Waking the Moon

CHAPTER 10 Ignoreland

I DIDN’T REALLY CHANGE all that much. I didn’t turn grey. I didn’t get fat, I didn’t get married, I didn’t have children, I didn’t die. When I wasn’t at work I wore the same T-shirts and jeans and battered cowboy boots, although I drew the line at buying a black leather jacket at thirty-seven and pretending I was still twenty-two. I listened to the same music I always had, although Baby Joe did his best to educate me beyond the tastes I’d formed when I was still in college. It wasn’t exactly like I’d sold out on my life and dreams and all that other bullshit, because the truth was I’d never actually had anything to sell. It was more like I slowly froze in place, inside my little office at the museum; more like some part of me just fell asleep one day and never woke up. Everything that had happened to me all those years before gradually disintegrated into a kind of dream.

There was nothing to tether me to my memories of the Divine. Oliver was dead, Angelica might as well be. I had invested everything in two stocks that failed. Baby Joe remained my only real contact from that single semester. He had graduated summa cum laude, with a degree in English, and was now the beleagured Alternative Arts & Music critic for the beleagured New York Beacon, from whence he waged an ongoing war against his rivals and detractors in the Manhattan print media. Every few months he’d send me a compilation tape of music he thought I should be listening to. Baby Joe’s idea of must-hear stuff included the Ramayana Monkey Chant as well as the entire and surprisingly extensive catalog of a dreadful band called Boink. His scant free time he devoted to writing a novel, but he did a good job of keeping in touch. He called me every couple of months, telling me about people from the Divine I’d never had the chance to know—famous people, a lot of them, anthropologists and theologians and actresses and fledgling politicians—as well as Hasel Bright and Annie Harmon.

I thought of Annie often. Baby Joe gave me her number, but I never called. What do you say after nearly twenty years? But I was also embarrassed: like Baby Joe, Annie Harmon had gone out there and done something. Annie had become a cult figure.

She’d come out of the closet shortly after I left the Divine, spent a bunch of years knocking around the whole coffeehouse/nouveau folkie scene, and then, mirabilis! she’d become a star.

“‘Silver-tongued dyke with a gold-plated mike,’” said Baby Joe dryly, reading to me over the phone from an article in On Our Backs! “Huh. But she’s great, you should hear her.”

That spring it was impossible not to hear her. The video of her version of “She Is Still a Mystery,” with its Georgia O’Keeffe backgrounds and the waltzing figure of Annie herself in full George Sand drag, had been getting heavy rotation on MTV. Then there was the notorious cover for Our Magazine, Annie dressed as Nijinsky in “L’Après-midi d’un Faun,” simulating orgasm with an Hermes scarf before an audience of captivated bluestockings. I couldn’t walk into a club or Galleria without Annie’s husky contralto seeping into my thoughts like fragrant oil. Baby Joe said she lived somewhere in the Berkshires with her lover, and although she had changed her name to Annie Harmony, that was the only cute thing about her.

“She looks dangerous, man. Shaved head and all these piercings. I hear she has a gold ring through her clit. I know she has one in her nipple.” He laughed. “Maybe you should try it, hija. Get you out on a date with something besides a lawyer.”

Baby Joe regarded my social life (or lack of it) with even more horror than my musical taste. About once a year he’d come to D.C. to visit old friends from the Divine and to see me. We’d go to small, pleasingly gritty clubs to hear bands with monosyllabic names that were easy to remember, though their music was hard to dance to.

Anyway, by then I wasn’t dancing much anymore. I’d kept up with the times: turning off, drying up, straightening out. I worked out three days at week. I lived in a rented carriage house on Capitol Hill and walked to work. I had a VCR, PC, and an aging VW Rabbit, though I resisted getting a CD player. It seemed an unnecessary expense, since I wasn’t buying much new music. And I didn’t care for CDs—they looked too much like the videodiscs I’d given my life to, they looked too much like what had happened to everything around me, people and things all getting sleeker, shinier, harder, bright reflective surfaces that put a spectral gloss on the world, but it was no longer the world I wanted to see.

That spring I learned that Hasel Bright had died.

“Bad juju, hija. I mean, real bad shit.”

Baby Joe called me at home one evening, his voice slurred. In the background I could hear distorted music and laughter, someone yelling for a Kamakazi shooter.

“You at Frankie’s?” That was the local dive where Baby Joe spent his few nights off.

“Yeah. Uh, Sweeney—something bad happened.”

I sucked my breath in. “You okay? What—”

“Not me, hija. Hasel. Very bad.” A pause. I heard ice clattering in a glass. “Shit. Listen, Sweeney—I gotta go. It’s bad. But tomorrow—”

“For god’s sake, what happened?”

Another pause. Finally, “I can’t now. I got a flight out of LaGuardia, I’m going to Charlottesville for the funeral. His wife called me. But I got a letter for you from him—”

“From Hasel? To me?”

“No. I mean, he wrote it to me, but I’m sending it to you. A copy. I have to go. I’ll call you when I get back. Be careful, okay, hija?”

The line went dead.

“Shit,” I said. I paced into the kitchen and pulled out the bottle of Jack Daniels. I did a shot for myself, and another one for Hasel.

Two days later I got the letter, a bulky envelope so swathed in packing tape I had to open it with a steak knife. When I turned it upside down, out slid a wad of paper, along with a note scrawled on a Frankie’s cocktail napkin.

The Xeroxed pages that followed were on letterhead from Hasel’s law firm, neatly laser-printed and justified left and right, amended here and there with Hasel’s precise tiny printing.

I put the last page of Hasel’s letter on the side table. There was one more page: a Xerox of two newspaper items, with arrows scrawled by Baby Joe. I didn’t want to read but of course I did. What would you do, Joe?

It was a short article from the Charlottesville paper, about the death by drowning of a local attorney. The date was June 27.

“Tragic and almost inexplicable,” the paper said; he had been fishing in the Branch Creek near Crozet, and somehow had fallen into the stream and drowned in a few inches of muddy water. There was no evidence of foul play.

The other item was his obituary: Hasel Atkins Bright, attorney. Age 36, drowning accident; survived by his wife and two young daughters. In lieu of flowers, contributions could be made to a scholarship fund in Hasel’s name at the English Department of the University of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine.

So.

Hasel was dead, Oliver was dead. Baby Joe was drinking heavily but otherwise okay in New York. Annie was famous, and Angelica—unless one was to believe Hasel’s account of seeing her bathing in the Branch Creek near Crozet, Virginia—Angelica was still unaccounted for.

And me? At 38, I was a GS-11 and holding, just barely holding on.

Once, I’d dismissed Angelica’s account of the Benandanti as craziness. But during the years following my expulsion from the Divine, I often thought that she had been right. That whatever opportunity for change or expiation or revolution the dark goddess and Magda Kurtz and Angelica herself might have represented was now gone forever. The Benandanti had not relinquished their control over the world. They never would. If anything, their hold was stronger now than it ever had been. Fourteen years earlier, the day after the presidential inauguration, I stood at the entrance to the Dupont Circle Metro subway and watched as workmen hauled away the newspaper racks selling the Atlanta Constitution and Village Voice and Mother Jones, binding the flimsy metal-and-plastic machines in heavy link chains and dragging them down Pennsylvania Avenue to a waiting garbage truck. The next day, shiny new dispensers appeared, holding the LA, Times and Wall Street Journal. What Angelica had told me of the Benandanti made it all sound mystical and darkly glamorous, secret shamans ruling the world from behind a scrim of smoke and leaping flames.

But the truth was as banal and everyday as the headlines of the Washington Post and the endless parade of silver-haired men frequenting new restaurants in the corridor between K Street and Georgetown, lobbyists and lawmakers trailing in their wake like remoras. And like everyone else I knew in the city, I just got used to it. My life never stopped, I had a few casual friends and occasionally lovers, and through it all I was lucky enough to have a fairly decent job and a nice place to live.

But I knew that my heart had gone to sleep at the Divine. When it woke nearly two decades later, I started to emerge from Ignoreland, just like everybody else. It was going to take a teenage riot to get me out of bed, but that’s just what I got.

CHAPTER 11 Ancient Voices

TO REACH THE ANTHROPOLOGY Department, you ascended a series of grand curving marble staircases, up through Plant Life and Vertebrates and Paleontology, past the enclaves of Man and the Higher Mammals, skirting the secret temples of Egyptology and the Ancient World and stopping short of Gems and Minerals and the breeding cells for the Living Coral Reef and the Insect Zoo. Each marble step held a shallow depression worn into the stone by more than a century of thoughtful treading by scientists and receptionists and cleaning personnel. Slender grooves showed where hundreds of fingers had absently traced the edge of the marble banisters; if you knew where to look you could see a faint rusty stain, like the shadow of a raven’s wing, that marked the exact spot where Othniel Marsh and Edward Cope had grappled during an argument concerning the use of the name Titanosaurus for an immense herbivore. The steps to Calvary or Mount Olympus could not have been more resonant with ancient secret power than those of the Museum of Natural History.

My office was on the south side of the building, overlooking the Mall. Each morning I walked down the long dim corridor, past Invertebrates and Arthropods and Ungulates (which had migrated here because of lack of space in Mammals), the Department of Worms (where department chief Vic Danhke had a sign on his door that read HEAD WORM), and so into the Department of Anthropology. The entire floor had a faint rainy scent, punctuated by occasional bursts of formaldehyde and the woodsy odor of the beetles Molly Merino used to clean the occasional shipment of tapir or wildebeest pelts. There were boxes and cartons and shelves everywhere, spiring up into the dark recesses of the ceiling, lit by dangling tubes of fluorescent lights and the occasional blinding nova of a halogen lamp trained upon a fragile human femur or mummy restoration-in-progress. Here and there the pale green light of a computer monitor glowed in the darkness, or you might glimpse the flickering opalescent lozenge of a laptop exiled with its curator to some dank corner.

Nothing looked as though it had been cleaned since at least the Bicentennial. An overzealous expedition by the building’s custodial crew had once resulted in the loss of a pipe used by the Yanomano to blow psychoactive residue into each other’s nostrils. Barry Hornick claimed his work on the Yanomano diorama was set back three weeks, and the entire South American Peoples division traced the late opening of their new gallery to this same housekeeping error. Since then, cleaning was done sporadically if at all. A rich yellowing patina covered everything, composed of bone dust and pollen and beeswax, varnish and plaster of Paris and the odorous cabbagey residue from the kim chee Robert Dvorkin bought at a little Korean place in Alexandria and ate every day for lunch. A fine silvery net of webs from the Insect Zoo’s runaway golden orb weavers hung from the rafters and kept the cockroach and silverfish population at bay. In the summer most office doors remained shut, not out of any burning need for privacy but because that was the only way to retain some slight breath of cool air from the museum’s balky central a/c system. The closed doors formed a kind of informal gallery of Gary Larson cartoons clipped from the Post, along with amusing postcards from colleagues in distant places (HAVING a GREAT TIME in CAIRO DIGGING UP some OLD FRIENDS! CHANUKAH GREETINGS from OLDUVAI GORGE!) and the occasional announcement of an honorary degree or new publication in Antiquities. In the fall, the doors flew open again so that the heat blasting from the museum’s ancient furnaces could find its way into cubbyholes full of carven masks and heaps of moldering newspapers and damp papier-mâché replicas of Breton menhirs.

In contrast to all this nearly Victorian splendor and decay, my office was compact and bright and sterile as a hypodermic needle. A sleek steel display case held video monitors and television sets and the assorted VCRs and incidental equipment necessary for running the archival videodisc system. A network of multicolored cables connected these to computers and still more monitors and CD ROMs on my desk. The desk itself was a battered wooden contraption tunneled with pigeonholes and drawers in varying states of disorder. It looked as uncomfortable with its glittering satellites as a dowager aunt with her skinhead niece, but I liked it. It had been my first desk at the museum, and had traveled with me from my first little cubicle next to the Department of Worms to what would probably be its final home here. My window had an unobstructed view of the brick turrets of the Castle across the Mall. On sunny days the ghostly sound of calliope music echoed up from the ancient carousel outside the Arts and Industries Building, and sometimes stray balloons tapped plaintively against the glass before drifting off to float above the Tidal Basin and the Pentagon.

After so many years, my job had become more of a PR position than anything else. New technicians handled the eternal sorting and cleaning and labeling of photos in the ever-expanding Larkin Collection. None of the actual production was done in-house, and three years earlier the museum had cut a deal with Jack “Jolly” Rogers of Winesap Computers to write, manufacture, and distribute the accompanying software for the system. The videodiscs weren’t exactly best-selling items, but we almost managed to break even. And it was a nice tax write-off for everyone concerned, since the museum, of course, was an educational not-for-profit institution, and good PR for Winesap.

Jack liked me. He’d grown up in Yonkers, dropped out of high school in his junior year to play around with the earliest generations of personal computers, writing accountability programs for the mainframes at ConEd. He’d made his first million while still a teenager. We were the same age, and the yawning rift between our income brackets was bridged by a mutual distaste for Republican politics and a fondness for cheap beer and noisy proto-punk music. Once or twice a year he dropped in on one of his lobbying circuits of Capitol Hill, and we’d sit around my office with a smuggled six-pack of PBR to reminisce about seeing the Ramones and the Cramps in high school gyms and lament the failure of great unknown bands like the Shades (once of Trenton) and D.C.’s own Velvet Monkeys.

“Kids today, they don’t know what it was like.” Jack shook his head, his thinning blond hair slipping from its ponytail. He wore Doc Martens and white painter’s pants and a faded blue T-shirt depicting Officer Joe Bolton and the Three Stooges. “They rip off someone else’s riffs and go on MTV and jump around and—”

He made a rude noise, then consoled himself with a mouthful of chicken vindaloo. It was the last day of June and we were sitting in my office, gazing out the window at the crowds below. That morning, there’d been a Senate hearing, something to do with the Communicopia Bill. Jack had blown in and out of the Senate chambers, making the appropriate noises for C-SPAN and the national news, then ducked over here to check up on things. “Hey, this is pretty good curry, huh?”

I nodded, my eyes watering. “No lie.”

Outside on the Mall a month-long carnival was in progress: the Aditi, the Festival of India, sponsored by the Museum and the Indian government and SOMA Software (publisher of the fabulously successful GEOQUEST! and a division of Winesap Computers, Inc.). For weeks workmen shouting in Hindi and Urdu and English had been constructing stages and booths, staking out tent sites and laying wooden walkways across the trampled yellowing grass. Now most of the Mall, from the old west wing of the National Gallery of Art all the way down to the Museum of American History, had been transformed into an idealized Indian village, like something from a soundstage for Kim. Gaudy paisley pennants hung from booths selling wooden toys and puri, lime pickle and vegetable samosas and edible effigies of Durga with spun sugar skulls dangling from her neck. From a small tent echoed the eerie wavering cry of a bone flute, along with the shrill voices of children shouting in Hindi as they practiced their tumbling, clambering onto each other’s backs to form pyramids three- or four-high, then leaping off with outflung arms, graceful as flying squirrels. Even from here I could smell frying ghee and the overly sweet scents of jasmine incense and sandalwood, and hear an occasional burst of raga music from one of the wooden platform stages in front of the Hirshhorn’s sculpture garden.

“Quite a little show you got on down there.” Jack stood and crossed to the window, holding his paper plate and spooning yellow rice into his mouth. “We should be drinking Pink Pelican beer. You ever had that, Sweeney? It’s all I drank when I was in Bombay last year, trying to get visas for those fire-eaters I told you about. Brewed from water from the sacred Ganges. Pink Pelican.” He sighed and shook his head. “Great stuff.”

“How long will you be in town, Jack?”

“I’ve got a four o’clock this afternoon from Dulles. Shareholders meeting in Bel Air tomorrow. Hey, any of those things get C-SPAN?” He pointed at the bank of video monitors, spilling sauce on his T-shirt. “I wanna see if I’m on yet.”

I put down my plate and slid my chair over to the steel display case. “Sure. Hang on—

I turned on the newest monitor we had, a thirty-two-inch HDRTV (Jack told me he had a two-inch Sony SuperHDR in his Range Rover). I fiddled with the remote, scanning through dozens of channels until I found the right one.

“Live Coverage of the House Subcommittee Hearings on Census Statistics and Postal Personnel,” read Jack in disgust. “They preempted me for that?”

“Maybe you were on live. Or maybe they’re saving it for tonight—”

“Nah. They bumped me, that’s all. Screw ’em. I’ll have Maggie Gibson loose her Stinkbomb virus on their system. Ever hear of that one? Replaces all your data with the screenplay of Ishtar.”

He cackled, then snatched the remote from my hand. “Give me that, let’s see what else is on—”

Random images flickered across the screen: Bugs Bunny, “Bonanza,” soaps, “Reading Rainbow,” vintage PeeWee, Windex, the Stephen King Network, what looked like a live broadcast of an assassination attempt on the president but turned out to be the new Slush video, Pepsi, Astroboy, Hoji Fries. It was impossible to tell what you were supposed to buy and what you were supposed to actually watch—Brando, Datsun, IBM—Jack made another rude sound—Donahue, McDonald’s, “Mormon Matters,” Sally, Oprah, Geraldo, Angelica—

Angelica?

“Stop!” I shouted. The screen froze on “This Old House.”

“Here in Lubec, Maine,” Bob Vila was saying as he tapped a coil of glittering blue foil, “you need an R-value of + 47 to provide even the most basic insulation—”

“This?” said Jack in disbelief.

“No! Go back—wherever you were a second ago—no, slow it down, I can’t—There! That’s it, stop!”

“Opal Purlstein?” Jack was incredulous. “You watch Opal Purlstein?”

On the screen, talk show hostess Opal Purlstein was curled at one end of her cozy aubergine couch, staring raptly at this afternoon’s guest.

“…when you think of it, it’s really just a return to the natural world order. In the grand scheme of things, the last few thousand years of history—well, let’s be overly generous, and say the last ten thousand years—why, in geologic time, that’s nothing! Just a blip—”

Opal nodded earnestly. At the other end of the couch, a stunning bronze-haired woman in an elegant crimson sheath extended her hand, delicately spreading her fingers as though they were the petals of some rare desert flower.

“—pfff! That’s all,” the woman said in a lilting voice. She looked as out of place on Opal’s show as Brooke Astor at McDonald’s. “That’s what our civilization is worth.”

Opal nodded, wide-eyed, and the audience burst into applause. On the couch the bronze-haired woman smiled demurely. Behind her stood two raven-haired Amazons, easily topping six feet, their arms crossed on their chests. They were lean and muscular and lethal as a pair of cheetahs, and stared with oblique black eyes into the camera. Both wore sleeveless black tank tops; silver armillas shaped like serpents coiled around their biceps. Their hair was cropped short as a boxer’s, but the effect wasn’t butch so much as purely androgynous: their faces were too serene, their eyes as carefully made up as Angelica’s own. The girl on the left looked very young, maybe eighteen or nineteen, her face for all its grim expression surprisingly childlike. Her partner had a tattoo of a crescent moon on her cheek.

“It is very important to understand this,” the bronze-haired woman said in a low, urgent voice. From the audience came murmurs and scattered clapping. “We are only trying to reclaim what originally belonged to us. We are only trying to bring back the world that was ours, the world that is ours.”

The audience roared. Opal opened her mouth, closed it again, and nodded. The bronze-haired woman turned so that she directly faced the camera, her eyes huge, almost imploring. Then she smiled, lifting her hands slightly to acknowledge the applause. From her ears dangled two delicate silver crescents; on the breast of her ruby sheath lay another silver crescent, dazzlingly bright where the spotlights struck it. Her hair was still long and thick and curling, its ruddy highlights silvered here and there as though touched with ice. A faint web of lines radiated from the corners of her eyes, and there were laugh lines around her mouth, as delicate as though drawn with a sumi brush. She didn’t look as Hasel Bright had described her in his letter: still a girl, young as when we had last seen her at the Orphic Lodge. But her eyes were the same as ever, that unnaturally brilliant emerald, and her smile could melt enough ice caps to cause major coastal flooding along the entire Eastern seaboard.

Letters flashed across the bottom of the screen.

“But I know her!” I leaned forward to stab at the screen. For a moment my finger pinned her there, then the station cut to a commercial. “That’s Angelica!”

Jack took another bite of chicken vindaloo and nodded. “Yeah, I know her. She was at my birthday party—did I tell you Erica threw a surprise party for me at Morton’s last year? A bunch of people came, like big Hollywood types. Tom Hanks, that woman with the hair. I mean, Erica knew everyone. Did you know Erica?” He shook his head remorsefully. “Kind of a kook, but boy, she had great legs. We’re not together anymore.”

“No, I mean I really know Angelica—we were at the Divine together, she was my best friend!”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “No kidding?”

“Really! She was—well, if you met her, you know what she’s like. We were best friends, before—well, before I left. I lost touch with her, I haven’t heard from her in, jeez, it must be nineteen or twenty years now.”

“I thought she said she went to some school in Italy, Rome or Florence or something.”

“That was later—I met her here, at the University of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine. We were both anthropology majors.” I continued to stare at the TV, shaking my head. “I can’t believe it—”

Jack nodded. “Yeah, that would be her—she was talking about some place she was at, in Sardinia or Sicily or somewhere like that, she had a villa there that was built above some tomb that’s three thousand years old. She married an Italian duke, Rinaldo somebody, Rinaldo Furiano, I guess, Erica knew him because he used to help produce Fellini’s early stuff and Erica is a very big Fellini fan. But he died, he was a lot older than she is. She’s very big on the West Coast. Your friend, I mean.” He pointed at the television with his fork.

“Big? Big for what?”

He shrugged. “Like this cult or something. Well, no, not a cult—she’s got this sort of self-help group, I guess it is. Only it’s religious, kind of crackpot stuff but women out there just go crazy for it. Whoo-whoo at the moon, raise your consciousness, all that kind of shit. Plus she’s written all these books. Like what’s-her-name with the legs, you know. Shirley MacLaine.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No—she’s really popular. I think it’s a boatload of crap, all this New Age stuff. But Erica was totally into it, that’s how come she invited her to my surprise party. Geena Davis was there. Did I tell you I met Geena Davis? That girl could eat apples off the top of my head.”

The screen cut back to Opal and her guest.

“Let’s see what the audience has to say,” Opal announced. She stood and marched into the rows of seats, waving her cordless mike like it was a censer. On the couch Angelica uncurled her legs and smiled beguilingly at the camera. Behind her the two tall black-haired women shifted. Their arms rippled with muscle, smooth and powerful as anacondas. The one with the moon tattoo smiled slightly, her thin mouth opening to flash very white teeth.

“Who are they?”

“Oh, those are her bodyguards—”

“Bodyguards?”

Jack laughed. “Yeah, her Amazons, she calls ’em. Cloud and Kendra. They’re kickboxers. They were at the party too—”

“Angelica needs bodyguards?”

“Oh, sure,” said Jack. “She gets death threats all the time. Guys are always trying to jump her bones or else trying to cut her up. I gather her views are a little extreme—well, here, listen—”

“My name is Amanda Jeffries, from Port Lavaca, Texas,” a round-faced, heavyset woman was saying. “I was married for seventeen years to a man—”

Her voice broke. Beside her Opal jockeyed with the mike so it would catch every breath.

“—My husband used to beat on me, so bad sometimes I couldn’t go to work. And our children, too. I threatened to leave him but he always said he’d change but he never did. Then I heard you talk at Victoria Community College—”

She inclined her head and the camera angle jumped to show Angelica listening intently, her brow furrowed and her green eyes glowing with concern.

“—I heard you talk about the Warrior Goddess inside of us and I went home, I signed up for a self-defense class at the Victoria YWCA and filed for divorce.”

Opal nodded. “And your husband let you go?”

“Oh, no.” Amanda Jeffries shook her head. “He came at me with a baseball bat—”

Gasps from the audience. “What did you do?” urged Opal.

“Well, I ran outside and threw the kids in the Pontiac and tried to drive off, but he smashed the windshield—”

Another cut to Angelica, her perfect eyebrows arched, the two women behind her silent and brooding.

“And?” said Opal.

“And so I ran him over. I—I—killed him. In reverse.” More gasps; scattered applause and one deep boo. Amanda Jeffries wiped her eyes. “I—I didn’t want to do it, I loved him but—the jury said it was self-defense and the Women’s Defense Fund helped me and my children while the trial was pending—”

“Let’s hear another point of view.” Opal walked deftly through the rows of seats until she reached a burly young man scowling near the back of the room. “What do you think of Angelica Furiano’s—”

“I think she oughta be locked up—”

The camera focused on the man’s face, his brown eyes darting from Opal back to the stage. “My wife and her friend went to one of her workshops in San Diego and this woman—”

His arm jabbed out as he pointed toward Angelica.

“This—” bleeep! “—is advocating overthrowing the government—”

Boos and catcalls, so loud the man looked startled and fell silent.

“I think,” Opal said gently, “I think that she’s calling for a change in the patriarchal system in this country, not overthrowing the government.” She whirled to face the stage. “Am I correct, Angelica?”

“Yes,” Angelica’s clear voice rang out. “And—”

“Can I finish?” The man broke in angrily. “These women, they get together and they all bitch about how their husbands abuse them and they can’t get decent jobs and I’m a rapist and everything comes down to Men Suck, but I work fifty-hour weeks to support my family, I never lifted a finger against my wife or children, I supported the Equal Rights Amendment and what do I get? My wife left me, she says I was condescending to her, she says I—”

“Well, perhaps she did not correctly perceive your concern,” Angelica suggested smoothly. “Very often men are not aware that they treat their wives in a childlike fashion. You see, we’re still trained to see women in only certain ways—and other countries are worse than the United States in this, when I was in Italy it was very pronounced—the whole Madonna-Whore syndrome. Or you have this whole way of looking at women as either nurturers or as children who need constant protection. Many of the world’s ancient Goddess religions represent the Goddess as having three faces: those of the Mother, Daughter, and Crone or Destroyer. And a number of recent books help women focus on two of those aspects: Gaea, the nurturing Mother, and her daughter Kore. And that’s wonderful. I truly think these books are wonderful and I think that they’ve helped women a great deal; but it’s not enough.”

The camera moved in slowly for a close-up on Angelica’s face. Shafts of light from the silver crescent on her breast flickered across her cheeks and jaw; she looked as though she were rising up from deep clear water. Her voice grew softer, more intense. Beside me Jack leaned closer to the television set, and I could imagine everyone in that audience shifting in their seats, everyone straining to get closer to Angelica.

“—Because we can’t just ignore that other face of the Goddess. For thousands of years we’ve pretended that She doesn’t exist, that human history begins and ends with the Old Testament. But now, for the first time in millennia, women are starting to embrace Her again. And that’s marvelous, but we can’t just pick and choose which of Her aspects to honor. We have to deal with all of them. With the Full Moon and the New Moon but also with the Dark of the Moon, Hecate’s realm. We have to acknowledge the Mother and the Avenger. We must embrace She Who Mourns and She Who Creates, but we must also honor She Who Destroys.

“Because otherwise we will never be whole. In traditional patriarchal societies, men have always acknowledged their own aggressive tendencies—that’s why they’ve always been the warriors and the football players, the generals and bank presidents and—”

“The serial killers!” a shrill voice shouted. Uneasy laughter from the audience; but Angelica only nodded seriously.

“—and yes, the serial killers—but also the great artists and writers and composers. But until we as women acknowledge our own personal need for power and our own capabilities for aggression and independence, we will never be whole. We’ll continue to be good mothers and daughters, we’ll continue to be muses, we’ll continue to be victims—but we won’t be whole and strong. We won’t be the Supreme Goddess that we can be. We need to acknowledge all the aspects of the Goddess within us; we need to embrace the chthonic darkness, to welcome and awaken the Moon; and then we will be whole again. Then we will be strong, unconquerable, sovereigns of the Sacred Earth.

“Then we will be One with Her.”

Riotous applause and a few enraged shouts from the audience. A quick cut to the burly young man shaking his head and mouthing something obscene. But Opal had already abandoned him and was walking briskly back to the stage.

“Well, thank you, Angelica! I know I’ve read your books and found them incredibly empowering, and I took your Dark of the Moon workshop up in Vancouver last summer and—well, it was wonderful, absolutely wonderful! Thank you so much—

“Angelica Furiano, on a cross-country tour promoting her new best-selling book Waking the Moon: Toward a Supreme Spirituality of Women.”

Opal held up a book: I could just glimpse its title, in bright gold letters against a black background, and the glinting foil crescent that surmounted Angelica’s name. Cheers and excited yelps. Angelica stood. The studio lights made a golden aureole of her hair, and while she should have looked like a thousand other talk show guests, sheepish or giddy or simply inane, she did not. She looked as she always had, beautiful and poised and utterly regal. Very slowly, as though performing in a Noh drama, she rested one hand upon her breast, her fingers spreading to cover the lunula, and then raised the other hand to the audience as though in benediction. Once again glittering letters flashed across the screen.

I stared at her and shivered.

“Boy, she is a looker, huh? And she looks just like that in real life, I mean in L.A., some of these girls you see on TV or in the movies, you see ’em in real life and pffft—” Jack made a disgusted sound, his eyes still fixed on the screen. “But she’s the real thing, I tell you.”

“Her eyes aren’t real,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Her eyes—those are green contacts; her eyes aren’t really that color.”

Jack stared at the screen, then shrugged. “Well, whose are? You think she’s a dyke?”

“Angelica?” I said softly. “I don’t think so—I mean, I don’t think she used to be. I always sort of thought of her as pansexual.”

Jack snorted. “Yeah, sure. Her and what’s-his-name. And I’m the Ludovicher Rabbi.”

From behind the couch strode Angelica’s two bodyguards. The black tank tops flowed into army-style khaki shorts, and they wore lace-up black leather boots with thick clunky toes and nasty-looking metal spurs. The one with the crescent moon tattoo had a long thin braid falling down her back, its end tied with a leather thong hung with crimson feathers and what appeared to be bones. Jack stared at her admiringly, then sighed and wiped the corner of his mouth with a paper towel.

“Well, listen, kiddo, I got to go.”

The two Amazons flanked Angelica, their heads held high like pro wrestlers. I had to admit it made a striking tableau, those two black-haired beauties guarding their golden idol. Angelica smiled and nodded as her guardians looked around the room, eyes glittering. As Opal’s theme music surged Angelica turned. Her bodyguards smiled, thin mirthless smiles like those of a dreaming cat, and escorted their mistress offstage.

“Wow. I still can’t believe that was Angelica.”

Jack grinned. “What a piece of work. ‘Angelica Furiano.’ The Avenging Angel. Sounds like she made it up.”

“When I knew her, her name was Angelica di Rienzi.” I sighed and shook my head. “God, I can’t believe it’s been that long. I completely lost touch with her, you know? For a couple of months it was like we were bonded at the hip, and then—” I stared sadly at the TV screen. “I never heard from her again. Christ, I’d love to see her.”

Jack took a last bite of his chicken vindaloo and shoved the paper plate beside a video monitor. “Well, like I told you, she married this count guy from Italy. Erica said he was like one of the three richest guys in the country. When he died it all went to Angelica, and I can tell you his first three wives weren’t happy about that at all. Ah well, gotta fly.”

He stood and picked up his bag, a worn Guatemalan rucksack. “Have fun at the festival. I’ll have one of my boys see if they can track down a local distributor for Pink Pelican and send you a case.”

I walked him to the door. “When will you be back in D.C.?”

Jack hugged me to him, gave the top of my head a swiping kiss. “Shit, I dunno. Christmas I’ll be visiting my dad in Florida, maybe I’ll be through then. We’re test-marketing this new software program in the fall, a tie-in with the big dinosaur exhibit reopening at that other museum in New York. Maybe I’ll be out then. We can check out the mosh pits downtown.”

We walked down the hall, Jack stopping at every door to read the cartoons posted there and hooting with laughter. Finally we reached the end of the corridor. At the head of the broad curving stairway he stopped.

“Well, listen, Sweeney, it’s been a slice, like always.”

He took a few steps, then turned to look back at me. “And listen—I was going to call Erica when I get back, she’s still got all my Arvo Pärt CDs. You want me to see if I can get your friend Angelica’s number from her? She and Erica have mutual friends or something, they used to run into each other a lot.”

I nodded eagerly. “That would be great, Jack! I mean it—I’m sure Angelica remembers me, tell Erica—”

He waved me away. “Sure, sure. See you, kiddo.”

I watched him descend the steps, taking them two at a time like a kid eager to get out of class. Then I went back to my office.

The little room smelled of cumin and fenugreek. From outside came the high skirling wail of flutes, the carousel’s ghostly fanfare. Billowing smoke from the Aditi’s outdoor grills mingled with the yellow dust of the Mall’s wide walkways. I turned from the window and for a long moment stared at the TV screen. The credits for Opal’s show were still running—This program was previously recorded in front of a live audience—the music soaring until it was rudely cut off by a commercial for tooth powder. I turned off the TV and closed my door, settled into my chair, and for a few minutes rocked thoughtfully back and forth.

Angelica Furiano. The Avenging Angel. I thought of those two Amazons, of Opal Purlstein and women across the country crowding her workshops, listening to her talk about the rights of women and becoming empowered. Kickboxers and former nuns and slacker dykes, New Age hausfraus and fin de siècle suffragettes.

“What a crock,” I said out loud.

But then I thought of when I had last seen Angelica, nearly two decades ago: a beautiful young girl rising naked from the water in the shadow of the Orphic Lodge, a young girl striding through the dust, dancing around a lowing bull in a dark field. I thought of her lying in the grass with Oliver; I thought of Oliver himself with his poor mutilated scalp and his mad blue eyes, making that last leap of faith from the window of a closet at Providence Hospital. I thought of all these things; and of Balthazar Warnick staring at me from atop a curving staircase; of Francis Xavier Connelly helping to push Magda Kurtz into the wasteland; of a boy’s reedy voice cutting through the darkness like a heated wire through black glass.

I thought of them all, and of Hasel Bright lying facedown in a pond in the Virginia woods. And Angelica so rich and famous that she had homes in Los Angeles and Italy and god knows where else; of Angelica writing best-selling books and having a following that could number in the thousands, maybe in the tens or hundreds of thousands for all I knew. I had no idea at all what she’d been doing all those years—writing books, I guess; teaching people to go whoo-whoo at the moon. Above the haunted strains of the carousel and the faint cries of children, I heard Oliver’s voice the last time I had seen him alive—

“…don’t you worry about her: Angelica is destined for Big Things. Very, very Big Things—” I thought of Hasel’s letter. After a few more minutes I got out of my chair. I walked to the door and made certain it was shut, then reached for my phone and called Baby Joe in New York.

CHAPTER 12 The Priestess at Huitaca

WHY DON’T YOU ALL take the night off? I don’t think you’ve had a day off since Opal.” Angelica di Rienzi Furiano reached for her glass of chardonnay. She raised it, toasting the sun where it struck bolts of violet and gold from the edge of the butte that rose above her home. In its delicate goblet the wine glowed. A tiny bee with green eyes hovered above the lip of the glass. Angelica flicked at it with a carefully sculpted fingernail. The bee spun off and disappeared into the late afternoon light. Angelica sipped thoughtfully at her wine, suddenly smiled. “I know! Dr. Adder’s playing in Flagstaff, you could go see that. It’s supposed to be pretty good.”

In the pool, Cloud and Kendra and Martin lay on inflatable plastic floating chairs. The two bodyguards wore plain back one-piece bathing suits; Martin an ancient pair of surfer’s baggies appliquéd with yellow smiley-faces sewn on by Kendra. Cloud’s dark pigtail drifted across the turquoise surface behind her like a dozing water moccasin. A few feet away Kendra and Martin held hands, their floats bumping noses every now and then in a companionable way. They were all three burnished copper by the sun, though Martin’s hair was white-blond, straight and fine as a baby’s. He was Angelica’s personal trainer, and lived in a casual ménage with the two girls in the adobe gardener’s cottage down the hill from the main house.

“Girls?” Angelica inquired softly.

“You sure?” Kendra lifted her head drowsily, shading her eyes as she squinted up at their employer. She was only eighteen, taking a year off between high school and Bennington. She had a black belt in karate and for the last two years had won the Idaho State Martial Arts Competition. “Cloud said she heard something outside last night—”

Angelica shook her head. “I saw it later—a coyote, looked like it had a jackrabbit. No, you all go on; I think the early show’s at seven.”

“A coyote?” Cloud repeated dubiously.

Angelica nodded. She tipped her head to gaze at Cloud from above the rim of her sunglasses. “Isn’t that amazing? It came right up to the house. They’ve never done that before.”

Damn straight they’ve never done it before, thought Cloud. They haven’t done it yet. The night before she’d been up late, reading a new Pasolini biography, when she’d heard it. Something was struggling on the path that led from the cottage to the pool, something too large for any animal, and besides, she’d distinctly heard a voice, a boy’s voice, she thought. She hadn’t been able to make out any words; she hadn’t waited around to hear more. By the time she got outside, arms and legs taut and ready to strike, whatever had been there was gone.

“You really should put the surveillance system back on, Angelica,” said Kendra. “I mean, someone could walk right up to the house—”

Angelica shook her head, her hair escaping from beneath a huge sun hat. “That’s why I have you, bambina. Besides, the animals would set it off every night—I told you, it was a coyote.”

Her tone was light, but Cloud heard the soft threat in it: the topic was closed. “Listen, Artie down at the Soaring Eagle said he was getting in a shipment of Dungeness crabs today—you all should go there for dinner, check it out for me. Elspeth”—Elspeth was her agent—”Elspeth will be coming out next week and I’ve got to figure out where to take her.”

Cloud grimaced but said nothing. She loathed the Soaring Eagle. The others were more cheerful.

“Aw right” Martin sang. He slid from his float into the pool. “Man, I need a night off.” He yawned and absently flexed his arms. “Thanks, Angelica. We’ll bring you back some Ben & Jerry’s.”

Angelica smiled. “Pomegranate sorbet, if they have it.”

“Cha, boss.” Martin gave her a thumbs-up, turned to pull Kendra from her float. She slid into the pool silently and smoothly as an otter. Then she and Martin swam to the steps and climbed out, Martin squeezing water from his long hair, Kendra shaking her feet off like a cat before they gathered towels and sandals and sunscreen and began to pick their way across the terra-cotta-tiled patio to the path that led to their cottage. In their wake a string of tiny garnet butterflies rose from the tiles, and fluttered tipsily about Kendra’s closely shorn head.

“You coming, Cloud?”

Cloud raised her head from her float, her pigtail slithering between her shoulder blades. On one cheek was a tattoo of a crescent moon, its dark curve outlined faintly in red. Three gold rings pierced the web of skin that stretched between her thumb and forefinger, and her upper arm was tattooed with zigzag bands of black and deep blue.

“In a minute. Go on ahead, I’ll catch up.” She turned onto her stomach and stared at Angelica, her golden eyes slanted and wary. “Leave me some hot water in the shower.”

“Take the Porsche,” Angelica called as the other two disappeared around a tumbled pile of sandstone. “You know where the keys are—”

She leaned back into her chair, a banana yellow Italian chaise that she had had shipped here from her villa on Santorini. It was elegant and simple and sleek as a driving glove. Its curves fit those of Angelica’s body, and she liked the feel of the warm kidskin against her own bare flesh, the musky scent the leather released in the heat. She was wearing only a simple black maillot, cut high to show off her long legs and the taut abdomen Martin worked so hard to maintain. “Cloud, don’t you want to go?”

Cloud gazed at Angelica, her eyes heavy-lidded. Lines of sweat had gathered around the outlines of her moon tattoo, giving a silvery gleam to the dark crescent. She smiled, a thin smile that showed her small white teeth and the pink tip of her tongue.

“In a minute.”

Angelica stared back at her, her wineglass balanced between two perfect fingers. Cloud had been difficult lately—nothing major, just small annoyances like this: her refusal to leave when she’d been dismissed, her insistence on having heard something last night when it was clear that Angelica wanted that something to have gone unheard. Cloud was smarter than Kendra and Martin, a few years older as well—she’d graduated from UCLA film school, worked for a while as an apprentice foley artist before getting bored and taking off on her own. Two years ago in October, she’d attended Angelica’s Samhain workshop in Minneapolis, the one where Angelica had been heckled by a guy who kept calling her a castrating bitch and a bull dyke. Afterward he’d slimed his way through the crush of autograph seekers and hauled off and hit Angelica in the face. Cloud had felled him with a single kick to the solar plexus, holding him down until security arrived. Angelica had hired her on the spot. A year or so later, when they were back in Los Angeles, she hired Kendra.

“So you won’t get too lonely on the road,” she’d told Cloud.

“You mean so you won’t get too lonely,” Cloud had replied with a smirk. Cloud preferred men, serious ironworkers when she could meet them at the gym, which wasn’t often when you were on the road, and besides, you had to be real careful whom you went out with these days. But she’d had a brief fling with a girl at UCLA; she figured Angelica must be a lesbian, one of those older lipstick dykes with the clothes and the heels and Opium perfume, although Cloud had already decided she wasn’t going to go to bed with her. It was bad karma to sleep with people you had to work with. But, somewhat to Cloud’s disappointment, Angelica didn’t put the make on her. She never seemed to put the make on anyone. Although sometimes when her son was visiting, Angelica might go out to dinner with him and a few of his friends, and afterward Cloud suspected that some of the young boys spent the night at the glass house in the desert.

Yes, Cloud was sharp. If she’d been a real cloud, she would have been one of those brilliant crimson flares you saw sometimes above the buttes just after sunset, a cloud like flame and not a gentle rainbringer. Angelica gazed across the turquoise pool, caught the glint of Cloud’s golden eyes staring back at her, measuring, unafraid. She took another mouthful of wine, letting its sweetness fade, the faint tang of raspberries and smoke dissolving on her tongue.

Angelica had her own reasons for wanting her staff gone this evening. Her housekeeper, Sunday, came to work during the day, spending the night only when Angelica gave one of her rare parties. So she was never a problem. Cloud and Kendra and Martin usually had one free night a week together, when they drove Martin’s Jeep up to Flagstaff or Sedona. The three alternated their other days off, but once a month, at the dark of the moon, Angelica had to make up excuses to get them away from the compound. This had never been a problem at her place in Los Angeles, where so many clubs and bright lights beckoned, or in Santorini, where Martin had a legion of admirers among the sloe-eyed girls who worked as waitresses at the waterfront restaurants, and where Kendra and Cloud liked to go night-diving for octopus with Sabe, the old fisherman who cared for the Furiano estate when Angelica was away.

But when they were here in the desert, the girls and Martin didn’t like to leave Huitaca. Martin complained about the flaky old women in Sedona (Angelica laughed, most of the tourists were younger than she was), and Cloud thought the food in the local restaurants was disgusting. As for Kendra: well, Kendra was just plain lazy. Left to her own devices, Kendra would lie outside by the pool with her + 87 factor sunscreen and a pile of Sandman comics, and read and doze until she dried up into a little heap of brown dust and blew off into the Mazatzal Mountains.

Although really, Angelica couldn’t blame her for wanting to do just that. Huitaca was a glorious place. She had bought the land a year after Rinaldo died. She had just sold her first book—Into the Nysean Fields: Empowered Dreaming For Women Who Have Suffered Enough—for a modest five-figure advance. She’d visited Sedona on the tour promoting Nysean Fields, fallen in love with the buttes and vast lonely expanse of the desert, the blue sky like wet enamel paint and the wonderful midnight incense of piñon pine burning in fieldstone fireplaces. She’d found this place for sale and closed on it a month later, hired a brace of architects and contractors and carpenters. A year later she moved in.

She named the spot Huitaca for the Chibcha moon-goddess, a deity known for her love of indolence and intoxication; one of Her more easygoing incarnations. The compound was tucked between sandstone crags and a piñon-topped bluff where ravens and vultures nested. In the chaparral roadrunners and chachalacas rustled, hunting snakes and the little spiny lizards that hid among the stones. On spring mornings she could hear the chachalacas screaming raucously from the tops of huisache and scrubby pines. The cloudless air smelled of hot dust and pine resin; on summer evenings she could see prayers for rain rising like blue smoke from the distant belfry of the little church in Cottonwood.

Huicata was a few miles from Sedona, with its crystal wavers and wealthy pilgrims seeking enlightenment at overpriced restaurants that served blue corn chips and free range lamb fajitas. Every now and then a gaggle of tourists would find its way through the hills to Huitaca. Then Cloud and Kendra would get to do their stuff, politely but firmly directing the disappointed women back into their rented four-wheel-drive vehicles, watching until they jounced down the dusty gravel road, and out onto the main highway. Huitaca was an enchanted place, almost as beautiful as the Furiano villa on Santorini. Outsiders were only welcomed on special occasions.

The main house was dazzling, three thousand square feet of low-E glass and adobe and two-hundred-year-old beams salvaged from a deconsecrated church in Phoenix. The walls were hung with Navajo sand paintings and an entire steer’s skeleton had been reassembled above the massive fieldstone fireplace, its bleached bones threaded with beads and feathers and rattles made from the shells of tortoises. The floors were covered with hand-painted tiles imported from Tuscany, and small dried bundles of sage burned day and night in front of a tiny altar near Angelica’s bedroom.

But it was outside that Angelica did much of her work. The pool and its surrounding patio were set in a sort of natural amphitheater. On clear nights it afforded an unobstructed view of the eastern sky, with the violet-tinged buttes and hillsides erupting like frozen geysers of stone above the desert. On the patio, there were studiedly naturalistic plantings of native grasses and succulents: lecheguillas, the thorny leafless wands of ocotillo; rock nettles and prickly pear. Collared lizards slept upon the tiles; horned toads crept into the crevices where tiles had cracked, and laid their eggs among shards of terra-cotta. A colony of sidewinders visited there as well. Once Martin had tried to kill one, but Angelica stopped him—

“They only come here to drink,” she said. To his horror and amazement she stooped above a snake as long as Martin’s arm and thick around as his wrist, its head a raised fist, the dry husk of its rattle a blur.

“Here now,” murmured Angelica. Before the rattler could strike, she grabbed it behind its head. It dangled from her hand, writhing and twisting into improbable loops, its tail slapping her thigh hard enough to leave a red streak like the mark of a belt. Angelica held it at arm’s length and gently squeezed its jaws, so that Martin could watch the venom stream in milky strands from its hollow fangs onto the tiles. Then she let it go. Martin jumped onto a chair as the rattler made its crazy sideways flight across the patio and finally disappeared into a stand of prickly pear.

“Let them drink if they want to,” Angelica commanded. “And don’t you ever kill one.”

Martin had never threatened another snake, but he and the girls were much more careful about swimming after dark. That was fine with Angelica: she preferred swimming alone. The pool itself was a good twenty feet deep, designed to resemble a natural spring-fed mere. And it was small—three good strokes and Cloud was across it. Angelica had been concerned about its impact here in the desert, although not enough to forgo its construction, or to curtail the steady trickle of water that coursed from a hidden spigot into the narrow end of the pool. In its depths flecks of gold and silver glittered from a mosaic, done in the style of the women’s apody-terium in the Forum Baths at Herculaneum. It depicted the phases of the moon, with a triumphant female figure at center, the full moon held like an offering in her cupped hands.

Now, Angelica toyed with the idea of taking a swim. It was the twenty-ninth of June, and hot enough that your spit would sizzle on a rock. But Cloud was still there.

“I guess I’ll go on in,” Angelica said at last. She finished her wine, setting the empty goblet on the table beside her chaise. “Don’t miss your ride into town,” she called out, and went inside.

Cloud waited till she was gone, lying on her stomach and letting her hands trail through the blood-warm water. My ride, she thought. She flexed her hand, the hand with the three gold rings piercing it, feeling the water lap against the sensitive delta of flesh. Near her float, a beetle flailed against the surface of the pool, a small dun-colored atom of the desert. It had probably never seen this much water in its life. Cloud slid her hand beneath it, lifted it so that the beetle was marooned on one of her knuckles. For a moment it remained there; she watched as the film of water on its mottled carapace dried. Then its wings lifted and it flicked off into the heated air.

My ride, thought Cloud, and dived beneath the turquoise water. Maybe Kendra and Martin were too brain-dead to notice, but Cloud had figured out a pattern. One night a month Angelica got rid of them, with excuses mundane or byzantine by turns. Tonight, Cloud would peer a little more closely at that pattern, and find out just what was really going on at Huitaca.

I’ll have a fucking ride, all right. And she swam to shore.

Angelica’s preparations were, as always, simple. She waited until she saw Cloud saunter back to the gardener’s cottage. Then she turned from the window. She walked down the hall into the bedroom wing, went into the bathroom with its imported coralite marble floors and the frieze of ecstatic maenads she’d had smuggled into the country from Turkey, and stepped into the shower, a tall cubicle of green industrial glass.

Inside the light was diffuse: like showering beneath a hurricane sky. An alabaster dish held natural sponges and soaps scented with wild lavender and catmint; there was also a small canister of sea salt. Angelica poured a tiny mound into her palm, touched her tongue to the bitter crystals, and then let the water sluice it away. The smells of salt and lavender made her think of the Sea of Crete off the coast of Santorini; made her think of the Aegean, of narcissus nodding on stony hillsides and wind marbling the waves to whorls of white and midnight blue.

Afterward she changed into a plain white linen shift, sleeveless, knee-length, belted with a cord that only Angelica knew was made with real gold thread. She pulled her wet hair back into a ponytail, fastening it with a strip of leather. Then she sat at the battered Mission-style table she used as a vanity, the unstained wood so old and weathered it was soft to the touch, like suede. A small round mirror rested against a piece of lava from Akrotiri. Pots and tubes of expensive cosmetics were strewn everywhere, but Angelica ignored them. Instead, she reached for a terracotta vial stoppered with a cork, and tapped a little heap of coriander seeds into a marble pestle. She ground these, together with a piece of red sandalwood and a few slivers of dried blood orange peel, carefully rubbed the powder onto her breasts, wrists, thighs, neck.

All this while Angelica stared into the mirror before her. It was ancient, of polished metal that had corroded with time, so that her reflection was pocked with darkened spots and craters. Around its border were painted arabesques of dark green and umber, the fluid pattern broken here and there by a pair of eyes. Scungilli, her uncle had told her when he had given it to her, nearly twenty years before in Florence. Octopus.

“It was your mother’s,” he had said. There was a little break in his voice. Not of sorrow, Angelica knew that now. Remorse, perhaps, or apprehension. “Your father has forgotten I have it.”

“My mother?”

Her uncle nodded. He was older even than her father, for all that his youngest child was only seven. She had been with him and her cousins for only a short while; she had visited them often before, of course, but this was different. This was like an exile. “I found it. Afterward…”

“But I thought my mother died!”

She was amazed. Close as she was to her father, he had never spoken of her mother: it was a forbidden topic. Cousins and aunts here in Florence had told her that she died in childbirth. Angelica herself suspected something less dramatic. Her father and one of the hired girls, or a wealthy student, or… These things happened; so Angelica let it be. No one in Florence cared, and no one at home in the States knew.

But on that late-winter afternoon her uncle had only shrugged, and avoided looking at her eyes. “Perhaps she did,” he said after a long moment. Outside silver wands of rain tapped at the high windows overlooking the piazza. “We do not know.”

“Wh—what do you mean?” Angelica reached for her glass of aquavit—her young aunt claimed it stimulated the appetite—and without wincing downed it in a gulp. “Tell me.”

“You must never tell your father that I did so.” Her uncle poured himself another glass. “But it is not right, that you do not know. Especially now,” he added softly.

“It was years ago—well, you know how long it has been.” Her uncle leaned across the divan to stroke her hair. “My sweet girl—it is so difficult to remember you have already been to university! Nineteen,” he murmured, then went on.

“Your father was traveling to Rhodes, to meet with some of his friends—the university professor and some others, I do not recall. Their plan had been to rendezvous at Athens and depart from there on your father’s boat—Cefalû, the same boat he has now—but their flight from London was delayed, and there was some confusion regarding how long it would take them to get to Rome. Luciano has always been impatient: he decided to go on alone, and await them at Mandraki Harbor. That is a fine yacht harbor on Rhodes, but it is a dangerous passage in the summer. He went from Cape Sidhero on Crete to Kasos, and thence to Scarpanto—Karpathos. His plan was to continue on to Mandraki and meet his friends.

“He stayed overnight on Karpathos, and early in the morning decided to leave for Mandraki. He should have had a relatively safe passage—the Karpathos Strait is not dangerous, once you leave the shadow of the mountains—but at midday a storm came up. From nowhere, your father said. The sky was without clouds, and in the near distance he could see that the waves were unruffled; but the Cefalû was hard beset. He was forced to make landfall on an island. A godforsaken place, no larger than our villa near Poggibonsi. It was without water or any living thing, no trees or grasses; only a tiny beach surrounded by lava stones. It was fortunate for your father that the Cefalû was well provisioned, because he was marooned there for two days. He tried to radio for help, but the storm kept up, and he was unable to reach anyone. By daylight he explored the islet, but there was little enough there, and he was afraid the winds might swamp the boat. But the second night it was calm enough that he left Cefalû where she was moored and took the Zodiac to shore, to sleep there. He had so little sleep, I think that it affected his wits, but your father is angry when I say that.

“So he camped on the little spar of rock. A charred place, he told me; but when he returned with his friends a few weeks later they found gold and skeletons in the waters there—they brought divers, in hopes of finding treasure, and they did. I believe it was one of those islands burned up by a volcano long ago, but you know I do not pay much attention to your father’s work.

“That night he had only a driftwood fire, and his blankets against the wind, and a bottle of Tocai he found on Cefalû—still, not an ugly picture, eh? The storm had fled and there was a full moon, which made the sea look like blue snow—that is how your father described it. Blue snow.”

Her uncle fell silent, staring at the windows. The panes shuddered as water cascaded from a gutter overhead. After a moment he turned to her once more.

“She came to him in the night. He woke and she was there—not with him on the island, but in the water. Swimming. He wondered how she could swim, the bottom was so sharp with rocks, but she swam well. It was still dark but he could see her quite clearly from the beach, and he told me that he knew immediately she was a woman and not a dolphin or other fish—or a man.

“He watched her for some time, and then she came onto the shore. She was naked—no bathing costume, no bathing shoes, nothing to protect her from the wind or the stones. Only in her hand she carried a very old mirror made of polished metal. He thought she must have stolen it from some ancient tomb or grave, because he knew by looking at it that it was very old, not a thing a young girl swimming alone off the coast of Rhodes would have!

“She knew he was there watching her—and when she came ashore she walked directly toward him. The water behind her like blue snow and the full moon in the sky. She was beautiful—of course she was beautiful! An hallucination, they are always lovely! Young, and very slender, and though she had long legs she was not tall. So that you inherited from Luciano. And she had wide hips and high breasts and long hair that was very dark and curled, and huge golden eyes, though how he could see the color of her eyes I do not know because it was dark. Even in the moonlight it is dark. He said she was not like any woman he had ever seen before—not because of her beauty, but because of how she was put together. Such small bones, and so delicate but very very strong.

“And so he lay with her, and in the morning she was gone. He never saw her again.”

Angelica stared at him. “But what about me! He must have seen her again, if she was—if she was really my mother!”

“Luciano says he did not.” Her uncle gave her a piercing look. “Perhaps he never saw her in the first place, eh? But some months later he was in London, staying with friends, and in the middle of the afternoon there came a knock at the door and when they opened it—pfff! There was a very nice basket from Harrods, and a blanket, and inside the blanket was a baby—and with the baby there was that—”

He pointed to the tarnished-looking mirror on the table before her: a round mirror the size of her two hands, carefully wrapped in chamois leather, and decorated with an octopus’s elegant dark coils. “A fairy story, eh? I do not believe all of it, but you are here, so—” With a heavy sigh he settled back upon the divan beside her, and raised his glass in a toast. “Cede Deo.”

“But who was she? What was her name?”

Her uncle smiled sadly. “I do not know, my darling. We none of us know. Not even your father—”

“But he must—you said—”

“Perhaps he does know. But he has never told me. He said only what I have told you already—that she was beautiful, and also that she sang, and he found her songs very interesting. They were old songs, he told me, very old songs. I am only a financier and so I do not know about these romantic things! But he said they were in a language we no longer remember.”

“But isn’t there a picture? Or a birth certificate? Somebody has to have something—”

Her uncle’s eyes widened. “My dear! You must not be so distressed—here, I will have Giuletta bring you some warm milk and biscòtti—”

Angelica looked stricken. “No—I mean, isn’t there anything else? A photo, something—”

Her uncle pursed his lips, frowning. “I can show you what your father showed me,” he said at last, and went over to the tiers of bookshelves that covered one wall. “Here—”

He pulled a heavy volume from the wall. Angelica craned her neck to read the title.

Lavender-smelling dust rose when her uncle blew upon the cracked binding. “One of his books. See?”

She glimpsed a brightly colored plate of a vase, the pink clay fragments carefully repaired and painted with a wide-eyed octopus.

“Like yours, eh?” Her uncle cocked his head at the mirror on the table. “Scungilli. But this is what I want to show you—”

Beckoning Angelica closer he held up the book to display another illustrated plate. “He showed me this, afterward. Many years later. He said it reminded him of his woman from the seashore.”

It was part of a fresco showing the profile of a woman’s face. A woman in a blue-and-white-striped dress bedecked with scarlet ribbons, her long hair elaborately arranged; her huge eyes accented with kohl, bee-stung lips brightly rouged. In her hand was a sort of axe, double-bladed, the heads crescent-shaped. At the bottom of the plate were words printed in German. Beneath them Angelica recognized her father’s casually elegant script—

“She is lovely, eh?” her uncle murmured.

“Y—yes.”

The image had none of the inhuman coldness of Egyptian paintings. Angelica could easily imagine this girl laughing, eating bread, dancing; smoking too much and drinking too much wine and falling into bed and—

“Yes, she’s very lovely,” whispered Angelica—

Very lovely, and she looks just like me.

“So you have seen her,” her uncle said after a long silence. Angelica could feel him staring at her, but she refused to look up. What remained of her energy she was saving to keep tears of outrage and fear and disbelief from spilling down her cheeks. With a sigh her uncle closed the book and set it back upon the shelf. “But in your studies, Angelica, your archaeology—such a famous image, you would have seen her someday and noticed the resemblance, even without me.”

Downstairs in the main kitchen she could hear footsteps, Giulleta giving orders to one of the maids to bring mostaccioli and a glass of marsala to Signorina. Her uncle finished his aquavit. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and carefully folded the metal mirror back into its chamois. “But perhaps I should not have spoken of this now. Forgive me, Angelica—”

He kissed her cheek, his breath smelling of Sen-sen and spirits, and pressed the soft packet holding the mirror into her hands. “But you do have this, and your mother’s necklace—” He inclined his head delicately toward her throat.

“What do you mean?” One of her hands closed tightly about the mirror in its chamois wrapping; the other touched the lunula beneath her scarf.

“Your necklace.” Her uncle leaned back against the divan and closed his eyes. “Eh! This rain is exhausting.”

“My necklace?”

He opened his eyes and nodded. “Yes—the other thing she had, besides the mirror. Your father said she wore a silver necklace, like the new moon—like the labrys the priestess carries—”

He glanced at the bookshelf. “—the double axe. I am glad he gave the necklace to you; I cannot stand these family secrets. Ah! Your aunt has sent us some wine and biscòtti di cioccolata! She knows we must make you fat!”

“But he didn’t—I didn’t—” Angelica stammered, then grew silent as a maid entered the dim room. She had not told her father of the lunula. She had worn it casually here in her uncle’s house, because she had been certain no one would recognize it; but now…

“Thank you,” her uncle said to the maid. “Here, Angelica—”

And he had handed her a crisp dark crescent on a tiny silver plate, a little smiling mouth like the new moon. “Now, my darling—eat.”

Now, nearly twenty years later at Huitaca, Angelica gazed into the same mirror. When she turned her head, the metal’s blurred surface showed her the same profile she had glimpsed so many times since then: on postcards at Knossos and Iraklion; in art histories and volumes of mythology; in the publicity photographs that adorned her books. The bull-priestess, the moon-priestess, the author at home. Angelica Furiano.

“Haïyo Othiym,” she murmured, and brushed her fingertips against the mirror’s pitted surface. Then she took the lunula from where it lay in a carved sandalwood box. For an instant the lunula’s reflection gleamed in the window, like a glimpse of the moon rising above the chaparral. She slid it over her head, being careful not to snag her hair, and fingered its cool edge as though she were testing a blade. She gazed another moment at her image in the bronze mirror, then left.

She went back out into the main house. Sunday waited there as she always did, standing by the window and staring out at the chaparral—she had seen a puma there once, and Angelica knew she was hoping to see it again. She gave her housekeeper a little white envelope—Sunday liked to be paid in cash, and she liked to be paid every day—thanked her and walked her to the front door. Angelica watched her housekeeper climb into her new red Chevy pickup and take off down the rutted drive. She waited half an hour later, until she saw the Porsche disappear in a haze of dust. Angelica was alone at Huitaca.

Well, almost alone.

It was the hour after sunset, when you could feel the desert heat seep back into the earth. She went to the back of the room and drew open the sliding doors, opening the entire rear of the house to the night.

“Well now,” she murmured, and breathed in luxuriously.

Overhead the sky was violet. The horizon paled to green where the buttes reared: immense pillars of sandstone, so huge and strange and silent they were like living things, vast watchful manticores or sphinxes waiting to descend upon the sleeping plain. Heat lightning stabbed fiercely at the tallest crags, and though Angelica knew there would be no rain, the scent of water filled the air, sweet as incense. Angelica smiled to see what awaited her outside.

At the pool’s edge, myriad small things had gathered to drink. Desert crickets, kangaroo rats, fat golden-eyed toads, and tiny sleepy-looking owls. Nighthawks and shrikes swooped above the water, and crimson bees like strings of beads spilled across the tiles. And rattlesnakes that paid no attention at all to the furtive kangaroo rats and nervous mice, but drank and then slithered back across the patio with a sound like the rustle of a wooden rosary.

Angelica watched them all, her smile a benediction. Then she slipped outside.

Beneath her bare feet the tiles felt warm, but the air touching her arms was cool enough to raise goose bumps and make her nipples harden beneath the thin fabric of her chiton. A few of the animals looked up, but none fled. A kit fox froze, water dripping from its jaws, then lowered its head once more. As Angelica watched it, she felt something tickle her foot. She looked down to see a tarantula, three of its legs extended so they brushed against her instep, a fourth raised to tap tentatively at her little toe. She stooped and opened her hand. The tarantula stiffened, then relaxed, its legs unfolding like miniature landing gear, and crept onto her hand. The hairs on its legs and abdomen were soft as those on a mullein leaf. It crawled onto her wrist and crouched there, its eyes bright and intelligent as a magpie’s.

“Ah, little sister.” Angelica walked toward the pool, stooped, and rested her hand against the warm tiles. The tarantula jumped from her palm to the ground. Angelica laughed, then stood and stretched her arms toward the sky.

Bats swept down to skim the surface of the pool and ricocheted back into the night. A few stars pricked the darkness. Angelica lowered her hands and pulled her dress over her head. She untied the suede ribbon that bound her hair, so that the thick curls fell in a damp mass down her back. She was naked, save for the glint of the lunula above her breasts. As she moved, the animals moved as well. Not fearfully but with care, as they would move to accommodate some great beast, bull or elk or antelope.

But someone else froze at the sight of the woman in the dark. Staring at Angelica from the shadows, Cloud felt her breath catch in her throat. She’d been hanging furtively around the edges of the patio, trying to come up with some kind of MO for the evening, when without warning Angelica appeared at the bank of sliding doors. With a muffled cry Cloud darted into a thick stand of underbrush.

Immediately she wished she’d worn something other than her usual uniform of tank top and hiking shorts and Doc Martens. Thorns tore at her bare legs and arms. Cloud muttered a curse, crouching among snaky wands of ocotillo and agave blades. She felt giddy from the rush of adrenaline. A stupid overreaction. She shouldn’t be this stoked about hiding in the bushes and peeking at Angelica, but here she was.

And there she was—

Cloud held her breath. This was, like, definitely Out There. She had always thought her employer was beautiful—everyone thought Angelica was beautiful—but seeing her like this Cloud finally understood the fanatical, almost worshipful reaction of Angelica’s fans.

Cloud had read a few of Angelica’s books, but it was hard for her to take them seriously. All that crap about the Goddess, about atavistic beauty and power. A power that would fill any woman, if only she would open herself up to it. Angelica had designed an entire ritual for this: Waking the Moon, she called it. Cloud had watched the ritual plenty of times. To tell the truth, it was not very impressive, at least to Cloud. A lot of incense and chiming bells and chanting, a certain amount of Camp Fire girl rowdiness and restrained nudity. Cloud usually dozed through most of it, leaving Kendra to watch in case any crazies showed up.

So maybe Cloud was missing out on something. Certainly afterward the women appeared to be ecstatic enough. Chattering about the Goddess, and how empowering it was to know Her true names. About what it was like to feel that power and to see Her beauty, a terrible beauty that She held within Her very bones, a beauty that would burn like flame and consume anyone foolish enough to come too near.

In Angelica’s workshops—and these were very special workshops, participants were carefully screened, and to further ensure that only the very serious-minded took part, the experience would set you back two grand and change—in her workshops, Angelica even hinted that she, Angelica di Rienzi Furiano, was the final and supreme incarnation of the Goddess. Cloud had always thought this was a little presumptuous of Angelica, to say the least.

Now she wasn’t so sure. Now, it seemed that maybe Angelica was onto something. Because this was different. This looked like the Real Thing.

In front of the pool Angelica stood, arms upraised, bathed in a cold bluish glow like moonlight. But when Cloud tilted her head back, she could see no moon, only a black-and-grey chiaroscuro of thorns and scrubby leaves. She moved gingerly, trying to get more comfortable, snagged her arm and swore beneath her breath.

When she looked up again Angelica was at the very edge of the pool. Light rippled across her bare flesh, mirroring the lightning overhead. About her throat she wore the same moon-shaped pendant she always wore for her rituals. The necklace must have been catching the light in some weird way: it glittered and sparked as though it were white-hot and had been struck with a hammer. The eerie light made Angelica look as though she were made of some semiprecious stone, fluorite or azurite or agate, something that filled her veins so that she glowed like phosphorous. Her hair streamed across her shoulders and over her breasts, tangling with the ends of her necklace. Angelica was a good ten or twelve years older than Cloud, but you couldn’t tell by looking at her now. Her breasts were high and full, her waist small above wide hips, her legs long and muscular.

Gazing at her Cloud’s mouth went dry. Her head was pounding, as though she’d had too much to drink; but Cloud never drank. She tried to take a step forward, felt her head yanked back sharply.

“Ow!”

Her pigtail was caught on a thorn. She sucked her breath in, terrified. But a few yards away Angelica stood oblivious, her hands rising and falling as she chanted.

Cloud teased her pigtail free. She brushed a line of sweat from her upper lip, glanced back up at Angelica, and froze.

Angelica had fallen silent. For the first time Cloud noticed the myriad small creatures at her feet. Squirrels, or maybe rats, something that must be a horned toad and a ponderously moving creature with a tail squat and thick as its body. A gila monster, gaudy as a beaded clutch.

Ugh! Cloud grimaced, but Angelica paid no attention to the lizard. Instead, her hands were poised above something that Cloud couldn’t see. Faster than Cloud would have thought possible, Angelica snatched at the ground. An instant later she raised her arms triumphantly. From each one dangled a snake—sidewinders, Cloud could hear their rattles as they whipped the air, and the whistling noise of their bodies writhing frantically to escape.

She’s gone nuts! Cloud swallowed, her mouth gone sour with fear and disgust. Time to check out, Sister Cloud—

She wanted to run; but Cloud had chosen her hiding spot too well. She couldn’t move without dislodging something or getting stabbed by thorns.

She moved anyway. Immediately a branch snared her tank top. An overhanging limb snagged her pigtail. Cloud yanked the ocotillo from her shirt; the fabric ripped as she lurched away. A small burst of pain as hair pulled from her scalp; then she was free again. She staggered forward, falling to her knees. Holding her breath, she raised her eyes to look out onto the patio.

Angelica was still there, her body shimmering in the violet dusk. In her hands the snakes flailed. Her voice rose, nonsense syllables that Cloud did not recognize.

Within the darkness a light appeared, a tiny flicker like a spark fallen from a burning log. As Cloud gaped the light grew stronger, until a flame leapt there, higher than Angelica’s head, high enough almost to lick at the stars. The flame spread, grew into a wall of fire that obscured utterly the serene surface of the pool. Cloud raised one arm before her eyes.

Like an earthbound aurora the wall of light flickered. In front of it stood Angelica, the two frantic serpents coiling and uncoiling in her hands, like living question marks. Like some terrible question themselves, and that awful heatless flame the answer.

There was a figure within the flames. It was as tall as Angelica, and like her it faced the eastern sky with arms raised. Save that it bore no serpents, it might almost have been her shadow—a shadow limned in flame, almost too brilliant to look upon. Angelica lifted her hands. The snakes squirmed furiously as with a cry she flung them from her.

For an instant Cloud saw them, curling and hissing like two hairs held above a lit candle. Then the sidewinders burst into flame. A searing blast, a smell like burning leather—and they were gone, vaporized as cleanly as though they’d been tossed into a furnace.

“Oh, man.” Cloud shivered helplessly. “This is some shit.”

Angelica brought her hands to her face. She clapped, just once, and took a single backward step.

“Eisheth!”

A hissing, as when hot metal plunges into water. Then the thing that stood within the flames walked toward Angelica. Cloud made a groaning sound deep within her throat.

It was like a man or woman made of fire. Light rippled about it like leaves thick upon a tree, but as it moved from the flames its bright skin faded to ruddy bronze. Its hair fell about its broad shoulders in tangled brassy strands. From its shoulders sprang two immense folded wings. While it made no sound, there was a heaviness to its tread—it moved like a creature formed of the same stone as the buttes and mesas. Its hands were crossed tenderly upon its breast. It held something there, but Cloud could not see what it was.

“Eisheth,” whispered Angelica.

The creature lifted its head, and Cloud nearly cried aloud for the sheer mad beauty of it. It had a long angular face, with high, planed cheekbones and slanted eyes, a strong jaw and jutting chin. But there was something feminine about it as well, something soft in the wide mouth and rosebud lips, the enormous eyes and arching brows. Its pupils were almost without color, pale and icily prescient, like those of a malamute. Its skin was the color of thick cream, ivory tinged with yellow, its body smooth and hairless as an infant’s.

It had wings.

“Eisheth,” Angelica repeated.

“Yes,” the thing replied, its voice a whisper. A girl’s voice, or a boy’s before the change. Its arms remained crossed; whatever it held neither struggled nor cried out.

“Do you know me, Eisheth?”

The thing bowed its head very slightly. “I do, Mistress.”

“And you have brought what I commanded you to bring me?”

“I have, Othiym.”

Othiym, thought Cloud. She dug her nails into her thighs to keep from crying out. Othiym, it called her Othiym—what is this shit?

“And the other naphaïm: they have done as I asked? They are heeding when they are called?”

“They are.”

“And they do as my priestesses bid them?”

“They do, Othiym.”

Cloud’s knees shook uncontrollably.

Othiym. Angelica was calling herself Othiym. And this other—thing, whatever the fuck it was—it was calling her Othiym, too!

The two of them were barely fifteen feet from where Cloud squatted. Behind her, past more ocotillo and the deactivated electric fence, stretched the gravel road that led to the highway and open desert. If she took off now, she could be out of sight in moments. Cloud knew she could outrun Angelica—all that personal trainer stuff was great for keeping your stomach flat and your thighs taut, but it didn’t do shit for your stamina.

But was this Angelica? And could she outrun something with wings?

“Let me see him, then.” Angelica’s voice was impatient. Cloud forced herself to look up again.

Behind the naphaïm, the fiery wall had died away. There was only the pool, still and calm as before, though streaks of lavender and green occasionally flickered across its surface.

“Now!” demanded Angelica.

The naphaïm’s wings spread into a shimmering tent of gold and bronze and black. It opened its arms. From them something staggered, something pathetically small and frail-looking. It took a few steps, stumbled, and clumsily got to its feet again.

“Hey.” The figure looked around slowly. “This isn’t the bus station.”

Oh, shit, thought Cloud.

It was a kid. A boy, no more than sixteen or seventeen. He wore standard street gear—baggy pants cut off at the knees, a paisley shirt once brightly colored but now faded to grey tears. Busted-out boots with no socks, filthy bandanna, bruised knees. Kind of a sweet face, sunburned pink where it wasn’t grey with dirt. Blue eyes, freckles: basic Midwest issue. Probably hadn’t seen a shower in a month. His hair was blond and very dirty, hanging limply to his shoulders. What Cloud could see of the rest of him was dirty as well.

“Hello,” murmured Angelica. Almost imperceptibly she gestured at the naphaïm. “Eisheth—go now.”

The boy lifted his head, blinking. Behind him the naphaïm took a step backward. Its wings shuddered, beating the air. There was a sound like thunder. For an instant the air grew darker, as though a cloud had swept before the moon; but of course there was no moon. The boy covered his head, like he expected to see something bearing down on him, crazed eagle or renegade jumpjet or some other desert weirdness. After a moment he lowered his arms, gazing stupidly into the empty air and then at the ground, where a single feather trembled, as long as the boy’s arm and the deep crimson of fresh blood.

“Hello,” Angelica said again.

The boy’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open.

“Who—oa,” he breathed.

Angelica smiled. One hand flicked playfully at a lock of hair falling into her eyes, a fleeting motion that for an instant made her look more human. So that, Cloud thought, maybe—like if you were this kid and hadn’t had a hot meal in a week and were homesick and heartsick and probably sick with other things as well—just maybe you could imagine she was something like a normal woman. He was gaping like a gigged frog, running one hand nervously through his stringy hair and staring at Angelica—beautiful, unearthly, naked Angelica—like he didn’t know whether she was real or just some hemp-fueled vision.

“What’s your name?”

Angelica stepped toward him, still smiling. It was all so crazy and horrible and yet so real, and of course the only sane thing for Cloud to do was to run, get the hell away from there as fast as she could. But Cloud was paralyzed.

“Russell,” said the boy, his voice cracking.

“Russell,” repeated Angelica. “How old are you, Russell?”

“Uh—seventeen.”

Her necklace cast a delicate silvery glow across his face, so that for a moment you could see that he really was a nice-looking kid, but definitely younger than seventeen—Cloud thought fifteen, tops. He closed his mouth and swallowed, unable to tear his gaze from Angelica. The amazement in his eyes flickered into something else. Confusion, a certain wariness.

Fear.

“You must be awfully hot—would you like to go swimming?”

Angelica’s hand rested lightly on his shoulder. Cloud hadn’t seen her move to touch him, and apparently the boy hadn’t either. He jumped, then shook his head.

“Uh—no—I mean, I don’t have like, a bathing suit or anything? I was trying—I was trying to get to the bus station…”

He frowned, looking up at Angelica, then peered into the darkness behind her as though searching for someone. Cloud’s heat pounded. Surely he must see her crouching there amidst the thorny scrub, he’d point and say something and Angelica would turn and then—

“No?” Suddenly Angelica’s voice was exasperated: she might have wasted hours talking with him, instead of minutes.

One hand lay upon her breastbone, fingers spread to cover the silver crescent. Bluish light streamed between her fingers. As Cloud stared Angelica’s hand tightened about the pendant. “Well then, Russell—”

She pulled the necklace over her head, held it with both hands, her fingers curling over its curved points. The boy stared at her, his expression frozen between surprise and disbelief. Before he could move she was upon him.

A streak like the moon through a shuttered window. The boy’s hair fell across his face. His mouth yawned hideously. Cloud saw Angelica’s hand snatched backward, the silver crescent a swath of darkness, blood flowing in its wake. The boy’s head flopped onto his chest. Cloud glimpsed his eyes, wide and startled, his mouth brightly crimson as though lipsticked.

“Ah,” he said.

There was a glistening darkness where his throat had been cut, a net of red covering his face and hands. Very slowly his body crumpled, until he lay on his side like a sick child, his dirty hair fallen across his face.

Above him stood Angelica. She held the crescent before her, its silver tarnished black and crimson. Smoke threaded between its two prongs. Her upturned gaze was beseeching yet triumphant, her voice like hail hammering against the desert floor.

Haïyo Othiym! Othiym Lunarsa!

From distant hills and canyons her voice was thrown back—

Haïyo Othiym! haïyo haïyo haïyo…

—voices dying, dying, dying…

With a yelp Cloud bolted from the underbrush. Thorns tore at her legs, she could feel blood spurting onto her thigh but she didn’t care, she didn’t give a fuck about anything as long as she was gone. Beneath her soles stones scattered like marbles. She slipped, catching herself on a barrel cactus and crying out as the thorns pierced her hand. From the corner of her eyes she glimpsed Angelica standing above the corpse of the boy she’d killed, her face twisted with rage.

“Mellisœ agevahe! Oye Mellisæ!”

“Fuck you!” gasped Cloud. She leapt over a prickly pear and landed on the smooth surface of the drive. And fuck Melissa, too!

She hurtled up the driveway. Ahead of her, she could just make out the tall posts with their sagging loops of electrified wire strung between, the crossties of the weathered gate that opened out onto Fire Road S3. Her heart was like a brick slung inside her chest, her shins ached from pounding the rough ground, but it was only a few more yards, she could feel where wild grass and sedge were poking up through the loose dirt beneath her feet and all she had to do was reach the gate and she could—

“Shit!”

Pain erupted from a spot above her knee. She slapped at her leg, felt another agonizing stab at her palm. Still running, she drew her hand up, saw a glistening red spot on the fleshy part of her thumb. Blood.

She shook her hand, trying to dislodge the shining droplet. But then the drop upon her thumb moved, coalesced into a gleaming bead of crimson with black legs and two bright black beads for eyes. Its jointed antennae twitched furiously, its swollen body thrust upward so for an instant she glimpsed what protruded from its abdomen, a black splinter like another thorn. Before she could slap it away another burst of pain lanced her shoulder, her leg, her breast; then another, and another. She glanced down and screamed.

She was covered with bees: a living shroud of bees, so many she could hear the pattering of their legs as they crawled over each other, trying to find purchase on her exposed skin. Thousands of them, each with its blaze of agony like a tiny blade drawn through her flesh. She shrieked and slapped at them, lurching across the stony ground, but it was like trying to outrun the rain. Her mouth opened and one darted inside; she gagged as she felt its legs, and then a horrible bolt of pain as it stung the back of her throat. She fell to the ground, clawing at her tongue.

Her throat was swollen shut; she couldn’t see for the bodies swarming across her eyes. They were crawling into her nostrils, she could feel them burrowing into her ears, their spent stingers a pelt of soft black hairs across her tongue and cheek and lips.

A few more minutes, and you could not tell that there had ever been a person there at all. The swarm covered a mound that could have been a large stone or dead animal, vaguely human-shaped. The bees crawled atop each other, coupling, feeding, moving their abdomens in vicious thrusts, squeezing their eggs from their bodies to lie beneath the girl’s skin, before it grew too stiff. When nearly an hour had passed, they departed. In long skeins like thread spun from a spindle, they lifted and sang off into the night, their humming growing fainter and fainter until it died.

From a few yards away a figure watched, silent, unmoving. Upon her breast glowed a swollen moon. It gave forth beams of splintered light as she raised her arms and chanted in a clear strong voice.

And now that the bees had gone she summoned their sisters:

—and the ants came, the voracious red driver ants named eciton that lay waste to vast areas of the rain forest, devouring anything in their path. They were like a shadow creeping down the hillside, like a ragged hem of darkness falling across that small still form. As quickly as the bees had found Cloud, the ants foamed across the barren desert and onto her corpse. Their feet made a whispering sound as they climbed upon her, her limbs and face bloated with venom. They darkened her skin like a bruise, crept beneath her loose clothing so that the fabric moved with a soft undercurrent of sound, a rustling that grew into a sort of tearing noise, like shears being drawn through thick canvas.

The noise continued for a long time. An acrid smell filled the air, released from glands near the ants’ mandibles. As they fed, other creatures crept up from the tiled veranda to watch: a pair of soft slow tarantulas and the elfin kit fox. But when they detected that bitter smell the tarantulas raised their front legs defensively and stalked back into the darkness. The kit fox’s ears flattened against its skull as it whined, then fled into the shadows. Only the bats whistled overhead, now and then sweeping down to carry off one of the winged sentries that hovered above the corpse.

When finally they had fed, the ants moved on. Like water poured onto the desert floor, the dark cloud spread; then disappeared into countless unseen cracks and crevices. Only their scent remained, a smell like bitter melons, and a glistening assemblage of bones and skull, a torn black shirt and khaki shorts like the flag of a fallen army sunk between loops of ivory.

It was Martin who found her early the next morning, out on his dawn run. He recognized her clothes, and also the three tiny gold rings he found caught in the curve of a finger bone, alongside the shivering crystal wedge of an insect’s wing.

“Oh, my god,” he whispered, and raced back to the house.

“What is it?” demanded Angelica, as she met him at the door.

“Stay inside, just stay in here,” commanded Martin, and he dialed 911 with shaking hands.

A short while later the police and ambulance arrived, but of course there was nothing they could do. The dogs they brought, sturdy cheerful German shepherds trained in tracking lost children and hikers, sniffed at the sad array of bones and then bellied miserably onto the ground, pawing at their muzzles and whining.

“The coroner’s on his way, and Dr. Sorrell from up at Flagstaff,” the chief of police told Angelica. He was pale as he scratched a few notes onto his clipboard. By the pool Martin was comforting the hysterical Kendra, who had, despite orders from Angelica, run to the top of the ridge and seen what was there. Sunday was talking excitedly to a reporter, telling him about the puma she’d seen months before. “He says fire ants have killed folks in South Texas but that was more of an allergic reaction. This just seems like some kinda crazy freakish thing—”

“I can’t believe it, I just can’t believe it,” murmured Angelica. She shook her head and stared out the open front door. Three police cars and the coroner’s car and an ambulance were in the drive, along with the pickup trucks of two local reporters, all parked every which way, some with their doors still hanging open. As she stared a plume of yellowish dust rose from between the jaws of the wooden gate at the top of the hill. A moment later a Jeep came bouncing down the drive.

“Who’s this?” asked the chief of police.

“My son,” Angelica said softly. “He’s been driving back from college—”

The Jeep slammed to a stop. Its door flew open and a tall figure jumped out. He paused and stared at Martin and Kendra on the patio, turned to gaze in disbelief at the policemen and ambulance and the howling brace of dogs caged in a police car.

“Mom?” he yelled, running up the sidewalk. He ducked through the front door, glancing around frantically until he saw her. “Mom!”

“Dylan,” she said, and opened her arms to embrace him. “Dylan—”

“What happened, Mom, what’s—”

“Shhh,” she said, raising her hand to stroke the long hair from his eyes. “Shhh, don’t worry, it’s okay—

“Just something bad, that’s all. Something bad that happened to Cloud.”

CHAPTER 13 Other Echoes

WHEN I CALLED THE Beacon I got Baby Joe’s voice mail, his soft sleepy voice followed by a few bars of the Bernard Herrmann score for Jason and the Argonauts. I left a message, then went to clear my head.

Outside on the Mall, the Aditi was in full swing. Raga music, wailing flutes, fire-eaters and magicians and puppet masters, all obscured by the duck smoke of frying samosas and the dust raised by thousands of passing feet. Already the grass had been trampled into a dirty greenish mat pleached with cigarette butts and trampled hot dogs and broken balloons. You could see the heat shimmering from the sidewalks and the flow of traffic on Constitution Avenue. In front of the National Gallery of Art, water arced from a line of sprinklers and children ran shrieking in and out of the rainbow spray. A woman in a stained sundress rummaged through a trash bin.

It was the second of July. Tens of thousands of tourists had descended on the city, and they all seemed to be right here, mingling with the dancers and fakirs and weavers imported from India at the expense of Winesap, Inc. I watched a family in full American tourist drag staring at a Bengali mother in tissue-silk sari and gold bracelets and her children, as they watched two young men angle a pair of fighter kites across the sky. In the background the Capitol glowed like a huge white cloud, its perimeter ringed with flags and the concrete bulwarks set up over the last few years to guard against terrorist attacks. The kites swooped and dipped, delta chips of green and yellow. Their strings had been coated with broken glass, so that when one suddenly dived at the other, the tail of the second kite was severed. It went into a stall and crashed. The victor reeled in his kite, smiling; then the two warriors gathered their reels and arm in arm walked to a Good Humor wagon.

It was all a little too weird for me. I went to a booth with a yellow-and-white awning and bought a lemonade. I crossed the Mall to the Freer, always an oasis of calm amidst the summer storm of tourists and children. I sat on a bench and sipped my lemonade and mused on what I had seen on TV.

Angelica a cult figure.

I shook my head and took another sip, getting a grainy mouthful of sour sugar. Although, really, it wasn’t totally unexpected. If I really thought about it, I would have been surprised if Angelica hadn’t turned out to be somehow extraordinary. If instead of an Italian count, she’d married a chemical engineer from Houston and settled there to raise their children. I wondered if she had children, dismissed the notion as ridiculous, maybe even a little grotesque. I could imagine Angelica hiring someone else to bear a daughter for her, and then engaging an army of nannies and tutors and linguists to raise her, a serenely beautiful child playing by herself in a Florentine garden.

But Angelica pregnant, Angelica in labor; Angelica changing diapers and making Play-Doh and watching The Brave Little Toaster? Not in a thousand years.

I finished my lemonade, dropped the empty cup atop a trash can already filled to overflowing. I walked slowly back across the Mall. A murky breeze carried the greasy smells of hot dogs and egg rolls from the lines of roach coaches parked in front of the museums. A bunch of marines in summer whites posed on the museum steps with a cardboard cutout of the president and his wife. Two museum guards watched, laughing, and saluted.

Too weird. I let the heavy revolving doors bear me inside, breathing gratefully the cool recycled air, the heady scents of tourism and scholarship, and returned to my office.

A little while later Baby Joe called. “What’s shaking, hija?”

“Baby Joe!” I was unexpectedly relieved to hear his voice. “You okay?” Silence. It had been only a week since Hasel’s death. “Yeah, I guess. Why?”

“Well—I just saw the weirdest thing on TV. On Opal Purlstein—”

“You watch Opal Purlstein?”

“Angelica was on! I saw her, she was promoting some new book—”

“Oh, yeah. Waking the Moon. It’s supposed to hit the best-seller list this Sunday.”

I was flabbergasted. “I have a friend at the Times Book Review,” said Baby Joe tentatively, “he says—”

“You knew?” I exploded. “You knew about Angelica and didn’t tell me?”

“Hey, Sweeney, it’s not like it’s some kind of state secret—”

“I know that! But all that stuff about Hasel, and you never even mentioned—”

“I didn’t even know until a few months ago. I mean about her,” he said, aggrieved. “And—well, with Hasel and everything, I kind of forgot—”

“How could you forget?”

“Cut me some slack, Sweeney! My best friend fucking died!”

“But Angelica—Hasel said he saw—”

I could hear a soft intake of breath as he dragged on his cigarette. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about Hasel right now,” he said finally.

“Fine,” I snapped. “Can we talk about Angelica?”

Another long silence, followed by a sigh. “Yeah. But listen, Sweeney—there’s something weird going on. I mean with Angelica—”

“So that’s news?”

“Back off, huh? Okay, this is what I know: someone here interviewed Angelica for the Leisure section a little while ago. She’s got some kind of cult following out on the West Coast, feminist grad students, something like that…”

“You could have told me, Baby Joe. Jeez, I almost had a heart attack when I saw her—”

“How’d she look?”

“Fantastic. I mean, she doesn’t look different at all, she looks just like—”

I thought of how she had looked the last time I’d seen her: crouched over Oliver, as though she were a wolf and he her prey. I felt a clutching in my chest, the same awful disjointed feeling I’d had when Baby Joe told me Hasel died.

“—she looked just like always,” I ended lamely.

“Yeah.” Baby Joe sighed again. “Okay, I guess I should have told you when I first found out. But I kept thinking of Oliver, and—well, you and Angie had all that weird history—”

“We did?”

“Hey, hija, you tell me. But Oliver, you know, I thought it would just make you feel bad…”

His voice drifted off. I imagined him sitting at his computer, hazed with blue smoke and a dusting of ash. My anger melted—because seeing Angelica did make me think of Oliver, and that did make me feel bad.

“It was a long time ago,” I said at last.

“A long time ago, in a university far, far away,” Baby Joe giggled softly. “Hey, you didn’t videotape her or anything, did you?”

“No. I guess I should have. But I was so—well, I was kind of shocked. It was like The Picture of Dorian Gray or something.”

“Yeah. And somewhere there’s a very bad photo of Angelica, with her mascara running and no lipstick. Very scary.”

I laughed. “So she’s a best-seller now, huh? I had no idea. I’ll have to get her book. You know anything about it?”

“Not really. But I’ll fax you that interview.”

We exchanged a few scurrilous remarks, and I told him about the Aditi.

“Sounds pretty wild. I bet the food’s good—”

“It’s great. You should come down and check it out.”

“Do they have baluts?”

“What’s baluts?”

“Filipino specialty. You take these embryonic chickens and bury ’em in the dirt for a couple months, and then—”

“That’s enough. No, I’m pretty sure there’s no baluts.”

“Too bad. Don’t you ever do any work down there?”

“Nah. This is the government. Mostly we just take turns answering the phone and going to lunch.”

I heard someone calling to Baby Joe in the background. “Listen, hija, I gotta go. I may have something else for you later. You gonna be there?”

“I guess—”

“Okay”

He hung up. I sat for several minutes staring at my desk.

“Katherine?”

I turned to see Dr. Dvorkin framed in the doorway. “Robert! Come on in.”

“Thanks—I can’t stay, Jack left me some paperwork I’ve got to fill out for his fire-eaters.”

He grimaced: a small round man, with white hair and a neatly trimmed white goatee, wrinkled and kindly and smartly dressed as an F.A.O. Schwarz Santa doing time in a fancy law firm. Even now, in D.C.’s broiling summer, he wore an immaculate grey three-piece suit, complete with testosterone yellow tie and matching pocket handkerchief.

“Katherine, I have to attend a Regent’s Supper at the Castle tonight. Would you mind checking in on the cats for me?”

In addition to being my boss at the museum, Dr. Dvorkin was my landlord. For the last eight years I’d rented the tiny brick carriage house in his back garden on the Hill. It was the most wonderful place I’d ever lived. The only place I could even imagine might be nicer was Dr. Dvorkin’s own town house.

“Of course not. Should I be looking for white smoke rising from the tower?”

Dr. Dvorkin sighed. For several months now the search had been on for a new Regent; three months earlier one had died at the age of ninety-seven and his replacement had yet to be named. “Not yet, I’m afraid. We’re meeting someone else this evening. I hope to god this thing doesn’t take all night. I think there’s some basil in my refrigerator, you should take it when you come over, it’s about to go bad.”

“Thanks, Robert.”

“Thank you.” He turned to go, then stopped. “I almost forgot—you got a fax.”

I took the pages, tossed away the cover sheet, and settled back into my chair to read.

It wasn’t what you’d call an in-depth piece—the New York Beacon wasn’t exactly noted for its coverage of Nobel Prize winners—but it seemed like a pretty decent matching of journal and subject. While there wasn’t a photo of Angelica accompanying the interview (and that seemed a mistake), there was a loving description of one of her homes, in the canyons north of Hollywood, and a rather breathless listing of the original artwork hanging there: Frida Khalo, Mary Cassatt, Cindy Sherman, Robert Mapplethorpe’s polaroids of Patti Smith, an ancient vase fragment depicting Sappho’s lament for the virgin Gorgo.

The (female) interviewer was obviously bewitched by Angelica. It was easy to see why—Angelica was so charming, her answers to even personal questions funny and self-deprecating. I could just imagine her, lounging on her white leather sofa with the picture windows overlooking the canyon. She wore expensively tasteful clothes: Italian sandals, pleated cream-colored skirt, jade green silk blouse. The interviewer noted that she wore simple jewelry, silver earrings shaped like crescent moons, and a moon-shaped silver pendant around her neck.

I learned that her husband the duke had been eighteen years her senior, and had died during a sailing trip in the Aegean five years ago. Following his death, Angelica returned to the States and began writing in earnest. Her first two books, The Nysean Fields and Amazons in America, had been published as trade paperbacks by a small New Age press. The books had become surprise best-sellers, and a cause célèbre in both New Age and small press circles. After Amazons in America turned up on the New York Times best-seller list, Angelica started giving workshops stressing the same things she invoked in her books: how women should avoid becoming victims, how they should take responsibility for their own failures as well as successes; how they should learn to recognize the Goddess within themselves. There was a strong occult slant to all of this, with the Goddess (whom Angelica called Othiym) standing in for that ubiquitous Greater Power favored by adherents of AA and its ilk.

And, unlike any Twelve-Step program or women’s self-help group that I’d ever heard of, there were some genuinely disturbing elements in Angelica’s Goddess-worship. The emphasis on the division between the sexes, rather than their union; a certain disregard for the importance of family or any other ties except for those between the Goddess and her followers. In the little I’d read of other, similar, female gurus—Shirley MacLaine, Lynn Andrews, Marianne Williamson—there was always an emphasis on the powers of love and forgiveness, of the importance of loving yourself so you could better love someone else.

Angelica didn’t buy it.

The reporter gently suggested that perhaps it wasn’t as bad as all that. Dr. Furiano bristled.

[Dr. Furiano: I was impressed.]

I laughed. This sounded like the old Angelica.

There was more of this sort of talk; then,

I put the fax paper down on my desk, smoothed it with my hand.

Othiym. Waking the Moon.

It was all crazy, of course, but exactly what I would have expected from Angelica. The part about saving the world made it sound like maybe she’d tripped off the line somewhere, but the rest seemed pretty much in character with the girl I’d known nineteen years before. And at least she’d given credit to June Harrington and Marija Gimbutas and…

At the thought of Magda Kurtz I shivered, reached instinctively for the cardigan I kept hanging on the back of my chair all winter. But it was July now. The sweater was stuffed in a drawer at home, and I doubt if it would have offered much comfort anyhow.

“Katherine?”

I started, turned, and saw Laurie Driscoll, our department secretary “Another fax for you.” She handed me a piece of paper. “And Alice said to tell you that your intern will be here tomorrow morning—I guess a whole batch of them arrived this morning, they’ve got orientation and then some kind of lunch at the Castle. So finally we’ll have some help getting that new stuff organized.”

“About time.” I took the fax, glanced down, and recognized Baby Joe’s signature. After she left, I read Baby Joe’s addendum.

It was a copy of a brief article from that morning’s New York Times.

I stared at the paper, unsure whether to laugh or not. At first I thought it was another one of Baby Joe’s practical jokes—killer ants?

Then I remembered the things I had glimpsed behind the door in Garvey Hall so long ago.

I had spent the last nineteen years trying to forget what I had seen in my few months at the Divine; trying to forget Oliver. Because Oliver was dead, and Magda Kurtz, and now Hasel Bright…

But I was alive, and so were Baby Joe and Annie and Angelica. Even if part of the unspoken deal I had made with Luciano di Rienzi and the Benandanti was to cut myself off from my friends, it had been almost enough, during all those years, to know my friends were out there still. To know that they were thriving, even if I was not. Even if my head and heart had remained under some kind of house arrest ever since.

And there was always Baby Joe, who had stayed in touch with me in apparent defiance of the Benandanti. Who had struck out on his own into the tabloid jungle, rather than become the brujo the Benandanti wanted him to be.

But now it seemed that all the unfinished business of my life that I had thought safely interred in the past was waking, moving slowly beneath the dry earth and starting to break through. I thought of the words of the poet of another city—

I stared at the pages Baby Joe had sent me.

I took the pages, folded them as neatly as I could, and put them in the top drawer of my desk. I made sure all the monitors and VD players were turned off, checked the latches on my windows, and left.

CHAPTER 14 Devil-Music

HER ENCORE WAS ALWAYS the same. She walked offstage, got doused with Evian water by Patrick and Helen, tore off her sweat-soaked tuxedo shirt and replaced it with a sleeveless black Labrys T-shirt showing the double axe and her label’s motto. She gulped down a second bottle of Evian, smoothed her buzz cut with one hand and exchanged her acoustic Martin for a shocking pink electric Gibson.

“Good house,” said Patrick. He was her manager. They’d known each other for thirteen years, since Annie first began singing in campus bars and rathskellers and then coffeehouses when the drinking age was raised to twenty-one.

“Great fucking house,” retorted Annie. She reached over to get Helen’s head in a hammerlock, kissed her scalp, and turned to run back out onstage.

“Provincetown, we love you!” she yelled, raising her fist.

A wave of screaming applause from the audience. The band stepped from the shadows where they’d hidden all night, giving the occasional muted nuance to Annie’s acoustic work. Annie kicked away the chair where she’d sat with her acoustic guitar. A droning bass line roared out, a few tentative drumbeats; then the opening bars, transformed into something ominous and brooding. Annie stepped up to the mike, standing on tiptoe to readjust it. She grinned, tossing her head back. Her smoky voice rang out, twisting around the odd rhythms of desire and rage and nostalgia: her first real hit, Number 2 on the alternative charts: not bad at all for a thirty-seven-year-old lesbian folksinger from Nebraska.

The audience shouted out the chorus, several hundred women and a few guys singing and swaying, raising their margaritas and Bellinis and Amstel Lights to the diminutive figure on the small raised stage. The music raged on, the chorus repeated again and again as the audience refused to let her leave. Annie grinned, dipping her head so the sweat flew off in tiny droplets and turned to mist in the heat of the spotlight.

Then, Annie heard it. The now-familiar chant rising from a half dozen people at a table in the very front, their voices at first keeping time with the music but gradually growing stronger and louder, running counterpoint to her own husky voice and guitar—

Annie’s smile froze. She glanced up and saw her bassist Linga staring at her in concern.

Still those other words rang out, loud enough now to drown her own.

Annie glared down into the front row of tables with their flailing figures, trying to turn the tiny space into a mosh pit. She shouted the last lines of her song, heard the crash of echoing feedback from the band behind her. She bowed, trying to look as exhilarated as the women screaming a few yards away from her on the club floor. Then she walked offstage. The band followed her into the tiny dressing room, grinning and raising their fists.

Patrick met her there with more bottled water, a paperback book, and a huge sheaf of flowers.

“An admirer,” he said, handing her the book: Journal of a Solitude. “And I don’t know who these are from—”

He waved the flowers at her, but Annie turned away.

“Boy, they’re really noisy tonight,” said Helen. “Must be a full moon.”

“Fucking amateurs,” snarled Annie Harmony. She gulped her Evian water and tossed the book onto a table. “Dark of the moon.”

“What?” Helen stepped behind her partner.

“Dark of the moon, they come out at the dark of the moon. Black angels,” she added ominously. “Fucking cultists.”

Patrick raised an eyebrow, gazing at her over the fragrant cloud of blossoms he still held. “I would have thought you’d be into all that stuff, Annie,” he said in surprise. “You know, women’s spirituality, awakening the goddess within, that kind of thing.”

Annie scowled. She grabbed a towel from Helen and mopped her face.

“Annie went to college with Angelica Furiano,” Helen explained. “They were roommates.”

“No lie?” Patrick’s eyes widened. “Was this in Italy or something?”

“D.C.,” said Annie brusquely. “It was only a semester. I haven’t seen her since.”

She crossed the cramped room to gather her bag and a plastic quart bottle of Diet Pepsi, looked back at Helen. “I’ve got to go to the hotel; I forgot my filofax and I’d like to take a shower. Martha’s supposed to meet us at the inn at eleven-thirty. Please don’t make us late again.”

Patrick and Helen watched as she swept out of the dressing room, the little swaggering figure shoving open the fire door and disappearing into a small crowd of fans waiting in the street.

“She doesn’t like to talk about Angelica,” Helen explained.

“Duh,” said Patrick. He rubbed his earcuff gingerly. “So they were really roommates?”

Helen nodded. She was slender and dark, her hair braided into elaborate patterns spliced with red and yellow beads and brighdy colored strands of kente cloth. “Yeah. Supposedly even back then, Angelica was really something.”

“She and Annie have a thing?”

Helen shrugged. “Who knows? It’s ancient history now. I know Angelica was involved with some friend of theirs, this guy who killed himself after she dumped him. I guess Annie must have taken it pretty hard. She doesn’t like to talk about her at all.”

Patrick regarded the flowers thoughtfully. “Well, I guess I can relate to that. You want to take these back to the hotel?”

Helen grabbed the bouquet, sniffed it tentatively. “Nice. Hey, these are pretty exotic. What are they?”

Patrick touched one delicately crumpled scarlet blossom. “Well, that looks like some kind of poppy, and these—”

He breathed on a handful of soft pale blue petals, “—these are anemones.”

“And that’s a jonquil.” Helen’s pinkie brushed a tiny pale orange flute surrounded by flaring white petals. “We used to grow them in Vermont.”

“Narcissus, I think little ones like that are called narcissus, and this looks like some kind of hybrid hyacinth.”

Helen breathed in deeply. “God, they really do smell wonderful, don’t they? All these fragrant things. But what a bizarre arrangement—I’ve never even seen some of these before. Who’d you say brought them?”

Patrick shrugged. “I don’t know. Some woman. She had on this cowled dress, très mystérieuse. She just kind of blew in and out before I could say anything. But wait—you know what, there was a card with them, let me look—”

He shuffled through the crumpled newspapers and plastic containers from the take-out Thai place next door, triumphantly held up a piece of paper.

“Ta da!”

“Let me see.” Helen took it, a small white rectangle, expensive cotton rag paper with tiny letters written on it in black ink. A cryptic but very careful hand—the script looked as though it had been typed. Patrick stood behind her to read over her shoulder.

Helen shook her head. “How bizarre. Dea, that means goddess, I bet. Well, that makes sense, there were a bunch of those girls out there tonight. But the rest’s in Latin. You were an altar boy, what’s it mean?”

Patrick took the note and puzzled over it. “‘Utcunque placurit.’ I think that’s something like, As it pleases you or May it please you. And verus, that means truth. So this would mean, As it pleases the true Goddess. Weird with a beard.”

“Weird with a merkin.” Helen dropped the card onto the table and handed the flowers back to Patrick. “Here, go find some nice young man and give these to him.”

“You don’t think Annie wants them?”

“I think Annie would be a little freaked, Patrick. Those girls give her the creeps. Me too. Look, I gotta fly; if I’m late again, she’ll have a fit.”

“Yup. See you later. I’ll clean up—”

He poured the rest of the Evian water into a jar and set the flowers in it, then went to meet the club manager to discuss the evening’s take.

They met Martha in the bar at the Tides Inn, a small, pleasantly dim room cooled by several softly whirring ceiling fans. Air-conditioning would have been more useful—it was seventy-nine degrees outside, at midnight—but Annie had to admit the fans looked nice, big old brass-bladed things slicing through the darkness and making a gentle whick-whick sound. For once Helen hadn’t been late. But Martha was, and so Annie and her lover sat alone at a small table by the window, silently holding hands. There was no one else in the place. The owner served them, a taciturn man with long white hair in a braid down his back. Helen got a Hurricane, Annie a club soda with lime. Through an open window wafted the brisk salt smell of the ocean, the reek of patchouli and joss sticks from the crystal emporium next door. They sipped their drinks and stared outside, watching the twinkling lights of boats bobbing in the water, the steady parade of sunburned couples on Commercial Street—men and men, women and women, women and men—laughing and talking, relishing the night.

Annie stared at them enviously. Everyone looked so bouncy and cheerful, as though they’d all just come out of the same Frank Capra movie. She always felt slightly dazed and suspicious when she visited P-town, just as she did in Key West and Palm Springs and the Berkshires, any place where gay couples could act just like everybody else. Any place, really, where people made being happy look so easy.

Face it: you’d feel like this in Disneyland, she thought. Too many years in Nebraska, too many years singing and starving; too much time spent being afraid, remembering Lisa and Oliver and Angelica and now Hasel—

She stiffened, and her fingers tightened around Helen’s.

“Those girls tonight?” asked Helen softly. Annie looked up at her, shaking her head as though awakening from a dream.

“How’d you know?”

Helen smiled. “I have magical powers and the gift of sarcasm.”

“That’s my line, girlfriend. But yeah, I was thinking about them.”

“It’s not such a terrible thing.” Helen twisted one of her braids around a finger, playing with the rows of striped trade beads. “How bad can it be, for women to learn how to stick up for themselves, to be assertive and all that stuff? I think your friend Angelica is onto something—I mean, there really is this dark aspect to goddess-worship that everyone has ignored for all these centuries. It’s like being a Christian and refusing to acknowledge the Inquisition.”

“She’s not my friend.”

Helen smiled wryly. “Boy, you must have had it bad, to still get so worked up over her.”

“I’m not worked up over her, this has nothing to do with my feelings for—”

“Hi, guys! Sorry I’m late, I had to go home and feed the dogs. I brought a couple of friends—I hope you don’t mind, Annie—”

They looked up to see Martha, resplendent in an African-print dress, her hennaed hair looped in extravagant braids and her ears hung with gold circlets. Around her throat she wore a thin gold chain heavy with little charms: a lambda, a dolphin, a crescent moon, a tiny silver image of the faience Cretan snake-goddess, serpents like two lightning bolts dangling from her raised arms. “This is Lyla, and this is Virgie—they were just at your show, Annie, I turned them on to you years ago and promised I’d introduce you to them someday—” Martha sank into a chair and reached for Helen’s drink, took a sip. “Oooh, that’s good. I’ll try one of those.”

At the sight of the two strangers Annie stiffened.

Moon-girls. She recognized them from the club earlier, shouting their goddamn mantra while she was trying to sing. Young, in their early twenties—so many of Angelica’s girls were young, it must have something to do with having missed that whole first wave of feminism and liberation, of growing up under the conservative cloud of the eighties, of being desperate and cynical and incredibly naive all at the same time. Virgie was coffee-skinned, with long thick black hair and tilted black eyes and a Hothead Paisan T-shirt. She wore crescent-shaped earrings and a crescent-shaped pendant around her neck, a bad copy of Angelica’s necklace made of cheap Mexican silver. Her companion was slight and short, wiry as a young girl, with auburn hair clipped close to her skull and a small tattoo of a crescent moon on her left cheek. When she extended her hand in greeting, Annie saw that she had another tattoo on the ball of her thumb, the tiny perfectly rendered image of a honeybee.

“That must have hurt,” said Helen. She pulled two extra chairs from another table and scooted over to make room.

“Not really,” said Lyla. She slid into a chair, her grey eyes never leaving Annie. “You let yourself flow into the pain. It’s over pretty quick.”

“I always thought body mutilation was the sin against the Holy Ghost,” said Annie.

“What?” asked Virgie.

“Nothing. Obsolete cultural reference.” Annie reached for her club soda and sipped, staring warily at the newcomers. “Enjoying your vacation?”

“Your show was fantastic, as always,” said Martha. She inclined her head toward her two friends. “It was the first time they’ve seen you—”

“First time we’ve seen you live. Your video is great,” broke in Lyla.

“Your music is so fantastic,” gushed Virgie. “It cuts so close to the bone, I mean it’s really amazing how you get so much out of your own pain and sense of loss, how you’ve managed to heal yourself and turn it all into those intense songs—”

“It’s a living.” Annie crunched an ice cube. She leaned back in her chair, staring at Virgie’s throat with narrowed eyes. “Nice necklace.”

“Thanks! I got it at one of Angelica Furiano’s Waking the Moon workshops. Have you ever been—”

“No.”

“Oh, but you must! I mean, she is so incredible, you can just feel the power emanating from her, I mean it was just the most incredibly intense experience of my life—”

“Wow,” said Annie dryly.

“It was pretty intense,” said Lyla. “We live in Northampton and we’ve started a group there, there’s a lot of us who took the workshops and were awakened. We get together every week and the energy level is just amazing, and—well, you just wouldn’t believe it, that’s all. You really should check it out.”

“Annie’s pretty busy touring these days,” Helen said. “We don’t have a lot of free time—”

“Angelica really is rather remarkable,” said Martha. She gave Annie an apologetic look. “I know you think it’s all kind of dumb—”

“I don’t think it’s dumb. I’m not a separatist, that’s all.”

“Oh, but all kinds of people are into Angelica!” Virgie leaned across the table to stare earnestly at Annie. “I’ve even met guys there. I mean, most of the women at our workshop were straight, and it was so amazing to see how they blossomed! Most of us—”

She fluttered her hands, indicating the women at the table, the crowds outside. “We’re used to feeling outside the mainstream, but for them it was like the first time they ever truly realized just how marginalized women are, how totally dependent on this archaic obsolete patriarchal system that enslaves us—”

Annie was silent. Martha and Helen exchanged a glance; then Martha said quickly, “I don’t think she really meant that women were literally enslaved—”

“Oh, but she did!” exclaimed Virgie. Lyla nodded; the crescent moon on her cheek caught a stray mote of candlelight and seemed to flicker. “That’s her whole thing, how we’ve been so incredibly conditioned we don’t even know that we’re nothing more than chattel, I mean look at the way they want to control our bodies—”

“The way they want to control our minds,” added Lyla.

“But Othiym—I mean Angelica—I mean, she just makes you aware of this whole new way of looking at the world. A whole old way, really—”

She pointed at Annie’s Labrys T-shirt. “Like that thing there, the double axe—that’s a symbol that goes back to ancient Crete, to the Great Goddess religion there—”

Annie gazed at Virgie coolly. “I know what it means.”

“Well, you should come to one of her gatherings and see for yourself, Annie.” Virgie’s sloe eyes widened as she spread her hands imploringly. “Angelica Furiano gives you a whole new way of looking at the world! And there’s so many of us now! Somebody’s even making a documentary about her—”

“Oh yeah? Who? Leni Riefenstahl?”

Virgie frowned. “Is she the one who did that Bikini Kill video?”

Annie moaned and looked away.

“You have to admit, Annie, at least it’s a change,” said Martha. “I mean, she really does make you think about things.”

Annie stared broodingly out the window.

“I prefer to think of things on my own,” she said at last.

“Annie’s had some bad experiences with organized religion.” Helen looked at her lover fondly. “You know, that whole lapsed Catholic trip—”

“Othiym says the reason conventional Western religions have failed is that they don’t take into account the notion of sacrifice.” Lyla’s prim expression was at odds with her tattoo and cropped hair. “She says the problem with Catholics is that they don’t take the idea of sacrifice far enough.”

“We have to break away from all that,” agreed Virgie in a childish voice. “‘The New Woman will only emerge when she learns to commit every horror and violence that till now society has denied her as foreign to her temperament.’”

Everyone was silent.

“Gee, I never thought of that,” said Annie.

“It’s from the Marquis de Sade,” Virgie confessed. “I read it in one of Angelica’s books.”

Annie’s eyes flashed. “I think you’re all playing with fire,” she said, casting a poisonous look at Virgie and Lyla. “And I think it’s incredibly rude of you and your friends to interrupt my show yelling your stupid slogans—”

“They’re not slogans,” Lyla said. “It’s an incantation. Because all great music invokes the Goddess.”

“You should be flattered.” Virgie looked as though she might burst into tears. “I mean, that your music could invoke such feelings from us—”

“I don’t think—” Martha stammered, but Annie was already getting to her feet.

“That’s your whole problem, Martha. You don’t think—none of you think, you’re letting some rich crazy egotistical New Age bitch do it for you. Haven’t you ever heard of cults, girls? Don’t any of you know how to read a newspaper? The name Manson mean anything to you? David Koresh? Bhagwan Rajneesh? Jim Jones?”

Helen rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, Annie—”

“It’s not like that at all! This is something beautiful, something totally new—”

Annie snorted. “Oh, give me a fucking break! How much enlightenment can you get in a fucking weekend? And am I wrong, or are you paying for this transcendence?”

“Actually, Angelica’s practically giving it away these days,” said Martha. “She’s got all these priestesses teaching new initiates—”

“Priestesses?” howled Annie. “Now she’s got priestesses? Man, are you getting hosed! Do you all dress like her, too? Do you spend fifteen minutes with your eyeliner and—”

“Annie,” growled Helen.

“Priestesses! I bet she passes the collection basket, too! Man, what a crock! Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. This one’s got tits and a twat, that’s all.”

Helen raised her voice above Virgie and Lyla’s angry protests. “Annie, you are being totally ridiculous!—”

“Oh yeah? Well, maybe you should just go with them and get in touch with your secret lunar self. I’m leaving.”

Annie stormed from the table. She paused to stare disdainfully at the crescent moon on Lyla’s cheek. “Hey, that’s pretty cutting edge—only you and ninety thou-sand other girls have one of those.” She headed for the door.

“It’s a sensitive topic,” said Helen, sighing. Martha put her arm around Virgie. Lyla just looked mad. “Look, I’ll go calm her down—but let’s not talk about religion anymore, okay?”

“I thought she’d understand,” wailed Virgie. “She seemed so in touch with her own inner cycles—”

“Hush,” said Martha.

Helen found Annie just outside the front door of the Inn, leaning against the wall. Down the street the usual nighttime crowd was starting to gather in front of Spiritus. A few yards away, a streetlamp’s shining globe cast a rippling silver reflection on the dark surface of the water, the bright circle breaking into fluid coils when the breeze stirred it. From a sailboat at anchor echoed laughter and the strains of dance music.

“If you think I’m going back in there, you are out of your fucking mind.”

Helen smiled in spite of herself, reached to stroke Annie’s neck. “Don’t you think you were overreacting a little?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on—Charles Manson?”

“Angelica di Rienzi could eat Charles Manson for breakfast. Probably she already has,” Annie added darkly.

“I think you’re carrying around just a teensy bit of personal baggage, Annie. I know you said you never wanted to talk about Angelica, and I’ve always respected that, but this has kind of gotten out of hand. I mean, they’re just a couple of dopey kids, that’s all! Virgie’s crying, Martha is totally bummed, and Lyla the Bee Queen looks like she is getting in touch with a very pissed-off inner goddess.”

“Good,” snapped Annie, but her mouth twisted into a half smile. “Maybe next time they won’t ruin my show.”

Helen sighed. “Well, I don’t think you’re going to get much repeat business from those two. Listen, Martha says there’s some kind of dance party out at Herring Cove tonight—”

“Yeah,” said Annie, nodding. From here you could just glimpse where the narrow spit of land curved to face the Adantic, a hazy darkness spangled with a few bobbing lights. “In the old boathouse there. Patrick told me about it; he knows one of the guys who’ve put it together. They’re supposed to have a fabulous sound and light show.”

“So let’s go and dance. Come on, it’ll be fun.”

“Oh, sure! A bunch of kids on X and vitamins—”

“You used to love to dance! Jeez, girlfriend, loosen up a little—”

Annie shook her head stubbornly. “If I ever loosen up, the world will come to an end. You know that. I’m the only thing standing between you and the dark of Mordor—”

“Hey. You know what, Annie? Shut up—”

Helen took Annie’s chin in her hand, stared into her dark eyes, and then kissed her, long and slow, her hand dropping to stroke her lover’s breast beneath the thin black T-shirt. After a minute she drew back and there was Annie, her face slightly flushed, the blazing light in her eyes somewhat softened. “You remember how to dance, don’t you?”

Annie nodded, her mouth breaking into a slow grin. “Sure. You just put your lips together, and flow—”

And drawing Helen close, she kissed her again.

When they got to Herring Cove Beach the party was in high gear, the rickety old boathouse shaking dangerously as music throbbed inside and the party spilled out onto the sand, hundreds of bodies thrashing and moving ecstatically.

“Now I know why the bar was empty,” Annie shouted.

“It’s been going on since this morning,” Martha yelled back. “I’m surprised they haven’t gotten busted.”

“They will if they stay out on the beach like that.” Annie handed the boy at the door a ten-dollar bill. He glanced at her and did a double take.

“Yo, Annie Harmony! Great time inside—”

He stamped her palm with a little smiling Goofy face in purple ink.

“What, no change?” Annie looked down at the zippered cash bag that sat in the lap of the huge bodybuilder helping guard the door. “Ten dollars so I can get sand in my drink?”

“Ten bucks, ten bucks,” he yelled, his head nodding up and down. “Chem free, smart drinks at the other door, no drinking inside—”

“Oh, yeah, right—”

“Enough, Annie!” Martha and Helen pulled her through the door.

She felt like she was inside a fireworks display, all explosive sound and color and motion. The boathouse was the only structure on this stretch of the protected seashore, a place curiously ignored by the local constabulary, most of the time. You could drink or cruise or engage in just about any carnal pastime you wanted there. Its piers had been bored by sea worms and salt, the roof was missing most of its shingles, the whole thing flooded whenever it stormed. There were ragged holes in walls and ceiling. Annie’s sneaker got stuck in the gap between two floorboards. When she bent to yank it out, she could see through the hole to where black water lapped at the rocks and pilings below. She straightened and found herself alone on a patch of empty floor. The DJ had shoved a new song into the sound system, and everyone seemed to have rushed to the far wall. She could just make out Helen and Martha dancing a few yards away. Of Virgie and Lyla she saw nothing; they had stalked off as soon as they got here, whispering and casting baleful stares in Annie’s direction.

Forget them, she thought. It was easy enough. The music was so loud it drove any-thing like a coherent thought from her brain, so fast it was like the steady rumble of an aircraft taking off, a mad stuttering sound that sent her blood hammering so hard her vision blurred. Everywhere she looked she saw people dancing, such a mass of indistinguishable bodies that it was like watching footage of bizarre underwater creatures, all waving tentacles and gasping mouths and teeth. Nearly all the boys and men were shirtless, a number of them completely naked except for plastic water bottles taped to a thigh or forearm. A lot of the women were naked too, their breasts flashing white in the steamy air. And of course she saw people humping, too. Not just in pairs, but in threes and fours and fives and serpentine lines too long to count, although there was something oddly sexless about their motion: it was like they were just another part of the machine, tins vast human engine thundering through the old boathouse like a juggernaut.

It was too much to hope that she’d be able to hold out against it. Within minutes she was moving too, and if she’d worried about being recognized she soon forgot—hers was just another shining face, another pair of arms and legs flickering in the blinding strobe lights. She let the river of light flow across her closed eyelids, a spectral wash of purple and black. When she opened her eyes a moment later she saw a strange tableau against the far wall, frozen in the brilliant glare of the strobes.

It was Virgie and Lyla and several other women and young men. They stood together, not moving, not even engaging in the incessant nervous gestures of drinking and mopping sweat that, as far as Annie could see, was the closest anyone here came to actually standing still.

This crowd was standing still. They were utterly motionless, and they were staring at Annie. In the center of the little group was one figure that really stood out—quite literally, since he or she was head and shoulders taller than the rest. Annie slowed her dancing to a sort of halfhearted swaying, staring boldly at the others, daring them to keep looking at her.

They did. Virgie and Lyla stood by the figure in the middle, their faces stern and watchful. The others formed a half circle around them. Most of the women were young, their bodies taut and muscular as Lyla’s; though one was much older, with greying hair pulled into a coil on the nape of her neck. Boys and girls alike, they all had tattoos. Like a brand, grinning crescents on cheeks and shoulders and swelling biceps.

Hah! real Moonies, thought Annie. She tried to keep her gaze fearless and disdainful, tried to keep moving. But those watchful eyes made her shudder. Like the multiple eyes of some patient spider, the way they just kept staring, like they had all the time in the world to wait for her to tire and weaken. And the frenzied crowd roiling about her only made it worse—she could scream and thrash all she wanted out here, and they’d only think she was having a good time. And for sure nobody was going to call the cops.

She glanced around uneasily, looking for Helen. Probably went out onto the beach to cool off. Annie turned back to her motionless sentries.

They hadn’t stirred. They were still in their silent half circle, staring. It was the one in the center that made Annie’s blood freeze. Tall, almost seven feet tall, with broad naked shoulders rippling with muscle. Yet it had breasts, too, small swelling breasts each tipped with a dark nipple. It had a narrow waist and hips, shadowed so that Annie couldn’t tell what it wore, or even if it was a girl or a guy. It had no body hair at all that she could see; nothing except for a pair of breasts more suited to a thirteen-year-old girl, and beautiful long auburn hair. A wingless watchful angel struck down from its pediment. A fallen seraphim.

A black angel.

Annie swallowed. So what the fucking hell is she—or he, or it—doing here, and why is it watching me?

As if in answer to her thoughts, the tall figure looked away. Lyla and the others turned as well, as though they were all bound to it by invisible cords. Before they could look back and see her, Annie darted to where a bank of speakers rose above the dance floor.

“Whoa, Nellie.” She caught her breath and leaned backward, until she was hidden between the speakers. From there she could watch them without being seen; from here they looked like just another group of partygoers.

So maybe that’s all it is, she thought, a little desperately. Just some of Angie’s girls from Brown, and their friend the Incredible Miss Hulk.

Then, in the darkness, someone begin to sing.

A frail, quavering, voice—an old man’s, or a woman’s?—impossible to tell; but hearing it Annie shivered.

The song flowed through Annie and she trembled.

As abruptly as it had begun, the song died away. Annie stood motionless with dread—it had done something to her, devil-music, she had been turned to ice or stone! Then across the room a screen door banged open. A gust of sharp salt-smelling wind raked her face. She sneezed, clapped a hand over her mouth, and shrank against the speakers. The spell was broken; she could move.

And so could the black angel.

Annie gasped. It really was as though a statue had come alive, some beautiful malefic creature, half-gargoyle and half-gigantic child. From here she could watch it striding through the crowd, pulses of crimson and white marbling its bare arms and chest. Now and then it paused, one foot poised above the floor, its great head swaying back and forth like a mastiff’s. Annie was too far to see all that clearly, and she was certainly too far away to hear, but she had a horrible certainty that it was sniffing for something.

Once it stopped, and slowly turned. Annie almost fainted—it was staring right at her, it saw her where she crouched in the shadows. The tip of its tongue flicked between its lips, a tongue white and fat as a mealworm; but abruptly it looked away again, as though it had scented bigger prey, and strode off.

Behind it, Lyla and Virgie and the rest trailed in alert silence. Annie let her breath out, shuddering. Whatever it was hunting, it wasn’t her—yet. She dared another peek out onto the dance floor.

Obviously it was going to take more than a murderous seven-foot androgyne to get the attention of this crowd: no one gave it a second glance. Hell, no one gave it a first glance. Its black eyes stared fixedly at something just out of Annie’s range of vision, and as she watched she could see how the attention of its followers was turned as well.

It was staring at a boy. Like Annie he was by himself.

Just a stupid kid! Annie thought in a sort of bitter panic. Probably taking a few days off from his family vacationing down at Wellfleet or Chatham or Rock Harbor. Tanned and muscular, his short dark hair given ruddy highlights by the sun. He wore a pair of baggy tie-dyed shorts and a pair of sunglasses hanging from a cord against his chest. And he was wasted—that was obvious, he was laughing and talking to himself, his eyes shining, sweat glistening on his cheeks and brow. A little psychedelic fun in the shade, that was all; another harmless mindfuck.

“Hey.” Annie’s mouth was so dry it hurt to whisper. “Hey, wait—no—”

She wanted to yell, to throw herself across the floor, anything to warn him. But fear flowed through her like a drug, so deadening it was a relief not to move. She could only watch as the silent angel crossed the floor, until it loomed above him.

Still the boy was oblivious. He kept talking to himself and giggling; now and then he’d feint and punch out at the air, then fall back laughing. The black angel’s harriers sauntered toward him.

Suddenly the boy stiffened. He stared at the floor, for the first time noticed the shadow there. He raised his head.

The angel was gazing down at him with unblinking onyx eyes. The boy stared back, his smile gone now, his fists hanging loosely at his sides. Annie could hear the throbbing roar of music as Virgie and the others circled the boy.

His eyes widened, his mouth parted, and he tried to move, but someone grabbed him. Lyla; Annie recognized her little body and the dark crescent upon her cheek. When he tried to cry out, Lyla wrenched his arms back, whispering a warning into his ear.

Above them the tall figure smiled. Something huge and shadowy billowed behind it, a deeper darkness that furled and unfurled like great black wings. The dance music faded, until there was nothing but a persistent thudding backbeat, like waves against the shore. The sound grew louder. The dull percussive thud became words, a string of names that rolled across Annie’s mind in an endless tide.

Like the slow soothing blood of poppies the words seeped into her, and as the music had faded, so now did the boathouse, dissolving into a colorless mist. Another room held her. A claustral space, dimly lit by smoking tapers and thick with the smells of flesh and wine. She was lying on her back on a wide stone table. A few feet away, someone else lay as well, sleeping soundly. Dream-logic told her that this was an altar; but it was unlike any church or cathedral Annie had ever been in. And, dazed as she was, she knew this wasn’t a dream. Sweet smoke filled her nostrils, the scents of coriander seed and heated amber, sandalwood and oranges; and why was that so familiar? The fumes clouded her thoughts and she yawned. She wanted only to sleep, like her companion upon the altar—sleep and forget.

But sleep wouldn’t come. This was all was too strange, and part of her wouldn’t stop trying to make sense of it—had she been slipped a drug back at the boathouse? But this was more like a movie than an hallucination, albeit a movie with myriad smells and the acute discomfort of lying on a cold stone slab. Flowers were everywhere: orange lilies, cyclamen, purple morning glories already fading to grey. Tiny golden bees crawled over them, and gathered thickly upon the lip of a rhyton smeared with honey, sipped at a shallow salver of wine and one of soured milk.

Annie grimaced and tried to move, discovered that she was bound with cords—strands of vines and dried grasses that smelled sweet but were surprisingly strong. Several bees crawled toward her, drawn, it seemed, by her struggle. Annie stiffened, then sighed with relief as the insects stopped, too drunk on honey and fermented milk to go on.

She tilted her head to get a better look at the other figure on the altar. A boy, she thought at first—he was slight and curly-headed, his mouth open as though he were asleep. But then she noted that his fair hair was tinged with grey, and the torso beneath the hempen ropes was slack and pale—the skin white and translucent as ice, blue-tinged and with a faint damp sheen.

Annie whimpered. Dizziness swept over her: this was all wrong, she didn’t belong here, and neither did that man, whoever he was. Whoever he had been. She tried to struggle but the ropes were too tight. She could hear faint voices somewhere just out of sight, the pad of bare feet upon stone floors. And there was that sweet smoke…

Don’t breathe, try not to breathe!

She exhaled, with all her strength raised one elbow and rammed it against the stone.

She gasped. Her vision wavered; the pain curdled into nausea and a blade of fire jabbing through her arm.

Now! she thought. Because with the pain came a split second of clarity. She recognized the figure beside her on the altar.

Hasel Bright.

“No!” Annie shouted, but her voice was lost among the others singing.

They emerged from the shadows, nine priestesses forming a half circle before the raised stone table. Behind them three male acolytes carried rhytons shaped like the heads of bulls. The women were tall, breasts exposed above long shirred skirts that swept to their ankles. The skirts were striped black and gold, bold and surprisingly modern in such an archaic-seeming place. They might have been wasps given women’s form, moving in a slow measured dance. In their arms they carried a boy, a boy with very white teeth and tanned skin and sun-streaked hair.

Annie stared, entranced. They were so close that she could smell the boy’s sweat, coconut oil, and the faint chloroform odor of XTC. When the priestesses raised their arms she could see silver crescents gleaming between their breasts. She could hear the papery rustling of their skirts, their low voices—

Each word with its echo of threat and fear—

The male acolytes approached the altar, gathered Hasel’s limp form, and bore it away. Annie fought the panic boiling up inside her, but for the moment it seemed she was forgotten. The priestesses came forward, and gently placed the boy upon the altar. He lay upon his side, naked, his mouth stained from the libation. They had painted his lips and eyes with ocher, and drawn a half-moon upon his smooth chest. Against his honey-colored skin strands of ivy gleamed. He looked like a child at rest, eyes closed, his mouth in a sweet half smile; a child dreaming of his Mother. And his Mother came.

Without a sound she approached the altar, passing through the ranks of chanting women. Taller than any of them, and naked, her bronzy hair unbound and flowing past her shoulders, her lovely face calm, unsmiling. Between her bare breasts the lunula shone. Her priestesses fell silent as she stepped between them.

When she reached the altar she stopped. As Annie watched through a haze of smoke, Othiym’s fingers tightened around the lunula. She moved until she stood directly above the boy. She raised the lunula over her head. Before Annie could flinch, the glowing crescent fell to strike the boy beside her. Sudden warmth splashed onto her face.

Annie screamed. When she blinked her eyelids felt sticky. A salt-scorched taste burned her mouth. Through the roaring in her ears she heard Othiym’s voice crying Eisheth! And Eisheth came.

It was no longer the black angel she had seen earlier. It was a vulture, so vast the shadow of its wings blotted out everything behind it. The stench of rotting flesh flowed from it, and she could see white grubs and blowflies rooting in the wattled flesh of its neck. It made a soft gurgling sound, like laughter, then pecked at the boy’s eyes.

Annie gagged. The acolytes darted to the altar, vying with each other to catch the boy’s blood in their rhytons. The vulture stared at them balefully, its black tongue clicking against its beak.

“Eisheth!”

A thunderous flapping as the vulture rose into the air. Annie tuned her head.

“Angelica,” she whispered. It was almost a relief to say it.

The woman smiled. She looked improbably youthful and lovely as ever, with her tawny skin and hair, her slanted eyes. But her breasts were stippled with blood, and blood ran from her nipples to streak her belly. In her strong peasant’s hands she held a rhyton shaped like a bull’s head. Steam threaded the air above the vessel’s opening as she lifted it, tilting it until a dark stream flowed from the bull’s open mouth and into her own.

“All I have loved is mine,” she said. Her mouth and tongue and teeth were black with blood.

Annie broke into hysterical gabbling. Beneath her the cold stone altar disappeared. The smoke dispersed, and with it the vulture’s carrion stench. Once again she was crouching upon the wooden floor of the boathouse.

On the other side of the room people danced, oblivious. A few yards from Annie, Lyla and the others stood above a limp form. Annie’s voice became a sob. Virgie glanced at her, then back down at the dead boy.

His eyes were gone, and his tongue. His torso had been split, the twin arches of his rib cage pried apart and his organs removed. In the empty cavity there was only a black-and-crimson feather, like a blossom sprung from his heart.

Annie shook convulsively. A single maddening thought raced through her mind—there should be more blood, she had seen how he’d died, there should be blood everywhere…

Without warning they were upon her, clawing at her arms and face as they dragged her to her feet. Annie screamed, she kicked and fought and yelled but they were everywhere, a mindless hive tearing at her clothes, pinning her arms behind her back.

“Be careful, be careful!—

Annie saw Virgie looking at her with round black eyes.

“Agape, Annie—you’re so lucky you’ve been chosen—”

Annie moaned, closed her eyes against the pain. When she opened them again she saw a crescent flashing in the darkness. A few inches from her face someone held a battered silver vessel. She smelled blood: that choking thick smell, its ferrous taste as they prised her jaws open and it scalded her gums, blinded her where it splashed into her eyes. She couldn’t scream, there was blood everywhere, filling her nostrils and ears and mouth. Through a film of red she saw the lunula, the Moon poised to rise and blot the sun from the sky…

“Let her go!”

A voice cried out. The hands upon her tightened; then the same voice cried again.

Annie blinked. The others turned, gazing at a screen door that had blown open behind them.

Her captors let go. Annie staggered across the floor.

“You fucking amateurs,” she spat, and started to cry.

A few feet away Othiym’s followers stared at the door, their faces angry and bewildered. Virgie let out a wail.

“Ohh—she’s ruined everything—”

Like insects they scattered, and disappeared among the crowd. Annie tried vainly to stop sobbing.

“You better call someone. I mean like 911—” she choked, wiping her eyes and staring repelled at her blood-streaked fingers. “God, I don’t fucking believe this—”

From the doorway came a muffled laugh.

“Funny?” Annie whirled, hoarse with rage. “You think this is funny?”

For the first time Annie saw her savior: a striking long-haired woman in a purple dress.

“Funny ha-ha or funny strange?” the woman asked.

Annie gasped. “B-but you—you were—”

The woman only smiled. Not with mockery or amusement, but with the purest joy and longing Annie had ever seen. Smiled and nodded, just once, whispering—

“Oh, Annie—I’ve missed you so—”

—before the wind sent sand like rain raiding against the floorboards, and without a sound she melted into the darkness.

CHAPTER 15 Ancient Voices (Echo)

I DECIDED TO WALK home. The Metro would have been quicker and cooler, but the mere thought of all those thousands of happy tourists exhausted me. I stopped at a bookstore to order a copy of Waking the Moon, then headed back out.

More than ever I felt like a failure. Compared to Angelica—beautiful, eternally youthful Angelica, with her gorgeous hair, her string of books and villa in Santorini and bewitching (if false) green eyes—I was a failure. Here I was, thirty-eight years old, never married, no kids, no serious love affairs, still renting a house because I didn’t make enough money to get a mortgage. The most interesting thing that had ever happened to me occurred half a lifetime ago, but even that didn’t really count because whom could I tell about it? Who would believe it?

Or—and this was worse—who, after all this time, would even care? The only real friend I had was Baby Joe, because he was the only person who remembered me the way I was at eighteen.

And that was the way I still liked to think of myself. Not as Katherine Cassidy, the loyal civil servant who’d paid her dues at the National Museum of Natural History and after thirteen sober years had an office with a view, a government pension, five weeks of annual vacation and the occasional professional junket to New York or Chicago; but Sweeney, who had dreamed of discovering buried pyramids and sacred tombs, who could drink and dance all night and all day and still find her way home in one piece; whose friends were beautiful and magical and who for some reason, however briefly, seemed to find Sweeney enchanting too. Sweeney, who read poetry and saw angels and had glimpsed the Benandanti’s wasteland behind a hidden door; Sweeney, who had known the answer to the magic question when it was asked of her, and who had tried to remain loyal, courageous, and true till the end. Sweeney, whose one great love had taken a swan dive from the loony ward at Providence Hospital.

But Sweeney was gone, as surely as Oliver was. And to the rest of the world, to everyone except for Baby Joe and maybe Angelica or Annie Harmon, she had never even existed at all.

Dr. Dvorkin’s house was on one of the myriad little cross streets that make up the residential blocks of Capitol Hill. From the street, the house looked much like its neighbors, a wide three-storied century-old brick town house, the walls painted a dark red that had faded nicely over the years and went well with the butter-yellow roses tumbling across the black wrought-iron fence.

The real wonder of Dr. Dvorkin’s house could not be seen from the street. Because, for all the loneliness and boredom I’d lived with since leaving the Divine, the Benandanti had granted me this: a secret garden, my own hidden cottage in the woods. The garden itself was so lovely I was surprised it had never been written up in Washingtonian Magazine or one of the national shelter rags. But then I learned that Dr. Dvorkin had, indeed, been besieged with requests to photograph the garden, and always gently refused them.

“It’s my secret place. And yours now, too, of course. And I would like to keep it that way.”

The garden was behind the town house. It was bound on all sides by high brick walls overgrown with Virginia creeper, climbing yellow roses and morning glory and wisteria. There were flagstone paths winding through hostas and astilbes and a low dark green mantle of pachysandra, and around its perimeter all kinds of gorgeously exotic lilies. At the back of the garden, pressed up against one of the crumbling walls, was the carriage house, a nearly perfect square with a flat roof interrupted by a small belfry. It was made of red brick that had weathered to a soft rose that was nearly white. Ivy covered it, and wisteria that twined above the flagstone path that linked it to the main house.

Inside, the carriage house was cool as the hidden recesses of my own heart. From the rafters hung bunches of herbs I had bought at Eastern Market—valerian, lemon balm, mint. I inhaled gratefully, kicked my shoes off, and let my bare feet slide across the cool slate floor. I was home.

Downstairs the carriage house consisted of only one largish room, with a tiny bathroom tucked beneath the stairs and a miniature kitchen like an afterthought added on to one side. The main room had slate floors and the original exposed oak beams and joists. One entire wall was filled with bookshelves, and there was a small harvest table that held a lamp and a few domestic artifacts: a shadow puppet, a vase of oriental lilies, the sea urchin lamp that Angelica had sent me for Christmas so many years before.

Like the carriage house itself, most of its furnishings were borrowed from Dr. Dvorkin. He had more money than I did, I liked his taste, and so for all these years I’d just lived with his things. Against the back wall was a sagging Castro Convertible sofa bed, draped with a heavy kilim rug. Shaker chairs hung from hooks in the beams, and there was an abandoned hornet’s nest perched on a rafter in the corner. The tiny bedroom upstairs held a beautifully carved wooden bed from Sweden, a heavy armoire from Java, another kilim on the floor. Outside there were a couple of deck chairs and an old wicker table I’d salvaged from the curb.

Right now it was too hot to sit outside. I changed into an old T-shirt and turned on the radio. “All Things Considered” was starting, but I felt like I’d had enough news for one day. I fiddled with the dial until I found something more soothing—some nice madrigals, very dull, very pretty—then checked my answering machine for messages. There was only one, from Dr. Dvorkin, saying that he’d forgotten to tell me someone was staying in the main house, so I shouldn’t worry if I saw lights there later in the evening. I reset the machine and went into the kitchen and poured myself some wine, then flopped onto the couch.

“Well, here’s to Angelica,” I said. I finished one glass and poured another, then another. I didn’t usually make such a dent in a bottle of wine, especially on a work night, but this seemed like a special occasion, an evening for elegies and repining. The sad strains of the madrigals filled the little room, the slate floors cooled beneath my bare feet as the sun died and violet shadows crept across the deck and into the carriage house. From Ninth Street came the occasional hushed sound of a passing car, and I heard soft laughter from one of the neighboring houses. One or two stars glimmered in the darkness, and fireflies moved in a drowsy waltz above the hostas outside. I watched for lights to go on in the main house, trying to guess who Dr. Dvorkin’s newest guest might be—someone connected with the Aditi, probably, a visiting curator or diplomat. Maybe even one of Jack Rogers’s fire-eaters.

“Ah, well,” I sighed. I leaned forward to refill my glass one last time, stood a little shakily, and put the bottle on a side table beside the vase of oriental lilies. A little water slopped out of the vase and I wiped it up with the hem of my T-shirt.

“Messy, messy,” I said thickly.

By now it was full dark. I switched on the sea urchin lamp, the tiny bulb inside casting a rosy glow through the curved shell. A pink haze hung above the table, a lovely soft globe like a fairy lantern floating in the darkened room. I returned to the couch and lay back with my head resting against the kilim’s rough wool, the wineglass held between my hands, the sweet clear voices of the madrigal singers rising and falling in the room about me like the wind. Like the sea, like waves rushing and receding while I rested there, dreaming and untroubled in the sultry tropic night, while in the garden a single mockingbird sang.

Much later I awoke. The madrigal singers had been replaced by a man speaking in a very soft urgent voice about the need for a more efficient Capitol police force. I sat up, blinking, and put my empty glass on the floor. My watch said ten-thirty. Time for bed.

I hadn’t eaten dinner, but I wasn’t hungry, or even thirsty. The wine had left me with a feeling of drowsy well-being, as though I’d eaten that fairy fruit that eases all hunger and thirst and slows the passage of time. I yawned and started to get up, wondering if to was too late to call Baby Joe.

But at the edge of the couch I stopped.

The room was on fire. Shadows leapt across the walls, black and red and white, the air was thick with smoke, and I heard a persistent frantic sound like flames crackling. I stumbled to my feet and sent my wineglass spinning across the slate floor. I looked around, flushed with fear and wine: but there was no smoke, only the thick steamy mist that often appeared on the hottest summer nights. In the background the man’s voice droned on and the wind rustled in the leaves, a sound like rushing water. Weirdly colored shadows moved upon the walls, rose red, velvety black, amber. Tentatively I crossed the room, until I stood beside the harvest table.

Something was trapped inside the sea urchin lamp. Its shadow darted across the room’s walls as it beat frantically against the curved interior of its prison. The sound I had thought to be flames was its wings banging against the bulb. There was an unpleasant smell, as of scorched cloth.

I took the globe in my hand. It was quite hot, and I nearly dropped it. Very carefully I lifted it, holding it away from me so whatever was inside would fly out toward the open front door. For a moment or two it continued to thrash around. Then suddenly it emerged—very slowly, as though exhausted by its battle.

Antennae first, long as my forefinger and extravagantly feathered; then its long jointed legs, its thick brown-furred body and finally its wings. Huge wings, I was amazed there had been room for them inside. And how could it have gotten in there, surely the opening at the bottom was too small?

For a moment it poised on the sea urchin. Then it fluttered onto the table, landing beside an oblong drop of water spilled from the vase. I fixed the lamp, then squatted beside the table to watch it, marveling.

It was an enormous butterfly, a beautiful creature like a swallowtail, patterned with black-and-yellow stripes and dots. But the coloring was all wrong for a swallowtail—more orange than yellow, and the border around its wings was not black but a deep, rich purple. The edges of its wings were frayed from battering at the inside of the lamp. It opened and closed them slowly, as though trying to gather the strength to fly again. Then it fluttered up to perch on the lip of a yellow lily. After another minute it spread its wings again, and fluttered back down to the tabletop.

“Well,” I said, yawning, “enough ‘Wild Kingdom’ for tonight. I’m going to bed.”

I turned to close the front door, when something zoomed from the corner of the ceiling where the hornet’s nest was perched.

“Shit!”

I scrambled backward as an angry buzzing filled the room: An enormous yellow jacket, big as my thumb and striped black and red, dived through the air to land on the table. The butterfly quivered, but before it could move the yellow jacket seized it, crawling atop it with wings beating so fast they were a dark blur.

I yelled and grabbed a magazine, slammed it against the table. The butterfly dropped to its side, the yellow jacket still clinging to it. Shouting I banged the table again. This time the wasp fell from its prey. Before it could move I smashed it flat, hitting it so hard I had to grab the sea urchin lamp before it could crash to the floor. When I finally stopped the yellow jacket was a reddish smear on the table top, its legs still feebly twitching. The butterfly had wafted to the floor and lay there, dazed.

Shuddering I scraped the dead wasp from my table and shook it outside, then got a broom and very, very gently prodded the football-sized nest hanging in the corner, terrified that a cloud of yellow jackets would come pouring out. When the nest toppled and fell to the floor I shrieked and ran outside.

But there were no wasps. The nest lay there like a softly deflated grey balloon, its white honeycombed innards spilling onto the floor. When I was certain it wasn’t going to give birth to any more insects, I swept it outside, got some matches, and set it aflame. I watched it burn, the papery fragments disappearing before my eyes into the humid night air. Finally I went back inside.

The butterfly had flitted to one of the bookshelves. It was quite still, its wings stirring slightly in the draft. I left it and went to the harvest table to turn off the lamp.

“God damn it,” I swore beneath my breath.

Where the wasp had been crushed, the wood was puckered and blistered, as though something caustic had been spilled there. I moved the vase to cover the spot, turned to salute the valiant little butterfly, and stumbled off to bed.

When I went downstairs the next morning the butterfly was still there. On a whim I got out a Ball mason jar, punched a few holes in its lid, and went outside to pick a tiger lily. For good measure I threw in a frond of wisteria, sprinkling a few drops of water onto the greenery.

The butterfly didn’t move when I approached it. I was afraid it was dead, but its wings fluttered feebly as I slid it into the jar. When I got to the museum, instead of going directly to my floor, I went to see Maggie Lucas in her office by the Insect Zoo.

“Hi, Katherine. Care for a dead hissing cockroach?” Maggie held up an insect almost as large as her hand. “We’ve got plenty.”

“No hanks.” I moved a stack of magazines from a chair, plunked my jar on her desk, and sat down. “I want to make a donation.”

“Oooh, a butterfly! A pretty bug.” Maggie slipped the giant cockroach into a Baggie. She was a plump matronly woman in her fifties, a lepidopterist and assistant curator of the Insect Zoo, where in addition to the giant hissing cockroaches she watched over a beehive, a worm tank, numerous ant farms, bottles of pupating moths, an aquarium swimming with giant carnivorous water bugs, and a terrarium full of scarab beetles. “Now, what have we here?”

“I don’t know. It was in my house last night.” I told her about finding it inside the sea urchin lamp, and also about the yellow jacket that had attacked it. “I never saw anything so vicious—”

“Oh, that’s pretty common. Some kinds of wasps are carnivorous, you know, and some of them even lay their eggs on caterpillars. Now, let’s see what you’ve got—”

She opened the jar and gently shook the butterfly onto her hand. It fell into her palm and lay on its side.

“Did I kill it?” I asked in dismay.

“I doubt it. Sometimes these things only live for a day or two. Now this is interesting—”

She prodded it with a pencil, examining its wing markings.

“I thought it looked like some kind of swallowtail.”

She shook her head. “It’s not—wrong kind of tail hairs. Now this will sound kind of strange, but I don’t think this is a native species at all.”

“You mean not native to D.C.?”

“I mean not native to this continent. Unless I’m mistaken, this is some sort of festoon—”

She put the jar and the butterfly on her desk, crossed to a bookshelf, and pulled out an oversize volume. “Okay, let’s see—”

She rifled the pages and stopped, pointed triumphantly. “Yup, here it is! Zerynthia cerisyi keftiu. Zerynthia cerisyi, that’s the eastern festoon, and keftiu—that would be the subspecies from Crete.”

“Crete?”

She looked puzzled. “That’s in Greece, isn’t it? Can that be right? Here, look at this and tell me what you think—”

She put the book down beside the butterfly and pointed to a colored plate, and yes, there it was: the same insect, the same pied wings and extravagantly feathered antennae.

“It—it sure looks the same,” I said slowly.

“I wonder how it got here?” she mused. “Did someone just send you this lamp as a present?”

“No—I got it ages ago. I mean really long ago, almost twenty years.”

“I was thinking maybe it had pupated inside—”

“Could it have been doing that for all this time?”

Maggie shook her head. “Beats me. I guess it could have, but I’ve sure never heard of anything like it before.”

I looked back down at the illustration. On the facing page, there were plates showing several Greek amphorae, a small round seal like an irregularly shaped coin. I drew closer to the page and read.

Maggie’s voice made me jump. “Do you mind if I keep this? I’d like to study it—”

I pushed away from her desk, my heart pounding. “S—Sure,” I stammered. “Listen, thanks, Maggie, but I’ve got to get to my office.”

“Anytime! Hey, better stop and get a soda—I hear the air-conditioning’s down in the west wing.”

“Oh, great.”

“Let me know if you change your mind about the cockroach.”

I fled upstairs. Maggie was right: the a/c was down. When I reached the third floor the heat was like a solid red wall. I stumbled past the security guard at the west desk and continued on down the corridor with my head bowed, so that I almost bumped into Laurie Driscoll.

“Katherine! Your intern’s here—”

I groaned and slapped my forehead. “Oh, god, I completely forgot! Has she been here long?”

“Not really. Twenty minutes, maybe, they all had breakfast at the Commons but—”

“Okay, well thanks, I’ll take care of her—”

I swept into my office, tossing my briefcase onto the desk and pausing to run my hand across my forehead. Then I put on my best formal expression and took a step toward the figure gazing out the window. She was tall for a woman, leaning on the sill to stare out at the Aditi already in full swing even in the sweltering heat.

“I am so sorry,” I began, holding out my hand. “I had to drop something off on my way in here and I just—”

Slowly the figure turned to me. A lock of dark hair slipped across his forehead, his mouth curled into a crooked smile as he gazed at me and I stopped, paralyzed with the purest coldest terror I have ever known.

“Hi,” he said softly, and brushed the hair from his eyes. “I hope you got my message.”

“I—ah—ah—” I staggered back until I bumped my chair. “No!—”

It was Oliver.

He stared at me with wide blue eyes, holding his hand out in greeting. When I didn’t move he frowned, glanced down at his extended hand, and then at me again.

“I’m sorry?” he said anxiously. “Is this—I mean, I called your voice mail and Dr. Dvorkin said this was—”

I slumped into my chair, clenching my hands to keep them from shaking. “Who are you?” I hissed.

“I’m Dylan Furiano. My mom says she knows you—Angelica Furiano, she says you’d remember her maiden name, Angelica di Rienzi—”

“Angelica?”

“Uh, yeah. I’m your intern—I wasn’t on the original list because I was doing a semester abroad, in London. I’m at UCLA, studying film ethnography. My mom says to tell you hi.”

“Angelica.” There was a roaring in my ears. “Angelica is your mother.”

He nodded. “See, originally I thought I had this summer fellowship at Sundance, but when that fell through my mom pulled some strings—my grandfather was good friends with Dr. Dvorkin, so Mom called him and they set this up—”

“Your grandfather.” I seized on the notion like it was all that stood between myself and the abyss. I took a deep breath and nodded, my words spilling out breathlessly. “Your grandfather, I knew your grandfather—”

Dylan looked at the floor. “Yeah. He died a few years ago—”

So the Benandanti could die. “I’m sorry,” I said softly, and meant it. “He was—I only met him once, but he was very kind to me.”

“He and my father—they were out sailing together, there was this freak storm and the boat went down. They never recovered the bodies.”

“God, how awful. I—your father?”

“Rinaldo Furiano. He was sort of this entrepreneur—well, it’s kind of hard to explain what he did. We lived in Italy until he died. After that my mother and I moved here, to California. I guess probably you didn’t know him.”

“No,” I whispered. “I—I don’t think so.”

But of course his father wasn’t Rinaldo Furiano! I thought of that night at the Orphic Lodge, of Oliver and Angelica coupling in the shadow of the dead bull. No wonder she disappeared, ran off to Florence or Rome or god knows where, to hide from us all and have her baby and…

And here he was.

“Dylan,” I murmured.

“Yes?”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I was just saying your name.” I laughed, a little shakily. “So, are you named for Bob or Thomas?”

He looked at me blankly.

“Bob Dylan or Dylan Thomas.”

“Oh! Neither, actually—it’s Welsh, it means ‘Son of the Wave.’ I was born on this island and my mom was reading about some myth or something and there was this guy named Dylan, and so—”

He waved his hands: pouff!

“—here I am. She’s into all this sort of weird stuff, my mom is.” He smiled wryly, tilting his head to gaze at me. “But I guess probably you know that already.”

Yeah, no shit, I thought. Now that I’d had a few minutes to calm down and look at him more closely, I could see how different he was from Oliver. His voice, for one thing—like Angelica’s, it was musical and slightly accented, though the accent was more British than Italian, no doubt smoothed out by a few years in California. And he was much more handsome than Pretty Boy Oliver, with an underlying shyness that contributed to his almost feral beauty, like someone unaccustomed to wearing clothes or shoes.

Maybe that comes from growing up in Italy. Maybe in, Angelica’s house no one ever wears clothes.

The thought of this particular kid not wearing clothes made me dizzy. I swallowed, forced a smile, and said, “Yeah, your mom is a piece of work.”

He laughed. He was not as tall as Oliver, but more muscular—he wore neatly pressed tan chinos and a white oxford cloth shirt, its sleeves neatly rolled to show smoothly muscled arms. A tie was loosely knotted at his throat and I could see the muscles bunched at his neck, flaring smoothly out onto his shoulders. He wore clunky black shoes like combat boots, with worn knotted laces. He was broad-shouldered, long-legged, slim-hipped—probably a bodybuilder, and god knows I had never seen Oliver lift anything heavier than a hash pipe. But he had Oliver’s nose, Oliver’s high cheekbones and piercing blue eyes, though Dylan’s were flecked with green. One of his ears had multiple gold studs in a little line, gold and malachite and a single tiny silver crescent. And his long hair, though jet black, cascaded in loose curls like his mother’s. He wore it pulled into a ponytail, but it kept escaping to fall into his eyes. His mouth too was Angelica’s, full-lipped and sensual. When he smiled, it twisted into Oliver’s canine grin.

He was smiling now. “My mom told me a lot about you. About how close you two were at school, and how much she always envied you and your boyfriend—”

“My boyfriend?”

“Yeah. That Oliver guy. My mom said that everybody was just, like, insanely jealous of you.”

“Angelica told you that?”

He nodded. “She said you were so pretty, everyone was in love with you—” He tilted his head and added shyly, “She was right.”

“Uh—whoa.”

I stared at the ceiling, bewildered and embarrassed. Angelica had told him some crazy story about Oliver and me? But it made a bizarre kind of sense, it was just the kind of thing I could imagine her doing; and maybe it made her feel less guilty about what had happened to all of us.

And it certainly seemed to have piqued Dylan’s interest. He was gazing at me so boldly that I blushed, although there was something innocent about his expression, almost childlike. As though he’d never been told it was rude to stare.

But then why should I be surprised? Shouldn’t I expect Angelica’s kid to act like this? Not even in the room for five minutes and already he was turning up the heat; not that we needed any more heat. I groaned and wished I was back home asleep in bed.

Maybe this is what they’re like in Italy, they’re much more open there, such earthy colorful people…

I felt myself flush. This was ridiculous, and dangerous, too: the museum had truly draconian rules against sexual harassment. Although at the moment I had no idea where I stood in this jungle, whether I was predator or prey; whether this was even Real Life at all, or some twisted hallucination brought on by the heat and a mild hangover.

Because all of a sudden I was eighteen years old again, sitting in a stifling classroom and gazing at the most beautiful boy I had ever seen, the only person I had ever loved, waiting with my mouth parted for him to ask me a question only I knew the answer to…

I took a deep breath and stumbled to my feet. I pushed the hair from my eyes and smoothed my skirt—a short linen skirt; I had long legs and wasn’t above flashing them around in the summer, not that anyone ever seemed to notice.

Dylan noticed.

I glanced up and there he was, staring at me like I was something in the downtown window of Victoria’s Secret. When he saw me looking at him he smiled.

Slowly this time, a smile utterly without guile, sweet as a child’s and so completely, unabashedly carnal that my legs buckled and I sank back into my chair.

“Hey,” he said, and tugged at his shirt collar. “It sure is hot in here, isn’t it?”

I decided we should go for a walk. Outside my office a steady stream of people hurried through the corridor, all of them heading for the steps or service elevator.

“Mayday, mayday.” Laurie stuck her head through the door. “Hey, Katherine. They’ve put the Liberal Leave policy into effect, because of the heat. Everybody’s taking off—”

“What an excellent idea,” I exclaimed. “Thanks, Laurie—”

I started from my chair, and a wave of dizziness crashed over me. Before I could catch myself Dylan grabbed my arm and was helping me to my feet.

“Oh, that’s all right, Dylan, I’m fine, really—”

I shrugged him away and put my hand up, trying not to sound rude. “Thanks, thanks, I’m okay—I just stood up too fast, that’s all.”

I tried to catch my breath, wondering if I looked and sounded ridiculous: an aging proto-punk Baby Boomer having a heart attack while getting out of an ergonomic chair. “Look, let me go tell Dr. Dvorkin that we’re leaving—”

Dylan followed me into the hall. Dr. Dvorkin stood outside his office, his face bright red. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and no tie, practically unheard of for him.

“Oh, Katherine! I see you found my houseguest”

I stopped. “Your houseguest?”

“Yes—Dylan’s grandfather was a very dear friend of mine—but of course you knew that, didn’t you?” He mopped his face with a handkerchief, looked up at me and shook his head. “You know, I’d completely forgotten you knew the di Rienzis. You were friends with Angelica, weren’t you?”

His questioning eyes were mild but I could see something else in them—a spark, a quiet intensity that I had never glimpsed before. A look like desperation, desperation or fear.

I waited a beat before replying. “Yes. But we haven’t talked in almost twenty years.”

“Then you and young Dylan here have a lot of catching up to do.” He smiled, that familiar ironic melancholy smile, and suddenly was the man I had always known. “I think they’re sending all the staff home. Apparently the heat and ozone levels up here are dangerous. Central Engineering’s diverting all our power so they can keep the public areas open downstairs.” He turned to Dylan. “We curators are always the scapegoats when something like this happens. Little lambs to the slaughter.”

Through all this Dylan stood beside me, his boyish face composed into a serious mask, the good scout on his best behavior. And that’s all he was, really, just a kid, for all the sculpted torso and earrings and scary shoes.

“Dylan, would you mind waiting for me by the steps? We can talk outside, but I’ve just got to grab some paperwork first—”

“Sure.” He ducked his head in farewell, but before he could go Dr. Dvorkin put a hand on his shoulder.

“You have your key, don’t you, Dylan? I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to greet you last night, but we’ll have dinner together this evening, how would that be?”

Dylan nodded earnestly, then walked slowly down the hall, glancing back once or twice. Dr. Dvorkin turned to me. “Did you need something, Katherine?”

“Uhh—well, Dylan’s internship application, I never saw any of the paperwork that came through on him. I thought I was getting that girl, Lydorah Kelly…”

Dr. Dvorkin dabbed at his cheeks with his handkerchief. “Yes, well, Lydorah put in a request to go out to Silver Hill, to work in the forensics lab. It seems that’s more what she’s suited for than photo archiving. And then Angelica called me about her son, and, well I’m sure you understand how that works; and then of course you were without an intern, and he’s studying film ethnography, and so it seemed like a good idea to place him on the videodisc project. But he’s a very bright young man, Katherine. I think he’ll contribute a good deal to your work.”

I tried not to roll my eyes. Whatever was going on here, it seemed like a whole lot more than just some kind of insane coincidence. “I’m sure he will. Is there a 171 on him, though? Anything at all that’ll give me some idea what he’s done, what he’s studying?”

“Oh, absolutely. Come on in, if you can bear it—”

He rifled through a heap of 171s, finally pulled one out.

“Here it is! If you’ll excuse me, Katherine, I’m supposed to be at some kind of emergency powwow, and I’m already late.”

I trudged back out into the hall, dragging my briefcase. The 171 form he’d given me was green and white, limp as wet lettuce. It was the standard government employment form, with a cover sheet detailing the particulars of the summer internship program. The empty spaces had been filled in neatly with a slightly italicized European hand.

I flipped through the Xeroxed pages. UCLA film school, majoring in film-and-video ethnograhy. Four years at the Lawrenceville School. Elementary education, the Cathedral School in London and private tutors, Florence, Italy. Reads and writes English, Italian, German, French. In case of emergency notify Angelica Furiano, Los Angeles, California, and Sedona, Arizona. I stared at the page for a long moment, then slipped it into my briefcase.

“Ms. Cassidy?”

I started, turned, and saw Dylan. His cheeks were pink and the knot in his tie had slipped halfway down his chest. “Someone fainted! They’re sending everybody down the back fire stairs, but I wasn’t sure where they were—”

I laughed. “Well, you’re certainly having an exciting first day, aren’t you?” I raised my briefcase to point down the hall. “Thataway.”

“I figured you’d know.”

The fire door had been wedged open with a chair. Squeezing past it I looked up at Dylan, his long hair falling into his eyes and his hands swooping to pull his hair back into its ponytail, his face red and glowing as with uncontained excitement. When he’d gotten his hair out of the way he stared down at me, his blue eyes so brilliant it was like the sky reflected there, or the ocean; like some wonderful dream of a warm blue place, some secret haven by the sea and for the first time in almost twenty years I was waking, waking—

“Hey, Ms. Cassidy—?”

I shook my head, dazed.

“Ms. what!” Suddenly I grinned, and nudged him with my briefcase. “Please, Dylan, do me one favor, okay—”

I swept past him, taking the steps two at a time, heedless of the heat or the blood singing in my ears, heedless of anything at all except the sound of him bounding after me, the metal banisters clamoring as he tugged at them. When I reached the landing I paused and looked back, out of breath and panting, laughing, really laughing, for the first time it seemed in decades.

“—Call me Sweeney.”

CHAPTER 16 Black Angels

AT THE DESK IN her room at Huitaca, Angelica Furiano sat writing a letter. It was evening, hot enough that the petals of the oriental lilies in their Waterford vase had crisped into brittle orange tongues, and their leaves all fallen to the floor. In spite of the heat she had turned off the air-conditioning. She liked to hear the night come alive, she liked to hear the sound of small creatures splashing in the shallows of the pool outside, the muted voices of Kendra and Martin wafting up from the gardener’s cottage and the radio behind her playing the Kronos Quartet.

Through the French doors she could see the tiled patio, and beyond that twisted spires of stone still flushed with sunset. Above the nearest rocky tower, named the Devil’s Clock by the locals, the full moon dangled like a lantern hung there by a tired deity. Angelica stared at it, then sighed and looked away.

A small brass tray sat on her worn desk. Balanced on its edge like a cigarette was a smudge-stick of dried sage and coriander leaf bound with hemp, smoke rising from it. Beside it was the lunula. Angelica took a deep breath of the pungent smoke, then picked the necklace up idly. She rubbed the smooth surface with her thumb, feeling the faint impressions of the pattern etched there, the small gaping mouth where the lost portion of the triskelion was missing.

Four weeks from now would be Lammas; four weeks from now she would be Waking the Moon. She stared out at the evening sky, the limbs of the crippled piñon pines stirring gently in the hot breeze; then looked down to read over her letter.

As she reread the letter, the strings in the background soared into a sweet motet. Spem in Alium, Sing and Glorify, Judith seducing and then beheading Holofernes to save her people. Today, men would judge her actions as a crime, but three thousand years ago Diis aliter visum: it seemed otherwise to the gods.

Angelica pushed aside the letter, listening to the immeasurably sad music, the violin straining like a lover bidding a last farewell. She knew it was foolish, writing to her son like this—he never wrote back, preferring the telephone—but it made her feel close to him; alleviated some of the loneliness she felt. Her eyes filled with tears as she stared at a photo of Dylan on her desk. Dylan at four, playing on the rock-strewn beach near Akrotiri on Thera. He was naked, his dark hair burned to copper by the sun, wind-tossed as the waves behind him. His tiny fist held something, shell or stone, he was holding it above his head and laughing. In the background Rinaldo stood knee-deep in the water and smiled, his grey hair a bright aureole. It had been the first time Angelica had visited Thera and seen the excavations at Akrotiri. They had left the island the next day, to return to the villa near Florence, and had not returned for two years.

That was the only other time she had ever used Dylan to smuggle something for her: a thumb-sized seal of the Cretan bee-goddess that she had sewn into the waistband of his training pants. He had been as innocent of the seal’s power as he was of the missing piece of the lunula.

“Oh, Dylan,” she whispered. She moved the photo so that she could see the others behind it. An old Lucite frame held a picture of Hasel Bright, looking so young it almost took her breath away—he’d been a child, really, they’d all been little more than children! Hasel had given her the framed photo after they slept together that once, over Columbus Day weekend.

“It can’t happen again, you know,” she’d told him. Hasel so serious he looked like a cartoon owl, with those enormous blue eyes and a blinded, stricken look.

“Never?”

Angelica laughed. “I’m sorry, Hasel. But those are the rules.”

He sat up on her bed—they were in her dorm room, Annie having gone to stay with friends for the holiday weekend—and took her hand in his, raised it to his mouth, and kissed the little cleft between her first and second fingers. “Rules? What rules? Do you, like, turn into a pumpkin or something?”

Angelica had laughed softly, drawing her hand away and leaning forward to kiss the top of his head. “No, sweetie—you do.”

She pursed her lips, tracing the edge of the frame with a fingernail. It had been Hasel’s destiny to the for Othiym. She leaned forward to blow a little thread of ash from the burning sage, then pushed aside Hasel’s picture, moved several others where she could see them better. Frames of heavy darkened silver; frames of real tortoiseshell and delicate coral. Within them were more photographs: faded Polaroids, amber-tinted Kodachrome, crisp black-and white.

Mostly they were pictures of Dylan and her late husband, taken during her long Mediterranean exile. But here was her beloved uncle, at his villa near Poggibonsi, and there was her father, and there her beautiful cousin Rafael—her first cousin, twice-removed, ah! he had been so handsome, she was truly sad when he died—and here was another of poor sweet Hasel.

And one of Annie Harmon, taken by Angelica herself during one of their afternoon interludes. Annie looking very cross but also rather stunned, her worn old quilt pulled up around her breasts. And here was the young Sweeney Cassidy—not caught in flagranti delicto like Hasel or Annie, but looking quite gamine with her cowboy boots and cropped hair. And here was a more recent picture of Annie, clipped from an issue of the Advocate and stuck in the corner of a large framed picture of Dylan’s graduation.

“Come here, you,” murmured Angelica. Gingerly she teased the newspaper photo of Annie from the frame. She had been focusing all her will on Annie lately. She did not dare confront Annie as she had Hasel—Annie was another woman, after all, and had a better understanding of Angelica’s true nature. She would be wary of a meeting with Angelica.

And rightfully so! Angelica thought, her mouth curving in a smile. But even Annie Harmony could not escape the naphaïm. She took Annie’s photo in one hand, and with the other picked up the lunula. For a moment a pang of real sorrow made Angelica’s eyes fill with tears.

Because while each sacrifice was holy, and each one made her stronger and stronger still, it was only those who had loved her who made the Goddess real, who made Her epiphany complete. That was the bridge between the worlds of Othiym and Angelica di Rienzi Furiano—a bridge formed of all those who had truly loved her, those who had died for her over the centuries. And for each of them she had wept, as she had wept for Hasel and Rafael and Oliver; as she would weep for Annie, and Dylan. As Ishtar, Au-Set, Isis, Artemis or Cybele, as the thuggees’ Kali or Wilde’s Salome, she had always received a tribute of souls—and blood. The bridegroom who lay with her but one night a year, and died before sunrise; the man who served as her consort for twelve lunar cycles and then was slain within her sacred grove. Even in modern times her ancient worship was not utterly forgotten. All those nineteenth-century artists who had painted her as sphinx and panther and vampire sensed the truth of it: Woman was a perilous country.

Angelica blinked her tears back, and ruefully smiled. In the tarnished mirror nestling between the photos, her reflection smiled back. Oh, men had feared her then, and women too—they had always feared her! But they had loved her as well, and perished for her willingly.

And so they would again. And each death, each loving offering, would be another stone in the bridge that swept from Angelica to the Queen of Heaven. Already she had received so many, nameless men and boys. But then there had been Hasel, an ardent sacrifice if ever there was one. And Oliver…

Her heart beat too fast, thinking of Oliver. She forced herself to stare at Annie’s photo again, Annie with her freckles and her cowlick and her soft white skin. Tonight, perhaps, Angelica would finally see Annie again. When the Goddess came to her, when Othiym would be her. And someday soon, she would see Dylan, too, would cradle him within her as she had all those millions of others…

She took another deep breath, the scent of coriander and sage making her think of temples made of clay and earth and dung, of malachite and mammoth ivory. She raised her head to stare at the swollen globe in the eastern sky.

“For I so love the world that I will give unto You my only Son,” she whispered.

With Dylan’s death it would be done. Her epiphany would be complete: Othiym would awaken from her aeons-long sleep.

Her words faded into the plaintive strains of the string quartet. Her reverie ended when the telephone chimed. Angelica smiled, that would be Dylan, calling to tell her how his first day at the museum had gone.

“Hello?”

“Angelica?”

A woman’s disembodied voice rang hollowly from the speaker. Not Dylan after all but Elspeth, her agent, calling from New York. Angelica heard traffic noises in the background: she’d be on her car phone. “I’m sorry to call so late, but there’s been some trouble.”

Angelica’s heart stopped. “Dylan? Is he all right? What—”

“He’s fine, Angelica. It’s not him, it’s—”

A pause. “Last night. A bunch of your girls were at some kind of party at an abandoned house in Cape Cod. Some big gay hangout on the beach up there. I just saw it on the news. A boy was murdered, a bunch of kids found the body and—”

“Who was it?”

“They don’t know, the body was so mutilated—”

“No! The girls, which girls?”

Elspeth’s voice rose edgily. “I have no idea, Angelica. But the way they described it, I’m certain—”

Angelica twisted her pen between her fingers, heedless of the ink spilling from its seams to stain her nails peacock blue. “Did they bring any of them in for questioning?”

“No, of course not.” Elspeth gave a sharp laugh. She had been one of Angelica’s earliest initiates, and was now at the center of a Circle in Manhattan’s publishing district. “But they did note similarities between this death and that boy in Lubbock. And the New York Beacon mentioned Cloud.”

“Cloud’s death was a—a horrible accident.” Angelica let her voice catch, so Elspeth could hear how the memory still upset her.

“This kid’s death was a pretty bad accident too,” Elspeth said dryly. “Apparently the body was so mutilated they had to use dental records to identify him.” Another pause. “Do you know someone named Annie Harmony?”

Angelica was silent. “Did you hear me?” Elspeth asked after a moment.

“Yes, I heard you,” said Angelica carefully. “I knew someone named Annie Harmon. She was my roommate for a semester at college. Why?”

“Well, someone named Annie Harmony may have seen what happened. She’s a singer with a big gay following; my son says she’s on cable all the time. She did a show in Provincetown last night and according to the club’s owner there were a number of your girls in the audience, he said they disrupted her encore and she was pretty pissed off. Afterward she apparently went to this party and saw something.”

Angelica’s voice was tight. “Did she go to the police?”

“No. But I guess she’s enough of a local celebrity that the news is all over the place—she was hysterical, screaming about black angels and some woman who saved her. Now the police want her for questioning but she’s disappeared.”

Annie! She couldn’t lose Annie, not now! Not after so long—

“Angelica?” Elspeth’s voice came through in an angry burst of static. “Are you listening?”

“Of course—it’s just, well, a surprise, that’s all.”

Elspeth snorted. “Yes, I would say a murder in the middle of a crowded party is a pretty big surprise! Pretty careless, too—a lot of people noticed your girls and boys there, and even though the gay press is trying to make this out to be some kind of queer-bashing, the local media and the national news are talking about ritual murder. They’re talking covens, they’re talking witches, Satanic rites…”

Angelica finally gave in to exasperation. “Well, let them talk. Remember Freedom of Religion, Elspeth? Remember the Santeria decision?”

The distorted scream of a bus’s brakes tore through the room. “This isn’t about freedom of religion, Angelica! This is ritual murder—”

“One man’s mass murder is another man’s high mass, Elspeth. If they summoned the naphaïm no one will find anything.” Her fingers drummed at the phone’s speaker. “I’m expecting a call from my son—”

“Maybe you can suggest to everyone that they cut back on the Circles for a few weeks—”

“Elspeth, I’m not their Mother Superior—there are women all over the world acting on their own now! You know what it’s like—all those splinter groups. I couldn’t possibly contact them all.”

Elspeth’s voice rang out warningly. “This is really bad timing, Angelica! You have a new book out, and the tabloids love this kind of stuff, especially in the middle of summer—tomorrow it’ll be on ‘A Current Affair’ and then you’ll have Laurie Cabot and NPR and everyone else in the country shoving microphones in your face!”

“It won’t be a problem, Elspeth.” Angelica’s voice was disarmingly calm. “All right?”

For a moment she heard only the drone of traffic, and faint music rising from the radio behind her. Finally Elspeth said, “I just thought you should know. Whether or not they can prove anything, the media and the public are starting to link these murders—”

“Offerings, Elspeth, offerings,” Angelica said gently.

“—to link these offerings, with your name. Your publisher is not happy about this at all, not one little bit.”

Angelica reached for the disconnect button. “Thank you for letting me know, Elspeth. I have to go now.”

For a few minutes she sat at her desk, staring at the moon outside. It was high above the cliffs now, its light falling in a shimmering curtain to cover everything, stones and tiles and pool, the twisted limbs of yucca and ocotillo and huisache.

“Four more weeks,” she said softly, and picked up the lunula. It had grown so heavy over the last few months. It drew strength from the waxing moon; as the moon waned, the offerings made by her followers would fatten it once more, until a month from now it would be heavy as though it had been wreathed with the tiny carven images that had been buried with the bodies of the faithful so many centuries before. By then Dylan would have found the missing crescent, the little moon’s lost dark quarter. The lunula and its Mistress would be whole again at last.

Now she felt the gravid curve heavy upon her breast. She ran her fingers across it, thinking of her beautiful son playing in the waves. She began to recite softly to herself, his favorite bedtime verse.

Very early the next morning, Annie Harmon sat on the tiny balcony of the room she and Helen had rented at a B&B in Wilmington, Vermont. To the west stretched the Green Mountains, their peaks gilded with sunrise. Above Haystack Mountain the moon was poised to set, just a few hours past its full. Phoebes and titmice sang from birch trees in the yard below, and from Lake Whittingham echoed the wailing of a loon and its mate’s anguished reply.

“We’ll have to let Vicki and Ed know if we want the room for another night,” Helen said gently She took her coffee cup from the breakfast tray that had been left outside their door. “It’s the Fourth of July weekend; they’ll want to rent it to someone else.”

Annie continued to stare at the western sky. She’d showered seven times since she and Helen had fled the rave on Herring Cove Beach, trying to rid herself of the smell and taste and feel of blood. Now her skin felt as though it had been rubbed with sand, so raw and sore it hurt to move.

“Annie?”

“I can’t go on with the tour.”

“You have to, Annie.” Helen’s voice was soft but annoyed; in the last twenty-four hours they’d had this conversation fifty times, at least. “You’ll be in breach of contract, besides which we still haven’t paid the mortgage—”

“There’s money in my private savings account in Burlington. I’ll write you a withdrawal; take it and pay all the bills.”

“You have a private savings account?” Helen sounded aggrieved. “You never told me.”

“Now you know.”

“But why! I mean, aren’t you going with me?”

“I can’t. I can’t go on with this tour, and I can’t go back home with you. I told you, it’s too dangerous.”

“Dammit, Annie, why don’t you just go to the police! This is ridiculous, you can’t just—”

“The police won’t be able to help me. The police won’t be able to help anyone if this keeps up…”

“And you can?” Helen asked incredulously.

“No, I’m sure I can’t. But maybe—maybe I can think of someone who can.”

“Who? Your mystery woman back in Provincetown? All of a sudden you’ve got to run off and play Sherlock Holmes?”

“Helen, you know that’s not what I’m doing.”

“So tell me what you’re doing.”

“I can’t.”

“Always a fucking mystery. Always the fucking heroine,” Helen fumed, gulping her coffee.

“Oh, stuff it!” But a moment later Annie was kneeling, clutching at Helen’s knee. “Oh, god—”

Helen bent down to hug her, her eyes filling with tears. “Hush—it’s all right, sweetheart, don’t worry, it’ll be okay…”

“It won’t be okay. Something terrible is happening, something horrible and now I’m in it but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna drag you into it with me—”

She closed her eyes to keep from crying, but that was when the visions came: those shadowy figures looming around the boy’s ravaged corpse, darkness behind them and overhead the ghostly blurred face of the moon…

Annie moaned, and stumbled to her feet. Overhead the sun broke over the mountain. “I can’t stay here. It’s Angelica, Helen, if you only knew what she was like!”

“Try me.”

“She’s just so used to getting her own way—I mean everything she wants! Men, women, boys, girls—”

“Beauty,” Helen suggested. “Eternal youth.”

“It’s not funny!”

Helen finished her coffee and reached for a croissant. “So, does she bathe in the blood of virgins, or what?”

“Helen. They killed that kid last night. And now—now she wants me. I don’t know why—I mean, after all this time—but she wants me—”

Helen forced a laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart.”

From the bedroom came the sudden hoarse shout of a telephone: an old-fashioned rotary phone to go with the inn’s 1930s decor. Two short rings and then a longer one. Annie stiffened and looked at Helen.

“Don’t answer it.”

“Don’t be silly. I have to answer it; it’s probably just Vicki or Ed checking to see if we want the room for another night.” Helen got to her feet.

Briiing briiing.

“Helen. Don’t.”

Briiing.

“Don’t! Nobody knows we’re here, nobody should be calling, Helen, PLEASE!—”

“And do we want the room?” Helen glanced back as she picked up the heavy black Bakelite handset. “Hello?”

From the porch Annie watched her. Helen’s sweet round face, the edges of her braids fuzzed from sleeping on them and her kimono falling open around her wide hips, that dark cleft and Annie’s heart aching because they hadn’t fucked, they’d fought, and now it was too late.

This is the last time I’ll ever see her, she thought with a sort of greedy desperation. This is it, make the best of it, Annie-girl, because—

“Annie?” In the bedroom Helen’s expression folded into fear, as quickly and neatly as a deck chair collapsing. She sank onto the bed, holding the phone out to Annie with wide eyes. Her voice faded to a whisper as she said, “It’s Fiona. From Labrys. She says…”

…because…

“Fiona? It’s only three A.M. out there, how the hell did she find—”

…because…

Helen stared at her in a daze, shaking her head. “I—I don’t understand. She says she just got off the phone with Angelica Furiano and she wanted you to know right away—the bad publicity, for some reason Angelica called and threatened them with a lawsuit, something about that boy, and you being there, and—well, they’re canceling the tour—”

Annie yanked the phone from her lover.

—because this is where things fall apart.

Angelica stood before her bedroom window, watching the moon disappear behind the black rim of the world. It had been a long night. After talking to Elspeth she had called Fiona from Labrys Music, dragged her out of bed and would not let her go until she’d promised to call Annie Harmon immediately. Let Annie wonder how she’d tracked her down; let her twist in the wind for a few weeks. By then it would be too late, and no one would be talking about the police, or anything else for that matter; not unless Othiym wanted them too. Her hand rested upon the lunula at her throat, felt its warmth seeping into her fingers.

Already first light was striking the Devil’s Clock. Her fingers slipped from the lunula to pluck at the sleeve of her kimono, wipe a drop of sweat from her wrist.

Dylan had never called. She knew better than to worry about that—did eighteen-year-old boys ever call their mothers? Still, it was enough to spark a small frisson of fear and unease; enough to keep her from going to bed.

Though in truth she did not really sleep anymore. As the power of the lunula waxed, as Othiym Herself grew stronger and Angelica waned, she found that she had little need of sleep. Instead of dreaming, her waking mind burned with random images. Annie in the shower, her face raw from crying. The black angel Eisheth rising into the darkness above the Atlantic Ocean, huge and ravenous, its mouth a flaming hole, its fiery wings billowing until they were swallowed by the clouds. A Circle in a Kansas wheatfield, adolescent girls and boys with knives raised above the cowering figure of a young boy scarcely more than a child; another Circle in the old growth forest of the Pacific Northwest. Older women here, the last ragged edge of the failed separatist movement, their prey older as well, and the sound of invisible wings beating fiercely at the air. Angelica saw all these things and more; they chased sleep from her mind as though it were a gnat.

But of Dylan she saw nothing, and that was strange. And try as she might, she could not find Sweeney Cassidy.

From the room behind her static crackled softly. Angelica turned. She had forgotten about the radio. Whatever station it had been tuned to had gone off the air hours ago. The hissing of white noise had become part of the ambient fabric of the night. She crossed the room slowly, to the neat array of stereo equipment stacked atop an antique secretary. Her finger was poised above the OFF switch, when abruptly the static cleared.

“Now what?” she murmured, frowning. There was a moment of silence. Then the radio picked up some distant signal. Music caught in mid-song, a sonic blur of feedback and echoing synthesizers; then a voice. An unfamiliar voice, repeating unfamiliar words in a near-monotone.

But there was a thread of melody there as well—a familiar melody, it nagged at her, tugged at the carefully woven tapestry of memories she had cloaked herself in.

“Enough,” whispered Angelica. She stabbed at the OFF button. There was a gentle click, an electronic sigh; but the music did not stop.

The sound filled the room. Everywhere around her, the voice overdubbed so that it formed its own echoing chorus, the same voice ringing in her ears like the aftermath of an explosion.

The song ended. As though someone had dropped a bottle of perfume, a thick fragrance filled the room, a cloying scent that made her head ache. The smell of the festival games, when great armfuls of flowers were strewn upon the graves of all the golden athletes given to her in tribute. The smell of hyacinths.

She could hear her own heart, her breath coming in shallow gasps. Then another sound, so soft she thought at first she’d imagined it. A ticking noise like fingers rapping at a glass.

Angelica whirled, hands clenched at her sides. In the arch of the Palladian window, something beat against the panes. The shadow of its wings ballooned across the floor and up onto the wall behind her, but when she darted to the window she saw that it was actually quite small, no larger than her hand. She flung open the casement but before she could thrust her head outside it flew into the room. The smell of hyacinths grew overpowering, the syrupy odor so strong her tongue felt coated with it, she felt as though she were drowning in petals, stamens showering her with pollen until she could hardly breathe. She staggered back and it flew toward her, its wings slowly rising and falling, sending the faintest of currents through the warm air.

It was a butterfly, purple and yellow, its glittering eyes fixed upon her, its antennae wafting back and forth like sea hair. It hovered mere inches from her face. When she extended one hand it floated down, gentle and hapless as a falling leaf, until it rested upon her palm.

Angelica stared at it, the dusting of gold and violet scales think as ash upon its wings, the tiny hairs upon its legs brushing the ball of her thumb. Its wings fluttered languidly, and the smell of hyacinths flowed into something else. The smell of rain-washed earth, of burning sand and the sea at Karpathos, of coriander and red sandalwood; the smell of autumn leaves and applewood burning in the chimneys at the Orphic Lodge.

“Oliver,” she whispered, as she drew the butterfly to her face; then crushed it between her hands.

CHAPTER 17 Falling

WE WALKED OUTSIDE ON the Mall, pausing to watch a magician who made a boy sharp-eyed and brown as a weasel disappear. The boy crawled beneath a rattan laundry basket scarcely large enough to hide him. The magician, a toothless man younger than I was, uttered some words in Hindi; when he lifted the basket, the boy was gone. Dylan and I inspected the packed earth, the laundry basket, the fringed edges of the silk tent: nothing.

“The Mysterious East,” I said at last. We wandered on. After the airless inferno inside the museum, the Mall felt comfortable, although the temperature was well into the nineties. Dylan removed his tie and slung it around his neck; I took off my linen jacket and was glad that I’d gone bare-legged that day. Our museum IDs still were clipped to our breast pockets; apart from that, we might have been any two tourists goggling at the acrobats and sitar players and contortionists at play in the shadow of the Washington Monument.

“So, Boss,” Dylan finally asked, “what do I do to earn my keep?”

I shrugged. “Not much.” Summer interns weren’t actually paid at all; the exceptional experience of working at the museum was supposed to be worth far more than any one person could possibly earn in the space of six short weeks. “To tell you the truth, interns don’t actually do very much. At least mine never do. Laurie’ll show you around the archives, I’ll show you how the videodisc system works. I’m sure we can find some stuff to keep you busy. There’s a new collection of photos that came in last week that needs to be cataloged; I’ll get you started on that. But mostly just have a good time, take advantage of being here.”

“I’m already doing that.”

I blushed, glanced over to see if he was being smarmy. But no, Dylan had the same earnest open look as before. As a matter of fact, the way he was staring at me was pretty dopey: like a kid longing for a new skateboard or the latest Boink CD.

“So,” I asked hurriedly, ducking into the shade of a great oak tree. “How’s your mom?”

“My mom.” Dylan kicked up a cloud of dust, flicked a strand of hair from his intense blue eyes. “Well, you know my mom.”

“Actually, I don’t. I haven’t seen Angelica since—well, since before you were born. I really only knew her for a couple of months.”

He stared at his feet. “I guess she’s okay.” He flashed me a crooked grin, a look that was so much like Oliver’s I felt a stabbing at my breast. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t seen her much since I’ve been born. My dad and I, we used to do a lot of stuff together. Riding, sailing, flying—my dad had a Cessna 150, he was gonna teach me to fly. But my mother—well, you know she’s always been into all this strange stuff. Like digging up our place on Santorini, looking for tombs and artifacts. She’s a real field archaeologist, at least she was until my father died and she started getting more into her books. I mean, she’s a great mom and all. But I’ve always gone away to school, I liked going away to school; and so I didn’t see her much except at vacations. And summertime she was always off on her digs, and Christmas we’d go see my grandfather…”

He leaned against the oak tree, staring across the long downward slope of green leading to the Tidal Basin, where little paddleboats like fat blue beetles swam through the water. “She’s just one of these driven professional women you read about,” he said at last with a sigh. “Over here, at least. In Italy you don’t read much about them, because there aren’t any. Not as many, at least.” He fell silent again, gazing into the hazy distance.

“So,” I said. So maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to talk about Angelica. “So you like UCLA?”

He shrugged. “It’s okay. It’s a lot of driven professional students. I guess I’m just not as motivated as I should be, I dunno.” He looked at me sideways and smiled. “I actually wanted to take the summer off and go cross-country with these friends of mine to Nantucket, but my mother had other plans. It was her idea to apply for this internship.”

“Well, I’m glad you did,” I said, and grinned. “Really.”

“Me too.”

His voice was sweet, with that hint of an accent and Angelica’s theatrical phrasing. His glittering green-flecked eyes remained fixed on me. I wiped a bead of sweat from my nose.

This is insane, I thought. I’ve known this kid for, what? an hour? ninety minutes? and already I’m totally wiped out by him.

Although he is incredibly fantastic-looking, I told myself, like that was a good excuse.

Although he is exactly half my age, and I am his supervisor, and old enough to be his mother.

Shit, if I’d had my way with Oliver, I would have been his mother. I shook my head, feeling slightly delirious.

“You okay?”

I started. Dylan was just inches from my face, his sea blue eyes wide with concern. “Sweeney? You look a little—I dunno, sunstroked maybe. Maybe we should go inside—”

Gently he pushed the hair from my eyes. I felt as though I might faint.

I am losing my mind, I thought. Or else this kid is losing his.

“Uh, sure,” I stammered. “We could duck in there—” I cocked my thumb at the Museum of American History. “—it’s air-conditioned, we could just kind of cool off and decide what to do next.”

“Sure. Here, let me take your bag—”

He reached for my briefcase but I tugged it from his hand. “That’s okay, it’s not heavy—”

“Really, I don’t mind—”

“No, it’s—”

I clutched my briefcase like it was the only thing keeping me from falling. “Right in here,” I babbled, hurrying up the steps.

Inside we wandered through throngs of tourists gaping at the first ladies’ gowns, Stanley Steamers, Fonzi’s leather jacket, the nation’s largest ball of string. We walked to where the doors opened onto Constitution Avenue and tourists crowded the gift shop and water fountains. All of a sudden I was noticing young girls—high school girls, college girls, mere children of twenty-five and -seven and thirty. All of them antic and colorful as guppies.

All of them younger than me.

The girls of summer everywhere and this poor kid was stuck with me, Electra on a coffee break.

But Dylan had inherited his mother’s ability to confer invisibility upon his companions: no one noticed me at all. The girls saw only Dylan. He ignored them, doing his best to carry on a serious conversation with me, which was difficult since what we were trying to talk about was what the floors were made of:

“Marble, you think?”

“Maybe just marble-colored linoleum.”

“Congoleum?”

“No, not linoleum, this is—”

This was nuts. We were acting like two people who were nervous because they were thinking about going to bed together, and I for one had always made it a policy not to sleep with someone until I had known him for at least twenty-four hours. Actually, in the last decade I hadn’t had much cause to implement that policy, or any of the others I’d made up over the years. And yet here I was, stumbling along in a daze beside someone half my age, who, to his credit, seemed to be equally nonplussed by the situation.

Probably he’s just embarrassed, I suddenly thought. The notion made my heart sink; but I knew it had to be true. He wanted to take off, meet some friends, make some friends, nice young people with tattoos and multiple body piercings; not hang around with a woman wearing sensible white tennis shoes and a Donna Karan suit.

“Listen, Dylan, do you want to go?”

We were outside now, balancing on the curb and feeling the last atoms of cool air plummet from our bodies onto the sweltering concrete. “There’s really no reason for us to go back to the museum today, they won’t get the a/c fixed till this evening and there’s no way to work there without it. And I know you probably have stuff to do…”

Dylan stared at the sidewalk, his long hair draping one side of his face. When he glanced up at me a moment later he looked crushed.

“Well, no,” he said. “I mean no, actually I don’t. I don’t know anyone here.” He rubbed his nose and coughed self-consciously. “Actually, can I take you to dinner?”

“Dinner? It’s only eleven o’clock.”

“Lunch, then, can I take you to lunch?”

“Uh—”

“Coffee, we could get espresso somewhere?”

I started to say no, but then there was that earnest face—that earnest, beautiful face—and the earnest, beautiful body it was attached to, now leaning rather precariously from the curb into Constitution Avenue.

“Listen, you don’t have to pay,” he said, a desperate edge creeping into his voice. “I have my own Visa—”

I started to laugh. Trust Angelica to send her only child into the big scary world with his own Visa.

“Or we could—”

“Okay, okay!—let’s go have lunch. Or espresso, or something. Only, no, you can’t pay for me—even though you have your own Visa. Christ, Dylan, get out of the road, you’re gonna get flattened by a Winnebago!”

I grabbed his arm as a land yacht roared past. For a moment we teetered on the edge of the curb, dust and smoke curling around us. He was tall enough to look down at me, he gripped my arm and held me tightly and I still hadn’t let go of his hand. Very dimly I could hear the distant skirling of a sitar fading into the drone of traffic. Then Dylan was pulling me closer to him, and before I could yank away he had dipped his head to graze my cheek with his lips. He smelled of car exhaust and sweat, and the faintest breath of sandalwood.

“Wow! Sweeney. Thanks. But you’ll have to tell me where we’re going.”

“Where we’re going?” I swallowed, my mouth dry and my heart pounding like I’d just run a mile. “I guess—we’ll go—well, somewhere that’s not around here.”

I looked over my shoulder at the museum. I unsnapped my ID and shoved it into a pocket, turned to Dylan and did the same to his. “Let’s see. Uh, we’ll go to—”

I frowned, staring out at the traffic, the tourists running to make the light. Then like a swallow lighting upon my shoulder it came to me.

Of course! Where else?!

I laughed. “We’ll go,” I said, grabbing his hand and pulling him after me into the crosswalk, “to Dumbarton Oaks.”

We spent the entire afternoon there, until the gates closed at five. We wandered across the lawns and through the boxwood labyrinth; gazed into the shallow pool with its mosaic of Bacchus and the grape arbor nearby; shook our heads at the grim remains of the bamboo garden that had flourished for so many years and had finally flowered, as bamboos do once a century, and then died. We ended at the trompe l’oeil wooden gate depicting a fountain, its splashing waters done in precious stones and mother-of-pearl, then found our way back up a narrow flagstoned path. We stopped to watch a small girl dart beneath a grove of miniature fruit trees, plucking kumquats and running to give them to her mother, a very proper Georgetown matron who promptly hid them in her Coach bag.

We wound up on the stone ramparts overlooking the pool. Dylan gazed longingly into its depths: a lozenge of purest turquoise shot with glints of gold, like the pool in the garden of the Hesperides, like the pool in a dream.

“Does anyone ever swim in it?”

“Maybe visiting Harvard horticultural fellows. I’ve never seen anyone.”

“It’s so beautiful. It reminds me of the pool at Keftiu—”

Keftiu. I gazed across to where wisteria bearded the high stone walls opposite. Where had I heard that before?

“What’s Keftiu?”

“My mother’s house on Crete. She always says it’s her favorite place in the world. I think sometimes that’s why she married my father,” he added softly. He rested his chin against the stone, his blue eyes wistful.

Keftiu. And I remembered the butterfly I had shown to Maggie that morning. The word had been part of its name.

“What does it mean?”

“It’s what the Egyptians called ancient Crete. Keftiu, or sometimes just Kefii.”

I was silent. Then I asked, “Why do you think it’s why she married your father?”

“Because he always said she loved that place more than she loved him. And I believe him. They met at a party on a yacht moored off the north coast of Crete. He took her to his place the next day—it’s not far from Knossos, and she’d never been there. She wanted to see the temple restoration, and she wanted to see Keftiu.”

His voice cracked as he went on, “He—he told me once that he had never seen anything like the look she got on her face, the first time she saw his villa there. It really is beautiful, it’s right on the coast and there are ruins all around it, and at night you can hear all these wild birds, and the wind on the water. But my father said that he had never seen anyone look as beautiful as my mother did when she first saw Keftiu. He said that from then on, all he wanted was to get her to look at him like that, just once.”

I smiled, but when I glanced at Dylan I saw that his face was sad.

“And did she?” I asked softly.

“I don’t know. My father never told me. He didn’t like it out there as much as she did. There’s no running water or air-conditioning, it’s rather primitive. He never wanted to stay very long—he preferred our villa in Florence, or the Milan apartment.

“But Mom loved it. She never wanted to leave. But after he died there, and her father… she’s only gone back a few times since then.”

We turned and left the pool, walking down to the formal gardens, where swallowtails and tiny hairskipper butterflies fluttered everywhere, so that it looked as though someone had shaken all the rose petals from their beds. The air had a sweet, powdery smell. Beneath our feet the grass was lush and damp from hidden sprinklers. A woman held a baby out to admire a huge rose, and the baby laughed. For a long time we wandered in silence, Dylan stopping now and then to watch the butterflies on the roses, or bending to sniff delicately at a dianthus blossom like a fragrant pink spider.

At last I said, “How did they the? Or—never mind, you don’t have to—”

“No, that’s okay. It was a while ago. We were at Keftiu, my grandfather had come for the winter and they were out sailing, my father and him. It was kind of strange. My grandfather was this great sailor, and my father was too, he never had any trouble in the water. He used to take us sailing at night, in the middle of winter, anytime; but he was careful, he’d never go out if there was any danger, if there was a storm brewing or something. And he was very careful with my grandfather, because Grappa was so old—almost ninety.

“But anyway, they went out, just for a few hours. It was morning, a beautiful perfect clear day, there was nothing on the weather about a storm or anything. Then out of nowhere this gale came up—there were people out on the water who saw it happen, they said it was like these clouds just boiled over the horizon and overtook them and that was it. Their boat capsized, they couldn’t get to their life jackets, and—”

He stopped. He was staring at the broken stalk of a yellow daylily, the flower’s long petals wilted in the sun.

“Oh Dylan,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked, I’m sorry—”

He turned to me and shook his head. “It just makes me sad, that’s all. They never recovered the bodies. Some people—friends of my father, who never really liked my mother—they said it was like in Rebecca. That Hitchcock movie…”

I looked away, stunned, and pretended to examine the broken lily. It wasn’t the notion that Angelica might have killed someone. I could imagine that; I could imagine almost anything of her. That golden faithless creature, beautiful and amoral as a fox, having another man act as father to Oliver’s child (and had her husband ever known? had he even suspected? had Dylan?), dreaming her mad dreams of apocalypse in her million-dollar houses…

But killing her own father! One of the Benandanti?

“I—I—”

Suddenly Dylan grabbed me by the shoulders, so hard that I gasped.

“‘Rebecca? I hated Rebecca!’” he hissed, then laughed sharply as he let me go, his face bright red. “Forget I ever said that! You must hate me, for having said that about—”

“No—really, of course not! It’s—I should never have brought it up. It’s none of my business, I don’t even know you—”

“But I want you to know me,” he said, with that same wistful earnestness. He took a deep breath, smoothed his hair from his face, and stared at his feet before looking up at me sideways. “I know this might sound strange. I know I just met you this morning and I know that you’re—well, I know that you’re older, okay? But—

“But this is really weird, Sweeney. I just have this amazing feeling about you. This incredible feeling that I know you. I mean, really know you.” He tugged imploringly at my wrist, his eyes wide and beseeching. “Does that sound ridiculous?”

He sighed and gazed at the neatly clipped lawn, then shoved his hands disconsolately into his pockets. “Shit. I guess I should have gone to Nantucket.”

I stared at him: his lanky body slung into its chinos and neat white shirt as into a prison uniform, the late afternoon sun glinting off that tiny constellation of gold and silver in one ear, his long hair slipping from its ponytail to spill across his shoulders. In the golden light he looked like someone who was melting, a wild boy poured into one careful upright mold but now slowly reverting to his true self. Not Angelica’s Good Son, with his museum internship and Visa card and italicized list of contacts and places to go; but a wild boy, like Oliver himself had been. Maybe not truly crazy as Oliver was, but fey enough to be talking to me like this. Fey enough to sense the same eerie quality that had colored our afternoon together, that made me so reluctant to leave.

Unless, of course, it was all my imagination. Unless he was so much Angelica’s child that she had put him up to this, to fit into some mad scheme of hers that I couldn’t even begin to imagine.

But Dylan didn’t look like he was playing a part. He looked stricken and lost, almost angry.

“No,” I said at last. “You’re supposed to be here, Dylan. I don’t know why, but I feel it too. You—you remind me of someone I knew once, a long time ago. Someone I—somebody I was in love with.”

“Oliver.” The word was barely a whisper, but whatever anger had been welling inside of him spilled now into his eyes. “You just never got over him.”

“Yes,” I said, abashed. “How did you know?”

“Because my mother said that after he killed himself your life was ruined. And just now you had this look…”

“My life was ruined?”

“…like maybe you were thinking about what it would have been like, not to have thrown your whole life away.”

“My life? She said my life was ruined?”

“Well, you never got married. Dr. Dvorkin says you’ve been living alone in his carriage house for almost ten years—”

“Eight years! And I didn’t want to get married. I mean, I could have married a lot of guys—”

“Oh yeah? Isn’t that against the law?”

I stopped, my hands clenched at my sides, and realized that I was furious; that I was ready to pop him one. But then I looked up and saw him starting to laugh.

“Not too defensive, huh?” He shook his head. “I always thought it was romantic. I mean, nobody ever killed herself for me.”

“He didn’t kill himself for me, Dylan! He was crazy! Nowadays they’d probably have diagnosed him as some kind of latent schizophrenic. Back then we all just thought it was too much drugs.”

“Well, still, no one ever carried a torch for me for twenty years—”

“Nineteen, kiddo. And give ‘em time.” I sighed in exasperation, but just then a woman in a white caftan strolled down between the rows of flowers, ringing a small brass bell.

“We’re closing,” she called in a low voice. “Five o’clock, we’re closing.” And passed on, her bell sending its cool clear notes into the greenery.

Like the hidden revelers in some Shakespearean romance, figures suddenly appeared from between stands of foxgloves, from beneath staked towers of delphiniums and the fragrant clouds of roses. We followed them to the main gate, and headed down the gravel drive to R Street.

At the gate the woman with the bell stood, smiling and nodding as we all filed out. When at last Dylan and I passed through she called a final, “Good evening.” Then she pulled the gates closed. A lone guard locked the great curved iron arch. Dylan and I stood blinking in the golden sunlight of the street. I felt as though I had dreamed the entire afternoon: the honeyed light, the smell of roses and honeysuckle, Dylan himself. I yawned, rubbing my eyes. When I glanced around, all the other visitors had disappeared. We were once more alone.

“Well, I guess we could think about dinner now,” I suggested. “Or cocktails. It’s five.”

“I’m not old enough to drink.”

“But you do?”

He grinned. “On special occasions.”

“Well, consider this a very special occasion—”

We walked down to Wisconsin Avenue and caught a cab to Mamma Desta’s, a dinky little restaurant in a dicey part of town that had the best Ethiopian food in the city. The place was little more than a storefront with a handful of Formica tables lit by fluorescent lights, and two ceiling fans spinning dizzyingly fast overhead. We shoved into a corner table and Mamma Desta herself came out and took our orders, a tiny cheerful woman with frizzy greying hair and a bloodstained chef’s apron. We ate with our fingers, food so hot we could watch beads of sweat pop out on our cheeks. Tibs, zilzil wat, bits of spiced meat and vegetable and sauce sopped up by spongy thick white pancakes that looked like foam insulation. We drank tej, sweet honey wine served in globular glasses like alembics. I had never been able to knock back more than one or two of these—too sweet, the taste of honey too unfamiliar—but that evening it went down like water, after all that hot food and the unsettling experience of meeting Dylan.

“My mother says that in ancient Crete they embalmed their dead in honey,” he remarked, rolling a bit of injera between his fingers. “They’d curl up the corpses and put them into big clay jars and bury them.”

“Ugh. Thanks for sharing, Dylan.”

“And sometimes to torture a prisoner, they’d stick him in a vat of olive oil and leave him there, so eventually his flesh would just melt away. And they raised vipers, and used their venom as a hallucinogen—”

“Dylan. I am trying to eat.”

“I thought you were an anthropologist. I thought you’d like to know these things.”

“I’m an armchair anthropologist. I like to look at pictures of colorful peoples, I like to eat in exotic restaurants I can reach by cab from my home, I like to purchase my voodoo masks from The Artifactory and get my clothes at Banana Republic.”

“So I guess watching dawn break over the Great Pyramid at Cheops is out, huh?”

“Dylan, I don’t even have a passport. I’ve never had a passport. I mean, your mother—she leads the life I always wanted to lead. She’s been to all these places, she’s unearthed things in Crete and Italy and god knows where. And me, it’s hard for me to find my shoes in the morning. She has all these theories about civilization, and I’m a civil servant.”

I picked up my globe of tej and smiled bitterly. “I mean, I wanted to do the stuff she does, but somehow I never did. Sometimes I feel like the prince in one of those Russian fairy tales—you know, the guy whose soul is stolen by the witch, and he spends his life in a coma while Baba Yaga is out there watching dawn break at Cheops.”

Dylan was silent. I thought I must have angered him, talking about Angelica like that; but suddenly I didn’t care anymore. I was tired and drunk and probably had sunstroke, I was exhausted by the effort of trying to carry on a conversation with someone who not only didn’t remember the day Kennedy died, he didn’t remember the day Sid Vicious died. “I think it’s time to call it a night, kiddo,” I said, and motioned for the check.

Outside it was dusk, cars and passersby and crumbling buildings all cloaked in a blue-black haze. The sky was like one of those paintings on velvet, violet streaked with yellow and red, lurid yet also soft, and the smells of cumin and cayenne and coriander spilled out into the street with us, mingling with the putrid scents of rotting gingko fruit and stagnant water.

“We’re going to have a hard time getting a cab here,” I said, glancing down the street. “It’s not a great neighborhood—”

“I’ll get you a cab,” Dylan said. He stepped to the curb, his effort at gallantry somewhat marred by his stumbling gait. I started to say something about walking over a few blocks, but he had already raised his arm.

As though he had summoned it from the underworld, a Yellow Cab came roaring up, its front wheel scoring the edge of the curb as Dylan and I jumped back.

“Step inside, step inside,” called a rumbling voice.

Dylan looked at me and burst out laughing. “Wow! I’ll have to try that in Rome sometime—” He yanked the cab door open and gestured extravagantly “Λprès-toi, mademoiselle.”

I slid into the cab, the seats warm as skin, the air smelling like Pine-Sol. Dylan sat beside me, so close our thighs touched. A broad-shouldered figure turned to look back at us, his hands resting lightly on the wheel.

“Where to, my man?”

I gasped.

“Where’re we going, Sweeney?” asked Dylan. But I couldn’t say anything, only stare at the cabdriver, his license dangling from the rearview mirror.

Yellow Cab Number 393, with its neatly patched seat backs and glove compartment cracked open ever-so-slightly, so that you could just make out the gleaming barrel of a gun inside, hidden in a nest of yellowing newspaper clippings covered with shadowy images of Cassius Clay and Sugar Ray and a square-jawed young black man beautiful enough to be a movie star.

“My man?” the driver repeated gently.

It was Handsome Brown.

“Uh—the Hill, we’re going to 19 Ninth Street Northeast—”

“No—” Dylan suddenly leaned forward. “Take us down around the Washington Monument. Just drive around for a while; I’ve never been here before.”

Handsome Brown looked at me, his eyebrows raised. “Is that what the lady wants?” he rumbled.

“Yes,” Dylan said, before I could protest. He took my hands, pulled me gently but irresistibly to him. “So you never saw the pyramids,” he said. “So we’ll go look at an obelisk.”

“Fine,” I said hoarsely.

“Very good, very good. I’ll have to charge you extra zones, my man, taking the grand tour like that.”

“Whatever you say,” said Dylan.

He took us through that warren of back streets and narrow alleys that only Handsome Brown had ever known, labyrinthine precincts of the city that I had seen years before, with Oliver dozing in the cab beside me and an unfinished bottle of Pernod in my lap. Embattled tenements behind their chain link fences; neat little row houses where old women sat fanning themselves with copies of The Watchtower; side streets rank with the gingko’s shattered fruit.

Then we were cruising down Embassy Row, past mansions with battlements and minarets and towers, fake Tudor facades and Moorish splendors and crepe myrtles blooming everywhere in explosive bursts of magenta and rose. Handsome Brown said nothing, only turned up the radio. It was tuned to a station that played nothing but the lushest most soul-melting ballads, Al Green and Teddy Pendergrass and Prince wailing heartbreak like the world was going to end at midnight. Every now and then Handsome Brown’s face would fill the rearview mirror as he glanced back at us, unsmiling but his eyes keen as blades.

I stared out my window, biting my lip and trying more than anything not to see him there beside me, though I could feel him and if the music died, I could hear his snores and his even breathing. There was a ghost there in the purple darkness, his long hair slipping around his shoulders like black rain and his white shirt undone at the throat, there were two ghosts—Oliver and myself, circling the city forever while outside the night deepened and distant laughter rose from the Tidal Basin—

I felt as though my heart would break, my eyes filled with tears even as I smiled bitterly—so this was what it was like to get old, you rode around in taxicabs and cried when you heard Prince on the radio…

“Sweeney,” I heard a low voice whisper. “I’ll love you next time. I promise.”

And silently I wept. Because of course there would never be a next time. There had never even been a first time; and I moved closer to the window so that Dylan wouldn’t see me crying.

After a minute or two I stopped. I wiped my eyes and hoped there wasn’t mascara all over my face. We were downtown. Cab 393 slipped between the other cabs flowing past the White House, like caravels around a royal barge, then headed for the Mall.

“It’s so beautiful,” Dylan said softly. “And it’s so small. Even the worst parts of it only go on for a few blocks.”

“It’s worse now than it used to be—now you’ve got all these crack houses, and gangs, people getting shot everywhere. It’s just different now.” I sighed. “I guess everything is different now.”

The cab moved smoothly past the Monument, the museums in the distance and above all of it the Capitol, the City on the Hill. I could feel Dylan beside me, his warmth and the sweet soapy smell of his sweat. I stared resolutely out the window, pretending interest in the tourists in front of the Lincoln Memorial, gazing at the great sad giant entombed within.

“Maybe it’s good that it’s different,” Dylan whispered. “Maybe it’s better…”

He put his hand on my shoulder and gently turned me to him. For an instant I tried to resist, then gave up. I was staring into his sea blue eyes, his sunburned face spangled with green and crimson from the traffic lights outside. He wasn’t smiling, there was nothing mocking in his gaze, nothing playful at all. He was staring at me as though he had never seen me before; he was looking at me as I imagined Angelica had looked upon Keftiu so long ago. As though he saw something in me long dreamed of, something he had hardly dared hope to find. I could feel his other hand on my thigh, his fingers burning through the coarse linen, his fingers trembling as they pulled the fabric taut, and then he drew me to him and I was gone. My fingers tangled in his long hair and I could feel him all around me, his arms pulling me close until I could hear the roaring of his heart as he kissed me and I wasn’t thinking of Oliver anymore, I wasn’t thinking how different we both were, how young he was or who his mother had been, I wasn’t thinking of anything at all except for Dylan, Dylan, and how I would have waited another twenty years for him, a hundred, a thousand. I would wait forever for him, now that I knew he was there.

CHAPTER 18 A Meeting

BABY JOE MET HER in a Manhattan bar called Chumley Peckerwood’s, a garishly lit franchised strip club where a visiting executive on an expense account could drop a grand for a steak and a few margaritas and a blond lap dancer from Massapequa named Tiffany Gayle.

“Hey, Annie,” Baby Joe murmured, hugging her. “God, you feel good.”

“Baby Joe…” She was surprised at how quickly the tears came; just as quickly she blinked them back. “I’m—I’m so sorry I missed Hasel’s funeral. I was touring and I couldn’t take off—I’m not big enough that I can get away with that—”

He made a dismissive gesture, slid into the booth, and sniffed her club soda. “Ugh.” Grimacing, he beckoned a waitress. “Double vodka martini. And bring her one too.”

Annie started to protest but he waved her off. “It’ll put some hair on your head. So. Angie’s found you.”

Annie felt her chest contract. “How did you know?” She sank into her corner of the booth, shrinking like Alice into burgundy leather.

‘“Cause you wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this, unless you were drunk or crazy or in very deep shit.” He took his drink from the waitress, cast her an appraising look as she handed Annie her martini, then downed his in two gulps. “And I know you don’t drink, and you didn’t used to be crazy. So it’s got to be mondo poo-poo. And I’m thinking it’s got to be Angie.”

Baby Joe slid his empty glass back onto the tray and glanced at the waitress. “Two more.” He turned back to Annie. “I’m waiting.”

“We-ell.”

She took a deep breath. Every few months Baby Joe called her, but Annie hadn’t actually seen him in years. He’d grown into an imposing figure: big and broad-shouldered, with a body that should have run to fat but so far had not. His hair hung to his shoulders, straight and very, very black. His deconstructed suit jacket was black, too, except for where the lining showed, as were his trousers and the T-shirt that read JELLY BISHOPS in tiny white letters. A pair of cheap plastic sunglasses was shoved into the thick hair above his forehead. He looked like a bellicose young capo in whatever the Filipino analog of the Mafia might be; though there was a weariness to his gaze she didn’t recall, a sorrow she could see mapped in the lines around his dark eyes and mouth.

It’s Hasel, thought Annie, and felt ashamed that she hadn’t shown more grief over the death of their old friend. She stared at her untouched drink.

“Well, you’re right,” she said at last. “I am in trouble.”

She gestured at the dark-paneled walls and crimson lighting behind them, the stage where a young woman in high heels and a peacock feather writhed to a synth-pop version of the theme from Gigantor. “This place, I heard about it from a girlfriend and I thought it’d be good cover for me.”

Baby Joe’s eyebrow arched. He reached for her martini and sipped it thoughtfully. “Trouble. Is it Angie?”

“I think so.”

“Huh.” He finished her first drink just as the waitress returned with his second. His expression remained impassive, but his eyes narrowed very slightly. “So. Our Lady of Perpetual Motion has decided to get in touch with all her old college chums.”

Annie nodded.

Baby Joe reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and tapped one out. “Tell me about it.”

“There was a murder—two nights ago. In Provincetown—”

Baby Joe bared his teeth in a smile. “The Eviscerator.’ I saw the file photos.”

“I saw it in the flesh.”

“You saw it?”

“I nearly was it. This rave out at Herring Cove. A bunch of Angelica’s followers were there, performing some kind of ritual. And somebody must’ve slipped me something, ‘cause it was like I was someplace else. Like I had some kind of out-of-body experience. I know for all you guys from the Divine, that would be, like, all in a day’s work, but let me tell you, I was freaked…

“And then I turned around and saw him. This kid, laid out on the floor like a turkey on the day after Thanksgiving. And these geeks who killed him, they start coming after me, only this—well, somebody scared ‘em off.”

“You go to the cops?”

“No.”

“How come?”

She shrugged, glancing around uneasily. “I don’t know.”

Baby Joe rolled his eyes. “You know, every movie I see, somebody witnesses a horrible murder, but they don’t go to the cops. And I’m like, Why don’t they go to the cops! So, why don’t you—”

Annie started to slide from the booth, furious. “This is not a fucking joke, Baby Joe! If you’re not gonna—”

“Hey! Hija, sit—” His hand clamped around hers and he pulled her into the seat beside him. “It was a rhetorical question. So you saw a bunch of Barbie’s playmates waste this kid and you figure they’ll pin it on you. Okay, I’ll buy it. Hey, if Angie’s involved, I’ll buy anything. So now what?”

Annie glowered, her buzz cut sticking out in tiny spikes around her pale face. She looked even more like a feisty kid than she had back at the Divine. Feisty, but scared. When she didn’t say anything Baby Joe tilted his head toward her second martini.

“Drink that. It’s costing the paper thirty bucks.”

Annie stared at him belligerently. Suddenly her hand shot out; she grabbed the glass and drank it, then gestured for the waitress to bring another.

“Okay,” she said, her eyes watering. She turned sideways to face Baby Joe. “What do you remember about Oliver’s death?”

“Oliver?” Baby Joe looked taken aback. “Oliver Crawford?”

“Yeah. Did you go to his funeral?”

“No.”

“Know anybody who did?”

Baby Joe stared at her, brows furrowed. “No. Hasel and I wanted to go, but we got a call from Professor Warnick. He said the Crawfords didn’t want anyone there but immediate family.”

“Did you ever actually meet his immediate family?”

Baby Joe frowned. “Do you mean do I think they exist? I know they do, my brother was—”

“No—I meant, did you see any of them then. After Oliver supposedly jumped out the window of the hospital.”

Baby Joe was silent. The waitress brought Annie’s drink, disappeared into a flood of ruby light. Baby Joe looked at Annie holding her double martini in both hands, like a child drinking a glass of milk. “You think Angelica killed him?” he said at last.

“I don’t know what I think.” Annie sipped her martini, made a face. “This really costs thirty bucks?”

“Yeah.”

“No wonder your newspaper’s in trouble.” She shuddered. “Listen. I want you to do me a favor.”

Baby Joe raised an eyebrow.

“Labrys canceled the rest of my tour. Angelica called them. I don’t know how she did it—like maybe she pulled Fiona from a flaming plane wreck once and I never knew about it. But Fiona called me a few nights ago and the tour’s off. Angelica Furiano threatened them with a lawsuit, some bullshit about me making a statement to the press that Angelica was involved with that murder in P-town. Only I never talked to the press! I never talked to anyone except Helen and now you. But unless I go along with her, Labrys pulls the plug on me, MTV dumps my video, and the masters for my next album disappear somewhere between here and Iona Studios.”

Baby Joe whistled. “Sounds like you’re fucked, hija.”

“Tell me about it. So I’m going underground for a little bit.” She sighed and leaned back into the booth, her cheeks bright with a false rosy glow from the martini. “See, I’m thinking that maybe Angelica’ll just kind of forget about me. Like maybe she just wanted to scare me; so Whoo! I’m scared.” Annie fluttered her hands in front of her face, then cocked her head. “Think it’ll work?”

“No.” Baby Joe looked at the empty stage, his expression remote. When the music blared out again and another girl pranced onto the platform, he ducked his head to reach inside his jacket. “Here. You better read this.”

It was Hasel’s letter, and the worn obituary notices from the Charlottesville paper. Annie scanned them quickly.

“What is this?” Her face went dead white. “Baby Joe… ?”

“It’s what happened to Hasel,” he said softly.

“But—is it true? I mean, this stuff he wrote you about Angelica?”

“I think it’s true, hija.”

“B-but—but why?” Annie’s voice broke and she looked away. “Why would she kill Hasel?”

“Why would Angelica kill anyone?” Before she could protest, he lit his cigarette and took a drag, leaned over and slid the pages from her hand. “You know what this is, hija?” He waved the papers at her and put them back inside his jacket.

Annie shook her head, hardly seeing him at all. “What?”

“This is some bad fucking fallout from the Benandanti.”

“The Benandanti? But Angelica hated them, she told me! All that patriarchal shit—she was like, way ahead of the curve on that,” Annie said, and in spite of herself smiled wryly. “She’d never go along with the Benandanti.”

“I’m not saying she went along with them. I’m saying she’s coming back at them. You ever read her books? No?” He looked surprised. “I would’ve thought you’d be into that shit—”

“Why? Because I’m a lesbian? Please.” Annie’s glare softened into curiosity. “So what about her books?”

“They’re a fucking blueprint for a new religion, that’s what. Dios ka naman! She’s got women from here to Bombay, reading this stuff, making these círculos—” He inscribed a circle in the air, looking as though he’d spit into it. “—these, like, covens. Talagang bruja! When I first read her stuff, I couldn’t believe it—I mean, I couldn’t believe anyone would buy into it. Goddess rippers! Like Witchcraft 101. But now…”

His black eyes grew distant, unfocused; looking at him, Annie shivered. The Benandanti. For the first time in years she thought about Baby Joe being one of them. She swallowed, her mouth tasting bitterly of vermouth.

“Not any more, hija,” he said softly. “I’m like Angie: I got out. But what she’s doing—Dios ko, this is some serious shit! I been hearing about it for a while, at the paper. We get all the crazies, you know? Wife beaters, guys who want to stick it to little girls, but this is crazier even than that. These guys call us, saying their wives and girlfriends are into some kind of cult, you know—get together with the gals once a month over on the Upper East Side or wherever, and we should be writing about that instead of trade sanctions against Japan. Girlfriends dancing in the moonlight, snake handling, calling up demons, whatever. These guys talk about blood, they say the women’re up to something weird. But you know—guys like that, they always think women are up to something weird. So who pays attention?

“But then I start to hear other stuff. Guy I know, covers homicide, starts talking about these ritual killings. Bones alongside the Major Deegan Expressway, this fire circle up by the Cloisters. A snuff video, with all these women and some guy who gets it at the end, only no one ever reports him missing. Stuff like that.

“Then some bodies start to show up. Mutilated bodies. No single MO, the killings are all over the map, but a lot of the victims are homeless men. Sometimes homeless women. And a lot of kids. I mean, like runaway boys who’re hustling or whatever. Some people say it’s Santeria; maybe even Anton LaVey’s people. But then the Santeria folks say No way, this isn’t them at all, and even the other guys, the Satanists, get pissed off! That’s when I started to take a professional interest.

“Then I hear about something out West. One of Angelica’s bodyguards is, like, eaten by killer ants! On Angie’s ranch, with Angie supposedly asleep back in la casa. Then there’s all these unsolved murders of runaways and homeless people out in Arizona and L.A. and Seattle, and your acid test up in Provincetown, some dumb kid on smart drugs ends up wearing his small intestine for a necktie. Now you look me in the eye and tell me there’s not something weird going on.”

She tried to look him in the eye, but Baby Joe only stared at the stage, where two women were embracing and simulating orgasm. Annie lowered her head into her hands and ran her fingers across her buzz-cut scalp.

“And you really think Angelica’s behind it all?”

Baby Joe turned back to her. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

“But why? I mean, I know she’s got something to do with it—I saw her, when I was hallucinating, or—well, whatever I was doing. But she can’t be in all these places at once. Can she?” Annie added, a little desperately.

“‘Let us placate her in advance by assuming the cannibalistic worst,’” recited Baby Joe softly.

“What?”

“Just something I read. Listen, Annie—”

He took her hand, her small fingers disappearing beneath his. “Something really strange is going on—I don’t mean just with you, or me, or Hasel, but with everything. The whole world, maybe.

“You remember how Angie used to talk—all that goddess stuff, all those books Warnick gave her? Well, I read some of them too—back then, I mean. And I saw what happened at the Orphic Lodge that night, before—well, before Oliver jumped—”

“And?”

“And—well, what if something really happened to them? What if Angie did something—what if that night, her and Oliver both did something, and—well, what if they woke something. Something they shouldn’t be screwing with.”

“Something like—what?” Annie asked warily.

“Christ, Annie! You were at the Divine, you know there’s a whole world of stuff out there that nobody else talks about! You weren’t supposed to find out, and I walked away from it, and maybe Oliver killed himself because of it—but it’s still there.”

Annie tried to draw her hand away, but Baby Joe only clutched it tighter.

“It’s still there, Annie! You know it is! Look what’s happened to the world since that night at the Divine—only what, nineteen years ago? People always say how the past looks better than whatever we have now—but Dios ko, things really have gotten worse! There’s all these horrible little wars, there’s this horrible plague that’s killing us and everyone’s pretending not to notice. Things happen like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, and we’re supposed to just forget. Men go around hunting women and children like they were deer, and women fall on the men with knives. And on top of that, the whole fucking planet is just sort of dying. I mean, we got earthquakes, and fires, and floods, and droughts and blizzards and—well, everything! It’s like the pregame show for the apocalypse!”

His voice rose as Annie continued to look at him with a stony expression. “Don’t you see, Annie? This is it—and whatever it is, Angelica’s not just part of it. Angelica is it. I mean, for two thousand years Christians have been talking about the Second Coming, about Jesus and the saints and all that shit… but what if there could be a different kind of Second Coming?”

“But why is she killing us?” Annie tried to keep her voice from quavering. “We were her friends! Why did Oliver have to the, and Hasel? Hasel would never hurt anyone! And me, they tried to kill me—”

“Maybe to her it’s not like killing. I mean, if somehow this goddess has been reincarnated as Angelica.” Baby Joe laughed, a soft ominous giggle. “Maybe she’s trying to save us—keep us from seeing what comes next. Maybe she thinks she’s doing her friends a favor.”

For several minutes they sat without talking. Dancers walked on and off the stage behind them, sweat and glitter silvering the air in their wake. Finally Annie asked, “What about Sweeney? You’re in touch with her—does she know?”

“I told her about Hasel. And she knows about Angelica—I mean she knows that Angelica’s come back. She saw her on TV a week or so ago, some talk show.”

“But this other stuff? These—” Annie raked her fingernails across the table’s surface. “You know,” she ended brokenly.

Baby Joe dropped his cigarette on the floor and let it burn there. “She knows some. Hasel’s letter, and I faxed her some other things. Articles.” Glitter and grey ash sifted over him; he waved it away and said, “I’ve tried calling her this week but she’s never at the museum. Which is strange, ‘cause I don’t think she’s taken a vacation in five years. When I call her at home I just keep getting her machine.”

He fell silent. Annie couldn’t meet his eyes: they were so black he looked stoned or crazy drunk, and ferociously intense. She turned instead to gaze at the stage, where two women caressed each other with luminous violet talons. The mirrored floor beneath them was streaked with sweat and god knows what else. One of them arched her back so that her blond mane swept the floor. Her spike heel impaled a twenty-dollar bill, and she laughed.

“Fucking shit.” Annie swore beneath her breath and looked away. The sight of them sickened her, and the sound of the men watching, the way their drunken voices got husky and boyish at once. And their smell, that almost imperceptible musk of—what? Sweat and semen and whiskey-fueled hope, she guessed; then realized it was Baby Joe she could smell, the oily taint of vodka on his skin and pungent tobacco on his breath. Without wanting to Annie cringed, thinking of her old friend sitting beside her with an erection, his eyes fixed on the stage.

It almost makes you think they get what they deserve…

She recoiled in horror at the thought.

“What?” Baby Joe put a hand on her shoulder and started to his feet, looking around with that same fierce gaze. “You see someone, hija?”

At his touch she jumped, her skin prickling. But it was only Baby Joe. Sweet rude Baby Joe, with his Peter Lorre giggle and nicotine-stained fingers, his angry gaze directed at some imagined enemy out there in the strip club.

He’s being protective, Annie thought with amazed tenderness, protective of me!

“N-nothing… She stared past him at the women onstage, their motions no longer grotesque or crude but merely pathetic, even childish. Suddenly she laughed.

“What?” Baby Joe demanded, but Annie could only point. “What?”

“Just the idea,” she finally gasped through her laughter.

“What idea?” Baby Joe stared at her suspiciously.

“That Angelica could take over the world. That she could make us all afraid of each other—afraid enough to—”

She reached for his hand; but at that moment a shadow fell across the table. With a small cry Annie looked up. Baby Joe’s back stiffened against the booth’s leather seat, but then Annie exclaimed in relief.

“Justine! Jeez, you scared me.”

“Ah-nee!” a lilting voice sang out. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

“It’s okay, Baby Joe.” Annie scooted across the seat to make room. “This is Justine. She’s a friend of mine. I asked her to meet us here.”

Above them towered a six-and-a-half-foot Caribe beauty, her long black hair oiled and twisted into corkscrews, her full lips and high cheekbones dusted with silver powder. She wore a shocking pink sheath slit to her thighs, and over that a pink rubber girdle, and pink rubber platform shoes with tiny silver starfish embedded in them. A zircon studded one of her very white front teeth.

“Mr. Malabar. What a pleasure. I enjoy your writing in the Beacon.” Her deep voice was French-inflected, luscious as fine chocolate. Her hand folded around Baby Joe’s, larger and stronger than his, studded with rings and smelling of Obsession perfume. “Although you were very unkind to poor Miss Hyde Park last week, cette femme maudite! What can you have been thinking? I saw her show and it left me in tears. Je pleurais.”

Justine dabbed an eye with a ruby-pointed finger, then smiled as she gently slapped Annie’s cheek. “And you! I haven’t seen you since Wigstock, except on TV. And now you have troubles with voudon?”

Annie glanced from Baby Joe to Justine, who were eyeing each other with polite wariness.

“Um, well…” Annie cleared her throat. Justine was really Helen’s friend. Annie had only met her once before; she’d forgotten how imposing she was. “Justine, I need you to help me find someone. Someone special.”

“In here?” Justine swept the room with a disdainful glare. “Chérie, you will need a Geiger counter to find someone special here.”

“No, not here. I don’t know where, exactly.”

“Uh-huh.” Justine rolled her eyes. She leaned over to pluck a cigarette from Baby Joe’s pack, then slid into the booth beside Annie. “Girl problems, Annie?”

“Sort of.” Annie looked at Baby Joe. “Now, I know this is going to sound crazy, but…”

She told them about the rave. Her vision—if that’s what it was—of ritual sacrifice and the eerily beautiful demon in the boathouse, Angelica’s role in the killing, the attempt to slay Annie herself, and then the phone call early the next morning, when Annie learned that Angelica had successfully derailed her tour. Finally, she told them of the woman who had saved her.

“And that freaked me as much as the rest of it. Maybe more.” Annie leaned back in the booth and tugged at the collar of her tuxedo shirt. “God, I’m exhausted.” She turned to Justine, who was listening with great seriousness, her dark eyes wide. “And I can’t believe I’m telling you guys this. I’d think I hallucinated it all, except I know that kid is dead. And I know a strange woman brought flowers to me after my show that night. Patrick saw her, and Helen saw the flowers, and I recognized her—”

Baby Joe shook his head. “You sure about that, Annie?”

“No. I’m not sure. It was dark, I was scared to death, and messed up—I mean, they must have slipped me something, for me to see all that crazy shit! But I’m pretty certain. I got a good look, and…”

Her voice trailed off. She stared miserably down at the floor. “Maybe I’m just going nuts.”

Justine shook her head. “Uh-uh. I believe you. Things like that, they happen to me all the time. Except for the black gardon with a face.” She shuddered, wiping her mouth with a cocktail napkin and examining the lipstick stain as though it were an omen. “Now you said you have a photo for me? Because Justine knows a lot of people, but she is not psychique.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” From her knapsack Annie withdrew an envelope, opened it carefully, and removed a black-and-white photo, brown-stained and curling around the edges. “It’s just an old Polaroid. But it’s the only one I have.”

“Hmmm.” Justine squinted as Baby Joe peered over her shoulder, looking like he wanted to snatch the photo from her hand. “Well, you are right, it is not very good. But—”

“Who took that picture?” demanded Baby Joe.

Annie looked annoyed. “I don’t remember. We were at a Halloween party. I had a life too, you know.”

“Mes enfants!” Justine shook a finger at Baby Joe. She pursed her lips and stared at the photo for another moment, then slid it into a small plastic reticule hanging from her waist. “Tant pis: not someone I know, but we’ll see. Now, I have to meet some friends of my own, so you will excuse me.”

She stood, towering above the others. “Annie, you know how to call me? But it will be a while—”

“How long?”

Justine tilted her head, eyeing the girls onstage. “Bridge-and-tunnel amateurs,” she sniffed. “How long? A month…”

“A month! I can’t wait a month—”

“You wait this long, you can wait a month. But I will start asking about your friend. Give Helen a kiss for me. And you—”

She ducked to kiss Baby Joe on the lips, letting her long fingernails tickle his throat. “Mr. Malabar! You need a date for one of your shows, you give me a call. Your friend has the number.” Light sparked the zircon in her front tooth as Justine smiled and strode off through the club.

“That puto’s something else,” observed Baby Joe.

“Helen knew Justine back when she was Jerome.” Annie sighed. “Sometimes I think I’ve lived too interesting a life. Listen, Baby Joe—I hate to freak and run, but I’m so tired I feel sick, and that—”

She pointed at the remains of her vodka martini. “—that didn’t help.”

Baby Joe looked at her—the circles beneath her eyes that weren’t smudged makeup, the sparks of silver-grey in her cropped hair. “Where you staying, hija?” he asked, reaching across the table for her hand.

“With friends.”

“Where?”

Annie turned away. “I can’t tell you. And I’m really not trying to be difficult,” she insisted, when Baby Joe glowered. “But someone tried to kill me a few days ago, and—”

“And that’s a good fucking reason to tell me where you’ll be! Or come stay at my place—”

“No.” Annie shook her head stubbornly. “Forget it, Baby Joe, don’t even say it—just let me do this my way, okay? I promise, I’ll call you if I hear anything from Justine—”

“Fuck that! You better call me tomorrow—”

“Friday, okay? I’ll call you Friday, I promise—only don’t tell anyone you saw me.”

“What about Sweeney?”

Annie stood. She pulled a pair of sunglasses and a baseball cap from her knapsack and stepped out of the booth. With the cap slung on backward and the sunglasses riding on her snub nose, she looked about fourteen. “Sweeney? I don’t think so. Look, Baby Joe—”

He met her in the aisle and threw an arm around her shoulder, hugged her close to him. “Look nothing! You better—”

“Shh.” Annie stood on tiptoe and placed a finger on his lips. “I probably shouldn’t even have told you. You’re not going to write about this, are you?”

“Don’t insult me.” He walked her to the door, stood inside while she stepped out into the blazing late afternoon heat and shrieking tumult of midtown. “But you better call, hija.”

Annie laughed. “Don’t insult me! Friday—”

“I’ll be waiting.”

He stayed on at the strip joint after she left, checking his voice mail for messages, then leaving word at the paper that he’d be back late that night. He had a show to cover at Failté, a tiny downtown back room where a new band from Ireland would be playing after midnight. But there was a lot of ground to cover between now and then. It was almost one hundred degrees out on the pavement, and he’d already started a tab here. So he stayed.

Baby Joe hated places like this—too clean, too many suits, the dancers all commuters from Rutgers and SUNY Purchase working to pay off their student loans. Not to mention ten bucks for rail liquor and a DJ playing the Top Ten from the Jukebox in Hell. Still, he moved to a seat in front of the stage, knocked back a few more drinks and watched and thought about Annie and Sweeney and Oliver Crawford, about Hasel and Hasel’s widow and Angelica Furiano. During a break, he talked with a dancer who was doing her thesis on the films of Ed Wood. Baby Joe bought her a seven-dollar ginger ale and gave her the name of a guy in Atlantic City who’d worked on Glen or Glenda.

After that he lost track of time. Outside the air took on that lowering orange-purple glare of city night, the sky between the high-rises colored like viscera. But inside all was rainbow light and smoke, the a/c cranked all the way down to sixty, so that he began to feel sorry for the dancers, their goose-pimpled flesh and the way they clutched at their cheap silk kimonos as they strode offstage. He’d actually started to fuzz out on the girls, lost in his own dreamscape. It was seeing Annie again, and thinking about Oliver and the others—something he’d been doing too much of since Hasel’s death. He dipped his head to light another cigarette—he had myriad packs tucked into his pockets, like a hiker padded with trail mix—tossed the match on the floor, and swiped his long hair back from his eyes. And whistled.

At the edge of the stage, near the mirrored alley leading back to their dressing rooms, three girls stood watching him. Not the kind of girls you usually saw at places like this, either. They were far too young and brown, slender and restive as mink, their long dark hair pulled into topknots from which stray tendrils trailed like smoke. They reminded him of child prostitutes back in Manila, girls he’d seen washing in the runoff from hotel laundries. These three looked way underage, their bodies muscular and lean, small-breasted like young girls’ bodies but with swelling hips. They were barefoot, and naked except for copper bracelets about their tiny wrists and ankles and silver necklaces upon their breasts. They stood side by side by side, staring at Baby Joe with narrow black eyes and smiling.

“Dios ko,” he murmured. “New floor show.”

He stared back at them and finished another drink. His mouth tasted burned from too many cigarettes, and the vodka was starting to give him a headache. He knew he should think about paying up and heading out to Failté, but he wanted to see what those girls were up to.

He didn’t know how long he’d been watching them, but after a while he realized that the music had changed, from a monotonous downtown club standard to something he couldn’t place. One of those eco-techno anthems, all soft percussives and breathy vocals in a language nobody could understand. Only in this music there was the rhythmic pulse of the sea and a faint hissing sound, steady and measured as his own breath.

“Hey,” whispered Baby Joe. The girls didn’t move. There was none of the usual chatter between performers, just those intense dark eyes boring into him. “Nice.”

A moment later the girls took the stage. Not a replay of the same slow grinding dance he’d been watching all afternoon, but like circus acrobats vaulting into a ring. They leapt onto the raised platform, springing airy and careless as children through the smoke, their bare feet slapping the mirrored floor. Once there they seemed surprised: they stared giggling down at their reflections, pointing and hiding their faces behind their thin brown hands. Baby Joe glanced around to see if anyone else thought this was strange, but no one seemed to take any notice at all. The place had grown more crowded, but most of the clientele was jammed up against the bar. He turned back to the stage again.

One of the girls was listening to something—a cue, perhaps—poised like a Balinese legong dancer, her hand cupped around her ear like a curved leaf. With a cry she whirled on one heel and darted across the stage, stopping to raise her head. With murmured exclamations the other two raced after her, and began somersaulting and twirling, leaping to catch one another and racing apart again, like beads of mercury skimming across the floor.

Baby Joe watched them, breathless, his heart pounding. Their bracelets slid up and down, their anklets clattered as they danced and laughed, fingers brushing their girlish breasts and curling black hair tumbling about their shoulders. It was like watching the courtship of mayflies above a stream, all slender legs entwined amidst the ghosts of wings. In and out, up and down, until their steps assumed a pattern, the sound of their bare feet a muted tantara that was both summons and warning, and utterly hypnotic. And there was a voice as well, a woman’s voice, so low and musical it might have been inside his head, whispering.

It is time. It is time…

Baby Joe jerked upright: where had he heard that before? He shuddered and fumbled at his jacket, searching for cigarettes. His mouth was dry; he needed another drink, but before he could signal the waitress one of the girls ran up to him and struck him under the chin, giggling, then darted off again.

“Dios mio.”

Baby Joe began to sweat. It wasn’t just her touch, those tiny fingers skimming above the loose collar of his T-shirt, or the way her hair had momentarily fallen across his face, warm and oddly tensile. He looked about, even more uneasy; as though he had remembered a dream from his childhood in another language, a garbled message he had not until this moment understood.

All around him the room looked the same—too bright, the men at the bar stupefied with drink or lust, the waitresses yawning and chatting with the other dancers. But when he turned at the stage again it was like he was in a different place. The mirrored floor broke into motes of silver and brown as the dancers whirled and leapt, feinting and dodging some unseen foe. There seemed to be other things in the air as well—flies maybe, or were they cockroaches?

No. They were butterflies, great violet-winged butterflies that floated between the girls, as though the dancers’ soft cries had somehow been made carnate. Now and then a girl would leap as though to grasp one of the lovely creatures, but their slim fingers always closed on empty air. Then it seemed they would employ ropes to snare the butterflies: Baby Joe watched in dreamy amazement as thin brown cords whipped about the girls’ heads as they pirouetted and struck at the swallowtails above them. And somehow even this bizarre capering was familiar to him; as was the smell of something burning, sweet and pungent like katol incense, and the echo of that insistent voice.

It is time.

“Fucking A, man.” He forced himself to look away from the dancers, tried to stand but his legs gave way beneath him. With a grunt he crashed back into his chair. Laughing, the girls darted up to him. This time all three struck him, hard enough that he gasped, then ran off, calling out to one another in words he couldn’t understand.

But if their words still made no sense, their motions did. It was like he was watching some bizarre shadow play: the three girls shades of someone else, someone he should remember, someone he knew—it should be easy. And why was it he couldn’t get to his feet no matter how he tried, why couldn’t he escape them? Because now, instead of striking at the butterflies, they struck him, their little hands much more forceful man you would think, their nails piercing him like tiny beaks. The cords they wielded like whips, and lashed—but gently—at his cheeks and shoulders. When he struggled to avoid their touch, they would only laugh the more, in high sweet voices. Then one might pluck at his jacket, while another would take his hand in hers and kiss it, her tongue sliding across the ball of his thumb before her sharp teeth sank into the flesh there and he cried aloud.

Baby Joe shut his eyes. His head throbbed, his heart hammered in his chest as though someone pounded him mercilessly.

“No!”

At the sound of his own anguish it all came back to him. The field, and Angelica weaving in and out among the trodden-down grasses, her bare legs streaked with dirt and sweat. He could see where her heels had left small indentations in the dust, and smell the sweetness of dried vetch and clover she had crushed in her passing. A few yards away from her the bull watched, stolid and unmoving as Baby Joe himself. But now Baby Joe knew, and understood, and surely the bull never had.

It is time.

A howl as he struggled to get to his feet. Again the girls laughed, but there was no mockery in their voices now. Instead they were gentle, even soothing, as though they had tired of their play and were ready now for some more serious pastime. They gathered round him, their hands surprisingly strong as they grasped his arms and drew him forward. He tried to shake them away but it was no use—they were too strong, he was too drunk, too exhausted to fight. About his head the butterflies weaved their own tipsy patterns in the air. A spicy scent surrounded him, something else remembered from his childhood. Crushed coriander seeds and sandalwood and katol incense, the bite of sour orange pulp in his mouth. He felt himself being lowered to the floor, the girls’ hands everywhere upon his body—cheeks, forehead, arms, chest—their touch warm and smooth and dry. When he blinked the air seemed filled with snow, but then he saw that it was not snow but a sort of colored dust like pollen. His hands were coated with it. He brought a finger to his lips and tasted honey; looking down at the floor he saw that it was littered with the broken wings of butterflies, grey and colorless. Their scales filled the air, atoms of rust and violet, and settled like ash upon his cheeks.

Before him the girls knelt with arms extended. From their open hands dark cords slid to the floor, rustling. Their mouths were moving, he could not hear them but it didn’t matter anymore; he knew he was dying. And suddenly he was no longer afraid: not of the girls, not of anything, not even of those thin brown ropes, which he now saw were moving, sliding between the girls’ fingers and up along his legs. The sight should have terrified Baby Joe, but it did not. Instead he felt an odd exultation, a sense of imploding tension and release that was almost sexual. He knew he must be delirious.

Snakes, everywhere he looked there were snakes, slender brown vipers with triangular-shaped heads and tongues like split twigs dousing at the air. They slipped beneath the fabric of his trousers and flowed across his bare legs, and their touch was like the girls’, warm and dry. As though desert sand was being poured onto him, slowly and with exquisite care, as though he was himself a serpent, sloughing away an old lifeless skin and wriggling through the dust.

The girls were still there, he could see them through slitted eyes. Only they no longer looked like bull-leapers or legong dancers but like people he knew. Angelica was there, which did not surprise him, but he felt no rancor toward her, no rage that she had somehow caused Hasel’s death. Because Hasel was there, too, his ruddy face exploding into laughter when he saw Baby Joe—

Hey, man! What took you so long?!

—his embrace joyful as he reached for his friend. And there was someone else—Oliver, Baby Joe knew it must be Oliver though there was something different about him, he had changed somehow but it was all too much to take in, this mad exalted freedom, the sheer joy and unexpected delight of it all, nothing like what he had expected!

Hands were everywhere now, he could no longer see but he could feel them, pulling away his jacket and tearing open his T-shirt. Something bit at his left nipple; he shuddered and moaned at the sudden pain, and knew it must be one of the vipers. Its teeth piercing his flesh and then the slow surge of venom beneath the skin, like a wave building as it rushed through him. The pain came again at his left breast, but he was beyond that now. He was beyond them all, excepting only Hasel and the woman waiting behind him, her eyes laughing and her mouth forming his name as she took his hand and he knew at last what it was all about, there had been a mystery to it all along, serpents and bulls and a woman he had foolishly feared; but then he was lost in Her embrace, Her arms closing about him and his heart bursting with joy as She took him and he was Hers, Hers at last.

CHAPTER 19 Fire from the Middle Kingdom

ON THE PATIO AT Huitaca Angelica stood. It was evening of a day so hot that all the small things of the desert had retreated to their lairs: rattlesnakes and Gila monsters and scorpions coiled beneath the burning stones like hidden treasure, with their gleaming black carapaces and jeweled eyes. Above the Devil’s Clock lightning spiked the darkness. The bolts looked like cracks in the desert sky, but only Angelica knew what lay behind them.

She was alone now. Kendra and Martin had left earlier that week, Martin to return to California, Kendra to prepare for college in September. Kendra had never gotten over Cloud’s death. Her relationship with Martin soured, she grew teary and slept too much and refused Angelica’s offers to help her attend a grief workshop. Finally word came from Bennington that she would be able to start there as a freshman after all. The next day she told Angelica she was leaving, and the day after that she was gone. Martin split the following afternoon.

“You want me to, like, recommend someone to take my place?” He leaned across the hood of his Jeep, his white-blond hair falling into his eyes. “I mean, it’s probably not so cool for you to be out here all by yourself, Angelica. That cougar could still be around—”

Angelica smiled. “Sunday will be here.”

“Sunday!” Martin snorted. “Like Sunday’s gonna save you if something happens—”

“Nothing’s going to happen, Martin,” Angelica said soothingly. She tousled his hair and let her hand rest on his shoulder. He was so beautiful, beautiful things always made her yearn to possess them and it would be so easy, just a few moments alone and then…

Martin sighed. He took Angelica’s hand in his and squeezed it, then grabbed her in a bear hug. “Well, I better go. But I’m gonna miss you, Angelica.”

She laughed, her bronze hair falling across his. “Oh, you’ll see me again, Martin. Don’t worry.”

She hadn’t asked him to stay on. She knew he would refuse. The truth was that she no longer needed bodyguards. She no longer needed anyone. The house at Huitaca would be closed after tonight. Despite what Angelica had told Martin, Sunday would not go to Huitaca alone, so Angelica had given the housekeeper an envelope with a month’s wages and a false promise that she would call her when she returned in the fall.

And that was that. She had already turned off the water and notified the electric and telephone companies that she was canceling their services. The oriental lilies and freesia that had been slowly deteriorating in their Waterford vases were gone, tossed into a patch of ocotillo outside. Before leaving, Sunday swept the floors clean of sand and cactus needles, folded Angelica’s linen shifts and the embroidered camisoles of honey-colored silk, and set them inside drawers among little muslin bags of sandalwood and dried orange peel. Angelica had seen to the last bits of tidying up, putting back on the proper shelves the notebooks containing so much of her work. Translations of the Sybaris tablets that she had made at the National Museum in Naples, with their invocation of the Queen of the Underworld. The copy of the Demœric Hymn to Othiym from Keftiu, where night after night she had sat bowed over her desk, bathed in the light from a smoky clay lantern, its wick a calyx of false dittany floating in olive oil. One by one she had transcribed the cuneiform tablets, and returned them to their resting place in the tombs beneath the house. Hand-lettered sheets and Xeroxes of parchment pages, drawings she had copied from vases and rhytons and frescoes, from forgotten temples within the rain forest and subway platforms near the great necropolis in Paris: all of them would now be carefully interred at Huitaca, to be given over to whatever priestess next claimed them. For Angelica herself, they had no further use.

Looking over all her things for one last time, Angelica sighed. For nine days now she had been fasting, as the ritual commanded. She had grown so thin, and her skin had taken on an almost luminous translucence: as though her blood was already fleeing her, as though whatever strange raptures she had given herself to had purged her flesh of color and sinew and bone. When she gazed into the mirror her uncle had given her so long ago, the face that gazed back was no longer her own, but that of a caryatid or kouroi—beautiful, ageless, inhuman. For a long moment she stared at herself, touching the heavy mass of her bronze curls and seeking in vain for a grey hair. Letting her fingers brush against her cheeks, the skin smooth and cool as faience, unlined, unscarred. To look at her, one would never think that she was a grown woman with a grown son; but neither would one see anywhere within her the memory of the girl who once upon a time had astonished her friends with her explosive laugh.

“It was so long ago,” she whispered, and set the mirror back amongst the curling photographs and antique silver frames, the papery nautilus and cowries and rose-colored sea urchin. As she removed her hand something fell. She heard the chime of breaking glass, and with a low cry reached to pluck a photo from a sad heap of shivered crystal.

It was a picture of herself and Baby Joe and Oliver, Baby Joe smiling for perhaps the only time in front of the camera, Angelica in the middle and Oliver at her other side. His arm was draped across her shoulder, his eyes were so bright they might have been lit from within by candles, like a jack-o’-lantern.

“Oliver.” She bit her lip and blinked tears from her eyes. “Oh, Oliver…”

She thought of the poem that Sweeney Cassidy had liked to quote back at the

Crazy drunken Sweeney, already seeing the end of things, but oh, Sweeney, if you only knew!—

Angelica wept. Bowing her head and sobbing until her chest ached, she clutched their photos to her breast and wept for all of them. Oliver and Sweeney and Baby Joe and Hasel and Annie and Dylan, but for herself most of all: Angelica di Rienzi, like her poor dead friends given to the night.

It was twilight when she finally composed herself. No more time to waste. She wiped her eyes and brushed her hair, turned away forever from everything that might remind her of that other life and went to the bed where her clothes were laid out. There she readied herself for what was to come.

First she drank the kykeon. On her bookshelf was the recipe, garnered from a tablet she had found in the museum at Athens. Barley and honey and the crushed purple bracts and pink flowers of dittany of Crete, fermented in a vessel of fired clay; the same beverage the initiates had drunk at Eleusis millennia ago. It had a pleasant yeasty taste, the honey’s sweetness offset by the dittany’s raw earthiness. After drinking she wiped her mouth on a piece of cotton. She anointed herself with ground coriander and sandalwood, rubbed a fist-sized chunk of amber against the hollow of her throat until it released its musky resin. Then she drew over her head a simple shift of linen shot with gold thread, and piece by piece slipped on the sacred jewelry she had amassed over the years: bands of ivory and gold and sweet red sandalwood, rings shaped like serpents giving suck to children, bracelets heavy with steatite figures of women giving birth. Last of all she took the lunula. She turned to the window, raised the shining crescent to the eastern sky where the moon waited and cried out.

Victory to the Mothers. Victory to the Dark Mother. She slipped the lunula around her neck, and glanced around to see if she had forgotten anything.

The floor was swept clean, the gauze curtains had been drawn across the other windows. On her bed was an envelope containing a one-way ticket to Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. It was dated the thirty-first of July, the eve of the ancient feast of Lammas.

But that festival had more names than Angelica had hairs on her head. In India it was called Kalipuja, by the worshipers at the Temple at Dakshineswarand and in Calcutta—the city whose name is actually Kali-Ghatt, “the steps of Kali.” In Finland it had been the day of Kalma, “odor of corpses;” in the Antipodes that of Kalwadi, who devoured her own children and then gave them rebirth. On Coatepec—Snake Hill, in Mexico—there gathered followers of the serpent-skirted lunar goddess Coatlicue, she who wore upon her breast the moon and from whose girdle dangled dismembered hands and beating hearts, Coatlicue who danced upon the entrails of her son while wearing his flayed skin. Upon other hills, the sun-gilded mounds of Tuscany, the good fairy Turanna still brings children balloons and bells and Nintendo games, while her Etruscan companion Zirna strews the floor of their bedrooms with tiny sugared crescents.

But woe to those children whose windows are left open at summer’s dying, because that is when Lilith comes and brings them fair dreams, then strangles them so that they the smiling; and woe to those who do not wear the new moon upon their breasts and so placate Lamasthu, whose bite leaves pestilence in the blood!

Upon the second day of the death of summer the silent poppy-goddess Spes walks. Spes whose mouth is red as poppies and whose skin is white, whose kiss is cold as alabaster. On that day, too, Aetna was worshiped, who disgorged her rage upon the city suckling at her breast; and the Haida goddess Dazalarhons, whose anger erupted when she saw that men were torturing the shining salmon in their streams instead of giving thanks for their plenty. In ancient Greece it had marked the transition to the time of the great women’s festivals, culminating in the Thesmophoria, that greatest and most holy of all feasts, honoring Demeter’s rescue of her ravished daughter from the lord of Hell. Everywhere that the moon shone, everywhere that people died and lamented, everywhere that infants failed to wake and grain turned to dust beneath the merciless sun, where women died in childbirth and their mothers and sisters keened in vain: in all these places, the dark goddess had been worshiped, and forgotten.

But now, in all these places and more, women had learned her name anew. Now, they called her Othiym. Now, her hour had come. Slowly she opened the doors leading onto the tiled patio, and stepped outside.

The dusk surrounded her like rumpled velvet, soft and warm and fragrant with the scent of crushed sage. Angelica breathed in deeply. Her heart was racing; a trickle of sweat traced its way across her rib cage. She tried to remember what Cloud had taught her about conserving energy in a marathon: breathe from the diaphragm, close your eyes, relax.

She began to pace across the patio, the heat from the tiles seeping through the soles of her feet and on up to her thighs. Compared to all that had come before—nearly two decades of work and study and sacrifice—there was really very little left to do. But the greatest sacrifice still remained. And only Angelica could perform that task.

In the course of the last year, she had instructed Elspeth and the other priestesses in the final rite of Waking the Moon. They, in turn, had gathered to them Circle upon Circle of women, radiating from Angelica outward to all the lost reaches of the world. It had taken years of patience for it to come to this, years of working alone and with small groups: waking first the women themselves, then encouraging them to teach their friends and neighbors.

But women work quickly once they are awakened. Angelica had learned that by watching television programs where women wept and fought and embraced; by reading the books that American women read, and the newspapers that told of their vengeance upon those who had harmed them; by visiting the tiny villages in Orisa and Bangladesh and Uttar, where girl children are aborted and wives are murdered for their dowries; by entering compounds in the countryside outside of Gracanica and Glamoc, where women were raped and forced to give up their babies to doctors and soldiers; by witnessing initiation ceremonies in Africa and New York, where girls were mutilated, and standing at the mass graves of nuns slaughtered in Central America and men and women and children in the jungles of Kampuchea. Everywhere, everywhere, she saw horror and death and brutality; everywhere she saw forgiveness, and ignorance, and endless cycles of poverty and servitude, women cringing before their masters and murmuring about love.

And everywhere she saw rage: rage that was twisted until, like an auger, it bored into the women themselves, and their children. Rage that like the desert creatures burrowed beneath the surface, waiting patiently for nightfall and moonrise.

“But it is time now,” whispered Angelica. She raised her face to the Devil’s Clock. Amethyst light danced across her brow, set the lunula aglow. “Oh Great Mother: it is time!”

She raised her arms, took another deep breath, and let her hands drop. Bracelets of bone and copper and gold slipped down about her wrists, and the linen shift fell from her shoulders, cascading around her waist and thighs in folds of white and gold to pool about her feet. Bare-breasted, naked save for her armillas and the lunula, she closed her eyes and sang.

As she sang she began to move, swaying back and forth and stamping her bare feet upon the tiles. At each step dust rose beneath her, and tiny fragments of terracotta. Her dance inscribed a circle upon the ground, an orbit of dust and dried grass and the broken wings of moths. Her bare feet slapped the tiles, her heels grinding into them as though she were extinguishing small flames.

Beneath her heels the tiles began to crack. Fissures ran from them toward the pool with its tranquil dark surface, and from the fissures reddish soil flowed, as though the earth beneath her was boiling. The soil stained her feet and ankles, but Angelica danced heedless, treading the red earth until it churned like wine or blood being poured in her wake.

Her voice rose to a wail, a lament for those green places burned by Othiym’s anger, for the temples destroyed and the children buried when her rage erupted into streams of liquid fire and molten ash. She mourned for Kalliste and Keftiu, Aetna and Sumbawa and Pompeii; but most of all she mourned Kalliste, the island that had been her sacred jewel, her emerald eye, the center of all her worship. Kalliste, whose name meant “Most Beautiful,” but which after its destruction was known as Thera: Fear.

Her face gleamed with sweat, sweat coursed down her throat and warmed the lunula until she felt as though a heated blade nudged between her breasts. Still she danced, her breath coming in sharp hard bursts that were counterpoint to her footsteps, and with each turn and stamp of her heels she drew nearer to the edge of the pool. Behind her now all the earth was broken, tiles shattered and stones as well, so that it looked as though some small but powerful machine had razed the patio. When she reached the edge of the pool she poised, shining like a glazed figure still cooling from the kiln, then without a sound dived beneath the surface.

The water was warm as new milk from a mother’s breasts, so warm that her blood seemed to flow in and out of her veins, mixing with the quiescent darkness that surrounded her. Seven times she climbed from the pool, seven times returned to its depths; until at last she rose and stood upon the broken patio, the water sliding from her in pale ribbons.

Above the Devil’s Clock the storm had spent itself. Now and then faint rumblings echoed from the distance, but otherwise the night was still. With the storm some of the evening’s heat had passed. A chill breeze rustled the spiny ocotillo and the agave’s heavy blade-shaped leaves, bringing with it the smell of rain and damp shale from the mountains far to the north, the first augury of summer’s end. Angelica shivered a little in her nakedness, but the potent kykeon still burned inside her. She picked her way across the cracked tiles, nudging shards of terra-cotta out of her way. When she reached where the patio ended in a jumble of soil and broken pottery, she laughed and shook her head, her tangled curls flinging droplets into the air.

“Come then!” she called, opening her arms to the night. “I am ready—”

And they came: from every opening in the earth they scuttled and slithered and crept, hollow legs and shells rattling against the stones, scales rubbing together with a sound like sand running through the fingers, ponderous feet clawing for purchase upon terra-cotta. Gila monsters and elfin lizards, rattlesnakes and pit vipers, the tiny sacred scorpions of Innana that would be colorless were it not for the amber venom floating inside their arched tails, like retsina in a glass. Ancient tortoises pushed aside walls of earth and clambered up to gaze at the woman. Nestling spiders, and beetles that dwell within spheres of dung, and millipedes, whose legs whispered across the sand, and centipedes, with mandibles that clacked: all emerged from their sunken castles, to welcome her and give her homage.

But mostly, there were snakes. Docile rosy boas, western racers like wands of brushed steel, eyeless worm snakes so small a hundred of them would not fill a teacup. Puff adders, coachwhips, tiny ring-necked snakes that children could wear as glossy jewelry; lyre snakes, whose bite causes gongs to ring and clamor, and night snakes, whose rubbery fangs hold no more venom than a honeybee. As though they were being disgorged from the earth’s very core, as though rivulets of magma spewed forth and then cooled into living coils and veins of serpents: in every direction the ground seethed with snakes.

“Children, children,” murmured Angelica. The air was filled with a sound as of an entire forest of dried leaves taking flight. Still they came, forked tongues tasting the air, their supple bellies reading the stony earth, like so many fingers brushing across a loved one’s face. As they passed the other creatures rustled and shivered, but did not flee.

At the very last the greatest of all the desert serpents appeared. Diamondbacks and rattlesnakes, the immense and terrible sidewinders. The ground shook beneath them, and the noise of their rattles was like that of sistrums and tambours and stones in a hollow gourd; the sound of the krotalon, the ancient Greek rattle from which they took their name. They surrounded Angelica, the stored-up warmth of their bodies making the violet air shimmer, and curled around her legs and ankles like kittens. As though they were kittens she stooped to pick them up, the largest ones as thick around as a man’s arm, and strong enough to capture a young pig.

But to Angelica they did no harm. Instead they writhed and flung their coils about her wrists, their darkly patterned scales nearly lost among her clattering jewelry, and covered her until she seemed to be draped in a shadowy cloak set with winking gems. They gaped to display pale mouths and black tongues and fangs as long and curved as a hawk’s talons. Had they struck her, their venom would have caused the tender flesh of her arms to swell and then decay as necrosis set in, with its subsequent hemorrhage and shock and renal failure.

They did not bite, and Angelica did not recoil at their touch. Thousands and thousands of years before, when the first woman poked at the African savanna in search of grubs and tubers, the snake befriended her, sharing with her its eggs, its young, its own sparse flesh in times of drought. From the snake she learned the patience to hunt, the wisdom of sleeping when one’s belly is full and hiding when the inferno of midday raged. From the snake she learned that we can slough off our lives as easily as a dead skin, and that death need be no more terrifying than that empty sack. It warned her of earthquakes and devoured vermin. She read oracles in its sand tracks, and from its poison derived subtle visions as well as a cure for bites. Like the moon the snake renews itself; with the moon it became the first sacred thing.

And when the first woman’s people migrated north, the snake went with them. In the Libyan desert it was worshiped as an avatar of the goddess. Still later it was the uraeus, the gold serpent that conferred power upon the crown of the Egyptian pharaohs, and wrapped its coils around the blessed caduceus of Innana and Hippocrates. Tame cobras slept in the palaces of the Indus queens, and nursed the godlings of the Aegean, and in Crete every house had its snake tubes, where the sacred adders and harmless vine snakes slept.

“And now you will serve me,” whispered Angelica. “All of you…”

She lifted her arms. Above the Devil’s Clock a crescent appeared, spare and pale as a crocus shoot. “Othiym haïyo!” Angelica cried. A ripple ran through the carpet of small things at her feet. “Oh Great Mother, it is begun.”

Then:

“Go now,” she said, and set the great sidewinders back upon the ground. “As Menat I command you, as Feronia and Pele and all those who rule the stones: wake the earth, free your children imprisoned there! So may we destroy the cities of men and reclaim what is ours.”

And throwing their great coils across the shattered ground, the sidewinders departed, their rattles so loud they sent hollow echoes booming from the mesas.

“You, scorpions,” she said next, “As Innana I command you, and Echidna and Walutahanga and all those who guard wives and concubines. Go now and hide beneath the beds of cruel and unfaithful lovers, and sting them with your tails!”

And the little scorpions raised their pincers and clacked them together like stones, then scattered across the desert in a great army.

“Tortoises now,” she cried, and what had appeared to be a row of boulders lumbered toward her, their heads nodding wisely on withered necks. “In the name of the nymph Chelone I call you! She who was stoned when she refused to lay blossoms at the feet of Zeus. Go now to the lakes and seas and rivers, and wake there your sleeping sisters, the kraken and leviathan and Scylla of the gnashing waves! This I command in the name of Moroch, of all those who lay too long abed from fear.”

On and on she went. Each creature she called to her by name, and in the name of each of their patronesses she commanded them: Melissa of the bees, Arachne’s spiders, the patient ants and scarabs who had been waiting since Nefertari’s death to receive their due. All the beasts she named, all those that crawl upon their bellies and more besides, wolves and shrikes and owls and bats, every creature maligned by men because it had once been sacred to Her. And all of them answered, all of them came; and into the darkness they all raced away, to bring to all the other creatures and places of the earth her bidding.

At last she seemed to be alone in the darkness. Above her the moon had risen into the soft summer sky, its crescent smiling down upon her and the lunula upon her breast smiling back. The air was strong with the acrid odor of ants and scorpions and the venom of rattlers, but there was another scent there too, something sweeter and yet more noisome to the woman. A faint noise sounded in the sharp spears of the ocotillo, and the dry leaves of the huisache rustled softly.

“Who is there?” Angelica called. She turned with fiery eyes to stare into the grove of trees. “Who has not answered me?”

There came no reply. But it seemed that a wind was stirring the huisache, though it was a wind Angelica did not feel; and then it seemed that upon the dry branches blossoms opened, blossoms pale and fragrant in the moonlight. Angelica drew her breath in sharply: the blossoms lifted from the trees, fluttered and circled the broken patio until they surrounded her, a silent rain of butterflies.

“No!” she cried, and stamped her bare foot upon the earth, so hard that the lunula shuddered upon her breast. “I did not call you, it is not time yet—”

“Oh, but it is,” someone said in a low voice behind her.

Angelica whirled. “No,” she hissed.

In the shadows stood another figure—a tall woman with dark hair and deep-set eyes. Butterflies formed a halo above her, and momentarily lit upon her shoulders before wafting off once more. She was cloaked in purple and her face, though reserved, even sorrowing, was beautiful, as beautiful as Angelica’s own.

“Well-met, Angelica,” the woman said. She waved her hand, so lazily that a butterfly did not move from where it rested upon one finger like a topaz ring. “It’s been too long.” And though she did not smile, there seemed to be faint mockery, even laughter, in her voice.

“We have not met,” said Angelica. But the wind that had not chilled her before, did so now.

“Oh no?”

The figure remained unmoving as Angelica took a step backward, her fingers covering the lunula. “Where have you come from?” she demanded.

The woman laughed softly, then recited,

Angelica’s fingers tightened upon the lunula. “You’re lying,” she said in a shaking voice. “I do not know you.”

“No?” the woman replied.

“No!’” shrieked Angelica. “Why are you here, you can’t be here—”

“The boy,” the woman said simply. She slid her hands into the folds of her robe. “You’re not to harm him.”

“The boy is mine!”

The woman shook her head, just once. Her eyes glinted. “And mine.”

“No,” said Angelica. “Not yours. Never, never yours.”

“A warning, Angelica,” the dark-haired woman said in a low voice. “Don’t hurt him.”

Angelica laughed harshly. “You have no power here, sister,” she said. She lifted her hands to the sky and glared. “Go, before my Mistress loses patience with you!”

“You should be more careful whom you bed, Angelica.” The woman’s voice was low and threatening. “Not everyone wants to embrace an asp—”

“Go!” screamed Angelica. Rage made a sibylline mask of her face, and her hair fell about her cheeks in tangled coils. “You—”

But the dark-haired woman was already gone. Only, on the ground where her bare feet had stood, a sheaf of flowers trembled, and stained the desert air with the scent of hyacinths.

CHAPTER 20 Threnody and Breakdown

HANDSOME BROWN LET US off in front of Dr. Dvorkin’s house, solemnly accepting the wad of bills Dylan pressed into his hand. “It’s good to see you, my man,” he said in his basso voice, and toasted us with a pint of Hennessy. “Take good care of the lady. Always take good care of the lady.” Cab Number 393 lumbered off into the darkness, trailing the strains of Idris Mohammed.

Ninth Street was deserted, the streetlights casting their glow over the crepe myrtles and magnolias, the heaps of fallen petals that had drifted up against the curbstones. We stepped from the street and opened the wrought-iron gate that led into Dr. Dvorkin’s front yard, the little lawn overgrown with myrtle and ivy and a single huge magnolia. The air was so warm and sweet it was like drowning to stand there and breathe it; but I could hardly breathe at all, my heart was pounding so fast, my mouth seemed filled with something thick and sweet and strong, honey wine or Handsome Brown’s cognac. From the hidden garden echoed the burbling song of a mockingbird, so achingly beautiful it brought tears to my eyes.

“Sweeney.” Dylan drew me to him, his long hair warm against my cheek. “What is it, Sweeney? You’re crying—”

He held me gently against his chest, the two of us leaning against the magnolia. For all that his words were soft I could feel his heart pounding like my own. “Nothing,” I whispered. I laughed, wiping my eyes. “It’s just—god, I must be drunk or something, it’s just all so beautiful, and—”

My voice caught. A warm breeze stirred the leaves of the magnolia. From its waxy blossoms scent poured like rain. “I’m—I’m just so happy,” I said, and began to sob.

“Happy?” Dylan’s voice was perplexed, and when I looked up his eyes were burning, flecked with gold from the streetlamps. Panic lanced through me: what was I saying? I tried to move away, but Dylan’s arms tightened around my waist. “Happy? I’ll show you happy—”

He kissed me again, pushing me against the tree, his hands stroking my face as I grabbed him and pulled him tight against me. I didn’t care where we were, I didn’t care who might see or hear. I couldn’t hear anything, except for his heart and breath and the mockingbird singing blissfully somewhere in the green darkness. I thought I would faint: my head was roaring but all I could feel was Dylan’s mouth and the taste of him, and everything about us hot and sweet and liquid.

“Sweeney,” he whispered. “Oh, Sweeney…”

We made love there, the tree wound about with ivy that tangled with Dylan’s hair and fingers, my skirt torn and scattered with bark as Dylan moved against me until he cried out and the two of us slid down, gasping, into the carpet of myrtle that blanketed the earth.

Nothing had changed. The night was soft and darkly golden as before. In its secret haven the mockingbird still sang. Overhead the sky was starless, but I could hear the first far-off stirrings of morning, subway cars moving into Union Station, the rush of distant wheels.

“We should go in,” I said at last. I smoothed my ruined skirt, tried to stand, and slid down again helplessly, my legs were so weak. “Jesus! Where’d you learn to do that?”

Dylan pulled me up, grinning. “You liked it?”

I laughed and plucked a bit of vine from his hair. “It was okay,” I said, and taking his hand started back toward the carriage house.

“Just okay?” His voice was plaintive. “Then maybe we should practice some more…”

And we did.

That was how Dylan missed his dinner with Dr. Dvorkin, as well as breakfast and any invitations for lunch that might have come to him. The next morning I called in sick, for the first time in almost two years. When Dylan wondered, somewhat nervously, if he should call in as well, I just laughed.

“Who do you think you’d call? I’m your boss, and I think you need to spend the day in bed…”

We made love until I ached all over, until I couldn’t tell where my body ended and the damp warmth of the sheets and air and Dylan’s skin began. He was so beautiful, I really did weep, watching him as he slept late that morning, his snores vying with the soft roar of a neighbor’s lawn mower. I lay beside him and still couldn’t keep my hands from him: his skin so warm and smooth it was like marble fitting into the curve of my palm, the swell of his narrow hips where I pressed my mouth so that I could feel the bone jutting beneath my tongue. I wanted to devour him, feel his soft skin break under my teeth like a pear’s and my mouth fill with juice, sweet and hot. When I took him in my mouth again he groaned, his fingers pulled at my hair and once more we tangled together as he came, warmth spurting onto my breasts as he clutched me and cried my name aloud.

“I guess it’s true,” I said when we finally had both slept, and awakened to find ourselves bruised and soaked with sweat and wrapped in each other’s arms. A fan moved lazily back and forth in front of a window, sending a faint coolness through the room.

“What?” Dylan mumbled.

“About guys reaching their sexual peak at nineteen.”

“Yeah? Then you have something to look forward to.” He rolled over and hugged me. “My birthday’s not till August first.”

“You’re only eighteen ?”

He sat up, grinning. “Yup. Wanna know something else?”

I fanned myself with yesterday’s Post. “I don’t know if my heart can stand any more.”

“This is the first time I did it.”

“Did what?”

“You know.” He looked at me sheepishly, and I suddenly noticed he was blushing. “It.”

“It?” I dropped the newspaper, shocked. “You mean, you’re a—”

“A lot of people are,” Dylan said defensively. “I mean, people my age. And—well, I never really wanted to before. Not much,” he ended lamely, and stared out the window.

“Holy cow,” I said, and collapsed onto a heap of pillows. “I think I need a drink.”

I got up, padded downstairs, and got a nearly full bottle of chardonnay from the refrigerator. I found two wineglasses and some fruit that I put into a basket—a bunch of black grapes, a rather wizened orange, a couple of figs that I’d bought impulsively and at an outrageous price at Eastern Market a few days before.

“Here,” I announced when I got back upstairs. I put the basket on the bed beside Dylan and poured some wine. “Nectar of the gods.”

We lay next to each other and drank and ate. The sunlight didn’t slant through the windows so much as flow, ripe with the carrion scents of wisteria and gingko fruit, burning charcoal and magnolia blossom and car exhaust: the sooty green smell that is summer in D.C.

“I love figs,” said Dylan. He bit into one, exposing the tender pink flesh beneath the dark husk. “We had fig trees at Keftiu—my father always said they were the real fruit in the Bible—you know, with Adam and Eve. But my mother said it was pomegranates.”

“Mmm,” I said, sipping my wine. “So. You never had a girlfriend, huh?”

He finished his fig and tossed the gnarled remnant out the window. “Not really. I went away to school a lot—prep schools, you didn’t really have a chance to meet girls. At least I never did, not in the States. Here I was like, Eurotrash, and over there I was the ugly American. And there was always my mother, you know?” He sighed and reached for his wineglass, stared into it for a long moment before going on. “My mother made me kind of paranoid about stuff.”

“Stuff? You mean—uh, sex?” I caught myself. Angelica preaching abstinence? Anger warmed me along with the wine, but I bit my tongue and nodded. “How interesting.”

“Yeah. I guess because I’m her only child. And AIDS, of course. And in Italy it’s a little different from here. All those Catholics—”

A pang shot through me. It had been so long, and what with the tej, and the night—I hadn’t even thought about AIDS. Or birth control. Or anything.

“Jesus, Dylan, you’re not, uh—”

He looked at me with those brilliantly guileless blue eyes. “No. I never got tested for AIDS. I didn’t need to.”

“Me neither.” I laughed, embarrassed, tried to cover for it by grabbing a handful of grapes. “I guess it’s different now, huh?”

Dylan yawned. “I guess. But my mother always made such a big deal about my being pure. About saving myself. For some crazy sacred marriage.” He stretched, his long lean body glistening with sweat, his hairless chest taut with muscle. I found my mouth getting dry, despite the grapes, and hastily drank some more wine.

“Saving yourself,” I repeated stupidly. The idea was ludicrous. A child of Angelica’s, saving himself for marriage?

“Not anymore.” He leaned over and kissed me, then buried his face against my breasts. “Oh god, you smell so good—”

We kissed, too happily exhausted to do more, and then Dylan adjusted the fan so that its scant breeze coursed over us.

“I’m sorry—I’m probably the only person in D.C. who doesn’t have air-conditioning.”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t bother me. It reminds me of—”

I laughed. “I know—Keftiu.”

“I was going to say Venice. Crete is much hotter than this. Drier, too.” He frowned and, with a swooping motion, pushed the hair from his face—a gesture that suddenly, heartbreakingly, made me think of Oliver. “Does it bother you? Talking about my mother?”

“No.” The truth was, I’d somehow managed to forget about Angelica until he’d mentioned her—Oliver, too, until that moment. And it was strange, because being with Dylan suddenly made Oliver seem both more alive and more distant from me than he ever had. “No, it doesn’t. It just seems weird. I never would have thought Angelica would consider—well, that she’d think marriage was sacred.”

“My mother is very strange, Sweeney.” I started to laugh again, but Dylan’s expression was grim. “I’m not kidding. It’s not that she thinks marriage is sacred—she doesn’t. I still don’t know why she married my father. I’m pretty sure she didn’t love him. Not the way you’re supposed to love someone. Not the way—”

He leaned over and let his lips graze mine. His hair fell across my eyes for a moment, and I felt dizzy, breathing in his scent; but then he drew back.

“Not the way I feel about you,” he said in a soft voice, and any thought of laughing went right out of my head. He sat up again and sighed. “But she has this thing, about some sacred marriage—it’s got to do with her goddamn cult. All those women…”

“You mean like Sun Myoung Moon, marrying off his followers in Madison Square Garden or something?”

“I don’t know. It’s a secret, to me at least. Maybe they’re all going to marry each other. But I doubt it.” He picked up his wineglass and stared into it. “Hey, look—a bug.”

He tipped the glass toward the window, and I watched as a honeybee crawled out. Dylan blew on it; the bee somersaulted drunkenly across the windowsill, then disappeared outside.

“I know just how it feels,” I said, and poured him the rest of the wine. “Listen, you don’t have to talk about your mother if it—well, if it’s weird for you.”

“It’s not weird for me.” His voice took on an edgy, aloof tone, and for a moment I felt the same sharp panic that had seized me before.

Because crazy as it was—and it was crazy! I was twice this kid’s age, I’d gone to school with his parents, if things had gone differently I might have been one of his parents, on top of which I’d only known him for twenty-four hours, during which we’d fucked six times and I had called in sick to work!—crazy as all this was, I knew I was falling for him. Had fallen for him. Me, Katherine Sweeney Cassidy, who’d spent almost twenty years in an emotional coma—

I. Was. In. Love.

“…do you understand?”

I started. “Huh? I’m sorry, Dylan—”

He traced the line of my calf. “I was just saying that it’s not weird for me to talk about my mother. It’s that she’s weird—really weird. I love her, I really do; but I don’t really know her. I was always away at boarding schools, and she’d be off on all her digs, and even when she took me along there was always someone she paid to take care of me—tutors and stuff. She was always nice to me, it’s not like she was mean or something, it’s just—”

He stopped and sighed. I wanted to put my arms around him, I wanted to tell him I understood—that I knew what Angelica was like, that it was okay—but I was afraid to. I was afraid I’d seem too quick to comfort him, afraid I’d seem too maternal. So I just sat beside him on the bed and waited for him to go on.

“It’s just that she’s so fucking intense,” he said finally. Against his tan face his eyes burned like midnight blue flames. “She has all these bizarre ideas, these mad prophecies; but a lot of them come true.”

“Like—what?” I asked guardedly.

“Like earthquakes. Remember that big quake in L.A.? Well, two days before it hits, out of nowhere she calls me at school and tells me that she’s taking me with her to Minneapolis for a few days. Minneapolis! But I thought, okay, I’ll check out the music scene there, which I did.

“But meanwhile, everything back in L.A. goes fwooom—”

He slapped the bed with his open palms, with such vehemence that I jumped.

“All our neighbors’ houses slide into the canyon, but our house—Mom’s house—it doesn’t even move. Now you’d think my mother would be upset when she heard about this earthquake, right? That she’d be on the first plane back there to make sure everything’s okay. But no—she takes her time, which is a good thing, considering how violent all those aftershocks were. And when we finally get back to L.A., and get to the house—nothing has moved. I mean, nothing. All these rare statuettes and icons she brought from Crete and Italy, they haven’t even shifted on their shelves. The books haven’t moved. The dishes haven’t moved. Nada. I asked her, I thought maybe she’d paid someone to come in and clean it up before she got back, but no. An earthquake has leveled the entire West Coast, except for my mother’s house.”

He fell silent, and stared fiercely out to where the wisteria leaves hung limply from their woody vines. I waited before saying anything. My mouth was dry, I felt chilled in spite of the torrid heat; but if it killed me I wasn’t going to let Angelica and her weirdness into my carriage house.

“So she had a premonition,” I said at last. “Well, thank god she did, or you might have been hurt, right?”

“Oh, sure,” Dylan said bitterly. He shook his head, his long hair spilling across his shoulders. “A premonition! My mother has nothing but premonitions! Hurricane Andrew, Mount Pinatubo, some mudslide in Bangladesh—she’s always got an inside track on natural disasters. This woman told me once that my mother had told some scientists—women scientists—to leave Finland, because there was going to be some kind of disaster, and it turned out she was right: it turned out she was talking about Chernobyl. Her and her followers, they’re always on the first train out of town, a good twenty-four hours before the storm hits.”

I took a deep breath. “So—what are you telling me, Dylan? Do you really think Angelica knew about all those things before they happened?”

Dylan turned those burning blue eyes on me. I saw a sort of desperation in him: that I didn’t believe him, that I thought he was crazy. For the first time I could see how it might have been hard for him—despite his beauty, despite the gold earrings and Doc Martens and all the other trappings of flaming youth—to find a girlfriend. Hard maybe to make any friends at all.

“Yes,” he said, daring me to argue. “She did.”

I waited. Then, “I believe you, Dylan,” I said softly. I reached to touch him on the shoulder, half-expecting him to flinch or turn away. But he didn’t. He turned and took me in his arms. I could feel him trembling as he whispered, “She scares me sometimes, Sweeney. I know she’s my mother, but she scares me…”

“Me too,” I murmured, and stroked his tangled hair, the two of us holding each other so tightly that not even the golden air could slide between us.

“The way she talks,” he went on in a low voice, like a child comforting himself. “All this crazy goddess stuff, but the way she goes on about it in her books and all, it almost makes sense. You can really see how these women fall for it. It’s not just that she knows about these things. I can believe that. I mean, animals know when there’s going to be an earthquake, right? But some of the people who’re into all her New Age stuff, they think she makes it happen! Like in Hawaii they think there’s this goddess Pele who makes the volcanoes blow up—these people think my mother can actually do that!”

He rubbed his forehead as though it pained him. “Sometimes, I think my mother believes it herself.”

“Oh, she does, Dylan,” I whispered, but he didn’t hear me.

“You know what she’s like?” he said at last. “This picture I saw when I was at Lawrenceville. An X ray of the inside of a nuclear blast, taken out at White Sands. Have you ever see that? Outside you can see all this smoke, this huge mushroom cloud and flames everywhere. But inside it’s just all this fire, and then in the very middle, there’s a black hollow core. Like there’s all this destruction around it, but in the middle there’s nothing there at all.”

I shuddered and reached for my glass. “Maybe we should think about going out to get something to eat,” I suggested, finishing my wine. “You hungry?”

Unexpectedly, Dylan laughed, as though we’d been talking of nothing more serious than the weather, then rolled over to slide his arms around my waist. “I could be,” he said, nuzzling my throat. “Maybe. If I had the chance to work up an appetite—”

Later, we went out to eat.

When we returned that night, Dylan tried calling Dr. Dvorkin, to see about picking up his things from the main house. But Robert was out, no doubt caught up in selecting the new regent, or else with the Aditi or the Mall’s Independence Day celebrations or any of the million other things that consumed his life. I finally gave Dylan my key, so he could get into the house and retrieve his things. He returned to the carriage house with a knapsack, a gym bag stuffed with clothes, a personal CD player, and a couple of paperbacks, Shampoo Planet and Pylon and a book about the Neanderthals.

“That’s it?” I stared at the overflowing gym bag. “That’s all you brought for the entire summer?”

Dylan shrugged. “My mom’s coming out for my birthday. She’ll get me some more clothes then.”

We called in sick the next day, and the day after that. We stayed in my bedroom in the carriage house, with the wisteria trailing through the open window and the old fan in the belfry humming like a hornet’s nest. At night we’d venture out onto the Hill, walking as in a trance through the blue-veined air, drunk on sex and heat and wine, both of us not a little stunned to find the city still around us, the sound of firecrackers and police cruisers crackling somewhere just out of sight. At twilight government workers filled the outdoor cafés, crowding the little round marble-topped tables. Street kids vied with each other along the southeast strip of Pennsylvania Avenue, kicking through spent blossoms and McDonald’s wrappers and the frayed blackened tails of firecracker strings. At 3:00 A.M. the streets filled with revelers leaving the bars, and their laughter became part of our sleep and our lovemaking, laughter and the crash of bottles breaking against the curb, like surf pounding a far-off shore.

“I love you, Sweeney,” Dylan would whisper, his hands warm against my breast. Before I could fall asleep again, I would wait to hear his heavy breathing. I would wait, to make sure that he didn’t disappear.

When I finally awoke, it was as though I had awakened to find myself in another city. The city I had first glimpsed years before, the city that Oliver had shown me, with its ghosts and transvestite hustlers and phantom cab drivers. Sometimes Dylan and I heard gunshots and far-off screams; more often the tired banter of lawyers and nannies, and college students walking home at 4:00 A.M. from tending bar and waiting tables on the Hill.

Best of all, early one evening, we saw a little family walking from Union Station: mother, small boy, father in military uniform, the exultant boy swinging between his parents and then suddenly bursting free, to run shouting into the empty traffic circle with its lines of American flags, arms raised as he yelled at the top of his lungs,

“ALREADY I LOVE IT!”

Dylan fell onto the sidewalk, laughing helplessly. I joined him, and we watched as the family raced gleefully toward the Capitol.

“Sweeney, this is a great place,” said Dylan, wiping his eyes and turning to drape his arm around my shoulder. “Already I love it.”

So that, too, he gave back to me: the city I had fallen in love with once, the city I thought I had lost forever—

When at last we went to work again we walked with arms linked down Pennsylvania Avenue, disentangling ourselves when we reached the Mall and putting on our best sober faces when we got inside the museum. No one seemed surprised that I’d taken time off. Whenever I passed Dylan in the hall, whenever he ducked into my office, I felt as though wisps of smoke must hover above our heads like Pentecostal flames. But no one else seemed to notice at all, or if they did, no one cared.

Still, we tried to be discreet; at least I did. Dylan seemed immensely pleased to be carrying on an affair, and I suspected he was just waiting for someone to ask him so he could spill the beans.

“Don’t,” I cautioned him, almost daily. “I could get in trouble for this.”

“How? We’re consenting adults.”

Well, one of us is, I thought. But I only said, “Dr. Dvorkin is very, very paranoid about this kind of thing, okay? This is government work, and there are big problems with sexual harassment in this city, and I just would rather we be discreet, all right?”

Dylan rolled his eyes and slung his hands into his pockets. “Of course. Discreet.”

Although I hadn’t seen much of Dr. Dvorkin since Dylan arrived. He had greeted Dylan when we finally made it back to the museum. He seemed pleased enough to see him, and didn’t appear to have taken note of the fact that neither of us had been in to work for some days, not to mention that Dylan was supposed to be staying in Dr. Dvorkin’s guest room, rather than my bed.

“Your mother is well?” Dr. Dyorkin asked absently. He was even more preoccupied than he normally was. The phone in his office kept ringing, and his comments to whoever was on the other line were unusually terse. “Please give her my best, will you? Now then—”

He sighed and touched his brow with a handkerchief, and we followed him down the hall. “Katherine, I’ll be out again all day. If you need me, talk to Laurie—”

“Has Dr. Dvorkin ever met your mother?” I asked, as Dylan and I stared after him.

“I don’t know. He and my grandfather were good friends, I know that.”

I glanced sideways at Dylan. He was wearing baggy khaki trousers and a white oxford cloth shirt, the sleeves rolled up loosely to expose smoothly muscled forearms and bony wrists, his tousled hair slipping from its ponytail. He leaned on the curved banister, staring rather mournfully down at Dr. Dvorkin’s retreating figure. I wondered if Dylan knew about the Benandanti—it struck me that he should be a legacy of theirs, if anyone was. The thought was dispiriting, almost frightening, and I pushed it aside.

“Hey,” I said, and turned away. “You got work to do.”

“See you at lunch?”

I nodded and smiled. “Yeah. Au revoir, kiddo.”

Summer was usually a slow time of year, despite the annual onslaught of tourists. While I’d been playing hooky with Dylan, only a few messages had come in on my machine—the usual inquiries for photos and videodiscs, a message from Jack Rogers, a few intelligently worded calls from Baby Joe in New York.

“Uh, yeah, hija, what the fuck you doing? Call me.”

“Jeez, hija, it’s Thursday. Where the fuck are you?”

There were several more variations on this theme. I played them back and grinned, wondering how Baby Joe would react when he learned I was fooling around with an intern. But the idea of telling him about Dylan himself, and Dylan’s parentage, was just a little too much to contemplate. So I didn’t call Baby Joe back right away. I figured I’d wait a couple of days, until I’d caught up with everything else.

It wasn’t just me: that summer, everything was slightly skewed. The weather was strange—had been strange, for months and months, which made Dylan’s comments about his mother even more unsettling. After a long and terrible winter, with its earthquakes and blizzards and record cold, there came a terrible spring—floods and mudslides, more earthquakes in places with unpronounceable names, unexpected volcanic eruptions in Indonesia that dumped a fine layer of ash into the atmosphere. That did not bode well for the coming winter, though scientists seemed to think we might be graced with a cooler summer.

But then summer came, and by the second week of July we were experiencing a record heat wave—a record even for D.C., which is really saying something. The temperature stayed up around a hundred, and scarcely dropped in the evening, when the streets and sidewalks would be covered with immense cockroaches and water bugs trying, like everyone else, to find some respite from the heat. At first the brownouts came weekly, then every few days; but I soon got used to hearing shouted curses and shrieks from odd corners of the museum, whenever the power cut and the computer network crashed.

Elsewhere it was worse. In the Midwest a drought ravaged crops. A biblical plague of locusts swept from Missouri to the Dakota Badlands, leaving dust and mounds of hollow carapaces in their wake. More flash fires devoured the West Coast, where people were still trying to rebuild from the earthquake. On the Baja Peninsula an outbreak of rodent-borne hantavirus caused a temporary quarantine to be set up. Up in Acadia National Park a devastating fire swept across Mount Desert, brought on by the hot weather and a careless hiker’s match. In the Pacific Northwest a full-scale war broke out between loggers and environmentalists, with tree-spikers getting picked off with AK-47s and logging trucks blown up in the middle of Route 687. The locusts were blamed for at least one major airplane crash; in D.C., cockroaches literally smothered a child sleeping on a front porch swing.

“Jesus,” I said when this last news item came over NPR, and switched stations.

There was the usual talk of apocalypse, of the coming millennium and the failure of schools, and god only knew what was going on in the Middle East. So yes, it was strange and disturbing and even frightening, but it was also so much business as usual—you know, Texas Cult Claims Entire Town. Bus Crashes in New Delhi, Thousands Die.

And I just didn’t care, I just didn’t want to think about it. I just didn’t want to think about anything but Dylan. I bought some boric acid and a new fire extinguisher at Hechinger’s, and laid in a case of decent chardonnay from the Mayflower. I stopped reading the front section of the Post, and started hanging out with Dylan at Tower Records and flipping through Pulse.

It was harder for me to ignore that something odd was going on in the museum, something that took up a great deal of Dr. Dvorkin’s time. I saw him leaving his office at odd hours, always with a strained expression, often heavily laden with sheaves of papers, manila folders, even wooden boxes. When I went down to Laurie’s desk to ask her about it, she only shrugged.

“I don’t know, Katherine. It might be another one of those Native American things—”

I groaned. Like a number of museums across the country, we’d come under fire for having sacred objects in our collections. There’d been a few lawsuits, a few out-of-court settlements, a lot of unhappy-making press, and one of our Native American galleries closed for renovation when its permanent collection of kachina dolls turned out to be not so permanent after all. “Am I supposed to be doing something? Like, not talking to the press? Or talking to the press?”

Laurie jabbed at her computer with a paper clip. “Too late. Somebody from the Post was in already—oh, but you were out sick, weren’t you? Well, anyway, there’s supposed to be some big story coming out soon.”

“More Indian stuff?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so—I think it’s something bigger than that. Something with Turkey, maybe.”

“Turkey?”

“The country, Katherine.” Laurie tossed the paper clip into a corner and looked at me suspiciously. “What’s the matter with you, anyway? You still look a little out of it—”

I gestured feebly. “Nothing. A sinus infection. What’s going on with Turkey?”

“I’m not sure. Robert hasn’t told me, but everyone down in Paleo is having a cow. I think Robert’s just trying to get some damage control going.”

I tapped a handful of papers against my palm. “Guess I chose the wrong week to be out, huh?”

“Or the right one.” The phone buzzed and she turned away. “See you later, Katherine. I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

I walked slowly back to my office. I wasn’t terribly concerned about whatever might be happening in Paleolithic Europe, except insofar as it might cause me actually to think about my job instead of Dylan.

But whatever storm was brewing, it wasn’t ready to break quite yet. The rest of that week was quiet—unusually quiet, even for the curatorial wing of the Museum of Natural History in mid-July. Dylan and I played hooky, coming in late, leaving early—the sort of thing that gives civil servants a bad name. I barely pretended to work. Instead I walked around in a Technicolor haze, feeling as though I’d somehow wandered from the world I knew into the Bombay Film Board’s version of my life, the Mall outside magically transformed into an exotic festival complete with fireworks and sloe-eyed boys and girls, Hindi puppet shows, and little stalls selling bird cages and fighting kites and puri. The heat wasn’t so bad, if you didn’t actually have to move. Dylan and I took three-hour lunches, and I found that Jack Rogers had been as good as his word: Pink Pelican beer was now being sold at all Aditi food kiosks. I arranged to use up some of the million or so vacation days I’d accrued over the last eight years, and basically did what everyone else in D.C. did that summer: not a damn thing.

Dylan did get some work done. He cataloged photos for the Larkin Archive and gradually learned his way around the museum. For hours he’d wander through the Anthropology Wing by himself, poking into odd corners and storage bins, occasionally coming back by my office to show me something he’d found—a first edition of The Origin of Species shoved beneath the leg of an ancient rolltop desk; a cardboard folder holding original photo gravures of Edward Steichen’s most famous works, the Flatiron Building and Central Park in the snow and half a dozen other images, all printed on tiny narrow bits of paper frail and lovely as dried violets; even one of Maggie’s hissing cockroaches that had made its home near a collection of Malaysian spirit puppets in the Indonesian corner.

“Keep looking,” I told him after he presented a German helmet from World War I to a bemused ornithologist. “Jimmy Hoffa’s in there somewhere, and the guy who wrote The Little Prince.”

Dylan grinned. “And Elvis?”

“Elvis is over in American History.”

One week flowed into the next. I put off calling Baby Joe, just like I put off everything else. The heat wave showed no signs of abating. Perhaps as a result of that, the threatened Post article didn’t appear. I was just starting to think that maybe, just maybe, I might get away with it. That maybe this was what it was all for—all those lost years, my exile from the Divine and the only people I had ever let myself love. That I had finally found a safe place; that I had finally found one of the Beautiful Ones. And he loved me.

Then Laurie Driscoll dropped by one morning with the latest issue of Archaeology.

“Here,” she said. She opened the magazine and tossed it onto my desk. “This just came in. Check it out.”

“What is it?”

“Just read.”

Two brief articles crowded a page otherwise filled with ads for personalized cartouches and a bonded marble replica of Queen Hatshepsut’s head. The first article noted that a prestigious Manhattan art dealer had agreed to return a collection of Middle Kingdom Minoan gold seal rings, ivory, necklaces, and faience sculptures, including two images of the so-called Cretan Snake Goddess, to the Greek National Museum in Athens. The collection was valued at over $2 million on the booming antiquities market, but before it could be transferred to Athens, the National Museum itself was slapped with a lawsuit by a feminist spiritualist group named Potnia, after the ancient Cretan mistress of the beasts.

“Oh, great,” I said under my breath. I glanced up at Laurie. “I guess you’re not interested in talking about this nice ad for Mayaland Resorts, huh?” I asked wistfully.

“Read it.”

I read that Potnia’s attorney and spokeswoman, Rosanne Minerva, claimed that the collection should neither be in private hands nor in a museum. It was “the ancient spiritual legacy of women everywhere and, as such, should be given into the keeping of a sacred trust that will administer these objects, and others like them, for all womankind.” In lieu of an expensive lawsuit, the Greek National Museum and the Manhattan art dealer agreed to donate the collection to Potnia, under Ms. Minerva’s watchful eyes. It was presumed that both museum and gallery would reap substantial tax benefits from the transfer.

This article segued quite neatly into the second, which detailed how the well-known American businessman Michael Haring had agreed to donate his private collection of Neolithic artifacts, including a Celtic Bronze Age mummy, to Potnia. This was a timely decision on Haring’s part, as there now seemed to be some question as to how he had come by many of these artifacts in the first place. Several governments, including those of Cyprus, Denmark, and Turkey, had threatened him with legal action, but the redoubtable Ms. Minerva seemed to wield a great deal of clout—more than I could easily fathom.

Until I got to the article’s last sentence, which read,

“Ouch.” I closed the magazine and pushed it away, pressed my fingers against my throbbing forehead. “Michael Haring, why is that name familiar?”

I looked up to see Laurie staring at me pointedly, her arms crossed.

“‘Angelica Furiano, now why is that familiar?’” she said, mimicking me.

I opened my mouth, shut it again, turned to stare at my computer. “Am I missing something, Laurie? I’m serious. Who’s Haring? I mean, besides being some capitalist tool?”

Laurie sighed and reached for the magazine. “Well, he’s a regent of the National Museum of Natural History, for one thing.”

My eyes widened. “No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

“So you think this is what Robert’s been dealing with? Some radical feminist group demanding he return their artifacts? No wonder he seems so depressed.”

Laurie leaned against my desk, slipping her feet out of her espadrilles. “Are you telling me this is news to you, Katherine?”

“Well, yes,” I said slowly. “I am. This is the first I’ve heard of it. I mean—well, Laurie, give me a break, okay?” I finally exploded. “I haven’t been paying much attention lately, I’ll admit it! But this stuff—”

I waved disparagingly at the magazine. “It’s not my field, you know? And it sounds like all these cases are being settled out of court, so…”

Laurie stared at me as though I had suggested stomping a little bunny to death with her bare feet. “Pete Suthard said he heard they might have to shut down seven galleries!”

“Seven! That’s ridiculous! There can’t be one gallery’s worth of goddess stuff here—”

“I’m just telling you what I heard. He said these Potnia people have apparently joined up with an alliance of Native Americans’ civil rights groups, some African-American groups, the Celtic Gay and Lesbian National Congress—”

She sighed and slid back into her shoes. “Well, anyway, I just thought you might have some inside track on this. Because of—well, because of Dylan.”

“Dylan.” I slumped farther down in my ergonomic chair. “Dylan?”

Laurie snorted. “What, you think nobody here’s noticed you’re shacking up with an intern?”

I rubbed my nose, then replied a little defensively, “Well, yes.”

“Oh, please. Not that I care. I just thought, well, because of his mother—I thought you might know something about this other stuff.”

“I don’t.”

“I believe you. It’s just that whatever is going on seems to have Robert more worked up than I’ve ever seen him.” Laurie looked uncomfortable, even somewhat pissed. “You know, if they bring the ombudsman in to check out whatever it is these Potnia people want, it’s going to be a royal pain in the tush. At the least.”

“They won’t bring the ombudsman in,” I said, and tried to sound like I meant it. With Robert Dvorkin so preoccupied and the rest of the curators on vacation, I was just about the senior staff member. I had enough of a conscience to feel a vague sense of responsibility to the department, at least enough to make a cursory effort at reassuring our secretary that she wouldn’t be out of a job anytime soon. “Relax, okay, Laurie?”

“I am relaxed. I’m going to Hatteras in a few weeks,” she said smugly, and headed for the door. “I just thought you should know. Since with Robert so tied up, you’ll pretty much be in charge of everything.”

“Gee, thanks.” I watched her go. For a moment I thought of chasing her down, to retrieve that magazine.

Then I decided I just wasn’t going to think about it. For one thing, it wasn’t any of my business. I didn’t want it to be any of my business. I had invested almost my entire adult life into being a drone, a suit in Washington, a Videodisc Project Supervisor Grade 9, Step 4, and that’s how I liked it. The museum wasn’t paying me enough to think—that was Dr. Dvorkin’s job. I didn’t want to think, especially now. I wanted to believe this was all just some odd coincidence. I wanted to believe that Angelica had no reason to be thinking of me, or the museum, or even her own son, no reason at all beyond her own career concerns, whatever the hell those might be. I wanted Dylan, that was all. I wanted Dylan, and I didn’t want to be reminded of anything strange in my past that might have led to his being here with me now.

And Dylan obviously didn’t want to think about it, either. We had reached a sort of unspoken agreement about his mother. If he wanted to talk about Angelica, I’d listen; but I learned not to question him.

“Don’t you think you should at least give her a call?” This was after we’d been together for a few weeks. I was on my way to Eastern Market to get some ribs for dinner. “I’ll be out for a while, you could—”

“I already called her,” Dylan said shortly. He was wearing tight frayed cutoffs and nothing else, sprawled on the old Castro Convertible with those impossibly long legs dangling over the sofa’s edge. “She knows how to find me if she needs me.”

“Fine,” I said, and left.

I wondered about that. At Dr. Dvorkin’s request, I’d been going over to the main house nearly every day after work, to water the orchids and feed the cats and gather up the mail. That evening my heart skipped: under the stacks of magazines and overseas correspondence I found an envelope with Dylan’s name on it, written in Angelica’s lovely handwriting with peacock blue ink. My hand shook a little as I picked it up, and the rest of the mail slid to the floor.

“You got a letter,” I said when I got back to the carriage house, trying to sound nonchalant as I handed it to him. Dylan glanced at the envelope and tossed it aside. I went out onto the patio to check the grill. When I came inside again, the letter was gone—I know, because I looked for it when Dylan was in the bathroom. It finally appeared again a few days before Dylan’s birthday, shoved beneath the kilim that covered the sofa. The envelope was still unopened. When I picked it up I could smell sandalwood, like incense clinging to the heavy paper—sandalwood and oranges and the odor of ground coriander seed.

Annie Harmon stared at the ranks of black and grey limousines lined up in front of the Javits Convention Center. Behind the soot-colored monolith, the Hudson moved sluggishly, streaked black and orange from where the sun was dipping behind the Jersey skyline. If she inhaled deeply enough, she could smell the river, rank with spilled gasoline and dead fish; but Annie didn’t want to smell it. She didn’t want to be there at all. The out-of-towners disgusted her, there wasn’t a decent place to eat within ten blocks, and she didn’t believe that Justine was going to show up in a limo with a very rich John.

Actually, Annie could believe that; she just preferred not to. If she looked closely at the vehicles pulled alongside the river, Annie could see heads bobbing up and down in most of them, TV and TS whores taking care of the tourists and bridge-and-tunnel regulars. But she didn’t want to see that any more than she wanted to smell the garbage barge drifting past, with its clouds of gulls and blowflies; any more than she wanted to think about the message Justine had left on her hotel room’s voice mail. So she sat on the convention center steps and tried not to think, that week’s unread Voice balanced on her knees. Tried not to think at all.

It had been three weeks since Baby Joe’s death. Pulmonary failure, said the coroner’s report. Not as uncommon as you’d think at places like Chumley Peckerwood’s; although at thirty-eight, José Malabar was still pretty young, even with the extra weight and cigarettes and peripatetic sleep habits. It made for a sordid little story nonetheless, a few inches of newsprint glorifying the death of a minor New York character in a strip club. The usual HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR kind of stuff, a few halfhearted attempts at suspecting foul play; then someone from Newsday took over Baby Joe’s column and that was the end of it. Annie had been afraid to go to the funeral in D.C. or even to call his family. Instead she’d had Helen send some flowers and a card with both their names on it. Later, after she’d gotten all this other screwed-up shit taken care of, she’d come up with a more fitting memorial for her murdered friend.

Because if Angelica di Rienzi didn’t have something to do with Baby Joe’s death, then she, Anne Marie Jeanne Harmon, was a Carmelite nun. And Carmelites don’t hang out on the Manhattan riverfront, waiting to meet transsexual prostitutes early of a torrid July evening.

“Annie! I’m he-ere—”

Annie turned, and grinned in spite of herself. Justine had, indeed, arrived by limo. She watched as her leggy friend flowed from the back of an endless silvery vehicle, patting demurely at her carefully arranged coif and then striding across the street, skirting steaming puddles and rubbish-filled potholes with her size-thirteen platform shoes.

“Hi, Justine,” said Annie. “Wanna go see Cats?”

“Uh.” Justine swept up beside her and looked around disdainfully, adjusting a pair of gold-framed sunglasses on her aquiline nose. “I hate this place—c’est a cochons.” She lifted her chin as someone on the other side of the street shouted her name and an epithet. “Eat moi, asshole! Girlfriend, you look terrible,” she added, looking down at Annie.

Annie shrugged. A streetlamp clicked on, showering the steps with violent light and making Justine’s shades glow taxi yellow. Annie could see herself in the lenses: her buzz cut growing out in sloppy tufts, her eyes shadowed and face blotched. No chance anyone would recognize her as last week’s Heavy Rotation. “Yeah, I know,” she sighed. “I look like shit. Pardon me—merde. So let’s cut to the car crash. What did you find out?”

“I found your friend.”

“You did.” Annie took a deep breath, forgetting about the toxic air, and closed her eyes very tight. “I wasn’t crazy. You really did.” For a moment she thought she’d cry, from relief or exhaustion or maybe joy.

“She is in London—” Justine rummaged in her Day-Glo vinyl purse, spilling a wad of bills and Technicolor condoms onto the steps. “Ooops, wait—here it is—”

Justine stooped to sweep up the money in one hand, in the other flourished a piece of paper. “Was in London. Her roommate said the last time he saw her was several months ago. This is where she was until then. Sorry—there’s no forwarding address.”

Annie took the paper from Justine’s enameled fingers and stared at it. A name she didn’t recognize, an address on the Camden High Street. For a long time she said nothing. Justine stood above her and smoked a cigarette. The sun disappeared behind the river’s western shore, the number of hired cars in front of the convention center dwindled to the occasional Yellow Cab or livery driver.

“Okay,” Annie said at last. She folded the paper and put it carefully into her filo-fax. “Was there—was there anything else? I mean, do you know what she’s been doing all this time?”

Justine took a final drag on her cigarette and tossed it away. She exhaled, then said, “She went to Southeast Asia. I think maybe Thailand, for a long time. No, wait—Taiwan, maybe? I don’t remember. Her roommate said she had some problems with junk for a little while but she’s clean now. Her doctor was there, Bangkok or someplace, that’s why it took me so long to come up with anything for you—everyone I know sees someone here, or maybe in Stockholm. Not Taiwan.”

“Bangkok’s not in Taiwan,” Annie said. “It’s in Thailand.”

Justine twisted her head and peered out above the rim of her sunglasses. Annie had a glimpse of kohl-rimmed eyes and pupils so dilated it was like staring into the empty sockets of a skull. “I will tell you something, chérie. Sometimes, people who do this don’t want to be found—”

“No shit,” Annie snapped, but Justine raised a hand warningly.

“I was going to say, sometimes they don’t want to be found; but I think your friend will find you, Annie. She found you once already. She will again—”

“But—”

“But I have to go now, chérie.” Justine stretched her arms and yawned loudly. “I have a date.”

“Wait—” Annie stumbled to her feet, yanking her knapsack after her. “Look, Justine. I know you’re a friend of Helen’s and all, but I thought—well, I feel bad, you going to all this trouble. So—can I write you a check or something—something to reimburse you for your time?”

Justine dropped her arms, staring at Annie with those huge black eyes, and burst into laughter. “Pay me! No way, girl—”

“Aw, Justine, you made all those overseas phone calls! I know this was more trouble than you thought—”

Justine grabbed Annie by the chin. “Chérie! You and Helen are both my friends. Just remember me when you’re rich and famous—really rich, and really famous.

“Besides,” she said, letting go of Annie’s chin and leaning down to kiss her noisily on the cheek, “I charged those calls to a client. And—”

She laughed again, swinging her vinyl bag through the hazy air. “You could never afford me, girlfriend.”

“Justine…” Annie took her hand and squeezed it. “I can’t thank you enough. Really.”

Justine nodded. “I know.” She clattered down the steps, stopped and looked back. “It is sad about José Malabar, uh? I will miss his columns in the Beacon.”

“Me too,” Annie sighed. “Me fucking too.”

Justine sauntered off, and Annie waved sadly after her. When the tall silhouette disappeared into the shadows at river’s edge, Annie hitched her knapsack over her shoulder and began walking away from the Javits Center. At the corner she hailed a cab.

“Penn Station,” she said, and slumped into the seat. As the taxi careened in and out of traffic she took out the paper Justine had given her and studied it again, finally put it aside and rummaged through her restaurant chits and airline stubs until she found a tattered Amtrak schedule.

“Well,” she said softly to herself. Looks like old home week for the archangels.

At Penn Station she paid for her ticket in cash—Helen had her credit cards—found a liquor store and bought a bottle of Pernod, because she remembered that was what her college friends used to drink. At 7:55 she boarded the train and collapsed into a seat. She took out a narrow sheaf of twenties—half of what remained of her cash—and stuck it in her right sneaker. Then she, Annie Harmon, who never, ever drank, spent the next few hours choking down Pernod until she finally passed out, somewhere around Wilmington, Delaware. She didn’t wake up until they pulled into Union Station, an hour later than the Senator’s scheduled arrival time and much too late for the Metro to still be running. The few other passengers trudged to where a handful of BMWs and Audis and Volvo wagons were waiting for them. Annie brought up the end of the parade, stumbling a little.

When she got outside she looked around blearily. It had been a few years since she’d been in D.C. It was like getting that first whiff of ocean air: just one deep breath and it all came back to her, the swampy heat and soot and honeysuckle, the sound of traffic a few blocks away in the old riot corridor and an ambulance wailing along North Capitol Street.

“Great,” she muttered. At least they’d cleaned up Union Station.

A solitary cab was parked beside the curb in front of the station.

“I guess I need to find someplace that’s still open,” Annie announced thickly to the driver as she slid into the backseat. “I mean a hotel or something. There a Day’s Inn around here?”

The engine started with a thrumming roar. “I’ll take care of you, young lady, now don’t you worry,” the driver said in a deep, oddly comforting voice. Annie winced. She must sound like a hick. A drunken hick; this guy would never believe she’d lived here once. She stared defiantly at the back of his head, trying to remember the name of some other hotel, but her brain felt damp and empty. “Don’t you worry at all.”

“Yeah, okay.” Annie glanced at his medallion, just in case he tried to overcharge her. Yellow Cab Number 393: easy enough to remember. “Maybe the Phoenix, then. Or the Tiber Creek…”

The taxi swung out into the empty traffic circle, with its carefully arranged plantings of red, white, and blue petunias. Annie thought of how she should have called Helen, let her know she was coming down here, but then Helen would just worry. Fuck it, Helen would worry no matter what. And Annie’s lover was right, the cloak-and-dagger stuff was getting old. Their money was running low, people were starting to wonder where she was; Labrys had started calling about getting her back into the studio.

And it was probably a really stupid idea to come down here to D.C., especially since Annie didn’t have a number or address or anything for Sweeney Cassidy. She wasn’t even certain that Sweeney still lived here, although she was pretty sure Baby Joe had told her that she did; and even if she did find Sweeney, it might be too late to stop Angelica’s little game of Ten Little College Friends…

Somehow, somewhere between Union Station and the Old Executive Office Building, Annie must have fallen asleep. Because the next thing she knew, she was being helped gently from the cab’s backseat and led into the softly glowing lobby of the Hay-Adams, which was not anyplace she ordinarily would have been caught dead in, not to mention being a place neither she nor Labrys Music could possibly afford.

“Hey,” Annie mumbled. “This is—maybe I just better—”

But before she could say anything else, or even really wake up, she was in an elevator, and then she was in a richly carpeted hallway, and stumbling into a room; and then she was lying on a bed fully clothed with a warm blanket pulled up around her chin against the arctic air-conditioning, and there were voices whispering, and someone saying, “Of course, we understand,” and finally the sound of a door closing and blissful, peaceful silence.

When she woke up it was late morning. The phone was ringing to inform her that checkout time was noon.

“Unless you’ll be staying another night?” The voice on the other end suggested.

Annie shook her head, dazed. “Huh? Oh—no, I mean, I think there’s been a mistake. I—”

“Your bill’s already been taken care of. Just leave your key at the front desk as you depart.”

“What?” But the voice had already rung off.

She was still wearing the fatigues and sleeveless flannel shirt she’d had on last night; the same clothes she’d had on for several days, including her sneakers. She was too confused and hung over to feel panicky yet, but she figured she should get out of here fast, before someone figured out there’d been a mistake.

Although maybe there’s time for a quick shower, she thought, gazing wistfully to where the bathroom door was cracked open. She tried to stand, had to pause and give her head a chance to stop reeling. How do people drink?

After her shower she felt better. She found her knapsack set carefully on a mahogany table, beside a brass lamp. Next to it was a message pad printed with a nice engraving of the Hay-Adams Hotel, circa 1923. She stared at the pad curiously, suddenly grabbed it.

“What the hell?”

Bold black letters marched across the paper where someone had written a message in Magic Marker. Annie’s hands began to tremble as she read.

So the summer passed. And in spite of the dreadful heat, the rumors of imminent disaster at the museum, and the usual threats of gang violence, random shootings, environmental cataclysm, and inflation, I was happier than I had ever been in my life.

If you had asked me what I was most afraid of, it wouldn’t have been any of those awful things. It would have been that Dylan would wake up one morning and suddenly remember that he was only eighteen and I was thirty-eight; that it was his prerogative to be a fickle adolescent; that he had a whole other life to lead, with college and girls and god knows what, and I had Amex payments and the same dull job waiting for me that I’d held forever. My affair with Dylan shouldn’t have meant any-thing to either of us; it should have been nothing but a summer fling. It seemed crazy, even irresponsible, for me to think otherwise.

But I did. Dylan and I had never really spoken about What Happened Next. The fall term at UCLA started before Labor Day, and September first I was supposed to go to Rochester to look over a collection that Kodak was thinking of selling to the museum. It seemed impossible that our relationship could outlast the summer; it seemed ridiculous that I should even dream of it doing so. Yet the mere thought of going on without Dylan, of returning home alone to the carriage house every day, was enough to reduce me to tears. But I was afraid to ask him to stay.

At night I lay beside him and listened to the mockingbird in the garden outside. Dylan’s dark tousled hair spilled across the sheets, moonlight threw shadows across his chest and throat and I would be so flooded with love and desire that I would fall on him like a panther, biting softly at his throat, the skin there taut and tasting like a salted peach. Groaning, he would awaken and we’d fall onto the floor, Dylan clutching me as I straddled him, while outside the moon hung like another fruit in the sky.

“Oh, Sweeney, Sweeney…”

His voice broke as he hugged me to him and I cried, we both cried, from joy or exhaustion or unspoken fear, or perhaps just because it was so beautiful, so terribly, terribly beautiful there in the moonlit summer night with the smell of roses and wisteria perfuming our skin.

A few days before his birthday we went to Kelly’s, the Irish bar next to the Dubliner. They knew me there and never raised an eyebrow when they saw me with Dylan, and never asked to see his ID. The ceiling fans turned desultorily overhead, but otherwise everyone seemed to have given in to the heat. Maureen the bartender had stripped down to a Wonderbra and a pair of men’s plaid boxer shorts; the band was wearing much the same, minus the bra. Dylan drank black-and-tans and I sipped cognac. The band knocked back pints of Guinness and cooled off by spraying each other with bottles of Molson. When closing time came Maureen hopped over the bar, locked the door, and lowered the lights, so the rest of us could stay inside. We drank some more, yelling requests, and the band played everything from the Irish national anthem to “Purple Haze” and “Ghost on the Highway.” Dylan took his shirt off and we danced by the unplugged jukebox, knocking over bottles and pint glasses and sliding in spilt beer. As the light in the windows turned the color of a steel penny, Dylan went up and gave Sean the lead singer a twenty-dollar-bill, and the band played their last song—

We stood and swayed in front of the tiny stage, and Dylan shouted drunkenly in my ear and pointed to where Sean listed in front of the microphone—

“Listen, Sweeney!”

—as Sean sang in his raw, Guinness-blurred tenor.

“Would you, Sweeney?” Dylan pulled me to him until our noses bumped. His breath was warm and sweet and beery as his arms encircled me. “Would you?”

I looked at him, confused. “Would I—?”

“Stay with me? Marry me—forever?”

“Marry you?”

“Marry me!” Dylan shouted. He turned to the band and yelled drunkenly, “I just asked her to marry me!”

From behind the bar Maureen and her friends cheered, and the few others scattered at tables joined in. Sean laughed and yelled into the microphone, “And what did she say?”

Dylan looked at me. “What did you say?”

I stared up at him, at the grinning faces watching us from onstage and at Maureen and the expectant strangers behind the bar; then, laughing, I flung my arms out and shouted the only thing that seemed appropriate.

“Yes, I said—yes I will!—

“Yes.”

That was how I decided to get married. The next morning neither Dylan nor I had changed our minds, although we didn’t make any immediate plans to find a chapel. It was the thirty-first of July. Tomorrow Dylan would turn nineteen. Angelica was still supposed to be coming for his birthday, although I had no idea when she’d arrive or what arrangements, if any, she and Dylan had made. Now it felt even stranger to think about Angelica—my former friend and onetime lover was going to be my mother-in-law? I had no close friends of my own to confide in, certainly not anyone who would understand the inherent weirdness of the whole situation with Dylan and me. So I decided to concentrate on planning a private birthday celebration for just the two of us. Dinner at home, since otherwise we wouldn’t be able to drink champagne. It was too hot to cook, so I thought we’d bring home a couple of boxes of sushi from a place on the Hill. I laid in three bottles of Taitinger and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. If Angelica decided to show up, well, I’d deal with that later.

I did want to tell someone, though. So when I got to the office I finally broke down and called Baby Joe. After three rings his machine clicked in and I heard an unfamiliar voice.

“You have reached Daniel Aquilante at the Arts Desk of the New York Beacon. Please leave a message at the tone, or else call Reception at 8407.”

“That’s weird.” I frowned and dialed again, got the same recording. “Huh.”

I double-checked the number in my computer, then tried Baby Joe at home.

“The number you have reached has been disconnected.”

I dialed again and got the same playback. When I put the phone down I felt chilled. I walked over to my window and stared outside.

The Aditi had ended last weekend. Now the Mall looked like the aftermath of Woodstock or something worse—trash heaped in huge piles inside hurricane fencing, Park Police and orange-suited custodial engineers everywhere, bare scaffolding and dead grass where I had grown accustomed to seeing luminously colored kiosks and tents. That morning in the coffee room I’d overheard someone talking about an infestation of rats outside, drawn by the mountains of food left to rot in the heat. At the time I’d laughed, but now I felt distinctly uneasy. I turned back to my desk and dialed Manhattan information, then called the main number at the New York Beacon.

“I’m trying to reach José Malabar,” I said when someone finally picked up the line.

Silence. “I’m a friend of his from college,” I explained. “I was out of town for a while, and when I got back I had several messages from him on my machine—”

“Hold on, please.”

A moment later someone else came on, a woman with a pleasant but reserved-sounding voice. “Who’s calling, please?”

I took a deep breath. “My name is Katherine Cassidy. I’m with the National Museum in Washington and I had several messages to call José—”

“You said you were a friend of his?”

“Yes.” My heart was pounding as I stammered, “Why?”

The woman sighed. “I’m not really supposed to do this, but—” She hesitated. “José passed away a few weeks ago.”

I slumped back into my chair as she went on, “He had a heart attack—”

“A heart attack! But he couldn’t—he’s so young!”

“I know. I’m sorry.” The woman’s voice broke slightly. “I really am. It was a terrible thing, very unexpected. We’re all really going to miss him around here…”

“Yes,” I whispered. I wanted to ask more but suddenly I felt sick. “Th-thank you, thank you very much. I’ll call somebody—I mean I’ll call one of our friends…”

I hung up. For a moment I clung to the edge of my desk. Then it was too much, on top of cognac and a nearly sleepless night and everything else that had happened. I stumbled out of my office and down the hall, and fled into the ladies’ room. I thought I’d throw up—I wanted to throw up—but I didn’t. Instead I started choking with sobs, so violently that Laurie came running in from her cubicle around the corner.

“Katherine! What is it—”

She put her arm around me and I shook my head. “Here,” she said in a softer voice, and turned on the tap. “Get some cold water on you—you’re so hot! Is it heatstroke?”

“I’m okay—I’m okay,” I gasped. “I just had some bad news—a friend of mine—a friend of mine died.”

“Oh, Katherine—”

“I’ll be all right. It’s just—just so sudden,” I said, and gulped back a sob.

Laurie nodded, her eyes wide with pity. “I’m so sorry. Do you want me to get Dylan?”

I shook my head. “N-no. It’s—it’s not anyone he knows, and tomorrow’s his birthday and I don’t want to upset him. I’ll be okay, really. But thanks.”

I stood over the sink with the cold water running, until finally I stopped crying. Then I went back to my office, hoping to hide until lunchtime.

But Dylan was already there. “Sweeney, I’m so sorry,” he murmured, hugging me. “Who was it?”

“Just a—well, an old friend of mine. From school—from the Divine, I mean. I hadn’t even seen him in a year or so, but we talked all the time, and he left me all these messages early in the month but I kept putting off calling him back. And then I—”

I bit my lip, trying to keep the tears back. “I called him this morning. To tell him about us. And someone at the Beacon told me he had a heart attack.”

“Your friend Baby Joe?” Dismay flickered across Dylan’s face as he made the connection.

I nodded. “Yeah. Oh god. I don’t even know who to call—I mean, his family was from here, but I never met them or anything…”

“It’s okay, Sweeney. It’ll all be okay.” Dylan soothed me, stroking my head. “Don’t worry…”

I tried not to laugh bitterly. Yeah, death sucks, man; but what the fuck does a kid like you know about it?

But that was just mean. I looked up and could see how confused he looked, and also a little worried: was he doing this right, was this how you behaved when one of your girlfriend’s friends died?

“I’ll be okay,” I said, and tried to sound like I meant it. “It’s just so—unexpected. And I feel so fucking guilty. He left me all these messages, and I just blew him off. Because of—”

Because of you. I fought back the nasty thought, and ended, “Because I—I just didn’t feel like talking. And now—he’s dead.”

“How could he have a heart attack? I mean, if he’s your age?”

I moved away from him. “I don’t know. I—well, I don’t know, that’s all.”

For the first time, I thought of Hasel: how had he died, really? That insane letter he’d sent to Baby Joe, about seeing Angelica bathing in a creek in Virginia; and the next thing I knew, he’d drowned.

What had Baby Joe been up to when he died?

I leaned against my desk. “You know,” I said slowly, “I think I’m going to leave early today I feel pretty awful—” I smiled ruefully. “No offense—it’s just, you know, I’m kind of hung over and now this.”

“It’s okay.” Dylan ran a hand through his hair. He hadn’t showered that morning, and had dressed hastily, in wrinkled khakis and a blue cotton shirt that had seen better weeks. In the close hot room he still smelled like the smoke and beer from Kelly’s. “I’d go too, but I told Laurie I’d help her with stuff downstairs.”

“Okay.” I felt relieved. I needed to be alone for a few hours, if nothing else just to sleep and take a cold shower. “Hey—”

I linked my hands behind his neck and kissed his chin. “You haven’t changed your mind, have you? I mean about last night?”

He frowned. “Last night? Last night?—oh, you mean that.” He grinned. “Hell no. Have you?”

“Hell no.” I pulled his face closer to mine and kissed him, his skin rough and hot where he hadn’t shaved. “Never…”

Dylan half turned and reached for the door, closed and locked it. He turned back and gently pushed me until I was sitting on my desk. We made love with most of our clothes on, until the whole room smelled like sex and afterhours. When he came he bit my shoulder to keep from crying out, so hard he left a small bruise there beneath the silk. For a long time we sat on my desk curled in each other’s arms, our hearts pounding, and when I drew away from him I knew that somehow things had changed. I knew that this was it: that there was no turning back now, for myself or Dylan. His skin and blood and memory were branded into me as surely as that little bruise on my shoulder, but I knew that none of those things would ever fade. He was mine now, he had always been mine, and nothing on earth would ever take him away from me.

“Sweeney,” he whispered. “I love you so much. I always have.”

“I know,” I said, and gently pushed the long damp hair from his face. “I love you too, Dylan.”

I left, not caring that my blouse was soaked with sweat as I walked unsteadily down the long curving marble stairs; not caring that I looked dazed and maybe even a little nuts, like someone who’s survived a terrible accident; someone who had just watched everything she owned in the whole world go up in flames except what she loved most; someone who had seen all that, and just walked away with bruises.

I went home and took a cold shower and slept naked on our bed with the fan turned on me. When I woke it was after six o’clock—I could hear Dylan downstairs in the kitchen, watching the local news—and I felt much better. I had decided I’d call the Beacon again next week, after Dylan’s birthday, to get the whole story I could try to contact Annie Harmon, but that might be difficult. She was an up-and-coming star of sorts, and it seemed tacky to get in touch now, after such a long hiatus. Still, I figured if I got my nerve up, I could get her number from whoever had taken over Baby Joe’s column.

And then there was Angelica, of course. The next day was Dylan’s birthday, and while we’d made our own plans, he seemed to take it for granted that his mother was going to show up sometime. Maybe a few days late.

“But she’ll call over at Dvorkin’s,” he’d assured me. “She gets caught up in her work, but she’ll call.”

“I hope so,” I said. He still refused to let me buy him anything, and his wardrobe was looking pretty shabby. “You need some new clothes.”

He rolled his eyes. “Clothes. Like you ever see me in clothes.”

“Good point.” I left it at that.

Now I was hungry. I yawned and threw on a T-shirt and a pair of Dylan’s cutoffs, then padded downstairs.

“Sweeney! Come here!”

“What?” I walked into the kitchen, to find him perched in a chair staring at the tiny Sony on the counter. “Is that news?” I asked darkly. “You know I hate news—”

“Just listen!”

He turned up the volume, so I could hear a correspondent in L.A. talking about how a previously unknown fungus had apparently been released from somewhere within the ground during the previous spring’s earthquake. People all over southern California were getting sick, their symptoms alarmingly similar to those caused by biological warfare in Southeast Asia in the sixties.

“Isn’t this great? First rats, now fungus!” Dylan shook his head and reached for an opened bag of tortilla chips. “My mother is right—we are going to hell in a clutch purse! Here—” He pushed the bag at me. “I got some salsa.”

I grimaced. A list of symptoms was scrolling across the postcard-sized screen, along with information numbers for the Center for Disease Control and NIH. “Thanks, Dylan. Maybe later.”

“Wait—don’t go, there’s supposed to be something about that man who boiled his kids in Trenton—”

“Dylan!”

I had started for the living room, when the screen switched from the L.A. correspondent to a woman standing in front of a huge sand-colored building.

“Hey,” I said. “I know that—”

“This morning, officials at the University of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine in Washington, D.C., confirmed that they had reached an agreement to transfer a collection of over three hundred ancient artifacts to the radical feminist group Potnia.”

“That’s the Divine!” I grabbed Dylan’s shoulder. “That’s where—”

“Shh—I can’t hear!”

“—as ongoing investigations continue at several museums in this country and abroad, amid rumors of a secret society from which women are barred, and even stranger allegations made by Potnia. We spoke to Professor Balthazar Warnick, Professor Emeritus at the University’s Thaddeus College.”

“Holy cow,” I breathed. “I don’t believe this—”

The screen showed a slight man in a three-piece suit, standing in a cavernous space. He was so thin as to appear almost wasted, but his hair was still dark, and his eyes were the same piercing eyes I had last seen years before at the Orphic Lodge.

“There has been absolutely no wrongdoing on the part of the University or any individuals associated with the institution,” he said. At the sound of his voice—silken as ever it had been, with that same ironic undertone of menace and laughter—I hugged myself; as though someone had opened a window onto winter. “We have held these items—and numerous others of greater value, I should add—for many, many years. Centuries, some of them.” He swept his hand upward to indicate the vaulted recesses of a ceiling high overhead, and I realized he was being taped somewhere in the recesses of the Shrine.

“No one, absolutely no one, at the University has ever gained any sort of financial benefit from these objects,” he went on. For an instant I saw a glint of fire in his eyes. “I should also say that, considering the political climate in many of the countries where these artifacts have their origin, the University has done an excellent job of safekeeping—”

Abruptly the camera cut to an elegantly dressed young woman sitting behind an important-looking desk. She was even more diminutive than Professor Warnick, with straight jet black hair and white skin and black eyes. Her almost childlike beauty was belied by her suit, which probably cost what I made in a month, and the delicately drawn tattoo on her cheek.

The newscaster intoned, “Rosanne Minerva, attorney and spokeswoman for Potnia, disagrees.”

“Some of these figurines, including the so-called ‘Tahor Venus,’ are literally tens of thousands of years old,” Rosanne Minerva said. Her tone was utterly self-assured. “For centuries this relatively small group of men—primarily American and European businessmen and scholars—has been hiding these treasures—these priceless religious artifacts that belong to women, and men, everywhere!”

When she said the word men it was with the sort of pity usually reserved for speaking of the terminally ill. The camera drew in for a close-up of her poised, aquiline face, and I got a better look at her tattoo. Without meaning to I gasped.

“What?” demanded Dylan.

The little cusp drawn so carefully upon her cheek was a perfect half-moon, incised with tiny swirled lines and meanders. The same lunar crescent that Angelica had worn: a lunula.

“What these men have done is nothing short of profanation,” Rosanne Minerva said. Her hand rested lightly upon a stack of papers, but I could see how her fingers tensed. “It is a sin, and a crime, and it will be—it has been—stopped.”

I continued to stare in disbelief even after the screen cut back to the newsroom.

“She’s just a lawyer,” Dylan said, reaching for another handful of chips. “I know who she is.”

“You do?”

“Sure. Potnia—they’re with my mother.” He turned to look at me, a curtain of dark hair flopping over his eyes. “Haven’t you ever heard of them?”

“Well, sort of. I read something about them. What—”

At that moment the door buzzer rang. Dylan stopped eating in mid-bite. I froze with one hand on the wall. Nobody rang that buzzer, except for UPS men and Seventh-Day Adventists.

“My mother!” whispered Dylan. He glanced nervously down at his shirt, then at me. “Uh-oh.”

“You stay here,” I commanded.

“Why?”

“I don’t know!” I said, flustered. “It’s my place, that’s why, I’ll open the door—”

“I live here too!” Dylan called after me plaintively, but he stayed in the kitchen.

I walked to the door in my bare feet, running a hand through my hair and cursing myself for not putting on makeup. Give it to Angelica to pull off something like this. After all these years, here she was coasting in with a little fanfare of related media coverage and not even a phone call to warn me. I could just make out a figure through the window, someone nearly hidden by wisteria. I stopped in front of the door, took a deep breath, and opened it. “Surprise,” someone rasped. It was Annie Harmon.

I was so stunned I could only gape. She had the same dun-colored hair, trimmed to a messy crew cut; the same recalcitrant cowlick, dusted now with grey; the same brown violet-tinged eyes and wanton voice. She was thinner than she had been, and it showed mostly in her face—puckish Annie had cheekbones now, and a small cleft in her chin, that obviously hadn’t just been put there for her music video. She had lines too, around her eyes and mouth; her arms were thin and muscled, her hands worn and raw-looking. Her tiny feet were shoved into red tennis shoes—expensive red tennis shoes. She wore torn fatigues, a blue flannel shirt with the sleeves ripped out, a gold wedding band on her right hand. She looked absolutely beautiful.

“Annie.” I fell back as she pushed past me into the room. “Uh—jeez, it’s uh—it’s great to see you.”

“I’m underwhelmed,” she said, and grabbed me in a hug. “Remember me? The girl least likely to succeed in a long-term heterosexual relationship?”

I laughed. “I dunno, Annie. I think I was in the running there for a while.”

She dropped her knapsack to the floor. “So: you happy to see me, or is that a roll of pennies in your pocket?” She grinned, but her voice sounded strained. As though she was putting on an act for me, as though if she gave me the chance to think, I’d change my mind and push her right back out the door.

“Of course! Here—sit, sit,” I urged, pointing her to the couch. “You want something to drink? No kidding, Annie, it really is great to see you. I mean it.”

I hesitated, went on in a rush, “This is so weird. There was just something on the news about the Divine, and I’ve been thinking of calling you, but I didn’t know how to find you. Did you hear about Baby Joe?”

She nodded, her expression guarded. “Yeah. I meant to call you when it happened.” She sank onto the couch, tugging at her cowlick. “I know this is totally nutso, me just showing up like this—”

“No—I’m glad, Annie, really, I’m so happy you—”

“Well, you might not be so happy when you hear why I came.” She sighed and leaned back into the couch. “God, I’m so exhausted. Can I crash here tonight?”

“Tonight? Sure, Annie, of course—” A little warning beeper went off in my head, reminding me that tomorrow was Dylan’s birthday: I’d have to find some polite way of kicking Annie out by then. “You look beat. Don’t you want something? I think there’s some orange juice—”

“Orange juice sounds great. You know, I had some of that stuff on the train the other night—that Pernod shit you used to drink in school.” Annie shook her head. “Now I know why you were always so nuts.”

I hopped into the kitchen and got the juice. Dylan was finishing off the chips and salsa; before I could say anything he started into the other room. I hurried after him.

“Dylan—uh, wait a sec—”

Annie looked up just as the two of us came through the doorway. The blood drained from her face. For a moment I thought she was going to scream.

“Annie! This is Dylan—Dylan Furiano.” I gestured weakly at Dylan with the glass of orange juice. “He’s—he’s Angelica’s son,” I went on breathlessly. “Annie is a friend of mine. We all went to college together. Your mom and Annie and I. Dylan’s father was Angelica’s husband in Italy,” I ended, willing Annie not to bring up Oliver’s name.

“Hi,” said Dylan politely. He smiled at Annie. She nodded—too fast, as though someone in a dark alley had just asked for her wallet.

“Yeah,” she replied in a hoarse whisper. “I—Angelica? Angelica di Rienzi?”

“She’s my mother.” He peered more closely at Annie. ‘You look kind of familiar…”

I slapped my forehead: I was not handling this well at all. “Dylan, this is Annie Harmon—Annie Harmony, I guess you are now, huh?” I gave Annie an anxious look. I had the uneasy feeling that everyone in the room was covering for someone else, except for me. I was standing all alone out in the field, waiting to be plowed down.

“Annie Harmony?” Dylan tilted his head, suddenly exclaimed, “The singer?”

“Dylan,” Annie was saying, her voice carefully modulated. “Angelica’s son Dylan. And—”

I coughed loudly; I would have kicked her if I’d been a few inches closer. Annie whistled and gave me a sideways glance, her dark eyes narrowed so that she looked like an animal that’s just been poked with a stick.

“Sweeney Cassidy and Angelica’s son Dylan,” she said. “Dylan and Sweeney. Now I must have missed the pilot for this show, because I am very surprised to—”

Dylan stepped around Annie to stand awkwardly beside me. “I bet you girls have hair and fingernails to discuss, so maybe I’ll go pick up something for dinner. Is that okay, Sweeney?”

“That’d be great, Dylan. Thanks.”

He leaned down to brush his lips against my cheek. “See you later, Sweeney. Annie—”

Annie nodded, forced a smile so false I was glad Dylan was out the door before he could see it. I watched him go, then turned to Annie and said, “Well, hey, how about that orange juice.”

Annie glared at me. Her face was dead white except for a fiery red spot on each cheek. “Yeah? Well hey, how about telling me who the fuck that is?”

I bit my lip. “Well, actually, Dylan is—”

“I know who he is! Anyone with half a brain can see who he is! The hell with Angie—that’s Oliver’s kid!”

She began to pace furiously across the room, punching the air with her fist. “Jesus Christ, Sweeney! I almost had a heart attack—I thought he was Oliver. What is he doing here? What are you doing—”

I shoved my hands into my cutoffs and glared back at her. “What am I doing? I live here—”

“What is he doing here?”

“He lives here! What are you doing here?”

Annie stopped and stared down at the harvest table. She reached for the sea urchin lamp, moving her fingers across its tiny raised nodes as though she were reading braille. Suddenly her expression changed. “I remember this,” she said softly. “This was Angie’s…”

I nodded. “She—she sent me that for Christmas, that first year…”

“That only year,” Annie said, but there was no malice in her voice. “It always sort of gave me the creeps, this lamp. But it looks pretty in here.” She sighed and turned, leaning against the table. “Man, it’s hot. Where’s that orange juice?”

I handed it to her, went and got the rest of the pitcher. “Here—” I poured her another glass. “Why don’t you sit, Annie? It’s too hot, and we don’t have air-conditioning.”

I could see her flinch when I said we, but she said nothing, just flopped onto the sofa and rested the glass against her forehead for a few minutes.

“Okay,” she said at last. “I feel better now. At least I don’t feel like I’m gonna run screaming out into the street and have fits.”

I laughed. “Why not? Everyone on Capitol Hill has fits.”

Annie sighed. “Right—Capitol Hill. Baby Joe said you lived on Capitol Hill.”

I hesitated, then asked, “Is that—is that why you came here? To tell me about Baby Joe?”

Annie shook her head. “No. Not really. I mean, if I just wanted to tell you about Baby Joe, I would’ve called, probably. No, this is—well, this is a little more than that.” She fixed me with a sharp glance. “A lot more.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Annie,” I settled next to her on the couch, reached over to give her a tentative hug. “Try me. I’m more open-minded than I used to be.”

She snorted. “No kidding. Open-minded Sweeney Cassidy, the girl with a hole in her head. I’m sorry—it’s just a shock, you know? I haven’t seen you in—what? Nineteen years?”

“Twenty, almost.”

“Twenty years! And here I walk in and it’s like a fucking time warp, you and Oliver…”

“Yeah, well, imagine how I felt.”

Annie rested her elbows on her knees and looked at me, head cocked. “All right, girl. Shoot. Tell me how it felt.”

I told her about Dylan. Everything about Dylan, up to and including about how the night before at Kelly’s he’d asked me to marry him.

Annie cupped her chin in her hand. “And you said you’d wait for him to grow up, no matter how long it takes. How romantic.”

“Fuck you, Harmon. I told him I’d marry him in a New York second.”

“Wow.” Annie looked at me with wide eyes. “Really? You said yes?”

“Of course I said yes! I’m in love with him, Annie.” I tried to keep my voice from sounding desperate. “He’s—he’s everything I never thought I’d find. He’s everything in the world to me,” I said softly. “Everything.”

I looked up, expecting to see Annie’s mocking gaze or worse, her anger. Instead she was staring at me as though she’d somehow walked into a stranger’s carriage house; which, I guess, she had.

“You said you’d marry him. Too much. And obviously he doesn’t know who his real father is,” she mused. “Which is probably for the best…

“Well. He sounds nice,” she said after a long silence had passed. “Really, he does. I guess it’s just that—well, some kind of intense stuff has happened to me in the last couple of months.”

“Like what?”

She shifted uncomfortably on the couch, finally curled up into the corner facing me. “Well, like—like I guess maybe I’ll have to wait a few minutes before getting into it. This is a lot to think about, after all this time. Right here—”

She gestured at me, then at the little room around us, with its ancient beams and slate floor and books and rose petals strewn everywhere.

“All this, and you, and him.” She was quiet, and stared thoughtfully out the front window; then she asked in a low voice, “Don’t take this the wrong way, Sweeney, but—well, are you sure it’s Dylan you’re in love with? I mean, you really used to bang your head against the wall over Oliver—”

“I’m sure,” I said curtly. “I haven’t thought about Oliver in years and years.”

Which was a lie, of course. Annie didn’t seem to believe it for an instant.

“Really? I have,” she said, almost dreamily. “I thought about him, and you, and Angie, all the time. All the time. Especially Angie.”

She pulled a pillow into her lap and kneaded it, and I was shocked to see her eyes were red. “I thought about Angie for years. Fucking years, girl. Did you know we slept together?”

I shook my head. “No,” I said awkwardly. “But—well, I’m not surprised. You probably weren’t the only one.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Annie’s face twisted, and she held the pillow so tightly her fingers were white.

“But I wanted to be the only one! I was so gone over her, I was insane for her. That time I found you in the room—I wanted to kill you, Sweeney, I mean, really kill you. It was like when I found out about what happened to my cousin Lisa—”

“But you know it didn’t mean anything, Annie! I was drunk, that was such a horrible night, and she—”

“I know what she did. She did the same thing to you that she did to me, that she did to everyone. She used you, Sweeney. She used us all.”

Annie’s expression was so vehement, her eyes so black with rage that I moved a little closer to my end of the couch.

“Annie,” I said gently, trying to be careful with my words, “I’m sure Angelica didn’t mean to hurt you. I don’t think she meant to hurt anyone. Things were different then, you remember what it was like—lots of people slept with their friends. We didn’t know.” It was like letting something go, that had been caged inside of me. “We were just kids, Annie. That was all. Besides—”

I pointed at the ring on her right hand. “You’re a big star now. You can’t be living alone.”

“I’m not.” Annie straightened, tilting her chin defiantly. “My lover, Helen—we’ve been together for almost eight years now. Shit,” she added under her breath, “I think our anniversary’s coming up, too, I got to remember that. But that’s not what I meant, anyway.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“I mean that she used us. Really used us—starting with me, and you, and Baby Joe, and Hasel, and then Oliver…”

My heart clenched, but I only nodded. “And Oliver.”

“And I don’t know who else, over the years.” She pulled the pillow to her chest. “Have you been following Angelica, Sweeney?”

“You mean, watching her career?” I shook my head. “No. I never heard from her, after—after what happened. Until this summer, as a matter a fact. I saw her on TV about five or six weeks ago, I guess it was right before I met Dylan. But he’s told me about her, so I know about her from him. Why?” I asked guardedly. “Have you been in touch with her?”

Annie let her breath out in a long low whoosh. “I have been doing everything on god’s green earth not to be in touch with her.”

She stood and crossed the room to stare at the sea urchin lamp. When she turned back to me she was pale but very calm.

“I don’t know exactly what she is, Sweeney, but Angelica is dangerous. I mean fatal. She killed Baby Joe, and she killed Hasel; she’s killed people we’ll never know about, hundreds of them—thousands, maybe. Homeless people, runaways, people nobody would ever miss—you ever seen statistics on how many people just disappear, like that?”

She snapped her fingers and I jumped. “You know, I’ve known people who’ve seen snuff movies—movies where people literally get fucked to death, and someone’s there behind the camera watching it all, and someone else is out there to market the stuff, and someone else is there to buy it… You like to think something that horrible could never happen, that it couldn’t be real; but it is, Sweeney. It is.”

Her eyes grew wide and unfocused. “It’s like we spend our whole lives walking on this little rind that covers the world, this little crust that’s got flowers on it, and dirt and houses and families and—and then one day, you break through, you just fall right through, and you see there’s something else there. The real world, the world that was there a million years ago, the world you see when you’re a kid alone in the dark; the world that fills your worst dreams until you can’t even wake up screaming from it, you can’t wake up at all…

“I’ve seen it, Sweeney,” she whispered. I swallowed, thinking back to Balthazar Warnick’s room at the Orphic Lodge, hobbled creatures whirling ecstatically around a single thin flame. “I’ve seen it, and you’ve seen it, Sweeney—that world is real. It’s real, and Angelica’s tapped into it. Whatever she is, whatever she’s made herself into—she’s found a way into that place. She’s found a way to bring it here—”

Her hand slashed through the shadows. “To make it here. And she’s doing it by feeding off all of us. It’s like she set out to be some kind of crazy goddess of love, Ishtar or Mary Magdalene or whatever the hell she thought she was—but somehow she’s really done it. She has turned into a goddess. She’s got her bible, and her cult, she’s got some kind of fucking black angels picking off kids from here to Seattle—”

“Annie!” I was shaking my head furiously. “No—”

“Listen to me, Sweeney!” She was kneeling in front of me, her hands on my knees. “She killed them! I know she killed them, because she tried to kill me—”

And then she told me about what she had seen: about the girls who would turn up at her shows, with their lunar tattoos and ominous chanting; about the sacrificial murder at Herring Cove, and the monstrously beautiful creature she had seen there; about the flowers left with Helen, and the strange woman who had saved her from becoming the next offering to Othiym. She told me that the same day he died, she had met Baby Joe alone at a strip club. But at that part of her story her voice faltered, and I knew she was keeping something from me.

Whatever it was, it could wait. My heart was racing; I felt as though the temperature had plummeted fifty degrees in five minutes.

“But why?” I said at last in a whisper. “If this is all true—”

“You don’t believe me? Don’t tell me that, Sweeney! I don’t know what happened to Oliver at the Orphic Lodge that night, but you saw it—you and Hasel and Baby Joe, you saw it—”

“No,” I said, pulling away from her. “I—I do believe you. Baby Joe sent me Hasel’s letter, and an article about Angelica’s bodyguard…”

I told what I had read about Potnia a few weeks before, and about the odd news item that evening, with Professor Warnick and the Benandanti seemingly under fire. Then, somewhat reticently, I told her what Dylan had said about his mother and the earthquake in Los Angeles, about the deaths of Rinaldo Furiano and Luciano di Rienzi in a freak storm in the Sea of Crete.

“But that’s just—well, it’s got to be coincidence,” I finished. “I mean, something’s got to be coincidence, right? We can’t blame everything on Angelica.”

I stood and went to the front door and looked outside, hugging my arms to my chest. I was surprised, almost unnerved, to see how quickly night had come. “It’s dark already,” I said mechanically. I felt almost calm now, as though I was dreaming.

“Not any cooler, though,” Annie said softly.

“You know, the weather’s been so horrible this summer that if D.C. had been a factory, OSHA would have shut it down.”

Annie nodded. “Yeah. But it’s not the heat. It’s the humidity.” She stepped up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder. “Sweeney. Listen to me—

“I’m glad for you, about Dylan. You deserve to be happy, Sweeney, you really do. I know we didn’t know each other that well, and it was so long ago, but—you mattered to me anyway. You matter to me now.”

“Even if I slept with Angelica that once?”

She grinned wryly. “Probably especially since you slept with Angelica. You mattered, and Baby Joe of course, and poor Hasel. Even Oliver… I guess what really used to bother me about Oliver, and about Angelica and that guy Francis, about all of them with their secret society or whatever the hell it is, was that even if they seemed to be like us—you know, just kids in college getting high or whatever—well, they weren’t. They could just do whatever they wanted and not get caught, not get hurt or anything. People like Lisa, or you—they just threw you away,” she said bitterly. “The rest of them, though, they were always working with a net. No matter what they did up there, if they fell, somebody would catch them.”

“Oliver fell, Annie,” I whispered. “Oliver fell, and nobody caught him.”

An odd look crossed her face and I thought she was going to tell me something, something about Oliver, but the moment passed.

“Well, Dylan sounds like a prize, at any rate. I guess if you get ‘em that young, they’re easier to train, huh?”

I couldn’t keep from grinning. “Guess so.”

“And if you love him—well, that’s great, Sweeney. It’s hard to find someone, to find anyone, and I hope it works out for you. I mean it.”

Then, surprisingly, she took my chin in her hand. She turned my head, until I was looking down into her dark eyes. “But Sweeney—I came here because I was scared—for you, and me. And for Baby Joe, though it’s too late for him—”

I swallowed. “And now?” I asked.

Annie tilted her head toward the soft darkness occluding the garden, the velvety chiaroscuro of leaves and brick and the first faint threads of lightning, like cracks in a lovely old fresco. “Now I’m scared worse than before.”

“Because of Dylan?”

She nodded. Her gaze remained fixed on the sky, but her husky voice trembled. “And you, Sweeney. Especially you…

“Because if something really has happened to Angelica—if all this somehow means something—if she’s turned herself into some kind of a, a goddess, or demon, or whatever the hell she is—well, what does that make Dylan?”

She turned and stared at me, her eyes emptied of anything but fear. “And Sweeney?—

“What does that make you?”

Dylan came home not long after that. He seemed quieter than usual, but I was too drained really to pay attention.

“Hey, Dylan, I’d like to hang with you some tomorrow. Maybe after work, okay?” Annie croaked as she came out of the shower. She walked over to the couch in her soaked T-shirt, leaving puddles on the slate floor. “I’m just too beat now to appreciate how wonderful you are. I think I’m gonna crash. That okay with you, Sweeney?”

“Sure.” I leaned against Dylan, sighing, and he kneaded my shoulders. “I’m exhausted. You ready to turn in, kiddo?”

He smiled. “Sure.”

We said good night to Annie, then crept up the creaking stairs to the tiny bedroom. We fell asleep immediately, despite the ungodly heat. Just before dawn we woke tangled in one another’s arms, the sheets beneath us soft and damp as new green leaves, and made love without a sound, so as not to disturb Annie.

“Happy birthday, Dylan,” I murmured, letting my fingers catch in his damp hair. I kissed him, my tongue lingering on his mouth so I could taste him, all sweat and my own salt honey. “Nineteen: it’s all downhill from here.”

Afterward we showered and dressed quickly. I left a note for Annie, telling her to call me at work so we could arrange to meet later. Just as the sun was rising, Dylan and I left for the museum. We stopped for bagels and iced coffee, then walked down Pennsylvania Avenue together. There were already a surprising number of joggers out on the Capitol grounds, like us trying to beat the heat, but it was hopeless. By seven-thirty the sky was the color of a spoiled egg yolk. An unbroken mass of clouds stretched from above the Hill out past the Tidal Basin, dark lowering clouds that seemed low enough to snag upon the drab blade of the Washington Monument. The air smelled awful, like kerosene and rotting vegetation. Inside the museum it wasn’t much better. The air-conditioning was working fitfully, so it was cooler than outside, but even the upstairs curatorial wing reeked of a million sweaty tourists and greasy fast-food from the cafeteria.

“Listen,” Dylan said, leaning into the door of my office. “I really need to finish up that Kroeber stuff today. So maybe you and your friend should just meet for lunch, and then you and me can leave early.”

“Sounds good.”

“You remember the champagne?”

“I remembered the champagne.”

“So I’ll come by around four, how’s that?”

I stood on tiptoe to kiss his chin. “Sounds great. Later.”

“Ciao, baby.”

A few minutes after he left Annie called.

“I think I might just crash here today,” she said. I could hear her gulping coffee. “If that’s okay with you. It’s so hot, and I’m kinda into keeping a low profile right now, if you know what I mean. I figured I’d sit out in the garden later. At least it looks cool there.”

“Sure. Uh, listen, Annie—today’s Dylan’s birthday, and we had sort of planned an evening together—”

“Oops.” A clink as her coffee mug knocked into the phone. “Say no more. I’ll find something to do. Check out a movie. Maybe The Sorrow and the Pity’s playing at the Biograph.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Heck no.”

“Thanks, Annie,” I said, relieved. “I feel bad, but we had this all planned and—”

“Like, no problemo, Sweeney.”

“Okay. We should be home by four-thirty or so. I’ll give you a key and you can just let yourself in, then maybe tomorrow we can—”

Annie cut me off. “Sweeney?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t you have work to do?”

“Right. Later, Annie.”

The problem was, I didn’t have work to do. Because of the terrible weather and air quality both inside and out, the museum had put its Liberal Leave policy into effect; the place was almost deserted. With the Aditi gone, I couldn’t even kill a few hours with some Pink Pelican, and I knew Dylan had been feeling guilty about not getting the Kroeber project wrapped up before now.

I really wished I could just go back home. But Annie was there, and Annie’s arrival had me on edge. Everything had me on edge. I felt the way I did when Oliver and I used to drop acid: the same queasy mixture of terror and exhilaration, compounded when the drug started to kick in and everything got a little blurry around the edges. Only now it was a combination of not enough sleep, too much alcohol, too much heat, and far too many ghosts popping up. Like the end of a Restoration comedy, when all at once everyone shows up onstage, fools and diviners and soldiers and lovers and cuckolds, until you wonder whether the whole rickety platform will just collapse beneath them.

I wandered out into the corridor. Laurie wasn’t at her desk, and I figured she’d probably just left early for Hatteras. I went by Robert Dvorkin’s office, thinking I might grill him about what I’d seen on the news last night, but of course he wasn’t in.

“Okay,” I said out loud. There wasn’t anyone around to hear me. “Time for Classics.”

Classics was an expanse of brightly lit offices on the side of the museum abutting the dome. Fritz Kincaid was the chief of Hellenic Stuthes, a rosy-cheeked red-haired man of fifty who played squash on his lunch hour and lived in a houseboat tethered on the Potomac. I knew he’d be in because Fritz was always in. He was the kind of museum curator beloved of old movies and local news stations: photogenic, partial to polka-dot bow ties and cheerfully eccentric headgear, and most of all a terrific source of Strange but True (and often disgusting) Facts regarding the Ancients.

“Katherine Cassidy! Queen of the Interactive Video Display!” he crowed when he saw me peeking through the door. “What brings you to visit this old fossil?”

“You’re the only old fossil here today,” I said. “Actually, I saw the news last night, about all those artifacts at the University of the Archangels, and I thought of you.”

Fritz rolled his eyes. “Oh, yes: Potnia. Just what we need in these troubled times, a revival of the ancient matristic societies of the Aegean.” He turned and gave me a quizzical look. “Oh, but I forgot—your young friend Tristan—”

“Dylan.”

“Yes, of course, I’m sorry—Dylan. His mother’s the writer, isn’t she? The one we have to thank for all this nice publicity.”

He grimaced, then added, “Please, Katherine—come in, have a seat. Would you like some coffee?”

“No thanks. But are you busy? I wanted to pick your brain for a few minutes.”

Fritz shook his head solemnly. “I am never too busy for lovely young ladies. Entrez—”

I walked around the perimeter of the long library table that took up most of his office. It held an exquisite scale model of the Acropolis and the Athenian Agora, constructed of paper and cardboard and balsa wood, with matchstick triremes in the distance that glowed against the painted sea. The model had been constructed for an exhibit dismantled years ago, but Fritz never had the heart to get rid of it. It made a nice backdrop when he was visited by local news crews, especially since he’d improved the Acropolis by adding several troll dolls and plastic velociraptors.

“So this group Potnia,” I said. “Is that the name of a goddess?”

“In a manner of speaking. To be more accurate: it’s a name of the goddess.” Fritz cocked his head and raised gingery eyebrows, so that he looked like an intelligent Airedale. “Have you—taken an interest in this sort of thing, Katherine?”

I shrugged and tried to look noncommittal, although in truth my heart was racing. “Not really. Well, maybe a little.”

He gave an understanding nod. “Probably young Dylan knows a great deal about it…”

I laughed. “Yeah—kids these days, with their wacky matristic cults! No, I was just kind of—intrigued. I saw that article in Archaeology, and I understand the museum might be hit with a lawsuit…”

Fritz shuddered. “God forbid—I’m sorry, Goddess forbid,” he said quickly, raising his eyes to heaven. He picked up a piece of paper from his desk, holding it between thumb and forefinger and making a face as though it smelled bad. “Did you see this? No? It’s Potnia’s press release—they’re timing all their little escapades by the old pagan calendar. Actually, this one is dated today, but they dropped it off yesterday.”

“Today? What’s today?”

Fritz made a great show of squinting as he held the release at arm’s length and read aloud, “ ‘August First is Lammas, one of the great harvest festivals sacred to the blah blah blah.’ ” He grimaced, crumpled the page, and tossed it into a wastebasket. “So much for Potnia.”

He turned to me and shook his head apologetically. “Oh! But I forgot, you asked about them—

“Well, Katherine, Potnia is a name found on various Linear A and Linear B tablets in Knossos and Mycenæ—you’re familiar with those?”

“A little.”

“Well, the tablets are some of the earliest records of our so-called Western Civilization, and Potnia is one of the oldest names found therein. It’s been translated as one of the titles of the Great Mediterranean Goddess. Atana Potnia, she was called—Atana like Athena, do you see? Most of the Greek gods actually started out as Cretan gods—by Cretan I mean what we call the Minoan culture, from our old friend King Minos.”

“The guy with the minotaur?”

“The guy with the minotaur. But these are very, very ancient gods, dating back millennia before the more well-known Greek gods. A lot of the place-names in that part of the Mediterranean are actually pre-Hellenic, completely different linguistically from Greek words. But the Greeks were so impressed by this culture that they ended up incorporating many of these names and words into their own language. So a lot of words we think of as being classically Greek, like theos or hieros or laburinthos, actually belong to this earlier society.”

I eased myself up onto the table beside the Agora. “Really? That’s fascinating.”

Fritz nodded, pleased. “It is fascinating. Because, you see, the Greeks did the same thing with their gods. They co-opted these more ancient deities for themselves—gods like Hyacinthus, who was sort of a proto-Apollo, although he was also associated with the death cults that the Greeks later attached to Adonis; and Posidas, who became Poseidon, and—”

He gave an effete wave. “—oh, you know a bunch of lesser deities. But—”

Fritz started pacing, carried away by his monologue. “Your feminist friends out there are onto something. Because in fact this entire Minoan/Mycenæan civilization probably grew up around the worship of goddesses. The gods were a much later addition, most of them we think brought in by Northern invaders. The goddess cults probably originated on the mainland—Turkey, Anatolia, that whole cauldron of Eastern European countries—and then were brought by colonists to Crete and its satellite islands. The Cyclades, Rhodes, Thera…

“These goddesses eventually took the form of our familiar Greek goddesses. But originally they had names that are very strange to us—I mean, they are linguistically very unusual, which makes the whole thing even more mysterious, don’t you think?”

I nodded, not sure how many more mysterious things I could take. Fritz went on without missing a beat.

“Wanasoi,” he pronounced, gazing dreamily at the ceiling. “Those were the twin queens who may have become Demeter and her daughter Kore. Sitopotiniya, the Mistress of the Grain. Erinu, who also was a Demeter prototype, although her name sounds very like that of the Erinyes, “the Angry Ones” or Furies, who gave Orestes such a hard time. Britomartis or Atemito, who was probably Artemis. Pasaya. Querasiyua, the Huntress. Inachus, who was named for a sacred river. Othiym and her lover-son Pade, the sacred child—”

I gasped. “That name—”

Fritz looked at me sideways. “Which one?”

“Othiym—”

He nodded, smiling as though I had posed an intelligent question. “Ah yes: Othiym Lunarsa. The Woman in the Moon. Another garden-variety lunar deity, although some scholars translate her name as the Destroyer. You know, like the Hindu goddess Kali.”

I swallowed. My mouth felt parched as I croaked, “And these goddesses—they all came from Crete?”

Fritz shrugged. “Who knows? Originally, no; but many of them were worshiped there. Crete was the center of the ancient Minoan civilization, which was an incredibly sophisticated and advanced civilization, even by our standards. Flush toilets, hot running water, and according to the frescoes and pottery they left, they had an absolutely fantastic sense of style. And they may have had optical lenses, for telescopes and spectacles, and wet-cell batteries—and this is four, five thousand years ago! Compared to the Minoans, the ancient Greeks were really just a bunch of pederastic misogynist thugs.”

“But then what happened to them?”

Fritz looked wistful, almost sad. “That entire part of the Mediterranean was blown off the map by a gigantic volcanic eruption on Thera around 1628 B.C. Fffft—” He snapped his fingers. “Like that. Utterly destroyed, all in one day.”

“But Crete wasn’t destroyed,” I broke in.

“It might as well have been. The island of Thera had been central to the Minoans, and Thera was completely obliterated—like Pompeii. So the Minoans lost one of their most important ports and cities. And their religion took a hit as well. The so-called labyrinth at Knossos, and all these other temples on Crete, had already sustained some pretty serious damage from earthquakes. They all had been rebuilt, but when Thera blew, that was pretty much the death knell for Minoa.”

Fritz sighed. “All that beauty! Crete could have rivaled ancient Egypt—and we’ll probably never know the extent of what we lost when we lost that culture.”

“What were they like? Were they goddess-worshipers?”

“Ha!” exclaimed Fritz. “You have been listening to your young friend’s mother! Yes, Virginia, they were goddess-worshipers, at least as far as we can tell. The Minoans left no literary accounts of their culture, but they did leave wonderful images: paintings, statues, temples, the entire marvelous temple-labyrinth at Knossos; and almost all of their religious images seem to be of goddesses or priestesses.

“The frescoes show that women were not only worshiped in Crete but probably also ruled there, and certainly played a major part in the political structure of the city-states. They seemed to have some sort of bull-worship, which was pretty common in the ancient world. It’s very likely that the bull-worship as well as the goddess icons originally derived from central Europe, where we’ve found numerous similar icons and images.”

“What about their religion—I mean, what did they do?”

He frowned. “What did they do?”

“You know, did they worship a golden calf, the Ark of the Covenant, stuff like that?”

“Who knows? The frescoes indicate they were real naturalists—there are beautiful, beautiful paintings of sea animals, of flowers and plants and trees. Sir Arthur Evans, who led much of the restoration at Knossos, liked to think they were flower children. You know, very airy-fairy, artsy-fartsy, wearing pretty clothes and jewelry, skirts for boys and girls and lots of makeup. A quote-unquote ‘feminine’ culture: fancy hairdos, ritual transvestism, lots of attractive young people doing aerobics in the stadia.”

“Sounds like Dupont Circle.”

Fritz smiled. “Well, Evans has been proved to be wrong, at least in part. It turns out that the Minoans, at least some of them, were actually more bloodthirsty than we first imagined. There is a famous fresco that shows women sharing communion in some kind of religious ritual—only women, which is interesting in itself—and some of the tablets we’ve deciphered in Linear B list as much as 14,000 liters of wine used in a single year at one major temple site.”

“Mass alcohol consumption.”

“To put it mildly. There’s also evidence that opium was very widely used. Some people have said that the labyrinth—palace, really—at Knossos looks like it was designed by an architect under the influence.”

Fritz laughed, somewhat grimly. “But some of them may have really needed a few drinks—

“Not long ago, archaeologists managed to decipher some of the script on one of the Linear A tablets that postdates the Thera eruption. It was a record of the hieros gamos, the so-called ‘sacred marriage’ that was supposed to appease the Great Goddess. Apparently these particular survivors believed that she had caused the volcanic eruption as punishment to them, for turning from her to these new young sky-gods from the north.

“But even before we learned that, we may have found evidence of the same ritual being performed. Back in 1979 another group of archaeologists discovered a small shrine overlooking Knossos—Anemospilia, on Mount Juktas. In addition to an arena where sacrifices were performed, and a sort of sacred rock—like those goddess-meteorites found in parts of old Europe—an altar was found, with the ossified remains of a seventeen-year-old boy on top of it. His legs were drawn up to his chest and might have been tied there, though of course we don’t know that. What we do know is that he was murdered—sacrificed, there was a very ornate curved dagger in the shape of a crescent moon found next to the skeleton. A lunula, they call it. Bone analysis indicates that the blood had been completely drained from the upper portion of his body…”

I gasped, but Fritz wasn’t finished.

“That’s not all. It seems that this particular sacrifice was being carried out at the exact moment of the terrible earthquake that leveled Knossos in 1700 B.C. So when archaeologists searched the area further, they found the bodies of three other people who had been taking part in the sacrifice—skeletons of temple servants. One of them was holding a shattered rhyton with a bull painted on it. There was also a man, possibly a priest or priest-king—he was wearing a sacred ring—lying on his back in front of the altar. Probably the guy who used the knife. And finally the body of a woman, a priestess, who appears to have been anemic—so there may have been some kind of ritual bloodletting going on with her as well. The earthquake must have struck minutes after this boy was killed—the rhyton had traces of blood on it, and it had probably been full when the whole temple collapsed and buried them all. Nice, huh? Kind of makes you long for the good old days.”

I stumbled down from the table and started for the door, my legs shaking so that I could hardly walk.

“What’s the matter?” cried Fritz. “Katherine! Are you all right? Here, sit down, you look like you’re going to pass out—”

“I can’t,” I whispered. At the door I turned and stammered, “Thanks, Fritz. I—I’m sorry, I don’t feel well, I have to leave—”

“The Minoans really were a highly sophisticated people!” he called a little desperately, as I fled toward my office. “Caligula’s Romans were much, much worse—”

But I turned the corner before I could hear any more.

The halls were empty, so there was no one to stare after me as I ran down the corridor, first to Dylan’s office cubicle, which was empty, and then to the tiny room off the main library where he had been archiving the Kroeber collection.

He wasn’t there. I stood for a moment, staring down at the digitizer and the neat stacks of photos, each appended with a number in Dylan’s careful, European hand. I drew several shuddering breaths and tried to calm myself—he was probably in my office looking for me, he could have gone downstairs to get a soda, or to the bathroom—

His battered motorcycle jacket was tossed over a chair. It had been there for weeks, after Dylan had worn it against the rain one morning and then forgotten about it. I picked it up, holding it close to my face as I inhaled, the cracked leather rough against my fingers and his smell still clinging to it. After a moment I let it slide from my hand to the floor.

I forced myself to walk back to my office, fixing in my mind’s eye just where he would be standing—there, by the window, his back to me as it was the first time I saw him—and how I would slip up behind him, slide my arms around his waist and pull him to me and whisper that we weren’t going to wait till four o’clock, it was too hot, too scary, it was his birthday, we were going to leave now…

My office was empty, the video screens black and dead as when I had left them a few hours ago. My whole body shook as I approached the desk and saw the note there. A page torn from some anthropological journal, one corner damp from where it had been weighted with a coffee mug, and the ink smeared so that Dylan’s careful hand looked rushed, almost frantic.

“No!”

I pounded my fist against the desk, ripping the page so that no one else would ever read its final lines.

CHAPTER 21 Waking the Moon

THE CAR ANGELICA HAD hired was a Lincoln Town Car, pure white inside and out, with plush velvet seats and chromium fixtures. She could tell that Dylan thought it was tacky; it was tacky, but it was the only car she could find that had air-conditioning.

“Mmm, it’s so nice to see you, sweetheart,” she said, hugging him in front of the guard’s desk in the museum.

“You too, Mom,” said Dylan. She let her head rest upon his shoulder for a moment, then drew back to stare up at him.

“So what’s this, you can’t call your mother more than once a summer?” she teased. “I could have been worried, you know.”

“But you weren’t.” Dylan let her slip her arm around him and together they walked outside. “I’m sorry, Mom—really, I am. I just—I’ve been kind of caught up in things.”

Angelica nodded. She had dressed for the weather, in a sleeveless shift of ivory-colored crumpled silk, belted at the waist with a gold cord, and simple but very expensive Italian gladiator sandals. Her hair was pulled into a chignon, and she wore heavy gold earrings and bracelets of ivory and sandalwood. Around her neck she wore the lunula. The silver crescent should have been jarring with all that gold, but in fact it was hardly noticeable, like the moon seen during daylight.

“You look good, Dylan,” Angelica said as they walked to the car. “I told you you’d like D.C.”

“It’s been great.” He stopped at the curb and stared up at the sky. “Except for the weather,” he added, frowning.

Overhead the liverish sky had grown even darker. Heavy brownish thunderclouds crept above the National Gallery and Regent’s Castle and the Treasury Building. Everything had a strange greenish cast, as though he was seeing the world through a whorled glass. A hurricane sky, he thought.

But the first of August was too early to worry about hurricanes. Besides, he was with his mother.

“Hop in!” Angelica said cheerfully pulling open the back door of the car. Cool air like water flowed into the street. “Your chariot has arrived.”

Dylan looked at the town car and made a face. “Gee, Mom, is someone paying you to ride around in that?”

Angelica laughed. “Not yet. Come on, go easy on me—it’s the only thing Elspeth could find that had air-conditioning.”

Dylan slung his long legs into the car and slid inside. “Is Elspeth here?”

“No. I just implored her to take care of a few things for me—I’ve been so busy, and I didn’t want to have to worry about anything on your birthday.”

“Right.” Dylan nodded, stared back out the window at the museum, its dome faded to grey in the glaucous light. He bit his lip, then said, “I know you came all this way to see me, but I have to be back here by four. I—I made plans for tonight. With a friend.”

Angelica slipped onto the velvet-covered seat beside him, motioning to the driver. Without a sound the car eased onto Constitution Avenue and headed toward the Tidal Basin. “Plans? What kind of plans? Anyone I know?”

Dylan opened his mouth to reply, thought better of it. He shook his head. “Just some friends.”

Angelica turned and stared at him. She plucked a stray tendril of hair from her forehead and pushed it aside. “I see,” she said softly. Her voice was even, her emerald eyes unreadable. “Well, that still leaves us time for lunch, doesn’t it?”

“Sure.”

She leaned forward. “Don’t you have something for me?” she asked playfully.

Dylan frowned. “Oh… yeah. Here—”

He handed her the fragment of the lunula he’d found in the museum. She took it and Dylan held his breath, waiting for her to say something else, but his mother seemed distracted. She looked out the window as the Mall slipped by, her mouth pursed, brow furrowed. He’d spoken to her a few times over the summer, usually calling her from the museum, but he hadn’t told her about Sweeney. He hadn’t told her about anything; he hadn’t actually wanted to speak to her at all. But she was his mother, and this was his birthday. She’d come all the way here from Huitaca, though past experience had made it clear to Dylan that his mother usually visited him when there was some other business she could take care of at the same time—dress fittings in Milan, academic cronies in Princeton. This time it was probably some old friends in Congress and the diplomatic corps.

But here she was, cool and beautiful as always, sinking back and sighing luxuriously. “Isn’t this air-conditoning wonderful? The flight here was a nightmare! Maybe we should just drive around for a few minutes and enjoy all this nice cold expensive air.”

She smiled at Dylan, but her son noticed that she hadn’t given any command to the driver: he was already headed for the Lincoln Memorial. Whatever she had planned, and wherever they were going, had all been decided long before Dylan came onto the scene.

“Sure. Just remember—four o’clock.”

“Of course: Four o’clock!” Angelica repeated brightly. “Always time for tea!”

I raced downstairs to the guard’s desk.

“Did someone come here looking for Dylan Furiano?” I asked breathlessly.

Captain Wyatt, the security chief, smiled. “You mean some sweet young thing pretending to be his mother?”

I gritted my teeth. “That would be her.”

“Well, she came by, Katherine, but she didn’t sign in. He came on down here and went on out with her—” He gestured over his shoulder at the Constitution Avenue exit, then looked at me with raised eyebrows. “What, they leave without you?”

“No—yes, I don’t know,” I cried, and turned away. “If you see Dylan, tell him I’m looking for him. Tell him I want to know as soon as he gets back.”

Captain Wyatt nodded. As I left I could hear him saying, “I knew that wasn’t his momma.”

Once back in my office I called the carriage house. The line was busy. It stayed busy for nearly forty minutes, during which I thought alternately of jumping out the window or running home. But at last I got through, only to hear the answering machine kick in.

“Goddammit, somebody pick up!” I shouted when the recorded tape ended.

“Hey.” Annie’s voice came on, sounding a little sheepish. “I’m sorry, were you trying to call? I was talking to Helen—”

“Is Dylan there?”

“Dylan? No. Why?”

“You’re sure?”

“I think I’m sure. Dylan?” I heard her calling his name as she carried the cordless phone outside. “Dylan? Nope. Sorry, Sweeney. Why? You guys have a fight or something?”

“A fight? No, we didn’t have a fight—” I choked. Then I couldn’t help it: I broke down. “He’s—he’s gone, Annie! She came and he’s gone—”

“What do you mean, gone?”

I told her about the note, and in between sobs gasped out what I could remember of Fritz Kincaid’s impromptu history lesson. When I finished I sat with the phone pressed up so hard against my ear, I felt as though I’d been punched.

“Oh, man. Sweeney, this is bad.” I could only nod, my entire body trembling. “But let’s think, let’s think—”

I heard her crashing through the dried stalks of lilies by the front door. Then. “Okay. You’re still at the museum, and he said he’d be back there by four, right?”

“Th-that’s what his note said.”

“So maybe he’ll be back by four.”

I drew a shuddering breath. “You really think so?”

“No. But I think we better wait at least until then. You can’t file a missing persons report on someone who’s gone to lunch with his mother.”

“Okay.” Hearing Annie’s voice calmed me somewhat. “Okay—so, four o’clock. You’ll call me if he comes in? If he calls or—”

“Of course, Sweeney,” Annie said gently. “Of course.”

I could hear her moving back across the little patio, clonking into deck chairs. “It’s going to be all right, Sweeney. He’ll be okay, don’t worry. He’ll be fine—”

Just like your cousin and Oliver and Hasel and Baby Joe, I thought, and clenched my hands. “Okay. Four o’clock—” I whispered.

And waited.

Inside her hired car, Angelica Furiano looked down upon the sleeping figure of her son, sprawled across the pristine seat with one hand against his cheek and the other drooping to touch the floor. His chest rose and fell easily, his mouth was slightly parted where his fist was pressed against it. The same way he had slept as a child, his knuckles digging into the soft hollow of his cheek, his lovely face calm and dreaming as the moon’s.

Angelica sat—crouched, almost—in the corner of the seat farthest from her son. In front, the radio played softly as the driver hummed to himself. They were driving up Pennsylvania Avenue for the third time that afternoon, the car moving smoothly in and out of light traffic. But this time, when they reached Seventh Street, Angelica leaned forward and murmured, “Thank you, Bryant. I’d like you to take us to the University of Archangels now. It’s quickest if you go by Edgewood—”

The driver nodded, and without a word steered the car onto the narrow cross street. Angelica turned her gaze back to Dylan. The seat beside him was littered with small crushed pods—the dried seed heads of papaver somniferum, opium poppies. On some you could still see where, days before, she had used the lunula to make the neat incisions that allowed the flower’s blood to seep through and dry to a pale crust. Afterward she had carefully scraped off the opium paste, and with her hands formed it into a tiny cake. Kneading it carefully between her fingers, she added dittany of Crete and crushed roasted barley; then, in lieu of the sacred mentha pulegium, an aromatic mint that brings delirium, she added salvia divinorum, the diviner’s sage that she herself had smuggled from the Sierra Mazateca to grow at Huitaca. At the last she flavored it with honey and dried orange peel, cardamom and coriander seed. Then she had wrapped the little square with gold tissue paper and a tiny white raffia ribbon, as a present.

“Here, sweetheart.”

Dylan had gazed suspiciously at the gold-wrapped lozenge sitting in her palm.

“This isn’t more jewelry, is it?” His mother was prone to giving him extravagant and unwearable gifts, ruby and emerald earring studs, a Rolex watch eminently unsuited for a college freshman.

“No, silly. Open it,” she urged, leaning back in the seat. He peeled the tissue off with some difficulty, the paper catching on the sticky cake inside.

“Gee, Mom.” Dylan stared at the gritty little cube. It looked like a caramel that had been dropped in the dirt. “You shouldn’t have.”

Angelica gave her rich throaty laugh. “Silly! It’s a special herbal thingie I had the apothecary make up for you at the Body Shop. It’s supposed to bring—well, you know, strength and long life and all that good stuff. For your birthday.” She kissed him, tousling his hair. “And you better eat it, Dylan—it cost a fortune.”

Dylan rolled his eyes. “I bet.” He grimaced, then popped the cube into his mouth. “Bleagh—”

“Oh, come on, it can’t be that bad. It has honey and stuff in it.”

“It tastes like dirt,” Dylan said thickly, chewing. “Ugh. Dirt and perfume.” After a minute he swallowed, then reached for Angelica and gave her a kiss. “Well, thanks. I hope it works. But listen, Mom—next time, just give me a new car, okay?”

That had been over an hour ago. It hadn’t taken long for the opium to have its effect. Just a few minutes, its power enhanced by the roasted barley and salvia divinorum.

“I think I’m getting carsick.” Dylan had turned from the window to stare blearily at her, his face pale. He looked distinctly queasy; his eyes were glassy, his voice thick, childlike. “Mom…?”

“Shhh. Lie back, darling. Put your head down and rest, you’re just sleepy…”

Her voice soothed him; he lay across the seat and within minutes was snoring. Since then his breathing had grown softer as he plunged more deeply under the poppies’ spell, though his face remained pale as new milk. Beside him Angelica sat and with one hand stroked his hair. Her other hand absently traced the silver curve upon her breast as she whispered,

Dylan moaned. Angelica’s hand lingered on his brow; then she leaned down to kiss him, very gently, on the lips.

She lifted her head to gaze outside. Overhead, the storm clouds hung so low that she could see threads of lightning racing across their undersides, like flames seeking purchase on damp wood. She could feel a faint throbbing at her temples; but Angelica felt no pain. She herself had eaten a cake similar to Dylan’s, with mentha pulegium added to it. But for several weeks now she had been readying herself for this: each night swallowing a tiny spoonful of the aromatic paste, until now, while she could feel it flowing through her, the opium did not cloud her thoughts so much as color them, an antique palette of blues and soft golds and reds, like a crumbling skyphos…

The car made a quick turn. Angelica steadied herself, her fingers clutching at a brass handrail.

“Not many people here this time of year,” the driver called back to her as the car shot onto North Capitol Street. Behind them the Capitol grew smaller and smaller, until it disappeared into the haze.

“We’re almost there.” Angelica rested one hand protectively upon Dylan’s breast. “Dylan—”

And then in front of them, rising from the city’s smoke and filth, the domes and minarets of the Shrine of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine came into view. Slowly, like varicolored dyes bleeding into a piece of linen, cobalt blue and saffron yellow, ruddy ocher and that pale silvery gold that she had only ever seen here, where the gilded stars marked out their own strange constellations on the lapis dome: slowly as in a dream, as though called from the thick haze by the sound of Angelica’s voice, it all came back to her. Drooping oaks and elms, dun-colored grass that even the Divine’s corps of gardeners had not been able to save from the terrible heat; the cornices and towers of all the gaunt Gothic buildings faded to bluish grey and bluish green in the suffering late afternoon light.

And above them all the Shrine, with its stained glass windows like sheets of hot copper, its triad of defiant angels with hands raised above the great oaken doors. Upon every turret and spire and building, angels; angels everywhere.

“Hah!” Angelica said triumphantly, her son forgotten. Her face grew taut as she stared out at the monstrous building, the few small figures walking slowly down the steps to the waiting tour buses. “At last.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am?” the driver called.

Angelica started, looked at him and smiled. “Nothing, Bryant. I think if you pull up over there—”

She cocked her head to where a door stood open at the side of the Shrine.

“—right there, and if you don’t mind waiting here a few minutes.”

The driver brought the car up to where she had directed. “Man, I never knew a place for the kind of trouble we’ve had this summer. Guns and weather and everything else,” he sighed, running his hand across his forehead. “And the thing is, it just keeps getting worse and worse, and nobody ever does anything about it.”

Angelica nodded. “Quis iniquæ tam patiens urbis, ut teneat se?”

Bryant shook his head. “What’s that?”

Angelica smiled. “Just something someone said a long time ago—

“Who can have the patience, in this wicked city, to restrain his indignation?”

“You can say that again,” the driver agreed, and he reached to turn up the air-conditioning.

I thought I would go mad. Afraid to leave my office, because I might miss Dylan if he returned. Afraid to stay, because every minute that passed meant he was going farther and farther away, he was almost gone now, I was losing him, he was gone…

“Oh, god,” I cried, and laid my head on my desk. I stared at my watch, the numbers blurring: 3:45, 3:54, 3:57…

Four o’clock.

No Dylan.

Four-fourteen; four-thirty; four thirty-five. I called Annie.

“He’s not here,” she said. She sounded as though she had been crying. “Sweeney. I think you better come home.”

I have never felt anything like the air that afternoon: so moist and suffocating it was like being covered with hot wet plaster. The sky was the baleful color of lichen or tamarack. But dark as it was, the light stung my eyes, as though there was some subtle toxin in the haze, something that sapped the spirit and gave everything the livid bruised glow of a corpse. My nostrils burned; the air smelled of harsh smoke and something more organic, algae or decaying wood. I thought of the legendary swamp the city was said to have been built on—the buried River Tiber, somewhere below us the bones of people whose cemeteries had been covered over by cement and limestone and marble.

There were hardly any cars on the street. I paced nervously back and forth, looking for a cab, and had already started walking when one finally appeared.

“I’m going to Ninth Street, up by Eastern Market,” I said, and flung myself into the seat.

“You live in Northeast?” the driver asked. She was a small grey-haired woman with a ring in her nose. “You know there’s no power there, right?”

I shook my head. “No, I hadn’t heard—”

She nodded. “No power. They had to shut down the Library of Congress and the Post Office. Some people got stuck in an elevator there, a guy had a heart attack. I guess the heat. Yeah, power’s out all across Northeast. Metro’s down, everything’s off in Brookland, parts of Southeast, over in Maryland…”

The cab had no a/c, but I rolled up my window anyway. I couldn’t stand to breathe that soupy air. I couldn’t stand to think about what the driver was telling me; I couldn’t stand anything.

“Yeah,” the driver went on, wiping her face with a bandanna. “Me, I’m going home now, you’re my last fare. They’re talking about riots, you know? Power goes down, everybody takes to the street, you’re looking at some trouble, sister. This whole place up in flames before you know it. You got a boyfriend?”

I tried to say something, but all that came out was a groan.

‘“Cause you know, us ladies probably shouldn’t be out alone if something like that comes down. All this heat, makes people crazy. That’s why I’m going home now. You’re my last fare…”

There were no people on the sidewalks. No one sitting on the stoops, no one hanging out on street corners. From far away I heard a siren, but I didn’t see any police cars. I didn’t see anyone. My chest felt heavy, crushed between my fear for Dylan and this new horror: was it really as simple as this? A few weeks of terrible weather, a gathering storm; then pull the plug on the air-conditioning and subway, and the city goes up in flames?

“Yeah, I was listening to WMAL, they got an emergency generator or something I guess. They said everybody should just stay indoors. Like if you got no air-conditioning and it’s a hundred degrees out, you want to stay indoors…”

The woman gave a last harsh laugh and fell silent.

When we reached Dr. Dvorkin’s house I shoved a handful of dollar bills into the driver’s hand and stumbled from the cab. I shoved open the ramshackle door that led through the breezeway, my heart beating so hard it was as if it didn’t belong to me anymore, it was like something trying to get in. Then I was running across the patio, and then I was at the carriage house.

Annie met me at the door. Her face was beet red and wet, from crying or from the heat I couldn’t tell. “Sweeney. I tried to call but you’d already left your office…”

“Dylan?” I shouted, pushing her aside. “Dylan—”

Sitting on the couch, atop Annie’s crumpled sheets and pillows, were two men. They wore faded khakis and their shirtsleeves were rolled, their heads bowed so at first I didn’t recognize them.

Then the taller of the two looked up and saw me.

“Katherine,” he said, starting to his feet. The man beside him looked up hesitantly; then he stood as well.

“This guy said he was your landlord,” Annie said, cocking her thumb at Robert Dvorkin.

“He is,” I said numbly, but I hardly glanced at him. My eyes were fixed on Balthazar Warnick.

“Sweeney,” he said. “The time has come that we must ask for your help.”

“Help?” I shook my head, dumfounded. “You want my help? Where’s Dylan? What are you doing here?” My voice rose as my confusion boiled into anger. “What the hell is going on?”

“Please, Katherine.” Dr. Dvorkin’s tone was calm but edgy. “You must understand. We need you—”

I stared at him: so thin and worn-looking in his faded clothes, his eyes bright and desperate.

“No. Robert—you’re not…”

But of course he was. This wasn’t the Robert I had known and worked with all those years, not the neighbor and friend I had sat with in the hidden garden, drinking wine and talking of nothing at all. This was someone else entirely. This was one of the Benandanti.

“You’re—you’re one of them.”

He nodded. “Yes. But surely you knew?”

“I—I guess I did,” I said slowly. “I guess maybe I just didn’t want to.” I turned from him to Balthazar Warnick. “Why are you here? Where’s Dylan?”

My hands bunched into fists; I started to move closer to them but Annie stopped me. “If you’ve hurt him—”

“We have not hurt him,” said Balthazar Warnick quietly. “Angelica has taken her son.”

“Why?” blurted Annie.

Balthazar’s eyes remained fixed on me. “Sweeney. She will kill him—”

“No!”

“Yes. She is not the Angelica you knew, Sweeney. She hasn’t been, for—for a long time.”

For the first time since I arrived he took notice of Annie. “Tell her, Annie,” he urged. “You saw—you know what happened to the others—”

Annie stared at him in disbelief. “You knew? All along, you knew what she was doing—and you didn’t stop her? You let her kill Baby Joe, and Hasel—you almost let her kill me!” She looked as though she were about to grab Balthazar by the throat. “Why didn’t you stop her—”

Balthazar stood his ground. “We couldn’t—”

I broke in furiously. “You couldn’t? Why couldn’t you? Why? Where’s your Benandanti magic now? Why don’t you just stick Angelica through another door, Balthazar? Why don’t you just go after her with a fucking gun?”

I lurched forward and grabbed Balthazar by the collar, no longer caring what happened to me. “What, all of a sudden you need my help? All of a sudden you need my permission to kill someone? You didn’t bother asking when you killed Oliver—”

“We didn’t kill Oliver!” Balthazar cried. “He—”

“You drove him to it! You had him locked up in that place, you knew he wasn’t strong enough, you knew it! I thought you were supposed to help him, I thought you all had some special plan for him—”

“We had no plan, Katherine,” Robert Dvorkin said softly. “All we ever knew of Oliver and Angelica was that they were Chosen. For some reason, they were Chosen. It’s only now that we realize that Dylan must have been the reason—”

I shook my head. “Dylan?”

“He must be—else why would Angelica and Oliver have conceived him? He is the last great sacrifice Angelica must make, in order for her epiphany to be complete. Then she will truly be Othiym—”

“Then it will be as before,” whispered Balthazar. “Have you forgotten, Sweeney?”

I flinched as Annie grabbed my arm. “What’s he talking about, Sweeney?”

“Have you forgotten?” Balthazar took a step back and flung his hands upward. “Then remember now!”

Before us the room was rent apart. Where Balthazar and Robert had stood, there was utter darkness. From the wasteland came a freezing wind, its roar so deafening that I could not hear Annie’s screams, only see her face contorted into mute horror. My sweat-soaked clothes grew stiff with rime as I grabbed her and pulled her to me, then crouched so as not to be borne into the abyss.

A terrible voice rang out. Balthazar’s voice.

“Behold Her now!”

The darkness was sucked away, whirling into some vast fiery vortex whose center was an immense eye. An eye that was open yet at the same time without sensibility, like that of a stone idol. As the darkness coiled into that huge orb I could see that it was but part of a face, a face so horribly and inconceivably vast that I fell to my knees in awe and terror.

“Behold Othiym!”

It was Her—the same monstrous figure I had seen that night with Angelica so long ago. The sleeping goddess, the Woman in the Moon: Othiym Lunarsa. She wore upon her breast the lunula, but it was no longer a slender crescent of silver but the moon, the real moon. She was more beautiful and terrible than I could ever have imagined, her mouth parted like a dreaming child’s—but it was Angelica’s mouth, just as those dreaming eyes were Angelica’s eyes, as the hair that was the very fabric of the night country was Angelica’s hair…

With a shout of horror I drew my arm up over my face. Because that deathly wind, the wind that sucked all sound and color and life into the void—that wind was her breath. All life was being drawn into her, into the shining crescent that lay upon her white skin. It was so brilliant that I could not bear to look upon it, so bright that it would surely set aflame all who gazed upon it, all who dared to walk beneath it—

“Sweeney!”

Like a gong Balthazar’s voice echoed across the wasteland. I lifted my head. As suddenly as it had appeared the night country was gone. I was kneeling on the slate floor of the carriage house, shuddering with cold. Beside me Annie moaned, then with a cry started to her feet.

“Sweeney—he’s going to kill us!” She grabbed me, her eyes wild. “Come on—”

Before us stood Balthazar and Robert Dvorkin. Their hands hung limply at their sides and their eyes were wasted-looking. As I looked at them, Balthazar raised one hand and held it out to me.

“It is my fault,” he said, his voice so low I could scarcely hear him. “I thought Angelica was too young when the lunula came to her. I thought she could never be anything more than what Magda was—smart, ambitious, cunning. I thought—I thought she was just a girl. Just a woman…

“Even after that night at the Orphic Lodge—I never dreamed how powerful she might become. I never dreamed she would turn so completely from her father, from all of us—”

He looked at Annie. “From all of you,” he said. “From her friends. And from her own son.”

He fell silent. I thought I could hear my heart beating inside me, and in the stillness Annie’s heart as well, and Balthazar’s, and Robert’s. I looked away from Balthazar and stared at the floor, trying to find some pattern there in the slate tile. Trying to find an answer; something to believe in.

“Sweeney.” I raised my head and Balthazar was there, his hand still held out to me. “You are our last hope.”

“You are Dylan’s only hope,” murmured Robert.

Annie yanked my wrist. “No, Sweeney, this is insane—”

With an effort I shook her from me. “No,” I whispered. “Wait—”

The room was utterly still, save for the exhausted buzzing of a fly against the window. I could feel their eyes upon me—Balthazar’s brilliant yet restrained gaze; Annie’s fury and confusion; Dr. Dvorkin’s pleading. I took a deep breath. Then I took Balthazar’s hand.

“I will help you,” I said in a low voice. “Not because I think you’re any better than Angelica. I don’t. You murdered Magda Kurtz and Oliver Crawford and god knows how many others. You stood by and did nothing while Angelica slaughtered my friends. You let her take Dylan, and—”

My voice began to shake. “—and you tossed me aside, like I was nothing! Like I had no place in your beautiful perfect world, your perfect Divine! Because I wasn’t one of your golden children, one of your goddamn scholars. One of your fucking chosen ones.”

I tried to yank away from Balthazar, but he tightened his grip with one hand.

“No,” he said. “You’re wrong. All these years, here—”

He indicated the walls and ceiling of the carriage house, the garden outside. “All this time, Sweeney: you have been under our protection.”

A chill ran through me. “No—”

“Yes.” Beside him Robert Dvorkin nodded. “We have been taking care of you, Sweeney—”

“No—”

“Watching out for you. Protecting you…”

The blood was thrumming in my ears but I could only shake my head, saying no, no, no as he went on.

“All those years ago at the Divine, Sweeney—we were wrong. Or, at least, we were only partly right. We knew that Angelica and Oliver were part of the equation; later, we knew that Othiym was as well.

“But we did not understand that there might be someone who would love Angelica and Oliver both. Someone who would not just come between them, but who might, somehow, serve to bring them together again.”

I groaned. “No…”

“And Dylan—We did not know that he was going to be born, that he would grow, perhaps, to become the real, the true Chosen One—

“We did not foresee that, Sweeney. And we did not foresee you.”

Silence. My legs buckled, but Balthazar pulled me to him, his hands surprisingly strong.

“Do you understand now?” he asked, his voice desperate. “Do you see, Sweeney? The pattern was there all along! It wasn’t just Angelica and Oliver—it was you and Angelica and Oliver—you were there, all along—”

“But what can I do?” I cried. I could feel Annie next to me, her cold hands tight on one arm, Balthazar’s on the other.

“You can save Dylan,” Robert said. “If we haven’t waited too long.”

“But how—where is he?”

I pulled away from Balthazar, and pushed Annie aside. “Do you know? Is he hurt? Because if you hurt him—if anyone hurts him—I’ll kill you with my bare hands. I swear to god by all that’s holy, I will—”

Balthazar opened his mouth to speak. But before he could say anything, Annie erupted into laughter.

“What?” I shouted, whirling to face her. “What’s so funny?”

“N-nothing,” she gasped.

“Because I’m not kidding, I’ll kill anyone—”

“That’s what I mean,” Annie said, and wiped her eyes. “I think that’s the point, Sweeney—”

She turned and stared at the two Benandanti. Then, to my surprise, she made a little bow. Her husky voice rang out as she announced, “Well, guys—whoever you really are, and whatever the hell you’re doing—

“I think you finally got the right girl for the job.”

I said nothing; what could I say? But at last Robert Dvorkin sighed and murmured, “We can’t wait. Are you ready, Balthazar?”

Balthazar turned to me. I couldn’t bear to look at him, so I stared at my feet and nodded. “I’m ready. But where is he? How are we going to find him?”

Balthazar took my hand. “This way, Sweeney,” he said, and pointed at the front door of the carriage house. Abruptly Annie was there between us, shaking her head furiously.

“Hey! If you think you’re taking her off somewhere—”

“No, Annie,” I said. Adrenaline and dread and exhaustion had pumped me up so that I hardly even felt afraid anymore. “This is—well, I don’t know what it is, but you better not come.”

“Don’t you dare—”

“Annie!”

“Let her go.” Robert’s calm voice cut through the anger. “One way or another, it won’t matter.”

Annie turned to him. “Oh, right, like I don’t—”

I grabbed her. “Shut up, Annie. Balthazar, tell me what to do.”

I looked into his eyes: those half-feral eyes, with their mockery and menace always waiting, waiting, like a patient wolf. I saw no mockery there now, or menace; but neither did I see any warmth. Only a cool, measuring regard, as though he were looking at a heated glass and wondering if it was strong enough not to shatter.

After a moment he nodded. “That way.” Once again he pointed to the door.

I shook my head. “That’s the front door of my house.”

“That’s right, Sweeney.” A very small smile appeared on his face. “Go,” he urged, and gave me a gentle push.

“But—”

“Go.”

All the bravura I’d felt moments before was gone. I felt sick and numb with fear; but then I thought of Dylan. Somewhere, Angelica had Dylan; but where? I could only trust Balthazar now.

“Okay,” I said. I walked toward the door, forgetting Annie stumbling behind me, forgetting Balthazar and Robert and even Angelica.

Dylan, Dylan, I thought, and reached until my hand pressed against the screen. Oh, Dylan.

The door bulged open, the bottom catching on the floor sill and groaning as I pushed. Dylan. Dylan. Then, with a sound like water bursting from a broken dam, the door gave way. Before me was a dazzling vista, gold and crimson and argent, nothing but radiance, and so brilliant I could not bear to gaze upon it. I closed my eyes and stepped forward. My hands flailed helplessly as I plunged. Before I could draw another breath I tumbled head over heels and struck the ground. I lay there for a moment, groaning.

I had walked through the Benandanti’s portal and left the carriage house behind, and it hadn’t killed me. Yet. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes.

I was at the Divine.

“Sweeney—”

I stumbled to my feet as Annie staggered up beside me. “Sweeney—how did—are we—”

“Yes,” I said, staring at the sky. “I think we are.”

We were on the porch in front of Garvey House. Wherever I looked, everything seemed to be in motion. Immense oaks lashed back and forth like saplings, their leaves torn from them and sent spinning upward. All the air was charged with the sound of wind, a terrifying roar like a thousand engines racing. A power line whipped through the air, finally wrapped itself around a toppled pole. On the narrow path leading to the building, whirlwinds of dust and grit churned furiously. A chair went skidding across the porch to crash into the balustrade. I grabbed Annie to steady myself, then pulled her after me down the steps.

“Oh Annie,” I breathed when we reached the bottom. “It’s the end of the world.”

Above us was a raging maelstrom like that I had glimpsed in my vision of Othiym. Only this was real. This was the sky. Like an endless sea of molten lead it flowed and boiled, iron-colored, streaked with waves of bruised green and violet. Lightning shot through the clouds, and as we watched a tree burst into blue flame, then, with a howl like a wounded leviathan, crashed to the ground.

“We have to go!” Annie shouted, pointing at the flaming wreckage. “Get off the hill!”

With a deafening boom the air exploded into white flame. I screamed and ducked, felt Annie pulling me down the path. Leaves and branches whipped my cheeks as I stumbled after her, until with a cry I looked up.

All the Divine was ablaze with lightning. Against this jagged splendor the Gothic buildings rose stark black, their towers and parapets rippling with phosphorescence, their angel guardians aglow. There were no people anywhere in sight, no lights on in any of the windows. I stared, speechless, half-deafened by thunder, like one of those stone figures brought to ground.

“What are we supposed to do?” yelled Annie.

I shook my head and shouted, “I don’t know.”

But I did. Because in all that raging tempest, only the Shrine was untouched. It loomed above the chaos of light and shadow, more the implacable sphinx than ever it had been: ponderous and silent, a behemoth waiting to give birth. Fox-fire flowed from its parapets, pooled like cyanic mist about its twisting stairs and the empty black eyes of its stained glass windows. The gilded stars burned a fiery gold against the lapis dome, and reflected within its curve was the most perfect white crescent of a moon, rising from volcanic clouds on the eastern horizon.

“In there.” I pointed to the Shrine. “He’s in there.” Annie nodded mutely as I started to run. “Come on—”

Beneath our feet the grass kindled. Smoke billowed behind us and I choked on the scent of burning leaves. To either side rose the Piranesian citadels where for two hundred years the Benandanti had kept their treasures and lore intact, with their winged granite sentinels outside. I could feel their eyes upon me now, those same blank eyes that had greeted me on that first afternoon so long ago; could see them crouched on balusters and columns with wings arched as for flight, their hands drawn up before them prayerfully. I ran, wiping my eyes against the smoke and heat, while before me the Shrine seemed to swell ever more monstrous, and the impassive angels watched.

Suddenly Annie shrieked. I turned and saw her pointing wildly.

“Sweeney!—”

The sky was filled with angels: black and crimson angels with coppery wings. From towers and rooftops and steeples they flew, launching themselves with arms outflung, hair aflame and their wings spreading behind them in glorious arcs, and all the air thundered with their cries. Voices like bells and voices like the sea, children’s voices and the groans of old men, exulting and lamenting and howling their triumph as they swooped from their pediments and made blazing Catherine wheels across the sky. I stared dumbfounded, too overcome by awe to feel afraid, until one careened through the air above me, so close that its fingers raked my scalp and I fell back screaming with pain.

“Fire—”

I covered my head, my palms scorched and the reek of singed hair filling my nostrils.

“Sweeney! Are you okay?” Annie shook me. “Sweeney!”

I bit my lip and nodded. “Can you still run, Annie?”

A grin broke through her ash-streaked face. “Hell,” she shouted, “if I can’t run now—” She raised her arms protectively as another shadow raced across us.

We ran, zigzagging among the trees, pursued by that yelping horde. Angels or demons, furies or divine escort, I never knew. Whether they were sent by the Benandanti to protect us, or by Angelica to hunt us, they followed Annie and me to the very foot of the Shrine. Only then did their whooping cries diminish. In twos and threes they flew to the uppermost rim of the Shrine and landed, wings spread, until the dome was ringed with them.

Beneath that watchful army Annie and I hesitated. Overhead storm clouds boiled. The sickle moon was a hooded eye within the tumult. Before us the great steps led up to the Shrine, the rosy sandstone given a lurid sheen by the storm. Dust eddied like smoke where the wind garnered it. I glanced to make sure Annie was beside me, and began to climb.

Nothing stopped our ascent; nothing was there to bar our way inside. The wind’s roar seemed muted there, though its power was evident: a fallen column, a large concrete urn toppled and crushed like an acorn. Bitter smoke hung everywhere, and there was the funereal musk of another odor, myrrh and sandalwood incense.

“Look,” whispered Annie.

Where the statues of the three archangels had once stood, there was now a single huge marble image, filigreed with smoke and flame. A young woman with huge staring eyes, her torso draped in heavy robes that parted to expose her chest. Only where her breasts should have been, there were mounded rows upon rows of teats, dozens of breasts like a dog’s or sow’s, like rows of monstrous eyes staring down upon us.

I tried to summon some thin veil of hope to cloak me when I walked through those doors. Nothing came. Only the thought of Dylan bore me on—but it was a distant and curiously detached thought, like the remnant of a dream quickly fading. My scalp ached dully, my mouth felt dry and chalky.

“Let’s go.” I pushed against the door, and we entered the Shrine.

The wind died. The ornate windows admitted no light from outside, and a pervasive grey haze clouded the air. Marble vessels that had once held holy water were now filled with glowing chunks of charcoal, from which rose thin columns of scented smoke. Blossoms carpeted the marble floor: crushed narcissus and purple hyacinth, tiny white rosebuds, anemones and cyclamen, wilted poppies and jonquils. There were figs, too, their black hearts bursting with pink juice; and small hard apples, and pomegranates big as gourds, their rinds cut away to reveal the moist seeds within like so many wine-stained teeth. And ears of corn no bigger than my hand, and barley sheaves and maize; clusters of grapes that oozed red and black where we trod upon them, and the swollen knobs of opium poppies whose blooms were spent. Everywhere we looked there were flowers and fruit wreathed in that dreamy haze.

I turned and saw Annie staring transfixed at a pile of grain.

“Look,” she breathed. She reached to touch a single white kernel like a glistening pearl. “It’s so—so perfect.”

The mounded grain shimmered like fairy fruit. With an effort I turned away.

“Come on, Annie. We can’t stay here.”

I pulled her after me. She came reluctantly, glancing back as we walked from the bay into the nave of the Shrine.

“Oh,” I gasped, and stopped.

All around us there were stones. Megaliths, I thought at first, or boulders; but then I saw that they were not stones at all. They were immense carven idols—the most ancient and holy of icons made huge and manifest, in anticipation of the epiphany that was to come. A bulbous-shaped woman who might have been molded of honey, so bedewed with moisture was she—eyeless, mouthless, her hands placed protectively over a swollen belly that flowed into huge jutting buttocks and plinthlike thighs. Behind her stretched rows of tall white figures like alabaster blades, their breasts mere jots upon their torsos, a knife-slit of vulva between their marble legs. There were simple basalt columns and stalactites, pregnant women carved of green serpentine and shining onyx; ivory figures twenty thousand years old, their smooth faces scrolled with indentations and meanders, their hair etched into elaborate braids and knots. Women with the curved beaks of ibises and women with the heads of bees; snake-women, bear-women, women bearing tusks and tails. Their necks were hung with ropes of blossoms, their mouths smeared with honey and wine. Bees crawled across their cheeks and nested in their parted thighs. On the floor the matted petals shivered as serpents made their way through the blossoms. The air steamed, as though the vegetation was already decaying. Sweat streamed down my body and soaked my shirt and bare legs. Mingled with the heady incense of sandalwood and myrrh was another smell, pungent and sweet and malty. Beer, and the unmistakable odor of crushed coriander seed, the fragrance of sandalwood and oranges.

As we approached the altar the stone figures gave way to forms of gold and silver and bronze. Queens in chariots borne by griffins, tiny girls cast in gold, with eyes of lapis lazuli and feathered crowns; a statuette of a monarch with her head thrown back, flanked by crouching lions. A goddess upon a mountaintop looking out to sea. Drowsy mothers nursing their young. A marble madonna holding the broken body of her son; the painted plaster image of a woman crowned with the moon and seven stars, a serpent coiled protectively about her ankle. Faint music sounded from the transepts. Flutes and tabors, a jangling sistrum.

And suddenly I was in that hot classroom again—the smells of chalk and wood polish, a faunlike man dancing across the floor with sistrum raised as a boy recited—

I started to fall, but Annie caught me.

“I’m okay,” I said hoarsely. “Just dizzy…”

Chanting voices joined with the sound of bones and flutes. Women’s voices—

And now with them chimed the sweet piercing tones of boys or castrati—

High overhead the vaulted dome arched, like a hand cupped above us. I knew its mosaic of semiprecious stones as well as I knew the lines of my palm: the sad somber face of Christ, haloed with chips of gold and jade, hands raised to display the stigmata.

That image was gone. Instead there was the sleeping visage of Othiym—her heavy-lidded eyes, her upturned mouth like the moon’s spar. Within the streaming radiance of her hair a silver crescent was netted. The smell of sandalwood grew overpowering, the sweet odor of oranges so strong my mouth watered.

But I could not tear my eyes from the dreaming goddess. As I stared I realized this was no mosaic, no archaic fresco painted upon a crumbling facade. This was Othiym, and that was the Moon she held. Behind her I could glimpse the smoking towers and edifices of the city, the long shimmering stretch of turbid water that was the Potomac. As I stared the moon began to grow, swelling like a milky bubble that would burst and shower us all with bitter rain.

And then what would there be? When the moon goes black and cold, when Her fire is quenched and her hunger appeased: what becomes of us then?

An icy hand grabbed mine. In a daze I turned and saw Annie. She looked as dreamy as I felt, but I saw that she was pinching the inside of her arm, so hard that it bled.

“L-look,” she said through gritted teeth. Her eyes teared with pain as she cocked her head. “I think we’ve found her.”

In front of us was the altar. Its crimson carpeting was lost beneath the crushed pods and calyxes of fragrant plants. A life-size statue of a woman was there. She wore a pleated flounced skirt of many colors. Her broad hips narrowed to a small waist, cinched with a bodice that opened upon her breasts. Full and round and creamy as some lush fruit, her aureolae and nipples flushed red. Her hair was the color of amber, and fell in loose curls across her shoulders. Upon her brow was a silver crescent, and upon her breast. Her hands were raised. Clutched within them were two serpents that writhed and coiled. This was not a statue. It was a woman, a priestess. It was Angelica.

“Haïyo!”

Her voice rang through the Shrine. Immediately those other voices answered—

“Othiym haïyo! Othiym Lunarsa!”

With a wordless cry Angelica brought her hands together. The snakes braided themselves around each other, their tails lashing at her wrists. And suddenly she no longer held them but instead an axe, a great double-bladed scythe of hammered bronze; but then that too was gone. Her hands were empty. With great reverence she let her fingers slide across the twin spars of the lunula upon her breast. Then she stepped forward and clapped, once.

Her voice rose as she raised her hands to the vast face floating above us.

A clattering noise. From the eastern transept stepped an ungainly form, its hooves cleaving flowers to strike at the marble below. A bull. About its neck loops of ivy were twined, and withered blossoms. It walked haltingly, as though it were exhausted, or drugged, its dark head hanging between its legs. In a low voice Angelica called out to it, in words I could not understand. The bull gave a soft moan, then walked toward her. Those same hidden voices sang out once more, their words counterpointed with the dry rattle of a tambour.

With a soft laugh Angelica raised her hand, then struck the bull upon the muzzle. It shook its head distractedly, as though she were no more than a fly. She struck it again, harder, and yet again, with such force that I could hear the blows, as though she had struck a drum. The bull snorted, then bellowed loudly.

“Come now!” cried Angelica. She struck at the bull again and darted away, beckoning at the shadows. “Children!—”

The chanting voices grew louder. From the darkness of the western transept figures came, a slow procession of men and women—boys and girls, really, scarcely more than children. A sandy-haired boy and one blond as the sun; a girl with shaven head and a frayed pigtail running down her back. Seven and seven; and I remembered then the old story of Theseus sent to slay the minotaur, the monster given tribute every one hundred moons, of Athens’s fairest children. Seven boys and seven girls, sacrificed to the bull…

But there was an older tale beneath that one: of a time when there were no gods, only men and children and bulls, and She who gave birth to all of them. She who must be worshiped and fed, She who must be appeased. The oldest tale of all, perhaps, and here it was now, before me.

Their voices intertwined, unpolished voices but sweetly poignant.

Gather your immortal sons, ready them for your wild dance

Harrow Circe’s children beneath the binding Moon

Bare to them your dreadful face, inviolable Goddess, your clashing teeth

They walked to the bull, unafraid, and I saw that in their hands they held vines still wrapped about with leaves, and slender ropes.

They chanted, lashing the bull with ivy and hemp, their voices rising and falling in a cadence that kept time with my blood until I could feel their words inside me, and the whicking sound of the vines was one with the beating of my heart. I felt enthralled, no more capable of flight or thought than a stone…

As one they turned from the bull, eyes raised to the sleeping moon overhead. I saw how deathly pale they were, their faces and bodies drained of blood and life. I knew then they were the chosen ones, those who had been given to Othiym—

“No!”

I flinched, turned to see Annie screaming.

“Joe! Baby Joe—”

She pointed to the last two in the line of the dead. Their skin faded to the color of oiled parchment, their hair bound with white fillet.

“Baby Joe!” Annie howled. “Hasel!—here—

I looked desperately among the others, trying to find Dylan among them, looking for his face, his beautiful eyes drained of all fire; but he was not there.

“Hasel!” Annie wailed. “Oh, no…”

They did not hear her. Instead they turned with the rest, and as slowly as they had entered they left the Shrine, arms hanging limply at their sides and ivy whips behind them.

“Oh god, get me out of here,” sobbed Annie. “Please, oh please, let’s go—”

I hugged her to me. I was alert now—seeing those walking corpses had made me feel the blood still pulsing in my own veins, made me taste rage like salt in my mouth.

“Angelica!” I shouted. I stepped away from Annie so that I stood in the center of the nave. “Angelica! Your son Dylan—where is he!”

She did not so much as glance at me. My voice echoed in the empty air; I might have been one of those basalt columns.

“Angelica!” I cried again. But this time there was desperation in my voice, and real fear.

On the altar Angelica stood beside the bull. She ran her hands across its back, soothing it. She tugged at the circlet of dried blossoms around its neck, breathed into its nostrils and stroked the hollow beneath its chin. Her bronzy hair spilled across its muzzle as she bent and kissed the smooth spot between its liquid eyes. With a gently lowing sound the bull knelt before her, its head moving back and forth, then rolled onto its side.

A soft echoing boom as it hit the floor and lay there, its sides heaving. For a moment Angelica stood above it. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders, her bare breasts gleamed with sweat. Above her the reflected face of Othiym stirred, mouth parting to show teeth like walls, the tip of a tongue red as blood.

Then, smoothing the layers of her flounced skirts, Angelica knelt beside the bull. She looked more beautiful than I had ever seen her, as serene as one of those faience images. Her eyes were brilliant, a flush spread from her breasts to her throat and cheeks. With sure hands she stroked the bull’s side, all the while whispering to it; then very slowly she let one hand slide to where its groin was hidden in a thick mat of black hair.

I held my breath. One of its hind legs twitched; I glimpsed the dark flash of its hoof, large enough to crush a man’s skull as though it were a bale of hay. Still Angelica kept murmuring. A shudder passed through the bull’s entire body.

Angelica let her other hand slip beneath its leg and gave a quick satisfied smile. I sucked in my breath: she held its erect phallus between her hands, a thick dark column so big it was like watching a child put her fingers around a tree.

“Ugh—I’m going to be sick—”

Annie buried her head in her hands. I looked back at the altar, repulsed but also fascinated. It wasn’t the idea of Angelica coupling with that huge creature—by now, I could imagine Angelica with anything. But she looked so frail and otherwordly, a woman spun of light and flowers; her glowing eyes green as elderflower, her lovely mouth mirroring the endless dreamy smile of the sleeping Othiym. If the bull were to move suddenly, it would crush her; its hooves would trample her carelessly as if she really were one of those scattered blossoms…

It would not harm her. I stared in disbelief as Angelica stood, her hands still firmly wrapped around the animal’s member. All about us the air grew warm and sweet, a cloying sweetness, like narcissus or a blood-soaked rag. The soft chanting and skirling that had been a constant undercurrent ceased. High, high above us the pale face of Othiym wavered, as if seen through smoke; then suddenly Her eyelids fluttered. I had a glimpse of a blackness so profound as to make the Shrine’s cavernous space seem daylit. Her mouth opened in a yawn, wider, wider, wider; and my head reeled, seeing the void that lay within Her, that ever-hungering maw poised to engulf us all.

A susurrant sound, like a silk train being dragged across the floor. I looked down and saw an enormous sidewinder lazily throwing its coils across the floor. With a smile Angelica turned and gazed down upon it; then slowly she let her fingers slide from the bull’s phallus. She drew her skirts up around her waist, those long slender legs honey-golden, her hips thrusting forward as though she would lower herself upon the bull.

I watched appalled. She would impale herself, she would be crushed and trampled into blood and pulp…

But then I saw that she had slid the lunula from her neck. Her skirts spilled behind her in folds of ocher and saffron and blue, the muscles in her thighs tensed as she held herself completely still. She gripped the necklace in both hands, its razored curve aimed at the bull’s throat. A rumble shook the floor beneath me. I saw Othiym in the sky above us, Her eyes open now—Angelica’s eyes, green as summer but uncomprehending and heavy with sleep, so huge that she would shed entire cities in a tear. Her expression mirrored Angelica’s, rapt with desire but also avid, famished.

For an instant all was frozen in a grotesque tableau. The mute animal with its throat exposed for sacrifice; the priestess poised above it with her shining blade; and hovering above us all the moon, waiting, waiting…

Then with a cry Angelica fell upon the bull. Blood misted the air and spattered her face; there was a smell of dung and offal. With a howl it reared its head, then fell back upon the floor, its legs kicking uselessly. Angelica only smiled. She lifted her face and sang.

The bull stirred convulsively. From the transepts came the echo of triumphant voices. Beside me Annie crouched and refused to look up. But I could do nothing but look, though my whole body ached from the horror of it, as Angelica’s hands tightened upon the lunula. With a single quick motion she moved to slash its throat.

Through the sanctuary a shout rang out. A woman’s voice, commanding, so loud that the stones trembled. As though a wind had risen from the night country, the hungering face above us shivered. With a cry Angelica stumbled backward.

“Who would profane this place?”

The other voice cried, “Ne Othiym anahta, Ne Othiym—praetorne!”

Annie looked up at me, her eyes wild.

“That’s Oliver!”

I drew my hands to my breast. “Oliver’s dead—”

“Angelica!” the voice commanded. Angelica froze. “Listen to me: You will not slay him!”

It was Oliver’s voice. I whirled, trying to find him in the darkness, but there was only a woman there, tall and raven-haired. She wore a loose purple robe and her feet were bare. About her butterflies flew lazily, lighting upon her shoulders as though to feed.

“Go from here!” Angelica hissed.

The other woman shook her head. “Not yet. You have something of mine, Angelica.” She stepped from the shadows and stretched out her hand.

For an instant I thought she was going to tear the lunula from Angelica. Instead she gestured at the bull. It snorted and gave a weird high-pitched wail; then it was as though it melted into the broken lattice of flowers upon the floor. I shouted in dismay and wonder.

Where the bull had been, Dylan sprawled on his back, naked, his arms flung protectively in front of him. From a gash on his collarbone blood welled and spilled down his chest. His hands clenched as his head moved blindly back and forth. There were streaks of black and red along his flanks and chest, and his hair fell in thick oiled curls about his shoulders.

“Dylan!”

He shook his head numbly.

“Dylan!” I shouted, and ran toward him. “Dylan—”

“Get back.”

I screamed: it was as though I had been set aflame. My face and limbs burned, my bones blazed with the most acute pain I have ever felt. I stumbled to my knees and looked up helplessly.

“He is my son!” Angelica shrieked. She looked like a madwoman—her hair flung across her bloodstained face, bodice torn and skirts tangled behind her. “Mine!”

As though her voice were a match set to paper, rage leapt from Angelica to the Titan’s head above us. The huge eyes narrowed, the mouth gaped open. Upon Othiym’s brow the moon began to burn with a fierce black flame.

“And mine,” the dark-haired woman said evenly. As though she were skirting a muddy curb she stepped across the mounded fruit and flowers, to where Dylan lay. “Mine,” she repeated.

It was Oliver—the same lustrous hair, the same fine cheekbones and strong chin, the same strong long-fingered hands. But it—she, he—was a woman, too, with rounded flesh and mouth, breasts and skin smooth and white as an eggshell.

A woman. My head roared. I could hear Baby Joe’s voice, very faint as though recorded on faulty equipment, saying Your goddess-worshipers… the priests would go into some kind of ecstatic frenzy and castrate themselves, then live like women, like priestesses…

“Oliver?” I whispered.

But Oliver did not hear me. Oliver wasn’t there. The dark woman was, and she was gazing upon her son for the first time, with the most intense yearning I had ever seen; with such raw love and pride and sorrow as to make my eyes grow hot with tears.

“Dylan,” the woman said. She stooped and touched the place where the lunula had cut him. “Dylan, son of the wave. Here, get up.”

My heart burst inside me. Because the gesture she made was Oliver’s, pushing the long black hair from her face and smiling that crooked canine grin as Dylan stumbled to his feet. They stood and stared at each other, the dark woman with a sort of greed, Dylan with stoned incomprehension.

“What’s—what’s going on?” he asked, slurring his words. He looked around at the heaps of dead flowers and fruit with their heavy smells, the rows of silent icons. He held his hands out imploringly. “Where am I?”

“Dylan!” I lunged for him; but before I could grab his hand Angelica was there.

“No! He is mine—you are nothing to him, nothing!” Her voice rose to a shriek. “I will destroy you all—”

She raised the lunula above her. Her eyes closed as she let her head fall back, her mouth contorted as she opened herself to the waiting goddess and cried,

From the emptiness above us came a roar, the sound of the last wave as it overtakes the shore. The sound grew louder and louder still, until I was deafened; until all about us I could hear the great stone idols shattering, an avalanche of ivory and granite and marble and bronze; and the sound of their destruction was that of a thousand prisons exploding into dust. Overhead the face of Othiym burgeoned until there was nothing in all the world but Her. She was the world, She was the Moon, Her eyes huge, no longer green but iridescent, all the colors of the spectrum streaming from them, lips curved into a vast and secret smile, Her hair a river of light coursing across the sky, the stars like silver dust upon Her cheeks. Her arms were upraised, only they were no longer arms but immense columns holding back the night. Her legs reared to either side of us, vaster than anything imaginable. When She moved the ground shook. On Her brow was a silver crescent, the hungry curve of the new moon like a mouth opening to feed. Beneath Her all the Earth was in shadow. But it was a moving darkness, a darkness that thrashed and flailed, a shadow that threw up first one leg like a continent and then another.

The darkness was a bull. It was the Bull, the great and eternal sacrifice, as she was the Woman, staggering to its feet and shaking its great black head, its horns the shadow of that blazing lunar crescent. The Woman in the Moon stared down at it, her mouth breaking into a smile.

And I knew Her. Her mouth the freezing maw of the abyss, her teeth like clashing knives, her tongue the flame that burned in the night country. Othiym the Devourer, Othiym the Mouth of the World—

Othiym Lunarsa! a million voices shouted. There was a smell of burning, of hyacinth and anemone and roses, of sandalwood and oranges. There was a smell of the sea. The chanting voices grew to a shout. The crescent in Othiym’s hands burned brighter still, when with a sudden choking roar the bull staggered backward, tossing its head so that its horns were silhouetted against the blazing light—

And suddenly the vision of goddess and bull was gone. Suddenly all I saw was Dylan, and before him his mother, her eyes like scorched holes, her face a ravaged mask, and the lunula gripped in her hands like a scythe. On the floor behind her the dark woman lay, stirring weakly. Beside her Annie crouched,

“Oliver! Are you hurt—oh!”

“Now!” cried Angelica.

Before I knew it I was upon her. A searing pain as I wrenched the lunula from her raised hands; then a scream, whether my own or Angelica’s I never knew. Then there was only light, light and sound, a vast echoing tumult. In my hands I clutched a flaming crescent.

“No, Sweeney!—please, you don’t understand, you can’t possibly—”

For one last instant I heard Angelica’s voice, faint as the sound of rain dying into the wind. With both hands I raised the lunula before me. I had a flickering vision of eyes and mouths, of white throats raised in supplication and weeping women. With all my strength I broke the lunula upon my knee.

High above me Othiym threw Her head back and howled; then with a groan She stooped. Her monstrous hand closed around something on the ground—Angelica’s doll-like figure. Othiym bore her upward. Her mouth opened, a yawning entrance to the abyss, and the moon upon Her brow glimmered fitfully as the tiny struggling figure was swallowed by that engulfing darkness. With a last howl of rage and hunger She was gone—and with Her, Angelica.

Every sense was riven from me. From very far away I heard a faint high ping!, a sound like the tiny crack that foretells the destruction of a prized vase. One moment I was numb; the next I was blinking as I looked around.

“Sweeney? Sweeney, it’s me—”

I moaned. A few feet away Annie was still crouched over the dark woman. Beside me knelt Dylan. He was covered with blood, but the blood was cracked and drying, the slash along his collarbone already scabbing over.

“Dylan?” I grabbed him and began to sob. “Oh, Dylan—”

“It’s okay, Sweeney,” he murmured. “It’s okay, it’s okay…” He helped me to my feet.

“Is it—what happened?”

“Hush. Not now, Sweeney.” He put his arm around me and we started toward the back of the Shrine. “Maybe not ever…”

The endless lines of goddesses were gone. Instead the same wooden pews stood there, rank upon rank, the same holy water fonts and Sunday Missalettes. There were dead leaves everywhere too, and mud—

Mud!

“Is it raining?” I asked thickly.

Dylan nodded, unexpectedly grinned. “Wait’ll you see—”

We walked slowly till we came onto the Shrine’s broad steps. Rain sluiced from the sky, rain so cold that within a minute I was shivering.

“It’s broken!” somebody yelled. I turned, and saw Annie stomping in a puddle. “The heat wave’s broken—”

A thunderclap boomed and I jumped, then laughed.

Across the campus of the Divine, lights were flickering on, one by one. Lights in turrets and paneled studies, streetlights and crimelights and lights in cars—

In one car, at least: Yellow Cab Number 393, idling at the base of the Shrine.

“Is that for us?” I croaked.

“Not this time.” A diminutive figure slipped from behind Dylan, holding out some wadded clothing. “Here—put these on for now.” He drew Dylan away from me.

“Professor Warnick.” I raised my hand to my brow. “Angelica—where is she? What happened?”

“Hush,” he said, and he sounded exactly like Dylan. “Later. Sweeney, I want you and the others to come with Robert and me.”

“But Oliver!” I cried. “Where’s Oliver?”

That was when I saw someone standing by the cab. A tall black man with barrel chest, an umbrella in his hand. He was holding the door open for a woman in a purple robe, a woman with long black hair that fell, wet and glistening, to her shoulders.

“Oliver!” I shouted. “Oliver—”

Handsome Brown raised the umbrella so the woman could step into the back of the cab.

“Oliver!”

The dark woman stopped, shaded her eyes, and looked up the steps to the Shrine.

“Sweeney,” she said; although how could I hear her from that distance? She smiled, that beautiful crooked smile, and her voice rang out across the distance, across years and decades and maybe even centuries—

“I told you I’d be back.”

Then there was the muted thump of a car door slamming shut. With a low rumble the cab pulled out of the parking circle and onto North Capitol Street. In a moment it was gone.

“Here, Professor Warnick. I can take over now.”

Balthazar Warnick smiled slightly as Dylan pushed him aside. “You okay, Sweeney?” Dylan asked tenderly, drawing me close to him. “You okay?”

I stared at him openmouthed. He was wearing a clean, though damp, white oxford cloth shirt and chinos, and a pair of black leather wing tip shoes with no socks. One shirt cuff still bore the faded image, in blurred ballpoint ink, of a clock’s face, the hands set to four. Always time for tea.

“Where—where did you get those clothes?” I stammered.

“From Professor Warnick.” Dylan gestured to where the cab had been parked. “He said that woman told him to give them to me.”

“That—that woman.” I wiped my eyes and nodded. My throat was tight as I whispered, “They—they fit pretty good.”

Dylan gave me a sad smile. “I know. It’s weird, isn’t it? Warnick said she was an old friend of—of my mother’s.” He plucked at his shirt. “He said she’d been holding on to these for a while, to give them to me. And she said to give you something, too—”

Behind him, Balthazar Warnick and Robert Dvorkin and Annie Harmon stood watching us.

“What’s that?” I whispered.

“This,” Dylan said. He bent to kiss my cheek, his warm breath smelling of honey and coriander. “And this—”

He handed me a flower: a small flower with violet-blue petals and brilliant yellow stamen, its scent faint as the fragrance of rain and sweeter than anything I had ever know.

Huakinthos. The flower of Adonis. A wood hyacinth.

There were lights burning in the carriage house when we returned. Balthazar and Robert Dvorkin stood on the sidewalk, waiting for us to go inside.

“I won’t expect to see you in the office for several days,” Robert said.

Annie rolled her eyes. “Gee, what a prince.”

“Good-bye, Sweeney,” said Balthazar. Again he had the barest hint of a smile. Unexpectedly he raised his hand and waggled his finger at me, just as he had that first night at Garvey House. “We’ll be in touch.”

Annie stared as the two Benandanti walked back to the main house. “Goody. Next time, why don’t you just send a neutron bomb?” she muttered. Then we went inside.

Annie spent the night, and Dylan of course—I held him so tightly that more than once he woke, and I bit my lip to keep from crying out as he clutched me to his chest. When I finally slept I dreamed of the sun on blue waves, the warm fresh wind rushing down from a stony mountaintop and the smell of hyacinths perfuming the air.

Annie left the next morning, after having a very protracted telephone conversation with her lover. “Sorry, Sweeney. Helen is frantic and just about ready to come after me with a flaming sword, so I better go. But I’ll be in touch,” she added, grinning. “Just like everybody else. Now that I know how to find you.”

She looked at me soberly for a minute, then said, “I have an idea, something I want to talk to you about after—after all this dies down. I’m thinking of taking some of the money I’ve made off that stupid song and endowing a scholarship at the Divine. In Baby Joe’s and Hasel’s names. Something for normal people, you know? For ordinary losers like you and me—”

I laughed and hugged her, trying my best to keep from crying. “I think that’s a great idea, Annie. Call me—”

“Oh, I will.” She hesitated at the door, shifted her knapsack from shoulder to shoulder. Finally she said, “Well. Bye, Dylan.”

Dylan smiled. “Bye, Annie.”

“Ciao, Sweeney.” And she was gone.

That left only Dylan and me.

“Will—will you be going back to school?” I asked softly, late that night. Dylan lay beside me in the heated darkness, his breathing so slow and measured I thought he had fallen asleep.

“No,” he said at last. He rolled over to look at me. “How can I go back there, after all this? I’m going to stay here. In D.C. And marry you, if it’s still okay.”

“Of course it’s okay,” I whispered, kissing him. “It’s the most okay thing in the world. But what will you do?”

“I have a trust fund that my father set up for me. If my—if Angelica ever shows up, well, I guess I’ll have to deal with her then.”

He was silent. Then he said, “I talked to Dr. Dvorkin this morning.”

“You did?” I was surprised and a little ashamed; I still hadn’t called or gone over to see him.

“He said that he could arrange for me to go to the Divine, if I wanted to. I could start in September, get my transcripts sent out from UCLA. He says I won’t have any trouble getting in—I’m a double legacy, whatever that is. I guess because of my mother and grandfather di Rienzi.”

I said nothing, thinking of Oliver and the hyacinth, now wilted upon the harvest table downstairs.

“So I thought, if it was all right with you, maybe I might do that. We’d still have a few weeks before the fall term starts.”

“And you won’t mind living with someone who’s older than most of your teachers?” I teased.

He shook his head. “No. Dr. Dvorkin said it’s nobody’s business, anyway—”

“Which it’s not.”

“—and he seems to think I’ll do really well there. He says I’m sort of the ideal student for them, whatever that is. He says they’ve waited a long time for someone like me to come along.”

“Oh, they have, Dylan,” I murmured, drawing him close to me. “And so have I.”