The Hawley Book of the Dead (40 page)

“It was Simon Magus who gave the Reverend up to the government. But it’s really the Book he wants. He’s been searching for it for many years. You see, there’s an ancient connection between the Book and the treasures. With the Book, one may summon them. Simon Magus must have discovered years ago that you were the next Keeper. But you escaped his Fetch, without even knowing you did so. He’s sent the Fetch again for you now. For you, and the Book.”

I thought of all we’d been through. Everything for a lump of paper and disappearing ink. “Why can’t I just give it to him? This could all be over.”

She shook her head. “No one but a Revelation can command the Book. And the legend is that only a Revelation can use the Book to summon the treasures in times of great trouble. He needs
you
, too.”

“So that’s what Simon Magus wants? That’s why he sent Voss after me? So I would summon the treasures?”

“Yes. Where
is
the Book?”

I shifted Caleigh, lax and weak from crying, to one arm, plunged the other into the Petroglyph bag. “It’s here.” I lifted it out, warm and fragrant as always.

“You haven’t used it!” The panic in Nan’s voice shocked me.

“Well …”

“Revelation, I
told
you not to. All my own troubles started when I tried to use the Book, without knowing how to. He could sense it, its power, held by hands that couldn’t shield it.”

I remembered how it had felt each time I used the Book. I remembered how I’d seen a magician in it. Simon Magus, Setekh, whatever he called himself. It was him, I knew it now.

“Nan, I think I
have
been shielding it, even if I didn’t know it. Every
time I’ve opened it, I’ve disappeared. I think the disappearing shields it
and
me. If he knew who I was at Bay State, how did I escape? It must have been because of the disappearing. And he knew about me before I even
found
the Book. He must have known all the years we were in Las Vegas. It’s why he was there in the first place. It’s why he gave Caleigh the string.” My hand stroked Caleigh’s hair. Her sobs had subsided to whimpers. “I think the Book itself has been teaching me how to use it. Nan,
I’ve
seen
him
in it.”

“When you’ve seen him, where is he?”

“In the mountains near Las Vegas. But, Nan, if he knew who I was all this time, why didn’t he try again to send me for the Book, long before this?”

“I suppose he was waiting until you had the most to lose. Don’t forget, he’s immortal. He has all the time in the world.”

“He has all the time in the world … but he can’t use the Book without me.” When Jeremy and I started our act in Las Vegas, the magician Setekh showed up on the Strip around the same time. He’d waited nine years. As Nan said, he could afford to bide his time. Until what? Until I was married, had children. Had everything to lose. Then he killed Jeremy. To create my time of great trouble.

But something else occurred to me. “Why hasn’t he gotten it before this?
Way
before?” I thought of all the women in my dreams who had hidden the Book, all the Revelations. Then I had a flash of understanding. “It doesn’t do any good to just keep hiding the Book. I need to learn to
use
it. That’s the only way to fight him, to keep it from him. That’s why he couldn’t get it before. All the Revelations in an unbroken chain knew how to use this Book.” I held it as close as I held Caleigh. “It’s ignorance that we can’t afford. He found out everything about us because I didn’t know how to keep him from it. That’s why he was able to enchant Caleigh with the string.”

Caleigh let out a fresh wail. “I want it! I want my string!” She kicked and flailed again at the mention of her string, nearly got away from me.

Nan rose, grabbed her from me like a struggling fish on a line, held her with a strength I couldn’t fathom. She took hold of Caleigh’s weeping face. “You can’t have it, do you hear? It’s too dangerous.”

Caleigh gulped, then stilled. “Can I still weave patterns?”

Nan looked to me. “Can she use other string?”

“I think so.”

“Leave her with me. We have to break the enchantment.” Caleigh’s head dropped to Nan’s shoulder. Her grip loosened, and Nan set her down on the sofa. She’d fallen into a deep sleep.

“She’ll be like this until I can disenchant her, now we’ve taken the string from her. She’ll need to stay with me.”

“But the Fetch—”

“She’ll be safer here. It’s really the Book he wants. And you. He wants one of your powers, surely. Simon Magus must have promised it to him in exchange for the Book. That’s how he retains his hold over a Fetch.”

“Rigel Voss knows I can use it to go to the past. To be with the dead. Maybe he thinks he can make me use the Book, so he can be with his wife again.”

“Maybe. But you don’t need the Book for that.”

“Of course I do!”

Nan shook her head. “Now I need to tell you the last remaining secret. You’ve always been able to go between the worlds, Book or no. When you disappear, Revelation, you slip between the worlds.”

“But I’m really just out of sight. It’s like I walk through a curtain, and I’m there, just behind it.”

“No. You stay close because we
taught
you to.”

I was even more baffled now.

“When you were a child, when you first began disappearing, you didn’t come back for hours, sometimes days. And when you did … well, you were not yourself. We almost lost you.” My mother had said the same thing. “So we had to teach you to stay with us, never to go deep into another world. It’s an uncommon sidhe gift, a very powerful one. It might be your ability to travel between worlds that Simon Magus promised to Rigel Voss, years before you had the Book in your possession. In any case, he doesn’t want this small fish herself.” She placed a hand on Caleigh’s flushed forehead. “He would only want her as bait for you.”

“All right.” I felt hopeless when I said it. I had no idea how I’d be able
to leave my Caleigh, walk away. But I didn’t know how to break the spell. Nan did. Or said she did.

“I want to know what’s happening. Promise me! And don’t let the Reverend near her!”

“I can keep the Reverend in check. I’ve done it for more than twenty years now. The one thing that I’ll need from you is a description of the magician’s show.”

I nodded, then knelt by Caleigh, took her limp body in my arms, buried my face in her damp neck. I felt her breathe shallowly against me, felt her quick pulse. There was a cloying scent around her, like burning sugar. “The enchantment runs deep,” Nan said softly. “But I have ways to conquer it. We just need a little time.” She stroked my hair, then took me by the shoulders, lifted me up with her strong old hands.

“I’ll keep Caleigh safe, I promise you, child. Now you must go.” She kissed my cheek with cold lips. “Good luck, Revelation. Although luck is relative. Perhaps I should wish you
on hlone
.” I didn’t ask what
on hlone
was. I was probably better off not knowing.

The Reverend sat on the front steps, handing out candy. A mummy and a vampire stared at the Goo Goo Clusters in their hands. “Sweet!” said the mummy. “These are heavier than Chunkies.”

“Enjoy them, young gentlemen.”

“Yeah. We will.” And they sped off, never guessing that they’d taken candy from another kind of monster. I slipped by him, and fled with the pack of kids. The mummy slung his gauze bandages back, and the vampire shoved through a pack of younger children, girls who all seemed to be princesses or ballet dancers. One tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, and I grabbed her before she could fall. She was resplendent in a blue tutu and tiara, and had glitter dusted on her skin. “Are you a ballerina?” I asked.

“No. See the wings?” She pirouetted so I could see the transparent net wings she wore, also glittery. “I’m a fairy.” And she marched up to the door to claim her candy from the Reverend.

I felt shaky, bereft of all my girls. I couldn’t stop thinking of Caleigh, the enchantment, Simon Magus eavesdropping on our lives for years.
He’d even had the audacity to hire me to write a script, disguised as Setekh the Magnificent. But my fury was mixed with a feverish dread. I felt like a mouse with a hawk circling above.

One hundred and twenty-two hours.

This wasn’t the kind of magic I was used to. In my world, I was always the one in control of all the magic tricks.

Mrs. Pike had brought us bags of Halloween candy, left in bowls on the kitchen table. My mom and I were picking through them for Caleigh’s favorites. I knew there would be no trick-or-treaters at Hawley Five Corners. Their parents feared the real ghosts too much.

Jolon, when he arrived, was pale and drawn. Dark stubble shadowed his face.

“Sorry I didn’t get here earlier,” he said. “It’s been a long day. Where’s Caleigh?”

“She’s at Nan’s. We thought it would be safer. Officer Bob stayed to watch the house.”

“Good. Though it would have been nice if he’d called the station.”

“Can I pour you a drink?” Dad offered.

“Love a beer, but have to get back to file my report. Just stopped to confirm that at least two of the bodies are those of the lost children. Liza Sears and Lucy Bell. But I expect they’re all there.”

“How was it possible to ID them so quickly?”

“Dental records. Fortunately for us, there was a dentist in Hawley in the twenties, and he kept his records until he died in 1952. His daughter lives in the same house now, and the records have been in boxes in the attic the whole time. It didn’t take long to come up with all the kids’ records.”

Jolon paused, sucked in a breath.

“And we found out that the guy who was staying at Candy Cane Park
had a fake ID. His story was a story. He probably was your Fetch, and possibly the guy I was tracking. I was tailing someone in the woods,” he told my parents. “I gave it up when a moose got involved. I put a raft of men on him, following the trajectory I thought he’d take from where he was headed, and they came up with squat. So. It’s time for
me
to say ‘mea culpa,’ Reve. At least we can be sure you have twenty-four-hour surveillance now, and the woods are crawling with searchers. We’re doing all we can do.

“The one thing that might bollix us up is the weather,” Jolon went on. “Supposed to snow tonight. It snows a little, an inch or two, it might help us out, as far as fresh tracks go. Anything more, though—and they’re saying it might be half a foot or more—the state will call off the search.”

“Why is that?” my father asked.

“We’d need to assess and bring in a team that’s been certified in snow and ice search and rescue. Regulations. You’d be surprised how much of a difference even a small amount of snow makes to a search. We can’t have volunteers out there getting stuck and needing to be rescued themselves.”

I remembered the mackerel clouds of the morning, and nodded. I knew he was doing his best, but it took the heart out of me to think after less than a week the state itself could give up on my girls.

“We’ll hope for fair weather, then,” my dad said. “Dinner in five. At least have some stew with us, Jolon.”

“Got to get back. Those reports, you know.”

“Take some away, then. Dad’s boeuf bourguignon is badass.” As the twins would have said.

Jolon smiled bleakly. “Well. Okay. Eat at my desk.”

Dad piled some of the stew, redolent of meat and caramelized onions, into a container. I put it in a shopping bag with a hunk of good bread. Jolon took it from me and, oddly, shook my hand.

“Thanks, Reve.” His hand lingered in mine just a heartbeat longer than a friendly handshake called for.

I called Henry, then went out to do night check, accompanied by Falcon Eddy. The temperature had dropped about forty degrees since the afternoon.
There was a dampness in the air, and the clouds rolled over the nearly full moon. A few snowflakes drifted down. I could see them falling through the barn light, feel them on my upturned face.

Zar and Miss May were content and sleepy. She was lying on her side in the shavings at his feet. His head drooped over her, his eyes soft and dreamy. He woke with a snort as I opened the stall door to hand in his two flakes of hay. Miss May stretched and groaned, her chocolate sides heaving as she scrambled to her feet and twinkled her short tail at us.

“They seem peaceful, so,” Eddy said.

“Sometimes I wish I was one of my animals.” I leaned against the stall wall, listened to the horse and goat munch their hay, noses nearly touching. “Eddy? Do you think he knows where they are?” I stroked Zar’s coarse mane. “If he did, I think he’d try to take me to them, somehow.”

“But, dearie, the horse did take you as far as he could, where our fella Jolon said they disappeared. The tavern cellar hole.”

I studied his craggy face. I realized he was right. “ ‘There are more things in heaven and under earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ ”

Eddy laughed. “Yeah, as poor bloody Hamlet says.”

“You continually surprise me, Eddy.”

“Hamlet would have been one of my kinfolk, and yours as well. Tuatha De Danann. Of the Danes.”

How did he know Nan had told me? Maybe they communicated with the hawks, like homing pigeons. “Sometime I’d like to know more about the history of the Danann.”

“The Tuatha De, as they’re more properly called. When we are less fraught, dearie, I’ll be happy to tell you. And that time will come, even though it doesn’t seem so to you now.”

I could hear the wind picking up, roaring through the trees. “We should go back.” I turned my collar up, and we plunged out the door into the bracing chill. The few random flakes had multiplied, were falling fast.

I checked my e-mail before bed. What I’d asked Henry to provide was there. A detailed description of Setekh’s show. Or Simon Magus, as I was beginning to think of him. Henry had attached photos and video clips of
the show, which was called
Web of Darkness
. They made his connection to Caleigh seem scarily real.

Next I took up
The Hawley Book of the Dead
. It was warm from its meadow. The pages wouldn’t be blank this time. I was getting to know when the Book had something to tell me.