by Bill Bennett
The door opened and a woman entered. She was a large African American lady, dressed in a white nurse’s uniform, with a stethoscope slung across one shoulder. She smiled broadly. ‘Thought I heard a noise in here,’ she said in a deep rich voice as she checked the drip. ‘How you feelin’? Bit dizzy?’
‘Where am I?’
‘You’re at your uncle’s place, miss,’ she said soothingly. ‘He’s asleep right now, but you’ll see him later in the morning.’ She checked the bandages around her wrist and neck.
‘What happened? What are you doing to me?’
‘Your uncle’s the best person to explain that, miss. Right now you need to go back to sleep. Let this work its magic.’ She nodded to the crystal above her heart. ‘We still have a ways to go with you. Now close your eyes . . .’
Lily didn’t want to close her eyes. There were too many questions she needed answered. Where was the boy? Was he responsible for this? Had he betrayed her?
She heard the nurse begin to sing. She couldn’t understand the words. They seemed to be in a foreign tongue. Or old. The song relaxed her, made her feel like she was disconnecting from her body and drifting up, going someplace else. And soon she was asleep.
When she awoke again, she was in a different room, with sunlight streaming in through an open window. She was wearing a hospital gown, all clean and white, the starched fabric crisp against her skin. She looked at her wrist where the drip had been. There was no bandage, no mark, nothing to show that a tube had ever been inserted. She felt her neck. The same. Not even a bandaid over the vein.
Had last night, with the moon and the giant crystal, just been a dream?
She sat up and looked around. Through the window she could see bleached desert brush outside. The light was harsh. It must be midday, or later, she thought. The curtains were patterned with Native American motifs, as was a rug which partly covered the stone tiled floor. Hanging on the far wall beside a simple wooden wardrobe was a Georgia O’Keefe poster of a white longhorn skull.
She tried to get out of bed and nearly collapsed. Her head was spinning and she felt weak and thirsty – very thirsty. There was a jug of water by her bed. She poured herself a glass, her hand shaking. She guzzled it down, poured herself another glass and drank that too.
She sat on the edge of the bed, put her feet on the cool stone floor, steadied herself, and held onto the bedframe as she made her way to the wardrobe. Inside were her clothes, freshly laundered and neatly ironed. They smelled of sunshine and wildflowers. Beside the clothes were her harmonica, the cash her mom had left her and the letter.
She got dressed, put the harp in the front pocket of her jeans and the letter in the back pocket. She then walked gingerly over to the door. It opened out onto a long hallway. At the far end were steps leading up to what looked like a kitchen area. Lily remembered the kitchen from when she was last here with her mom.
She could hear her uncle’s voice. She carefully made her way along the hall, holding onto the walls for balance. She climbed the stairs one by one and stepped up into a vast open-plan kitchen, dining room and living room.
The kitchen had white marble benchtops, acres of sparkling cupboards and cool terracotta stone tiles on the floor. Everything was state-of-the-art and new. The furniture in the living room was all leather and chrome. Large modern paintings hung on the walls. The whole place was spotless and tidy, as though no one actually lived there.
As Lily walked in she saw that her uncle was on his phone with his back to her. He was standing in the middle of the living room, talking grimly.
‘Dear God, I hope not, Gabby . . . Okay, get back to me when you know more, yes?’ And then he hung up.
He swung around and saw her. His face opened into a huge smile. Lily’s heart leapt at the sight of him – this tall gangly distinguished-looking man with long snowy white hair, sparkling eyes, and a smile that made her glow warm inside. Her Uncle Freddie.
He was Lily’s mom’s elder brother. He lived alone in a palatial walled house off the Old Santa Fe Trail. The house was three storeyed, although because it was built into the side of a hill overlooking a desert valley, from the street you wouldn’t realise it was so big. That’s if you could see over the high stone wall. It had been designed by a famous architect, and Lily remembered her mother mentioning that the house had been featured in several coffee-table books and glossy magazines.
Her uncle worked as a visiting consultant to the New Mexico Health Sciences Centre in Albuquerque, teaching undergraduates and interns at the School of Medicine, and doing emergency surgery in the public hospital when required. He didn’t have to work. Not long after he’d graduated from med school he invented a blood plasma pack that self refrigerated, using ambient radiant energy in a completely new and unexpected way that, at the time, drew talk of a possible Nobel Prize.
Freddie patented the invention, and when it became standard issue for hospitals and emergency services organisations around the world, the royalties flooded in. He was soon featured in Forbes Richest 500, and now he only worked because he wanted to – to give back to the poor and the uninsured, and those that couldn’t ordinarily afford his celebrated expertise.
He’d been married once, but his wife had died of a sudden cancer and Lily recalled her mom saying that he’d only taken a passing interest in romantic attachments ever since. He still held dear the memory of the woman that he loved. But that, along with his rakish good looks, his charm and his wit, and of course his immense wealth, only made him more desirable to the female population of Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
Freddie had prepared a light lunch out on a wide terrace looking out over the desert brush, and as they ate he read Angela’s letter. When he finished, he carefully folded away his reading glasses, looked up at Lily, his face grave.
‘You deserve an explanation, young lady,’ he said.
‘You bet I do,’ Lily said, wiping her mouth on a napkin. ‘I have so many questions I don’t know where to start.’ Then, looking around, ‘By the way, that boy. Skyhawk. Where is he?’
‘He had to go back to work. But he’ll be back again soon. He said to say hi, by the way.’
‘Was he involved with what happened, with those women?’
‘Of course not. In fact, he risked his life to save yours.’
‘He did?’
‘And then he drove like a madman nonstop all the next day to get you here fast. So you could get treatment quickly.’
She suddenly felt embarrassed – embarrassed that she’d doubted him, and embarrassed that because of her stupidity, she’d put his life at risk. She felt like crawling under the chair and hiding. When she first saw him in the police station, her instinct had been to trust him, but then later in the car she’d allowed her fear and panic to take hold, and she’d begun to have doubts. She had to learn to control her fear, because it caused her mind to play tricks on her, put her at risk, and now the lives of others too. If she were to get through this ordeal, she had to learn to trust her instincts, her intuition, and let go of her fear.
‘Who are they, Freddie?’ Lily asked. ‘Who are those people? What do they want? I don’t understand any of this.’ Tears sprang to her eyes.
‘There’s a lot I have to tell you,’ he said, smiling gently. ‘But first, let’s start with the most recent episode – last night, when they attacked you. They injected you with a substance that put you into a state of suspended animation . . .’
‘Suspended animation? Are you serious? Why?’
‘I’ll get to the why shortly, but just to explain what I did so that you know. This substance, let’s call it a “brew”, is a very ancient concoction. They call it Sleep Eternal. It’s like a poison, and there are no known antidotes. Essentially what it does is it puts you to sleep, but it keeps your body functioning, your brain working, it even keeps your muscles tuned and your bones nourished so that there’s no atrophy. This means they can keep someone in this state for decades, and when they bring them out of it, it’s a
s though they’ve merely woken up from a longish nap.’
‘If there are no antidotes, how do you bring someone out of it?’
‘They have their ways. We’re not sure what they are. What I did, though, was I used your body’s natural defence mechanisms to fight the foulness that was in your blood. I harnessed the healing power of the moon, directed that into your heart chakra, and as well I filtered your blood over crystals that had been energised with sunlight. So you got the healing effects of the sun and the moon,’ he said, then grinned. ‘This is not exactly orthodox medical practice, but then again we’re not dealing with orthodox people.’
‘So who are they, Freddie? What do they want? And why would they want to inject me with this . . . “brew”?’
‘They’re witches, Lily, short and simple.’ He hesitated. ‘So is your mother – as am I.’
Lily sat there, staring at him, not quite believing what she’d just heard. She smiled, uncertainly. ‘What? Witches? You’re kidding me, right? That’s a joke . . .’
‘No, Lily. It’s not a joke. And don’t worry. We don’t worship Satan, and we don’t follow the tenets of black witchcraft. Your mother and I are, for want of a better word, white witches. We use our powers to try and better the world. Our organisation is called Cygnet . . .’
‘Hold on. You have an organisation?’
Freddie smiled. ‘Yes, Lily. Your mother runs it. She’s head of Cygnet.’
She stared at him in disbelief. ‘Mom’s head of an organisation of witches?’
‘Yes, Lily.’
Lily felt like the world had just stopped. Like her heart had just stopped.
‘For how long? Since . . . when?’
‘Since before you were born. Angela is our potentate. It sounds rather grandiose, I know. We don’t really use that term day to day, but that’s what she is. Our ruler. It’s a title that’s been handed down generation to generation.’
‘Potentate?’ Lily shook her head blankly. ‘I don’t even know what that is.’
‘Well, all I can say is that your mother has been an incredible leader over the years. An inspiration. But now they’ve taken her.’
‘Who’s taken her?’
‘They call themselves Baphomet. The Golden Order of Baphomet. They’re the worst kind of witches you can imagine, and your mother was leading our fight against them.’
Lily stood up. She needed to walk around, but feeling lightheaded, she nearly toppled over. Her breathing was light and shallow, her skin felt moist, like she’d broken out in a clammy sweat. ‘I’m not feeling too good,’ she said. ‘I feel like I’m going to faint.’
Freddie gently led her over to the edge of the terrace to pick up a breeze coming in off the hills. She clutched the railing and looked out over the gully. He stood beside her, holding her arm.
‘I’m sorry, Lily. I’m sorry you had to learn this way. Your mom was going to tell you on your eighteenth birthday. She hid it from you because she wanted you to have a normal childhood. She didn’t want you growing up feeling you were any different.’
‘Well, I did anyway,’ she said, her mind racing. She hesitated before asking, ‘So my father obviously knew about all this?’
‘Yes, he was a witch too. Of lesser stature than your mother, but he was actively involved in helping run Cygnet.’
‘So was he killed by this . . . Baphomet?’
‘We believe so, yes.’
‘Who killed him?’
‘We don’t know.’ Freddie paused, as if deciding whether he should tell her. ‘David went down to Florida to check on a large disturbance they were planning, code-named Guy Fawkes. Anyway, they learnt of his whereabouts and . . .’
‘What do you mean they learnt of his whereabouts?’
‘We believe they were tipped off . . . by someone in our organisation. Within Cygnet.’
Lily looked at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know, sugar pie. We might be wrong on this – they might have just been working off good intel, but we have to face the possibility that we have an informant in our ranks. A black witch working for Baphomet.’
‘. . . who betrayed my father?’
‘We think so, yes.’
Lily paused, considering this. When she looked up at her uncle, her giddiness had gone, replaced by a quiet and fixed determination. ‘I want to find these people. I want to find who killed my dad, and who betrayed him, and I will make them pay.’ She felt an anger inside, as cool and clean as the flame of a blowtorch. She knew this anger would never leave her until she’d avenged her father’s death.
She turned and looked out over the gully full of wildflowers glowing gold and amber from a sun starting to dip behind dry dusty hills.
‘So this . . . Baphomet,’ she asked, dreading the answer she might receive, ‘do you think they’ve also killed Mom?’
‘We don’t believe so, Lils,’ Freddie replied, his voice calm and measured. In crisis situations, his training as a surgeon had taught him how to keep emotions in check. ‘We think she was drugged with the same substance you were injected with, and they’re keeping her somewhere.’
‘Do you know where?’
‘No, we don’t. We’ve thrown our full resources into finding her, but so far we have no leads.’
‘Why would they do this?’ Lily asked, turning to him. ‘I don’t understand. Why take her and put her into this suspended animation or whatever? Why don’t they just kill her? And why try and take me, too? What do they want me for?’
‘There’s someone can answer those questions better than me, sugar pie. He’s a good friend of mine, a former professor emeritus from Cambridge University. He retired here to Santa Fe, but he’s still renowned as a world expert on witchcraft and demonology. He’s spent the last thirty years studying our family.’
‘Studying our family? Why?’
‘Because Lils, our family is extraordinary.’
The Santa Fe Museum of Witchcraft and Demonology was tucked away in a shadowy back lane behind the tourist shops on the main square. The brass knocker on the large buttressed door was shaped like a hideous demon’s claw. Freddie grabbed it and knocked several times, loudly.
‘His name is Professor Henri Duprey,’ he said quietly to Lily.
She stood waiting, impatient. She hoped this wasn’t going to take long. She felt like she should be out doing something more proactive to help find her mom, rather than listening to some musty old professor give her a history lesson.
From inside they heard someone shuffling down a hallway muttering, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ The door opened to reveal a small, slightly bent bespectacled man, balding, with sharp impish eyes and laugh lines etched around his mouth. His sagging grey suit looked in dire need of a clean. Lily noticed he wore slippers.
He looked out at her through wire-framed glasses. He smiled expansively. ‘You must be Lily Maguire. What an honour.’ He shook her hand vigorously.
‘My name’s Lily Lennox.’
‘Yes, of course. You go by your father’s name. But your ancestral name is Maguire. In the annals of witchcraft, Lily, it’s a very famous name. Very famous. Which makes you very famous, young lady.’
‘Famous? Me? How am I famous?’ Lily asked him, confused.
‘I’ll explain in due course,’ the professor said, chuckling, then he turned to Freddie. ‘Now please, do come in.’
He ushered them into a large room that was the entrance to the museum. Standing near the ticket counter were life-sized models of witches, complete with warty noses, black conical hats and broomsticks. Beside them were a couple of fire-blackened cauldrons and glass-covered trays of exotic herbs and small dead insects, used for making up witches’ brews.
Mounted on the walls were cases containing wands of various shapes and sizes, made from wood and bone. Underneath were several small swords, their hilts studded with sparkling stones. And dangling from wires in the centre of the room were four very old handmade brooms.
‘This is what the touri
sts want,’ Henri said, shaking his head. ‘The stereotype. The myth. They want the Grimms’ fairytale witch. They’re not interested in the reality of contemporary witchcraft and demonology because it would probably scare the pants off them. And tourists don’t like to be scared.’
He nodded to racks of t-shirts emblazoned with witches riding broomsticks, with Santa Fe Museum of Witchcraft printed underneath. ‘I make more from this ridiculous merchandising than I do from my Cambridge stipend!’
He chuckled as he led them through a back door into his private study. The small cramped room was covered wall to wall with shelves full of books, some with cracked leather bindings and gold embossed covers, obviously very old. His desk was barely visible under a jumble of sun-faded newspapers, piles of scientific magazines, several opened books written in languages Lily didn’t recognise, and almost hidden among it all sat an old computer, covered in dust. The professor slid in behind his desk, offering Lily and Freddie two chairs.
‘The place is a complete and utter mess,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m about to head off to Paris. I’ve been invited to speak at a conference at the Sorbonne – on “Celestial Influences on Witchcraft and Satanism”. A fascinating subject. There’s a big cosmic event coming up, and I have some revelatory things to say about it, which are going to cause quite a stir. Hence I’m a bit disorganised.’ He pushed the computer away so he could have a clear space between them.
‘Now then,’ he said, taking a deep breath and looking across at Lily. ‘Freddie called me and said you needed some background on your family.’ He smiled. ‘You have a very celebrated lineage, young lady. Very celebrated. And if I can just add that your mother is an extraordinary woman. Utterly remarkable. And I’ll do everything in my power to help get her back. You must be very concerned . . .’
Tears suddenly spilled down Lily’s cheeks. She quickly wiped them away with the back of her hand. ‘You have no idea,’ she said.
The professor reached down under his desk and pulled out a box of tissues, offered it to her. She grabbed a handful. ‘Thank you,’ she said, dabbing her eyes.