the basin, as clearly as she had seen that of the girl. Now it only remained for her to learn who they were.

Magda glanced at her watch. Past midnight already. She stretched, then crouched before the Hand of Glory. The flames had burned to the first knuckle of each finger. Melting fat coursed in dark runnels to form a small pool in its withered palm. Magda grimaced. She began to speak in a loud, impatient voice, as though calling an animal to her.

“Eisheth. Eisheth. Eisheth.”

As she spoke she very slowly began to stand, straightening until at last she stood with arms outstretched. Pronouncing the name one final time she took a step backward.

“Eisheth.”

Directly in front of her, a shape like her own shadow rose in the darkness, arms outstretched, its back to her. Only this was a shadow filled with light. As Magda watched it slowly grew brighter, the lineaments and contours of its body so radiant that she had to shade her eyes. Her arms prickled with heat. Just when it seemed its intensity was such that she must burst into flame, the light dimmed. A figure stood there, taller by a foot than Magda. She gasped, as she always did. Its long black hair like marble coils upon its shoulders, the wings like sheaves of knives enfolded upon its back.

“Eisheth,” Magda whispered hoarsely. “Eisheth, look at me.”

The figure turned.

“Ah!—”

Her stomach knotted with rage and frustration at her weakness, but still she could not keep from crying out. The figure nodded. In spite of herself Magda started forward, her hands raised halfway between supplication and an embrace. But then she forced herself to stop. The figure continued to stare at her, its yellow eyes cold and unblinking as a tiger’s. Magda took a few deep breaths.

“Eisheth—thank you—”

The figure inclined its head to her and smiled. It might have been a man, except for some feminine roundness to its mouth, the arch of its cheekbones and the sly way its eyes took her in, appraising her as another woman might. Its skin was golden, not tanned or ruddy but a pure pale gold, the color of fine marble rather than metal. It was naked, and you could see its muscles as clearly as though they had been sketched upon its skin. From its chest two breasts swelled, a young girl’s breasts, tipped with pale roseate nipples. Its groin was hairless, its member engorged and erect; she had never seen it otherwise.

Magda forced a smile and stared boldly back into his eyes. She always thought of Eisheth as him, despite his breasts and coquettish smile, even as some of the other naphaïm she perceived as female despite their obviously masculine attributes, or the absence of genitals altogether.

“Yes?” The naphaïm never addressed her by name. “I have come.”

His voice made her quiver, trapped between stark terror and the most abject desire. It was the voice of a young boy before the change, sweet yet resonant with a man’s power. Magda clasped her hands tightly and indicated the silver basin on the floor.

“A few minutes ago I scried there in the water two faces. A young man and woman. I wish to know their names.”

As she spoke she grew more confident. She glanced down at the Hand of Glory. The smallest digit, a shriveled grey knot, was already burned away, and the flesh of the palm itself had begun to char. She went on quickly, “I—I could not see them clearly. And I do not know their names. I need you to tell me who they are.”

The naphaïm stared at her and smiled. At its back its wings rustled. “Last year, and the year before, and years before that: you who watch are always looking for a Sign, but one never comes.”

A flicker of desperation licked at the woman’s spine. She shook her head. “I am no longer among those who watch, Eisheth. I serve another now. And a Sign has come. I wish to know the names of those whose faces I scried in the water.”

Eisheth’s smile broke into a grin. He had very large, white teeth, and his tongue as it flicked between them was pointed, like an asp’s. “And does not your mistress know their names?”

“My Mistress—my Mistress is—She is not mindful as you are, Eisheth.” Magda’s desperation fanned into panic even as her tone grew more wheedling. “She sleeps, but perhaps this girl is the one who will help me wake Her, if—”

If I can find this girl before the Benandanti do.

Eisheth laughed. At the sound the walls trembled, the candle flames leapt until they formed a fiery ring about the two figures. He stretched out his great hand until it enveloped hers, and took a step forward. Magda shuddered. Willing herself to stare up into his eyes, she choked, “Their names, Eisheth! Or I’ll dismiss you and summon another—”

“Ahhh. A pity,” he murmured, mockingly. Slowly he withdrew his hand. “As you will.”

He stared down at the silver bowl, as though seeing something there beside the rippling reflections of candlelight and shadow. After a moment he spoke a name, and then a second name. He glanced at Magda and tilted his head.

“You will ask more of me?” His boy’s voice sounded innocent, almost tearful. “Or will you dismiss me so soon?”

Magda’s breath caught in her throat. “No more. Go—”

Quickly she repeated the rest of the incantation. Eisheth bowed his head, ebony locks spilling across his shoulders. From his wings smoke purled. Then, in a soundless conflagration, his entire body burst into flame. Magda stumbled backward, shielding her face. When she lowered her hand the naphaïm was gone. She drew a shuddering breath, looked down to see that the fingers of the Hand of Glory had burned away. A single ragged flame, brownish red like dried blood, scored the air above its clenched palm.

One last time she knelt before the copper dish. Almost frantically she began to whisper strings of words—Greek, Latin, Old Norse, and English, too, just to be sure. A simple cantrip, something to disrupt the meeting between those she had glimpsed.

Because almost certainly the girl could be turned to serve Her whom Magda served. But the boy was another matter. And the two of them were linked, Magda had seen that.

So now let them be torn apart.

And so Magda pronounced her cantrip. It was an ancient spell—Magda found such old folkways charming, and useful, too—and one that seldom failed to work. At the appropriate moment she whispered the boy’s name. Let him bear the brunt of whatever danger might come from Magda’s interference in the work of the Benandanti. She would trust her Mistress to see that the rest followed as it should.

“…uia Othiym psinother theropsin nopsither nephthomaoth…”

When she finished Magda sighed and stood. She crossed to where a white ceramic pitcher waited upon a windowsill. She took the pitcher, returned to the Hand of Glory and poured a thin stream of milk onto it. The Hand of Glory, sizzled, sending up a sour, clotted smell, then gave a shrill whistle as steam escaped from its pores.

“There,” Magda pronounced. She smiled with relief. So very simple, and also a little chastening, when one thought how it was that tiny acts such as these had kept their great and ancient feud alive for so many thousands of years. She moved cheerfully about the room, blowing out one candle after another, humming. She had been a promising student at the Divine herself once, before she joined the Benandanti and then betrayed them. It gave her a poignant thrill of nostalgia to think of those two attractive young people with all the world before them. With a final pouff like a kiss she blew out the last candle. Then, gathering her papers, she left the room, to spend the night at a friend’s apartment.

As for the candles and bowls, and the smirched remains of the Hand of Glory—well, custodians at the Divine were accustomed to disposing of such things.

CHAPTER 3 Oliver and Angelica

I DON’T KNOW WHAT I was thinking when I dressed for my first day of class. Recalling September in New York, I guess, where the air would have the ringing chill of true autumn. Or else maybe it was some kind of magical thinking already at work inside my head, stirred by that terrible dream of angels in my room, the bizarre and inexplicable reality of the long crimson feather I had carefully wrapped and hidden in the bottom of my knapsack. For whatever reasons, I left my room poorly armed against the numbing heat outside. I wore black velvet trousers tucked into knee-high black leather boots and a white cotton poet’s shirt, and a man’s black satin vest, very old and with tarnished silver buttons. By the time I was halfway across the Mall the shirt clung damply to my back. A blister throbbed insistently on the side of my left ankle. The sun beat against my cheeks like hot fists, and for a few minutes I considered returning to my room to change, or just going back to bed.

But then I saw the boy who’d waved at me the day before, strolling across the parking lot with his Frisbee sticking out of a knapsack. When he saw me he smiled and waved.

A Sign, I thought. I was always looking for Signs. And so I went on.

The Department of Anthropology was at the far end of campus. Today all that part of the Divine has been built up, given over to the Bramwell Center for Dysfunctional Study and Thought. But then it was mostly trees, scraggly kudzu-hung locust trees and sumac bushes, with that nasty footing of broken bottles and tattered newsprint that you find in city woodlots.

I followed a narrow meandering path. All the tropic glamour that had clung to the city last night was gone, burned away by the remorseless sun. The air smelled faintly of garbage. I wiped my face, panting with relief when finally I saw my destination, rising from steaming sumac mounds like Atlantis from the sea.

I approached it slowly: an ancient building formed of blocks of granite so colossal they might have been stolen from some neglected menhir. Several students lolled on the steps. They had that ruddy heartiness I would soon associate with archaeology majors—sunburned and freckled, hair bleached by the sun, sturdy work boots and fatigues stained red with mud. They smiled but said nothing when I passed, feeling dandyish and stupid in my velvet pants and harlot’s boots. At the door I paused to catch my breath. They didn’t even glance at me as I went inside.

Edgar Hall was like all the buildings at the Divine. Cool and old and silent, even the loudest of voices hushed by the long high corridors with their aqueous light. I found my class on the second floor, the door propped open with a torn textbook. Like my room at Rossetti, the classroom had high arched windows, though these were of stained glass that formed uninspiring geometric patterns, blue, yellow, red, blue, yellow, red. After the soft green light of the corridor, the riotous colors were painful to look upon. For a moment I stood there, shy, embarrassed by my clothes. I nudged the textbook that held the door open. The spine crackled softly, and a signature of pages slipped to the floor.

Child Sacrifice in Edessa, A Study in Ritual Infanticide. I kicked the pages aside. When I entered the room, four faces in the front swiveled to look at me, then returned to staring at the runic words on a blackboard.

An unusually small wooden podium had been set beside the chalkboard, and in front of this a slight man stood sorting papers. Except for him and those four students, the place seemed empty. Some thirty-odd seats staggered toward the back of the room. In one of them someone slouched, head flung forward above the desk so that all I saw was a mass of long straight black hair, an arch of neck with a white crescent bitten out of sunburned skin. I had never sat in the front of a classroom in my life, but I didn’t want to be alone amidst all those empty chairs. So I settled on an empty seat near the black-haired apparition, who didn’t look up. I dug into my knapsack, grubbing among wadded tissue, leaky pens, three new notebooks already soiled with ink. For an instant I grazed something sharp: like running my fingers longways across a razor.

The feather.

I snatched my hand back, dug more deeply until I pulled out a heavy book. It fell open and I looked down at the curling pages, pretending to be engrossed. A much-worn copy of Finnegan’s Wake that I carried everywhere but never actually read. The room grew warmer, the other students whispered as I sweated and tried to focus my eyes.

“Helloo.”

I glanced aside. The apparition had moved. I saw streaming jet black hair above a field of white—white shirt, white pants, black wing tips with no socks—and large chapped hands swooping the hair from a sunburned face. When I lowered my gaze I saw the pants were not really white but baggy chinos, faded to the color of bone. The hands were large and nervous. After smoothing back all that hair they attacked a pair of spectacles with ugly black plastic frames, jamming them onto a hawkish face.

I started. Something—the hair, that delicately curved neck or perhaps just the suggestion of affected disarray—had made me think the figure was another girl.

But it wasn’t. It was a boy. He glanced warily behind him, then at the front of the room, then back at me, staring at me so intensely I started to feel a little uneasy. Then he stood, looking around nervously, and slid into the chair next to me. His chinos rode up to display glossy muscular calves, pale in front, sunburned in back, and completely hairless. Later he told me that he shaved his legs, something to do with the aerodynamics of cycling. But at that moment all I could think of was those eerie sexless angels gazing blindly from their ramparts at Rossetti Hall. He smelled of sweat and sun and 3-IN-ONE oil.

“Well then.”

He had a sweet voice, boyish, with that clipped prep school delivery that produces the faintest echo of an upper-crust British accent. Unexpectedly my heart was pounding. I closed my book and started to shove it back into my bag, when he leaned across his desk and peered up at me. His eyes were a piercing sea blue, startlingly bright against his sunburned cheeks. He had a sharp chin, a narrow, slightly upturned nose. The sort of handsome yet delicate face that you find in doomed matinee idols, James Dean or Rudolph Valentino. But his glasses were cheap and very dirty and seemed out of place. They might have been part of a bad disguise, Cary Grant as bumbling professor, or some ridiculous bit of stage business—put these on and no one will know you’re Superman! With a flourish he shoved them against his face again. Then he took the copy of Finnegan’s Wake from my hand, glanced at the title, and placed it back on my desk. His head cocked as he gazed at me and asked, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

He was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose and looked away.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

It was the Mad Hatter’s question to Alice, of course. I knew it because I had directed a children’s production of the play at home that summer. And now this boy was sitting there like it was the secret password, waiting for me to come up with the right retort. I remembered the feather in my knapsack. I remembered the figures in my room the night before, the rows of angels flanking my window. I shivered.

Something truly weird was happening. Some kind of test, some bizarre initiation that I hadn’t been warned of. My fingers tightened on the edge of my desk as I raised my head.

He was still staring at me. And suddenly, inexplicably, more than anything I had ever wanted before, I wanted him to like me. Wanted him to keep on looking at me like this: eyebrows raised, almost smiling—not snidely but gently, encouragingly, as though to say Come now, you know the next line.

And the crazy thing was, I did.

“‘Your hair wants cutting.’”

The almost-smile disappeared. He removed his glasses and peered at me more closely. He looked dismayed, but also confused. All the glory faded from his beautiful face, the way the blue drains from a cornflower after it’s been picked.

My heart sank. Something had gone wrong, his face showed it. He hadn’t expected me to know the answer—and why should he? Still…

“That’s right,” he said. He folded his hands on his desk, frowning. I felt idiotic and about fifteen years old, as if I were waiting to hear I hadn’t made the cut for the cheerleading squad. But I couldn’t help it. Maybe it was just my homesickness, the terror that I would never make another friend in my life. That I would never wear the right clothes or say the right thing again. But somehow, it seemed that everything hung on whether he liked me or not.

There was a long moment when I could hear the soft conversation of the others at the front of the room, the sound of a pen scratching on paper. Then, abruptly, he stretched a hand toward me and grinned.

“Oliver Wilde Crawford.”

I looked into those sea blue eyes and nodded slowly. As suddenly as it had appeared, his doubt was gone. We might have grown up together, played Ringolevio in the summer twilight, been betrothed as children. For a moment I could only stare, until he nudged me.

“Sweeney,” I said. I took his outstretched hand. On his shirt cuff a watch had been drawn in blue ballpoint ink, the hands pointing to four o’clock. Always time for tea. “Sweeney Cassidy.”

“Ah hah.” Oliver slumped back into his chair. His eyes narrowed. “Sweeney. You’re from someplace very cold. Maine?”

I shook my head. “New York. Why?”

He drew an imaginary line from my velvet-clad knees down to my boots. “It was cold in my room,” I said defensively.

“Of course it was.” He nodded, tugging at the collar of his oxford cloth shirt. “I rode my bike down from Newport,” he went on. He spoke so quickly that I had to lean forward to make sure I didn’t miss a word. “A 103 Vega, I traded my twelve-string for it—1964 Gibson, with that kind of marbled bakelite detailing around the frets? That guy from the Thirteenth Floor Elevators had one just like it. Everything else’s coming in a trunk. Greyhound. I didn’t get here till yesterday night, took me three days, no change of clothes, I washed these this morning.”

He held out his arm and I touched the cuff above the ballpoint wristwatch. It was damp, but I barely had time to register that before his hand shot back, swooping the hair from his eyes, and he continued.

“So New York. Manhattan? Detour from the High School for Performing Arts? Or no, NYU film school but then you saw that Truffaut movie and—”

He cuffed my boot. “—here you are, Iphigenia in Northeast, our own Voila! And you’re taking Warnick’s class,” he added approvingly, adjusting his glasses. “Have you seen the pre-Columbians yet?”

I blinked. I was sweating so heavily I was surprised there wasn’t a pool at my feet. “Pre-Columbians?”

“At Dumbarton Oaks. We can go this afternoon. They open at two.” He glanced down at his wrist. “Can you borrow a bike? Or the 63 bus goes there.”

I felt a faint buzz at my temples, a thrumming sound that spread across my skull and down my spine. I felt stoned; at least, I couldn’t make any sense out of what Oliver was saying, although he seemed to think he was carrying on a normal conversation.

“The bus,” I said.

Oliver nodded. “Okay,” he said, pleased. “Sweeney, huh? Mockingbirds outside your window last night, near the Convent of the Sacred Heart? O sacred head surrounded?” He tilted his head sideways, gazing at me with glittering eyes.

I stared back, nodding like I had some idea what he was talking about. If he wasn’t so unabashedly beautiful, you’d think he was nuts. But this was Oliver’s peculiar gift—one of them, at least—that if you didn’t understand him, or were confused (and I usually was), or even just bored, you always felt like it was your fault.

“Tom O’Bedlam,” he said, and gave my chair a little kick by way of urging me to join the fun. “You remember. Gloomy Orion and the Dog outside your window while your parents were arguing downstairs. Spread your knees and fly away. ‘Sweeney Among the Nightingales.’”

I swallowed and riffled the pages of Finnegan’s Wake. This was worse than an oral exam. But then from outside came a faint burst of song: right on cue, a mockingbird in unwonted daytime concert. And suddenly I knew what he was talking about.

“Dumbarton Oaks,” I said. “‘Let us go and make our visit.’” It was the only line of Eliot I could remember.

Oliver nodded excitedly. “Right!” He removed his glasses, spun them by an earpiece. “Now, we’ll have to eat first—”

He rattled on, more unfamiliar names. Blue mirrors and Georgetown and numbers, 330 and six-oh-five, but was that a time or a bus or an address? It was my first exposure to one of Oliver’s odd monologues, composed equally of literary and private allusions and delivered at breakneck speed in his prep school voice, punctuated by dramatic tugs at his long hair and glasses. I nervously twirled a lock of my own hair and just kept nodding. I have a gift for looking and talking as though I know more than I really do.

But Oliver didn’t care. Oliver just kept on talking, smiling that loopy grin that let you know he’d spent a lifetime being loved by everyone he’d ever met.

“…so we’ll hit the Blue Mirror, hardly worth the transfer anyway, save your quarters for the Rockola at Gunchers and some Pall Malls, excellent sort of sub-Deco architecture and—”

Behind us footsteps echoed down the hall and then stopped. I glanced away from Oliver to see a figure standing in the doorway. A somewhat hesitant figure, the carnival light from our classroom’s windows broidering it with gold and red and green.

Now what? I thought.

It was a girl. Another of Dr. Warnick’s students, of course—if you could conceive of a Piero de’Franceschi madonna showing up for class in a Bloomingdale’s peasant dress and high-heeled Fiorucci sandals and Coach bag, trailing a cloud of perfume that smelled of sandalwood and oranges. She peered into the classroom doubtfully, turning until her gaze fell upon Oliver and me. Her eyebrows arched in a delicate show of disbelief.

“Is this Professor Warnick’s class?”

She had a beautiful throaty voice, with a slight vibrato. Oliver fell silent. I could hear the students in the front of the room whispering.

“Balthazar S. Warnick. That is correct.” Oliver found his voice and gestured at an empty seat next to him. The girl smiled, a rapturous smile that made you feel lucky just to have glimpsed it. I glanced at Oliver and could see that he was actually blushing, twiddling his glasses and staring at her, transfixed.

And suddenly all the cold misery that had overwhelmed me before rushed back. Because, of course, this was who was supposed to know the answer to Oliver’s ridiculous opening question. This was who he was supposed to meet—not me. Never me. Though from his expression he seemed quite unnerved. He looked away, shoving his glasses back onto his nose. “Ummm—a seat?” he asked, and tentatively patted the empty chair.

The girl stared at Oliver. Her eyes narrowed, and a curious expression crept over her face. Mingled apprehension and longing, but also a sort of restrained hauteur, as though she waited for a servant to come show her to her chair. As though she, too, had been expecting someone different. It was an unsettling expression to see in someone my own age. I wished I had taken a seat in the front of the room, wished that I’d never come here at all.

Her gaze flicked from Oliver to the chair beside him, and then to me. I found myself staring right back at her—a cat may look at a queen, right? For a long moment her eyes held mine. Luminous eyes, bottle green and almond-shaped, with long curled lashes tinted a dusky green as improbable as her irises. At the front of the room the muted conversation had stopped.

“We-ell,” the girl said softly. She shifted her bag to her other shoulder and stepped into the room. Then, to my surprise, she spun on her heel and sank into an empty chair.

The chair next to me.

“I am Angelica di Rienzi,” she said, and smiled.

“Wow.” An explosive breath from someone in the front of the room. “Daddy, buy me one of those.”

She was like a pre-Raphaelite Venus. Those enormous slanted eyes, cheekbones so high and sharp you’d cut your lip if you tried to kiss them. A wide curved mouth carefully shaped and colored with pale violet lip-gloss, hiding perfectly white teeth and just the slightest hint of an overbite. Her hair was a gorgon’s tangle of bronze curls, pulled back loosely with a thick purple velvet ribbon and hanging halfway down her back. Between soft tendrils glinted a pair of gold hoop earrings set with amethyst beads, and around her long neck hung a fine gold chain set with another, single tear-shaped amethyst. She wore a flowing cotton peasant dress, with short gathered sleeves and a scoop neck and little violet ribbons trailing from the bodice. Your basic trust fund hippie look, and just about anyone who affected it—me, for instance—would look infantile or perhaps, if they were fortunate, engagingly girlish.

But not Angelica di Rienzi. Angelica looked regal. How can I describe what it was like, seeing her in a university classroom? A classroom at the Divine, to be sure, but still just a classroom, smelling of chalk and cigarettes, floor wax and earnest fear. It was like glimpsing a peacock on a lawn in New Rochelle; like hearing someone sing the Magnificat in Grand Central Station. No one could look at her and not believe that the world would give her whatever she wanted. Not even Oliver. Not even me.

She tilted her head. “And you must be—?”

“Sweeney,” I said, my voice cracking. “Sweeney Cassidy.”

“Angelica.” Oliver repeated her name slowly, unconsciously aping Angelica’s theatrical diction. He moved his desk and chair closer to hers and extended his hand. “Oliver Wilde Crawford.”

Angelica nodded graciously. She pulled a notebook from her bag and let the purse slide to the floor, then, with another dazzling smile, took his hand.

In the front of the room someone giggled. I twisted around to see a heavyset young man in mirrored sunglasses staring at Angelica, his face expressionless, a cigarette dangling from one hand. I had a glimpse of dark eyes and a handsome, broad face with Asian features. Then with deliberate slowness he turned away.

“Are you related to the Wilde?” Angelica was asking Oliver. Her innocent emerald gaze made me kiss the pre-Columbians good-bye.

“Ah, yes. ‘The old somdomite,’” he said, giving her one of his vulpine smiles. “As a matter of fact Vyvyan—his son, Vyvyan—”

But at that moment Professor Warnick cleared his throat.

“Good morning, gentlemen and ladies. Welcome to the University of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine.”

One of the other students called back, “Good morning!” and another laughed. Professor Warnick gave a small tight smile, more like a stoat baring its teeth, and glanced at the papers in his hand. He was a diminutive man, his longish black hair touched with grey, but with a young, rosy face and blue eyes that blazed almost angrily beneath thick black eyebrows. He looked comfortable at his podium, despite clothes as ill suited to the weather as my own: a stylish and expensively tailored suit of charcoal black worsted, cream-colored shirt, and an expansive paisley tie of purple and poison green. The podium he leaned against had been specially designed for him. Its brass fittings were set into richly gleaming wood—rowan, I was to learn, and ancient oak imported from Aylesbury—the whole thing set upon polished casters that squeaked malevolently when it was wheeled from classroom to classroom. It might have been all of four feet tall, and Professor Warnick himself perhaps a foot taller.

“Ahem.” He inclined his head toward the back of the room. “Perhaps the Ghostly Trio would like to join the rest of us—?”

A titter from the other students. I gathered my things, abashed. Oliver stumbled noisily from his chair and took my elbow, looking past me at Angelica. She stared at Professor Warnick before giving him a small smile. His own cool gaze remained fixed as Oliver led me through the maze of empty chairs to the front of the room, Angelica behind us.

“Will this be sufficient, sir?” Oliver asked. He paused beside three seats and cocked his head. Professor Warnick smiled slightly.

“That will be fine,” he murmured, and began handing out sheaves of Xeroxes.

We settled into our chairs. Oliver looked at Angelica. He whispered, “Have you a writing implement? And some paper?”

She rumbled in her bag and came up with a gold Cross pen, tried to tear a sheet of paper silently from one of her pristine notebooks. Professor Warnick looked up as she hurriedly passed the contraband to Oliver. Immediately he began sketching cartoonish figures in the margins. I glanced back at Angelica. She had opened a notebook with marbled cover and endpapers, and was writing carefully at the top of the first page with a Rapidograph pen, drawing elegant cursives in peacock blue ink. I looked at my own battered notebook and my pen: leaky Bic ballpoint, black ink, cap missing. I decided not to take notes.

Professor Warnick’s class was strange. He began by dismissing other methods of teaching the subject at hand—

“Anthropology is very good as far as it goes, which is not very, since the discipline itself is only as old as The Golden Bough. And archaeology you will find is more, rather than less, problematical. Ah! you think, but how can that be so, since with archaeology we have, at least, the physical evidence in hand, it is only up to us to apprehend the culprit! But, I ask you, how many of you, looking upon a truly ancient artifact from a truly unknown culture, would have the slightest idea of what it was?”

Professor Warnick’s clear tenor rang through the room’s musty air. Dead silence from his students. Only from Oliver’s desk came faint scratchings and squeakings as he continued to sketch. Professor Warnick swept us all with a dismissive gaze. Then from somewhere (but where? it seemed too bulky to have fit in his pocket) he swept forth an object consisting of a straight upright metal rod with crossbars and several dangling narrow strips of metal. Although cleaned and burnished to a warm bronze color, it still looked stained and worn and undeniably ancient.

“What is this?” he asked. When no one answered he pointed to the heavyset Asian boy in the front row. “Mister”—craning his neck to read a computerized class list—”José Malabar?”

Mr. José Malabar removed his sunglasses and squinted, stretched a hand to touch one of the dangling bits.

“Uh uh uh,” scolded Professor Warnick. “No touching. Quick!—”

“A cattle prod?”

Laughter. The girl beside José Malabar suggested a hair curler. Professor Warnick stalked with quick small steps around the room, holding the rod aloft like a torch. Finally he stopped, turning all the way around once, like a dancer. I was terrified he would call on me. But no, his mouth was opening to say something, obviously he was about to reveal the true purpose of his toy, when…

“It’s a sistrum,” said Oliver. He didn’t raise his head. His glasses balanced precariously on the very tip of his nose as he scribbled away. Angelica drew her breath in sharply and glanced at me. I slid lower in my seat and watched Professor Warnick.

At Oliver’s words our teacher had frozen. Now he pivoted neatly, turning until he faced Oliver.

“That’s right,” Professor Warnick said in a soft voice. “And what is a sistrum, Mister Crawford—?”

“An Egyptian instrument used in the worship of Isis.” Oliver narrowed his eyes pensively. “Fourth Dynasty, I believe.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Professor Warnick. “Third!”

He raised the instrument and shook it. It made a harsh jangling, the sound of nails slowly being dropped onto glass. My scalp prickled. The sound died away, but for an instant I thought I heard something else. Another sound, like the distant sawing of cicadas in long grass, hot and tremulous and anxious.

Then it was gone. I lifted my head, chagrined to find myself yawning, and Professor Warnick staring at me with an odd smile.

“I will see you all on Wednesday,” he said, and minced back to the front of the room. “Please have read The Golden Ass by then—don’t complain, you’ll find it goes very quickly! The Adlington translation, I believe the bookstore should have it in by now. Oh—”

He looked up from piling papers and sistrum and the end of his tie into a cracked leather briefcase. “I am supposed to mention that there is a reception tonight for Molyneux scholars, at Garvey House. At—”

He peered at a stack of papers rustling between his fingers. “Oh, I don’t know. Seven, I think. Are there any Molyneux scholars here?”

Students paused in their flight to the door. I stood uncertainly between Oliver stumbling to his feet and Angelica carefully inscribing Golden Ass, Adlington Trans. into her notebook.

“None?” Professor Warnick said. His gaze flicked across the room. “Mister Crawford? Your friends?”

Angelica looked up, then slowly raised her hand. In the front of the room José Malabar did the same.

And so did Oliver.

“Ah,” said Professor Warnick, and returned to gathering his things.

In the hallway I tried to get a better look at José Malabar, but he hurried off, fingers twitching around a cigarette.

“What’s a Molyneux scholar?” I wondered aloud, but Oliver had already swept past. Angelica halted in the middle of the corridor, poring over a burgundy leather datebook.

“Damn,” she muttered. “Can you tell me what that says? Is it 102 or 202 Reardon?”

I read the fine italicized print as 102. Angelica nodded absently, digging in her bag until she came up with a pair of eyeglasses. “It’s my contacts,” she explained, holding the glasses to her face and staring at her miniscule handwriting. “I’ve got those new tinted lenses and I really can’t see out of them. Okay 102. You were right.”

Tinted lenses! Well, that would account for the eyes, at least. Angelica flashed me a smile and closed her bag. “Thanks, Sweeney. He’s a little strange, isn’t he?”

I thought she was talking about Professor Warnick, but then I saw her gaze dart to where Oliver leaned against the wall. “Java?” he called, snapping his fingers.

Angelica shook her head. “I have a class at Reardon.”

“We’ll walk you over.” Oliver waited for us to catch up with him. “Sweeney looks half-asleep, anyway.”

“I can’t—I’ve got Medieval History—”

Oliver gave me a smug grin. “Me too: kid stuff. Lecture. Origins of civilization, conversion of Constantine. Pseudo-Ambrose and the Avicennian heresy. Got the notes from a guy on my floor who took it last year. We can catch up on the reading tomorrow.”

I laughed, then saw he was serious. “We-ell—”

Behind us footsteps echoed. I caught a faint whiff of sweetly scented pipe tobacco. “So! You’re this year’s crop of scholars.”

It was Professor Warnick. He walked beside us with small neat steps, his blue eyes glittering. “You, of course, Angelica.”

Angelica gave me a queer, almost apologetic look, then nodded.

Professor Warnick smiled. “And you?” He raised his eyebrows at Oliver, who clicked his heels and bowed. “What a silly question! Yet another scion of the Crawford clan. And you?” He looked up at me roguishly.

“N—no—”

“No?” There was a world of disappointment in the word. I flushed, started to stammer some excuse but stopped.

Because from somewhere down the hall came that sound again, the droning noise that had seemed an echo of the sistrum’s graceless note. For a moment the hallway seemed to vibrate, as though we all stood inside some huge drum that had been struck. Then silence. I was staring into Professor Warnick’s bright feral eyes, and he was staring back at me with pity and what might have been relief.

“I see,” he said softly. “Well, I think you will all enjoy The Golden Ass, and I will enjoy meeting with you again on Wednesday.” A mocking smile as he tilted his head in farewell. “And some of you I may see tonight at the reception.”

We watched him march off, his silhouette growing smaller and more gnomelike as he approached the end of the hallway. Abruptly he disappeared, leaving us alone and at a loss for words.

“Well,” Angelica said at last, “I don’t want to be late.”

We clattered down the steps without talking. I felt overwhelmed and a little shaken. At first I was afraid to say anything, but then the heat began to work at me like a drug. Relief flooded me, and exhilaration, and fear: as though I had just escaped some terrible accident.

“God,” I said as we finally burst out into daylight. “Is it just me, or was that, like, the weirdest class you’ve ever seen?”

Angelica and Oliver looked at me curiously. “Guess not,” I said, and shut up.

The campus had come alive since last night. There were students everywhere, and enough anachronistically dressed clerical types to cast The Greatest Story Ever Told. As we headed toward the Strand, Oliver pointed out things of interest—

“Dutch elm trees, planted in 1689 by Goodman Prater and Arthur Simons. They’ve died of blight everywhere else in the United States, except on the seventh fairway of the back nine at Winged Foot.”

Or, “That’s Brother Taylor Messingthwaite. He was ethical consultant on the Manhattan Project, teaches postgrad Confucian Ethics and Modern Christian Problems. Last year he got a Pemslip Grant for five hundred thousand dollars.”

Or, “That’s the Ma es-Sáma mosque. This sheik donated a million dollars to build it, so Islamic students here would have a place to worship. No one else’s allowed inside. It’s got a sixty-foot lap pool underneath.”

Or, “Wild Bill! He’s on my floor, grows psilocybin mushrooms in a terrarium, plus he has this hash oil factory with Martin Sedgewick—yo, Bill!”

Angelica laughed at each pronouncement. I said nothing. The effort of trying to maintain my poise had given me a headache. And it seemed like a bad omen, to be skipping class on my first day at college. The heat blurred my vision. My velvet pants felt as though they’d been dipped in hot wax. In the nether distance, the soaring towers of the Shrine shone like glimpses of some watched-for shore. It all made me light-headed. Not giddy, but a cheerless dizziness, as though I had opened my front door at home and somehow found myself at the edge of some windswept chasm.

“Reardon Hall. Designed by Emmet Thorson, the pedophile—he hanged himself in the foyer after it was completed,” Oliver announced as we approached a small Palladian-style building. “Same architect as designed Rossetti—”

“What’s a Molyneux scholar?”

Oliver halted, teetering on the curb with one grimy wing tip toeing into the grass. He stared at me nonplussed.

“I mean, is it some secret thing?” I went on. “Like I’m not supposed to ask?”

Oliver and Angelica exchanged a look. After a moment Angelica said, “Well, yes, it is. It’s a—it’s something they test you for, before admitting you here.”

“But I never—I mean, they didn’t ask me. I don’t think. Is it like an advanced placement thing?”

Oliver pursed his lips. “You sacrifice some accuracy in describing it that way.”

I tried not to sound petulant. “So what’s the big deal? I mean, Warnick was talking about it in class. It can’t be that secret.”

“It’s not that kind of thing,” Angelica said slowly. The warm wind stirred her tangle of curls. She brushed the hair from her face and turned, sighing, to stare at Reardon’s neoclassical facade. “Some of it’s hereditary, a legacy—I mean if your father went here or something. It’s more like—well, like Skull and Bones. Have you ever heard of that? At Yale?”

“Sure. If you’re a member and somebody asks you about it, you have to leave the room.”

“Right. It’s more that kind of secret—”

“But what do they test you for?”

Angelica smiled wryly and shrugged. A few yards away, students lolling on the steps of Reardon were starting to gather their books and knapsacks, extinguishing spent cigarettes or lighting new ones. “I have to go. You’re in Rossetti, aren’t you? I saw your name on a dorm list. I’m on the third floor. You want to meet for dinner?”

“I guess. But—”

“The reception’s at seven,” said Oliver. He ducked his head, making agreeable noises as three white-clad friars rushed past us. “If we get separated, we’ll all meet there.”

Angelica laughed—a surprisingly loud and heartfelt laugh, not at all what you expected from such a carefully assembled beauty. She shook her finger at me and said, “Well, Sweeney, let’s you and me not get separated. I’ll wait for you outside the dining hall—”

She turned and hurried off, head bowed so that all I could see was her flag of shining curls.

“Come on,” Oliver said. He was staring after Angelica with a hungry expression, but he sounded relieved. “The coffee’s pretty good at the Shrine cafeteria. Then we can hit Dumbarton Oaks.”

“Let me make sure I got my wallet—”

Oliver drew a wad of bills from his shirt pocket. “Don’t worry about it.”

He spun around, like Puck in a play, and added, “Don’t sweat this Molyneux thing. Nothing but legacies. Alumni stuff, old school tie, you know. Another Old Boy Network—they’re just Very Old Boys, that’s all. Come tonight and you can see for yourself, okay?”

His blue eyes were intensely earnest, almost pleading. I smiled gratefully and nodded.

“Sure,” I said, and flapped the front of my shirt to cool myself. “Whatever you say, boss.”

Oliver grinned, walking backward and gesturing wildly as he began once more to lecture me on the plight of the city’s Dutch elms. I was so busy watching him that I almost didn’t notice the two figures that stood watching us from the curb. A diminutive man in black and, behind him, an almost grotesquely tall figure in an ankle-length black monsignor’s cape, the hood pulled so close around its face that its features were lost to sight, except for the malevolent glitter of a pair of huge and watchful eyes.

CHAPTER 4 The Lunula

MAGDA FOUND THE LUNULA on her first dig—not her first archaeological foray, but the first one she supervised. Not coincidentally, it was the first excavation she had carried out without any direct regulation by the Benandanti. She was twenty-six years old at the time, in the postgrad program at UC Berkeley, heavily involved with her doctorate and the work that a few years later would become Daughters of the Setting Sun. She had gotten some funding through UC Berkeley, but most of it was to come from a wealthy patron named Michael Haring.

He was the CEO of an American automobile corporation: forty-two years old, Harvard-educated, never married. Magda met him at the Divine, at a reception in his honor. Michael Haring was one of the Benandanti, though his provenance was industry rather than the more rarefied realms of the university. Still, he had donated funds for several expeditions and financed the renovation of the reading room at Colum Library. He collected Neolithic art, concentrating on those tiny bronze figures of animals that were often found in Celtic graves and burial pits. He also collected young women, and was especially partial to the dark-haired Ivy League types who reminded him of his own youthful dreams of a career in classics.

“That’s him?” Magda was still young enough to be impressed by someone whose picture had appeared on the cover of Time magazine. “Michael Haring?”

The man next to her nodded. “Sure is. They put a little plaque in the reading room with his name on it. But hell, he could have rebuilt the whole building.”

“No kidding.” Magda moved away, thoughtfully sipping her Tanqueray and tonic.

For almost two years now she had been seeking financial support for an excavation in northern Estavia. She had received the promise of small grants from the Divine and UCLA, and even a tiny stipend from the National Science Foundation. But both her supporters at the Divine and those at UCLA’s Department of European Archaeology felt that her proposed work was not important enough, dealing as it did with a site associated with a minor European goddess cult.

“Why don’t you go with Harold Mosreich to Yaxchilán?” That had been Balthazar Warnick’s suggestion. “He thinks that one of the stelæ there has a connection with the main pyramid at Chichén Itzá. Plus he has that National Geographic film crew—you know, ‘Mayan Adventure!’ or something like that.”

Magda shook her head. “The Mayans are overdone. This is something new, Balthazar,” she said fervently. “We both know that. Why won’t you back me?”

Balthazar had been her advisor since her freshman year. Even then she’d wondered what someone like Balthazar Warnick—a world-renowned antiquities scholar, the man responsible for cataloging the Metropolitan Museum’s Widdecombe Collection of Cycladic Art—was doing teaching an introductory anthropology course, even at a place like the Divine. Especially at a place like the Divine.

She’d found out, of course, when he’d tapped her for the Benandanti. Since then she and Balthazar had butted heads more than once, most recently over her decision to leave the Divine for UC.

“Not the place for a scholar of your rank.” Balthazar never raised his voice, but his mouth had been tight as he rifled through a stack of photographs, the most recent mailing from the Chichén Itzá site. “California! Jesus, Magda, you tilt this country on its side and everything loose rolls into California! There’s nothing out there but hopheads and surfers and rioting students. How are you going to get any work done?”

She’d gone anyway. She never told Balthazar that part of Berkeley’s appeal—part of the appeal of the entire West Coast—was precisely that open-mindedness that Balthazar and many of the Benandanti dismissed as quackery or, at its worst, a threat to their ancient ways. But she remained on good terms with her old mentor. Remained an active member of the Benandanti, even when her own work began to diverge from what they felt was important.

What they did not feel was important was the small but growing body of evidence that Magda, and June Harrington before her, had uncovered: all of it pointing to the existence of a matrilineal culture in ancient Europe. Balthazar at least had been courteous, reading preliminary drafts of her articles for Antiquities, but he did not feel that Magda’s theories were worth pursuing into the field.

“It’s small potatoes, Magda.” He turned and stared out the window of his office, to where the Shrine’s blue dome glistened in the sun. “Sure, you’ll find something there, but it’s not going to ever amount to anything. I mean, look at Catal Huyuk: there’s one of your goddess sites, a big one, too, but it doesn’t really add up to much, does it?”

Magda had listened, her foot tracing Xs on the expensive kilim that covered Balthazar’s floor.

Doesn’t add up to what you’re looking for, she thought furiously. But she said nothing. She hadn’t expected him to agree with her. Balthazar was after much bigger fish than her modest research had discovered. The Benandanti had financed digs in Jerusalem, Sardinia, Luxor; at Karbala’ in Iraq, and Katta-Kurgan near Samarkand; in Niger and Jamshedpur and the Hentiyn Mountains in Mongolia. Anyplace where the Benandanti had ever built a temple or cathedral of clay or gold or marble was suitable for resurrection. As was anyplace where their ancient enemy had once been worshiped: Athens, Knossos, Ur.

But a minor Balkan river goddess in a Soviet backwater was not exactly the powerful and vengeful deity they had been set to guard against. And so there was no funding for Magda’s project.

Fortunately, there was at least one other person willing to entertain her ideas.

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” She smiled brightly at her host. It was a few days after the Divine’s reception for Michael Haring, a few days after Magda had finagled the invitation to visit Haring at his Georgetown town house. “It’s a helmet crest, first century B.C.”

Michael Haring turned the figure over in his hand. A little bronze boar, no longer than his middle finger, its raised dorsal spine worked with an intricate pattern of whorls that ended in the tiny beaked heads of cranes. He whistled softly. “It’s absolutely stunning. Where’d you find it, Magda?”

“It was June Harrington’s. She gave it to me a few years ago, for a birthday present.”

“And it came from your proposed site?”

She nodded. “The American Museum mounted an expedition there in 1923, with June and her first husband, Lowell Ackroyd. She’s given me her field notes, and some of the pictures he took. They’re not very good—the photos, I mean, her notebooks are superb—but I can tell, Michael, I can just tell! June says they found three burial pits with evidence of ritual animal sacrifices, and that—”

She gestured at the bronze figurine. “—that came from the last one they uncovered, Eleven-A. The neighboring valleys show signs of having very advanced Bronze Age settlements—we’re talking collective burials, hypogea with detailed wall paintings, and heating from thermal springs, maybe even some kind of linear script on some of the pottery fragments. The whole valley’s a potential gold mine. The surrounding heath is pretty marshy, which means there’s a good chance that whatever we come up with could be well preserved.”

Michael nodded, turning the bronze boar between his fingers. “Why did they stop the dig?”

“Winter. The valley becomes completely impassable in winter. The first storm came in early October; June and Lowell and the crew barely got out before the snows blocked off the pass.”

“I see.” Carefully Michael set the boar back into its nest of yellowed newsprint. He reached for the bottle of claret beside it and raised an eyebrow. “More?”

“Please. It’s wonderful.” Magda held out her glass, smiling brilliantly and hoping he wouldn’t notice how nervous she was. “So!” She toasted him and let the first rich mouthful of wine slide down her throat. “What do you think?”

Michael Haring looked around his living room. There were glass cabinets everywhere, some arranged against the wall, others floating like huge crystal pendants amidst the expanse of black leather furniture and white shag carpeting. The cabinets were filled with figures very like the one that rested on his table, and with silver torques, beaked masks, bronze armor in the shape of wings, plaques inlaid with bone and silver and crudely polished stones. He surveyed them all, not with pride but with a certain wistfulness that gave his dark eyes a mournful cast. An Iron Age prince’s ransom in artifacts and metalwork: nearly all of it obtained on the black market, spirited from original holdings in Britain and Czechoslovakia and Turkey and Greece. He was tied up in litigation right now with the embassy of a small country in Eastern Europe, fighting over the disposition of his most-prized treasure: the mummified head of a Bronze Age man found in a peat bog, and now displayed within a tall glass case like a casket stood upon its end.

“I think,” he said carefully, staring at the tea-colored head in its crystal chamber. “I think that this could be a very important adventure you’re planning, Miss Magda. For both of us.” And turning, he let his hand rest upon her thigh.

Six months later Magda and her crew were in Çaril Kytur. The site was in a desolate corner of northern Estavia, deep within the Psalgÿuk Mountains—tall, needle-thin spars of quartz and flint that shot up against leaden skies that rarely showed the sun. Like something out of a Dürer etching of Hell, Magda thought, or Murnau’s Nosferatu. Even the trees were stunted, crippled pines and alders whose roots poked through the thin acid soil where they sought footing.

It was late July. In the three days it took Magda and her companions to drive from the Estavian capital to Çaril Kytur, they passed only two other vehicles: an empty Intourist bus with Moscow plates, and an ancient grey jitney piled high with wooden cartons, live chickens and ducks tied to its extremities with red twine. The bone-jarring trip was enough to make Magda wish that she’d left Janine, at least, back in Washington.

“This is not, like, what my faculty advisor told me to expect,” Janine announced after their second night in the Jeep. “I thought I was going to get to practice my Russian, but there’s nobody here.”

“Well, we’re stuck with each other now,” Magda said grimly. “So if you want to bail out, start walking.”

No one did. A few hours later they’d reached their destination.

“Oh man,” breathed Nicky D’Amato, another of the triumvirate who’d signed on from the Divine. “Are you sure you read that map right?”

Magda sighed. “I’m sure.”

They stumbled from the Jeep and looked down into the valley of Çaril Kytur, a long narrow spit of land crosshatched with streams that fed into a huge marshy area to the south. It was a dispiriting landscape. The stones dun-colored, pleached with lichen and moss; the few trees hunched against the wind that whistled down through a gap in the mountains to the north. Lowell Ackroyd’s theory had been that a band of Paleolithic hunters was stranded here during one of the minor ice ages, surviving to found the ancient encampment known as Çaril Kytur, Belly of the Moon. Certainly it was hard to imagine why anyone would choose to live here. The surrounding mountains were sparsely populated, mostly by shepherds who eked out a living from the barren hillsides and more temperate valleys. Magda had thought the natives would be eager to supplement their meager incomes with what they could earn from assisting on the dig, but that wasn’t the case at all.

“He says they’re not interested.”

George Wayford, the last of the three grad students who had accompanied Magda from D.C., shook his head. They were sitting in front of Magda’s tent—Magda, George, Nicky, Janine—the entire Çaril Kytur crew. Overhead the sky was grey and skinned-looking. A cold wind blew down from the mountain pass to the north, sending skeins of mist racing across the encampment. Magda shivered in her heavy Icelandic wool sweater and wondered why she’d thought this was a better idea than the Yucatan. “He says the whole valley is stantikic’t—”

“What? Haunted?” Janine interrupted derisively.

George squatted in front of the hissing campfire and lit a cigarette. “No,” he said, and tossed his match into the flames. George had majored in Slavic languages at Georgetown, and was hoping to find linguistic links between the Estavians of the Psalgÿuk range and the neighboring Cuclterinyi culture in the Transylvanian Alps, and even modern Crete. “Isch’raval, that would be haunted. This is more like tainted.”

“But they’re not coming. That’s what you’re telling us, right? That we are it as far as personnel goes—” Nicky looked balefully at his three companions, then picked up a stone and shied it at the Jeep. “Fuckin’ A, I knew we should have called first.”

“Called?” Magda laughed in spite of herself. “Christ, Nicky, there’s not a phone for seventy miles!” She got to her feet, rubbing her hands and doing a mental inventory. “Look, we don’t need anyone else, not really. We’ll start right in with the shaft at Eleven-A. That’s the one June said they’d just opened when they had to leave. It’s where they found that boar helmet crest—”

(now part of Michael Haring’s collection)

“—and it won’t be as much work as digging out a totally new site. We should be able to handle it on our own.”

Janine and Nicky shot her dark looks, but George was already heading for the makeshift lean-to where their tools were stored. “All right then,” Magda said, and started after him.

It took them four days just to dig through the accumulated debris and soil that had silted over the old site. But once they’d cleared away the dirt and rotting shrubs, the excavation that June Harrington had named Eleven-A proved to be remarkably well preserved. Nearly fifty years had passed since the original team from the American Museum had set up scaffolding around the burial shaft. But when they reached the first level, Magda and her students found that the timbers placed by Lowell Ackroyd were still holding back the chamber’s earthen walls.

“I’d feel better if we had some new beams there,” George announced, staring dubiously at the sagging timbers.

“I’m not climbing down otherwise,” Janine said flatly, peering into the dim reaches of the pit.

Magda nodded and took the shovel from Janine’s hands. “Well, then, I guess you and Nicky can start cutting down trees.”

By the end of the first week they had erected a second scaffold around the first, the whole shaky edifice sunk twenty feet into the earth. Curiosity and greed had gotten the better of the natives in the nearest village. Now Magda had a half dozen laborers helping to pull up buckets of soil and gravel. Janine carried these to a system of seines and screens set up nearby, and sifted through the debris for anything that might hold a clue to the nature of the shaft. So far they’d found potsherds, and a few bones that were probably a dog’s, but nothing more dramatic—no figurines, no human remains, nothing to make this site worth much more time and effort.

“I know it’s a burial pit,” Magda said stubbornly. She was balanced precariously atop a ladder sunk into the soft marshy ground at the bottom of the site, sipping her morning brew from a battered tin mug. She grimaced and stared at the cup’s murky contents, a concoction made from powdered beetroot that was the locals’ answer to coffee. “God, this is awful—no wonder they’re all so surly.”

“You’re gonna need something besides dog bones and a little bronze boar to determine that,” George replied mildly from a few steps below her on the ladder. “Chasar—” Chasar was the spokesman for the locals. “—Chasar says this hole is fancr’ted—unholy, you know, profane. Not a sacred site—”

“Or it could mean it was a pre-Christian site, which obviously it is,” Magda retorted. “And if the locals have some vague memory of that, they’d think it was profane, meaning pagan, meaning bad juju. Unholy,” she added, frowning for emphasis.

“Nah. This could’ve been a midden, someone might have pitched that ol’ boar in here—” George flicked at the wall and sent a miniature avalanche of pebbles and dirt flying to the bottom of the shaft. “Or it could have fallen out of somebody’s Neolithic pocket—”

“Do you mind?”

From the belly of the pit Nicky shouted amidst the hail of stones, brandishing a shovel. He wore waders and a totally useless plastic Soviet-made hard hat, and was covered with mud from head to toe. “Dammit, George!”

“Sorry, man.” George waved apologetically, shifting his weight on the ladder. Magda realigned herself to keep from falling. “But it’s been over a week, Magda—I really, really think we should abandon this site and check out that mound by the marsh. There could be human remains there, and the chances of preservation are so much better—”

“One more day,” said Magda. She and George had been having this argument for almost a week now. “June said she thought it was a burial site, and she wouldn’t—”

“June is senile, Magda! That was fifty years ago; they still believed in Piltdown Man—”

“One more day,” Magda said stubbornly. Without looking, she turned her mug upside down and dumped its contents. “Okay? Just—”

“Goddammit, Magda!” Nicky shrieked from below.

George and Magda burst out laughing. Magda shook the hair from her eyes and smiled. “Let that be a warning, Wayford.”

“Okay, okay,” George said, and grinned. The ladder shimmied as he climbed back to the top. “One more day.”

That night she couldn’t sleep. Part of it was anxiety over abandoning June Harrington’s site. George was right, of course. The shaft at Eleven-A had yielded little in the way of data, a few bits of bone and fired clay that might have been found anywhere—nothing remarkable at all. The mound near the swampy end of the valley might well hold more interesting material, and there was always the hope of finding human or animal remains preserved by the bog.

“Damn,” Magda swore aloud. She lay inside her tent, arms folded behind her head, and stared at the canvas ceiling. Outside the moon must be nearly full. The tent’s worn green fabric glowed so that she felt as though she were floating in a phosphorescent sea, the cool breeze carrying the scent of the tiny night-blooming stonecrops that were the only flowers that grew in the valley.

One more day.

There must have been some reason why June Harrington had been convinced of the site’s importance, something besides a little bronze boar and a few canine tibiae. It was the fragment of the lunula, of course: such a small thing to build a life’s work on, and lost now in the Museum. Magda wished she had questioned her mentor more carefully, but June had been so certain, her usually restrained site notes so exuberant—

There had been a curious addendum to this entry. Curious because June so seldom revised her first impressions—she was in the habit of being right. And so Magda had been surprised to see something scrawled in the margin, a quotation that had obviously been recorded decades after the original entry.

And after this, the words:

Magda started as a sudden gust sent the tent’s flaps and lines humming, and an eddy of dust flying up from the door panels.

“The hell with it,” she said aloud, and scrambled from her sleeping bag.

Outside the night air struck her like a clapper to a bell, making the blood sing inside her head and her ears throb painfully. She shivered in her heavy sweater and held the flashlight close to her chest, as though its pale beam might give some warmth. In front of George’s tent she hesitated. Even with the shrill wind she could hear his breathing, loud and measured as the pulse of a metronome. For a long moment she stood there, as though waiting for him to rise and come out to join her. But of course he didn’t wake, didn’t stir at all. She turned away.

She walked carefully between the other tents, her work boots sending gravel flying as she tried to tiptoe through the loose scree of pebbles and sandy soil that covered the valley floor. She paused again after she passed Janine’s flimsy little Sears Roebuck shelter, with its absurd red-striped awning and Janine’s wool socks hung out to dry.

“Janine?” Magda called softly, tilting her head. “Nicky?”

She saw no one: only the shadows of tents and stones, unnaturally large and black in the brilliant moonlight. But she had heard something, a faint noise like the tiniest of footsteps, or pattering rain. She waited, holding her breath; but the sound died away into the breeze. Finally she took another step. And stopped.

“Ohh!—get away, no—!”

It was as though she had walked into a whirlwind. All around her were falling leaves, hundreds of them: livid grey-green in the cold light, rushing up from the ground in a whirring explosion of dirt and dusty foliage. Magda shrieked and struck at them as they whirled and fell, brushing against her cheeks as they fluttered everywhere, tangling in her hair and slithering between her fingers. A scent of damp earth came with them, a smell like bitter chocolate. When she struck one with her open palm it exploded in a damp burst, as though she had crushed a rotten fruit.

“Jesus!—ugh, go away!”

She stumbled forward, beating at the air and whimpering, as the leaves covered the ground in a rippling carpet. For a moment the air was still. Then to her horror they rose once more from the rocky earth, fluttering and rustling, their fragile stems and tattered fronds beating against her like tiny living things as they climbed the legs of her jeans and clung to her sweater.

And suddenly Magda realized what they were—not leaves but insects, hundreds, thousands of them—wings crinkled and mottled in uncanny imitation of dying foliage, their legs and bodies elongated to resemble twigs. They filled the sky, blotting out the moon. She choked on the scent of bitter chocolate. Her legs felt bound as the insects clung to her jeans; she felt something brush against her throat, the soft impression of legs ticking slowly across her cheek.

“God damn it!” she yelled, and fled.

She ran for a few yards, wielding her flashlight like a bat. Then she had to stop, panting as she tried to catch her breath, hands raised protectively to her face. Her cheek felt wet. When she lowered her hands she gasped.

“What the hell?”

The insects were gone. Magda was so startled she shrieked again and jumped backward, caught herself and turned slowly, holding her flashlight at arm’s length as she swept its beam up and down her body.

Nothing. On her sweater, her jeans, her face: nothing at all. When she looked back she saw only the empty gravel in front of Janine’s tent. A single leaf twirled beneath the canvas awning and disappeared. She heard no sound except for the wind rattling distant branches. Her own tent stood off by itself. From a makeshift tripod her mud-stained rugby shirts and jeans hung drying, and moved like her own shadow in the breeze.

Magda let her breath out with a shudder. She might have dreamed it all. Only, as she brushed furtively at her sweater, her hand scraped against a tiny leg caught like a splinter in the coarse wool. As she walked away from the camp, she smelled the rich odor of bitter chocolate.

After a few minutes she quit trembling. Her heart slowed, she relaxed her grip on the flashlight and even grinned a little, imagining what June Harrington would have had to say about that.

She kept walking, not paying attention to where she was going, intent only on calming herself and trying to remember enough details of the swarm to relate convincingly to George in the morning. So it was that when she stumbled on the sharp edge of a boulder she looked up in surprise, and saw that she was heading for Eleven-A.

“Huh,” she murmured, and laughed.

Overhead the sky was clear, the color of a mussel shell and nearly starless. The moon had risen above the eastern edge of the valley. Where its light fell upon Çaril Kytur, it was as though someone had streaked the valley with chalk. Magda switched off her flashlight and tilted her head back until all she saw was the swollen moon. When she looked away pearly swabs of light still clung to her vision. The wind whistled down the channels it had found in the ragged bluffs. A fresh icy scent filled Magda’s nostrils, like rain on clean stone, and washed away the bitter odor of the swarm. She slid her hands inside the sleeves of her sweater and shivered.

It must be long after midnight; that cold thin hour when the dreaded keres of ancient Greece moved freely between their own dark world and this one. Magda smiled again, thinking of June Harrington and her endless ranking of specters and demons and harpies, all the nightmare eidolons that haunted the past. She would love hearing about the leaf insects. Magda shook her head ruefully. A hundred yards or so from where she stood, the rickety scaffolding of Eleven-A rose from the barren landscape.

“All right.” Her voice sounded shaky, so she repeated the words, louder this time. “Let’s have a smoke.”

She felt in the pocket of her jeans until she found the cello-wrapped packet of cigarettes she had gotten from Chasar a few days earlier. She’d traded him a half dozen of her Old Golds for three times as many of the local smoke—stubby hand-rolled cigarillos heavily laced with soft amber chunks of Turkish hashish. She lit one and smoked slowly, standing with one hand resting against the trunk of a wizened tree as she stared at the shadows in the lunar valley before her.

It was weird, how different the place looked by moonlight. Not just the normal difference you would expect between day and night, or between the night of a full moon and any other. It was much stranger than that, stranger and more unsettling. And, of course, the hash made it all even more intense, and the memory of the swarm.

Magda shuddered and took another long drag on her cigarette. As the moon rose higher, the chalky outlines of things grew burnished, until stones and withered trees and rocky outcroppings all took on an October glow. In the hollows, the tiny stonecrops covered the thin soil in a pale yellow carpet. Above Eleven-A hung the moon, placid, ripe as a pear about to fall. From an unseen roost a bulbul sang, its bubbling voice as improbably lovely as the night-blooming flowers.

“Wow,” Magda breathed. Smoke hung in a pall about her face as her eyes widened. “Too fucking much.”

The bulbul’s impassioned song rose and fell and rose again. A sweet smoky scent hung over everything, and Magda had one of those mind-jarring stoned moments when she wondered if she had somehow wandered far from the camp, far from Çaril Kytur itself, and come somehow to another country, the landscape in a dream.

But that was stupid; that was just the hash. She took a final drag from her cigarette and tossed it into the shadows. Then she headed for Eleven-A.

Even through the heavy soles of her work boots she could feel the bite of stones and thorns. She had no idea what time it was. Probably no more than an hour or two until dawn, judging from the moon. She thought of returning to bed, but in spite of the hashish she wasn’t tired—fear and adrenaline and wonder had purged all the sleep from her body. She stared balefully at the scrim of canvas and two-by-fours that hid the excavation.

One more day.

At the thought of abandoning the site she felt a twinge of guilt and disappointment. Guilt on June Harrington’s behalf—Magda had promised to finish the excavation her mentor had begun so long ago. And disappointment to think that, really, George was right. There never had been anything to Eleven-A to begin with. It was only another mismanaged and uncompleted excavation, from an age when archaeologists relied on The Golden Bough and dreams of Troy instead of dendronic rings and radioactive isotopes. She sighed and walked to the edge of the pit.

It was no different than it had been that afternoon. The same piles of rocky earth banked around the entrance to the dig. Nicky’s red flannel shirt still hung from a shovel stuck into a mound of gravel. Janine’s panniers and makeshift seines were where she’d left them, beside the carefully sorted and labeled boxes of bones and potsherds. An empty bottle of the local brew leaned against another pile of Janine’s painstakingly organized fragments.

Red Dot A. Red Dot C. Lightning Patterns. Canines. Auroch? Misc.

It was all innocent and bland as an abandoned sandbox, and as interesting.

“Damn it,” Magda whispered. She thought of June Harrington and the bronze boar, of the fragment of a lunula long since lost in the Museum. The single eidolon on which June had hung so many hopes. Then she climbed into the pit.

When she lowered herself onto the ladder it shuddered. Silently she cursed Chasar and the co-op where they’d been forced to get all their supplies. The ladder was old and had obviously been retired, for good reason. Now she could feel the soft wood buckling beneath her foot and creaking loudly as she hurried to the next step. Loose earth and stone flew into her face as she made her way down, and once the entire wall seemed to ripple. Magda had a horrifying vision of herself buried beneath a ton of earth and Nicky’s flannel shirt. For a few minutes she gripped the flashlight between her teeth and trusted to blind luck that she’d get safely to the bottom. But finally her foot rested gingerly against something soft yet solid. With a gasp Magda stepped onto the ground.

It was like being at the bottom of a grave. Far above a ragged violet hole opened into the night. Its perimeter glowed faintly where moonlight touched the edges of things, wooden pilings and stones banked up to form a rough retaining wall. But in the pit itself there was no light at all, nothing except the feeble gleam of Magda’s flashlight. She stepped forward, stumbled against a tin pail that gave an echoing clank when she struck it. She raised her flashlight and leaned back against the earthen wall, careful not to disturb the rough system of beams and joists that kept the whole ancient structure from caving in on her.

In daylight Eleven-A was dank and dim and uninspiring. At night it was downright creepy. Magda nearly choked on the pit’s earthy scent: not just dirt, but the heavy moldering smell of thousands of years of decay, shrubs and leaves and rotting timbers, the decomposing bodies of all the dogs and cattle whose remains they had already unearthed, and god knows how many other animals that had been sacrificed or merely tossed into the shaft, before the pit itself was abandoned. Magda tightened her grip on the flashlight. She coughed and covered her mouth and nose with her sleeve.

She’d never noticed it before, but an awful putrefying smell seemed to cling to the bottom of the shaft. There should be nothing, of course, only the ripe but relatively innocuous scent of decaying vegetable matter. But this was awful, as though something, squirrel or rat or vole, had fallen into the pit and died there. Magda grimaced, peering more closely at the floor. The flashlight revealed nothing, just the normal accumulation of stones and twigs, the gritty reddish sand that formed this stratum of the excavation.

She paced the bottom of the shaft. Five steps north, five steps south, six steps east and west. In a battered red plastic bucket someone had heaped a grouping of larger stones with uniformly pointed edges. Evidence perhaps of some kind of tool-making, or—more likely—nothing but pedolites, naturally occurring rocks that appeared to have man-made characteristics. She squatted beside the pail, picking out a few stones and examining them in the flashlight’s watery glare. One of them had the sharp edges associated with knapped stone, but it was feldspar—not good for toolmaking, merely a type of rock prone to breaking in this particular pattern. In disgust Magda tossed it across the shaft, wincing as dirt rained down where it struck the wall.

“Well, shit. I’m just wasting my time.”

The earthen walls swallowed her voice, made it sound thin and childish. The putrid odor was so strong she breathed through her mouth. All at once she felt exhausted. She stood and leaned back against the wall again, sighing. Her high had worn off. The odd things she had glimpsed, or thought she had glimpsed, suddenly seemed embarrassingly commonplace. The kind of things a careless site manager might run into, if she was the sort of person who got stoned in the middle of the night and went wandering around in a godforsaken place like this. Bugs and moonshine and bad smells, that was all.

She twisted her head and stared up into the shaft. Far overhead the sky had paled from violet to pinkish grey. The moonlight that had touched things with faerie gold was gone. In an hour it would be sunup. By this time tomorrow the site would be abandoned, for the second time this century, and probably forever.

At the thought anger welled up in Magda: at George and Nicky and Janine, for refusing to believe Eleven-A might hold anything of historic value; at June Harrington, for encouraging her to believe that it did. The flashlight’s beam wavered fitfully—after this moonlight outing the damn thing would need new batteries again. She thought of Balthazar Warnick’s persistent urging that she give up this crazy plan and join Harold Mosreich in Mexico. At this very moment she could have been perched atop the main pyramid at Chichén Itzá, waiting for moonrise.

Damn June Harrington!

Magda kicked furiously at the sandy ground in front of her. Her boot hit a rock. In a sudden rage she kicked again, hard enough to send the stone flying. With surprising force it struck one of the support beams in the wall opposite her. There was a soft hollow klunk. Then, with mesmerizing slowness, the beam started to buckle forward, and with it the entire earthen wall. Eleven-A was foundering.

Magda stared in horror as the timber split, its rusty splints groaning as they separated. From the surrounding wall soil and stones tumbled, not in an avalanche but with creeping slowness, like lava overtaking a mountainside. Earth like dark foam boiled across the floor, small stones and flecks of gravel flying everywhere. Magda cried out and tried to protect her face. Beams collapsed upon themselves in slow motion, soil covering them. Bit by bit the sandy floor disappeared. There was a soft mumbling sound, like voices heard from another room. When Magda craned her neck to stare upward she could see where other support timbers had begun to bulge outward. Her breath came in sharp gasps; she felt as though earth already filled her lungs, pressed upon her chest with numbing force. Too late she tried to scramble onto the ladder, felt the wall shivering behind it like boggy ground. When she opened her mouth to shout for help, dirt splattered her tongue like rain. Tears of rage and horror filled her eyes as she crouched and stared at the encroaching wall.

She could have extended her arms and touched it, a solid mound of darkness blotting out the little light that remained. The reek of decay was overpowering. Her mouth was filled with sand, dirt covered her boot as she tried desperately to pull her foot from the moving path.

Make it stop, make it stop, oh please…

And then, as abruptly as it had begun, the earthen flow ceased. Not a foot from where she crouched a dark and softly rounded hummock rose to meet the other side of the shaft. The mumbling undercurrent of sound grew still. Magda waited, not daring to move or breathe. Then, very slowly, she stood, with one hand retrieved the half-buried flashlight. She switched it on and trained its feeble beam on the opposite wall.

It was like looking into an empty well. Where timbers and support beams had been, there was now a hole big enough to drive the Jeep through. A dank breeze crept from its mouth. The choking scent of decay faded. Magda didn’t have time to wonder what the breeze might portend, or where the rotting odor had come from in the first place. Before she could turn and flee back up the ladder, a final solid chunk of earth dropped, like a great slice of cake sliding from a knife. When it struck the ground, Magda froze and stared openmouthed at the wall.

Suspended in the motionless waterfall of soil and rock was a skeleton. Perfectly formed, it lay curled upon its side, ribs, humerus, femur enmeshed in delicate bands of sepia and white. Even seeing it in the wake of that nearly silent avalanche, Magda knew its posture was not accidental. It was the same carefully arranged stance that she had seen in photographs of coundess burials, from the famous Neanderthal remains of Shanidar to dozens of Celtic graves throughout Britain and western Europe. The exact same pose: body carefully set upon its side, legs drawn up, arms tightly folded as though they held something.

And in this case, the arms did hold something: a skull. The long curving spine ended above the shoulders in a twist of vertebrae like heavy ivory beads. The skull was gone. Decapitated—the edge of the first vertebra sliced cleanly away. She shone her flashlight back upon the rib cage and there it was, a pale globe clutched within a cage of fingerbones and slender femurs. Its eye sockets gave back a hollow glow where the beam touched them.

“Sweet Jesus,” Magda breathed, and tears sprang to her eyes. “June was right. She was right.”

She half walked, half swam through earth and stone, heedless now of further danger. Enough light leaked from where the sun was starting to rise overhead that she could see it all clearly. Notched and shattered vertebrae like bits of broken chalk. Around one slender wrist a bronze cuff, chased in a pattern of curves and dots. A dusting of rust-colored powder—red ocher—on several ribs, staining the soil beneath like blood. Something glittered from the skull, and she caught glints of gold and silver where bits of metal had fallen into the rib cage as the corpse decayed. Peering into the hole left by the collapsed wall, she glimpsed another array of bones and a very faint glimmering.

More artifacts. When she withdrew, her heart was pounding so hard she thought she might faint. She gazed back at the skeleton. Nothing, no ancient hoard of gold or bronze, could be as precious to her as that human form. She wept openly to look upon it.

“Jesus God. June, June, June.”

Somehow it had not been crushed by the weight of millennia. Perhaps the slow withdrawal of the River Othiym from the valley had eased its passage, providing a protective boggy medium until the harsher weather of modern times overtook Çaril Kytur. Or maybe it was as June Harrington had told her once—

“They look after their own, you know. It doesn’t matter how long—they don’t sleep, and they don forget.”

June had been speaking of the Benandanti, but Magda had used the anecdote with her own students, referring to the remarkable preservation of the Shanidar site.

“They don’t sleep…”

This one hadn’t been sleeping when they killed him. Or perhaps he had been. Perhaps among the shattered remains of pottery and ornament she would find a ritual cup, a cauldron with pollen still adhering to its rim, chemical traces of psylocibin spores or papaver rhoeas, corn poppy. She extended one hand, her fingers trembling as they brushed the fragile-looking arch of ribs. She half expected the bones to crumble into ash at her touch, but they did not. They felt cool and solid as polished wood, their slightly rough pitted surface giving them a softer edge than she would have expected, like the velvet covering a yearling stag’s antlers. If she struck one, she was certain it would ring sweetly, like a bell.

It was bright enough now that she switched off her flashlight and stuck it into a soft mound of earth. She turned and lovingly ran both hands across the long femur, her fingertips catching on the raised lip of a scar, the rounded knob of its pelvis gleaming softly in the silvery dawn. Not just a burial, but a sacrificial burial: a ritual murder dating back some three thousand years. A major, major find.

June Harrington would be vindicated. Michael Haring would recoup his small investment. And Magda Kurtz’s reputation would be made.

Somewhere far above a warbler let loose a thin ribbon of song. She should go and wake the others, get cameras and notebooks and plaster of Paris down here, some kind of sandbags to keep the shaft from eroding further. Automatically she noted all the things she would write up later. Width of pelvis indicated a male. The clean edges along the damaged vertebrae suggested that a very sharp blade had been used for the sacrifice. A broken rib had healed unevenly; perhaps he had been a warrior. Teeth in surprisingly good condition, which meant a good diet. Probably quite young by modern standards, maybe eighteen years old. Most striking of all the positioning of the skull: carefully placed within the hands so that it faced outward, its empty eyes watching, waiting…

Nowhere had she ever read of a ritual slaying even remotely similar to this. She thought of George’s linguistic research, of how it pointed to heretofore unproven links with the Aegean. Together with the skeleton, this find would give weight to his work, and to all the hours of research that Magda herself had put into proving her mentor right. The welter of objects buried with the victim might at last provide conclusive evidence for June’s theories of a matrilineal culture in central Europe, undeniable proof of human sacrifice to a lunar goddess.

Magda took a deep breath. She pressed her clenched fists to her breast to keep them from shaking. This wasn’t just another find to be written up in Archaeology or Science. Not with women burning their bras and someone like Valerie Solanas shooting Andy Warhol. This would mean coverage in the Times and a mention on national news, early tenure, maybe even her own film crew…

She let her breath out in a long gasp and reluctantly forced herself back to the task at hand. There was still a considerable danger that the entire shaft might collapse. She should set as many details to memory as she could, and get the hell out. She thought of removing some of the jewelry for Michael Haring. This, after all, was what she had been hoping to find; this was why Haring had underwritten the spiraling costs of the entire odyssey.

But for once Magda Kurtz the scientist won out over raw ambition. If the site’s integrity was destroyed, any future speculation regarding the nature of Çaril Kytur would be compromised. There would be plenty of time to pocket some precious toy for her patron; this afternoon, perhaps, while the others were shoring up the excavation, or even sooner. She smiled and started to turn back to the skeleton.

Before she could, her gaze fell upon a small mound. Dun-colored and coarse with dirt, the mound had been easy for her to overlook. But now Magda whistled softly. The pile held tiny figurines, dozens of them, carved of bone and ivory and stone and clay. No bigger than a knuckle or forefinger, although Magda glimpsed one cylinder of dark green stone the length of her arm. Most of the figurines were simple, pendant-shaped, with tiny protrusions representing arms, legs, breasts; others were more elaborate and showed the figure of a woman extravagantly garbed with swirling drapery and ornate headgear.

“No,” breathed Magda.

Goddess figurines. There might be a hundred of them, spanning thousands of years of worship: Lascaux to the Parthenon, the Venus of Willendorf to Persephone. Magda’s hand hovered above them, and almost she could feel heat rising, the dust and earth turned to ashes as flames licked at sculpted azurite and carven bone.

Oh, June, if only you could see this! She gazed down, filing it all away in her head, and prayed that nothing would happen before she could get George and Nicky down here with shovels and sandbags.

Slowly she turned from the figurines, and back to the human skeleton. She stooped to examine the bones more closely. The corpse had been painted with red ocher, same as at Shanidar. Or perhaps it was left to decompose and be picked clean by vultures—there were ancient paintings of such a ritual in Anatolia—and then the bones were colored in another ceremony. Gently Magda ran a finger along a blunt curve of vertebra rusted with the powdered mineral. Clay and hydrated ferric oxide, dark red, almost brown. They’d have to run an analysis on the pigment, see if it was local or not. She could smell the pigment, a faint tang like scorched metal. She drew a little X on her wrist and watched as the ocher seeped into her skin, a stain like old blood. Amazing. To think of such a ritual surviving for tens of thousands of years, from Neanderthals to proto-Celts! The thought made her feel exhilarated and a little nauseated. It was like doing really good acid, this whole night had been like some horrible and wonderful drug—

But then from somewhere overhead she heard a dull clinking sound. She looked up. Someone was awake in the camp. George, probably. He liked to drink his ersatz coffee while going over the previous day’s field notes, and he didn’t trust anyone else to fire up the recalcitrant little oil-burning stove. Her mouth opened and she almost called up to him, but thought better of it. Instead she bent over the skeleton once more.

How had it been aligned? The bodies found in Celtic burials at Lindow and Gournay had pointed east. She looked up at the small rosy mouth of the shaft. After making adjustments for the burial site shifting over time, and for the sudden collapse of the wall, she decided that the corpse had originally been aligned with its head facing east. To the rising sun, as in the Shanidar burials.

Or the rising moon.

“The moon.” She said the words aloud and bit her lip.

Othiym, a minor lunar goddess with possible links to the great female deities of Knossos and Boeotia and Nippur in Sumeria…

The moon. As she raised her hand to brush the hair from her eyes, her nostrils filled with the sweet incense of hashish that still stained her fingers. With sudden clarity she recalled her walk, the eerie flood of moonlight and swarming insects. It was as though it had all been meant to lead her here, to this. For a moment she felt again the icy breath coming from the opening behind her, a chill that seemed to freeze her thoughts as well; but she quickly shook it off. She turned a last thorough gaze upon the burial victim, its arms clenched to its barren chest, its skull cupped within clawlike hands like a scryer’s globe.

And then, for the first time she saw something glittering upon the skull’s smooth surface. She had missed it in the darkness, but now dawn touched it with a rosy glow. It hung from the skull’s jutting brow in a gleaming curve, like a scythe or grinning mouth made of silver. She leaned forward until she could touch it, her fingertips grazing its edge so lightly they might have caressed nothing at all.

But it was there. It was real. Beneath her hands she felt metal, so cold it was as though she had plunged her hands into icy water, as though she had received an electrical shock. A jolt of pure energy bombarded her, shoving her back onto her heels. With a cry Magda reached forward again, though gingerly this time: because all she could think of was touching it, holding it. All she could think of was possessing it.

Upon the skull’s brow gleamed a crescent of pure light, so brilliant she had to shade her eyes. When she lowered her hand she could see it clearly: a span of smooth silver, like a little moon. At its widest point it was engraved with a triskelion that formed three moons, their intersecting crescents making a pattern as breathtakingly lovely as it was simple. Where the moons overlapped, there was a small crescent-shaped perforation, a grinning aperture. Very faint lines showed where once it had been touched with gold.

A sacrificial amulet, buried as an offering to the moon goddess. A talisman meant to guide the victim to his waiting and eternal mistress.

A lunula.

Magda hardly dared to breathe. Over the centuries only a handful of them had been recovered. Two from Artemis’s temple in Boeotia, where the Arktoi danced, bear-virgins sacred to the huntress. One from an Etruscan tomb, where no doubt it had been preserved as a curious relic of an even more ancient day. One or two others had been scattered across the Roman Empire, and now were locked within the holdings of the Vatican.

And then, of course, there was the fragment that June herself had found and given to the National Museum. With trembling fingers Magda touched the crescent-shaped hole in the pendant. This had to be it: the original of June’s lunula, the necklace from which the missing piece had been lost or stolen millennia before. Her breath caught in her throat. Michael Haring would give a fortune for it; any number of museums or collectors would give a fortune for it…

Magda pushed these thoughts aside, focused on the lunula itself. As she drew it from the skull, the hasp caught on a rounded plate of bone. Gently she tugged it free, and turned it slowly to catch the sunlight. The incised lines of its interlocking figures flickered from black to silver as it moved. The crescents seemed to burgeon from shining spindles to swollen orbs as she watched, new moon, half-moon, full, the missing crescent a bitter black mouth that twisted into darkness.

“Magda!” She jumped, the lunula swinging so that it struck her wrist. When she looked at her hand she saw a red blister there, faint as an old scar. “Magda! My lighter’s dead, I need some matches—”

In the glowing gap of the shaft’s entrance she saw George’s silhouette, his long hair a frizzy aureole.

“Hey! Thought you might be down here. You got matches?”

Magda stared up at him in panic. Her hand tightened around the lunula and she took a step backward, her feet sinking into the soft new fallen earth. “George,” she whispered.

“Couldn’t wait, huh?” he called cheerfully. He swung his legs over the edge of the shaft, one foot nudging at the air until it found the top of the ladder. “Last day’s a thirty-six-hour day, huh?”

She watched him slowly descend. Pebbles and clods of dirt fell in a dark rain as he came down. “Hey, you should be careful, you know? I mean, coming down alone like this in the middle of the night. This whole thing could collapse.”

She stood with her back pressed against the shaft’s wall. Panic boiled inside her. She was going to show it to him, to all of them; but so soon, so soon? A few feet away from her the skeleton lay streaked with light. In her hand the lunula was a burning arc, a star, a scythe. She clutched it against her breast and raised her face to where George stood midway down the ladder. His head turned this way and that as he squinted, trying to find her in the near-darkness. When he called out again his voice sounded muffled, confused.

“Magda?”

He shouldn’t be here.

The thought was another flaming arc. He shouldn’t be here. It was wrong, it was profane, stantikic’t. Not just tainted but forbidden. Against her back the earthen wall pressed, a moist enveloping weight. She could feel the lunula burning through her sweater, through her T-shirt, the smell of scorching metal and a raw red pain as the crescent bit into her hands, her fingers seared until nothing but blackened bone gripped the moon’s two horns and pressed them to her breast. Smoke filled the bottom of the shaft, smoke and the sound of her own anguished voice as she shrieked. Pain worse than any she could have imagined as the lunula branded her, its grinning livid mouth burning against her breast to leave its imprint, a pucker of moon-shaped scar tissue and just a trace of blood.

“Magda?”

She opened her eyes and he was there. His frizzy hair was pulled back sloppily with a leather thong and he wore a stained red T-shirt and jeans. He was staring at her, concern clouding his eyes as he stepped from the ladder and tried to find firm footing on the soft uprooted soil. He blinked in the dimness and pushed his steel-rimmed glasses firmly into place. He brought with him the scent of the open air, new morning and cold ashes and a faint smell of rain.

“Magda? You okay? You look a little—”

She tried to back away from him but she could go no farther, there was nothing but darkness now surrounding her, and earth. But George didn’t notice. He no longer seemed to see her at all. There was a quick sharp sound as he sucked in his breath. Behind their steel frames his eyes widened. Very slowly he raised one hand, pointing to the pale mound of bones glistening in the darkness. Before she could say or do anything, he lunged forward, shouting in amazement.

“What the hell? Magda, what did you find, that’s a, there’s a—”

Othiym.

She didn’t know if she said the name aloud or merely thought it. But she must have said something, done something. Because George froze, one hand reaching for the skeleton, his head turned to stare at her.

“Magda?”

It was a moon, a star, a scythe. Glittering in the darkness of the shaft as she swung it, a band of quicksilver slicing through the fetid air. She could feel its weight in her hand, a solid comforting thing like a smooth round stone, and feel how easily it sliced through his throat. Like a river swollen by the spring rain, erupting from its frozen prison to pierce and gouge its way through rocky soil; it was so easy, she brought her hand back and struck at him again, this time hearing a small pop as the lunula severed his windpipe.

“Maaaa…”

His voice was a child’s, soft, whimpering, the sound fading into a hiss as air leaked from his throat. He staggered and fell at her feet, and she stared down to see where the blood ran in a bright shining stream from the dark cleft left by the lunula. Her hand remained upraised, the silver crescent an eye peering into the shaft. Along its curved edge blood gathered in small black beads. Like water on an iron grill the beads danced and ran one into another, until they vanished and only fine white wisps of smoke remained. A metallic smell filled the air. Magda’s tongue grew swollen, dry and with the taste of something ferrous, flaking rust or dried blood clinging to the back of her throat until she retched and pitched forward onto the ground.

When she came to she was lying with her face pressed into the soft earth. Bits of dirt and gravel stuck to her lips. Her hair was matted with soil. She pushed herself onto her elbows, coughing. Her right hand still clutched the lunula, a leaden curl of metal now, all its glory gone; but her hands bore a fine red cross-hatching of fresh scars and she could feel a dull ache opposite her heart, as though she had been punched.

She got to her feet, brushed the dirt from her clothes and turned to look for her flashlight. That was when she saw George Wayford. He was lying on his side, his body twisted into a grotesquely fetal position: arms curled inward, legs bunched up against his solar plexus.

“George?”

She bent over his corpse, her fingers stretching until they stroked the curve of his jaw. Gingerly she cupped her hand beneath his chin, tilting it until his head moved and she could see the wound beneath, as clean and smooth as though it had been executed with a razor. The blood made a stiff crimson sheet of his T-shirt, crumpled into hard folds like lava or ice; but the flesh of his throat was smooth and white, almost translucent. She marveled at the concentric rings inside, flesh and cartilage and sinew. She reached to touch it, then recoiled. From the corner of her eyes she had glimpsed his, dull and speckled with dirt. He had fallen so that his glasses were mashed into his face, and she could see the fine network of broken capillaries radiating from the shattered glass like twin spider’s webs.

“Oh, god.”

She stumbled to her feet, frantically wiping her hands on her legs. She turned and ran the few steps to the ladder, stopped and tried to calm herself, tried to keep the nausea from overwhelming her. She mounted the ladder, then looked back.

In the dimness the two bodies lay just a few feet apart, their posture nearly identical. It was like two stages in a time-lapsed sequence showing decay: before and much, much after. There would be feasting and song, exultant wailing from sisters and wives and mothers; but then the scarab beetles would come, and the elegantly segmented worms and ivory-billed vultures, and smooth-skinned boys with their arms full of asphodel and handfuls of red dust to be rubbed into the bones…

No.

She whimpered. This was crazy; she’d gone insane; it was the hash or something worse, some hallucinogenic poison percolating in her brain all these years. Acid is Groovy, Kill the Pigs! But even as she clutched at the worn ladder she heard something, a low moaning that rapidly grew louder and louder, filling the chamber like a torrent of black water pouring down. It wasn’t until something struck her cheek that she looked up and saw that the circle of light at the mouth of the shaft had been eclipsed, tongues of shadow licking fiercely at its sides as gravel and rusted tools began falling everywhere. Eleven-A was collapsing.

“No!”

Her voice was swallowed as she scrambled upward, the ladder bouncing against the earthen wall as huge chunks of compacted soil slid and fell away to either side. All she could see was the shaft above her and far away its opening, a small dead moon. She screamed, choking on dirt and debris; but still she went on, forcing her way out, until finally she could feel the top of the ladder; there were no more rungs, no more darkness, only grass-strewn earth and light and air. She scrambled from the pit and rolled away, heedless of her torn clothes, a place on her right arm that ached as though it had been caught between hammer and anvil. Behind her the rumbling grew to a thunderous roar, so loud her entire body shook. Then, abruptly, silence.

She lay on the ground, weeping softly. The echo of that final explosive surge died away. She could hear other sounds—Nicky’s shouts, Janine yelling her name in a shrill, panicked tone. When she tried to wipe the crust of dirt and leaf mold from her face, her hand grew sticky with blood.

“Magda! Oh my god, Magda, what’s happening, where’s George, where’s George?”

Nicky helped her to her feet. “Magda? Can you hear me? Magda?”

She pushed him away and barreled past the hysterical Janine, looking wildly for the excavation site.

It was gone. Anything that had ever been recognizable as the result of human engineering had vanished. There was only a great concave declivity like a sinkhole, fresh earth and stones strewn across its surface. From the soft dirt protruded two small nubbins of wood like fingers or horns: the top of Chasar’s ladder. Magda stared at them in stunned disbelief. They were all that remained of Eleven-A.

“…you were down there? Goddammit, Magda, I can’t believe you were down there!” Now Nicky was hysterical, his voice rising shrilly as he ran around the perimeter of the site, searching futilely for some way down, a passage, an air chimney, anything. “George! Can you hear me? George—”

“Of course he can’t hear you,” Magda said dully. She turned to where the sun hung above the horizon, the violet edges of the mountains in bold relief against the thin gold light.

“We have to get help—the Jeep, drive into town, someone to dig him out—”

She nodded mutely as Janine screamed on and on and Nicky shouted at her: as though his rage might somehow make things different. But after a few more minutes she let the two of them hurry her to the Jeep and help her into the back, where she lay on a heap of burlap. She tried not to cry out as the vehicle leapt forward, jouncing over rocks and gulleys as Janine’s voice rang desperately through the chilly morning air.

“We’ll find Chasar, right, he’s always there this time of day, why the hell don’t we have a goddamn shortwave—”

Magda bit her lip, wincing from pain and the effort of keeping silent. She knew they’d never find George. Chasar wouldn’t take on the job, and neither would anyone else. There was no way she and Nicky and Janine could get down there alone. The Çaril Kytur dig was finished. A thousand years from now someone else would discover George lying beside that other skeleton and marvel at the eerie symmetry, two victims in identical posture buried millennia apart in this desolate European wasteland.

At the thought Magda began to weep again. The ache in her breast grew stronger with each shuddering breath she took. She turned onto her side, still crying, and drew her hands upward. She grabbed at the damp weight of her sweater, kneading the wool as she tried to find some way to make the pain stop.

And then she felt it, cold and sharp as glass. The twin spurs of the crescent had been jammed into her, with enough force that they sliced through the heavy wool of her sweater and T-shirt before piercing her right breast. Magda closed her eyes. Her fingers ticked along its edge, feeling the cool bite of silver against her skin and the curve of her breast rising beside it, a solid aching mass. She expected the metal to cut her fingers but it did not; it lay there like something that had been planted in her, watered with her blood and waiting to bear fruit.

For a long moment she lay with eyes closed. The Jeep coughed and rattled, mercifully drowning out Janine’s voice. Magda wondered vaguely if she would lose consciousness, but it seemed that she hurt too much for that. Her entire body shimmered with pain.

Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore. She pulled herself up slightly, bracing herself with her feet against the floor and trying not to go flying as the Jeep made another precarious turn. With both hands she grabbed the edge of the lunula and, with a choking gasp, pulled it free. Agony exploded within her and she shouted, but neither Janine nor Nicky could hear her over the engine. With a grinding roar the Jeep lurched forward and began its treacherous ascent of the valley’s mouth. Magda pressed her hand to her breast, trying to staunch the wound. There was an incredible amount of blood—her T-shirt was soaked, her sweater bright crimson from collar to cuff—but she knew she’d be all right. She withdrew her hand, her fingers gloved with blood and dirt, and turned to look down into Çaril Kytur.

A shimmer of mist lay across the valley, softening the harsh edges of rocks and crippled trees. For an instant she had a glimpse of the ancient riverbed, the shadowy outlines of bawns and temples rising from its banks. Then it was gone, burned to nothing by the sun. She turned away, squinting in the painful light, and looked at what she held.

It was still there; it was real. She had been wrong—something besides Chasar’s ladder had survived the devastation of Eleven-A. As she raised her hand the Jeep’s groaning roar faded, and with it the dull buzzing of the others’ voices. A thin shaft of sunlight pierced the back of the vehicle. There was a smell of rain. Very faintly, as from some immense distance, she could hear the high plaintive cry of a bulbul seeking shelter from the day. Magda tilted her head and slowly drew her hand to her face.

Against her ruddy palm the lunula gleamed, the sun igniting its etched surface so that she could see all the moons there at once, new moon, full moon, dark, and within its curving bands of light the contours of a face, shuttered eyes and mouth half-open to the dawn, a sheen of blood staining her cheeks and lip and chin: Artemis, Durga, Cybele, Hecate, Inachus, Kali, Hel…

The Great Mother, lover and slayer of Her faithful son.

Othiym Lunarsa. The Woman in the Moon.

CHAPTER 5 The Sound of Bones and Flutes

WE NEVER MADE IT to Dumbarton Oaks. “Actually,” Oliver said, steam from his coffee clouding his glasses, “I think they’re closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.”

I tilted my cup until I could see my face reflected in it. “That’s okay. I don’t know where I would’ve gotten a bike.”

Medieval History had come and gone, then Introduction to Archaeology, followed by Oliver’s Early Greek Drama and my Philosophy 101. We hadn’t moved from our booth in the Shrine cafeteria, except to help ourselves to unlimited refills from a pair of battered plastic thermoses on a side table along the wall. Oliver took great interest in the endless stream of tour groups that filed through.

“Now watch them,” Oliver announced, tilting his nose toward a claque of grey-haired women. “Fill their plates because it’s an all-you-can-eat thing, but they won’t eat any of it, except the salad. Just watch.”

Ten minutes later, the women left. Oliver leapt from his seat and sidled up to their empty booth. He returned a moment later with two laden plates.

“See?” he said triumphantly, setting one of them before me. “You like shrimp creole? She didn’t even touch it.”

I stared at my plate. The shrimp creole did indeed look untouched. Only a fastidious bite taken from a biscuit, and a smear of lipstick on the water glass showed that he hadn’t just filled the plate himself. Looking at it made me feel ill.

“Uh—no thanks,” I said, standing. “More coffee?”

Oliver shook his head. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small object roughly the shape and length of his forefinger. When he held it up I saw that it was a little silver pocketknife tarnished almost black. On one side an elegant monogram spelled OFOW in extravagant arabesques. Oliver flicked it open and a glittering blade appeared, like a minnow leaping from dark water. He speared a triangle of overdone meat. “Would you like some liver?”

He polished off three plates. I couldn’t bring myself to eat anything, and I was so nervous I drank coffee till my ears rang. But I didn’t care. I felt the way you do when you wake up in the morning and, before you even get out of bed, remember it’s the first day of summer vacation. Here I was, on my own for the first time, with all the Gothic mysteries of the Divine to be explored and an entire city to discover. The sickening loneliness that had haunted my first days was abating, but that wasn’t what made me feel light-headed, so giddy I laughed at everything.

What it was, was Oliver.

He was so beautiful, and so odd, and so utterly unself-conscious. If I’d been older, I might have found him insufferable, with his fey affectations and prep school jargon; but I’d never met anyone like him. He smoked hand-rolled cigarettes made of dried flowers from England that smelled sweet as rain. He claimed secret knowledge of IRA gun-running operations and military experiments using LSD. He showed me a tiny scar on his right hand, beside his pinkie, where he said a useless sixth finger had been amuptated hours after his birth. And there was his beauty, and the way he made me feel that I was in on a secret. Most of all, I guess, it was how he seemed to take for granted that I was his confidante, that I would always understand what he was talking about.

“Here,” he said, after finishing his last plate of liver. He took my hand, placed a neatly folded paper triangle in the palm, and closed my fingers around it. I opened it: the page that Angelica had given him during class, now covered with spidery drawings.

“Hey!” I smoothed the paper on the table. “These are really good.”

They were funny, rather wistful caricatures of Oliver and Angelica and myself, with Professor Warnick a Nijinsky faun dancing in the foreground, sistrum upheld, sparks shooting from his little horns.

Oliver grinned. “You’ll like The Golden Ass,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

“Actually, I’ve read it.” I hadn’t, of course, but figured by tomorrow I would have.

“We-ell.” Oliver’s chair thumped forward. “I thought so,” he said softly, and began telling me his history.

He was from Newport, from an old, old money family that had its roots in County Meath in Ireland. Oliver claimed some character in a Fitzgerald story was based on his grandfather, and that Booth Tarkington had written The Magnificent Ambersons after the tragic death of Oliver’s great-great-aunt. His parents were famous (and famously wealthy) anthropologists, now estranged.

“Sort of,” Oliver explained. “Mom lives in the carriage house and does her pottery. Dad’s still in the main house, because of all his America’s Cup stuff.”

Oliver himself was the youngest of six brothers. The two oldest had enlisted to fight in Vietnam. Osgood died there. Vance returned a junkie and now lived in San Francisco. Another brother, Leopold, was a well-known female impersonator in London. Cooper played piano in Newport jazz clubs; Waldo had become a Buddhist monk.

That left Oliver.

“So what are you doing here?”

He shrugged. “I’m a legacy. We Crawfords all attend the Divine. I didn’t really have a choice. They tapped me a long time ago. I went to Fairchild Abbey—”

A preparatory school in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, run by an obscure order of brothers. Not Jesuits, Oliver was quick to explain; not Benedictines either.

I laughed. “So what’s left? Capuchins? Franciscans? Cathars?”

“No.” He frowned so fiercely that I looked into my coffee cup, abashed.

“There’ll probably be some there tonight,” he said a minute later, and sighed. “At that damn reception, I mean.”

I waited for him to go on. When he said nothing, I took a deep breath and asked, “So what are they? The Molyneux scholars, I mean?”

Oliver only gazed at the ceiling again. When I glanced up I saw squares of petrified Jell-O arrayed across the acoustical tile, like Mah-Jongg pieces. I decided to save face by getting more coffee. But then—

“Magicians,” he pronounced as I slid my chair back.

“What?”

“They’re magicians.”

For a moment I caught the full force of his eyes: so improbably brilliant and defiant he looked slightly deranged. Before I could say anything he glanced at his wrist.

“Uh-oh! Four o’clock, time for tea!” He stumbled to his feet.

“But it’s—I mean, it can’t be more than three—”

Oliver gulped the last of his coffee, held up his wrist so I could see the faded timepiece drawn there. “Wild Bill—harvesting the psylocibin—paid him last night—got to get back to the dorm. See you at seven—”

I watched him lope down the aisle, waving distractedly at a table of guys in fraternity sweatshirts. On the wall above them a dusty-faced clock showed it was nearly four.

“Damn!” I grabbed my knapsack. If I hurried, I might make my last class of the day.

When I finally got back to my room, there was a note on the door from Angelica, elegant lettering in peacock blue ink.

I drew the note to my face and smelled the woodsy odor of sandalwood and a sweet scent like mandarin oranges. I went inside and changed, throwing my velvet pants and sweat-soaked shirt on the floor and flinging on a T-shirt and black jeans. I pulled off my lace-up boots, thought of putting on sneakers but decided on my old, battered cowboy boots. They were of worn black cowhide with faded crimson stitching and pointed steel toes, still lethal enough to punch holes in drywall. I tugged them on and thumped back downstairs.

Angelica was waiting outside the dining hall, another girl beside her. I felt a jolt of disappointment that we wouldn’t be dining alone.

“Sweeney! Do you know Annie Harmon? She’s my roommate, she’s in the Music School—”

“No. Hi—”

Annie stuck out a small sticky hand. “Pleased to meet you. Nice boots.”

Her throaty voice was totally incongruous with her appearance: a weary old whore’s voice coming out of this little girl. She only came up to my chin, a slight figure in old green fatigues and a moth-eaten flannel shirt and very small red tennis shoes. Her thin brown hair was cut short and stuck up in a ragged cowlick. Next to Angelica, with her bird-of-paradise hair and exquisite makeup and expensive clothes, Annie Harmon looked like an inquisitive quail. But she had beautiful woeful eyes, deep brown touched with violet, and I was certain she was not wearing tinted lenses.

“Thanks,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

Annie nodded solemnly. “Charmed.”

We walked into the fake medieval Dining Hall, Annie and I first. Angelica followed, smiling and nodding as other students passed. I felt as though we were in a procession, clearing the way for the Queen. Angelica had changed into a tight black dress that ended just above her knees, the bodice inset with a revealing panel of black lace, and replaced her Coach bag with a tiny lozenge-shaped purse covered with jet and lapis beads.

“Kinda dressed up for dinner, huh?” Annie remarked, cocking a thumb at her roommate.

“You never have a second chance to make a first impression,” Angelica said primly. She let loose with that improbable laugh, and pointed to something bubbling on a steam table. “What do you suppose that is?”

We found a table in a corner. Angelica was quiet, picking at her salad and sipping ice water. I was so tired I was happy to let Annie do all the talking. She rambled on in her throaty voice, eating whatever we left on our plates.

“So they didn’t let me in the first time I applied,” she said, taking the crust of my apple pie and eating it with her fingers, “So I tried again in the spring. Zilch. But then I tried again in July, and bin-go! Third time’s the charm, and they accepted me.”

Angelica smiled fondly, as though this had all been her doing. For all I knew, it had been.

We left when we heard the Shrine’s bells ringing 6:45, faint tolling beneath the clatter of silverware and eager conversation. Angelica went first this time, and more heads turned as she passed. A few people called to her by name. She smiled and waved, but didn’t stop.

“Get used to it.” Annie nudged me. “Living with Angelica is an amazing experience. I walk into a room with her and poof. I’m invisible.”

Outside, the sultry afternoon had faded into a glowing early evening. The sky had deepened to a pure lacquered blue. A few supernaturally bright stars defied the jaundiced glow of the campus crimelights. We walked without speaking, Annie noisily scuffling her sneakers through the damp grass. The air smelled of mud and marijuana smoke and roses. It was so warm that I felt as though I had no skin; as though my blood flowed directly from my veins into the soft blue light. From off in the distance a percussive beat echoed from a stereo, melody and vocals smelted away by the heat. Angels looked down upon us from the stone facades of dorms and classroom buildings, and a skein of friars in their white summer habits strolled across the green lawn, silent but somehow companionable as they watched a few students playing Frisbee and hackeysack. From the onion-shaped dome of the Ma es-Sáma mosque came a ululating cry, and the echoing croon of sleepy mourning doves settling in the elms. It was all improbably lovely and strange. We approached Reardon Hall, and the great white porticoes of the Colum Library, and finally crossed onto the Strand.

“So you had lunch with Oliver, huh?” Annie asked. She paused and removed her sneakers, wiggling her bare toes in the grass.

“Yeah,” I said. “How’d you know?”

Annie pointed at Angelica. I shook my head. “I mean, how do you know Oliver?”

“Oliver? Hey, everybody knows Oliver.” Annie yawned and wiped a bead of sweat from her lip. “I mean, look at him. He’s like the E-ticket guy for the whole freshman class. Someone in my Composition Seminar saw him at the Vigilant last night with Maxwell Rheining.”

“Who’s he? What’s the Vigilant?”

Annie glanced at Angelica, who said nothing. “It’s a gay bar in Southeast,” Annie said at last. “Max Rheining’s artist-in-residence at the Pater Theater this semester. You’d recognize him if you saw him.”

“A transvestite bar,” Angelica corrected her. “On a houseboat in the Potomac. Rheining does a lot of work Off-Broadway. He’s pretty famous.”

I tried not to look impressed. “So how does Oliver know him? I thought he just got here last night.”

“Oliver is a very busy young person,” said Annie.

“So how do you guys know all this?” I persisted.

Angelica gave me a sly smile. “See what you miss when you skip class?”

Annie laughed. I slung my hands in my jeans pockets and turned to look at the Shrine. “Oh.” I felt a sudden hollowness inside me. “Well, that’s cool, I guess.”

“So, Sweeney.” Angelica adjusted her earrings and smoothed the bodice of her dress. “What did you and Oliver talk about at lunch?” Her tone was casual, but her eyes fixed on me like two searchlights.

“I dunno. Just stuff. Where he grew up, his family, stuff like that.”

“That’s all?” Angelica’s eyes grew even wider, and her voice rose in an exaggerated schoolgirl squeak. “Nothing else? He didn’t ask about me?” She laughed.

“I don’t think so.” I was starting to get pissed off. I glared at the Shrine and tried to think of some excuse to leave. I’d left my knapsack and all my books back in my room, so I couldn’t really go to the library. But I didn’t feel like returning alone to the dorm, either. Before I could say anything Annie’s hoarse voice broke in.

“Well, I hate to miss all the fun, but I got to hit the stacks for a while.” She raised an eyebrow at Angelica. “You gonna be home tonight?”

“Eh sì, bella.”

“Okay.” Annie stood on one foot, arms outstretched like a bird taking flight. “Wish I could go with you to your pah-tay, Angel, but…”

“Oh, man…” I gazed in dismay at my T-shirt and black jeans, the patina of dried mud on my cowboy boots. “I forgot all about the reception! I can’t go like this…”

Annie poised in mid-flight and eyed me quizzically. “But you can’t go. You’re not one of them, are you?”

“Huh?”

“A Molyneux scholar.” She glanced at Angelica and then at me again, her face expectant: as though in those intervening seconds I might have changed into someone else. “Naaaah…”

I felt myself blushing. From the Shrine came the first notes of the carillon. “I don’t—”

“Of course she can come.” Angelica’s tone was offhand. “She’s my guest; I mean, they’re not going to say I can’t bring a guest, are they?”

Annie sniffed. “That’s not what you told me—”

“This is different, Annie.” Even as Angelica smiled, there was a soft threat in her voice: don’t argue with me. “Sweeney and Oliver and I are in the same class.”

Annie started to protest, then shrugged and looked away. “Whatever you say, Angel.”

And that was that. With a satisfied smile, Angelica turned to stare at the Shrine: the great Byzantine folly silhouetted against the darkening sky, a few stars salted across its dome. Suddenly, as though it had been strafed by an invisible enemy, the entire huge edifice burst into flame. I gasped, and Annie’s hand shot out to steady me.

“Hey! Relax, girl—it’s just a light show—”

It was, but like nothing I’d ever seen. There were spotlights, footlights, rays of gold and silver and blue streaming from hidden recesses. The bell tower tolled seven o’clock.

Bong. Bong. Bong…

I looked up with a growing sense of unease. I felt as though some strange game was being played out by everyone I met, and I hadn’t been cued in to the rules. But when I glanced at Annie, my own anxiety sharpened into a blade driving deep into me. Because she was staring at Angelica, and her eyes were bright with fear.

“Do you really have to go?” she whispered. “Do you, Angelica?”

Angelica seemed not’ to hear. “Do you?” Annie asked again.

Now I was getting freaked. “Hey, Annie—you okay?” But when I tried to touch her, she shook me off.

“I never heard that they had a guests policy,” she said coolly.

“Oh, come on!” Angelica gestured dramatically at the floodlit Shrine. “That’s for us! I mean for the reception—all of us, the alumnae and everybody. They do it at Homecoming too—”

“And when we win a field hockey game,” Annie snapped. “Keep it in perspective, Angel.” She spun on her heel. “Bring her home by midnight, will you, Sweeney? I don’t want her waking me up at dawn.”

“Ciao, Annie,” Angelica called.

“Chow chow chow,” echoed Annie, and headed for the library.

“They really do light it up for us,” Angelica said as we started away from the Shrine. The last echoes of the carillon hung in the sultry air. “It costs a thousand dollars a night. This reception is going to be great.”

I sighed. “I don’t know, Angelica. I’ve got all this work to do, and—” I gestured at my T-shirt and scuffed my boots in the grass. “I just don’t know if I really feel up to it.”

Angelica took my hand. She pulled me after her into a narrow drive that led up a tree-covered hill to where a single domed building gleamed in the darkness. The breeze brought me the sweet musky scent of her perfume, sandalwood and oranges. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Sweeney, come on. And don’t worry, you look fine, very gamine.

“Besides,” she added, giving one of her odd clear laughs. “No one will give you a hard time. You’re with me.”

Garvey Hall stood at the far end of the campus, atop the hill known as the Mound. The broken concrete drive wound through white oaks and tangles of sumac, with a row of ancient iron lampposts casting a bleary yellow glare through the leaves. We saw a few other people straggling up the path—middle-aged couples in evening dress; students in thrift shop finery, stained velvets and satins; a tall black woman wearing elaborate African tribal robes. One young man in a dusty tuxedo did a double take when he saw Angelica, turning to stare at her so that he ran into a tree. Angelica pretended not to notice, but when we rounded a curve in the path she burst out laughing.

“They really do think with their dicks, don’t they?”

“That one was walking with his.”

She giggled, tilted her head to regard me with pursed lips.

“May I?” she asked, and gently smoothed the hair from my temples. “You know, you should cut your hair, Sweeney.” Her touch gave me goose bumps. “Really. You have such beautiful eyes, they’d really stand out if your hair was shorter. I’ll do it for you if you’d like.”

I laughed uneasily. “Yeah, well, maybe. Maybe over the weekend. I’ll think about it.”

Angelica continued to stare at me, her gaze intense and yet somehow oblique. I glanced away, finally said lamely, “Look, about this party—I just feel a little under-dressed, that’s all.”

“I told you, you’re with me.” Her voice took on that same tone it had earlier with Annie: impatient, subtly threatening. “Look, Sweeney—do you want to go to this thing or not?”

She grabbed me, not roughly but with unmistakable insistence. “Do you?”

I swallowed but didn’t pull away. A few inches from mine her eyes were huge, their color washed to topaz in the sulfurous light. I tensed, resisting her. If she let go of me, I was certain I would fall.

“Do you?”

Her words lingered in the air. But then I heard another sound, a faint jangling echo as of a glass harmonium shattering, its brittle notes fading into Angelica’s voice.

“Do you?”

It was a real choice she was offering me: a deal of some sort. Like Oliver’s opening parry, this was a kind of acid test—but what the hell was I being tested for?

The jangling grew louder. In counterpoint to it rose another sound, the tremulous sigh of wind in dry reeds. Angelica’s grip on my arm tightened as she pulled me to her, until her body’s warmth enveloped my own. Her perfume was everywhere, musky and sweet. The sound of our breathing faded into the wind.

“Sweeney,” she whispered. “Will you come with me?”

I wanted to reply but I felt too sleepy to talk, too sleepy to do anything but lean into her arms. My head lolled back until I was staring at the sky, the afterlight of sunset gone now, given over to a glowing purple the color of hyacinths. The moon was there, just barely—a slender crescent with a silvery ridge of cloud banked against its curving tines, and a single pallid star beside it. The crimelights gave a weird sepia tinge to everything. Moon and falling leaves and even our own shadows seemed to be strewn across the faded dusty plane of an old photograph—everything except Angelica.

She was so much brighter and realer than everything else. I could feel her arms around me, feel her hair blown against my cheeks and smell her perfume mingling with the scent of decaying leaves and moist earth. The rattling of the wind in the trees grew louder, the scent of sandalwood and oranges filled my nostrils until it all blurred together: the moon sweeping across my vision, Angelica’s warm breath and the soft pressure of her hands upon mine, the beauty and strangeness of the Divine itself joining to claim me as the night grew deeper around us.

Will you come with me?

I closed my eyes. A faint earthy sweetness lay upon my tongue, and almost I imagined I could smell woodsmoke, the scent of burning leaves. I opened my eyes and smiled, half-turning my head to look up into Angelica’s face. I could feel her there, just as I could feel the chill wind.

But I did not see Angelica. What I did see made me gasp.

There was a woman in the moon. I could see her as distinctly as though she were my own reflection. Her face calm, with the ageless features of a Toltec image—heavy lips, long slanted eyes, high rounded cheekbones. Her eyes were half-shut, and the curve of her mouth mirrored the moon’s bow glittering upon her brow. Milky light washed across her, so that it was as though I gazed at a face in deep water, a shattered caryatid waiting to be pulled from the depths. It was a beautiful face, but what made it beautiful was its utter calm, the overwhelming sense that in aeons and aeons she alone had never bowed before the wrath and fury of time and lust and death. I could have stared upon her forever, I felt, and myself turn to stone and ash and never even care.

But then the woman began to change. Her hair first, its cloudy mass dispersing into darkness until only a few bright threads remained. Then the rounded contours of her face hardened. Her mouth grew thin and taut. A row of teeth protruded from beneath her upper lip—teeth white and glittering as ice, grotesquely long and needle-sharp. Very slowly her mouth parted in a smile. Behind the row of teeth loomed a darkness more complete than any I had ever seen: starless, formless, not even a mote of light glimmering within it.

And then the moon began to burn, not brightly but with dull red clouds swelling above it, as though it had been set upon a smoldering pyre. I watched in horror as those bloody clouds grew and finally burst into a poisonous black haze. The fragile arc of moon collapsed. Where it had shone moments before was—nothing—only that immense face with its shuttered eyes, and the sighing wind.

I was shivering uncontrollably. I could feel the hammering pulse of blood in my temples, feel Angelica’s arms around me, cold and unyielding as iron, and hear her breathing. But my vision was filled with the dreadful visage that took up the entire sky: eyes like charred holes, her mouth a howling void. I was filled with a terror so intense, so sharp and pure and cold, that it was almost like joy. For a long moment everything was so still I thought we might stay this way forever, frozen beneath that implacable sleeping face. And then its eyes began to open.

I screamed; at least I tried to. But Angelica gripped me so hard the sound was choked out of me. Above us floated that gorgon’s face, vast and ravenous and patient. Once more the moon burned upon her brow with a hard silver gleam. Her hair flowed across the sky, her mouth gaped wider and wider until I thought it would swallow us. But what was most terrible was her eyes.

Because they were not a gorgon’s eyes. Instead, when the heavy lids lifted, there in that dreadful white face shone eyes warm and blue and brilliant as the heart of summer. Looking at them my knees buckled. Even Angelica gasped. She let go of me and I dropped to the ground, weeping.

Because I could have borne the gorgon’s stare, shuddered and kicked and fought some nightmarish vision of Hecate or Kali or Circe. But not this. Never this.

Because this was my mother. Her summer eyes staring down at me as she woke me in the morning, met me after school, waved a sad farewell in front of Rossetti Hall. But at the same time it was also Angelica I saw there. Angelica as I had first glimpsed her, poised in the doorway of a stifling classroom, Angelica staring at the Shrine as it burst into flame. I wept, overwhelmed by the most primal surge of yearning that I have ever felt.

And the Woman in the Moon gazed back down upon me. Her eyes, too, welled with tears, her lashes drooped even as her mouth yawned wider and I felt myself falling into Her. All around me was heat and flames, the stench of charred wood and cloth and cinders. My hair burned, my clothes turned to ashes and my hands to sizzling bone as I reached for Her, crying aloud. Because She was my mother, She was whispering my name, the only name my mother ever called me, even as She devoured me—

“Katie—Katie—Katie—”

—and in Her burning embrace my tears hissed upon my cheeks, my hair and skin were nothing but smoke—

“—Sweeney! Sweeney—please!”

I opened my eyes and blinked painfully. “What…?”

“Sweeney! Are you all right? Sweeney?”

In front of me crouched Angelica. Her face looked greenish in the crimelights. I coughed, waved unseen smoke from my bleary eyes. “Yeah, I’m okay. But Angelica—did you—did you see—?”

Her eyes widened as she shook her head. “I thought you were having a seizure,” she said. “You’re not—well, epileptic or something?”

I stared at her in disbelief. “No, I’m not epileptic. Didn’t you—I mean, Angelica, what the fuck was that?”

Angelica said nothing. Above us the night was clear; at least it was clear once you got above the scrim of heat and exhaust that hung above us like the ghost of some other, older place.

“What was what?” Angelica asked softly. “I mean—you just seemed—well, a little out of it.”

I glanced at her sideways: her pale face, the way she looked away from me and then back again, her gaze skipping from mine like a stone over cold water.

A little out of it.

She was lying. Something had happened, but who knew what? Not me; but then maybe not Angelica, either. I took a deep breath and forced myself to stare into the sky again, looking for the face I had seen there before, the moon like a bright reflection of my own deepest fears and longing.

It was gone. Oh, the moon was there, all right, but not The Moon: only a whitish blur hanging above the trees. There were no stars, no eyes; nothing but that pale scar in the bruised sky. As I stared, a thick brown haze encroached upon it, slow but relentless, until at last the moon was gone. Where it had been a smudged cloud gave forth a dull incendiary glow against the lowering darkness.

“No,” I whispered. When I looked at Angelica I saw that she was watching me, her gaze intent and not a little frightened. She opened her mouth and for an instant I thought she would explain, or at least apologize. But she only looked away again.

A moment later her voice came to me softly more imploringly than before. She drew close to me, rested her hands upon my shoulders, and whispered, “Do you still want to come?”

I said nothing. Instead I tilted my head to the sky, eyes shut, and listened, wondering how I could ever have thought the night was silent. Distant traffic, far-off laughter, and voices not so far, the pleading whine of a siren fading into the tossing leaves.

And once more I felt that faint eerie music, truly felt rather than heard it—a deep wild note that hummed through me, resonating within my chest as though I were a drum that had been struck. I trembled, with fear and expectation and yearning. All the exhilaration and uncertainty I had felt over the last few days hardened into a single thought, a small cold nugget that might some day crack and yield an explanation for what was going on. I had had a glimpse of what might be behind all of this, an intuitive flash that told me Yes, something really is happening here, and Yes, you can leave now if you’re afraid, and Yes, this really isn’t your life anymore.

Because in my life the moon did not call out my name. Angels didn’t appear in my room at night and leave their plumage upon the floor. Eerily beautiful boys and girls didn’t befriend me, and I didn’t hear distant music like bones and flutes. In my life I would gently take Angelica’s hands from my shoulders, then turn and walk away from the Mound. I would go to call my parents, or return to my room to study and maybe make some other new friends, misfits like Annie or myself who had been let into the Divine by mistake.

But this wasn’t my life anymore. I knew that. Because I only nodded, and raised my hands until they closed around Angelica’s.

“Yes,” I whispered, my fingers tightening about her wrists. The sound of bones and flutes died away into the laughter of others coming up behind us on the path. “I’ll come with you, Angelica. Of course, you know I will.”

CHAPTER 6 The Reception

GARVEY HALL WAS A domed Italianate villa dating from the mid-1800s, with kudzu-wound porticoes and twisted cedars hunched against the crumbling walls.

“Look at that.” Angelica sighed rapturously. “It’s like a set from Les Enfants du Paradis.”

I thought it looked more like Tara on bad acid, but Angelica didn’t waste time discussing the architecture. Instead she swept past the dozen or so people scattered about the patio and on into the crowded reception.

I hesitated. Inside all seemed to be smoke and scarlet and gold, with touches of black and white where groups of tuxedoed men bowed their heads.

I can’t go in there, I thought. But Angelica was already in there, smiling and nodding. So I hurried to catch up, my bootheels echoing loudly on the parquet floor. I was sure that someone would stop me, question me, ask to see my invitation.

But Annie’s comment about Angelica conferring invisibility was borne out. No one noticed me at all.

“Just act like you belong here,” whispered Angelica as I clunked past an aged monsignor chatting with a young man in a kilt.

“Oh, sure,” I muttered, but Angelica only grinned. The monsignor started in annoyance as we elbowed our way past, only to beam when he saw Angelica smiling down at him.

“Hello, dear,” he murmured. The boy in the kilt eyed her appraisingly before turning to his companion. Angelica and I went on.

It was an enormous round room, with faux marble walls and columns, parquet floors, a frieze of fanciful creatures circling the high ceiling around the dome’s perimeter. From somewhere rose the sweet strains of a string quartet. There was no air-conditioning, and the heat and humidity were intensified by the smoke. I felt as though I were swimming through some warm grey pool, washed by currents of expensive pipe tobacco and perfume and the fumes of about seventeen different kinds of exotic cigarettes, including clove, camphor, and what could only be hashish. Everyone smiled at Angelica, one or two of them greeting her by name. A few people even smiled at me. I smiled back, trying to put all of my charm and energy into my teeth, so they wouldn’t notice my clothes.

And everywhere I looked in vain for Oliver. I remembered what he had said about the Molyneux scholars—

“What are they?”

“Magicians—”

Though if anything, this looked like an assemblage of some very wealthy if eccentric alumnae, with a few flushed undergraduates and faculty members thrown in for good measure. And, whatever the Molyneux scholars were, they gave a loose interpretation to the term Formal Attire. I saw tuxedos of every vintage, as well as morning coats, evening gowns, beaded miniskirts, tribal robes, kimonos, velvet yarmulkas, and every kind of ecclesiastical attire, including a woman who appeared to be wearing a cardinal’s biretta and dalmatic. What I did not see was anyone else wearing a Blue Cheer T-shirt and black stovepipe jeans tucked into battered cowboy boots.

“I’m dying of thirst,” Angelica announced. She paused, smoothing her dress against her thighs, and peered through the smoke. “Come on—”

The bar was a long mahogany-and-brass affair that might have been imported from a 1920s cruise ship. Behind it a phalanx of harried undergraduates in ill-fitting white jackets poured drinks and opened bottles of champagne. I got a vodka tonic; Angelica took a fluted glass of mineral water. Then we walked to the end of the bar and staked out a spot by the wall. Angelica leaned back so that her dress rode up her legs, her stockings and high heels stark black against the creamy painted marble. I stood beside her and knocked back my vodka tonic.

“Nice bunch of folks,” I said, crunching ice cubes. “You think Oliver’s coming?”

Angelica shrugged, but I noticed how her gaze kept darting about the room. I was thinking of getting another drink when I spied a stocky figure off by himself, smoking a cigarette as he leaned against a medieval-looking tapestry.

“Hey! There’s that guy from Warnick’s class—what’s-his-name, you know—”

Angelica turned quickly, then nodded, disappointed. “Oh, him. José Malabar. He kept hitting up on me at orientation. He’s a commuter, lives here in D.C. with his parents.”

“And he’s a Molyneux scholar?”

“Yes—one of his brothers was, too. He’s an English major. Writes poetry. He showed me some of it.”

I rattled the last ice cube in my glass. “Any good?”

Angelica grimaced. “Not really my taste. Sort of raw. But it was okay.”

I looked back at the dark figure. He nodded and lifted his cigarette in greeting.

“Listen, I’m getting another drink,” I said. “You want something?”

“Maybe in a minute. But I’ll get it myself.”

At the bar I smiled gamely at the guys pouring drinks.

“You know her?” one asked, pointing his thumb at Angelica.

I took my vodka tonic and downed most of it in a gulp. “Yeah.”

“Huh.” He stared admiringly at Angelica, then flashed me a grin. “Well, you’re shitting in some high cotton, sister. Have another.” I traded my empty glass for a full one and stepped away. Angelica had floated toward the center of the room, deep in conversation with a white-haired man who could have been her grandfather. I turned and walked to the tapestried wall.

“Hi,” I said. José Malabar looked startled. “You’re José. You’re in Warnick’s class with me, right?”

He took a long drag of his cigarette and regarded me warily. He was my own age, heavyset and olive-skinned, with dark straight hair falling unevenly about his ears and small, almond-shaped eyes. He wore an ancient black suit over an open white shirt, flocked with burn holes and a dusting of ash.

“Joe,” he said at last, in a low voice. He had an accent that I couldn’t place. “Baby Joe.”

“Baby Joe.” I nodded and raised my drink to him. “I’m Sweeney Cassidy.”

He stared at me through a halo of grey smoke. “Yeah,” he said at last. “Sweeney. I know you. You’re the one got tagged by Beauty and the Beast this morning.” He began to laugh, a childlike wheezing giggle, and reached for my glass. I smiled uneasily and gave it to him. He took a sip, raising it in mock salute. “What’re you doing here?”

“I came with Angelica.”

“Huh.” Baby Joe frowned, then finished my drink. He handed me the empty glass and shook his head. “Yeah, I know her too. She’s okay. But you’re not one of them.”

“Who’s ‘them’?”

Baby Joe’s voice was derisive. “You know. The Benandanti. Brujos.”

“No.” I looked around uncomfortably, then set my empty glass on the floor. “I mean, I guess not. I never even heard of them until today.”

“That’s good.” He dropped his cigarette. “Because I hate them.”

He stared at the floor, waiting till his cigarette had burned a tiny black hole in the wood; then ground it out with a filthy high-top sneaker bound with electrical tape. The sneakers matched his shapeless suit, which was baggy even on his ungainly form. On the lapel was a small red button. I squinted as I read the tiny letters.

I laughed, but Baby Joe’s expression remained enigmatic. He tapped another cigarette from a pack of Pall Malls, then began to speak with exaggerated slowness.

“Let me tell you something, Sweeney Cassidy.” He spoke so loudly that several people turned to frown in our direction. “You shouldn’t be here. This scholar shit is dangerous, di ba?”

I grew hot with embarrassment and stared at the tips of my boots, but Baby Joe seemed to enjoy the glares we were getting.

“You think you’re getting in for some nice schoolgirl fun, you and Barbie Doll over there, but you’re gonna get fucked.”

He paused and turned an insolent stare upon two elderly women who regarded us with tight frowns. “YOU—ARE GOING—TO GET—FUCKED.”

The women moved off in disgust. Baby Joe smiled, then looked at me and added, “And your friend Oliver? Talagang sirang ulo—fucking crazy bitch! He’ll be pushing a shopping cart down Fourteenth Street one of these days. He’s crazy, that whole family is crazy. My brother was here with his brother, Walter—”

“Waldo.”

“Whatever. He was nuts, fucking nuts, di ba? Tried to poison some teacher that failed him. With rat poison. Once he shot at my brother with a bow and arrow.”

“He’s a Buddhist monk now.”

“Figures. These guys—” He gestured disdainfully at the well-dressed crowd surrounding us. “—these guys tapped my brother years ago, di ba? When we were in Manila my mother was a bruja, you know, a—a midwife and—well, some other shit—but then she had a run-in with President Marcos’s chauffeur and they made things tough for us. My father died of bangungot—you know what that is? Bad juju, Schoolgirl, very bad stuff—and we had to leave Manila, leave the whole fucking country. My uncle lives in D.C. so we came here, but then he’s got like some weird connection with this place and my mom gets plugged into all that shit. And my brother Nestor, they think he’s brujo like my mother, they give him some tests and finally he gets a scholarship.”

He shook his head and giggled softly. ‘“Religious Studies.’ But, like, this is the only way we get to go to college, di ba, so who’s going to say no?”

I nodded as though this was all perfectly normal. “What’s your brother doing now?”

“He’s got this band, Euthanasia. They play at the Atlantis sometimes.” He sighed. “Me, I’m only here ’cause they gave me a full scholarship. Nobody gives scholarships to poets.”

He raised his eyes thoughtfully. “But what are you doing here, hija? How’d you hook up with those two?”

I shrugged, stabbed at the floor with the metal toe of one boot. “I don’t know. They just started talking to me in Warnick’s class.”

“Huh. Talking.”

Baby Joe looked disgusted, as though this was an obvious setup. But he said nothing more, only gazed through hooded eyes at the room in front of us.

I fell silent. I stared at my feet and wondered if I should cut my losses and just sneak out now. It seemed clear to everyone I met that I didn’t belong at this reception; didn’t belong with Angelica, and probably didn’t belong at the Divine. The three vodka tonics made me feel weepy and hopeless. I thought of my parents and how much it was costing them to send me here, how much they’d save if I returned home and commuted to SUNY Purchase. I thought of the classes I’d skipped, and the copy of The Golden Ass I wasn’t reading.

“Shit,” I said under my breath. I glanced up, hoping I might see Angelica, or maybe even Oliver. But there was only Baby Joe, smoking and brooding like an extra in a bad French movie. Angelica seemed to have disappeared, and Oliver, I was starting to suspect, wasn’t going to show at all.

So I turned back to the party going on without me; and who I saw was Professor Warnick. Amidst all that extravagant finery he looked absurdly small and demure in a pearl grey morning suit and striped ascot, his dark hair swept back from his face. He was watching the crowd with a bland expression, his blue eyes guarded but calm.

It was the figure standing behind him that made my neck prickle: the same extraordinarily tall figure I’d glimpsed outside of Reardon Hall that morning. Only now, instead of a simple cape, he wore robes that evoked some bizarre liturgy. Cloth of a purple so deep and rich it was almost black, but with a sheen that picked up the light and shot forth a phosphorescent glow. They swept about his emaciated form, cuffs and hem trimmed with golden ropes and cords and tassels. The effect should have been ludicrous, Duchess of Malfi meets Star Trek; but it wasn’t. It was terrifying.

“Hey, Baby Joe,” I said hoarsely.

My voice died in my throat as the figure turned. Its hooded face bobbed, like a blind hound trying to pick up a scent, and I shrank against the wall. I was ridiculously certain that he was looking for me. I recalled the figures in my room last night. This could have been one of them, only even more frightening, because no one else took any notice of him at all. He towered a good three heads above Professor Warnick—cadaverously thin, head weaving from side to side, the robes looped about his frame like winding sheets.

“Baby Joe,” I hissed, but still Baby Joe didn’t hear. He was staring absently into space, nodding in time to some private music. Between his fingers the cigarette had burned out. I started to reach for him, then stopped.

This was crazy. Whether it was the vodka or nerves or just bad vibes, I was acting like I’d lost my mind, or at least the part of it that should tell me how to behave at a party I’d crashed. I took a deep breath and forced myself to look up.

Professor Warnick and his companion were gone. In their place stood a group of boisterous undergraduates who seemed to have all just come from the same boozy pregame show. I glanced around, certain that I’d be able to find that towering emaciated figure; but it was gone. It might never have been there at all.

My fear faded into drunken ennui. I watched the laughing students and tried not to feel envious and stupid and headachy. Finally I turned to Baby Joe and asked, “So. You live in D.C?”

“Huh?” Baby Joe started, gazing in surprise at his dead cigarette and then looking suspiciously at the crowd. “Hey, hija—isn’t that Barbie Doll? Over there with that famous lady professor—?”

I turned. For a moment I glimpsed Angelica between waves of black tie and silk, her auburn hair shimmering. She was talking excitedly to a woman who kept glancing over her shoulder and motioning Angelica closer to her.

“Her?”

Baby Joe nodded. “Yeah—you know, that archaeologist. I forget her name.”

I tried to get a better look at the famous lady professor archaeologist. She was maybe in her forties, brown-haired and sexy in a scholarly kind of way. Not exactly pretty but interesting-looking, with intense dark eyes and a Mary Quant haircut and probably the same frosted lipstick she’d been wearing since grad school. The same minidress too: a sleeveless black-and-white sheath with big eyes on it. A little weird, but the sort of thing I could imagine an archaeologist might think was appropriate formal wear. Whoever she was, Angelica looked more excited than I’d seen her all day I thought of joining them, but another wave of partiers swept through and I lost sight of them.

“You want a drink, hija?” Baby Joe pulled at his shirt collar to expose where it had been repaired with black thread. “Sweeney? You look like you need one.”

“Yeah, I guess I do. Thanks.”

He started for the bar, pausing to stare at my T-shirt and boots. “Blue Cheer. Well, fuck me. Di ba, okay, maybe you’ll be okay…”

I walked with him, this time accepting the Pall Mall he offered me, and for good measure ordered two vodka tonics.

Magda Kurtz, the famous lady professor of European Archaeology, had come tonight against her better judgment. It meant canceling her flight back to the West Coast, which was an expensive indulgence, and now she wouldn’t get enough sleep, which was always annoying.

But mostly, it was dangerous. All summer she’d been playing fox and hounds with the Benandanti, tiptoeing around the Divine like the renegade student she still felt like. While her own students here treated her like the prophet of a new age, the other teachers were more circumspect. Distant, at best, like Balthazar Warnick—and why were so many of them at the Divine still men! You’d think they’d at least make some recruitment effort!—at worst, cavalier or disdainful or even suspicious of her work. So different from Berkeley, where her theories were already part of the core curriculum.

But then the Divine had always been like that—so far ahead of its time in many ways, positively medieval in others. The Anthropology Department especially seemed hardly to have changed at all since she’d left. Sometimes, she thought wryly, it seemed like it hadn’t changed since Malinowski’s day.

A lot of that was Balthazar’s doing, of course. He’d been the one to approve her summer term here—it had been his suggestion, in fact, and Magda still wasn’t sure why the invitation had come. But once offered the chance to return, she’d been surprised at how strong her feelings were for the place, how very much she wanted to be here again, even in the middle of the summer.

So Magda had come. She hadn’t been back since the disastrous Çaril Kytur expedition. That was how they all still referred to it, even Magda herself. As in the words of the Washington Post article that had heralded her return this summer—

“…that disastrous Çaril Kytur expedition from which, like a phoenix from the ashes, Magda Kurtz arose with her landmark theories of the matristic cultures of ancient Europe.”

Here at the Divine the students loved her. Professor Kurtz, with her wry, rather droll teaching style. And, of course, her theories, and her books—the trade paperback edition of Daughters of the Setting Sun had recently become a campus best-seller. And the legendary parties she held in her tower room on campus, where a few of the chosen would pass around Magda’s ancient ivory opium pipe with its embellishment of tiny grinning evil-eyed lions, and smoke opium—Real opium! from Nepal! She was Too Much!—and where, as the night burned to dawn, one (and sometimes two) of the more comely undergraduate boys might be discreetly steered toward the little back room, while the rest of her admirers were directed to the door. Oh yes: Professor Kurtz was famous.

But always she was aware of how the other, older members of the Benandanti regarded her. Not quite, not necessarily, as a traitor. Certainly there had been others before Magda Kurtz who left the Divine, to carry on the Benandanti’s work in the government and the arts and even at other places of learning. But Magda’s work had reawakened an old, old feud, perhaps the very oldest one of all.

So this summer she had kept to her students, and to her tower room. Her little romances and necromancies helped pass the time, and the Divine’s extraordinary library, and of course all the other pleasures of the City on the Hill. She avoided the other faculty members as much as she could, especially Balthazar Warnick; but it had been difficult. As always she found herself falling under the diminutive Balthazar’s spell, his peculiar blend of wistfulness and melancholy and biting wit.

I might have fallen in love with him, she thought, slightly wistful herself now as she sipped her champagne and gazed absently across the crowded reception room of Garvey Hall. It might have all been different then, it might have—

But really it could never have been anything but the way it was.

“We serve at different temples now. Different temples, different gods,” Balthazar had said a few weeks earlier, over lunch in one of the sunlit upper rooms of the Old Ebbitt Grill. It had always been one of Magda’s favorite places in the city. Balthazar had taken her there when they first met, awkward student and ageless mentor, and ordered her a Clyde’s omelet—bacon and spinach and sour cream—and kir in a round goblet. It was the most sophisticated meal she had ever eaten, and the first time she’d drunk wine from a wineglass.

“Different gods,” he repeated, and his voice sounded sad.

Outside the afternoon traffic strained past, inching toward the Old Executive Office Building and the White House. Magda sipped her kir. Balthazar continued to stare at her with those piercing electric blue eyes.

“Perhaps we always have,” he added.

Magda answered smoothly, pretending to misunderstand.

“Oh, but it’s always the same old ivory tower, Balthazar, you know that! And you’ll see, I’ve been right all along. Soon every student at the Divine will have read Tristes Tropiques and Of Grammatology—”

Balthazar made a face, and Magda laughed. “Well, I’m still very grateful you let me teach here this summer, Balthazar.”

He smiled. “But who could turn away the lovely and brilliant Magda Kurtz?”

“You refused Paul de Man.”

“You’re much better looking.”

Magda stared at him, amused, but then she saw how Balthazar’s eyes had clouded, blue shivering to grey.

“It’s nothing but theory, Balthazar. Just another way of looking at the world.”

“Theories can be dangerous things,” said Balthazar. His tone was light, but she saw how his eyes were cold and parlous as fast-moving water. “Remember Rousseau and romanticism.”

“I can’t sleep for thinking about them,” Magda said, laughing; but that gaze had stayed with her for a long time, like a bad chill.

She shivered at the memory, quickly composing herself as a passing couple greeted her. It was exhausting, keeping up the pretense of being just another Molyneux scholar made good in the ivory tower. She knew there’d been talk. Within the legions of Benandanti there was always talk. Conspirators wormed through its long history, brazen or retiring or deadly, but always there. In this the Benandanti were like the Vatican, only far more ancient. Like the Inquisitors of old they had their little ways, their probings and inquests, scrutators and catechists, their spies and delators and indagations. Cabals of old men—the oldest of old men—and they gabbled and gossiped like crones. Women had gotten a bad rap for being gossips, Magda thought bitterly. She had never known a group more eager to snipe and speculate than old Catholic priests and the Benandanti. No better place than the Divine (or the Vatican) for that.

Though, unlike the Vatican, the Benandanti left no histories for the world to read. Most of their cadastrals and cartularies had perished with the libraries of Alexandria, after which time the Benandanti became a nomadic sect. They maintained their eternal vigilance from behind the marble clerestories of the Eternal City, and the Kaaba in Mecca; from the Maharajah’s pavilion at Varanasi, and Italy’s octagonal Castel del Monte and even, very briefly, the Old Map and Print Room on the fourth floor of Harrods. It was not until the colonization of the Americas that the Benandanti found at last a permanent home, a place where all the old wise men of the Indo-European steppes could settle to grow even older and wiser, and from the dusty classrooms of the Divine watch their protégés make their way into this brave new world.

And now that an unmistakable Sign had come, those at the Divine would be especially watchful against traitors. Without thinking, Magda touched the amulet at her throat.

In hoc signo vinces. Othiym Lunarsa, Othiym, Anat, Innana, Othiym evohe! Othiym haïyo.

The ancient tongues ran together but she knew them all. In this sign we shall conquer, Othiym. We exult! We praise you.

She’d been recklessly stupid the other evening, leaving her room with the spent Hand of Glory and the other remnants of her craft in it. That was what happened when you toyed with the naphaïm—they made you feel indestructible, made you forget that while they could soar above it, you were likely to plunge into the inferno and burn. Her fingers played along the smooth edge of the silver crescent, the half-conscious refrain still echoing in her head.

Othiym, Anat, Innana…

But she should watch her thoughts here—especially here—shroud them in nonsense or dull mental chatter. She closed her eyes and dredged up one of George’s dopey verses, composed on that endless flight to Estavia—

Someone touched her elbow and she started. One of her students, holding a bottle of Heineken and peering at her in concern.

“You okay, Professor Kurtz? You want a beer or something?”

She smiled and shook her head. “No thanks. Just tired. I have an early flight.”

He nodded sympathetically. “Oh, yeah, man, I can relate. Jet lag. Have a few drinks first, it really helps.”

She grimaced. “At 7:00 A.M.? Maybe not.”

He grinned and left her, weaving slightly.

Magda took another sip from her champagne. All these drunk kids, thrilled to be drinking Heineken when there was Veuve Clicquot and Tattinger Brut for the asking. She sighed.

Because of course it was the kids who had brought her here tonight. Knowing it was foolish, knowing it might mean dangerous questions from Balthazar or his toady Francis—still she hadn’t been able to resist the notion of seeing in the flesh one or both of the faces she’d scried in her room the night before. She wondered if the Benandanti had yet determined who they were, those two innocents doomed to be pawns in this latest skirmish between ancient enemies. She couldn’t imagine Balthazar not knowing, if only because she couldn’t imagine Balthazar not knowing anything.

She finished her champagne and handed the empty glass to a passing busboy. Over the years she had attended dozens of receptions like this, and some far more strange. Benandanti in full evening dress gathered in a derelict warehouse beside the Potomac; a seventeen-course dinner at the Gaslight Club served by naked young women; Benandanti mingling with career diplomats and Balinesian hierodules at Dumbarton Oaks. She had seen Michael Haring’s disconcertment turn to awe when he first viewed the collection of Iron Age cauldrons in the library of Saint Vespuccia’s College at the Divine. She had seen Balthazar Warnick walk through the door of a custodial closet in the Shrine, thence to disappear among the flower-strewn monuments on the island necropolis of San Michèle in Venice. Compared to some of those other gatherings, the annual reception for new Molyneux scholars was nothing but a glorified frat party.

But tonight Magda felt uneasy. Perhaps it was her knowledge that the two innocents she had glimpsed last night were here, somewhere, ready to meet and ignite. Or perhaps Magda felt a small share of guilt over having doomed some poor fool to walk into the resulting conflagration. She took a deep breath and once more fingered the pendant around her neck.

Othiym, haïyo.

This, too, was a risk. But she always felt stronger when she wore it, and she often did so despite the danger. A number of the guests here might recognize it for what it was: a real, a true lunula, sacred to the ancient European Goddess, she who in the northern lands was called Kalma, “corpse-eater,” and in Greece the White Goddess; in Sumeria Lamasthu, “daughter of heaven,” and in certain remote valleys of the Balkans Othiym Lunarsa, Teeth of the Moon. She who is both Mother and Devourer, whose breath is plague, who suckles serpents and devours children. She who had made Magda’s reputation.

Because in the end the Çaril Kytur expedition hadn’t been a disaster for Magda Kurtz. George’s death had been a tragedy, of course, but a minor one. There had been an inquiry, and a grief-stricken family mad for justice, but in the end it had been like that I Ching hexagram Magda had always favored: K’uei, Opposition but also No Blame. Michael Haring had been disappointed that she had not returned with illicit artifacts, but he soon found solace in another archaeologist.

In the wake of the Çaril Kytur investigation, with its threats of lawsuits and damaged reputations, Balthazar Warnick had not refrained from saying I told you so. Yet Magda herself had, been surprisingly cool about the whole thing. Her colleagues chalked it up to the general unpleasantness of the experience, another good reason to avoid the Soviet-controlled Balkan states like the plague.

And eventually the whole thing blew over. George Wayford’s family settled for a scholarship endowed in his name. And Magda wrote the landmark paper that was published in Antiquities, the monograph that became the framework for Daughters of the Setting Sun. From what should have been a career disaster, Magda Kurtz emerged not only unscathed, but triumphant.

Some of her colleagues remarked how obviously nobody knew the whole story; and of course they were right. Because Magda told no one about the lunula. Not Haring, not Balthazar Warnick, not even June Harrington.

In the wake of the failed expedition came long months when she researched her secret treasure. She traded her dimly lit carrel in the Colum Library stacks for a battered wooden desk in the upper reaches of the Museum of Natural History, then went to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Finally she made her way to London, for two weeks’ study in the dusty cool recesses of the British Museum. This was followed by a week of visiting private collections in the Scottish countryside, including a sojourn at Dalkeith Palace outside of Edinburgh, where she viewed the legendary skulls owned by the Dukes of Buccleuchs.

What she learned there sent her to Athens. In a cafe shadowed by the Acropolis she met with Christos Eugenides, an eminent archaeologist friend of Michael Haring’s whose involvement in the thriving black market trade between the Aegean countries and the rest of the world had long been supported by the Benandanti.

“These are very good, you should try them.” Christos speared a prickly star the size and color of a tarnished nickle. “Baby octopus. Quite wonderful. Or the bekri meze—you might like that.”

Magda’s smile was more of a grimace. The sun and heat and effort of translation and travel had given her a permanent headache. She felt feverish and disoriented. The scent of olive oil and fried fish was nauseating. As a panacea, she sipped grimly and steadily at a glass of fiery tsipoura.

“No thank you. Michael said you might tell me more about an object I found—”

She could feel it nestled at her throat, cool as a blade for all the numbing heat. She parted her collar and let her fingers rest upon the crescent’s smooth edge. Christos Eugenides leaned forward.

“Ah—ah.” His voice rose sharply, as though he had been kicked.

“You know it, then.”

Christos Eugenides had already drawn back into his plastic chair. “This is not within my provenance,” he said curtly. “I’m quite sorry. Michael must have misunderstood—”

“He said you knew about Cycladic figurines—”

“This is not remotely Cycladic.”

“—and other things.”

He removed a bill and several coins from his pocket and set them on the marble surface. “I have an acquisitions meeting at the university at six o’clock. I’m quite sorry not to have been more helpful.” He rose.

“Then can you recommend someone else?” The lunula slid back into the folds of her blouse. “I’ve come all this way…”

“Surely the Museum Library is quite—”

“I’ve read enough. I need to talk to someone who’s seen one of these—”

“There is no one.”

She waited for him to go on but he said nothing more, only stared fixedly at her throat. Yet despite his tone and words, he seemed reluctant to leave. After a moment he turned to face the endless parade of automobiles, the sand-colored shadow of the mountain looming above them. Exhaust fumes mingled with the stench of fried fish, and Magda raised her glass to her face, breathing in the harsh smell of tsipoura. For a long moment they stood there, silent. Finally Christos sighed.

“Spyridon Marinatos.”

“Who?”

“Spyridon Marinatos. In Akrotiri on Thera—that is, Santorini. He is excavating a city on the south shore of the island, beneath the village of Akrotiri. It is a Bronze Age city…”

His voice drifted off into the drone of traffic and the carnival sound of a radio blaring bouzouki music.

“Marinatos?” Furiously Magda scribbled the name into her battered notebook. “Spiro Marinatos?”

Christos shook his head very slightly, as though hearing some more distant music. “Spyridon. Nea Kameni,” he said softly.

“Nea—what?”

“Nea Kameni. ‘The New Burnt Land.’ It is a fabulous city, buried like Pompeii or Herculaneum beneath the volcanic ash from the great cataclysm of 1450 B.C. He believes it was the capital of the great lost Minoan culture.”

For an instant the roar and rush of traffic, of blazing wind, died away. His next words sounded unnaturally loud in the abrupt silence. “He believes he has found Atlantis.”

Magda put her pen down and rubbed her throbbing temples. “Oh, please—”

Christos Eugenides shot her an angry glance. “This is all quite true, Miss Kurtz. The site is thousands of years old and I assure you more spectacular than anything you have ever seen. It is a more important archaeological find than Pompeii or Tutankhamen’s grave.”

He paused, his gaze lingering upon her neck, then added in a very low voice, “You are aware, I am quite certain, that the Minoan culture is at the very heart of worship of the great goddess. Perhaps the most ancient culture of the Mediterranean. And we know next to nothing about it at all.”

At the word goddess Magda’s mouth grew dry. “Of—of course,” she said, and gulped the rest of her tsipoura. The raw liquor scorched the back of her throat. “Yes, of course—and this Marinatos will see me? I can catch a plane to Santorini?”

Christos Eugenides shook his head. “I do not know if he will see you or not. You will have to find someone with a boat. It may be difficult; Spyridon is not a popular man right now. His political views are considered reactionary and dangerous.”

“Can you give me the name of someone with a boat?”

He turned and walked to the edge of the patio. “I can give you nothing, Miss Kurtz. I am quite sorry.” But as he stepped down onto the sidewalk he hesitated, then said, “Santorini—that is not the correct name. In Greek it is called Thera.”

He walked quickly toward the corner, his last words hanging in the sullen air before the wind and dust swallowed them.

Thera: Fear.

She had not gone to the island. Instead she returned to her room in the cheap pensione she’d found in Monastiraki, the old Turkish quarter near the site of the ancient Agora. There she finished another bottle of tsipoura and tried vainly to find some English-language news on the ancient radio. She knew she shouldn’t be drinking. She felt sick and frightened and exhausted, ready to give up this entire crazy quest to learn something about her stolen artifact. She wished she could leave tonight, but she’d booked a return flight for two days hence and couldn’t afford to change it.

“Ahhh, hell.”

With a groan she collapsed onto the mattress, flattening a pile of books and papers. The sheets were damp and reeked of bug spray. Her notes looked as disheveled and forlorn as Magda herself. She reached for the tsipoura.

“Hair of the dogma,” she said, frowning. The bottle was empty. She couldn’t remember finishing it. “Well, enough already.”

She dropped the bottle onto the cracked cement floor. With a satisfying crash it shattered. “Goddamn waste of time,” Magda swore.

From the room next door came the endless percussive thud of music. The same song, the same tape played over and over until she could feel it in her spine as she writhed on her foul-smelling bed, trying vainly to sleep. Her neighbor wailed along with it, his voice hoarse and giddy.

“Goddammit!” she yelled, but the noise drowned her words. “Turn it DOWN!”

Drumbeats and a fadeout; then the song began again. Magda rubbed her temples and moaned.

“Oh, Peter, please.”

She’d run into him when she had arrived two days earlier, a young hippie taking a year off from Swarthmore. A sweet kid, actually, stoned every time she saw him, his head bobbing to music real or imagined, it didn’t seem to matter. But she just couldn’t stand it anymore.

Magda stumbled into the hallway, its stained white walls pocked with dead silverfish and faded blue handprints, talismans against ker, the spirits of the dead. From a small recessed window came the muted noise of traffic. When Magda pounded her neighbor’s door, the cheap wood paneling felt frail enough to break.

“Peter!”

Abruptly the door swung inward. Music and smoke poured into the hallway, the smells of sweat and burning wax. And there was her neighbor, blinking sleepily and holding a cotton kimono closed at his chest.

“Peter,” she repeated, striving to be heard above the din. “Look, could you turn it down a little? I—I’m not feeling well.”

He stared at her curiously, then backed into the room. She could glimpse a small tape player atop a heap of dashiki shirts and frayed jeans. In one corner a tiny old-fashioned oscillating fan turned listlessly back and forth, back and forth. He’d dragged his mattress onto the floor and covered it with an Indian print batiked in lurid shades of purple and orange. When he reached the mattress he stopped, kicking it idly with a dirty bare foot. He made no move to turn down the music.

“Peter?”

He was young, nineteen or twenty. Young enough that even after days, maybe weeks, without shaving he had only the faintest gold stubble on his chin. Thin but broad-shouldered, with long unwashed blond hair spilling down the back of his kimono. Where his robe hung open she could see his chest, hairless and tanned, and the smooth slope to the top of his narrow hips, the jutting edge of his hipbone and a flash of white where the sun hadn’t touched him. He nodded and cocked his head.

“Hey, Magda,” he said in a thick honeyed drawl. “How you doing?” His brow furrowed. “Um, maybe you better come in.”

She took a step after him, stopped as the warm wind from the fan tickled her legs.

No wonder he was staring: she’d stormed out barely dressed. Her jeans were still on the floor where she’d flung them after she’d returned from her unhappy meeting with Eugenides. She was wearing nothing but her blouse and white cotton underwear.

“Oh, shit.” She clutched foolishly at her collar and started to leave, but Peter was already at the door, peering outside before closing it with exaggerated courtliness.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he said, then, miracle of miracles, crossed to the tape player and turned it down. Without looking back he tossed her a dashiki shirt. “You want to get high?”

High? With no way to get to Thera, no hope of learning more about the lunula, only fìfty-three dollars (American) in her pocket and no credit left on her American Express card?

“No—” She shrugged into his shirt, then laughed. “Oh, what the hell. Sure, why not.”

The shirt hung almost to her knees. It had a strong powdery smell of jasmine incense. “Looks nice,” said Peter. He settled cross-legged on the mattress, reached beneath a lumpy pillow, and pulled out a small agate pipe. “Here—”

They smoked in silence. Peter’s head bobbed in time to the soft music, the small blue candle flame shivered with each pass of the ancient fan. After a few minutes Peter set aside the pipe.

“Is that the only song on this tape?” Her voice was hoarse, her tongue felt thick and sweet, as though she’s been eating jam.

He nodded, eyes slitted. “Yeah. Isn’t it great?”

“For the first million or so times.”

He only smiled and tapped out a rhythm on his thighs. Magda sat across from him, her headache still throbbing gently somewhere far beneath the soft buzz of hashish. She was so tired, she should get up and leave, thank him for the hash. She thought about moving, might even have stretched one leg toward the edge of the mattress; but when she looked up she saw that Peter was staring at her, his eyes gilded to gold coins by the candlelight.

“That’s really beautiful.” He moved until he sat on his knees facing her. He put one hand on her shoulder and gently touched her throat. She felt the weight of the lunula there, rising and falling with the pulse of her blood. “You’re really beautiful.”

She laughed again, softly. “Yeah, sure,” she murmured, but she didn’t draw away.

“No, really, I mean it.” One of his hands moved to stroke her breastbone beneath the crescent; the other brushed the hair from her face. “You really are. You look like a—” He shook his head, smiling, and made an extravagant gesture.

She could feel herself blushing: she’d been called beautiful about three times in her life. As he gazed at her Peter’s brown eyes were luminous, but also a little surprised, as though his own words confused him. He rested his palm against her cheek, staring at her with his lips parted, his eyes narrowed as though he was trying to remember something, like where or who he was, how she’d gotten into his room. Magda stared back at him. Her own breath was coming faster now and her heart was pounding. There was something about the flickering light, the way the shadows coursed across the boy kneeling in front of her—as though she was watching him from some impossible height, with webs of cloud and mist between them and blue waves smashing against cliffs far far below. She shut her eyes and the vision became even clearer, a barren mountaintop where small purplish flowers clung to the stones, their star-shaped petals hanging from a lax head nodding in the wind. Their scent was overpoweringly sweet, the smell of hyacinths. At cliff’s edge flames scored the rim of a blackened brazier. The air was full of sound, keening wind and gulls, the wail of an ibis. She heard voices, faint music and the sound of drums. Her bare skin burned from sun and salt water and she could smell something burning, a pungent leafy scent. Not wax or hashish but something else: yarrow sticks, dittany of-Crete, crushed bay leaves; and this mingled with the musky odor of Peter’s sweat, the faint scent of jasmine that clung to his hair, and the wind-borne sweetness of hyacinths. He was so near to her that his breath was warm against her skin, her throat. Nearly as warm as the metal crescent upon her breast, as the flames leaping behind them. She opened her eyes. A few inches from hers, Peter’s face was flushed, his eyes half-closed as though he was dreaming it all: the music, Greece, Magda herself.

Magda shook her head, tried to blink away the flares of grey and gold and blue that streamed at the edges of her vision. What the hell is this? But she could see nothing clearly save the boy in front of her. He was impossibly beautiful, his hair unbound and his throat and face and eyes all turned to gold, his robe fallen open so that she could see his skin, smooth, the color of expensive oil. Like a bronze kouros, one of those sacred images dredged from the Aegean, his blank eyes fixed on some point in the unfathomable distance. He was unbuttoning her shirt, his fingers cupping her breast, his weight pressing the lunula into her flesh as he kissed her.

She pushed him back against the mattress, pulling off his robe until he lay there, naked. For a long moment she looked at him, stroking the tops of his thighs, tracing the long curve of his waist and then cupping his ass in her hands as she lowered her head and took his engorged cock into her mouth. His flesh tasted salty, bitter; she could smell the sea and feel the wind cold upon her back, his hands hot as metal as they crushed her breasts and he groaned. A few bitter drops burned against her tongue. She drew back quickly before he could come. He groaned louder; she straddled his legs, took his cock in her hands.

“Oh—hey, don’t stop—”

His voice cracked as he stared up at her, his eyes no longer soft but imploring, almost desperate. She smiled, a thin smile, and mounted him.

It was too fast for him, she could hear him begging her to slow down but she didn’t care. Her fingers raked his chest, her nails left red streaks as she pulled him harder into her. Blood welled from beneath his bottom rib; she brought her finger to her mouth and sucked it, then lowered her face and kissed him. He moaned and tried to grab her, but she pulled back again, still holding him inside her.

When she came she gasped and let her breath out explosively. She could hear him crying out, a high thin sound carried away by the wind, felt the faint pulse and throb of him beneath her as she drew away. Her head pounded so that it drowned out everything else.

“God—ah, god—” Peter murmured where he lay beside her. “That was amazing…”

There was a sound. A lingering echo as of the voices she had heard earlier, far-off and indistinct. She sat with her knees sinking into the mattress, naked except for the silver crescent upon her breast. From its twin spars candlelight glinted, gold and red. The voices grew louder.

As though she were reading them in the air in front of her, the meaning of the words became clear. She had always known them, had heard them before a hundred times, a thousand.

The voices died into the rush of wind and the sea. Magda shook her head, trying to recall just where she was, why her knees seemed to be digging into rough dirt instead of cloth. She could smell the musty thick odors of Peter’s room, incense and semen and unwashed clothes, and see a small blue flame beneath its spiral of grey smoke. But the outlines of walls and floor and ceiling had grown blurred, lost in a growing haze. Then the sun was gone, and the candle flame. Everywhere about her was night save for a fine thread of silver drawn across the sky and the pale form of the kouros in front of her. In her hands she felt the lunula’s weight, no longer warm but icy cold. As she drew it over her head she felt the bite of metal, a tugging pain as it raked her temple.

Then it was free. Between her fingers she held the shining reflection of the new moon that burned high overhead. The face of Cybele, Brimo Hagne, Terrible Pure One. The sleeping moon, the fasting goddess: Othiym. She could feel eyes upon her, could see them now in the dark. But not Peter’s eyes.

No: Her eyes, cold and bright and full of yearning. She was there, standing before Magda on the mountaintop, the moon upon Her brow like an arc of flame, Her mouth curved into a smile. Magda could see Her white teeth and Her hands outstretched as though to gather Magda to Her breast; but Her breasts were withered and shrunken as an ape’s, Her hands knotted into clumps of bone. From Her mouth flowed a blackness so immense that Magda swooned; but before she could lose consciousness something grabbed her, she felt stony fingers pulling at her arms and that cold foul breath filling her nostrils like fetid water. Magda opened her eyes and She was still there, more immense and terrifying than anything Magda had ever seen.

“No!” Magda cried; but as she sought to wrench away she could feel herself bowing, even as her mind cried Worship! Worship!

And then She was gone. Magda gasped, blinked and raised her hands protectively, expecting to see that monstrous face. Instead she saw the boy, one arm flung across his face so that his eyes were hidden. His throat was pale, smooth, showing only the smallest bulge of Adam’s apple beneath his childish face. His breathing was soft. Across his mouth spilled a slender bow of moonlight. He stirred, murmuring, then lay still again. Without a word she raised the lunula, grasping its spurs so that the curved glittering blade faced outward, and fell upon him.

Long after she woke. She lay upon the pallet, the lunula still in her hand. The room was dark. From the sliver of bluish light that crept from beneath the door she guessed that it was morning. A foul smell hung in the air, excrement and bile and blood. There was blood on the sharpened edge of the lunula, still damp, and blood on the first three fingers of her right hand. On her knees was the crumpled mass of the shirt he’d given her. When she bunched the cloth between her fingers it crinkled, as though it had been starched. A tangle of something soft tugged at her fingers and she looked down to see a long matted plait of blond hair, at one end stuck with a felted blackish mass. Flies lifted from it in a lazy droning spiral, like the lingering ghost of the boy’s stoned chatter, and disappeared.

She drew her head up slowly. A few inches from where she sat, Peter’s corpse sprawled on the mattress. His head sagged backward; it had been nearly severed from his neck. He was so white he looked as though he had been frozen. She had never seen a body so purely albescent, like a figure carved of quartz or crystal. His hands were curled into rigid talons. His hair had fallen across his face, so that all she could really see was his mouth; his lips had drawn back in a snarl. One of his front teeth was missing.

“Aaahhhhh…”

With a moan she backed away from the corpse. When she bumped into the door she shrieked softly, covered her mouth with her hand. She stood there for a long time, staring. Finally she gazed down at the lunula dangling from her fingers.

In the dim light it looked almost black. The spots where the blood had dried were like jagged bites in the soft metal. As she stared, the blood staining the silver began to glow. The metal grew hot, so hot she cried aloud, but just as she moved to fling it away, the crescent cooled, as rapidly as a hot poker stuck in the snow. She saw where lines began to stand out on the smooth silver, the full curves and swells of its moons so brilliant they looked molten. Magda thought it would begin to drip, spattering liquescent metal upon the floor.

But then the lines faded, red to black to grey. The lunula’s surface gleamed as before, pure and smooth as though it had been cast anew.

She waited more than an hour before leaving his room. When she did, she saw no one. Not then; not when she bolted into the filthy bathroom at the end of the hall to wash. Not when she left the next day, her duffel bag stuffed with books and clothes, a small newspaper-wrapped bundle beneath her arm. She had paid for her room in advance; there was no one who cared when she departed, as long as it was before Friday. She had spent the intervening hours curled in a ball on her mattress, feverish, nearly delirious, waiting for the sound of footsteps that never came. When she finally left the pensione she walked quickly. She crossed several streets until she came to an empty alley. Without stopping, without even hesitating, she dropped the bundle containing Peter’s bloodstained shirt into the gutter.

Her flight left Athens as scheduled. While the customs officials spent twenty minutes going through her bag, and confiscated a model of a water clock that she had purchased in a shop near the old Agora, they took no notice of the crescent moon that hung pale and lucent as a tear against her throat.

“Excuse me—oh!”

Someone bumped into her and Magda winced. She ducked her head and let the lunula slip behind the silken folds of her dress.

“Well, well! Professor Kurtz! We’re sorry to be losing you again, Magda.”

It was Harold Mosreich, he who had attained such success with his work in the Yucatán and was now a fully tenured professor of Central American Archaeology at the Divine. He smiled at her, genuinely forlorn: whether because he had bumped her or because she was leaving, she had no idea. Magda smiled and leaned over to kiss his cheek, catching a whiff of talc and Lilac Vegetal.

“Oh, Harold. You’re the only one.”

He shook his head. “Not at all. Only yesterday I heard Balthazar Warnick say how sorry he was you were leaving us so soon.”

“So soon?”

At mention of Balthazar’s name she grew cold. She thought of the naphaïm in her room; of the faces she had glimpsed in the silver basin, the boy and girl she had come in search of tonight. She stammered, “I was actually supposed to leave earlier, but I stayed on a few extra days. Bind up a couple of loose ends. You know…”

Her voice trailed off. She wished she’d gotten another drink, or a canapé, something to use as a prop and distract Harold, keep him from looking at her face. She felt the lunula like a brand burning at her throat. How could she have been so stupid as to wear it here?

“Oh. Well, maybe he was sorry you hadn’t left sooner, then.”

She glanced at him sharply, but Harold’s expression was without irony. He was gazing across the room at a drift of white-clad nuns blocking one of the service doors.

“You don’t suppose they’re all going to the bathroom together, do you?” he asked. When Magda raised her eyebrows he went on, “It’s just that Balthazar particularly asked that we don’t have a lot of traffic upstairs tonight—they were supposed to cordon off that end, but then the loo by the kitchen backed up, and—well, you don’t want to hear all this, do you?”

He took her hand and shook it affectionately. “Good luck, Magda. Have a safe flight back.”

“Thank you, Harold.”

She smiled as she watched him make his way through the crowd, his bald head gleaming beneath the gently swaying chandeliers. Before Harold reached the doors leading upstairs, she turned to snare more champagne from a passing waiter.

And so she didn’t see Balthazar Warnick step from behind the cluster of nuns to greet Harold Mosreich, with Francis Xavier Connelly looming behind him. By then Magda Kurtz was much too far away to hear Harold’s words to her former mentor, or to see how the tenured professor of Central American Archaeology sketched a half circle in the air, his melancholy eyes even sadder than they had been a few minutes earlier. She did not see how Balthazar Warnick nodded as she took her champagne flute, or how he marked the tenebrous halo about her like a cloud’s passing, the glint of silver at her breast.

CHAPTER 7 Night of the Electric Insects

I ALWAYS WONDER WHAT would have happened if I hadn’t gone with Baby Joe for those two vodka tonics. If instead, I’d gone over there to stand with Angelica and Professor Kurtz. In my head that’s always been the moment when everything changed, the stone tossed into the stream that changes its course. If I’d been there talking to them, maybe the others would have left them alone. Maybe my entire life would have been different.

Probably I couldn’t have done anything at all. But I would have saved them if I could.

Her conversation with Harold Mosreich left Magda uneasy.

Only yesterday I heard Balthazar Warnick say how sorry he was you were leaving us so soon.

But she hadn’t told Balthazar, or anyone else, that she was going. He could have easily figured it out, of course: the summer session was over, the fall term had already started; but it was still unsettling. She had interfered with Benandanti matters; she had stolen knowledge of their Sign, cast a pebble into the clear water where they went to scry their secrets.

Time to go, she thought. But as she started for the door a voice cried out to her.

Wait!

The command was so loud and clear that she stopped, glancing around furtively. She saw only the same crowd of well-dressed men and women, nothing else. But when she took another step it came again—

Wait!

—a man’s voice, low and insistent. She smoothed her damp palms against the front of her dress, closed her eyes as she tried to summon whom or whatever had called to her.

Nothing. She heard scattered bits of conversation—classes, football, something about incunabula at the Library of Congress—the sweet sad notes of the string quartet. Tod und der Mädchen. She opened her eyes.

All was as it should be. There was Harold Mosreich, chatting with a blue-haired matron. There was one of her students, a boy who had been her partner in a brief and intense liaison over the Fourth of July weekend. Near Harold was another boy, stocky and dressed in an ill-fitting suit, who leaned over to light the cigarette of a pale, dark-haired girl, with a freckled, waifish face and nervous hands. Nothing more.

Magda let her breath out. Nerves and fatigue, that was all. She had forgotten how the effort of summoning the naphaïm exhausted her. By this time tomorrow she’d be back in her apartment at Berkeley, readying herself for her own fall term. She’d done what she could to intervene on behalf of her Mistress. Now it was out of her hands. She finished her glass of champagne and was turning to leave when the girl approached her.

“Professor Kurtz?”

Magda froze.

“I’m Angelica di Rienzi.”

It was the girl Magda had scried in her room. In sudden panic Magda took a step backward, then caught herself and tried to smile. The girl smiled back and went on breathlessly.

“I wish I’d been able to take one of your classes this summer—I wanted to audit one but they wouldn’t let me. I’m just starting here,” she added. “But I wanted you to know how much I loved Daughters of the Setting Sun—”

She was such a beautiful girl! Magda nodded, stunned. “Angelica, how—how nice of you—”

She winced as Angelica took her hand and shook it vigorously. The girl had incongruously large strong hands, a peasant’s hands despite their long polished nails, with broad, slightly callused fingers.

“Oh, I mean it, Professor Kurtz, it was wonderful—”

That smile! It was ravishing, and Angelica was probably not as unconscious of its effect as she tried to appear. When Magda wanly smiled back, she felt that her own mouth was too small and meager to project anything remotely worthy of this girl’s radiant good will.

“—I did a paper on it at school. It really, really changed my life.”

Magda arched an eyebrow. “Really really?”

“Oh, yes! I loved that story about the Greeks—the fight between the men and women, and how when the women lost, the men said their children would no longer be allowed to keep their mothers’ names. That was the first time I ever thought about the whole notion of a matriarchy. It was like a door opening, and you opened it for me.”

“Saint Augustine.”

“Excuse me?”

“The story’s from Saint Augustine. You know, the proto-feminist,” Magda said drily. “So I guess you should thank him for opening the door.”

“Oh. Well, anyway…”

When you took them apart Angelica’s features were almost too exotic, at least to someone accustomed to California, where girls were polled neatly and expensively as bonsai evergreens. And, of course, she was wearing green contacts. No one had eyes that color, Magda thought, like the virent flash of some Amazonian butterfly’s wing.

“…made me want to become an archaeologist. Before that I was planning to go into the theater—a friend of mine from Sarah Lawrence said she could set me up with an audition for ‘Dark Shadows’…”

Magda nodded. The girl definitely had something. The unusual features projected a striking, almost disturbing, beauty—Magda thought of the famous bust of Nefertiti, or the heavy-lipped face of the hermaphroditic Akhenaton. Exquisite, but in a way that wasn’t quite human. She wondered why the Benandanti had brought her here. Perhaps they had known, somehow, that she was to be chosen for some great work. But Magda was fairly certain that even the Benandanti had not known until a few days ago that a Sign was to appear.

No, something else would have driven them to Angelica; the world was full of beautiful girls who were not marked for the Benandanti. What Magda sensed in her was an overwhelming determination, a great and terrible will.

Will toward what, Magda had no idea. Probably the girl herself didn’t even know—not yet, at least. But when she found out, all hell would break loose. Magda stared at her thoughtfully as Angelica went on.

“…spent some time with my cousins in Florence and then…”

It wasn’t just her beauty: she projected such raw pure energy. Nearly everyone stared at her. A few, men and women both, quite literally stopped in their tracks to stare. As though some great icon—the Sphinx, Venus de Milo, Greta Garbo—had strolled into a cocktail party and mixed herself a drink.

And, while she seemed to pay no heed to this constantly changing backdrop of admirers, Angelica di Rienzi noted every single one of them. Magda was sure of it.

“And then one night I got a phone call from Balthazar…”

Balthazar? Since when did undergraduates call him Balthazar? Angelica reached out to stroke Magda’s bare arm, the girl’s touch like warm oil poured across her skin. Magda shivered.

“…and I love it, I just love it…”

Magda closed her eyes. The girl’s perfume enveloped her, a sweet warm fragrance like sandalwood and oranges. Like the sun burning down upon those tiny wild hyacinths that grow beneath endless blue Aegean skies—

Kirkotokous athroize te mani Grogopa Gnathoi ruseis itoa

—like the sweet smoke drifting up from the mountaintop, the kouroi gathered there and harrowed in the dusk like grain…

“So I like, really think that I’ll find myself here.” Angelica laughed and let go of Magda’s arm. “I’m sorry to go on like this! But your work really has meant so much to me.”

…Othiym haïyo…

Magda drew back as though she had been slapped.

What the hell is going on?

But Angelica had noticed nothing. Her huge emerald eyes were fixed on Magda. She opened her hands and held them palms upward as she recited in a low voice, “‘I have made you a lioness among women, and given you leave to kill any at your pleasure.’”

“What?” demanded Magda. “What did you say?”

Angelica dropped her hands. “From your book.” She looked confused. “I mean, I think that’s where it’s from. I’m sorry—was it, was I—did I remember it wrong?”

Magda drew her clenched fists to her breast.

“No,” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. Who is this girl? “It’s—it’s not from my book. It’s from the Mysteries of Eleusis—I mentioned them in there, but I never quoted that verse. I never quoted it anywhere.”

“Oh. Eleusis. The corn thing.” Angelica gave a self-deprecating laugh. “I must have read it somewhere else, then.”

Her voice trailed off and Angelica suddenly looked away. Magda followed her gaze.

On the other side of the reception room there was a stir, as people turned and craned their necks, to watch someone arguing with a gentleman by the front door. Magda heard tittering, a single raucous shout. Several students cheered drunkenly. Magda stood on tiptoe, trying to see over the crowd.

In the smoke-filled entrance to Garvey Hall stood a tall unsteady figure, wearing what appeared to be white robes—no, a sheet—no, two sheets, and one of them patterned with lurid purple daisies—draped around his torso and across his head like a hood. As she stared the figure straightened and pulled a small white rectangle from somewhere within his makeshift toga. Magda recognized the same heavy embossed card that had been issued as invitation to every Molyneux reception she had ever attended. With a flourish the sheet-clad figure presented it to the man at the door. The guard peered at it suspiciously, then waved the newcomer through. The boy walked into the main room with his head bowed, face still hidden by white and purple folds. Whistles and catcalls filled the air.

“Check it out!”

“Hey, Ah—lee—VER!

“Ah—lee—VER!” chanted a group by the bar. “Ah—lee—VER!”

The boy in the toga drew himself up. He gave one shoulder an exaggerated shake, like a stripper shedding her costume, and threw his head back. A flurry of long ebony hair fell around his shoulders. Angelica gasped.

“Friend of yours?” asked Magda.

Angelica nodded, covering her mouth and then exploding into laughter. “I—I can’t believe it—”

“Very nice,” Magda remarked.

It was a clumsy effort at drag, but credible. Just a raw gash of lipstick and two streaks of rouge and some kind of bright blue eye shadow. But even this crude effort could not hide how good-looking he was—indeed, the makeup gave him an eerie, almost otherworldly, prettiness, as off-putting in its way as Angelica’s beauty. He walked with great dignity through the cheering students who gathered around him. No mincing or prancing, no sheepish grin. He looked like the biblical harlot from some early Cecil B. de Mille epic, and while a few of the older guests were scowling, most laughed, or at least pretended to.

“Who is he, Angelica? Do you—”

Magda abruptly shut up. The girl’s lips were parted, her eyes glowing. Whoever this boy was, Angelica was staring at him the way everyone had been gazing at her all evening. Magda touched the lunula at her throat and bit her lip.

Of course. This was the other one, the boy she’d glimpsed last night. Oliver, the naphaïm had named him; and now across the parquet floors snaked a conga line led by a half-dozen drunken boys in evening dress, yelping, “Ah—lee—VER! Ah—lee—VER!”

“He’s—very good-looking,” said Magda. But Angelica only smiled, a look of perfect seigniory, and continued to stare.

And that was when Magda saw the pattern, the secret behind the Sign. That beautiful boy, this beautiful prescient girl; all of Angelica’s pure fiery will turned onto nothing but him. The oldest story in the book, that was all it came down to. Nothing more.

Magda turned. As quickly as they had gathered to lionize him, Oliver’s admirers had fallen away. Now he stood by himself, holding the crumpled sheet to his chest in a surprisingly delicate manner. He was gazing abstractedly at the ceiling, where the Venetian glass chandelier swayed slightly. Oliver moved with it, arm raised. His eyes were closed and he was singing to himself. He appeared to be stoned out of his mind.

“…so I better go now. It was wonderful meeting you.”

With an apologetic smile, Angelica started to walk toward Oliver. Magda watched her go. From a hidden recess, the string quartet began to play an austere arrangement of “Pavane pour une enfant defunte.” In spite of herself Magda felt her eyes well with tears.

Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire.

Sudden fury lanced her. All of her hopes for the Sign, all the divided energies of the Benandanti and her Mistress—and they came down to this, some adolescent passion! She stared at Angelica and thought of all that golden energy, just waiting to be released in a dorm room with some horny zonked-out kid. It was insane! Almost without thinking, Magda darted forward and grabbed the girl by the shoulder.

“Angelica! Wait—”

Angelica stopped, taken aback.

“Angelica—I—I just wanted to—”

That was when Magda saw them: Balthazar Warnick and his young stooge Francis. Even from here she could see Warnick’s sapphire eyes glittering, his fixed smile as he nodded to a passing colleague. Then he turned, and his gaze locked with hers. In an instant she realized what her recklessness had cost her.

They knew.

Magda could tell by Balthazar’s eyes, and by something else: an abrupt though subtle shift in the air, as though a window had been opened to let a freezing wind vent through the smoke and laughter. The names of the two innocents were no longer a secret. The Benandanti had learned of her betrayal.

“Angelica! Wait—” Magda put every ounce of her will into the command. The girl gazed at her, puzzled. Around Magda’s neck the lunula burned like a heated coil.

“Tell—tell me your name again,” she ordered. Angelica frowned. “Please! Tell me your name.”

Angelica glanced over her shoulder, looking for the boy in the makeshift toga; but beneath the chandelier the floor was empty. She turned back to Magda. “Angelica di Rienzi.”

“Angelica—”

The lunula was a white-hot collar about Magda’s throat. She could scarcely breathe, scarcely find the energy to speak. The air buzzed with static electricity; she felt a burst of nausea as before her everything spun into a sudden tumultuous brilliance, jagged rays of white and crimson distorting her view: a terrifying prismatic radiance that did not illuminate but disturbed the outlines of everything about her. Light and color pulsed and throbbed and even seemed to produce a sound, an anguished shriek like a razor drawn across a whetstone. A few yards away, two shimmering forms moved through the luminous maelstorm.

“That’s right. Angelica di Rienzi,” the girl said softly.

Magda summoned all her strength. “Angelica di Rienzi.” She could hear Francis’s heavy tread. Quickly Magda reached for a stray curl upon the girl’s forehead, plucked a single bronze strand and snatched her hand back.

“Angelica Di Rienzi: In hoc signo vinces. Othiym, haïyo!” She opened her fingers: the hair flickered into a wisp of flame and white ash. “I would like you to have this, Angelica.”

With one smooth motion Magda pulled off the lunula. She held it in front of her and gazed upon it for the last time.

All the brilliance that had filled the room now seemed to radiate from the shimmering crescent, so that nothing but shadows surrounded herself and Angelica. From somewhere very far away she heard murmuring, a woman’s voice raised in lamentation. The shadows grew thicker. For an instant Magda had a glimpse of the new moon rising above a stony outcropping, the scarlet arc of George Wayford’s throat against the earth. Before the vision could fade she slid the lunula over Angelica’s head.

“I’m very glad you enjoyed the lecture,” Magda said loudly as Balthazar and Francis Connelly swept up behind her.

“What?” exclaimed Angelica; then “0w!—it’s hot!”

“But now you’d better go—”

Magda pushed the girl toward the bar. In a daze Angelica stumbled past Professor Warnick and his companion, then on through the diminishing crowd, her fingers splayed across her throat. For once no one took any notice of her.

“Magda.”

Magda could smell Balthazar before she turned to greet him: that deceptively serene mixture of Borkum Riff and chalk and moldering books. “Balthazar,” she whispered.

The small slender man shook his head. In his pearl grey morning suit and ascot of pale green satin, he looked like a darkly elegant cricket.

“I was so—surprised—to learn you were still among us. I thought your flight was today.” His tone was mocking but also wistful.

“I changed it.”

He took her right arm, Francis her left. “You changed a few other things as well,” Balthazar murmured as they assisted her through the crowd. “News of your recent fieldwork reached me only this morning. I had no idea your interests had—expanded—so far beyond ours.”

Gently but irresistibly they steered her toward the same door where Harold Mosreich’s nuns had gathered earlier. Magda looked away so they couldn’t see the fear in her eyes. Her throat and breast felt scorched. Without the lunula she felt utterly exposed, as in a nightmare of facing a lecture hall naked, her students gaping in disbelief. As Balthazar and Francis led her through the darkened doorway she whimpered.

Here the sounds of the reception were abruptly silenced. They were in one of the service wings of Garvey Hall. The narrow passage was dark and cool, the floors smelling of disinfectant and neglect and giving a hollow echoing tone to their footsteps. A chill wind moaned querulously as it plucked at Magda’s bare arms. When they turned a corner her captors’ hold on her grew tighter.

“Where are you taking me?” she whispered.

They faced a wide stairway that curved upward through several stories until it disappeared into utter darkness. From far overhead came the rattle of an unlatched window. As Warnick and Francis dragged her up the steps she pulled back with all her strength.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Forget it, Magda,” spat Francis. “We know all about you, we—”

“Francis!” Warnick’s commanding voice rang out. Francis fell silent and glared sullenly at Magda. Balthazar shook his head.

“Forgive me if our methods seem a little crude, Magda. But we just can’t afford to let you go.”

“Where—” she began; but Balthazar hushed her.

“I was terribly, terribly sorry to lose you to Berkeley,” he said, his voice so regretful that she glanced at him hopefully, half-expecting to see tears in his eyes. There were none, but the look he gave her was immeasurably sad. “And now this—losing you twice… Oh, Magda—”

They stopped, halfway up the stairs. Francis stared pointedly into the darkness and glowered. But Balthazar gazed at Magda, his handsome features disarmingly youthful as ever. To her amazement she saw that now his eyes were brilliant with tears. She could feel his hand trembling even as he held her unyieldingly. For a moment she thought he was going to stand on tiptoe to kiss her. Instead he turned away.

“This is a great disappointment,” he said, and pulled her after him.

“Please, Balthazar, can’t you tell me—”

Her words broke off as she stumbled onto a landing. They stood at the entrance of another dim hallway. Seemingly endless ranks of closed doors lined each side of the corridor. There was a smell of stagnant water, the faintest whiff of gasoline.

“A safe place,” Balthazar said softly. “No people to bother you—”

“Balthazar, listen to me—”

“—no people at all—”

“Balthazar, please!”

No one heard as they dragged her into the silent passage.

The string quartet had packed their instruments and were lined up at the bar, ordering shots of tequila. A tape of the opening strains of Carmina Burana wafted above the dying smoke and laughter. At my feet a little army of empty glasses glinted, as I finished another vodka tonic. I was already totally wasted, but I had some stupid idea that the more messed up I got, the safer I would be here.

“They always play this as a sign-off,” Baby Joe said in disgust. “It’s like the fucking national anthem at midnight.” He shifted against the wall, pointed with his drink. “Uh-oh. Here comes Barbie.”

I looked up to see Angelica.

“The weirdest thing just happened to me.” She raised an eyebrow at the rows of empty glasses and the cigarette in my hand. “Have you seen Oliver? Sweeney…?”

“Angelica.” I grabbed Baby Joe’s arm. “This is Baby Joe—remember, you said you’d met him—”

Angelica flashed him a distracted smile. “Sure. Hi. Look, Sweeney, this is very strange—do you know who Magda Kurtz is?”

“Uh-uh. No, wait—” I looked at Baby Joe. “Wasn’t that who you were telling me about?”

“Visiting Marcellien Professor in European Studies.” Baby Joe regarded Angelica through slitted eyes. He looked like Peter Lorre sizing up a little girl for the kill. “Saw you talking to her.”

“Well, look—she gave me this—”

I leaned forward to see what she pointed at: a crescent-shaped silver necklace, like a Celtic torque.

“Wow. It looks expensive. She gave it to you?”

Angelica nodded earnestly. “Isn’t that weird?”

“Beware of geeks bearing gifts.” Angelica looked annoyed as Baby Joe pointed across the room. “There’s one now. Your friend Oliver.”

Angelica whirled. I made a show of casualness and turned slowly, taking another drag on my cigarette. When I saw him I started coughing uncontrollably. Baby Joe snickered.

“Maybe he heard the calla lilies are in bloom. Talagang sirang ulo.”

In the middle of the room Oliver stood gazing at the dome as if he were reading something there, his horoscope maybe, or the name of a good psychiatrist. A few feet away two middle-aged couples were trying very hard to ignore him. He was wearing makeup—at least what was left of it, most seemed to have come off on some kind of sheet wrapped around his neck. What remained was a red hole of a mouth and two bruised eyes, and of course all that disheveled hair and a flowered Marimekko sheet. He looked like the survivor of some terrible crash on a fashion runway, beautiful and wrecked.

Angelica stared at him transfixed. When I finally stopped coughing I wheezed, “He’s got to be totally wasted—he told me he was getting some mushrooms—”

“Mushrooms?” Baby Joe perked up. “Maybe I’ll go see how he’s doing.”

He rambled off, trailed by a grey cloud of ash. I started to follow when Angelica grabbed my arm.

“Come with me?” she pleaded, glancing back at Oliver. “I wanted to find the ladies’ room—I feel so grubby, all this smoke—”

I nodded reluctantly. When I looked back I saw Baby Joe standing a few feet from Oliver, smoking and staring at him pensively, as though he were on display in a museum. Oliver didn’t seem to know he was there.

We went to the bar. I shouted “Ladies’ room?” and the bartender yelled something about Doors, Right, Upstairs, gesturing vaguely with one hand as he poured scotch with the other.

“I think he said this way,” I said. We elbowed through an uproarious claque of young men who parted like the Red Sea when they saw Angelica. A minute later we walked through an open doorway and out of the reception area.

“God. This is an improvement. At least we can breathe.” Angelica started to laugh. “Did you see Oliver? He must be wasted.”

I grinned, reached over to finger her necklace. It was cool to the touch and surprisingly heavy. “She really gave that to you, huh? Wow.”

Angelica sighed. “Probably I should give it back. Maybe she was drunk or something.”

“Maybe she meant to give it to Oliver.”

“Maybe I’ll give it to him.”

I leaned in to get a better look, and noticed where a crescent shape had been cut out of the metal. “You know, it looks like part of it’s missing—” I poked my finger through and tapped her breastbone. “—see? Here.”

“Maybe that’s why she got rid of it. Damaged goods.”

I drew back and let the pendant fall from my hand. “Yeah, maybe. Let’s go. I want to get back and find out what’s happening with Oliver.”

We padded down the narrow corridor. After a minute or two the hall branched. To the right stretched an even darker, narrower passage; to the left stairs curving up and up through several floors.

I frowned. “He must have meant this way,” I said, and turned to the right. We walked for a few minutes but saw nothing—no doors, no windows, not even a painting on the dim walls—until finally we found ourselves in an empty utilitarian kitchen thick with the smells of steam and stale cooking.

“This can’t be right.” Angelica wrinkled her nose. “This is like, the servants’ quarters or something.”

“So maybe we’re supposed to use the servants’ bathroom.”

She shook her head. “No. It must have been back there.”

We retraced our steps until once again we stood at the foot of the broad staircase. Angelica started up, but I remained at the bottom, my hand clutching the banister.

Above me the stairway twisted into darkness, ominous and silent. I shuddered. From the hall behind me came a sudden gust of laughter from the reception. I had only to turn back, walk a few steps, and I would be safe again. I could get another vodka tonic, find Baby Joe, and Oliver…

“Sweeney? You coming?”

I looked up and saw Angelica’s face suspended between the banister’s curves, the silver pendant at her throat glistening. She looked like the figure I had seen earlier: those terrible eyes floating above me, hair streaming into the night while all about her whirled into chaos. The woman in the moon.

“Sweeney?” Her exasperated voice floated down. “Come on. They’ll all still be there when we get back.”

“Okay,” I said, defeated. “I’m coming.” Moments later I stood beside her on the landing.

“What’s the matter, Sweeney? You look awful.” She ran her hand across my cheek. “Sweeney! You’re burning up!”

Her fragrance clung to my skin, the faint musk of sandalwood and oranges like rain washing over me. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply, until that other, sickening odor was gone.

“I’m okay. I guess I drank too much.”

Angelica smiled wryly. “I guess so. Well, I’ve got some aspirin in my bag. Let’s find some water.”

She took my hand—firmly but companionably, like a determined English schoolgirl—and led me down the hall. After a few minutes I felt better.

“Well, this sure isn’t the servants’ quarters,” I said.

It was like being inside a landscape by Moreau. Against a shadowy black background all was painted or upholstered in dark jeweled colors, bloodred and purple and blue, shot with gold like spasms of daylight. A subdued ruddy light suffused everything, burnishing the oak wainscoting and worn oriental carpets that muffled our footsteps.

“Who the hell lives here? The second Mrs. de Winter?”

“No,” Angelica replied absently. “This is where visiting Benandanti stay.”

On the walls there were ornate brass fixtures shaped like griffins and gargoyles and beautiful women, and on the heavy closed doors brass plates engraved with simple legends—The Red Room, The Luxor Room, The Tuscan Room. Everything had the air of being made ready for guests, but at the same time it all smelled musty and closed-in, as though there had been no visitors here for months, maybe years.

“How do you know?” My voice was too loud. “I mean about the Benandanti. How do you know they stay here?”

“My father.”

“Your father.” I rolled my eyes. “Oh, sure.”

Angelica didn’t seem to hear. She continued on down the hall, not even looking to see if I was following her.

I wasn’t. I stood there, my hands clenched, and asked, “So who are the Benandanti?”

Silence.

“I said, who are the—”

“Ssshh!” She stopped and glared. “I thought you were sick, Sweeney. Come on—”

“I’m not your fucking sidekick! And I’d feel better if someone would tell me—”

Suddenly she was there in front of me, her hand on my waist, the silver necklace glowing against her black lace bodice.

“Sweeney,” she said softly. She touched one finger to my chin and tilted my head back, until all I could see were her eyes, huge and slanted and that impossible green. “It’s okay, Sweeney. Really, it’s okay—”

She kissed me, not a schoolgirl’s peck on the cheek but a real kiss; and I let her, though I had never kissed another girl before or even really thought about it. Her hair spilled across my face and I felt lace like dry leaves crinkling beneath my fingertips; her breasts spilling into my hands like warm water, and the hard smooth weight of her thighs where they pressed against me. But all I could think was that it wasn’t that different really, there was nothing soft about her at all, not her hands or her skin or anything except her mouth, so small and so hot I gasped, then moaned as she pulled me closer.

“Don’t be afraid,” she whispered, and though she didn’t say it aloud I could hear what came next—

You’re with me.

I tried to kiss her again, but she only smiled, drawing away from me and twisting a lock of my hair around one finger. “Come on, kemosabe—let’s get you that aspirin.”

I followed her in silence. I didn’t feel embarrassed or angry or even all that confused—just a little turned on, and very, very tired. She was so matter-of-fact, it was all so matter-of-fact that I was starting to think maybe this was what it was like for everyone on their first day of college. Angels at dawn, visions in the afternoon, succubæ at night. It was like a dream, like the best high you ever had; but I knew it was all a mistake.

Angelica had stopped where the corridor ended, at the top of yet another flight of stairs. She looked at me and frowned.

“Now what?”

I peered down the stairwell. A freezing draft shot up from it, and an oily smell.

“Maybe we just walked right past it,” I said weakly. “All those doors…”

We turned back, but only took a few steps before I saw something we’d missed—a narrow passage extending out from the hall. At the end of it I could see a greyish blur that might have been a doorway left ajar. I grabbed Angelica and pulled her into the passage. “I bet this is it.”

“Great.” Angelica stopped to fumble with her little beaded purse. “Okay. I know I’ve got some aspirin, I just—”

She stopped and looked at me. From the main corridor came the hollow echo of voices and muffled footsteps. Before I knew what was happening, she yanked me further down the passage, until we stood in a small recessed alcove facing a door.

Angelica rattled the knob. “Damn! It’s locked—”

“Jeez, who cares? We’re just looking for a—”

“Shhh!” Angelica crouched on the floor. “Get down.”

“What?” This was ridiculous. The worst that could happen was that we’d be reprimanded for snooping around, maybe asked to leave. But then I remembered that cold, black stairwell. I shivered. The voices grew louder as Angelica pulled me down beside her.

“I can’t—” I whispered.

“Shut up.” Angelica moved her hand in a small tight gesture and leaned back, as though trying to fold herself into the wall. I crouched beside her in the darkness.

Shadows blotted out the entrance to the tiny passageway. Men: two of them, I thought at first. But then the taller one moved, and I saw that they carried a third between them, a limp figure who kicked halfheartedly at the floor.

I felt a warm rush of relief. Just a drunk being walked around by his friends. But still Angelica didn’t move or say anything. Her sweat had overwhelmed the musk of her perfume, its fragrance now rank and sour, like the smell inside a small room where a child has been locked and forgotten.

Footsteps. The figures passed us, silent except for a faint wheezing from the man supported in the middle. I could see the trouser cuffs of the closest figure, a tall lanky young man wearing tennis shoes and no socks; I could have reached out and grabbed his bare ankle. Next to him slumped his drunken friend, and behind them I could barely glimpse the third figure, so small he was like the shadow of the other two. They stopped in front of the doorway across from us. The figure in the middle suddenly jerked upright, head thrown back, and let out a short strangled cry.

“No!”

Beside me Angelica stiffened.

“Let me go!”

It was a woman’s voice. Not a drunken man, not some frat boy being carried around by his friends, but a woman. I stared in horror as she cried out.

“Please.”

The taller figure twisted her arms behind her so that she couldn’t move. He was holding her so tightly I could hear her bones creak.

Oh, shit, I thought as the woman’s voice rang out again.

“You can’t do this, Balthazar. It’s against the charter, to strike someone within the boundaries of the Divine—” Beside me I could feel Angelica shaking, “—you can’t, Balthazar, you know you can’t…”

It was the woman who had spoken to Angelica at the reception. The one who’d given her the necklace: Magda Kurtz, the famous professor of European Archaeology. The man she spoke to, the smaller of the two others, shifted without loosening his hold on her. It was Professor Warnick, his face utterly impassive as he stared at her, not saying a word, just watching and listening. Her voice rose desperately.

“Please, Balthazar.”

Warnick took a step closer to her. “You broke the charter, Magda. A long, long time ago, it seems.”

Even in the darkness I could see how his face was twisted, not with lust or hatred or anything else I had expected but with longing, the purest distillation of desire and sorrow I had ever seen. “You found it and never told us. You never told me.”

“Only part of it,” Kurtz whispered. “It’s still incomplete, I only found part—”

For the first time the other man spoke. “You stole it! How else could you have—”

“Shut up, Francis!” Warnick’s voice cracked. Looking at Magda Kurtz he suddenly cried out, “I wish you’d left yesterday. Why didn’t you just leave?”

At the sound of his anguished voice I trembled. Beside me Angelica was absolutely rigid, her eyes huge and horrified. Professor Warnick pulled away from Magda Kurtz, pushing her toward the other man. Warnick’s hand made a slashing motion as he turned and took two quick steps that brought him within inches of the door in the passageway.

“You should have told me,” he whispered, and bowed his head.

I had thought the door was ajar. In fact it was tightly shut. Whatever light it held leaked from its seams, grey-blue, dull as ashes—not sunlight or even moonlight but some other kind of glow, with no warmth and scarcely any color to it at all.

“Balthazar.” Magda Kurtz’s voice died. Slowly she drew her hands to her throat.

Warnick traced his fingers across the wood, murmuring. I couldn’t understand the words, they were in a strange language, not Latin, not anything I recognized. As he spoke I began to feel a dull buzzing in my ears. An overpowering drowsiness filled me. It was like the hottest longest afternoon of summer, like falling asleep on the screened porch while the cicadas droned outside. I could hear their persistent burr, soft at first but growing louder and louder. The sound filled my ears, filled me until my bones rang with it and I could hear nothing else, not Professor Warnick’s voice, not Angelica’s breathing, not my own heart. The locusts’ cries rose to a mindless shrieking that wasn’t the sound of any insect or machine or human I could imagine. It wasn’t the sound of anything I had ever heard at all.

And then came another noise—an echoing rattle and thump, the sound of countless large objects being thrown against the door. In front of us the wall shuddered. The door bulged outward as the shrieking grew to a howl, a clamor nearly drowned by furious scratching. I could hear wood creaking and splintering. The steely light grew brighter, but there was no warmth in it, nothing of sun or candle glow or embers. It was utterly cold, grey-blue and stark as bone. The three figures standing before it were like people trapped in a video screen. The tumult became a roar, the howl of metal grinding against stone.

“Balthazar, no!”

Professor Warnick stepped back. The door flew open. I started to scream, but Angelica’s hand closed over my mouth. She pulled me to her breast, trying to shield me so I wouldn’t see what was there. But I tore away from her, and I did see.

There was a world beyond the door. It was the world that went with that howling, mindless noise, with that blinding leaden glow. An endless expanse of dead plain, colorless, treeless, a horrible lifeless steppe pocked with shadowy hollows and spurs of jagged stone. Overhead stretched the sky, purplish black and starless. On the horizon monstrous shadows rose and ebbed like clouds, and smaller blackened objects fell like hail or a rain of stone. It was a landscape bereft as the moon: no stars to light it, no aqueous Earth casting its blue glow upon the horizon. Only bare ground and stones and freezing air, and a faint foul smell like gasoline. Above it all the deafening roar continued, relentless, as those bulbous black shapes dropped from the sky onto the ravaged plain.

I moaned. In front of us the three others stood, their faces bluish white, their shadows stretching across the floorboards. Angelica’s hand tightened over mine, and as it did the horrifying clamor seemed to die. A sudden vast silence engulfed us, and a darkness more profound than any I have known.

“Angelica,” I wanted to whisper. But the name would not come.

Then out of nowhere I heard a thin monotonous voice; a voice chanting inside my head from a million years before.

Scratched and faint: an old man’s voice that struggled with the words even as I struggled to recall where I had heard them.

And I remembered. I was slumped in a chair in a darkened auditorium, a dim spotlight fixed on the stage where a horrible grey-faced rector chanted.

—or no, I was crouched before a leaping flame, fighting to keep my eyes open as a small figure clad in furs and leather tapped out a monotonous rhythm on a skin tabor.

Abruptly the voice rose to a scream and faded into a chittering wail. Once again I heard that buzzing roar, softer now though more distinct, a sound punctuated by thumps, the hollow impact of empty pods on gravel. And I almost laughed—would have laughed, deliriously, if Angelica hadn’t caught me and held me close.

Because when I first saw that charred landscape I thought that there could be nothing more horrible than that utterly barren place where nothing had ever grown or died, not scarab nor vulture nor thorn tree nor worm. But now I knew there was something infinitely worse.

Because in all that colorless formless desert, something was alive. Many things. What I had at first perceived as monstrous shadows, as clouds or mountains or fog, were not shadows at all. They were the monstrous things themselves. Huge, at least twice man-high and skeletally thin, with the outlines of ribs and thorax and skull gleaming in the silvery light.

But they were not skeletons, or cadavers. They were not even remotely human. They were immense arthropods, like praying mantids or walkingsticks or leaf insects. Many-jointed, silvery grey as the scar they danced across, their long, jointed legs trailing behind them like matches spilling from a box. They had huge round eyes, smooth and curved as glass, with a tiny black spot marking the pupil. Some of them had wings that retracted when they struck the ground. They filled the black sky of the world beyond the door, a vast horde growing nearer and nearer. I saw a blurred flutter as one fell to earth and then exploded into the air again, wings beating furiously as it propelled itself toward us. Above its twitching mandibles its eyes glittered like steel bearings.

“Balthazar! Balthazar, no—”

Magda Kurtz’s scream was silenced as, with a single thrust, her captors pushed her through the door. I struggled in Angelica’s arms, then pulled free.

For a final instant I glimpsed Magda Kurtz. She was on the other side of the door now, and she staggered as though blinded, arms flailing, before falling to the ground. Grey dust puffed up around her knees. I heard pebbles rattling against the wooden portal, wind buffeting the wall behind us. The air pouring from the doorway was so cold my teeth chattered. The smell of gasoline choked me. I could no longer feel Angelica’s hands clasping mine. I could no longer see anything, except what lay beyond the door.

Above Magda Kurtz hovered an immense black shape. Its dangling limbs moved slowly up and down, its huge witless eyes were fixed on what lay beneath it. For perhaps a minute it hung there, wings beating in silent rhythm. Then without warning it dropped to the ground. A cloud of glittering dust rose as it extended one long, jointed leg like the metal shank of a tripod.

In its shadow crouched Magda Kurtz. She looked impossibly small, a doll-woman or the spindly figure from a cave painting. She drew her arm up to shield her face and turned to look back at the doorway. But I could tell by her blank expression and gaping mouth, by the way her head weaved back and forth, that she could no longer see the door or what lay beyond it, that our world had closed upon her forever. The last thing I heard was her scream, a rising wail sliced off as the door slammed shut.

“Jesus Fucking Christ!”

Before Angelica could grab me I was gone, stumbling out into the main passage. From behind me came shouts; then Angelica’s desperate voice.

“Sweeney, no!—the stairs—!”

She pointed and I sprinted down the hall to where that horrible back stairway yawned. Behind me footsteps clattered like hooves; I heard Professor Warnick’s deceptively calm voice echoing through the darkness.

“Kids, it’s some students, that’s all—”

Then Angelica’s scream.

“No!—let go of me—Swee-nee!—”

I whirled. Francis Connelly had her by the wrist. He twisted it as he pulled her toward him and Balthazar watched impassively.

“Let go, you bastard, let me go—”

I could hear Angelica panting, could see the dark welts where he gripped her cruelly. An arm’s length from them, Professor Warnick crouched against the wall like a goblin fearing sunlight. And then Francis began to drag Angelica toward the alcove where they had taken Magda Kurtz.

“NO!” Angelica shouted, scratching at his face.

“God damn it, you stupid—”

Francis’s voice broke off as I darted toward him. I grabbed Angelica, then, with all my strength, kicked him in the shin. A satisfying instant when I felt my boot’s worn metal toe smash into bone. With an anguished howl Francis collapsed onto the rug.

“Oh dear,” murmured Balthazar Warnick.

“Come on!” I gasped, and pulled the half-sobbing Angelica after me.

Around us all was a blur of scarlet and black and gold. I thought I heard voices, the muted sound of vast wings. Then we were at the end of the corridor. Below us the staircase unfurled. From behind us came the rattle of bone, a shrieking wind rank with the smell of gasoline and burning leaves. I couldn’t think, couldn’t move…

“Sweeney, go!”

Angelica shoved me. I grabbed the railing and lunged down, two and three and five steps at a time. When I saw the floor only a few feet below I clambered over the banister and jumped. Then I bolted, toward a screen door gaping open onto the night. Beyond it lay the comforting yellow glow of the campus crimelights, a few half-shadowed figures gathered atop the Mound. When I reached the door I slammed my fists against the screen and, gasping, looked around for my friend.

“Angelica?”

She stood at the foot of the stairs, her hair wild, her breast heaving as she steadied herself against the rail. Her dress was torn, so that I could see her skin dead white against black lace and satin. In one hand she brandished a high-heeled shoe like a club. She was staring up to where the others gazed down: Francis, white-faced with rage; Professor Warnick, tight-lipped, his gaze steady as he stared back at her disheveled hair and blazing green eyes. She looked like a wolf brought to bay, like a maenad unrepentant on the mountaintop. No longer frightened but nearly incandescent with rage: if you held a match to her she would burst into flame.

“Angelica,” I whispered.

Around her neck the silver crescent was glowing. Not with any reflected light but with a hard cold brilliance, brighter than any star I had ever seen, so bright that I had to shield my eyes. As I stared Angelica’s hand crept to her throat, until it touched the edge of the pendant. Light streamed around her fingers in spectral rays, blue and white and silver. Her expression changed from fury to wonder as Professor Warnick’s voice rang out, clear and bitter as gin.

“She has the lunula.”

“The lunula?” shouted Francis. “How did she—”

With a cry Angelica turned and fled. An instant later she flung herself at me and together we stumbled outside. Professor Warnick’s soft voice drifted down behind us.

“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, and 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.

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.

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.

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.

Next morning I found Angelica at the dining hall. I sat beside her and she said nothing, absolutely nothing, about what had happened. I might have dreamed it all—everything except for sleeping with her. Angelica’s knowing smile told me that, at least, had been real. Her smile and the way she said good-bye, kissing me on the cheek and letting her hand surreptitiously brush against my breast for just a moment. Her fingers stroked my nipple until it hardened beneath my shirt, and then she drew away.

“Ciao, Sweeney. See you at dinner?”

I stammered some reply and nodded. As I watched her leave I noted that she still wore the moon-shaped necklace Magda Kurtz had given her, and like a talisman beneath her arm carried a copy of Magda Kurtz’s book.

And so began my new life. My real life, I thought then. Meeting Angelica and Oliver for breakfast at seven-thirty, Annie following her roommate like a grim conscience in cutoff fatigues and worn flannel shirts. Me drinking too much coffee in a feeble effort to kill what had become a near-constant hangover. Angelica picking fastidiously at slices of cantaloupe and grapefruit. Annie wolfing down petrified scrambled eggs with ketchup and ersatz home fries, while Oliver sat across from the three of us, kicking at the table legs, his hands never still as he swept back his hair and scribbled his odd ballpoint sketches on paper napkins.

“Very nice,” Annie would remark thoughtfully, peering at the pile of napkins fluttering in front of him. “That looks just like me. Except for the antennae, of course.”

Then she’d gather her books, give Angelica a soulful look, and leave. Annie never hung around after breakfast. She had an eight o’clock Music Composition class, and I sometimes thought the only reason she joined us was to keep an eye on Angelica.

Though Angelica seemed infinitely able to take care of herself. I knew she wore that crescent-shaped necklace everywhere, although she was careful to keep it hidden. A few days after the reception at Garvey House, I dropped by her room and found her reading by the light of a small banker’s lamp with a green glass shade. On one knee she balanced a steaming mug of tea. The air smelled warmly of vanilla and chamomile.

“Sweeney!” Angelica looked up, smiling. “We missed you at lunch today.”

At her throat nestled the lunula, its bright lines softened to grey in the dim light. Sans makeup, with her robe and glasses and white china mug, she looked solemn and a little silly, like a diva costumed to play the student in an operetta. Silly, but still beautiful enough to make my heart start raiding around my chest like a stone.

“Where’s Annie?”

“Library,” replied Angelica without glancing up again. She was painstakingly copying something into a notebook.

“What’re you doing?”

“Stuff.”

I made a face. As usual, she was poring over stacks of old books and anthropological journals from the Colum Library. She flashed me an earnest look. “This is fascinating, Sweeney. Really—you should check it out.”

I leaned over to pick up a volume slightly smaller than my hand, bound in calfskin faded to the color of old ivory.

One of the texts listed in the handout that Balthazar Warnick had given us the first day of class, along with The Golden Ass and “The Bacchae” and “The Hymn to Demeter”—

Gingerly I turned the pages. They seemed to be printed in Latin. When I reached the end of the book, a slip of loose-leaf fluttered out, covered front and back with Angelica’s fine cursive hand. I caught it and held it up to the light.

I read.

I turned over the scrap of paper.

“Gee, Angelica, that’s really nice.”

“Be careful!” Angelica picked up the volume, cradling it as though it had been a puppy. “It’s really old, and it doesn’t belong to me.”

“You can read Latin?” I asked sarcastically.

“Yes, Sweeney, I can read Latin. And Italian, and French.” She settled back on the bed. “Why haven’t you been to Warnick’s class all week?”

I felt like shouting, You know damn well why I haven’t been to class! Instead I just shrugged. “Listen, me and Oliver and Baby Joe are going down to the Cellar Door to see Patti Smith. You want to come?”

“I can’t. Professor Warnick lent me his own copy of that—”

She inclined her head toward the small leather-bound book. “—and I promised I’d give it back after class tomorrow.”

“Angelica! What are you—”

“Sweeney. Please.”

“Fine. Forget it.” I waited to see if she’d say anything else, if she’d bother looking up; but I had been dismissed. “Well, I guess I’ll see you later.”

She flipped through the pages of a monograph and nodded absently. “Tell Oliver to drop by after the show.”

“Sure. Whatever.”

I stalked outside, angry and embarrassed. To be commanded to carry a message to Oliver, as though I was nothing but her go-between! Still, I gave him the message. I’d do anything for Oliver, and almost anything for Angelica.

Each morning at a few minutes before nine, Oliver and I would escort her to Magic, Witchcraft and Religion. We’d walk to the foot of the Mound and watch Angelica stride up its path alone, her long legs flashing between the gauzy folds of a flowered skirt. Then we would turn away, and the real business of the day would begin.

We would go to the Shrine to drink more coffee and then wander around the gaudy chapels, occasionally pilfering the collection boxes for bus change. Sometime before noon we’d catch an 80 bus downtown. We’d get off at Dupont Circle, find a bench, and watch the boy hustlers at work. Oliver knew a lot of them from the bars; they’d wander over to bum cigarettes and tell us where to find the party that night, before sauntering off to lean on the hoods of big cars with diplomatic license tags and dark windows. As the afternoon wore on we’d head over to Meridian Hill Park. There Oliver would score marijuana or some very dubious acid from one of the starved-looking rastas—blottah barrels hemp two bucks too bucks—and then it would be time to head back to the Divine and figure out our evening agenda.

I would never have dared to do any of this on my own. But with Oliver I felt invulnerable. His beauty, his air of noblesse décharge, even his very obvious lack of judgment, seemed to protect us from the stunningly real dangers of the city. He’d lope through the city’s worst—and best—neighborhoods, his long hair streaming behind him, wearing his standard uniform of white button-down shirt and faded chinos and black wing tips with no socks, mad blue eyes agleam, arms waving as he told me some hair-raising story. And somehow we never got mugged, or arrested, or even lost. This despite the fact that much of the time Oliver was flying high and loose and pretty as a grinning dragon kite, tripping on acid or mushrooms or god knows what.

Though the truth was, I could never really tell if he was stoned or sober. With Oliver everything seemed strange. I think that in some bizarre way he could make strange things appear. A bald eagle landing in Lafayette Park to prey on feeding pigeons; a red fox skulking outside the entrance to a K Street law firm. Blind nuns, transsexual punks. An armless legless man on a skateboard who sang the Irish national anthem in a bone-freezing tenor, and then rolled a cigarette with his tongue and greeted us by name. It got so that if something peculiar didn’t happen on one of our outings, I’d feel disappointed and a little wary.

Nights we would take a Yellow Cab to Southeast and go dancing inside a warehouse where I was the only girl among hundreds, maybe thousands, of boys and men. When everyone spilled back outside at dawn, the same Yellow Cab would be waiting for us on the narrow dark street beneath the dusty trees of heaven. Cab Number 393, with its driver Handsome Brown, a former prizefighter who by that hour was as drunk as we were.

“Where to, children?” he’d rumble, his face filling the rearview mirror. Usually we’d go back to the Divine, to stagger off to bed. But some mornings Oliver would have him drive us to the Tidal Basin to watch the sun rise, or to some all-night place where we could sober up over bad coffee and greasy sausage sandwiches.

Some of these places weren’t safe, according to Handsome Brown; but “I’ll take care of things, my man.” And leaning over with one hand on the wheel, he’d pop open his glove compartment, to show us the gun in there—to show me, actually, Oliver usually choosing these cab rides to nap—and occasionally remove it and brandish it as he drove.

Through it all Oliver walked with me like my demon familiar. I got a weird buzz from going with him to the discos, where no one seemed to know I was a girl. Oliver usually seemed happy enough to forget. He knew I was in love with him. I told him, many times, when I was sloppy drunk, but he only grinned that crooked canine grin and threw his arm around me.

“Oh Sweeney. Why ask for the moon when we have the bars?” And he’d drag me to another club.

Angelica was in love with him too, of course. I knew that from the beginning. It seemed that there could be no way they wouldn’t end up together. Sometimes after dinner the two of them would rise from the dining hall table and go off alone. Or else Oliver and I might return from our evening’s debauch and he would walk me to my door, then continue, singing softly to himself, up the stairs to Angelica’s room. I would throw myself on my bed, feverish with jealousy and yearning and something else, something worse: the fear of having been befriended by mistake, of being found out as an impostor. I tried to console myself by thinking that, even if Angelica slept with Oliver, I understood him.

But now I know better. No one understood Oliver although Annie, perhaps, came closest.

“Forget him. He’s a nutjob,” she pronounced one night in a vain effort to comfort me. “Really, Sweeney. Haven’t you ever read Brideshead Revisited?”

I sniffed. “No.”

“Well, it turns out very badly for boys like Oliver.”

I didn’t care. Hanging out with Oliver was like being attached to some dense yet glittering, rapidly spinning object. By virtue of his speed and beauty he attracted all sorts of things—middle-aged professors, exotic cigarettes, postcards from Tunisia, psychotropic drugs—and now by association many of those things were becoming attached to me, chief among them Angelica di Rienzi and Oliver’s habit of increasingly sporadic class attendance and casual narcotics use.

So the semester passed. October’s acid glory burned into November ash; and one day the Xeroxed flyers appeared across the campus.

At dawn I woke to someone calling my name from outside my window. No angels, no creatures from the other side of the Door; only Oliver. His long hair was dirty and when I let him in the front door I could tell he hadn’t showered since we’d last met: he had a not-unpleasant musty smell of Tide-scented clothes, cigarette smoke, and boyish sweat.

“Oliver,” I croaked as I let him in.

Outside dew sparkled on the grass. The Divine’s domed and turreted buildings and dusty oaks seemed to float untethered above us, like the city’s dream of itself.

“Oliver,” I repeated, rubbing my eyes. “You’re up so early.”

“Didn’t go to sleep.” He bounced past me into the dorm, squeezing my shoulder and grinning. “Went back and had a little taste from Wild Bill’s terrarium.” I shuddered and pulled the door closed after him.

In the hall he paused to read one of Balthazar Warnick’s flyers. “Well!” he said cheerfully, “It’s the day after tomorrow, so I guess we still have time to pack.”

I yawned. “Pack?”

Oliver nodded. Carefully he detached the flyer, rolling it into a little cylinder and sticking it in a pocket. “There’s only a limited amount of space for these things, we should sign up now.” He turned and began walking back to the front door.

“Oliver, it’s 5:00 A.M.! And the retreat’s not till Friday—”

He stopped and regarded me thoughtfully. I had on another pair of ripped jeans, but I hadn’t washed off my makeup, and I was wearing the same T-shirt I’d had on for three days now. “Then perhaps you’ll have time to do your laundry,” he said mildly, and grabbed my arm. “Come on—”

The nightmarish thought of a weekend under Professor Warnick’s tutelage was eased by the notion that I might finally have some time alone, really alone, with Oliver. We found a sign-up sheet in the empty foyer of Thaddeus College, and he was right—only a few spaces were left, and my heart jumped to see that Angelica’s name was not there. But after fastidiously writing his name and mine in spidery letters, Oliver added Angelica de Rienzi to one of the remaining lines.

“Wait,” I said, and wrote Anne Harmon. “There—”

Two days later, Annie and Angelica and I were in the parking lot of Thaddeus College. I was wearing one of Oliver’s shirts, too big for me and infused with the musty marijuana scent of his room. Annie had on a red flannel shirt and beat-up tweed jacket that Baby Joe had given her. She was so small and compact that her guitar case looked incongruously large, like a cello carried by an earnest mouse. Angelica wore yet another gauzy flowered dress under a light woolen cape, her hair tied back with a green velvet ribbon.

“A weekend in the country…” she sang. Annie rolled her eyes.

A small crowd milled outside Thaddeus College. Beside a battered Volvo wagon Balthazar Warnick stood and read aloud from a list of names. I slunk behind Angelica and Annie and did my best to avoid catching his eye. Angelica checked us in and we waited for instructions. I dropped my knapsack and peered into the Volvo. Mounds of boxes and coolers rose from its back compartment, and I was relieved to see a number of gallon jugs of red wine. Several other vehicles arrived and were poised for flight, motors running, drivers cranking up tape players and radios. I saw Baby Joe and his friend Hasel Bright leaning on Hasel’s ancient Volkswagen bug. When they saw us, Hasel saluted Angelica with a Jack Daniels bottle.

“Avanti, Angelica! I want you to have my love child—”

Angelica smiled indulgently and blew him a kiss. People began tossing last bits of luggage into trunks and clambering into cars. The caravan was ready to go, but there was still no sign of Oliver. Angelica walked over to Balthazar Warnick, Annie and I trailing reluctantly behind her.

“Professor Warnick, someone else is coming,” said Angelica. “Oliver Crawford—”

Balthazar Warnick lifted his head to regard her coolly.

“Mr. Crawford seems to be carrying on a family tradition of holding everyone up,” he began, when Oliver came loping across the parking lot.

“Oliver!” cried Angelica. “We almost left without you!”

Oliver shoved his hands into his pockets. “Oh surely not.” He bowed, then draped his arm over Angelica’s shoulder. “Here I am.”

“All right. That’s everyone, then—” Professor Warnick folded his list and stuck it into his jacket. “Mr. Crawford, perhaps you would give me the great honor of riding with me—I want to hear how your brothers are doing, and how you have been spending your time away from my class—”

Oliver smoothed his hair back and tugged at his shirt collar.

“Yes, Professor,” he said, bowing. He was so loose-limbed, his pupils so dilated, that he looked like an Oliver rag doll with black-button eyes. “I’ll give a—uh—full report.”

“Come on, then.” Professor Warnick opened the front door of the Volvo and shooed Oliver inside. “You too, my dear—” He gestured for Angelica to follow.

“Don’t forget our bags!” Angelica called to Annie. I watched in chagrined disbelief as Oliver kissed her cheek.

Annie nodded in disgust. “Yes, Mistress! Igor obeys—” She turned to me and cocked a thumb at Angelica’s bags. “Mind giving me a hand?”

I sighed. “Yeah, sure.” With a sick feeling I watched Balthazar Warnick climb into the car with Oliver and Angelica. Then I hefted one of Angelica’s leather suitcases, grunting.

“Jeez, what’s in here? The True Cross?”

“Books on witchcraft,” said Annie, “and the entire fall line of Mary Quant makeup.”

I stared at the bag despairingly, “Why are we doing this, Annie? I mean, there’s Warnick, and—”

Annie actually went white. “Why are we doing this? We are doing this because for some insane reason you and Oliver signed us up—”

“I signed me up! I wanted to be alone with him for once, without—”

“Last train for Debarksville, girls,” someone shouted.

“Forget it,” fumed Annie. “Let’s go.”

We found two empty seats in the back of a Dodge Dart piloted by a dour young seminarian. I slumped in my seat and stared disconsolately out to where Oliver and Angelica sat laughing in the front of the lead car. Behind them Hasel’s VW rocked dangerously back and forth. Then there was a break in the traffic, and the two cars careened out of sight in a cloud of exhaust and dust.

“Hey, get over it, Sweeney, okay?” Annie looked at me and shook her head. “I’ve been wanting to ask you—did something really special happen the first time you put on that shirt? Or are you just waiting for Oliver to notice you’ve been wearing his clothes for three days?”

“Oliver and I are just friends,” I said loftily.

“Hey, don’t think I’m, like, jealous. I don’t like icky boys. Although I personally think your friend Oliver may be a member of the He-Man Women-Haters Club. Uno amigo de Dorothy, if you take my meaning.”

She dropped her voice. “I tell you, Sweeney, you oughta be selling time-shares in that boy. I mean if you’re not sleeping with him. ‘Cause I know that Angelica—”

I turned to her, furious, but Annie backed off. “Ex-cu-use me!”

We sat in silence as the car inched through rush hour traffic. Outside, all the sultry glamour of the city had vanished. The Washington Monument looked smudged and worn against the dirty white sky, the distant shape of the Jefferson Memorial like a great cracked egg hidden among dusty trees. Above Haines Point an endless line of aircraft roared into National Airport. Between the noise and exhaust fumes, the Lysol stench of Brother John’s car deodorizer and all the beer I’d drunk, I felt distinctly queasy.

“You know where we’re going, don’t you?”

Annie nudged me, but I refused to look at her. “You know what this is, right?” she persisted. “This Orphic Lodge?”

I waited a long moment before shaking my head. “No.”

“It’s their headquarters. Summer camp for your boy Balthazar and all the rest of them. Home base. Ground Zero. Your retreat business is a trap, Sweeney—”

Her words were like a window slamming shut behind me.

“—a fucking trap, and we’ve walked right into it.”

If the retreat house was a trap, it was a very nice one.

It took us nearly three hours to get there. I dozed, an achy hung-over nap that brought little in the way of real repose and gave me uneasy dreams of pursuit and flight. When I woke it was just past nightfall. Outside all was dim and softly moving, painted in shades of green and black and violet. The little car wheezed and bucked as it made one hairpin turn after another, climbing higher and higher. Suddenly we made a sharp turn, veering onto an even narrower road. The car jounced over stones and fallen branches, abruptly came out into a wide space where the trees fell back and the sky opened above us, black and studded with stars.

“Well, we’re here,” said Brother John, and we piled out.

The Orphic Lodge was the sort of place where you spend one enchanted August as a child, and devote all of your adult life to finding again. A sprawling Craftsman-style mansion, its pillared verandas and balconies and gabled windows thrusting out in bewildering profusion. When we stepped onto the front porch the wooden flooring boomed and creaked beneath our feet, as though we were walking on ice. Upside-down Adirondack chairs and wicker sofas were pushed against the walls. There was an air of genteel desolation about it all—the grey limbs of an espaliered pear tree; drifts of dead leaves everywhere; the echoing of ghostly voices from upstairs rooms where windows had been flung open to the chill night air.

But inside, the Lodge looked more like the first day of vacation. Students running up and down steps, back and forth between cars and the kitchen, carrying duffel bags and knapsacks and boom boxes, cartons and bags of food, paper towels, beer, wine. A fat, friendly-looking grey cat sat on a windowsill and regarded us all with mild yellow eyes. On a wider windowsill in the main foyer Balthazar Warnick did the same, though with a more feral gaze. Beside him stood a tall stern-featured woman, with black hair and very black straight eyebrows, wearing a paisley dress and old-fashioned chef’s apron.

“…said thirteen and I have made dinner for thirteen. Gravadlaks and salat, and the gravadlaks, the salmon, will not keep well. And those boys are spilling something on the stairs.”

“Thirty, Kirsten, I said there would be thirty. Mr. Bright, would you please assist Mr. Malabar with the cooler?” Balthazar looked distractedly at the tall woman. “We brought spaghetti for dinner tonight, Kirsten. We always have spaghetti the first night of retreat. You know, lots of water boiling, many eager hands at work. A sort of icebreaker.”

The housekeeper gazed suspiciously at the many eager hands now reaching for the cooler Hasel Bright had opened in the middle of the floor.

“Good night, Professor Warnick, they deserve their spaghetti,” she announced. “I am going to bed.”

“Our housekeeper does not approve of undergraduates drinking in the lodge.” Professor Warnick frowned at Hasel, who sheepishly replaced his bottle and closed the cooler. “Let’s get unpacked and get dinner going before she changes her mind and comes back to supervise the kitchen, eh Mr. Bright?”

Warnick turned to where Annie and I were standing, somewhat at a loss, by the front door. He regarded me measuredly before saying, “The girls’ rooms are in the east wing on the second floor. To the right.”

We straggled upstairs, yelling greetings back to the others, who’d already unpacked or were still arriving below.

“Where do you think Angelica is?” I panted. “She’s got to be here; they were in the lead car with Warnick.”

Annie shrugged, pausing red-faced to swing her guitar and one of Angelica’s bags to the other arm. “Who knows? She and Oliver are probably settled in the honeymoon suite already.”

The rooms in the east wing all seemed pretty much the same. A few simple camp-style beds lined up against the pine walls, unmatched curtains at the windows, maybe a worn rag rug on the floor. Annie stopped wearily in front of an open door.

“The view from this room is really terrific, Sweeney, I read about it in the promotional literature downstairs; this is like the best room in the whole place, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, and then Angelica appeared in the dim hallway.

“Sweeney! Annie! I got a room for us—down here, the third door on the left.”

“Hooray,” said Annie. She dumped Angelica’s stuff on the floor and took off down the hall with her guitar.

Angelica picked up her bags and smiled. “Thanks for bringing my bags, Sweeney.”

“Sure.” I rubbed my shoulder. “Where’s Oliver?”

“Oh, he’s around.” She smiled, a secretive delighted smile, and started after Annie. “I helped him get settled upstairs. I think he went down to help with dinner. Okay, this is it—isn’t it great?”

It actually didn’t look much different from any of the other rooms—bigger, maybe, with four beds extending from the far wall, and it did have its own bathroom with shower stall and ancient rust-stained pedestal sink where Annie was already noisily washing up. But the long far wall was filled with windows, and even in the darkness I could make out the shadowed hump of the mountains and the velvety star-filled sky.

“Yeah. Yeah, really, it’s nice.” I dropped my knapsack on one of the beds and flopped onto it. “Yow. Nice mattresses, too.”

“Mine is stuffed with corncobs,” announced Annie from the bathroom. “I sure do hope Oliver’s not sleeping in that other bed, Angelica.”

Angelica shook her head. “No, he’s not. Cornhusks, Annie; I don’t think anyone ever stuffed a mattress with corncobs. Come on, Sweeney, I told Oliver we’d help them out downstairs. We’ll see you later, Annie.”

Annie watched us go, nonplussed. In the hall Angelica took my hand. “God, this is so great here! Isn’t this great?”

I shrugged and tried to smile. We still hadn’t talked about what happened that night after the Molyneux reception, but obviously Angelica wasn’t the type to discuss such things. And I was burning to hear about Oliver, and to find out what room he was staying in.

But Angelica only laughed, pausing to pull her hair back into its loose ponytail. “Oliver says from his room you can lie in bed and watch Orion progress across the western horizon.”

I smiled ruefully “Progress, huh? How does he know? He hasn’t been here before—”

“No.” Angelica started down the corridor. “He’s never been here, but his brothers have. I guess they told him which room was the best one…” Her voice trailed off.

“So—I guess you guys are really like, involved, huh?”

I laughed as I said it, but I knew I sounded lame and jealous. Though probably I couldn’t even have told you what, exactly, I was jealous of. Angelica, I suppose, but it was stupid to be jealous of Angelica—like being jealous of the Mona Lisa. And really, what could be better? My two best friends were in love with each other. Only that left me somewhere in between, running back and forth like a stupid yappy little dog; because I was in love with both of them.

“Oh, you know Oliver…” She sighed. “I can tell you one thing, though. My father would hate him.”

“How come?”

We started down a wide stairway. “Oh, everything. The drugs, the partying all the time. Just the way he is. Okay, I think the kitchen’s over there—”

We found the kitchen, large and brightly lit and filled with huge gleaming stainless steel stoves and sinks and refrigerators. Small hand-lettered signs admonished everyone to wash their hands and put things back where they’d found them. Balthazar Warnick was nowhere in sight, but Hasel Bright was bent over a sink by the wall, pumping furiously at an old-fashioned hand pump and shouting excitedly as water gushed out.

“Look at this! It’s amazing—” yelled Hasel.

I peered into the deep slate sink, the water sluicing down a small hole in the middle. “Isn’t there running water?”

Hasel looked at me, red-faced and grinning. “Yeah, sure there is, but isn’t this amazing? I’ve been doing this for fifteen minutes, and it never stops!”

I laughed. “Wow. That really is great, Hasel. Maybe later you’ll invent the wheel.”

I crossed to where Oliver and Baby Joe and Angelica stood before one of the big gas ranges. Oliver was poking thoughtfully at an immense steaming pot with a wooden spoon. Baby Joe was smoking a cigarette, occasionally leaning over to tap his ashes into the pot. Angelica was watching Oliver, her brow furrowed.

“You want it to be just barely al dente,” she said primly. “Do you know how to tell when it’s done?”

“Yes.” Oliver leaned forward on the balls of his feet and dipped his utensil into the roiling water. He backed up, shaking his head to clear the steam from his glasses, then dramatically flicked the wooden spoon and sent several long streamers of spaghetti sailing toward the ceiling. Baby Joe and Angelica ducked as a few of them sailed back down, but Oliver nodded.

“It’s done when it sticks,” he said. I looked up and saw the ceiling mapped with dozens of darkened threads of dried pasta, and among them several fresh and glistening strands. “And it’s done.”

We ate in the dining room, a big open space with raftered ceiling and chandeliers made of antlers. I counted thirty-two of us, students and grad students and Balthazar Warnick, the only genuine adult present although I assumed the housekeeper was brooding elsewhere. The room was dark and drafty. There were citronella candles in little red glasses at every table, and spongy Italian bread from the Safeway back in D.C., and gallon bottles of Gallo Burgundy. I sat at a long table with Annie and Angelica and Oliver. Behind us Baby Joe and Hasel talked and laughed loudly, watching the rest of us, but especially Angelica, as they passed around bowls of spaghetti and iceberg lettuce drenched with bottled dressing.

“Hey, we’re having a party later. You want to come?”

“Keep it down, man.” Hasel tilted his head across the room to where Balthazar Warnick sat with half a dozen well-behaved graduate students.

Baby Joe lowered his voice. “Upstairs. Oliver knows which room it is.”

Angelica smiled and looked at Oliver. “Oliver knows where everything is.”

Annie stuck her finger in her throat and made a gagging noise. “I’m out of here. It’s either help with the dishes tonight or do breakfast in the morning.” She grabbed her plate and stood. “Later, guys.”

Oliver grinned as he watched her leave. He leaned back in his chair, and Angelica turned sideways in her seat so that she could lean against him. “There goes Jiminy Cricket,” he said.

Angelica closed her eyes and nestled closer to him. “This is wonderful. Isn’t it wonderful, Sweeney?”

“Absolutely, it’s wonderful.” I stacked our dishes and left them what remained of the bottle of wine. “I guess I’ll see you later, then.”

“I’ll find you,” Angelica called. “Oliver says they’ll make a fire later in the big room down here.”

In the kitchen I dumped the dishes into the sink and hoisted myself onto a counter. “I’m a morning person,” I said to Annie. “I’ll watch you clean and I’ll do breakfast tomorrow.”

A few other people straggled in, dropping off plates, drying a few glasses and dishes before wandering off again. Hasel bounded through, eyeing the slate sink and pump longingly, but Annie yelled at him to leave. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his torn jeans and sauntered out the door.

“Now don’t you all forget to come to our party,” he yelled.

“Maybe if he had two brain cells to rub together, he could start a fire,” Annie said, and sighed. “You know, the only reason I came along was to keep an eye on Angelica. And now look at me.”

“It seems kind of laid-back,” I said at last. “I mean, nothing weird is going on. It all seems pretty quiet. Kind of boring, actually.”

Annie swiped at her sweating face with a dish towel and nodded. “Yeah, I know. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I’m just paranoid.”

“Well, you’ve got some reason to be paranoid. I mean we all do, I guess, you and me and Angelica, at least.”

“If I were you, I’d be worried about Oliver.”

“Oliver? How come?”

Annie stared out one of the black windows. “Look at him! He’s wasted all the time. And he hangs out at those places in Southeast—”

“So do I.”

“Yeah, but it’s different for you, Sweeney. I mean, no offense, but underneath all that black eye makeup and stuff, you’re kind of—well, kind of normal. But Oliver just seems to be too unstable to be doing all this stuff—”

“Oliver is brilliant,” I said hotly. “He says he wants to be a visionary, a—”

Annie put on her best long-suffering expression. “Boy, no one can tell you anything, can they?” She squeezed a stream of grungy water from her sponge and wiped her hands on her fatigues. “Well, I’m done. Tell Hasel Bright he can come back now and pump all he wants.”

After she left I sat there for a long time, chatting with whoever happened through. Somebody brought in a half-empty bottle of red wine and I drank most of that, filling and discarding paper cups as they disintegrated into a soggy red mass. After an hour or so I left, taking the rest of the wine with me. When I got to our room the light was on. Angelica stood in front of the bathroom mirror, curling her eyelashes. She smiled at me and waved her mascara wand.

“Hi! I was hoping you’d come back up—I couldn’t find you downstairs.”

I flopped onto the bed nearest her, the wine bottle at my feet. It was dark. She hadn’t turned on the lights in the rest of the room, but I saw a hurricane lantern on the windowsill behind me. I picked it up and slid open the metal hatch on the side, where a box of matches was stored. “I figured you and O wanted some time alone together.”

“Well, we did.” She turned back to the mirror and wiped a smudge of mascara from beneath one eye. “But you could have come with us, Sweeney…

“I kind of felt like a third wheel.”

“Fifth wheel.”

“Whatever. I felt like a wheel.” I cupped the hurricane lantern in my hands, and asked, “Listen, Angelica—you mind telling me a little bit about what’s going on here?”

She dotted carmine gloss on her lower lip and rubbed it in very slowly. When she was finished she looked at me. “You mean with Oliver and me?”

“I mean with everything.”

“Sweeney.” She tilted her head and smiled with maddening sweetness. “My dear soul mate. Are you jealous?”

“No, I’m not jealous. I’m just—I guess I don’t know what I am,” I sighed. I gulped a mouthful of wine from the bottle and grimaced. “Gah. This stuff is awful.”

Angelica regarded me shrewdly. “Perhaps it would taste better if you didn’t drink so much of it. But okay. Twenty questions. What do you want to know?”

“The Benandanti.”

She said nothing.

“Who they are,” I said. “What they are.”

“We—ell.” She took a deep breath. “They’re sort of a sacred priesthood.” She said it matter-of-factly, as though she’d announced “They all went to Harvard” or “They play in a foursome every weekend at Burning Tree.”

“What does it mean?”

“Benandanti.” The word slid off her tongue. “It means ‘The Good Walkers,’ or sometimes ‘Those Who Do Well.’ They started in the Middle Ages, in Italy—I mean their whole sort of organized way of doing things dates back that far, to the eighth century, I think. You can find accounts of them in records from the Inquisition. But really they’re much, much older. They go back thousands and thou-sands of years, my father told me once.”

She stopped and reached for the wine bottle, as though she was going to take a sip, but then thought better of it. I took another swig and asked, “But what do they do? I mean, is it like the Masons or something, that you can’t talk about?”

“No—well, yes, some of it is. Most of it, I suppose; at least there are things my father has never told me, and I guess he never will. Because I’m a woman, and women are—well, they’re not exactly forbidden, I mean there’ve always been a few women—Magda Kurtz was one—but as far as the Benandanti are concerned, women are just sort of beside the point.”

I frowned and let this sink in. “Is it part of the Church, then? I mean, there they all are at the Divine, all these priests and rabbis and ministers running around—”

Angelica shook her head emphatically. “No. It’s not a religious thing—at least, it’s not just a religious thing. It’s more like the Church is part of the Benandanti—like all these churches and religions and things are part of it. There are members everywhere, all over the world. The Masons, the Vatican, Bohemian Grove, Skull and Bones… It’s like the ultimate Old Boys’ Network.”

“But then why doesn’t anyone else know about them? I mean, even if it’s such a huge secret, wouldn’t this have popped up on ‘Sixty Minutes’ or something?”

“It’s not a secret.”

In the glow of the hurricane lamp Angelica’s face looked lovelier and more serene than ever, but also strangely remote: her voice detached, a little strained. As though she was reciting something she’d learned long before and was having difficulty remembering. ‘“Hide in plain sight,’ that’s one of their maxims. So, we all know about parts of the Benandanti—but nobody knows about all of it, unless you’re in the very center; and that’s where people like Balthazar Warnick are.”

“So what do they do?”

“Research, mostly. Very obscure, totally useless research.” She began to enumerate. “Sacrificial rituals of the ancient Scythians. The secret meaning of the Book of Genesis. Trying to find a pattern in NYSE figures between April and June of 1957.” She laughed. “I mean, can you imagine wasting your whole life on something like that?”

I thought of Balthazar Warnick running his fingers across a door, letting it fall open upon the landscape from a nightmare. “Yeah,” I said at last. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I can see how it might come in pretty fucking useful.”

I moved closer to her.

“Angelica,” I said, my voice low but urgent, “if what you’re telling me is true—and, I mean, it is true, I saw what they did to Magda Kurtz!—if this is all true, it means the world is completely different from what we think it is. It means—it means there’s, like, magic, or something—

“It means that everything I know is wrong.”

“No.” Her eyes were huge and luminous. “It just means that you didn’t know everything. That’s all.”

“But what happens now? Are they going to kill me because I saw them? Because I found out about this big awful secret?”

She looked at me pensively. “I don’t think so. I think if they were going to kill you, they would have done it already. I mean, I found out about them when I was young, and nothing happened to me.”

“But you said your father is one of them.”

“He is. But my father always said that no one ever really learned about the Benandanti unless they were supposed to, unless there was some reason for it. No, I don’t think they’ll kill you, Sweeney.”

I leaned back and gazed at the ceiling. “Tell me this, then. What’s the point? Why are they doing all this research, if it’s so useless? I assume they get their weird books and monographs published, and they all get tenure, but why? What are they trying to find out?”

Angelica hugged her pillow to her. “It’s not so much that they’re trying to learn things. It’s more that they’re trying not to forget, trying to make sure they remember—

“Someone like Professor Warnick… he knows the words to all the Vedas, he knows a language they spoke in eastern Europe ten thousand years ago. Not the whole language, maybe, but words, phrases, stories: this whole incredibly ancient oral tradition that’s been carried on since the Ice Age. Maybe even before then; maybe so far back that the people who spoke it, we’d hardly even recognize as human at all. But the Benandanti remember. That’s their job.”

I felt chilled, by what lay behind her words: thousands of years unrolling in the darkness before me like a vast eternal plain, endless steppes where tiny figures could just barely be discerned, crouched around a single flame or dancing with arms outflung beneath the starless sky.

“So,” I said at last. “They go out and find these old primitive priests, these witch doctors, and take their pictures and film them and stuff. Like they’re an endangered species. They’re just into saving all these old shamans.”

“No, Sweeney,” Angelica said softly. “You don’t get it. The Benandanti aren’t into saving the shamans. They are the shamans.”

She walked over to the lantern on the floor, squatted before it, and held her hands out, so that black smoke licked at her fingers. “Thousands of years ago they came out of the northern steppes and boom! everything changed. The way people lived, the way they talked and dressed, how they divided property, how they determined parentage. There was this sort of cultural explosion, and we’re still feeling the aftershocks; we’ll go on feeling them forever. That’s what the Benandanti are for: to make sure we keep on hearing the echo of a bomb that went off seven thousand years ago.

“The men in my father’s family have been Benandanti since the fifteenth century, when the sultan Mehmed helped create the Laurenziana, the de’ Medicis’ library in Florence. So my ancestors were librarians. Balthazar Warnick goes back to the Dark Ages, to those monasteries in Ireland that were the only place in western Europe where they still could read and speak Greek, until the Renaissance. And Oliver’s family goes back even further than that, to the first wave of Milesians in Ireland.”

I stared at her for a long time, the lunula a faint gleam upon her breast. Finally I said, “This is crazy.”

Angelica looked up, her face composed. “No, it’s not,” she said calmly. “When it starts to get crazy is when you find out that underneath this whole Indo-European tradition is an even older tradition. One that goes back twenty, thirty thousand years; and that’s what the Benandanti are afraid of.

“Because the people who were there before the Benandanti knew things that make my father and Balthazar Warnick look like Boy Scouts putting on a magic show. The Benandanti did their best to stamp them out, but old things survive. Old religions survive. And the Benandanti are afraid that someday the old ways will truly return. If you know anything at all about history, you can see the signs: there’ll be these little isolated outbreaks, like the old religions that were persecuted as witchcraft during the Middle Ages, and again in Salem. The whole hippie movement in the 1960s, and some of this pagan revival stuff that’s going on now.

“All that stuff scares the Benandanti, and they do their best to put a stop to it. You want conspiracy theories? Well, this one beats them all, Sweeney. The Benandanti are so powerful that, for the most part, they’ve succeeded in keeping any resurgence of this other ancient tradition from gaining anywhere in the world. Probably the smartest thing they ever did was to infiltrate the Church; although the earlier religion got a toehold in there as well, with all those holdovers from Isis and Dionysos grafted onto Christianity.

“But mostly the Benandanti have just made sure that their guys are always in charge. That’s how they’ve managed to carry on in this unbroken line for all these aeons, all of them: presidents and generals and priests and monks and scholars and regular guys, witch-hunters and that guy pumping gas at the Sunoco station who thinks Batman is a real person. He’s not as dumb as he looks; and my father and Balthazar Warnick and some of their friends are a whole lot smarter.”

“Okay,” I sighed. “So your old man and Richard Nixon and the de’ Medicis and I guess the Dalai Lama are all in on this together. So what’re they so afraid of? What are they trying to keep us from finding out about? What is the big fucking secret?”

Angelica turned to stare out the window. A shaft of light from the hurricane lamp speared her crescent necklace so that it flared into a burst of gold and crimson.

“The Goddess,” she whispered.

I flung myself upon the bed. “Oh, man…

Angelica looked at me furiously. “I’m not kidding, Sweeney! Haven’t you read Magda Kurtz’s books? Don’t you remember what happened to her?”

“Okay.” I ran my hand through my hair and wished I was someplace else. “Magda Kurtz. You’re right, obviously something totally weird was going on with her. So tell me about your crazy goddess stuff.”

She began to declaim in her theatrical voice. “Well, in a way we just don’t know all that much. I mean, there’re these cave paintings and carven images that go back tens of thousands of years. The Venus of Willendorf, the Snake Goddess. And then later there’s Isis, and all these other Mediterranean goddesses; and Innana in Babylon, and the Great Goddess of Crete, whose name we don’t know. And the Roman Laverna and Satine in Indonesia and Skadi in Scandinavia. And the Virgin Mary, of course—she’s sort of the Sears knockoff of Isis—”

“I read The White Goddess,” I snapped. “I know how it turns out. Here’s all your goddesses, this nice big kaffee klatsch, and you’re saying that along came the Benandanti—okay, okay, the Scythian horde or the Hittites or Hyperboreans—that your basic group of patriarchal sky-god worshipers swept down and wiped them from the face of the earth. And for some reason Balthazar Warnick and his friends are doing whatever they can to keep them gone. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“Yes. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’ve been reading about it—you’d be amazed at some of the stuff Colum has in the stacks. I think these matrilineal cultures must have had some pretty dramatic type of social control. Their goddess religions were probably much more intense than we like to imagine. Almost certainly there was some form of recurrent human sacrifice. Magda Kurtz thought so; otherwise, why are there all these survivals of incredibly violent rituals? Even the ancient Greeks—we think of them as being so civilized, but originally the Greeks took most of their religious notions from places where the Goddess was worshiped, from Crete, and Anatolia, and probably other places we’ll never know about. When we read about Theseus and the minotaur, it’s just a fairy tale. But to the classical Greeks it was a memory of something almost unimaginably ancient, the remnant of some kind of human sacrifice to the Goddess. A tribute of young men and boys brought from the mainland to Crete at the end of every lunar cycle…

“And so for twenty thousand years we had these relatively peaceful matristic societies. No wars, no warriors. If we bought that peace at the price of a few men or boys a year, well so what?”

I stared at her as though her hair was on fire. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m not kidding,” she said haughtily. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.”

“But it’s insane! You’re saying that human sacrifice is acceptable as some weird kind of social control!”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying! It’s just a theory, anyway—but why would that have been such a terrible thing? I mean, what about Christianity and the crucifixion? That’s a kind of human sacrifice, and nobody thinks it’s weird. Why is it okay if a man does it?”

I wanted to laugh, but Angelica’s piercing glare shut me up. “Angelica, I hate to say this, but—but isn’t this all kind of—well, paranoid?”

For the first time in the nine weeks I’d known her, Angelica got mad: really, really mad.

“Listen, Sweeney! Maybe I don’t know everything about the way the world works, but I know enough not to buy into every idea my father taught me. Or Balthazar Warnick. I mean, look at this—”

She crossed the room to her bed, dug into one of her bags and withdrew a book: Magda Kurtz’s Daughters of the Setting Sun. She flipped through it, walked back, and shoved it at me.

“What’s that a picture of?” She pointed to a print showing a pattern of intersecting lines and Vs. I squinted at the page and shrugged.

“Swords.”

“Guess again.”

“I dunno. Spears, I guess. Some kind of weapon.”

“Why not leaves? Why not fish, or birds, or fir trees?”

I shrugged again. “I don’t know. They just look like spears to me.”

“They look like spears because you’ve been taught to see spears. Or swords, or javelins. What about this?” Her finger jabbed at another image.

“Easy. Some kind of phallic symbol.”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t it look a little top-heavy for a phallic symbol? Look again—”

I peered at it more closely; and this time I saw that there were incised lines on the top of the little image, forming a crude face, and lines along its body marking a vulva. I nodded and handed the book back to her.

“You’re right,” I said, a little surprised. “It’s a face—”

“It’s a woman. A goddess figurine. And yet for a hundred years people were digging these things up and insisting they were phallic objects, when they could just as easily have been mushrooms! Just like they were insisting every circle or delta was a shield or sun, when they were found surrounded by millions of these goddess figures, and were probably supposed to be vulvas, or moons. Just like you said all these patterns of lines represented some kind of weapon, when they could have been any number of other things.”

“Then why can’t they just be nothing?” I asked stubbornly. “I mean, these people didn’t have notebooks to doodle in. Maybe they were just scribbling on the walls.”

“That’s not the way the world works, Sweeney.”

“Oh yeah? Who died and made you hierophant?”

Suddenly she looked exhausted. Small lines showed at the sides of her mouth and eyes as she leaned to cup her hands above the hurricane lamp.

“Look, maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about,” she said wearily. “What I do know is, I read Dr. Kurtz’s book in high school, and it was like a bell went off in my head. All of a sudden all these things made sense—why they used to burn witches at the stake, why women aren’t allowed to be priests or rabbis, why Christmas is a big deal, but Halloween is just for little kids—all these things that had always just seemed to be the result of some weird random decision on somebody’s part.

“And Dr. Kurtz’s book explained all this stuff. Okay, so maybe a lot of it isn’t even true—but maybe it doesn’t all have to be true. Maybe just some of it is true, and maybe for me that’s enough. Because when I read her book, for the first time I felt like I understood things. Things that had to do with my father and the Benandanti, with everything I’d been brought up to believe in…

“And so I came here to the Divine, because my father went here, and I met you and Oliver and Annie, and Daddy’s old friend Balthazar Warnick, and Magda Kurtz—this woman I idolize!—and out of nowhere she gives me this—”

Her fingers clutched at the silver crescent hanging around her neck.

“—she gives me this, and then she’s gone. The paper says she was in a plane crash but I know she wasn’t and you know—and there has to be a reason, Sweeney. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have given it to me. There has to be a reason.”

I was quiet. Finally I said, “Sure there’s a reason, Angelica. Magda knew someone was going to kill her. She knew someone wanted that thing, and she was trying to get rid of it. And if you were smart, you’d get rid of it, too.

“No.” Angelica crossed her arms. “The only reason Warnick got to her at all was that she took it off. The lunula was protecting her. As long as she wore it, she was safe.

“And then she gave it to me…”

Her voice faded. When she spoke again it was in a whisper so soft I could barely hear her.

“That’s why I have to learn about it. If I was meant to have it, I have to know why. There are no accidents—that’s what my father says. Nothing ever happens without a reason.”

“Yeah, and when God closes a door, He opens a whole new can of worms. Well, you better be careful, that’s all,” I said darkly, and pointed at her throat. “I don’t know what that thing is, but it’s bad juju, I can tell you that.”

Suddenly the door to our room flew open. We both jumped; but it was only Annie.

“Hey, what’s this? You guys having a séance?” She flopped down beside Angelica and beamed. Her face was bright red and sweaty, and her hair stuck up in little tufts across her forehead. “Anyone I know?”

“Annie, have you been drinking?” Angelica raised her eyebrows in astonishment.

“Hell, no. I’ve been dancing, with Baby Joe and Hasel and those other guys. I just came back to get my sweater. You should come back with me. And listen: they’re having another party tomorrow night—”

She started throwing clothes out of her knapsack, finally held up a moth-eaten cardigan. “Eureka.”

“I think tomorrow’s supposed to be an evening of quiet contemplation, Annie,” said Angelica.

“Yeah, well, after vespers there’s gonna be some party over in Hasel’s room. I said you’d come, Angelica—oh, you too, Sweeney, don’t look at me like that!—they’ve got a boom box and a bunch of tapes, it’ll be great.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Angelica said doubtfully. “Is Oliver there now?”

“Oh, lighten up, di Rienzi! No, he’s not. I don’t know where he is—probably outside communing with Jupiter. Probably he’s on Jupiter.” Annie pulled on her sweater and whirled out the door again.

Angelica turned to me. “You can go if you want.”

“I don’t think so. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Are you tired?”

“Not really. I’m kind of buzzed, actually.”

“Would you like to take a walk? Outside, I mean.”

“Sure.”

We found a door that led out onto a rolling lawn. Beneath our feet the grass was brittle with frost and crackled noisily, like a match set to pine boughs. On the horizon, above the black tips of the trees, stars burned with a cold brilliance. There was no moon. We walked without speaking, and for once silence didn’t seem awkward to me. It was amazing how quickly we left the Orphic Lodge behind, neither light nor sound nor anything but the smell of woodsmoke hinting that it was there at all, sweet applewood and cedar, and an occasional flurry of red embers streaking the darkness overhead.

“I’m glad I met you, Sweeney,” Angelica said after a long while. The lawn had finally surrendered to tangled vetch and tall stalks of milkweed and yarrow. The night was utterly still; it was too late in the year for crickets, and even the night birds seemed to have fled. There was only wind rustling in dead weeds, and the crackling of leaves underfoot. “I don’t know, now, what I would have done if I hadn’t. I love Annie, but she’s different from you—you understand things about me, I don’t have to explain everything.”

I smiled ruefully and shook my head. I don’t understand anything! I wanted to yell, but didn’t.

“You really are my soul mate. You and Oliver.” Very tentatively her fingers brushed against the glimmer of light at her throat. Then she reached to take my hand. “Oh, Sweeney.”

I froze, my mouth suddenly dry as I waited for her to pull me closer. But she didn’t, only looked at me for a long moment with those uncanny green eyes. Finally she dropped my hand and continued down the hillside, picking her way carefully among weeds and brambles and stones.

In front of us the field dipped into a tiny hollow and rose again, ending in a grove of birches and sapling pines. In the moonless night the woods looked ominously black. Behind the timid growth of birches and young oaks, the evergreens formed a solid impenetrable wall, with thatched masses of dead ferns and leaves beneath.

“Maybe we should head on back now.” I was afraid that Angelica wanted to plunge on into those woods, and that as her soul mate I would be expected to follow. “I’m kind of cold.”

“Sure.” But abruptly she drew up short. “Sweeney!” she whispered. “There’s somebody there!”

I peered into the darkness, my heart pounding. I could just make out a pale figure sitting in a patch of dried milkweed. I took a few cautious steps forward, then laughed with relief.

“It’s Oliver!”

The night seemed to fall away. I turned giddily and grabbed Angelica. “Oliver!” I shouted.

“Oliver,” repeated Angelica.

He was all alone at the very edge of the field. He had a guitar in his lap and was holding it awkwardly yet lovingly, as though it were a baby. When he saw us, his mouth crooked into that odd canine grin. But he said nothing; only tipped his head so that his face was hidden.

“Oliver,” Angelica called again in a low voice. Her fingers closed about the lunula, so that its gleam was lost to me. Oliver did not raise his eyes. In the cold breeze his long hair rippled, as though some muscular impatient animal waited beneath. And then suddenly he looked up, not focusing on either of us but on some point far far away, between the ghostly shapes of the trees and the diamond-studded sky. In a thin clear plaintive voice—a boy’s voice, slightly off-key but so sweet and earnest it gave me goose bumps—he began to sing.

His guitar playing was like his voice—edgy, a little too fast, his fingers stumbling over the chord changes. But there was something about it all—the moonless sky, the trees bereft of leaves, even the wind stirring the dried stalks of milkweed and Queen Anne’s lace—something that was lovelier and lonelier and more fragile than anything I had ever experienced before. I leaned forward until I stood on the balls of my feet, poised for flight, though I didn’t know that then, and as I listened I felt Angelica’s hand slip into mine.

I began to cry. You have to remember I was so young, and drunk, as full of raw wet emotion as I was of bad wine; but even so there really was something there, I felt it then and years later I knew that I had been right, there really was something about Oliver, and Angelica, and maybe even me; but mostly it was Oliver. Even after all the rest of it, even now, when I think of Oliver that night is what comes to me first: standing in the cold dying grass, with the faint tang of woodsmoke wind-borne from the Orphic Lodge, the stars like cracks in the sky through which I might have peeked and seen all that was to come, if only I had known to look. And Oliver himself, the shadow of the song, singing as though they were the only words he knew

He fell silent, strummed the guitar a few more times, and then cocked his head to listen to the sound die into the wind.

“Oh,” whispered Angelica. “That was wonderful—what is it, that’s the most beautiful song…”

“No, it’s not,” cried someone behind us. I whirled and saw a pale face peering from a tangle of seedpods and dead grass: Annie, the front of her holey cardigan covered with burdock. “Who said you could use my guitar?”

Oliver stood. He brushed himself off and extended the instrument to her. “I’m sorry, Annie. I didn’t think you’d mind.” Glaring, she took the guitar from him and hugged it to her chest. After a moment she plucked at it tentatively.

“Huh,” she said, wincing as the strings jangled. She looked up and for the first time seemed to notice Angelica and me. “There you are. They’re asking for you up at the council fire.”

“I thought you were with Hasel.”

Annie yawned. “I was. But we went down to get something to eat and got caught up in this other stuff. You should come back in, it’s kind of fun.”

“We will—” I started to say, but then saw that Angelica had stepped over to join Oliver. The loose folds of her dress hiked up on a patch of burdock, but she didn’t notice. She had her arms around Oliver and was pulling him to her and he was kissing her, his hands sliding down her back slowly at first, then tugging at the thin folds of cotton until I could hear a faint shirring noise as the fabric pulled from the weeds and tore.

“Hey.” Annie nudged me with the neck of her guitar. “Come on, Sweeney,” she said softly but kindly. “Let’s go inside.”

I stood for another moment, staring, then quickly followed her up the hill. When we reached the Orphic Lodge I turned to look back, but everything behind us had been swallowed by the night.

I woke very early the next morning. It was still dark outside, the windows pewter-colored and edged with a tracery of frost. In her narrow camp bed Annie was a small snoring mound of blankets. Angelica’s bed was empty I lay on my side and stared at the neatly made rectangle with its quilt and cotton comforter and pillow, Angelica’s blue silk makeup case, and the little black box that held all her contact lens equipment. At last I got up. I dressed in the dark and ducked into the bathroom.

Even without the black eye makeup, the face staring at me from the mirror didn’t look sensible at all. At night, dancing in a dark club with gaudy lights arcing through the smoke, I could pass for androgynous and sinister: cropped black hair, gashed mouth, bruised eyes. But the act didn’t play well by daylight. I looked burned out and exhausted and younger than I liked to admit. I threw some water on my face, trying to pretend that made me feel better. I decided to forgo a shower because I didn’t want to wake Annie, and went downstairs.

The lodge was silent and cold and dark. I tiptoed into the kitchen, found some instant coffee and boiled water and drank the awful stuff black. Then I went outside for a long walk, down the hillside and to the edge of the woods where we’d been the night before. I smoked most of a pack of cigarettes and looked for signs of Angelica and Oliver’s passing. Crushed bracken, stray bits of clothing, the lingering smells of sandalwood and smoke. But, of course, I found nothing. Whatever the night might have known of them, the day held nothing—nothing, at least, that it would share with me. Where the overgrown meadow ended I slumped against a birch tree with my head bowed and eyes closed, the cold wind gnawing at my back and the empty windows of the Orphic Lodge gazing down upon me, and smoked my last cigarette.

I spent the rest of the day alone. The whole morning and most of the afternoon skidded by, and I never saw Angelica or Oliver. As dusk fell, I went down to a cheerfully airheaded ecumenical service in the living room, in front of the empty ash-streaked fireplace. The dreaded acoustic guitars were brought out, and a boy played “Embryonic Journey.” Two grad students sang an Elton John song that I hated. Everyone clapped politely, and then to my surprise, Annie Harmon rose and carried her guitar to the front of the room, climbing atop a wooden stool and perching her slender frame there. She fiddled with her guitar until she got the tuning right, pushed up the sleeves of her plaid shirt, and nodded.

“Okay,” she said. She gave a quick nervous laugh, and then began to sing.

She did “Chelsea Morning” and “Been Too Long at the Fair” and “Afterhours”—

—tapping the sounding board of her guitar so that it boomed as she sang in a deep scary voice scarcely above a whisper.

Her voice filled the room like smoke and we breathed it in, its rich dark menace, the simple words suddenly becoming a warning.

All too soon her voice died away. There was an instant of silence in which I could feel the last cold notes dissolving on my skin; then everyone began yelping and cheering.

“Whoa, Harmon!”

“Bravo!”

“Brava, bella!”

I looked over my shoulder and saw Angelica and Oliver leaning against the wall. Oliver was wearing the same clothes he wore last night, and Angelica had on her same dress, with a faded maroon sweatshirt that read Northeast Kingdom Abbey pulled on over it. She was red-cheeked and smiling, applauding wildly. She looked younger than I had ever seen her, more like a freshman college student and less the mysterious femme fatale. Her hair was loose and uncombed and, without its exquisite maquillage, her face was sweet and girlish.

But Oliver: Oliver looked awful. Chalk white, his blue eyes shadowed and so dark they looked like raw holes. His hair hung lank about his cheeks and he stared fixedly at his hands, flexing and unflexing his fingers. Every now and then his mouth twitched, as though he were trying to keep from laughing or crying aloud.

If I were you, I’d be worried about Oliver…

I stared at him, as drawn as I had been by my first vision of his fey prep school beauty. But now something truly terrible hung about Oliver: no more that casual aura of adolescent abandon, but a palpable air of ravagement and decay. His expression was vacant yet at the same time almost demonically intense. He rocked back and forth, back and forth, shifting his weight as though it hurt him to rest too long on one foot. Abruptly he moved away from Angelica with a queer shambling gait, more like a wounded animal than a person.

“Oliver—” Angelica called after him. But instead of turning to her, Oliver stopped and looked at me.

I froze. I was overwhelmed by dread—that he would say something to me, that he would call my name, and so doom me to whatever horror had consumed him.

Instead Oliver only smiled, his own sweet crooked smile. He shook his head, as though seeing me had awakened him from his stupor, and looked down at his feet. He was wearing his customary black wing tips without any socks, but there was a nasty gash on one ankle, the wound black and the flesh around it grossly swollen. I cried out and started toward him, but someone grabbed my arm.

“Sweeney!—” Annie popped up beside me, grinning. “What’d you think?”

“Hmm?”

“My singing. Didn’t you like it?”

“Huh? Oh sure, Annie—sure,” I said absently, then turned to see Oliver and Angelica near the door. She was holding his hand, talking and gazing at him with worried eyes; but Oliver ignored her. He was staring straight ahead, his eyes fixed on something I couldn’t see. Angelica lifted his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles—they were scraped raw and black with dirt—but he never looked up. I tried to catch his eyes, willing him to notice me, but Oliver’s gaze never wavered from whatever dreamscape had captivated him. “Annie, look at Oliver—do you think he’s okay?”

Annie shook her head, her dark eyes troubled. “I don’t know.” She shifted her guitar case and shrugged. “But those Molyneux scholars—somebody always keeps ’em from falling. Come on—”

We walked in silence to our room. Once again, Angelica had somehow gotten there first.

“Sweeney! Annie! What’s up?” She still had on Oliver’s sweatshirt, and there were burrs in her softly curling hair. “You know, I think I will go to that thing tonight in Hasel’s room. You guys up for it?”

“Sure.” I glanced at Annie, cleared my throat, and asked awkwardly, “Is—what’s Oliver up to?”

For a moment Angelica’s smile looked strained. Then, “Oliver will be there. Don’t you worry. Ciao, Sweeney—”

She slipped into the bathroom. I sat on my bed and turned to Annie. She pursed her lips, wriggling her fingers as she blew a kiss at me.

“Ciao, Sweeney,” she said.

When we got to Hasel’s room, things seemed ominously silent.

“Hey! The girls are here!” Annie yelled. She frowned, kicking aside an empty beer bottle. “What’s going on, Hasel? Is this a wake, or what?”

“Warnick gave me a hard time about all the noise last night,” explained Hasel. “So we figure we’ll just go outside. You guys have warm clothes on?”

“Angie doesn’t,” Annie said.

“That’s okay,” murmured Baby Joe. “She’s got her love to keep her warm.” He giggled soundlessly and tossed me a beer.

For a few minutes we sat around and made desultory conversation. I sipped my beer, Annie swung her feet restlessly and kicked at the rungs of her chair, Hasel and Baby Joe smoked in near-silence. Angelica stood by the window and gazed out at the night. The spectacular sunset had faded to a tattered fringe of black and red above the mountains. Elsewhere the sky was already black, save where the first stars clove through the darkness. Hasel finished his beer and stared at Angelica, after a moment said softly, “You sure look beautiful tonight, Angelica.”

She did, too: wearing a long-sleeved cobalt blue dress of champagne velvet, with a shirred bodice and silver embroidery and silver tassels hanging from the cuffs and hem. She had on the same half-moon earrings she’d worn the first time I met her. Against her throat hung the lunula. Every now and then she’d touch it, as though for reassurance.

“What? This old thing?” Angelica laughed, but her voice sounded odd: as though she were acting at being Angelica, pretending to be more self-assured than she really felt. “He should be here any minute—”

“I think,” Annie broke in, her eyes widening, “I think he’s here now.”

We all turned as a shadow filled the doorway—a shadow in stained tuxedo shirt and moth-eaten trousers and dirty black wing tips with filthy laces trailing behind them. The bare foot shoved into one of them was so swollen and bruised it looked black.

“Oh, Oliver,” whispered Angelica.

It was Oliver, all right; but his hair was gone. All that beautiful long hair, sheared away until there was nothing left but coarse black stubble. He must have tried to shave his skull—there were bald patches, and angry-looking cuts left by a razor.

I have never seen anyone so appallingly changed. His face was still beautiful, and with his shorn head, the high cheekbones and shadowed eyes gave him a monkish look. But his eyes were wild, and all Oliver’s sweetness, all his sly humor and intelligence were gone from them. He looked sinister and frighteningly out of place, like the victim of some terrible accident who has crawled for miles and miles, finally to collapse on the lawn at a wedding.

For a minute we were all silent. Then Hasel started to clap.

“Way to go, man!” Hasel crossed to the door and drew Oliver into the room, laughing. “‘Bout time you got rid of that hippie hair!”

“Oliver,” cried Angelica. I thought she was going to burst into tears. “How could you?”

Still Oliver said nothing. He looked dazed, and let Hasel lead him to where the rest of us watched in awkward silence. Beside me Baby Joe cringed, and Annie for once was speechless.

“Hope you brought a hat, man,” Hasel went on heedlessly. “It’s cold out there—”

Oliver lifted his shorn head and stared at me, his eyes black and huge.

“Sweeney,” he whispered. “Save me, Sweeney.”

Hasel laughed. “Shave you? Man, there’s nothing left to shave—”

I walked over to him. “Oliver,” I murmured, and touched his poor ravished scalp. I thought it would feel prickly and rough, but it was soft, the little hairs like velvet. “Jesus. Looks like you got a haircut the hard way.”

Oliver tilted his head. Unexpectedly he flashed one of his crazy smiles, then grabbed me and hugged me to him, held me so tight I couldn’t breathe, so tight I could feel his heart slamming against his chest as though it would fly out and into my body like a bird seeking shelter. I could smell the drugs seeping from his pores, a falsely sweet smell like vitamins, the fresh scents of lavender soap and shaving cream and beneath it all a meaty odor that I knew must come from his swollen foot.

“Sweeney?”

The smell filled my nostrils until I couldn’t breathe, he was dragging me underwater and I was drowning, drowning. I tried to move, I needed to get away, though at the same time I wanted to stay there in his embrace, could feel how he was willing me to stay—

Save me, Sweeney…

Abruptly he let go. I fell back, gasping. When I looked up Angelica stood beside him, frowning as she ran her fingers across his head.

“Oh, Oliver. What a mess.” She made a face. “Well, you’re definitely making a statement.” She peered behind her, looking for the rest of us. “Should we meet you guys outside?”

Baby Joe shrugged. “I guess we’re ready.” He and Hasel headed for the door. I started after them, then paused.

“Annie?”

Annie shook her head. “I—I don’t think I’m in for this one,” she said slowly, adding in a low voice, “This is starting to look too weird, Sweeney. I’m going back downstairs.”

“You sure?” I said anxiously. Because it was looking a little too weird, even for me. There was Hasel, eerily oblivious to Oliver’s misery, and beer-sodden Baby Joe in his ragged suit, ashes trailing him like a bad reputation. And me in my old cowboy boots and Oliver’s shirt; and finally Angelica and Oliver. Angelica radiant as ever; Oliver in his skewed formal wear. We really did look like some deranged wedding party; though whether Oliver was lunatic preacher or runaway groom, I couldn’t guess.

“I’m sure.” Annie squeezed my arm. “And Sweeney—if things get too out of hand, promise you’ll come back inside, okay? Promise you’ll come get me?”

I nodded and watched her leave, then went to help Baby Joe with the beer.

“Okay,” said Hasel. “We’re on the buddy system: everybody got a beer? Let’s go—”

Hasel had discovered a set of ancient rusted fire stairs that cascaded down the outside of the lodge. Probably we could have just gone right out the front door and no one would have bothered us, or even noticed, but something made us furtive. One by one we went down the zigzag steps until we reached the lawn. A faint wind stirred the upper branches of the trees and sent a few dead leaves spinning drunkenly to the ground. I sat down for a few minutes, and tried to calm myself by looking at the stars. The chill air magnified them until they seemed huge, brittle flowers waiting to be torn apart by the wind. Finally I stood.

A few yards downhill waited Hasel and Baby Joe, their heads craned to stare at the sky. We were on the far side of the lodge, facing the woods. Without a sound, Angelica appeared beside me.

“Let’s go that way—” Her voice rang out as she pointed to where the silvery grey lawn flowed into darkness. “Someone told me there’s a pond there.”

“Kinda cold for skinny-dipping,” called Hasel. “But I’ll keep you company!”

He laughed and gave Baby Joe a shove. The two of them loped on down the hill. Angelica nudged me and I looked back to see Oliver. I started to call out to him, but he hurried after Hasel and Baby Joe.

Angelica gave an angry sigh. “I hate the way he looks. Why’d he do that to his beautiful hair?” She spun on her heel and started down the hill. “Sometimes I really think he’s crazy.”

It was a cold, nearly windless night. What breeze there was smelled of rain-washed stone and mud. When it shifted it brought with it the tang of woodsmoke from the lodge, the harsh scent of marijuana smoke. There was still no moon. I understood nothing of lunar phases, else I would have known it was the darkest quarter, the fourth of four nights when the moon is absent from the sky. But that only meant the stars shone all the brighter.

We turned before we reached the trees. We were in rank pasture now, bordered by a tumbledown stone wall covered with matted clumps of kudzu and wild grapevines.

I slowed my steps, wondering how Angelica could walk so surely and quickly among the stones and clumps of burdock. But she merely lifted her long skirt and went on. Occasionally Hasel’s slow stoned laugh floated back to us, or Baby Joe’s. Angelica walked alone, mad at Oliver, I thought, or maybe she just wanted to be by herself.

Suddenly she stopped. She lifted her arms and let go of the ends of her skirt. A few yards away Oliver and Hasel and Baby Joe halted and stared at her. Angelica turned to me, smiling.

“Here we are, Sweeney.”

We were at the top of a wide shallow depression, a sort of bowl in the surrounding meadowland. The ground was covered with very short dry grass, as though it had been mowed or heavily grazed. Everywhere myriad tiny stones were strewn like the stones in a gravel pit, and the fragile stalks of burdock and milkweed rustled softly where we walked.

At the center of the hollow was a small perfectly round man-made pond, what in farm country they call a tank. It was like a hole cut in the fabric of the night, and so black that I was surprised to see stars floating in it, innocent as lilies. Certainly it had been put there for watering cattle, though there were no cows anywhere that I could see, and the Euclidean symmetry of the pool gave it a strange, almost supernatural appearance. It seemed unlikely that it would be spring-fed, and I saw no streams running into it. But it didn’t have that neglected-fishbowl smell I associated with small ponds. Instead the water smelled sweet, wonderfully sweet: like spring rain and apple blossom and oranges, charged like a storm ready to break. It smelled so insanely wonderful that I jumped back from its edge as though I’d seen moray eels there waiting to tear me into ribbons.

“Sweeney? What’s the matter?”

Angelica stood on the bank and watched me. She had removed her sandals and was probing the black water with a toe. The sweet fragrance was so strong that my hair stood on end—not just the hair on my scalp or neck but everywhere—every filament of my being a wick ready to burst into flame.

“Sweeney?”

About her head runnels of violet light streamed like water. I stared at her, as frightened by her matter-of-fact tone as by everything else. “What’s wrong, Sweeney?”

“Hey, ladies. Wait for us!”

Behind me I heard shuffling footsteps, Hasel’s soft drawling laugh. Out of nowhere rose a strong wind. The cropped grass at my feet rippled, and dust rose and wheeled in grey clouds.

“Sweeney—could you help me with this?”

In front of me Angelica stood with her back to the pool. She was pulling up her dress, but it had caught on a spike of dried milkweed. “Sweeney—?”

She was only inches away from me, her arms upraised, hair a long tangle of dark gold. In the starlight her skin was so pale it was as though her body was a rift in the night.

“Sweeney: please. Take the dress.”

Her voice was a whisper but also a command. I gathered her hem between my fingers and raised it. Warm velvet spilled over my knuckles like foam, and with it her scent, sweet oranges and sandalwood rushing into me like a drug. I fell to my knees, leaned forward until my lips brushed the skin just below her thigh. I kissed her, pressed my mouth against her flesh, until I could taste sweet salt and oranges, the soft pressure of her skin giving way beneath my teeth and the velvet of her skin softer than anything. The folds of her dress slipped from my fingers and I started to fall forward, pulling her down with me. But then her voice rang out sharply.

“Sweeney.”

I stumbled to my feet, cringing as though I had been struck.

“My dress.”

This time I pulled it up and over her—thighs, groin, belly, breasts, chin—all in one swift motion. Before I could drop it Angelica snatched the dress from me and tossed it aside.

“There now,” she murmured.

I crouched at her feet, my hands clutching at dead grass. Above me Angelica cast no shadow in the pale starlight. She was naked, her skin smooth as molten silver, nothing to show that she’d ever worn any clothes at all. Save only this:

A crescent like the sleeping moon above her breasts, its spars reaching toward her shoulders and the whole thing glowing as though it had just been drawn from the flame. I heard a sharp intake of breath and Baby Joe’s nervous giggle, then Hasel’s awed voice.

“Fucking A. A fucking goddess, man—”

But from Oliver, nothing. Not a sound, not a breath. I wanted to look back at them, to reassure myself I wasn’t alone; but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything but stare up at Angelica, my hands crushing the dead grass against my palms.

For a long time she stood, utterly silent, her slanted green eyes glowing. It was as though the rest of us weren’t even there. As if, like Magda Kurtz, she had walked or been pushed through some gap in the world and now breathed a different air than we did, finer, rarer, infinitely more precious. About her face her long hair lifted and flowed in dark coils. Her eyes were serene, her lips parted so that I could glimpse her even white teeth. Upon her breast the lunula sent shafts of pure white light streaming into the darkness.

Without a word she turned from us, the slope of her hips and buttocks catching a glint of starlight before they faded into shadow again. Very slowly she paced to the water’s edge, and, as we watched, she walked right into it, not even hesitating at its brink, walked straight and slow as though drawn by an invisible rope toward the center of the pool. With each step the water rose higher and higher, lapping at her ankles, then her thighs and flanks, finally sliding up across her rib cage to touch her breasts with shadow. Her body was swallowed by black water like the moon in eclipse, until at last only her head remained, her hair flowing ‘round her. I had a glimpse of her eyes, hard and cold and shining, and a softly glowing core of light where the lunula lay upon her breast.

Then she was gone. Ripples spread from the center of the pool, expanded until they touched its shallow banks and disappeared, one by one; and all was still again.

I heard a whimper, tentative footsteps. I turned and saw Baby Joe and Hasel huddled together, their awestruck gaze fixed on the placid water. A few paces behind them stood Oliver. His face was utterly implacable. I could have read anything I wanted in his staring eyes—terror, relief, amazement, even complete indifference.

“Oliver,” I called hoarsely, not caring that he’d hear how scared I was. I stood, my feet scrabbling against pebbles and dead grass. “Oliver, let’s go—”

His expression changed. Like water flowing into a glass, some of the old Oliver seemed to fill him. He blinked and, for the first time, noticed me.

“Sweeney.” His voice was frail and tremulous, an old woman’s voice. “Thanks for coming.” He stepped toward me, and there was something ghastly about his smile, as though it, too, had been stolen from someone else. “I didn’t think they’d let you come, I didn’t know you were here—”

He reached for me, and when his hand closed about mine, I cried out: the flesh was so dry and loose it was like bark shifting beneath my touch.

“Don’t fear me, Sweeney.” His voice rose as I pulled away from him. “It’s still me, Sweeney, it’s still me, please don’t leave me—”

An explosive sound ripped the night. The air shattered; shards of glass rained upon us, filling the night with a sound like bells. I screamed, drawing my hands to my face; but when the splinters struck me they were not glass at all but freezing water.

“—with her.”

At pool’s edge stood a tall slender figure. Angelica, shaking her head so that her hair spun out in long black tendrils and more icy rain scattered everywhere. She was laughing. Water streamed from her uplifted hands to spill upon her breasts and thighs, and when she moved atoms of light shot from her, like sparks from a glowing forge. Upon her breast the lunula still gleamed, but its glory seemed to have been swallowed by her eyes, treacherous fox fire eyes. She turned and all their fatal splendor focused upon me.

“Oh Beloved. It is time.”

Her voice, sweet as rainwater falling upon stone. I stepped toward her, my arms opening to her embrace: what else could I do? But then I saw that she was not looking at me; nor at Baby Joe or Hasel or Oliver.

She was not looking at any of us. She walked right past me, past the others, and never said a word. It was so still that I could hear Hasel swallow when she swept by him, the dead grasses rustling beneath her bare feet. After she had passed we all turned in her wake, peering through the darkness to see what drew her.

In the overgrown meadow crouched a hulking form. At first I thought it was an immense boulder, or maybe some abandoned farm equipment.

But as Angelica approached it, her arms flung open in greeting, I saw that it was not a machine. It was a cow—no, a bull, a huge dun-colored creature with arching horns and a ponderous dewlap that hung down between its legs. When it sighted Angelica it snorted and shook its head. Its dewlap shuddered. It pawed nervously at the ground and a cloud of vapor enveloped its nostrils. It seemed merely huge, until Angelica stopped only two or three paces from where it watched her with rolling black eyes. Then it became monstrous, unimaginably vast.

My breath was coming fast and shallow. I glanced over to see Hasel staring transfixed and Baby Joe wide-eyed and motionless, a dead cigarette caught between his fingers. Beside them, Oliver was a brooding shadow, silent and minatory. In the field Angelica and the bull stared at each other, their breath fogging the chilly air. And then, very slowly, they began to move.

She took a step; it took a step. She slid sideways, it raised its front legs and came down in a furious explosion of dust. Now and then the bull would lower its head and charge her, and Angelica would drop to the ground and roll away, darting to her feet again quick as thought. She was still naked; where the dirt and grass touched her, her skin was streaked black and grey, her long legs mottled with tiny seed heads. On one breast a smudge like a handprint showed as though she had been struck.

But the patina of dust and grime didn’t make her look less beautiful. In some perverse way it made her more so, made her more arousing, gave some earthy taint of straw pallet and byre to her unearthly beauty. She ducked and darted, reaching now to strike the bull’s flanks with the flat of her hand, now to tug at the heavy curtain of flesh dangling from its throat, then leaping away to flick at its ears; once even grabbing a long stick and making a sudden lunge between its legs, striking at its shadowy member and rolling away seconds before its hooves thundered back down. With each flashing motion the bull snorted and gamboled, tossing its head and rolling its eyes in a sort of ecstasy of fear and fury, its black hooves sending up a steady rain of stones and dirt.

And still she came at it, tireless, relentless, crying out in low sharp bursts, a wordless, teasing song that was the perfect music for that dance. And dance it was, not crude or stumbling but fluid as the mad rush of water raging down a ravine, beautiful and awful and horribly, infinitely perilous.

Suddenly she stopped. She was panting, I could hear her and see how her ribs rose and fell, see how her entire body was flushed and smell her sweat mingled with that of the bull and the pungent odor of the trodden grass. When she turned I caught a flash of light at her breast, a gleam like the sun on water.

In front of her the bull was still as well. Its nostrils flared and it shook its head, no longer furiously but slowly, as though exhausted. It pawed clumsily at the ground with one foot. Every now and then a shiver would run across its entire body and its skin would ripple with a long single tremor. Its ears lay flat against its huge skull. Two long strands of spittle dangled from its mouth. Darker patches stood out against its greyish hide. On its rear right fetlock there was a small gash that bled when it moved.

And now, oh so slowly, Angelica began to walk toward it. She would take one step and halt, wait and then take another. When the bull shuddered and lowered its head, eyes madly rolling, she would become motionless and remain so for a minute, two minutes, three. Then she would step forward again. Overhead the moonless sky stretched black and boundless. The stars threw down a pale bitter light that cast no shadows, illuminated nothing but the things themselves: a beautiful girl and a bull.

Finally she stopped. The bull’s head was inches from hers, its horns reaching to embrace her. Above her breasts the lunula glowed, its raised prongs deadly as the bull’s horns, its gleaming curve radiant beneath Angelica’s face. So slowly that she scarcely seemed to move at all, she lowered herself to the ground, never taking her eyes from the bull’s; until she sat cross-legged at its feet, her head thrown back. Its dewlap hung above her upturned face. It shook its head, tail flicking at the air as though to drive away an insect. Slowly it raised its head, its huge eyes fixed upon the frozen stars, and lowed: a chilling desperate cry.

As it did, Angelica brought her hands to her throat and then snatched them upward, so quickly that all I saw was a flash of white. I gasped. In her hands she held the lunula, grasping it so that it formed a curved blade like a scythe. Without a word she lunged, slashing at the bull’s throat. She drew back and lunged again, and this time when the animal bellowed the sound was a screaming roar, so loud I covered my ears.

But I couldn’t look away. She struck at it again, and again, and it kept on roaring, its legs buckling as it sank and kicked out at Angelica, frantic with rage and pain. Once it nearly struck her but she pulled away just in time. It staggered toward her, moaning, its head lowered so that its horns formed a dull moon to her glittering crescent. All the while its blood poured from its throat in a dark torrent.

The bull stood weaving slightly as it stared at her, its black eyes no longer bright but shrouded with blood and grit. With a coughing roar it fell onto its side. Its flanks heaved as, with a last strangled bellow, it struggled to lift its head. Finally it was still.

In front of it Angelica was frozen in a half crouch. When it was clear that the animal was dead she stood, her arms held stiffly in front of her. Slowly she turned to face us.

She was all but unrecognizable. Her long hair was clotted with blood, her face and hands and breast covered with it, a black syrup I could smell even from here. A stench that I had never known before but which was somehow, impossibly, familiar. Bile and heat and shit, the faint green fragrance of crushed grass and spring rain. But also the cloying sweetness of spoiled meat, and that unmistakable musky odor that was Angelica, sandalwood and oranges and something else, the salt smells of sweat and the sea. I stared at her in horror, as terrified and repelled as when we had watched Magda Kurtz given to the hollow land. But Angelica only smiled, her teeth red-streaked, and raised the lunula above her head.

She held it by its slender spars, so that it formed a silver arc above her. As I watched it began to glow, until it was not just a piece of glowing metal but something else, something real, its edge still black with blood, but so dazzling, so pure that I couldn’t bear to look upon it; I tried to tear away my gaze but could not. Angelica’s lips were moving although I could hear nothing, only my own breathing and the faint desperate knocking of my heart. From the small curved opening in the pendant flames danced, higher and higher, until they wreathed the entire crescent, until Angelica herself was ablaze.

And then I saw what it was, saw what She was—

The Moon: the real Moon, not the dead stone that whirls blindly in Earth’s shadow but Hecate, Selene, Artemis: the pure and terrible One. She hung above us like a dream, like a doom waiting to fall and crush us—myself, Oliver, Hasel, Baby Joe—all of us frozen. All of us waiting to be chosen. Waiting to be destroyed.

But not me.

I started to run. Someone grabbed my arm—Hasel, though he held me without looking at me, his eyes still riveted on what was before us.

And then, what was before us spoke. “Come to me.”

It was only a whisper, but the night shivered with it, each dried blade of grass trembling as though a hot wind roared down from the sky.

“Come to me,” she said again, and every bone inside me strained toward her. But it was not to me she called.

As though he were walking through deep water, Hasel turned and stepped toward her. She opened her arms to him and he walked straight into them, heedless of the filth and gore that clung to her, the clots of blood thick and black as flies. Behind her the bull lay upon the earth like some fallen monument: black, its horns the color of bone.

She drew Hasel to her and he grabbed her furiously, moaning as her hands moved across his body. He was like a candle flame, small and pale, shining more brightly in the moment before it is extinguished. I could see the lunula, dangling from her right hand. Her fingers tightened and drew the bright crescent across his shoulder. Hasel cried out, his voice torn between longing and pain, and pulled away.

For an instant they stood apart. Hasel reached to touch his shirt, parted the slit-ted cloth and probed there. His eyes widened when he saw his fingers slick with blood.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey…”

Angelica cupped a hand beneath Hasel’s chin. Her lips parted as though to kiss him, but her free hand moved toward his breast, her fingers taut around a blade of light—

“No!”

Oliver darted between them, pushing Hasel aside. With a moan Hasel staggered away from Angelica, clutching his chest. The front of his shirt had been ripped from shoulder to hem, and where the cloth flapped open blood oozed from a long shallow gash across his sternum.

“Oh—God!—Sweet Jesus, I’m fucking bleeding—”

I moved to help him, but fell back as another voice rent the air.

“You said it was me!”

In front of Angelica, Oliver stood with hands clenched at his sides. His eyes were wide and maddened, his face contorted with rage.

“You wanted me!” he shouted. “You said it had to be me!”

Angelica stared at him, the lunula dangling loosely from her fingers. For the first time she seemed uneasy, and her gaze darted from Oliver to Hasel. Suddenly she nodded.

“Yes,” she said in a low voice. Quickly she draped the lunula back around her neck, awkwardly brushed a matted strand of hair from her eyes. Before she could move, Oliver grabbed her, his hands stark white against her bloodied arms. For a moment I thought she would pull away from him, but he pushed her roughly to the ground. She did not cry out or try to flee. Instead she stared up at him, her mouth a hard line curving slowly into defiance and a sort of grim joy. Oliver stared down at her, his hands fumbling at his belt. His trousers slid down his legs. Like a clumsy schoolboy he fell onto her, pulling her beneath him as her arms closed around his back.

“No.”

I covered my eyes but still I could hear them, their bodies thrashing against the dead stalks and Angelica’s low moaning whimper, Oliver making a deep grunting ah! ah! ah! as though he were being struck over and over again. In a way it was more horrible than all that had gone before, if only because it was so banal and so joyless, like listening to some machine echo the most precious remembered words of a lover long dead. But there was also something maddening about it: truly maddening. I was seized by a dreadful terror that if I stayed there I would lose my mind, as Angelica and Oliver seemed to have lost theirs.

So I turned to run—and froze.

On the rise behind me stood Balthazar Warnick and Francis Connelly. They might have been two stones set there as sentinels to guard the scene below. In the cold starlight they looked grey and stern: Francis’s mouth curled in disgust, Professor Warnick grim-eyed as he gazed down upon Oliver and Angelica moving in the dust.

As I stared, other things began to appear in the darkness to either side of them. Shapes tall and thin and white as birch trees, and others huge as menhirs, with great upswept wings; and still others the forms of ordinary men and women, seeming frail as porcelain beside those monstrous shadows. From horizon to horizon they stretched in an unbroken line, demons and angels and human men and women. Though they were mostly men. Men old and young and middle-aged, men of every race imaginable, their faces drawn and silent as Balthazar Warnick’s.

I began to shiver uncontrollably. There was no mistaking who they were. They were the Benandanti: Those Who Do Well, The Good Walkers. The chosen ones who for millennia had watched over mankind, benevolent sentries but also jailers, who meted out punishment and torment and death with as much care as they preserved a way of life. As the Furies were known as the Eumenides, The Kindly Ones, so the Benandanti saw themselves as benevolent; but to me they were dreadful even in their stillness.

I turned to look back down upon Oliver and Angelica; and now it seemed that they were not a man and a woman rutting in the dirt but two grasping dwarfish figures, struggling as they fought, the dead bull behind them. And then again they were not two people at all but mere shapes; and then not even that but formless things grappling beneath another, greater darkness. One white, the other black. Not the black that soothes and brings sleep but a chthonic darkness, a vast supplanting emptiness that was both maw and womb, whirling maelstorm and the storm’s calm fixed eye.

And as I watched a cry rent the air, a howl so anguished that I dropped to my knees. To hear such despair and horror given voice! I would be deafened, rather than hear such a sound again. As it died I cowered and prayed that whatever had cried out was lifeless now, or fled.

Behind me something moved. I cringed and flung one arm out to protect myself. But when I looked up I saw that it was only Baby Joe and Hasel, and behind them Balthazar and Francis, all staring at where Angelica and Oliver lay motionless in the grass.

“Ohh…”

I whirled and saw Oliver stumble to his feet, yanking at his trousers until they hitched up around his waist. He moved clumsily, the loose cuffs of his pants billowing around his calves. His fly was still open; his shirt was blotched with dirt and blood. A poisonous-looking crimson line tracked up the side of his leg. With his shambling gait and shaven head he looked like an old drunk. He kept putting his hands into his pockets and drawing them out again, like a nervous boy or pantomime beggar, and I could hear him mumbling—

Suddenly he saw me staring at him. He raised his hand; for a moment I couldn’t see what he was doing, waving or mimicking a swimmer crawling to shore or showing me something, something bright and glittering between his fingers…

Then my gaze was drawn downward, to where Angelica lay at his feet. She was smiling, her eyes closed. Behind her the dead bull had shrunk from primitive icon to a grotesque and pathetic corpse, its legs stiffly crooked like broken planks, its eyes shuttered with dust. Angelica blinked, then slowly drew herself up, like a cat stretching. She opened her eyes and extended a languid arm to her consort.

“Oliver,” she said.

Oliver looked down at her. If before his face had been twisted with rage, now it was contorted into something almost impossible for me to fathom. Loathing, yes. But also love, and perhaps even admiration, but most of all, fear. One hand dropped to fumble with the buttons of his trousers. The other tightened into a fist. Whatever shining thing he had grasped was gone. Then he was staring not at Angelica but at me, though not at me really but at something else. Very slowly the familiar crooked canine grin spread across his face. His head fell back, and he raised his hand. For a dizzying instant I thought he was going to strike Angelica. I caught a flash of something lucifer-bright as his hand swept down: a slender shining blade. It fell, not upon Angelica but upon his own groin.

“Oliver, no!” I shouted.

If the bull’s dying bellow had been thunderous, then Oliver’s scream was lightning: a blast of pure agony. I sprang forward and struck his hand, sending the knife skidding across the dirt. I heard Angelica screaming, Baby Joe and Hasel shouting. Oliver howled as I pushed him to the ground and tried to hold him still. Damp warmth spread across my jeans as I yelled for help. His legs thrashed, his eyes were open and staring blindly at the sky as he still gave forth that unending anguished howl.

“Enough.”

A low voice commanded me. I looked up and saw Balthazar and Francis. Francis grabbed me roughly, but Balthazar shouted and he let me go. Then Balthazar knelt beside me, tearing off his shirt and trying to staunch Oliver’s bleeding. With one hand he pushed me away. “Leave him to us now.”

Oliver’s howl cut off and he began to scream. I stared mutely at Professor Warnick. Exhaustion fogged his blue eyes, and a terrible, terrible weariness. “Go now,” he said.

As I stumbled to my feet someone grabbed me.

“Hija, come on—” It was Baby Joe, and Hasel at his side.

“No!—let me go, damn it, help him, we have to save him!—”

“Stop it, hija!”

“No—you don’t understand, they’ll kill him—let me go—”

I shouted and pulled free from Baby Joe. “I’m not leaving him!” I yelled, then looked around frantically. “Where is she, where’s—

“Angelica!”

As though echoing me Francis stood. “She’s gone!” His gaze fixed on the distant woods, and he started sprinting toward the trees when Balthazar shouted.

“Leave her, Francis!”

Francis glanced back, took another step as Balthazar commanded him.

“I said, leave her.”

Francis nodded and returned to Balthazar’s side. Professor Warnick looked up at Baby Joe and Hasel and me. “Get back to the house. Go, all of you!”

“Come on!” cried Hasel. He and Baby Joe began running up the long rise to the Orphic Lodge, dragging me between them. After a few steps I turned to look back.

In the darkened hollow they waited: the dead bull; the fallen boy; the silent guardian; the fool. Of Angelica I saw nothing. Balthazar Warnick crouched above Oliver, his hands moving quickly across the boy’s groin. Oliver’s face was so white that I feared he was dead. But then he moved his head slightly from side to side. He opened his eyes very wide and stared straight up into the sky, as though he saw something there, something glorious and terrible. Even from here I could see how angry Francis was: almost literally hopping with rage.

“But she’s got it!” His words sounded thin and clear, as though plucked from wires. “We can’t let her go, she’s—”

Warnick turned to him, his eyes burning. “It’s too late, Francis. Go to the lodge and call an ambulance. Get my car ready in case it doesn’t come right away.”

“But—”

Warnick’s voice shook as he shouted, “It’s been done, Francis. It’s too late now—”

He staggered to his feet. Oliver made a noise like gurgling laughter, his eyes still fixed on the horizon. Baby Joe and Hasel halted. Without speaking we all turned to where Balthazar Warnick pointed at the eastern sky.

There, above the unbroken line of leafless birch and sturdy conifers, above the tumbled stones and dying ferns, a pale light glimmered. As we watched, the frailest, most delicate arc of a crescent moon rose above the trees. A new moon where no moon should be; a new moon when the heavens should hold only its darkest quarter. Balthazar’s voice rang out, taut with wonder and dread.

“—She’s not sleeping anymore.”

CHAPTER 9 The Harrowing

BY THE TIME I reached our room, the entire lodge was in an uproar. Lights were flicking on everywhere, yawning students peered out their doors while the housekeeper Kirsten waited grimly by the front door like the old mansion’s Cerberus, glaring at anyone who ventured down the steps. Annie stood in the corridor, white-faced, her hair sticking up like a porcupine’s.

“Sweeney! What happened? Where’s Angelica?”

I shoved past her into the room and raced from one window to the next, yanking each open and leaning out, desperately scanning the night for what I needed to see: Angelica and Oliver laughing together as they walked back up to the lodge.

But instead there was only darkness, the sweeping shadows of me mountains and a few faint stars blinking wanly beneath the sickle moon. I pulled my head away from the open casement and stared at Annie. My breast ached with fear and hopeless longing, a palpable throbbing pain as acute as though I had been stabbed.

“She’s gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean, gone?”

“I mean I don’t know where she is.” I went from the window to Angelica’s bed and stared down at the neat worn coverlet, her bulging cosmetics bag, the little case that held her contact lens solution.

She won’t get far, Sheriff. She rode off without her eyeliner.

“You don’t know where she is?” Annie’s voice rose to a hysterical pitch. “Jesus! What happened—”

Through the open windows came a sudden high wailing. It grew louder and louder, perfect counterpoint to my anguished thoughts. Crimson light streaked the trees, strobing from red to black to red.

“No!” I ran into the hall, but Annie stopped me.

“Sweeney, what happened? You have to tell me, you can’t just take off like this—where is she?”

“I don’t know!” I yelled. “She took off! Something—something happened, something with her and Oliver—”

“Drugs? Was it drugs?”

“No, it wasn’t drugs, I wish it was drugs! Angelica split and Oliver, he tried to—he—”

“Goddamn it!” Annie tore across the room to her bed and started throwing clothes into a knapsack. “I knew it, I knew I should have gone with you.” The ambulance’s siren went dead, although its ghoulish light show continued. “Where’s my stuff? Did you do something with my other bag? Oh, god, why’d I stay here—”

Grief and fear exploded inside me. “Christ, Annie, what do you think you could have done? Some kind of, of witchcraft, what could you have done about that! These people are crazy; Angelica is crazy and you think you could have stopped her?”

“I would have stopped her! I would never have let her go—”

“There was nothing you could have done.”

We whirled to face the door. There stood Balthazar Warnick, one delicate hand resting upon the wooden jamb. On his forehead a vein throbbed, and he brushed distractedly at it, as though it were a fly. His sweater was covered with dirt and leaves and blood.

“You shouldn’t have interfered,” he added wearily; though I was unsure if he was talking to me, or Annie, or himself. “Katherine Cassidy, I want you to come with me.”

I stiffened. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Professor Warnick shook his head. “No one will hurt you. We’re sending you back to the city, that’s all.”

“Why can’t we stay here?” Annie’s voice cracked and she clutched her knapsack protectively to her chest. “Why can’t we leave in the morning?”

“You can leave in the morning with the others. Miss Cassidy has to leave now.”

“Why?” I started to cry. I hated myself but couldn’t help it. “What’s going on? Where’s Oliver—”

“They’re taking him to the hospital. I think he’s all right, just a bad cut although he did lose some blood.” He ran his hand across the front of his sweater and winced. “Come on, Katherine. Pack your things.”

“No. I’m not going with you.”

“Do yourself a favor,” snapped a nasal voice, and Francis Connelly loomed behind Balthazar. He looked more shaken than I would have expected, but his eyes were cold. “Just shut up and come with us, okay?”

“Francis.” Professor Warnick turned to him angrily. “It’s under control. I told you to go to the hospital—”

“But it looks like—”

“I will meet you there,” Professor Warnick went on smoothly, but his voice had a dangerous edge. Francis stared at him, as though waiting for him to change his mind, finally nodded, and shot me a last disdainful glance. When he was gone Balthazar looked at me sorrowfully.

“Sweeney.” He’d never called me that before; his tone was so gentle that my silent tears gave way to sobs. “You have to come with me.”

“What are you doing?” Annie flung her arm protectively around my shoulders. In her too-long Snoopy T-shirt she looked like a kid fighting bedtime. “You can’t just take her—”

Professor Warnick sighed. “We’ve found drug paraphernalia in Miss Cassidy’s dorm room. Marijuana, some kind of mushrooms—”

“Hey! You didn’t have—” said Annie, but I cut her off.

“You were in my room? Who let you in my room—”

“I don’t believe it!” yelled Annie. “This is a setup, it’s a fucking—”

“I have a responsibility to the University,” Balthazar said coolly. “The penalty for drug possession is mandatory expulsion.”

“Expulsion!”

His voice rose impatiently. “Consider yourself fortunate, Miss Cassidy! We could call the police.”

“But—you didn’t have a warrant! Isn’t there some kind of appeal, can’t I—”

“There’s also the matter of missed classes—I haven’t seen you in my class for over a month, and there have been complaints from your other teachers as well.

“I think,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder and starting to steer me toward the door, “I think that it will be best for all concerned if you are removed from the University immediately. We could have you arrested, you know: it wouldn’t be at all difficult to obtain a search warrant. But at the Divine we prefer to deal with these things in our own way. You have had an unfortunate influence on some very promising students, Miss Cassidy. Enough is enough.” He pushed me into the hall.

“You bastard. Where the hell are you taking her?” I looked over my shoulder to see Annie staring after me in a rage.

Balthazar Warnick shook his head. “I’m sorry, Annie. It’s not just that she broke school policy. Drug possession is against the law—”

“The law! This has nothing to do with the law, and you know it, you—”

Professor Warnick pulled the door shut behind us.

“Are you going to expel her, too?” I demanded. “Are you going to expel everyone who’s here tonight?”

“Not unless they interfere.” Balthazar Warnick tugged at a greying forelock. He was breathing heavily, and his face was flushed. “Katherine Cassidy. Come with me, please.”

His hand shot into his trouser pocket and withdrew an old-fashioned key ring.

“Where are we going?”

He said nothing, only kept his hand on my shoulder and guided me down the corridor, up a small flight of stairs and through a narrow hall, up another stairway and finally into a wide passage carpeted with thick oriental rugs woven in somber hues of black and crimson. We were in a part of the Orphic Lodge I’d never seen. The sounds of urgent voices died. I could hear nothing but our echoing footsteps and the falsely cheerful jangle of Professor Warnick’s keys.

“This way, if you will.”

Professor Warnick dropped his hand and walked briskly down the hall. I walked beside him, resigned to whatever horror was in store for me. It seemed futile to try to run. And in truth, at that moment I was more afraid of being alone than of anything else. There was something about the passage that reminded me of that darkly ornate upstairs corridor at Garvey House: the same queer aura of readiness and neglect, the same brooding strangeness that was not assuaged by the gleaming brass fixtures and resiny smell of cedar. The passage was lined with doors, but unlike those in other parts of the lodge, they were all closed.

And now we were nearing the end of the corridor. There was a heavy oaken door with a brass handle, a little brass plaque that read Please Knock.

“Here,” murmured Professor Warnick.

I stopped and shook my head. “No. I mean, no. I’m not going in there.”

Professor Warnick slid a key into the lock, turned it, and listened for the clicking of hidden tumblers.

“I didn’t do anything,” I pleaded. “I mean, everyone keeps some pot in their rooms, you can’t just—”

“This isn’t about your drugs,” he said, grasping the doorknob. “It’s—”

“No!” I cried; but at that moment the door creaked open.

“—it’s just my study,” said Professor Warnick gently, raising an eyebrow. “Please, come inside.”

I went inside.

It was a large room, very dark until Balthazar switched on a tall floor lamp. A fringed maroon paisley throw had been tossed over the shade, and its rosy glow did a lot to make the place look less threatening, more like an eccentric scholar’s homely lair. Bookshelves lined the walls, full of flaking leather volumes and curling manuscripts, sheaves of computer printouts and encyclopedias and something that looked very much like papyrus.

“I won’t keep you very long, Katherine. Have a seat.”

I remained standing. Balthazar had crossed to the far wall, a wall taken up by an enormous bay window with many small, mullioned panes. On the window’s wide sill there was a small brightly colored model of the solar system. Balthazar stared at it thoughtfully. The orbs representing the planets were enameled in bright, almost violent, colors—scarlet, cyan, Tyrian purple—and embellished with odd symbols and curlicues. The sun was sheathed in gold with a network of black wires across its surface. After a moment he picked up the orrery and stared at it, brow furrowed.

“It is changing,” he murmured.

Balthazar raised the model to his face and poked one of the glowing beads with a finger—the ball that was enameled emerald green and blue, the orb that was third from the sun. It turned languidly, a marble in slow motion. With a sigh Balthazar pinched it between his thumb and forefinger.

“Worlds within worlds,” he began, and stopped.

In his hand the planets in their shining orbits trembled. A thin sound filled the air. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. A sound like shattering crystal; a sound I had heard before.

Balthazar’s eyes widened and he raised the orrery, as he had done with the sistrum all those weeks before. In the air before him the globes began to spin: slowly at first, but more and more quickly, until it seemed he was beset by a cloud of bees. Tendrils of grey smoke rose from their blurred circuits. Balthazar’s ruddy face grew pale.

“No,” he whispered, then grimaced in pain. He swore and snatched his hands from the model, as though it burned his fingers; but instead of falling the orrery remained in the air before him. With a crackling sound, flames erupted from the dizzying vortex. Professor Warnick fell back against the window.

“No!—”

There was a roar, a sound as though somewhere miles beneath us the earth was collapsing. The floor lamp swayed perilously back and forth before it crashed to the floor, plunging the room into darkness—save where the orrery burned in the empty air. Its brightness terrified me: as though waves of liquid flame poured forth from some depthless fiery sea. Yet the flaming globe gave off no heat. And while the roar continued it was muted now, a pervasive vibration that made my bones and blood hum.

“Get back, Katherine!”

The orrery candled into a single glowing mass, not the warm gold of any fire I have ever seen but a blinding silvery white, with a black core. It pulsed like a swimming medusa, and then suddenly, soundlessly, its dark heart exploded outward. I was staring at a spherical void, a black hole crowned by a fiery white corona. At its center glowed a bloody-looking crescent. Dark liquid streamed from it onto the floor.

“Professor Warnick!” I cried. I could barely see him behind the luminous apparition, but I lunged across the room, knocking aside a chair as I tried to reach him. “Professor Warnick, can you hear me?”

“Stay back—don’t come near—”

His voice sounded faint and thin; it might have been the sound of branches scraping at the window. Behind the dazzling crescent he was all but invisible, enveloped by the black heart of that flaming mass.

“Get away—” His voice echoed faintly. “—warn them—!”

An anguished shout came from behind the glowing sigil, then a scraping sound, a sort of gnawing. My boots grew unbearably hot, as though I’d been kicking at live coals. Balthazar’s voice grew fainter still, and more desperate, as frantically I tried to get closer to the pulsing spectral orb. But it was futile: like trying to force my way through a wall of flame.

By now I had all but lost sight of him. The gnawing sound gave way to avid lapping. To my horror I realized that the luminous sphere was moving. This was no illusion of darkness and radiance: the spectral moon was devouring him. Bit by bit Balthazar Warnick was being eaten away by the utter blackness, a man in eclipse; and all the while sparks and dazzling rays of white and silver-blue shot from the half-moon above him. For an instant I was paralyzed. Then I dived at him through the moon’s penumbra.

Silence. The fluid lapping sound faded. I could see nothing feel nothing but cold, a cold so penetrating the breath froze in my throat. I choked, unable to breathe or move or cry out, and crashed to the floor.

The rug beneath me was soaked through with warm liquid. I stumbled back to my feet, straining to see something in the clouded darkness. I drew my hands in front of me; I could barely discern that they were stained black. I could smell something hot and bitter-rich, and realized that I was soaked with blood. Desperately I looked around for Balthazar.

He was there, a few feet away, shielding his eyes from the terrible radiance that surrounded us. He looked tiny and wizened, and unbelievably ancient. Like one of those mummified cadavers dragged from the bottom of a peat bog, his skin turned to friable leather, his hair a few damp strands across his skull. His hands were drawn before his face and his mouth was open as though he were screaming in agony, but he made no sound.

Around us that awful light billowed and pulsed. On the nap of the worn rug in front of me I could see the tiny star-bright image of the moon, its body black and swollen, capped by a shining crescent like the indentation left by a fingernail. Like one of those images you make of the solar eclipse, using a piece of cardboard with a pinhole in it. I took a deep breath, my throat still raw with cold, and reached for Balthazar, then, with all my strength, crushed the image of the moon beneath my boot.

A shriek pierced the air—a woman’s voice. At that moment my arms closed around Balthazar. Beneath his heavy sweater his bones were like bundled twigs. The shriek grew into a roar. But worst of all, worst of any of the things I could have imagined, there came a cry so faint it was scarce a sound at all—

“Sweeney—”

“Angelica!” I gasped.

She was there. Dazzling flames flowed from her, and upon her breast the moon shone like a beacon—only it was not the moon but the lunula, brighter than any moon, brighter than the sun. Her face was like the face I had seen that night upon the Mound, terrible and beautiful, her hair a streaming darkness as she reached for me, her sweet voice begging me to come to her. And I would have gone, would have embraced her as eagerly and heedlessly as I had done before, had not Balthazar Warnick pulled me away.

“Sweeney, no!”

For an instant we strained against each other: me striving to flee into Angelica’s arms, Balthazar holding me back.

“Swee—ney!”

She wailed my name as though her heart would break, and I felt my own heart torn inside me. I lunged forward, trying to shake Balthazar from me.

“Come to me!” cried Angelica, her voice piercing me with sorrow and longing as her fingers grasped at mine. “Swee—ney—”

She was aflame, the tendrils of her hair whipped about me but I didn’t care, didn’t care about anything save that this was Angelica and at last I would be hers. I felt myself tumbling forward, falling into her arms, into her open mouth, and suddenly my boot skidded across the floor. It was enough for me to lose my balance, enough for my hand to slip from hers so that Balthazar could drag me away.

“Close your eyes!” he shouted. “Don’t look at her, come this way—now!”

I shut my eyes and turned. Balthazar clutched me as we staggered through the darkness. From behind us came a sound that made my entire body shudder, a horrible freezing cry.

“Sweeney, nooo—”

Her voice cut off. I pulled away from Balthazar, shaded my eyes; but whatever had been there was gone. I was on the floor, Balthazar sprawled beside me. In front of the window, the oriental carpeting was bunched up in a blackened heap. I could smell the coppery hot stench of blood. Against the edge of the ruined carpet, a small twisted mass of wires smoldered.

“The orrery,” said Balthazar. He got to his feet and stumbled to the window. I stayed where I was, feeling as though I’d been beaten black-and-blue. My clothes were stiff with blood, my arms scored with raw red lines, as though someone had gone at me with a razor. I thought of the lunula’s glistening edge raised above Hasel, and felt sick.

“She destroyed it.” Balthazar nudged the smoking clump of wires with his foot. His tone was more awestruck than angry, but when I looked at him I was shocked to see his face wet with tears. He pulled his bloodstained sweater over his head and wrapped it around his hand. Then he bent over the charred ruin and picked it up, holding it at arm’s length.

“See what your friend has done,” he whispered. “As above, so below.”

All the shining globes had melted and congealed into a single corroded mass. At one side there was a crescent-shaped hole, like a gaping mouth.

“It is a warning—an unnecessary one—that She has the lunula now; without it She would never have dared attack me here. But it is not whole.”

His finger probed warily at the opening, and I shuddered, absurdly afraid that the smoking moon would bite him. “And that might be what saves us—perhaps, perhaps…”

He stepped to a corner of the window and opened a casement. Leaning out into the night he flung the ruined orrery in the direction of the river, far below. I held my breath, waiting to hear a faint splash or crash upon the rocks. Balthazar seemed to be listening, too; but there was nothing but the sound of wind tugging at the trees. He waited a moment, then with a grimace pitched his sweater out as well.

“There,” he said as to himself. He turned back into the room, wiping his hands on his trousers. When he saw me watching him he started, as though he had forgotten I was there.

I stood, my legs still weak. “Is it—is it over? Is she—is Angelica dead?”

“Dead?” Balthazar’s voice hardened. “Dead? She has never been more alive—not for centuries, not for over two thousand years—”

“We knew that She would return, and so we watched for Her—in all the old familiar places, as the song goes.” He laughed sharply, a fox’s bark. “But I did not drink She would be so bold as to come here. And so I have spent a lifetime waiting for Her—many lifetimes—and it all comes down to this—a meddling child’s foolishness—

“No, Katherine, Angelica isn’t dead. But she isn’t Angelica anymore, either.” His eyes were livid with fury and disdain. “Your friend has been chosen for a very important task, but the work demands some alterations—”

“What did you do to her?” I whispered. “You bastard, what did you do to Oliver and Angelica?”

“What did I do to them?” Balthazar’s face darkened. “What did I do?”

“Tell me!”

“I did nothing, you stupid girl! Angelica has been claimed—by She who has a dozen names in every tongue, by the one we call Othiym—

“For aeons She has been waiting—for the lunula to be found; for the right woman to be born; for the moment when Her talisman and Her chosen daughter would be brought together. And for all those aeons we too have watched, and waited, and searched. We have prepared, as well, in each generation making certain that there would be one young man who might be strong and beautiful enough to win Her, to seduce Her and so weaken Her—and for nothing! Because in the end we have been betrayed. Betrayed by Magda Kurtz, whom I loved as my own—”

He looked away from me. “—as my own daughter. Betrayed by the daughter of one of our most trusted members, and by Oliver’s weakness, and your own meddling in things you cannot possibly understand.”

His hand tightened into a fist as he snarled, “I might have had the lunula, Katherine. I would have had it, there in Garvey House, had you not pulled your friend Angelica from my hands. Just as you pulled me from Her hands a few minutes

The vulpine snarl cooled to an icy smile. He stepped delicately across the floor, once more composed and elegant, and glanced over his shoulder at me.

“Come here, Katherine.”

I stayed where I was, tensed and shaking. “No.”

He stopped and drew himself to his full height. If I had been standing beside him, he would have come barely to my chin. But his face was so ravaged, his eyes so brilliant, that I might have been staring into the terrible visage of some ancient sphinx, might have been looking upon the dark Goddess Herself.

“Come here.”

There was a threat to the words, but more than that, a command; a Power. Even as I willed myself to run, I found that I was walking toward Balthazar Warnick, until I stood beside him at the far end of the room.

“I know everything there is to know about you, Katherine Cassidy,” he said softly. “And that is very little: because to us you are a little thing. Do you understand that? A little, little thing—”

His white teeth glittered as he pinched together his thumb and forefinger to show how insignificant I was, how small and stupid and clumsy, but not useless, oh no! Not that—

“But somehow—” His face tilted to look up into mine, his eyes bleak. “Somehow you have come between those two Chosen Ones—”

The disdain in his voice melted, and while there was no warmth to his words they were no longer hateful. “—and somehow, somehow you saved me, when She would have devoured me.”

He turned to look at the ruined carpet beneath the window, the blackened place where the orrery had been consumed. “And I don’t understand it.” He gazed at me and I shifted uneasily.

“Me neither,” I said.

“I know.” Balthazar gave a low laugh. “That is why I am going to show you something. Something that might help you to—”

He walked away from me and gestured meaningfully. “—better understand us.”

He stopped. Set into the paneled wall was a door. A very old door, fashioned of pale wood and surmounted by an ornate lintel where a motto had been painted in now-faded letters.

I stared at it in horror, remembering Magda Kurtz, the hellish landscape where she had been thrust by the same man who now held me captive.

“What does that mean?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Where—where does it go?”

From a pocket in his stained trousers he withdrew an old-fashioned skeleton key the length of my hand. He stared at it, his eyes slitted, then turned and slid it into the door.

“Go?” he echoed. A raging wind ripped the word from him, as before us the door swung open. “It goes where I will it to go—”

Streamers of mist rushed past me into the room. I began shivering uncontrollably, and scarcely felt it when Balthazar put one hand upon my shoulder and with the other pointed at the doorway.

“Behold the world She would give you!—”

All was darkness: total, engulfing darkness, so empty and vast even the memory of dawn was swallowed by it. But what was most horrible about the abyss was that I knew it. Knew its enveloping airless heat and flow; knew the all-encompassing void in which I floated like a lightless star, the pulsing mass of black matter that surrounded me, swallowed me, imprisoned me within its maw. I tasted rather than smelled a hot rich odor, the stench of blood and excrement and earth. The stink of the grave but also that of the incunabulum; of the gutter, the birthing room, the byre…

The beginning place.

“It is Othiym,” Balthazar’s voice echoed through my thoughts. “She who is the mouth of the world…

“…She who is the word unspoken. Othiym Lunarsa.”

His words fell away. Then,

“Look now.” Balthazar’s breath was warm in my ear. “Can you see them?”

In the wasteland a flare appeared, crimson and faintly blue.

“There,” murmured Balthazar.

Another flame; then another, and another, and another, until everywhere I looked I saw small bursts of gold and yellow and scarlet, numerous small bonfires spread across the darkness.

“Watch,” said Balthazar Warnick. “Now they will make the night their own.”

Shadows appeared before the flames. Without a sound they began to crouch and leap around the bonfires in a sort of grotesque hobbling dance, until each small circle of flame had its lumbering cavalcade. The bonfires blazed up suddenly. I glimpsed flame-gilded antlers and hairy pelts, a leather priapus and cloven hooves, a pinioned mask formed of a screech owl’s fell. The pungent incense was overwhelmed by an earthier stink. Trampled mud; singed hair; the putrescent reek of an ill-cured hide. And sweat, real sweat, with no sweet undertones of soap or perfume, and the hot ripe smell of women, like brine and yeast and blood.

“Ahhh…”

A whine escaped me and I bit down, hard, to keep my teeth from chattering. The splayed black bodies and antlered heads, the shrieking ragged voices that rang out like birds of prey—they were all somehow both more and less than human. Like that awful ancient figure painted upon the wall of a cavern in the Pyrenees—antlered but with a lion’s paws, wolf’s tail and cat’s genitals and human feet, and terrible staring owlish eyes. Le Sorcier: The Sorceror.

“Animals,” whispered Balthazar, his disgust tinged with fear. “Always, they would be nothing more than animals…”

I recalled Angelica’s words—

The Benandanti aren’t into saving the shamans. They are the shamans.

But then why was he afraid? I hugged my arms to my chest and forced myself to gaze more closely into that empty darkness.

And I saw what Balthazar saw.

The figures leaping and shambling around the blaze were women. All of them—shadows crowned with horns and leaves, feathered dwarfs and limping cranes—all, all were women. Dark gold—skinned women tall as men, long-necked and proud; women small and somber as badgers, beating the earth with blackened hands; girls no higher than my thighs, who tripped in and out amongst the others and shrieked like hunting kestrels. And mothers with nurslings, and grey-faced women who must be carried, and cold-eyed laughing girls who bore antlered crowns and flaming brands, goading the pelted shadows that humped along before them.

“Beasts,” whispered Balthazar with loathing. “Nothing but beasts.”

I knew then what he feared.

Women’s magic.

That’s where the real power lies, Angelica had said.

And it was true. Because I sensed the power of blood and milk, of flesh and sinew drawn together in the potent darkness. Of spittle rounding out a lump of clay, shaping it into the squatting figure of a Mother vast enough to embrace us all; of colored powder and kohl and rouge, shaping a mask to entice and enthrall; of a lone stern figure stooped over a fiery alembic, drawing forth a glowing wire like an arrow to spear the night.

And Angelica herself, her lap full of timeworn folios and crackling tomes; Angelica in bed beside me, her breath warm upon my neck; Angelica rising slowly from black water, her breasts silvered with light, her green eyes glowing and her hair streaming behind her: Angelica in all I could imagine.

From the night country rose a wind, warm and redolent of spices. Coriander and sandalwood and galingale, and sweet as their fragrance a childish voice, chanting.

Bone upon bone and the thumping of cloven staves, fingers tapping upon a hollow skull and a sudden chorus of keening voices—

“You see how they are,” Balthazar murmured. “Rooting in the dirt, smearing their faces with soot and filth. And there is worse than that—”

A scream ripped the night. The fires flickered out. All was utter darkness, save only this—

Upon the rim of the world a sliver of moon perched, a tiny crescent like the memory of magic. After a moment it faded. From the abyss a wind rose, cold and insistent.

“So it will always be,” whispered Balthazar as he pulled me from the edge of the portal. “She forgets that chaos begets only chaos, and cannot prevail.”

I clasped my arms to my breast, shuddering. “No.”

“No?” Balthazar’s tone was unforgiving as the wind. “Are you a fool like Mr. Crawford, then?”

“N-not of-fool—” I said through chattering teeth. With a grunt I pulled away. Two quick steps and I stood within the portal.

Dimly I was aware of the room, a shadowy place where outlines of walls, furnishings, windows hung ghostly in the darkness. But the real world lay before me—eternal and empty and torn by wind.

“Listen to me, Katherine!” shouted Balthazar. “Oliver is weak! He believes that we have no power left—that our time has ended—and so he sought to align himself with our Enemy. He thought She had changed, he thought She would not destroy him; but he is wrong! We are the only ones who can save him! You know that—”

I hesitated, thinking of Angelica wielding the lunula as a weapon, of Balthazar rushing to Oliver’s side in the field.

“We are always the strongest, Katherine! Force majeur, and we always prevail. Even in this darkness—”

He swept up behind me. “Even now, we will prevail—”

In the wasteland a light appeared. Not the carnal blaze of a bonfire, but a steady glow, deep blue and shot with sparks of living green. The glow took shape, grew into a single pillar—then two—then four; until I was gazing upon the spires of a cathedral, tiny and perfect as though carved of crystal. Upon the horizon a second light appeared, and another edifice arose—a mosque this time, its dome a cobalt tear.

“Witness our legacy,” cried Balthazar.

As though he had sown them, more and more structures sprang up, each more intricate than the one before. Pyramids of glass and steel, glittering alcazars and raised tombs of stone, pavilions and columned temples and immense black slabs of polished jet: all shining like gems, like prisms of flame. A stone had been hurled into the abyss and the darkness shattered, and each shard shone as brightly as a sun. A chorus of voices rose from them—voices now sweet and high and clear, now deep and tolling like those drowned bells that ring the changes beneath the sea. I could not make out their words, but I understood them well enough. They were singing joy and pride and courage in the day, singing long and loud against the dark.

“Do you understand now, Katherine?” Balthazar’s laughter sounded close beside me. “There is no choice, really—not unless you would choose darkness and ignorance over light and order.”

I felt his hand rest lightly upon my shoulder as he went on.

“Though it does not matter—not for you, at least. I show you these things just so that you will not forget—so that you will have something to take away with you from the Divine. Something to remember us by, if you will.”

I felt a tightening in my throat. “What are you going to do with me?”

“Nothing.” Before us the lights winked out, one by one. The glorious singing faded into the wind. “I will take you downstairs, and Francis will drive you back to the city—”

“Francis!”

He made a dismissive gesture. “I have much to do now. This has taken too much time already. Someone will be contacting you about forwarding your transcripts to your parents. I have no doubt but that you will do much better at your next school.”

He turned and began to walk away from the door. I watched him, stunned, then looked back at the portal.

Beyond it loomed the abyss. As I stared the outlines of the doorway became more distinct. The wood’s grain and the faint glister of light upon the doorknob grew brighter and brighter, until what lay behind them was all but lost to view.

“Behold the world She would give you…”

Yet could that truly be the world Angelica’s Goddess would bring?

I know enough not to buy into every idea my father taught me. Or Balthazar Warnick…

Why should the darkness be seen as evil and bleak and nullifying? Why women’s magic nothing more than rutting in the cinders? Why chaos and the end of all things?

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

“Katherine,” Balthazar said, gently but insistently, “it’s time to go.”

“No.”

Before he could stop me, I darted to the edge of the portal.

“Katherine! Get away from there—!”

Behind me lay Balthazar’s study. Somewhere in the lodge beneath us Annie slept, and Baby Joe. Somewhere Oliver slept as well, swept into the night on a tide of Demerol and hospital sheets; and perhaps even Angelica, perched on the cusp between earth and sky, dreams and waking.

That left me and Balthazar Warnick. His hands clenched as I edged away from him.

“If you step through there you will be destroyed!” he cried. “It is nothing!—”

“I don’t believe you, Professor Warnick!”

I took another step. The wooden lintel disappeared into fog. I stood upon a precipice hanging out above the abyss. “Nothing is that simple—maybe Angelica is wrong, but you’re wrong too! Or maybe you’re both partly right—”

The freezing wind howled up from the wasteland. Behind me Balthazar shouted, but his words were lost to me. Suddenly I laughed.

Because if it was a choice between the void and what lay behind me—the loss of my friends, the loss of the Divine and all its promise—then I would take my chances with whatever was down there rooting in the night. I turned to look at Balthazar—and jumped.

For an instant he was frozen in the air before me: hands outstretched, his mouth open in a wordless cry. Then it was as he said—

A raging wind, ice and darkness and the freezing air tearing my clothes from me, my flesh and hair and voice—

Nothing.

I came to in some kind of shed. Eerie blue light resolved into a wintry glare filtered through walls of translucent corrugated plastic. There was a strong sweet smell. Lemons, but chemical lemons. I rubbed my eyes, looked down, and saw that I was sitting on a nearly empty plastic container. Greenish liquid spilled on my boots. My stomach churned; I put one hand in front of my face and with the other pushed forward, until I felt the thin plastic give way. A door opened and I fell out onto the driveway in front of the Shrine.

“Ow.”

I got to my feet unsteadily. I felt light-headed and a little sick to my stomach, but otherwise okay. Above me the Shrine was booming the quarter hour; but which hour? Seven, I guessed, by the grey thin light and the scattering of cars across the parking lot. Seven-fifteen on a Sunday morning. At seven-thirty the first Mass of the day would begin.

I wiped my gritty hands on my shirt and hunched my shoulders against the cold. As I headed for my dorm I glanced over my shoulder at the utility building I’d stumbled from. Its cheap plastic door flapped open, but then the wind slammed it shut again, and I glimpsed the sign there—

Members Only.

I went to Rossetti Hall. My key still opened the front door, but when I got upstairs to my own room the lock had been changed. It was so early there was no one in the hall or lounge to ask about it, but I didn’t want to stick around and risk running into Francis Connelly or something worse.

I hurried up another flight to Angelica’s room. I banged on the door, but there was no answer. It was too soon for them to have returned from West Virginia; at least that’s what I hoped. I slunk outside through the back door, feeling like I had a big black X on my forehead.

It was just like my first day at the Divine, that first awful day before I met Oliver and Angelica. The few people I saw paid no attention to me at all. I might have wondered if they even actually saw me, except that an immaculately dressed family hurrying past on their way to the Shrine gave me disapproving looks. I must have looked exactly like what they were praying to be delivered from. I dug into my pockets, fished around until I found a few wadded bills and some change, and went to the Shrine to scavenge breakfast.

I ended up spending most of the day there. I was afraid to venture back out onto the Strand. I hid in a corner booth and drank endless cups of coffee, bought a pack of cigarettes and rationed them, one every twenty minutes. I even slept for a little while, my head pillowed on the Formica tabletop, until the clatter of dishes and silverware woke me. When I looked up I saw the old round schoolhouse clock at the end of the room, its red second hand sweeping briskly along. Four o’clock: time for tea. I shoved my cigarettes into my pocket and went in search of Baby Joe.

Dusk was already falling, barren trees throwing long shadows beneath the street-lamps. In Baby Joe’s room a light was on. I was afraid to go to the front door, so I threw pebbles at his window until he peered out. He mimed surprise and relief, raising his hands and shaking his head, then motioned for me to go around to the back of the building. I crept through a hedge of overgrown box trees until I saw Baby Joe leaning against the dorm’s ivy-covered wall, holding open a fire door with one hand. In the other he held my battered knapsack.

“Hey, hija. I was starting to worry when I found this in your room but no Sweeney. You in trouble?”

“Something like that.”

I followed him to his room. He shut and locked the door, and I groaned with relief. Baby Joe hugged me awkwardly, his stolid face creased with concern.

“What happened, hija? Me and Hasel went looking for you, but you were gone.”

I perched myself on the edge of his bed. Except for the fine layer of ash over everything, Baby Joe’s room was disturbingly neat. A Royal Upright typewriter sat on the old wooden desk, surrounded by carefully arranged stacks of paper and textbooks. Issues of Punk Magazine and New York Rocker and The Paris Review were lined up against one wall, and I knew if I opened one of his bureau drawers I’d see his tired white T-shirts and black nylon socks stored with just as much solicitude. It all made me feel incredibly disgusting.

Baby Joe didn’t notice or didn’t care. He cracked open the window, reached out onto the sill, and withdrew two bottles of Old Bohemian. “Here, hija. Where the hell’d you go?”

I told him everything that had happened since we fled back to the Orphic Lodge. Baby Joe leaned against his desk, giggling softly in disbelief and laughing out loud when I told him about the Benandanti’s portal.

“No shit? One of their puertas? You got cojones, Sweeney!”

But when I mentioned Francis Connelly he shook his head.

“Francis X. Connelly. Someday I’m gonna take him out—” He pointed a finger at me and cocked his thumb. “Bang. I’d do it now, but they might revoke my scholarship.”

I told him about watching Magda Kurtz being shoved through the door in Garvey Hall, about Angelica’s crescent-shaped necklace and how I wasn’t sure if she was working with Balthazar Warnick and the Benandanti or against them.

“Probably against them. Angie, you know Angie is smart but not that kind of smart,” said Baby Joe. “These student brujos, they get kind of cocky. I’ve seen it with my brother’s friends; they think because they’re tapped for the Benandanti they can do anything. Fly, walk on water, kill a big cow with a charm bracelet. But Warnick? I wouldn’t fuck with Warnick, I tell you that.”

At last I finished. My beer was still half-full, but all of a sudden I couldn’t stomach any more. I buried my face in my hands, and started to cry.

“Hey. It’s okay—” Baby Joe sat on the bed next to me and patted my back. “You can stay here tonight, you can move all your stuff here if you want, hija, it’s okay—”

“It’s not okay! They’re kicking me out, my parents are gonna kill me, and Christ, Baby Joe, what is going on here? Where’s Angelica? Where’s Oliver? What—”

I swallowed, my voice fading to a whisper. “What we saw in the field—what the hell was that?”

Baby Joe shrugged. “You tell me,” he said softly. “But these Benandanti, they do a lot of crazy shit—”

“But that didn’t have anything to do with the Benandanti. That was something else. Angelica’s gotten all hyped up about some weird goddess cult; she’s been reading all these books and talking about the second coming of Kali or Ishtar, or—”

I punched the mattress furiously. “It’s fucking nuts.”

“Ishtar, huh?” Baby Joe reached for my beer, drank it thoughtfully. “Well, at least she fits the job description.”

“It’s not funny.”

“Who’s laughing?” He finished the beer and leaned back on the bed. “But man, you are right, this is some crazy shit Barbie-girl has gotten herself into. And you don’t know where she is?”

“I don’t think anyone knows where she is. She must have taken off into the woods. And unless she wants to end up with Magda Kurtz, she better stay there.”

For a few minutes we sat in silence. Outside, the Shrine bells tolled five-thirty. It was already full dark. All around us, people would be getting ready for the start of another week. I took a deep breath, then asked the question I’d been waiting to ask.

“What happened to Oliver?”

“Oliver?” Baby Joe regarded me through slitted black eyes. “Oliver’s here.”

“Here?” I looked around quickly, but Baby Joe went on, “Not here in my room—I mean he’s back here in D.C. They brought him to the ER in West Virginia last night, but I guess he was okay ‘cause they just looked him over and discharged him. He came back with Warnick this morning. Hasel heard them talking, they were supposed to take him to Providence for observation—”

“Providence Hospital?”

He nodded. “To the psychiatric wing.”

“Don’t they have to get the family’s permission before they do that?”

“Hija, Warnick is his family. All the Benandanti—they come first, they take care of their own—”

“But Oliver’s not crazy.”

“Normal people don’t try to cut their dicks off with a Swiss Army knife.”

“Okay, okay.”

He lit a cigarette and smoked pensively for a moment before saying, “You know, that’s what they used to do.”

“Who? The Benandanti?”

“No. Your goddess-worshipers. In Iran or someplace. Turkey, maybe. The priests would go into some kind of ecstatic frenzy and castrate themselves.” He gave a wheezing laugh. “We read about it in Warnick’s class. You can see how church attendance might drop off after a while.”

“But—why would Oliver do that? I mean, how would he even know about it. He hasn’t been to Warnick’s class in two months.”

Baby Joe shrugged. “It’s not like it’s a big secret. It’s history, man, anyone can read about it. Maybe he and Angie, you know—she’s playing Ishtar, he’s gonna be Adonis. Talagang sirang ulo.”

I got to my feet. “I know, I know: crazy fucking bitch.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “God, I just wish I could have a decent meal and a bath and sleep for a week—”

Baby Joe put a hand on my shoulder. “Stay here, Sweeney. Really—you can have the bed, I’ll crash on the floor—”

“Oh, Baby Joe—thanks, really, thanks a lot. But I can’t. I think—I think I better go see Oliver. How far is Providence?”

“Maybe five, ten minutes on the bus.”

“Okay. Do me a favor, then. Will you call Annie and tell her where I am, and find out if she’s heard from Angelica? She’s got to come back, she can’t be out there running around the woods without her clothes—”

Baby Joe grinned. “Nice for the trees, though, huh? Yeah, I’ll call Annie.”

“Thanks.”

He followed me to the door. “You too, you know. You’re a fucking crazy bitch too, but you’re not nuts.”

He drew circles in the air beside his temple, then cocked his finger at me. “Be careful, hija. It’s the 84 bus, stops at North Cap and goes right to Providence. Five minutes.”

He leaned against the door and watched me go. “Tell Oliver I hope he feels better.” With a soft, nervous giggle he turned away.

Oliver’s room was on the second floor of the hospital. Down the hall a woman wailed in an eerie childish voice. A family composed of father, mother, little girl sat in a dreary waiting area, holding magazines in their laps and staring out the window at the parking lot. When I peered through the door of Room 1141 saw Oliver on the bed, reading The Ginger Man, a copy of the Washington Post Book World atop his pillow. There were bars on the window behind him but no shades or blinds, no curtain pulls or chains or cords. On one pale green wall an unadorned wooden cross hung above a wooden chair. Oliver was very pale. His right foot had been bandaged and was propped awkwardly before him on the bed, like a superfluous piece of luggage. The bandage and green hospital robe, coupled with his shaved head and blanched face, made him look like someone terribly, perhaps fatally, ill.

Seeing him like that terrified me—how long had he looked like this, why hadn’t I noticed before?

Because you were too fucked up yourself, I thought. Too fucked up, too selfish, too fucking stupid to stop him!

Anger and self-loathing flooded me. How could I just have let him go like this? The drugs, of course it was the drugs: he’d been eating acid and mescaline and hashish and god knows what else, eating it like candy for months, maybe years. And this is what it came to—

For one awful moment I thought of turning around and leaving, before he could look up to see me. But then I remembered how he had hugged me the night before, holding me so desperately I almost wept to think of it.

Save me, Sweeney. Don’t fear me…

“Oliver.” I forced a smile as I stepped into the room. “What’s shaking?”

He glanced up. When he saw it was me he grinned and tossed his book onto the pillow. “Smelly O’Keefe! What took you so long?”

I plucked at the sleeve of my shirt and made a face. “Stinky Cassidy, more like it. They let you read that stuff in here?”

He pulled me onto the bed next to him. “Ow. Watch the gam.”

I nodded sympathetically. “Looks pretty gross.”

“Septic poisoning. How’d you get up here?”

“Just walked.”

“Did you sign in?”

“Was I supposed to?”

Right on cue a nurse popped his head through the door. “Somebody at the station said you have a visitor? Oh, hi there—did you sign in? No? Well, don’t get up, what’s your name, I’ll do it, I’ve got to give him meds anyway. Right back.”

“That’s Joe,” explained Oliver. “He’s my keeper—”

Before he could finish Joe was back. “All right, six o’clock, time for these.” He handed Oliver a paper cup of water and another little cup containing two tiny red pills. Oliver waved away the water, tapped the pills into his hand, and swallowed them.

“Ugh. How can you do that, I could never do that.” Joe gave me a measured look, checking me out, I guess to determine if I had a hacksaw stuck down my jeans. “More friends,” he said after a moment. “This boy has more friends. Oh, and Oliver, another one of your brothers called, he said he’d try again tonight. Do you want dinner, sweetheart?”

This to me. I shook my head. “No, thanks.”

“All right, then. Visiting hours on this floor are officially over at seven, but I won’t do a bed check till eight.” He grinned, took the little plastic cup from Oliver’s hand, and left.

When he was gone Oliver got up and crossed the room to the door. He moved slowly, like a gunfighter in an old Western, and I tried not to think about what the hospital robe must be hiding. He closed the door and stayed there for a long moment with his back to me. A moment later I heard him gagging.

“Oliver! Are you okay—”

He turned and nodded, eyes watering, and opened his hand. His palm was wet, streaked with crimson; but before I could cry out he shook his head.

“Thorazine.” He automatically reached for a pocket; then remembered he was wearing a hospital robe. He turned to get a tissue from his nightstand. He wiped his hand and went into the bathroom and flushed the toilet, then walked over to the chair beneath the little wooden cross. “They gave it to me in the ER last night. I was under restraint so I couldn’t do anything about it. It made me hallucinate; I thought I was totally brain damaged. So now I cough them up.”

He kicked absently at the chair, then turned and crossed to the narrow bed, motioning me to join him. “I guess I could save them for you.”

“No thanks.” I smiled. “First time I’ve ever seen you turn down drugs.”

His pale blue eyes were sharp and guileless as he gazed at me. “I’m not crazy, Sweeney.”

“I know you’re not crazy. You don’t look crazy,” I lied. “But…”

But normal people don’t try to cut off their dicks with a Swiss Army knife.

“I don’t look crazy because I’m not crazy.”

I said nothing. After a moment I raised my head to look at him: the dark stubble covering his skull, the crimson web where he’d cut himself with the razor; his cheeks and chin still smooth as a boy’s though I was certain he hadn’t shaved in days.

It was like gazing at someone who had been consumed by fire, a lovely porcelain figurine left too long in the kiln; and now all that remained was this human ash, frail and white and cold. Except for his eyes, those madly burning blue eyes that still might without warning burst into flame.

He covered my hand with his—so cold, surely he shouldn’t be this cold?

“I’m not crazy, Sweeney. I’m just not what they wanted,” he said softly. “Angelica and my father, Warnick and all the rest of them—they all wanted different things, they all wanted something from me I can’t give. They wanted me to be strong, they wanted me to give them a champion. But I can’t, Sweeney. They don’t understand. I’m not like that.

“I wanted to—”

He stopped, stared at his hands with their bitten-down nails.

“I wanted to mend things,” he said at last. He looked at me and sighed. “I know it sounds stupid, but I thought—all this bullshit about darkness, and light, and different powers for men and women—all this fighting, all this, this hatred the Benandanti and the rest of them have—I thought I could make it different, somehow. At least I thought I could escape it,” he added with a grim smile. “But I was wrong, Sweeney. I can’t. No one can. We’ll never understand each other, any of us. Not ever.”

I nodded like I understood, although of course I didn’t. After a moment I asked, “But—if you’re not what the Benandanti want you to be, or Angelica—what are you?”

He tipped his head and smiled.

“I’m lovely,” he sang in his sweet quavering voice. “All I am is lovely…”

I laughed even as my eyes filled with tears, and touched his poor ugly scalp. “Well, you’ll be lovely again, Oliver. It’ll grow back.”

With sudden vehemence he shook his head. “No. Does the reed once cut return? Will the trees now barren turn again to greet the spring? What name did Achilles take among the women? Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?”

His hand shot out to grab my wrist, tightening like a wire as he pulled me to him. “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

“O-Oliver,” I stammered. His face had twisted into a bitter mask, still smiling, but it was a contorted smile now, and his eyes were no longer laughing.

“Sweeney? Surely you remember? It was the first thing we ever talked about. Why is a raven like a writing desk? Tell me the next line—”

He gripped me so hard that pins and needles darted from my wrist into my arm. “Tell me!” he hissed.

“I—I don’t—”

“Say it!”

“Your—your hair wants cutting.”

“There!” He cried out triumphantly and let go of my hand. I rubbed it gingerly, and moved a fraction of an inch away from him. “See, Sweeney? You remembered.”

With some effort he stood, moving slowly. He grabbed the hem of his robe and tossed it flamboyantly behind him, as though it were a flowing train. “I knew you would. Sweeney.”

He stopped and stared at me. The front of his robe gaped open and I had a glimpse of white bandages beneath, although maybe it was just his underclothes. “I know about you,” he said very softly. Once more his voice was gentle. He was gazing at me with pity, but also with great tenderness. “You’re in this by mistake—”

I shook my head desperately, but he went on. “It’s okay, Sweeney. Because even after I figured it all out, that you weren’t in on any of this—I mean, you’re not a Molyneux scholar, and obviously you’re not a Benandanti, and you’re not with Angelica, wherever the fuck she is—but, well, you’re still great, Sweeney. Anybody else would have run away screaming from all this, but you stayed, you were my friend and you stuck with me. And you’re great; you’re just so great to have done that. You know that, right?”

I bowed my head, mumbling something about No, well, maybe…

He knelt in front of me. It must have hurt, because he grimaced as he took my hands. He held them very tenderly, his fingertips barely grazing mine.

“Sweeney.” His blue eyes were clear as water. “I’ll love you next time. I promise.”

I bit my lip. Tears stung my eyes, and I shook my head furiously. “Why not this time? Why her and not me? I mean, I know you better, Oliver, I know you—”

He smiled and leaned forward to kiss my cheek.

“—and I love you. Even if I’m not one of them! I could be better, I could be good for you, I could help you out of this—”

I gestured at the pale green walls, that humble little wooden cross, the crooked chair near the door.

“Oh, my stars! Goodness had nothing to do with it, kiddo. Listen—”

He dropped my hands and got to his feet again, pulling his robe tight. “This isn’t new for my family. It isn’t new to me, not really. The Benandanti waited a long time for me, but in the meantime they used my brothers for target practice. Firing off a few rounds of firecrackers while they’re waiting for the Bearna Beill. I saw what happened to Osgood and Vance and Waldo, just like you saw what happened to Magda Kurtz. These guys take no prisoners, Sweeney, especially now. They’ve been expecting me for a long time—but they’ve been expecting Angelica even longer. Waiting for Electra, or someone like her.”

I laughed uneasily, but Oliver shook his head. “I mean it! You read all this stuff about the Second Coming, but no one really expects it to happen, maybe not even the Benandanti. Especially when you consider that when the Second Coming actually Comes, it’s not a He but a She, and she’s taking even fewer prisoners than they are.”

He went on bitterly. “They had me all picked out, you know, they bred me for this. And I was supposed to just kind of go along with them, be the sacred cow, be this sort of lure for Her when She arrived. Like this crazy arranged marriage or something, like once She got hold of me She might just roll over for them and play dead.”

His voice rose to a desperate pitch. “But I’m not going for it, Sweeney. Maybe Angelica doesn’t understand what’s going on, but I do. I’m not the right guy for the job. And if you’re not the right kind of person, if you’re not what they expect, if you don’t do exactly what they want, they throw you away, they use you up and throw you out and that’s it. And I’m not going to let them do it to me.”

“Oliver, this really is crazy, it doesn’t make any sense—”

He slashed at the air in a rage. “No! You saw what happened to Magda Kurtz; Angelica told me. You know what I’m taking about—”

“But, Oliver—you can’t hurt yourself! I mean, you’re playing right into their hands—”

“No, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not.” His voice cracked as he paced to the bathroom. His hands kept fluttering around his forehead, making quick nervous motions as though to keep phantom hair from falling into his eyes. At the bathroom door he stopped, and asked suddenly, “Have you seen Angelica?”

“No. She’s gone. Nobody knows where she is.”

He made an anguished face. “Ahh—she’s really gone, then, it’s too late anyway—” He stopped, ran a hand across his forehead. “Jesus.”

“Do you—do you think she’ll be all right?”

“All right? Angelica?” He laughed incredulously. “She’ll be fine! I mean, probably every guy she ever meets will end up like this—”

He cocked his head, rolling his eyes with his tongue hanging out and gabbling Ngah ngah ngah—

“Maybe we’ll all end up like that, but She’ll be fine. Blessed art Thou among women and all that shit. Listen, Sweeney, don’t you worry about her: Angelica is destined for Big Things.” His voice dropped to a conspiratory whisper. “Very, very Big Things.”

I decided to change the subject. “I got kicked out.”

His eyebrows arched in amazement. “You did? My little Sweeney, expelled from the Divine all by herself? Congratulations!”

“Jeez, Oliver, I’m not happy about it.”

“You should be,” he said quickly. “Oh yes very yes, you should get out of here as fast as your little bunny legs can take you, before this thing starts to blow. Oh yes.”

He fell silent, staring thoughtfully into the empty space between us. After a moment he took a few steps, until he stood in front of the wooden chair beneath the cross. He reached up and took the cross in one hand, lifted it carefully from the wall, and turned it over thoughtfully.

He looked up at me and said, “There is nothing for me but misery.”

I started to protest but he went on as though he hadn’t heard.

He lifted the cross in front of him. Around its crossbar tiny green vines moved, twining up and over the dull wood, their leaves so pale at first they were nearly white, but then quickening to yellow and gold and finally a rich deep green. As I watched in horror the vines spread, crept along the spars of the cross and then twisted around Oliver’s fingers, writhing and creeping like elvers or tiny serpents. They covered his arm in a tracery of gold and green and brown, leaves springing out so quickly that his white flesh was completely buried beneath them and I could see a few places where his veins had burst, sea green and crimson and the pale lavender of a new bruise, and the vines fed there and swelled to the thickness of a finger, a wrist, a thigh; then burst into scarlet blossom.

“Oliver!”

Now they began to trace the outlines of his torso, his shoulders and neck and face crumbling like old stones beneath a mantle of ivy and honeysuckle, his bald scalp covered with a frail yellow filigree that quivered and darkened to emerald. From within all that greenery only his eyes still glowed, twin flashes of blue as though some bright clever jay nested there, and his voice rang out like a blade slashing through the curling vines—

I screamed. But the sound choked within my throat, as all around me there was green, a horrible livid glory of green and living things, vines coiling about my breasts and ivy everywhere, bitter leaves thrusting themselves into my mouth and their stems pulling taut around my wrists and neck and ankles; but even as I struggled to free myself suddenly all fell away, leaves and vines turning into whirling ropes and arabesques that flared blindingly and then died into grey ash and disappeared. There were no vines, no leaves, no ivy. Only Oliver standing in front of me with his twisted smile, holding a simple wooden rood.

“He that has no cross deserves no crown,” he said lightly, and tossed it to me. I shrieked and jumped back. But the cross only struck the floor and lay there, a dull brown thing as lifeless as a pencil.

“What is going on?”

Behind us the door swung open to reveal the nurse, Joe. He frowned and strode inside, glancing around quickly.

“You’re not supposed to have the door shut,” he said. He stooped to pick up the cross. “Maybe we better cut this short, okay, Oliver? You seem a little overstimulated.”

Oliver said nothing.

“I’ve kind of got to go anyway,” I said stiffly. “But could we, like, say good-bye first?”

Joe went to the wall, moved aside the chair, and placed the cross back upon its hook. “All right. But they’re starting to bring dinner around, and your friend’s had a long day—”

He turned to me so I could read the message in his eyes: so give him a break, okay?

“—so maybe you and he could catch up some more tomorrow.”

We waited until he left, the door hanging open behind him like an unanswered question. When Oliver took my hand and led me to the bed I was shaking uncontrollably. I wanted to scream, to ask him a million things; but I said nothing, only clung to him as though he really were a tree and I was in danger of plunging to my death.

We sat together in silence for a long time. From outside the barred window I could hear faint sounds of traffic and machinery; the steady hum of the hospital’s air-conditioning system; and the rustle of voices, distant and muted as though heard from underwater.

“You won’t forget me, will you?”

At the sound of Oliver’s tremulous voice I looked up, shaking my head fiercely. “Never! I love you, you know I’ll be back tomorrow—”

“I know,” he said. He put his arm around me and hugged me close. “But in the meantime you have to be careful. Don’t sleep in the subway, button up your overcoat, hang on to your head. Don’t forget your friends, Sweeney.”

I looked down so he wouldn’t see that I was crying. “My—my friends?”

“Oh, Sweeney.” His voice was low and solemn as he tilted my head back up. He touched my cheek, drew away a finger with a tiny droplet on it, and brought it to his mouth. He touched his finger to his tongue and smiled, the same sweet crazy knowing smile I’d seen so many times before when he was out there skimming across some private sea. “You remember…”

His eyes gleamed, blue and strange as scallops’ eyes, and I knew he was looking at me from some great distance.

“You remember… you were little and you woke up on Sunday morning before your parents did and your brothers were still asleep, and outside there was that kind of golden rain that comes sometimes in the spring and the air smelled like roses and bacon, and when you looked over the side of your bed you saw him there, a little green lizard with hands like a baby, and he looked up at you and you fed him limes.”

He cupped his hands as though to receive an offering, and smiled.

“Oh, Oliver,” I whispered, and, weeping, buried my face in the folds of his robe.

A few minutes later the nurse arrived with Oliver’s dinner tray. Under his watchful gaze Oliver escorted me to the door. There he smiled and kissed me, then stood in the hall waving cheerfully as I walked to the elevator.

“My brother Leo’s coming to take me back to Newport,” he called after me. “Come stay with me over Thanksgiving, we’ll go hear Cooper play the Limelight—” He flexed his fingers and mimed playing a piano.

“Okay,” I said. My heart leapt at the thought of visiting him at home, of meeting his family for a holiday. “But I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He grinned and crooked a finger. “Next time, Sweeney. Bye.”

I got a bus back to North Capitol Street, got out and wandered around the campus. For some reason I was no longer afraid. I knew I could stay with Baby Joe but that would mean more talking, more discussion of what had happened the night before, and I was too tired to think about that right now. I didn’t want to think about bulls or blood or ivy or trees, about any of the things miraculous or terrible that I had seen. I wanted only to think about Oliver; about how his eyes had glowed and the way he had smiled at me; about taking the train up to Newport and staying with him and hearing his brother play stride piano in a barrelhouse; about what he had meant when he said You’re great, Sweeney and I’ll love you next time. I promise.

So I waited a few hours, walking across the Strand and thinking of all the things we’d do together, thinking of all the things we’d done, Oliver and I: lying there beneath that tree, sitting there talking in the Shrine’s shadow, drinking coffee and rum there while we waited for Angelica to get out of class. When I finally went to Baby Joe’s room it was late, after midnight. I threw pebbles at the window until he came down yawning to let me in the fire door. He refused to let me sleep on the floor.

“Forget it, hija. My grandmother would kill me.”

So Baby Joe curled up in the room’s single worn armchair and I curled up in his bed, still thinking about Oliver, willing myself to dream of him, his crooked smile, his mad blue eyes.

That night I dreamed I was swimming in the ocean, a hundred yards or more from shore. Oliver stood on the sand in the blazing sun, and with him Angelica and Annie and Hasel and Baby Joe. They were all holding beer bottles and laughing and talking, and every now and then one of them would look up, shading his eyes until he or she saw me. Then they’d wave, absently but still happy to see me, and maybe raise a bottle in greeting. They didn’t know that I was being pulled away from them, that I could feel something black and cold clawing at my feet and dragging me; they didn’t know I was going under when, a minute later, they glanced up again and vainly searched the horizon, looking for me. They just kept on looking at the ocean, certain that I was swimming there somewhere, safe among the green and dancing waves. They never knew about the riptide or how dangerous the currents were. They never knew at all.

When I woke up someone was pounding on the door to Baby Joe’s room. My watch read twenty-five after five. Baby Joe was snoring loudly in his armchair. The window was pearled with first light. I stood groggily and walked to the door, not totally conscious that I wasn’t still in my room at Rossetti Hall, and pulled it open.

In the darkened hallway stood Annie Harmon, grey-faced and shivering in her red flannel shirt and fatigues, her hands shaking as she pushed past me through the door. She had come to tell me that, sometime around four o’clock that morning, Oliver had walked out of his room at Providence Hospital and climbed the fire stairs to the Oncology Unit. There he found a utility closet with a window that opened onto the parking lot. He jumped out, plunging five stories before he went through a metal awning and the roof of an oxygen truck parked near the entrance to the Emergency Room. There had been no signs of distress, there was no suicide letter. Nothing but a scrawled note in the margin of last Sunday’s Washington Post Book World.

It said, I’ll be right back.