by Michele Lang
Obizuth’s face creased in a hideous grimace; because she and her sisters had bested me so easily in our first encounter, perhaps she had assumed I did not have the strength to summon their true names. It was important that she understood me now.
I turned to Knox, my jaw clenched so tight I had trouble speaking. “I beg of you, sir. A few moments alone, so I may speak freely.”
How could I convince him to listen to me? Remembering Bathory’s letter, I crossed my arms, spoke slowly and deliberately. “Bathory has sent me on a number of errands, sir. They have nothing to do with me and are too volatile to repeat in the presence of anyone else but you.” I paused. “And they mean a great deal of money.”
Knox’s impressive eyebrows gathered together in surprise. I had piqued his curiosity at last.
“That’s different. I didn’t know Bathory had non-book business for me.” Technically, Knox was wrong, but I was certainly not going to correct him.
He rose from his seat, surprisingly graceful for so portly a man, and kissed the demonesses’ limp, white hands one by one in farewell. My stomach turned as with my witch’s sight I saw the truth of what he kissed—long scaly fingers; dirty, bloody claws. But we all maintained the pretense of civility. How perfectly all of us in Europe practiced the art of false courtesy.
The three inclined their heads. Their leader, named Enepsigos, turned to smile at me. I remembered her well; she was the one who had delivered the death blow in the wilderness outside Vienna. “We shall meet again, Miss Lazarus. Very soon. And it will be for the last time, ma chère.”
I barely acknowledged her or her sisters as they left, only allowed myself a long, blissful sigh of relief when I saw the back of them disappearing through the doorway, and through the bookcases out to the street.
Knox offered me Enepsigos’s now-empty cane-backed chair, abandoned next to the place where Eva still sat.
I preferred to stand with the door at my back.
Eva rose to stand by me. I kissed both her cheeks and her rosy lips. “A sight for sore eyes,” I said in Hungarian.
“Sweetie, you know I am with you until the end.” The fact she spoke her benediction in Hungarian, our native, homely language, gave me almost as much comfort as her trust and her crazy courage.
Knox scooped up another packet of letters with his thick, hairy fingers: clean paper, unblemished by mud or blood. He slid the packet along the length of the heavy, ink-stained blotter to where I could reach it.
“I don’t understand Hungarian and what you two are saying,” he said, his voice shaking. “But this is the stuff that Bathory sent along with Miss Farkas. She didn’t read it, but maybe you should.”
I took the packet from him and opened it up. The same spidery handwriting, the same wet-looking strokes of fountain-pen ink:
Via Hand Delivery
Mr. Ulysses Knox
My Dear Sir:
No word from my first young courier. Alas, I now believe she never made it through the fire to reach you with my original missive. Since I have not yet been assailed by fascists or demonic ghouls, I trust that my first letter has also been destroyed with her, and I send this second one to you in the care of courier number two: a very nice, ordinary Hungarian girl named Eva Farkas who does not care about magic and who needs absolutely nothing from you.
There is a book. An ancient and malign book—and since books are your especial expertise, I come to you in search of assistance. This book was first reproduced in print, in Amsterdam, in 1701 Anno Domini or thereabouts. But I need the original, the handwritten version used to make the bound facsimiles.
The book’s name is THE BOOK OF RAZIEL. Penned by an angel, treated as mere legend, but real, quite real, I assure you. The book is talisman against fire, against violence, against death in childbed. To assist you I have gathered the relevant local and universal legends; please see the attached.
But. Most important, Knox, The Book of Raziel, in the possession of a person of power, may be used to command an army of demons to serve its wielder. So, the book is a magical instrument of doom, exquisitely dangerous, priceless once it has been recovered and decanted, like a fine wine, for our imminent feast of war and destruction.
I work with a group of revolutionaries in a Soviet location—no need to specify—whose resident seer has predicted the book’s reappearance and recovery. In the words of my Byzantine friend: It is a visitation. The beginning of the End, perhaps. And according to him, an American is currently in possession.
May I persuade you to procure and sell me this literary superweapon, for a premium, choice price? I assure you, I will outbid any other potential customer, and I seek the book’s recovery for a noble cause, though I well realize such scruples will not move you in the slightest.
As that is all to my advantage, I rejoice in your avarice, kiss your hands, and implore you to send word via Miss Farkas only.
Salut,
Bathory
I riffled through the thick packet of supplementary papers, and then stopped reading. I glanced up at Knox. “This is just silly. Why doesn’t Bathory simply call you on the telephone?”
He snorted with a whoop of barely suppressed laughter. “He does, oh believe me, he does.” Knox sighed and played with a cracked and reglued stone gargoyle paperweight no larger than my fist on his desk. “But Bathory believes he cannot speak honestly, that his conversations are being eavesdropped upon.”
His gaze met mine, and goose pimples rose all along my forearms. Bathory had his own enemies, after all. Of course he would be watched, by the Horthy regime or someone . . . or even perhaps something else. “I see. From what he says in his letter, couriers must be pretty faulty, too. At least my friend Eva reached you in one piece.”
“No, in your boss’s mind, paranoia is nothing more than just good sense. Bathory predates Herr Freud by a good two or three centuries. He trusts his couriers, you two girls, more than he trusts the phone lines. Smart fellow.”
Knox’s eyes bored into me, and his unspoken message—we are under surveillance, watch out!—rang in my ears. He indicated the packet half opened on his desk with a toss of his meaty chin.
A fine sheen of sweat slicked his ample cheeks, and I realized with a jolt that my formidable-looking American friend was in fact terrified. “Take the whole pile, m’dear. Read it at your leisure, then destroy it. Amsterdam is a free city, at least for now, but the borders here are porous. Watch who is reading over your shoulder.”
I wouldn’t allow his fear to deter me from the purpose of my mission. He knew as well as I why I had come. “Bathory must at least have hinted in that pile of paperwork at my own reasons in coming here for that book.”
Knox patted at his beefy face with a big linen handkerchief. “Ah, the Sefer HaRaziel. Written in the brillenbuchstaben script, am I right? You want the original copy. If Bathory’s right, finding it could mean death for all of us.”
I sighed and plunged in, invisible listeners or no. If I went too far, I expected Knox would stop me. “Yes, and I would be happy to take it off your hands and leave you out of danger. It’s mine, for one. And Bathory needs it to assist his clients.”
“Of course. The revolutionaries Bathory’s talked about.”
“Yes. You must know what Stalin is capable of, yes?”
“Of course.”
I swallowed hard. “Good. Now for my sister’s sake, I need The Book of Raziel, Monsieur.”
The polite smile faded from his lips. “You read what Bathory had to say, and I made my own discreet inquiries. It would be a disaster for that book to get into the wrong hands.”
“The Book is still mine. Of course, any weapon can be wielded against its rightful owner. But I will not relinquish it so easily once I have it.”
He cleared his throat, rose from his seat to his full, impressive height. “I’m sorry, my dear. But I don’t think I’m the fellow you or Bathory take me to be. Those—ladies—could carve me up like a Sunday roast without their hardly turning a hair.
And never mind their master.”
So he did understand. Even as my estimation of him rose, my spirits sank. “You must help me,” I whispered. I knew I sounded as pathetic as the Azeri man who had begged Bathory at the Istanbul, but pride was a luxury I could no longer afford.
“Whatever you and Bathory have to offer me, it’s just not enough. Don’t you know what you are up against?”
I swept the packet of letters into a neat pile, bound them up, and clutched the bundle to my chest. “So you are going to side with those Nazi demonesses instead? Give me the chance to prove to you that I am capable, though of course we all know time is running out for me, for everyone. But don’t throw your strength behind the Nazis. For the love of God!”
His face twisted with pain. “I’m not America personified, you know. I’m a private citizen, with no obligations to pass these letters on, help a partisan witch, finance a vampire anti-Soviet revolutionary group, none of it.”
“But you love freedom, you must. How could you side with the Nazis, with those demonesses?”
His cheeks grew red, as if I had spit in his face. “I want to help you, by God I do.” His voice was a half-strangled whisper. “But I don’t think I could survive double-crossing your enemies.”
He rose to the doorway and held the door open: our audience with Knox was at its end. “I will tell you those demonesses are not Nazi. But, I’m sorry, I can’t do anything more for you. Not now.”
19
When Eva and I reached the pavement outside the bookstore, I saw that the demonesses had vanished like characters in a strange, disjointed dream. I took a deep breath of the cool, late afternoon air, scented with the tang of canal water and fresh paint, and resolved to make my way to Lucretia’s address, there to untangle the mystery of my failure with Knox.
Eva’s smile effervesced into a laugh, like champagne bubbles. “You have a knack for showing up in dangerous places. It’s not just me.”
I adjusted my gloves to hide the trembling of my lips. “Eva, you have no idea. Just no idea how close you came to being incinerated.”
I looked away, across the arch of the bridge stretching over the canal. “How did you manage to get to Amsterdam so quickly? And what about Gisele? You’ve left her all alone!”
Eva avoided my gaze and shrugged, and we started wandering on the pavement, alongside the canal. “You left Gisele behind first, you know,” she said with a sigh. “Don’t worry. I came with her blessing. As for how I came, I took the train, you silly girl. The Orient Express, straight from Budapest.”
“But your papers. They had to be as flimsy as mine.”
“Even worse, I’m sure. But it’s amazing what a smile and a little luck will do.”
“Well, what are you planning to do now that you delivered your message?”
She stopped short, looked away again. A peculiar expression passed over her face. “I was thinking, maybe . . . Zanzibar.”
I tried to sound reassuring. “Zanzibar sounds like just the place for us by now. But I have a friend of a friend here in Amsterdam, and I hope she can somehow help me with the Book.”
Eva shot me a sidelong glance, and for the first time since we had found each other in Amsterdam I saw her mask of breezy insouciance slip. “Please, take me with you.”
I squeezed her fingers a little too hard. Maybe she was right and Zanzibar was a more reasonable destination. But Gisele waited for us both in Budapest. I had finally made it to Amsterdam, and the only person left who could help us now was Lucretia de Merode. Running away could wait. “You come with me, and I’ll watch out for you. Zanzibar isn’t going anywhere.”
When I arrived at the address that Capa had supplied, the decrepit-looking brick building drowsed in the fading light of day’s end. I rang the buzzer, and the porter, an ancient half-blind lady encased in black lace, shuffled ahead of me until we reached a tiny, dusty anteroom.
The shabby opulence of Lucretia’s brothel took my breath away. My work for Bathory had taken me places I could not bring myself to tell the girls about, but this . . . this woman’s house of wickedness was a new world.
Eva’s expression was bemused. “So, are you planning on becoming a working girl, Magduska? Can I join you, if so? Though I would make a terrible lady of the night.”
Eva. I wanted to hug and throttle her all at the same time. Our Hungarian was as good as a code language in this place, so I didn’t see the need to hold back. “What are you doing, ordering me around like a gendarme, no less.” My stomach rumbled with hunger, but my desolation at my failure with Knox trumped my body’s demands.
Eva’s incandescent smile could not hide the sadness lurking in her eyes. “Come on, Magda, show me your sunshine.” I rolled my eyes at her Pollyanna imitation, and she snorted in derision. “I am not joking!”
A regular girl caught up by extraordinary events: Eva had moxie, certainly, but what was my nonmagical friend from Tokaj doing in the midst of a supernatural lightning storm?
Eva read my expression, and her face grew serious, all traces of levity gone. “I heard what Gisele had to say, the same as you. What am I supposed to do, pretend I didn’t hear it? Sit at home and wait like a good girl until they come to chop off my head?”
She made an impatient little sound and slumped against my shoulder. She smelled like tea roses. “I’ve been busy too, Magduska. This is bigger than the three of us. You can’t just keep a secret as big as that.”
I groaned. I should have known the situation was far out of my control, had been from the beginning. “Oh, Eva. I wanted to keep you clear of this whole mess.”
“The last time I checked, darling, you didn’t rule the world. I’m not clear of this mess, and I never was.”
I grabbed her arm, shook her gently. “Don’t be dense. You’re blond and cute, can pass for an Aryan princess, in Hungary, Amsterdam, anywhere! Of all of us, I could have kept you clear. But it’s too late for that, now.”
Eva clutched me close, whispered in my ear. “No, not too late at all, silly goose. Don’t you see? We could still slip away; we got this far, got through the hardest part. My friends are better than Bathory at forgery, bribery, whatever you like. We could go on the lam, get out of Europe altogether, so easily now.”
Her tone remained calm, ordinary. “But we won’t. There’s Gisele, of course, too sweet and otherworldly. And more than her. We can’t just run.”
“We should,” I said, and we both laughed. “If we had any sense, we would. But we’re both fools.”
I drew back, searched her face. Something bothered me about her little speech, and after a moment, it dawned on me. “And another thing, Eva. What in Heaven’s name are you doing, acting as Bathory’s courier to Knox?”
Eva suddenly looked so tired. “I could ask you the same question, you know. Bathory sent me, but I also come as an emissary of the Zionists. They want me to tell the world about Gisele’s vision, try to get people outside to listen.”
I could not keep the horror out of my voice. “Tell everyone.”
“Yes, and I have. Don’t you think the Jews of Amsterdam, of Poland, of the Soviets and in America, that all of them should also know?”
Eva astounded me. “I thought . . .” I trailed off lamely, struggled to compose my mind. “I had trouble believing Gisele’s words, myself. I thought nobody would credit them secondhand. And I thought spreading around her visions would—”
Eva’s laugh was bitter. “Would what? Make them come true? Magda, you know her voice had the ring of truth. She’s too innocent to queer the message to suit some agenda or even her wish. I believe her, and the Zionists did, too. And Knox believed her, too. All you need to do is listen to Hitler and believe him. It’s not that big a leap, really.”
“But don’t you see? That’s why Knox won’t give me the Book. He must think the Book itself will hasten the war. But that won’t matter: the war is coming. You heard what the Witch of Ein Dor said. You know that book is our only chance.”
“She a
lso said we were all a bunch of dead ducks.”
Her turn of phrase made me smile and roll my eyes to Heaven. “I refuse to accept that. And you don’t accept it either, Eva, otherwise why did you bother coming all this way?”
She shrugged. “We all fight with the weapons we have.”
“So, how do we fight now? What do we do?”
“Well, first we talk to your lady friend Lucretia. And we do not give up, Magduska!”
I hadn’t planned on surrendering just yet, but I held my tongue and shifted my attention to the fantastically faded bordello in which we hid.
“I don’t sense much magic here,” I said.
A rustle behind a beaded curtain made both of us start. More than the sound, I detected the magic of the madam before she appeared. Magic speaks to magic. Most of the girls living here had no more magic in them than Eva did, but the madam made up for all of them by herself.
As a born witch’s child, I had my own odd notions of what it meant to be a worker of magic. Trudy and her family, simple country pagans, only reinforced those assumptions. So meeting her city cousins, the Sisters of Arachne, only shocked me the more.
At first glance, she looked no more than twenty-five. But as she drew close, her rounded cheeks and creamy complexion revealed a tracery of fine wrinkles like netting over her skin, and wise, tiny eyes, set deep. She looked like a benevolent mama elephant ready to stomp on two frightened mice.
Her French bore a strong, mysterious accent. “Ah, the Lazarus. Welcome, welcome, my dear.” She bowed from the waist.
A slight movement about her person sent a bolt of tension into my shoulders. It was her earrings. At first glance I took them for large gray pearls, luminous and soft like the full moon behind clouds. But when I took a second look, her earrings were in actuality living spiders, with gumdrop-sized abdomens, perched over each earlobe. They wiggled their long, silvery legs, and then they seemed to realize together they were being observed. Their long legs curled around her ears like filigree, they fidgeted a moment longer, and then became earrings again.