Bless the Child (15 page)

“Because I love her?”

“Because you are her Guardian—and whether you accept that in a metaphysical sense, or a grandmotherly one, they know you’ll fight for her, even at great cost to yourself.”

Maggie
hurried to Ellie’s shop and pounded on the door, despite the CLOSED sign that hung in the window. The lights were on and she heard footsteps coming toward her; she breathed a sigh of relief.

Ellie was wearing a long robe of some sort and very little makeup, but she looked serene and beautiful. Maggie wondered if she might have been meditating.

“I’ve got to talk to you,” she said breathlessly, holding out the astrological charts Father Peter had given her.

“Where’d you get these?” Ellie asked, stepping aside to let her in.

“Father Peter Messenguer brought them to me. Can you read them?”

Ellie smiled enigmatically as she reached for the charts. “Is the Pope Catholic?”

“He told me the craziest story, Ellie. I’m still reeling! It had to do with some ancient Egyptian legend.” But Ellie wasn’t listening, she was staring at the astrological charts open-mouthed.

“Sweet Jesus, Maggie!” she gasped. “She’s the Messenger!”

Gooseflesh rose on Ellie’s arms, and her blood ran faster.
A Lifetime. A thousand lifetimes, waiting for this one moment. The dream of every priestess since time began . . . to be called by the Goddess! But to do what? To battle? To sacrifice? To witness? Her heart beat hard against her breastbone and she forced herself to be calm. You never knew in what strange guise the call would come. Just as you never knew if you were ready. To be challenged by the Immortals was the greatest honor conceivable. And the deadliest.

“Oh Mags,” she breathed, motioning her in from the doorway. “We’ve got to think this through very clearly . . . you could be in terrible danger?”

Maggie stared at Ellie dumbstruck. If she knew about this, too . . . “I can’t believe you know about this Isis business, too!” she said agitatedly. “Is there a newsletter out there that I don’t subscribe to, and everybody else does? How did I live to forty-two years of age, thinking the world was a rational place, if it isn’t?”

Ellie sat down and motioned Maggie to do the same. “Look, Mags,” she said compassionately, “you may have fallen into something very big, and very important. All my life, I’ve known the legend of the Isis Messenger. I’ve probably heard sixteen different versions of it from sixteen different traditions, but the bottom line is always the same. Whoever has the Messenger, possesses the Amulets, and whoever gets hold of the Amulets rules the world.”

Maggie’s hand was at her mouth, her teeth sunk in the flesh of the index finger, as if she were holding back words or a scream. “And you believe this?” she whispered.

“Like I believe in the Grail, or the Philosopher’s Stone, Maggie. All the legends that have persisted for millennia have some basis of truth behind them, even if it’s been cloaked in metaphor. What the truth is . . . who can say? But if Cody is the Messenger, and you’re the Guardian, you are both endangered species . . . because true or not, there are many, many people who will want to control that power.”

“What should I do, Ellie?” Maggie asked simply. “And what do I need to know?”

Ellie sat back and stared at her new friend, as if trying to intuit how to answer her question. Finally, she spoke.

“I want you to suspend what you think of as the rational mind, for a little while, and just listen to me with you
intuition
. . . you
inner knowing
. Nothing I am about to tell you would be sanctioned by our priest friend’s Church, or by most of humanity—on this continent, anyway. But to those who practice ritual magic, or any variation on that theme, what I’m about to tell you would be accepted wisdom. So, I’m begging you to hear me out.”

Both the seriousness and the kindliness in Ellie’s manner touched Maggie. “Forgive me my unbelief, Ellie,” she said contritely. “It’s just that things seemed awful enough to me when I thought we were just dealing with child abuse . . . but this?”

Ellie’s demeanor was serious when she responded. “It would be apparent from your chart, Maggie, to anyone who believes in the wisdom of the stars, that you have practiced a high degree of ritual magic in many previous lifetimes.” She held out the astrological diagram and pointed to several glyphs at the top of the circle. You have Neptune at the midheaven, trining Saturn, which means you have not only been a practitioner of High Magic, and seeker far along the path to Enlightenment, but it means you have the potential
in this lifetime
to be an Adept.”

“Forgive me, Ellie, but I’m about as close to being an Adept as I am to being Pope Margaret the First.”

Ellie smiled as you would at a brilliant, but recalcitrant child. “Let’s explore that,” she said patiently. “You’re psychic, aren’t you? Maybe you call it by another name . . . intuition? Premonition? Maybe you know things before other people do? Or you’ve had visionary experiences? Think, Maggie! Help me along here, just for the sake of argument. I’m not fucking around about this. You are treading very close to the Great Mysteries here and they are not to be taken lightly.”

“I do seem to
know
things that other people don’t, Ellie . . .” Maggie said hesitantly, “to pick them up from somewhere inside me . . . as if I’m tapped into a source other people don’t have, I suppose. I thought it came from being Irish. You know, like the visions we Celts sometimes have when we pray . . . or the fact that I fell in love with the antiquities business because I understand old objects in some visceral, nonintellectual way. My store manager, Amanda, teases me about it . . . she says I never have to look up the provenance of a piece, I just have to hold it in my hands for a while. Is that the kind of thing you mean?”

Ellie nodded vigorously. “That’s exactly what I mean, Mags. And how about Cody? Is what you feel for her
just
grandmotherly devotion? Or could it be
more?
Is there some special element in it that isn’t quite ordinary? What does that housekeeper of yours say? From your description of her she comes form a culture close enough to nature to still be in touch with the Universal truths our more sophisticated cultures have lost.”

Maggie frowned in consternation. “Maria says Cody and I are joined by some kind of bond beyond the normal. She thinks Cody is magical, in some way. I think it’s just peasant superstition.” She looked sheepish and added, “but there is
something
, Ellie, between Cody and me. I don’t know how to explain it . . . maybe all grandmothers and grandchildren experience this, but we seem to read each other’s mind, as if we live in each other’s skin. And Cody’s gifts do seem unusual in certain ways. Her articulation, her ability to understand concepts beyond her years . . . Oh, I don’t know, Ellie, that could just be my grandmotherly pride talking.”

“Look, Mags,” Ellie said authoritatively. “You don’t have time for false modesty, or any other bullshit weakness right now. If you are her Guardian, in some karmic battle plan we don’t quite understand yet, it’s going to be necessary for you to
remember
things you’ve never known in this lifetime. You’re not going to be able to waste time on skepticism . . . and you’re sure as hell not going to have time for diffidence. I think you’re going to have to ‘act as if ye had faith,’ as they say in theology class. And you’re going to have to get tough as nails. For Christ’s sake, Maggie, this isn’t a Sunday school exercise. You’re up against the Prince of fucking Darkness!”

Maggie stared at Ellie in shocked acknowledgement. “Tell me what to do,” she said simply. “Tell me what to learn.”

Y
ou sure you know what you’re doing on this one, Lieutenant?’ Detective Gino Garibaldi asked, handing Devlin a steaming container of coffee from the Greek deli on Hudson Street. He was just above medium height, but so stocky he looked like a weightlifter in a 1912 carnival. Dark shaggy hair framed the kind of face women thought handsome and sexy.

Devlin looked up, annoyed, then reminded himself of how long they’d been friends. “I’m sure.”

“So, you’re telling me this is a case, and not a case of jock itch, right?” Devlin grinned, despite himself. Garibaldi knew, like everybody else, you could get hurt if you let your emotions, or your anatomy, cloud your judgment.

“I’m sure.”

“Okay. Okay. I had to ask. So, you need my help? On the case part, I mean.”

Devlin laughed good-naturedly and took a sip of the scalding coffee, grimacing. “This stuff tastes like battery acid.”

“Yeah, that’s why there’s so many Greeks in New York with coffee shops. Nobody in Greece would drink this shit.”

“You could follow up a couple of leads on this for me, Gino, if you’ve got time.” Garibaldi had good instincts and there wasn’t much he didn’t know about the gamier side of the Village.

“Time? Sure thing, Lieutenant. What New York cop ain’t got time on his hands.” He reached for the file Devlin proffered.

“This one’s unofficial, right, Lieutenant?” he asked dropping his voice.

“For now, yeah. But maybe not forever.”

Garibaldi glanced through the notes hastily. “What do you say we down a few at Clancy’s after work, and you fill me in?”

“Like there’s really such a thing as after work, in this line of business,” Devlin replied sarcastically. After work, before work, during work, he thought. If you’re a detective and something grabs you, you’re never really off the case.

Garibaldi listened. There was an intensity about his capacity to listen that Devlin had always liked a lot. You could almost hear the brain at work, cataloging, cross-checking, sifting the mental files. Gino was a great kidder, and full of the old nick. But not when he listened.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, when Devlin was finished. “You know this may come as a shock to you, but there are actually women in New York who are perfectly good in the sack, and where you don’t have to fight the Forces of Evil to get them there. Like, Lieutenant, this is not uncomplicated.”

Devlin shook his head. “It’s not uncomplicated and it could be dirty, Gino, so I’ll understand if you’d rather not get involved.”

“So who said anything about not helping. I am merely the voice of fucking reason, here. What do you want me to do?”

“I’ve got two possibilities at the moment. Jenna and the phone call. If you can pull in a marker, to get to the phone company to dump the computer records for the night Maggie got the anonymous call, maybe we can put the squeeze on the caller.”

Gino grunted judiciously. To get unauthorized MUDS and LUDS from the phone company could cost big bucks, or cost somebody his job. Of course, it wasn’t impossible . . .

“What have we got on the kid? You got a picture?”

Devlin handed over a snapshot of a lanky blond sixteen-year-old in jeans.

“What does she look like now?”

“According to Maggie, straight out of
Town and Country
. Long, perfect hair, designer wardrobe bought in Paris, very tony, very well-bred Greenwich.”

“Yeah, like I always say, these Satanists sure know a lot about good breeding.”

“You know as well as I do, addicts leave trails, Gino. They’re sloppy, they steal, they get arrested. She’s sure to have been boosting while she was on the streets. Maggie says she was hooking for a while. Maybe there are prints somewhere or old friends. Better call in BCI and get a list of associates to run a check on. Get hold of robbery and get them into the CARS computer, then run whatever you get through the safest system.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gonna teach your grandmother how to suck eggs, next? I’ll get the records, then I’ll hit the streets.”

He took a long swallow of beer, then added, “And I guess I don’t have to ask if you’ve checked out this Maggie, Lieutenant? Neighbors, friends, DMV, the works? It’s not possible she’s a good-looking crackpot, right?”

“I checked her out. No record. No speeding tickets. No stints at Bellevue. She’s a very nice lady in a big, ugly mess that nobody will help her with, and I, being a little bit crazy, would like to help her if I can. You’ll like her, too, by the way.”

“She’s gotta be a good one, if she rings your bells, Lieutenant . . . I didn’t mean to suggest you were thinking with your talleywhacker, here. I just hope this doesn’t get too hot to handle, unofficially. From what you’ve told me, she could playing against big kids. And nice ladies tend not to know how to do that.”

Devlin looked his friend in the eye. “Which is why she’s got us,” he said.