Bless the Child (37 page)

M
alachy Devlin watched the woman he was falling in love with, as she sat on the park bench next to him, eating a hot dog. He had found that asking her to dinner made her skittish, uncertain, but dropping by at odd hours, or calling and asking her to go for a brief walk so they could talk, kept her guard down. He would wear down her resistance, eventually. He had a cop’s persistence, and he knew she needed him, even if she hadn’t figured that out yet. The priest was the problem, that was apparent. There was something going on there—even if it was just some kind of affair of the spirit. But that would come to an end, one way or the other. Devlin also had a cop’s pragmatism about reality.

“How did you learn about sex, Maggie?” he asked, catching her by surprise. He liked doing that; there was something about her spontaneous honesty in replying that gave him back his faith in the world.

“The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám,”
she answered, smiling between bites of her hot dog. “I could show you the exact page that altered my carnal knowledge, forever.”

Devlin’s mouth turned down at the corners, in a crooked little smile.

“The Moving Finger writes,’”
she said, with an expansive gesture of the hand,
“’and, having writ, moves on: Nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy Tears wash out a word of it.’
I knew the instant I opened the book to that particular page, that it would change everything . . .” She grinned, and looked like a mischievous kid.

“It was the picture, as much as the words, Dev. The woman in the woodcut was draped across the giant Book of Fate, and the page was blotted by her sins. I could practically taste her desperation . . . hair streaming wildly, useless fingers clutching at the tainted page. I said to myself,
my God!
So this is what your Permanent Record looks like! No wonder Sister Benedict is so worried about it. I remember gripping the little book in sweaty hands, and hiding myself behind the XYZ’s, because nobody ever went there, so I could read on.”

“How exactly did this teach you about sex?” he laughed, amused and puzzled.

“Well, you see, I longed to know about bodies, despite the fact that the people in my family didn’t seem to have any. I mean, fathers and mothers were only seen and felt through clothing—you know, like those china dolls, whose heads and hands are made of different material from what’s in the middle? But, there in the
Rubáiyát
lusty men with wine flasks in their hands were fondling women’s breasts! Death with his sickle-scythe, was stalking young lovers in the grass. Naked men and women were
touching
each other, Dev.
Life
was on those pages. And I could tell that bodies were the key.”

God, how he wanted to hold her. To touch her warm, soft parts and lie entangled in her sweetness. There was such an innocence about Maggie, despite her brain, her years, her experience, her current plight.

“You know something, Maggie?” he said, a tenderness in his voice she hadn’t heard there before. “I’d like to give you things.”

She finished the last bite of hot dog and asked, “What kind of things?”

“I don’t know exactly. Crazy things. Sea dreams. Wild flowers in clay pots. Peace of spirit. Me.”

She tilted her head and looked at him closely. There was something so lovable about him . . . no, that wasn’t what she wanted to think. Was it?

She started to reply, but Devlin held up his hands to stop her. “I know. I know. No complications. Not now. But remember what I told you,” he grinned suddenly boyishly. “I intend to be your best friend, even if it’s against your will.”

She couldn’t help but laugh.
If things were different . . .
no! That was ridiculous. She loved Peter—or something akin to love. You can’t love two men at once.
Maybe she didn’t love either one of them.
And besides, the very fact that she didn’t have to be in love with Devlin took all the pressure off their relationship. No anxiety, no subterfuge, no longings that couldn’t be fulfilled, just honest friendship. And she
needed
that. He was so easy to talk to, and he always made her smile. God, how she needed something joyful in her life, just to remember that such could be . . .

“Look, Maggie,” he said, as if reading her thoughts, “I like Ellie a lot, and maybe the priest even has some good points, although I’ll be damned if I can think what they are. But religion and metaphysics are not going to nail the sons of bitches who have Cody. Good old-fashioned police procedures might. So I intend to hang around for a while.

“But here’s the bottom line, Maggie O’Connor, my elusive butterfly. The first thing I’m going to do is get those dirty bastards who destroy children to satisfy their own deluded lusts. Then, I’m going to get Cody back for you. And after all that’s said and done . . .” He grinned suddenly, the dark eyes merry in the weathered face. “If you’re such a damned fool you don’t fall in love with me, I can’t be held accountable for that.”

There was moisture in Maggie’s eyes when he finished, and she turned her head till she regained control; there was something about him that always gave her hope.

About an hour after he had walked her home, she found a piece of paper stuck under her front door. When she unfolded it, she read in Devlin’s bold scrawl:

Do me a favor and say what’s on this paper ten times a day, until further notice:

Nothing is too good to be true.

Nothing is too good to happen to me.

Nothing is too good to last forever.

T
here’s renewal in sunshine, Maggie thought as she walked briskly down Sixth Avenue toward Bleecker in the early-morning sunlight. She’d gone to the 7:00 A.M. mass at St. Joseph’s to ask for help in seeing through this maze. Now she needed a sounding board and Ellie was a good ear, so she’d stopped at the baker for sweet rolls to bring with her, and the cozy bakery smells had buoyed her spirits. She remembered going with her father to morning Mass, and bringing back rolls in a paper bag from the bakery . . . warm buttery memories of joy and intimacy and love.
Oh God! what memories will Cody carry with her, after this?
If there is an
after this?
She hurried from the market to Ellie’s building, needing to talk to a wise friend.

The rich dark sent of European coffee filled the apartment as she entered. She handed Ellie the sweet rolls, and was grateful to see there was a fire in the hearth.

“You and I are the only two people nutty enough to be burning wood in April,” she said with a smile, as Ellie handed her a steaming mug.

“Don’t you believe it! The wood man told me March is his second busiest month, because all us diehards stock up for any cool nights or mornings we can still dredge out of the year.”

They sat near the fire.

“Now what brings you here at an hour when the chickens are barely conscious?”

“I need to talk, Ellie,” Maggie answered. “There’s so much on my mind that needs sorting . . . I think I’ve got to try to
see
Cody, whatever it takes. I don’t care if I have to stand on the Vannier lawn and throw rocks at the nursery window—every instinct tells me she needs to know I haven’t forgotten her. I’m tired of feeling impotent, and waiting for somebody else to do something.”

“I’ve been thinking along the same lines, Mags. But I have a hunch your best shot for getting her out may be on Walpurgisnacht, during the festival.”

“Why
that
night? I’d imagine she’d be guarded then, better than ever.”

Ellie shook her head noncommittally. “I don’t know, Mags. It’ll be a Grand Sabbat and that usually entails a helluva lot of revelry. Maybe even an orgy, to rev up the vibrations. Maybe a lot of things. I think they’ll throw a huge party, and there are always people coming and going at a party . . . caterers, maybe . . . lots of servants. They’ll need thirteen Adepts for the ritual . . . if they each have spouses, that’s twenty-six, already. Plus, whoever else is a high-ranking member of the coven. Odds are they’ll want to display their prize, and the power it gives them, to as many followers as possible. Besides, we might have the element of surprise on our side that night. If they’ve gotten that far without being thwarted, they may get cocky and think they’re invulnerable.

Maggie thought for a minute, then shook her head. “I just can’t wait for the thirtieth, Ellie. Maybe you’re right and we can’t get her out till then, but I have to at least try to see her,
now.
It’s driving me up the wall that I can’t get through on the phone, and my nightmares are getting wilder. And you’ve said yourself that my dreams are accurate.”

“Time and space don’t constrain the soul in sleep, Mags. That’s how precognitive dreams happen, especially to someone like you, who’s brought the ability to travel outside the body into this lifetime.” She caught Maggie’s eyes with her own.

“You really need to get to the bottom of all this before the thirtieth, Maggie,” she said very seriously. “You
need
to do a past-life regression to unlock the full story.”

Maggie frowned, her distaste apparent.

“Look, Mags, I think it’s imperative that we get more information than we have before we make our move. Eric, Jenna, Cody, you, me . . . we’re none of us here by chance. It would help us to know what’s really going on. And we’re going to need every edge we can get,” Ellie pursued. A little clarity wouldn’t be the worst thing. I know one or two people who specialize in regressions.”

“Forgive me, Ellie, you know I’d trust you with my life, or Cody’s, but I just can’t take a chance on somebody planting any kind of debilitating thought in my head. Hypnosis scares me to death, and a ‘past-life regressor’ smacks too much of supermarket tabloids.”

Ellie looked thoughtful. “Then don’t go to a past-life regressor. Go to a bona fide psychiatrist-hypnotherapist. There’s a whole psychiatric association full of them. I’ll bet Amanda could find one, on her never ending list of acquaintances.”

“I’ll think about it,” Maggie said uncertainly. “I promise you I will.”

“There’s no time left for thinking, Mags,” Ellie said relentlessly. “It’s time to act.”

Clarity was a seductive lure, Maggie thought as she left Ellie’s apartment. If she knew more, maybe a solution would surface. She brooded about the possibilities for hours before calling Amanda for a recommendation. She almost hoped this would be the one time in history Amanda didn’t know someone who knew someone.

Ellie
locked the door to her apartment, after Maggie left, shut off the phones and removed the clothes she’d been wearing. She prayed as she did so, quieting her mind and heart, asking for guidance and purification. It was time to get some answers of her own.

She deliberated before bathing, deciding which essence to add to the bathwater. Salt and soda would cleanse any negativity that might be clinging to her aura, as would vinegar. Ginger would ward off any malevolent energy that might be hovering around the apartment. She settled, finally, on cedar oil . . . an old Indian remedy to ward off the evil intentions of others. This task was too critical to risk invasion by unfriendly forces.

She debated her choice of garment with equal seriousness. There were robes of many colors in the armoire she always kept locked: each was suited to a different magical operation. She finally decided on purple, because it balanced the blue of Justice, with the red of Mercy, and it was apparent that both truths must be served in what she sought to learn today. She chose a long purple gown of soft linen, pulling over her naked body, and belting it with the black ceremonial girdle, which she had merited, long, long ago, after many years of arduous training.

Ellie fingered the cord that was her magical girdle, reverently; the inner meaning of its complex symbology always warmed her.
“This magical cord forms the immediate Circle into which we are bound by our own wills,” her Russian grandmother had intoned, as she tied it round her waist. “The loop is the Ankh of eternity, and the free end connects you with all other human and Divine entities in the great chain of life. With it, we are pulled up by those Intelligences beyond us, just as we are bound to use our strength to pull up those below us who need our assistance. This magical girdle is the umbilicus which connects you to the Divine Mother, Illiana. Wear it only in Truth and Honor.”

Ellie belted the robe and arranged its pleats into an orderly line, remembering . . .

“By robing properly for ceremony, child,”
her beloved Babooshka had said,
“you are assuming the mantle of the traveler in another world . . . the world of Spirit. With this mantle on your shoulders, you may seek admittance to the Inner Realms. With it you proclaim yourself a member, however humble, of the Holy Mysteries. With it, you may seek to be given the chance to make a contribution to the Great Work, on which the Company of Light is engaged. But do not forget for a single instant, that you will be observed by your Spiritual Superiors, and you will be judged by their exacting measure.”

Reverently, Ellie took a large abalone shell from its place in the armoire; she filled it with silver sage and cedar chips, before adding a braided snippet of sweet grass. She lit the mixture with a taper, and fanned it gently, with the eagle feathers her Cherokee grandmother had given her for the task, encouraging the small blaze, until the fire had spread sufficiently to catch all three substances. When she blew out the flames, a dense and fragrant smoke billowed from the shell.

“I salute thee, O Great Spirit, by the power of the Elements!” she chanted, lifting the smoking shell aloft. “Abalone shell for water, sage, cedar, and sweet grass from the earth; smoke to purify the air; and fire to fuse them into unity,” she chanted the inventory with love. “I salute the Guardians of the Four Directions and ask their benevolent aid,” she called out. “Be it known that through the Four Directions I see the Way of Light! Be there peace between me and the East. Be there peace between me and the South. Be there peace between me and the West. Be there peace between me and the North.”

She fanned the pungent, cleansing smoke in each direction, chanting as she did so. There were many magical systems she had been initiated into over the years, in diverse parts of the world, but the way of her grandmother, She Who Catches the Rainbow, still had special meaning.

“O Great Spirit,” she cried out, “by the power of the Sacred Smoke, I entreat Thee to purify this place of worship. Father/Mother God, I ask thy blessing for the rites to be performed.

“Cleanse my soul and spirit

Purify my heart

Clear my vision, that I may see only Truth

On pain of death, do I pledge Thee

To respect Thy teachings

To serve beyond the self

To give Thee thanks

To keep silent what I learn.”

Elli called upon the four mighty Archangels, who have been charged by God, to guard the Watchtowers of Creation. Raphael, Michael, Gabriel, Uriel. She addressed each by his litany of sacred names, and asked permission to leave her earth-body behind and travel safely in the Higher Realms.

As she made obeisance to each direction, Ellie lighted a tapered candle, at each of the cardinal points. Her consecrated objects lay on the altar before her. A centuries-old silver chalice, brought out of Russia before the Revolution. A horn-handled knife, in a braided deerskin sheath, that had been carried into battle by her grandfather, and his father before him. A wand carved by her own hand, from a lightning-struck hazel tree. A pentacle engraved with intricate sigils few on earth could decipher. A medicine pouch with objects gathered in a painstaking time of self-examination, before Vision Quest. A crystal sphere that had been placed in her cradle at birth.

A Medicine woman of the Cherokee people, and a Magician of High Degree, Ellie was Rainbow Woman, Ellie was Illiana Petrovic—in this earth life. She had been many others, over the lifespan of her very old soul.

Tonight, she would seek to find her place in this Mystery of the Amulets. This was to be a battle of Goddesses; the counsel of the Gods would have little value, here. She would seek instead, communion with the Female Essence of the Universe, by means that had been secret since the dawn of time.

She had no way of knowing, as she entered the Silence, if she would survive the next twenty-four hours.