Bless the Child (38 page)

Maggie
paced her library after leaving, Ellie. She felt caged, trapped in impotence. Unable to help Cody, unable to even control her own mind. The Egypt dreams were impinging on the daytime now. Four separate times, she’d felt the ground shift under her, crashing her through the curtain of time into some bizarre bilocation.

First, she’d seen her hand become someone else’s . . . then, those damned bells kept insinuating their eerie sound. Then, last night she’d been standing in her kitchen holding a jelly glass, and it had metamorphosed in her hand, becoming a golden goblet filled with some magical elixir.
That
was bad enough. But today’s experience had really pushed her over the limit. Halfway home from Ellie’s she’d felt the reality shift coming . . . sweeping her into some kind of wrinkle in time. One minute she’d been passing the Ashby Studio on Cornelia Street, and the next minute, she was in an underground cavern, lit by torches. Even the temperature had changed to ice around her, and she had felt the weight of a golden girdle around her nearly naked hips.

She was in a labyrinth, in some ancient place, and she was being tested . . .
by whom, for what purpose?
And why today? There was fear in her, and intense concentration, but there was confidence, too.

Then, the wrinkle had eased back into ordinary time; the cold had vanished, and she was back on Cornelia Street, nearly at the corner of Sixth Avenue. But she had brought something back with her . . . a different kind of
confidence,
for a lack of a better word. She was sacred, but empowered, as if she knew the test was a hard one, but she’d been trained for it. An Olympic athlete anxious for a shot at the gold, knowing it was not impossible . . .

Maybe she was losing her mind. All the stress and anxiety . . . all the fear for Cody. Maybe it had unhinged her. Maybe crazy people didn’t realize they were crazy.
I’ve got to get a grip on myself.

Maggie sat on the floor in the library, in a half lotus posture and closed her eyes. She needed to meditate, and she needed to do it, now. She pushed the worrying, frustrated cacophony of old thoughts away, as Mr. Wong had taught her to do, and battled back the surge of new ones that scurried to fill the void.

Okay.
A relatively blank screen. She forced her breathing to a meditative rhythm, and concentrated on the flow of air through her body. The ancients knew what they were doing . . . clear the mind to find
no-mind.
Let the universal energies flow through you to heal and strengthen.

She was beginning to feel better. More harmonious, less frazzled.

Then she saw
her.
A living hologram in here mind’s eye.
Cody.
Sitting on a bench in a garden. Never had she experienced a clearer vision. She saw the child’s gaze turn slowly in her direction . . . self-contained, and sad beyond reckoning.

“I’m here, sweetheart!”
Maggie’s mind cried out to her excitedly. She saw the recognition spark for a moment, in the child’s eyes, then die completely, as Cody deliberately turned her head away from Mim, and returned to her own tormented world.

Sweet Jesus!
Maggie breathed aloud, a new and more terrifying knowledge crashing in.
She’s given up! They’ve taken even hope away from her!

Rage pushed Maggie to her feet, more powerful than fear or sorrow. She picked up the phone and called Devlin, and something in her voice made him drop what he was doing with the sure knowledge that he had to get her.

“I’ve got to try to see her, Dev,” Maggie said, the minute he charged through the door. “Everywhere I turn
I see her.
Every child on the street tears my heart out. I can’t stand it anymore! It’s been over two months since they took her and we don’t even know if she’s alive! We’re just
assuming
Walpurgisnacht is the time they’ve got planned for this Materialization—we don’t really know anything for a fact.”

Devlin could see the toll taken in Maggie by the past few weeks. How many hours of sleep had there been for her since the child had been taken? he wondered. There were dark circles under her eyes, and the lines in her face that he’d found so winsome when they met were more pronounced now.

“We
do
know some things, Maggie,” he said, trying to placate her. “All the experts pinpoint the
same
time—the astrologers, the Egyptologists, even Ellie. And we do know occultists attempt their specially evil magic on that night. That’s all good circumstantial evidence. As to Cody’s being alive . . . we know she’s no good to them dead.”

“Until after April 30th!” she interjected. “That’s two weeks away.
Two weeks.”

“Until after April 30th,” he agreed reluctantly, wondering what he could say to calm her perfectly sensible fears. The child could be dead already.

“I’m going up there, Dev.
Now.
Today. I’m going to knock on the damned door and demand to see my granddaughter. I don’t care if I have to stand on the front lawn and scream my bloody head off, I have to let her know I still love her.” She took a deep eloquent breath. “I was hoping you’d go with me.”

Devlin had been around hardship long enough to know when emotions had outstripped arguments.

“I’ll go with you,” he answered evenly. “They’ll be less likely to have you arrested for trespassing, if I’m there.”

The drive to Greenwich was spent in pained silence; Maggie head lay back against the seat of Devlin’s car, her eyes were open but they didn’t focus on the road. Dev reached over and took her hand in his own; she neither protested nor responded, but nonetheless, he held it tightly all the way to Greenwich, as if to impart his own robust strength to her depleted supply.

“You know, Dev,” she said wistfully, “I keep asking myself, what if she dies, and she never knows I tried to save her?”

“I don’t think that’s the way it’ll go down,” he answered with a conviction he didn’t really feel. Children died all the time at the hands of lunatics. “I think we’ll get her out of there. We just won’t do it today.”

Maggie pounded on the Vannier door three separate times, before it was opened by a servant who told her no one was home. Exasperated, Maggie pushed past the woman into the house, and Devlin followed her, despite the maid’s protests.

“Do not
tell
me they’re not here,” Maggie said tightly. “I want to see my granddaughter, and I know she’s in this house.” She was moving as she spoke, heading for the nursery wing; Devlin wondered just how far she intended to push this.

Vannier appeared in Maggie’s path, before she’d made it past the library. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave my home,” he said firmly, blocking her way with his large form.

“I want to see Cody, Eric,” Maggie snapped. “I’m sick to death of being put off, when I call. I want to see her,
today!”

“I’m afraid that isn’t possible. The child is ill and not receiving visitors.”

“I’ll bet she’s ill, you monster,” Maggie spat, attempting to push past him, but he grabbed her arm painfully and jerked her to a halt.

“Don’t do that!” Devlin ordered; there was enough quiet menace in the tone to startle Maggie and make Eric release his grip.

Eric’s eyes met Devlin’s evenly. “You are both intruders in my home,” he said. “If I call the local authorities I think you know what will happen.” Devlin began to reply, but Maggie, on impulse, started to run.

“Cody!” she screamed out, as loudly as she could. “Cody. I’m here!
Where are you?”

An echoing cry sounded somewhere in the upper recesses of the house. “Mim!” a small voice shrieked out in absolute desperation.
“Help me!
Help . . .” The last scream was silenced abruptly. A door slammed somewhere on the second floor.

Maggie was already on the nursery stair, before Eric tackled her, bringing her down hard on the edge of the fifth step. Devlin landed, seconds later, atop, the pile of arms and legs, pulling at Eric to keep his hands from Maggie’s throat. As the two men grappled with each other, Maggie managed to extricate herself from the melee, and staggered up the stairs.

Ghania blocked her passage at the landing, like a human wall. “She has been removed from the house!” she hissed, as Maggie attempted to move around her. “See for yourself! The window!”

Maggie spun toward the huge window that flanked the landing, and saw two men carrying the flailing child between them, to a waiting car. Cody was screaming, and pounding uselessly against her captors; Maggie could hear her shrieks through the glass.

Frantic with frustration, and fury, Maggie picked up the flower-filled vase from the table in front of the window and tearing the flowers out of it, flung them at Ghania. Before the huge woman recovered enough to move, Maggie smashed the heavy vase through the huge glass pane, sending shards crashing down to the patio below.

“Cody!” she screamed to the child, just as the men pushed her into the car. “I love you!
I’m coming back!”

She saw Cody’s stricken face turn wildly toward her, as the limo door slammed shut, and knew she’d heard the promise.

“She will die,” Ghania croaked, picking the flowers from her ruined robe. “And you will watch!”

Maggie turned on the malevolent giant, a fury in her breasts she could barely contain.
“You
will die!” she spat the words. “And
I
will watch!

Then, she turned on her heel and walked down the stairs, where Eric and Devlin now stood, like two small boys caught scrapping in the playground. They had obviously been separated by Eric’s bodyguards

“Get them out of my house!” Eric ordered hoarsely, and the guards reached out to hasten their departure. But Devlin’s gun was suddenly in his hand, and both men stepped back again, uncertainly.

“We’re leaving now,” he said, steady as Gibraltar. “If everyone stays very calm and out of our way, there shouldn’t be any trouble.”

Devlin and Maggie backed cautiously from the house, and ran for their own car, but the limo, with Cody in it, was already out of sight.

Maggie made it only as far as the rest stop before she began to cry, softly at first, then, as the full impact of all that had happened hit, great gasping sobs wracked her body.

Devlin pulled the car to the side of the Merritt Parkway and took her into his arms, holding her, speaking comforting words to her, patting her like a child, until she finally subsided into exhausted silence.

He drove directly to Ellie’s without discussion. He had no intention of leaving her alone in such a state, and he needed to get back to the precinct because that was the place to get the goods on that arrogant, child-molesting son of a bitch. And that’s just what he intended to do.

“
There’s
a Yiddish word for what’s going on with you, right now, Mags,” Ellie said caringly, after she’d settled her friend into a comfortable corner of the couch. Devlin had been right; she was in pretty bad shape.

Maggie looked at Ellie, hurt and angry; the weight of all that had happened was in her voice when she spoke. “Cody’s in danger of death or worse, Jenna’s sold her soul to the Devil, and I’m so worn out I don’t remember how to tie shoelaces,” she snapped. “How can there possibly be a word for all that?”

“Zerissenheit,” Ellie answered softly.

“And what does that mean?”

“Torn-to-pieces-hood.”

Maggie could think of no reply, quick tears filled her eyes.

“I’ve got the name of the hypnotherapist for you, Mags,” Ellie prodded. “I called Amanda.”