Wisdom's Grave 01 - Sworn to the Night

by Craig Schaefer

  Marie shifted from foot to foot, awkward. “You didn’t have to go to this much trouble. A restaurant would have been fine.”

  “Eh.” Nessa folded her arms, giving Marie a dubious look. “Waiter overhears that you’re celebrating something, next thing you know there are twenty of them clustered around your table, singing an off-key, off-brand version of ‘Happy Birthday.’ And honestly, after playing hostess to my father-in-law and his paper friends last night, I’m in no mood to deal with people in general.”

  “Paper friends?” Marie asked. “And aren’t I people?”

  Nessa held up her hand, flat, and wriggled it sideways.

  “Made of paper,” she said. “Two-dimensional. As deep as a mud puddle, at best. And you’re a friend; that’s not the same thing as people. I have very little use for large swaths of the human race. It’s likely a good thing for everyone that I’m not running the planet.”

  “Nessa,” Marie deadpanned, “Queen of the World.”

  Nessa held up a finger. “I’d put a lot of people to work in the salt mines. Are salt mines still a thing? If not, I’d make them build salt mines first. Then work in them. Come on, sit, sit. I’m trying a new recipe tonight.”

  The new recipe was a lush cacophony of greenery, a splash of wild color served up in black ceramic bowls. Marie took her seat at Nessa’s right hand and leaned over the bowl, inhaling the aroma. Subtle, lemony, tart.

  “It’s an Asian fusion dish with cabbage, Chinese long beans, plum tomatoes, Persian cucumbers, and daikon shavings, mingled with roasted chicken marinated in lemon juice and kaffir lime leaves. The dressing is a medley of fish sauce, Thai chilies, and palm sugar.” Nessa ducked her head, suddenly sheepish. “I make complicated salad.”

  Marie dug her fork in, taking an experimental bite. A long bean burst between her teeth, ripe with mingled flavors, the sweet and the tart slow-dancing together and concealing a little sting of heat behind their backs.

  “It’s good.” Marie stared at her fork. “It’s really good.”

  Nessa squinted at her. “You’re not just saying that? You really like it?”

  “I assume,” Marie said with a tiny smile, “the rule about not lying to you is still in effect.”

  “And so it is. Good. I’m glad you remembered.”

  Marie took another bite. “If I forgot, I assume you’d send me to the salt mines.”

  “Or just put you over my knee,” Nessa said. “Whichever is more convenient.”

  They both fell silent, eyes on their plates. Marie shifted in her seat.

  “So,” Nessa said, breaking the stillness. “You passed with flying colors, I assume? Got your badge back?”

  “I…passed, I suppose. I get officially reinstated tomorrow, but as far as anyone at the precinct is concerned, it’s already a done deal. My partner went in this afternoon and apparently he got the thumbs-up too.”

  Nessa reached for a wine bottle, tall and slender with a weathered sepia label. “And so we celebrate. Hand me your glass.”

  She poured for both of them, generous splashes of golden wine, and slid Marie’s glass over before lifting hers in a toast.

  “To our knight with the golden shield, reunited with the law, her steadfast liege.”

  Their gazes met, entangled, a silent caress by candlelight.

  “Cheers,” Marie said, and their glasses clinked together like crystal chimes.

  Nessa took a sip and nodded approvingly. “This is a 2009 Zind Humbrecht pinot gris, by the way.”

  Marie shrank in her chair. “We mostly buy Two-Buck Chuck at my place.”

  “Once upon a time,” Nessa said, “Richard had me playing hostess for his work friends, half of whom were avowed wine snobs. So I served them red wine from an eight-dollar cardboard box and told them it was a 2011 Louis Latour Batard Montrachet grand cru. Not one of them knew the difference.”

  “Saved some money,” Marie observed.

  “Oh, no, we already had the bottle. I drank it myself, later that night. My reward for putting up with their bullshit. It is, after all, the societally approved coping mechanism.”

  Marie regarded her over the rim of her own glass. “Meaning?”

  “Our mothers took Miltown and Valium. We drink wine. Every generation of women has their own special numbing agent. Only difference being, they popped pills behind the bathroom door while we took our particular vice public.”

  “It sounds like you don’t approve,” Marie said, “yet we’re drinking wine right now.”

  “Oh, I enjoy wine. What I don’t approve of is the normalization of the ritual. We are told, day in and day out, by advertisements and television shows, that gathering to drink wine is simply what women do. That it’s how we relax, how we cope. I don’t object to vices in general; it’s unquestioned and unexamined vices I detest. If one is going to drink poison for fun, as we’re doing right now, one should at least be honest about it.”

  Marie cast an uncertain eye at her drink.

  “Poison,” Nessa said as she took a sip, “is the wellspring of so many of life’s little pleasures.”

  Twenty-Eight

  They had another glass, the bottle dropping low as they ate and talked by the candlelight.

  “Your mysterious tattoo,” Nessa said, “has a pedigree. I didn’t find anything else in the historical record, so I delved into more esoteric sources. The Grimorium Verum, Cultes des Ghoules, the Purged Testimony of Edward Kelly.”

  “Sounds like some light reading,” Marie replied.

  “For me, it is. Turns out that particular symbol is linked to a cult of demon worship. The ‘Court of Windswept Razors’ it was called, with a particular affection for a creature called ‘Prince Berith.’ Near as I can tell, the cult wore out its welcome in Ireland and the surviving adherents hitched a ride on the pilgrim ships. The symbol pops up again here, in colonial-era New York, around 1771. After that, nothing. Well, until now, that is.”

  “Demon worship,” Marie echoed.

  “Not what you expected to find?”

  “I shouldn’t talk about this,” she said, “but the tattoo was on the body of a man affiliated with the Mafia.”

  Nessa shrugged. She reached for the wine bottle and topped off both of their drinks. The last dollop of gold splashed from the bottle’s mouth, a few scant droplets clinging to the glass.

  “Would hardly be the first time members of organized crime dabbled in the occult. In the early nineteen hundreds, the Five Points Gang and the Neapolitan Camorra both used the threat of death curses to scare shopkeepers into paying protection money. They’d import streghe—witches—from the Old Country, just to drive the point home.” Nessa winked. “My maiden name is Fieri. I can talk about Italy for hours. Fun fact: the word strega, ‘witch,’ is etymologically derived from the word strix, or ‘owl.’”

  “You know a lot about…” Marie fell silent.

  “Italy?”

  “Witches,” Marie said.

  Nessa sipped her wine and smiled. The candlelight gleamed in her eyeglasses, painting the round lenses in shifting, molten brass.

  “I have a passion for history,” she said, “and all the best history is made in the dark.”

  Marie felt like she was toeing a line drawn by a silent dare in Nessa’s eyes. She could back away, safe but her curiosity unfulfilled, or step across and take her chances.

  She took her chances.

  “Just an academic interest?”

  “Marie,” Nessa said, “I enjoy dancing too, but I prefer to use my body, not my words. Ask me what you really want to ask me.”

  “Are you a witch?” Marie blurted out.

  “Yes.”

  Marie paused. She’d asked the question, gotten an answer, the simple word hanging in the air between them. Like a dog chasing a car, she wasn’t entirely sure what to do now that the car had stopped.

  “Does it work?” she asked.

  “Sometimes,” Nessa said. “It’s an art, not a science.”

  She ga
zed into Marie’s eyes, contemplating her.

  “Would you like to see my workroom?”

  Marie nodded, slow. Nessa eased her chair back and rose to her feet. She held out her hand.

  “Come with me.”

  Marie eyed Nessa’s outstretched fingers. Then, curious, wary, she reached out and took the other woman’s hand. Nessa gently tugged her along, out of the dining room, into the hallway. The soft chamber music, playing throughout their dinner, had stopped. She hadn’t seen Nessa turn it off. But it was gone now, extinguished, cloaking the brownstone in trembling silence.

  Then a distant sound. Somewhere, a clock was faintly ticking.

  Nessa paused by a glass credenza. She opened a small box, the outer lid and sides layered with tiny mirrors. Inside, nestled on a bed of velvet, lay an antique iron key. Marie’s hand tensed around Nessa’s, squeezing her slender fingers.

  “That box,” Marie said.

  “Mm?”

  “That wasn’t there a second ago.”

  Nessa chuckled and scooped up the key.

  “Sure it was,” Nessa shut the lid and twisted the clasp, the mirrors reflecting the twirl of her dark-painted fingernails. “You just didn’t notice it.”

  “No. I was looking right at the table. That box wasn’t there until you opened it.”

  “You were looking,” Nessa told her, “but you weren’t seeing. Mirrors can be tricky things, after all.”

  She pulled Marie’s hand, leading her up the narrow staircase to the black door on the second-floor landing. A turn of the key, a flick of the light switch, and Nessa guided her into her private sanctum. Marie turned in a slow circle, eyes wide, as she took in the easels and dangling, half-finished canvases.

  “Did you draw all of these?”

  Nessa gave her a tiny, sheepish smile. “Mm-hmm. I’m a bit of an amateur artist. I dabble. Not very skilled, but it gives my brain something to do.”

  “No,” Marie said. “These are really good.”

  “You’re sweet to say that, but I barely finish anything I start. I just…run out of steam, I suppose. My inspiration doesn’t hold.”

  Marie paused at the charcoal sketch of the three women dancing around a bonfire of shadows.

  “Who are they?” she asked.

  Nessa peered at the canvas. Did it look more vibrant now? The dancers more energetic, with the sense of movement she hadn’t been able to capture before? A trick of the light.

  “I’m not sure,” she told Marie. “They just felt important.”

  “So.” Marie looked her way. “Show me something.”

  “Understand, this isn’t like the movies. No special effects.”

  “Show me anyway.” Marie’s bottom lip was trapped between her teeth. “I want to see what you do.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, the two women sat side by side on the floor, the only light glowing from the wick of a tall black candle. Nessa’s special book lay open across her lap, a ceramic bowl of water before them. Calligrapher’s ink dripped into the water, blooming in a nightingale cloud to fill the basin’s depths. Nessa’s spidery, whispered chant filled the room as Marie sat in frozen silence.

  “Now look into the waters,” Nessa murmured, “and let your mind float free.”

  “What should I see?” Marie whispered.

  “There is no ‘should.’ You might perceive shapes, or faces, or shadows. You might see nothing at all. Don’t force it. Just relax, and float.” Her hand closed over Marie’s. Their fingers entwined. “Okay?”

  Marie glanced sidelong at her. “Okay.”

  Nessa gave her a lopsided smile. “Look into the waters.”

  Minutes drifted by, punctuated by the distant patter of rain on the brownstone’s roof. Marie felt like she was losing herself. Slipping away, the waters closing over her.

  And then she saw it. The ink swirled and took on form. A square became a box became a horse-drawn wagon, riding across a snowy tundra.

  “Do you see that?” Marie gasped. Her fingers tightened.

  “Scrying is a personal experience,” Nessa whispered. “It’s all filtered through your subconscious mind, like a dream. We’ll likely perceive very different things. What do you see?”

  “A…a cart. A wagon. Two women, riding through the snow.”

  Nessa blinked.

  “That shouldn’t happen.”

  “What?” Marie asked.

  In the bowl, the women—their faces blots of shadow—stepped down from the wagon and approached a stockade wall.

  “We’re seeing the same vision,” Nessa told her.

  A flurry of snow washed the scene away. An eye, vast, unblinking, rimmed with rippling blue fire, took its place. And then a voice, tinny and distant like an old radio transmission, crackled from the water’s surface.

  “Hedy. Hold the book. Yes, just like that.”

  “Did you hear that?” Marie squeezed Nessa’s hand tighter. “Am I hallucinating? Did you hear that? Is that you? It sounds like—”

  “Shh,” Nessa said. She leaned closer to the bowl, her gaze fixed on the unblinking eye.

  The bowl rattled against the hardwood floor.

  “My name is Nessa Fieri,” the voice said. “Maybe yours is, too. I’m not certain how all this works.”

  The bowl rattled harder, turning in place, the ceramic vibrating in tune with the voice and the inky waters.

  “Are you doing this?” Marie stared wide-eyed at Nessa. “How are you doing this?”

  “Shh,” Nessa snapped.

  “But if you’re receiving this,” the voice said as the bowl thrummed and shook, “then listen and understand: you are in terrible danger.”

  Then a pause.

  “Marie,” the voice said, “go back to—”

  The bowl shattered.

  Marie let out a shrill yelp as the ceramic burst into a dozen jagged pieces, like it had been dropped from five feet in the air, shards scattering and spinning across the workroom. Ink-stained water splashed across the naked floorboards. She let go of Nessa’s hand and jumped to her feet, sprinting from the room.

  Nessa sat perfectly still in the flickering candlelight, staring at the spilled water, the swirls of midnight-blue ink.

  Twenty-Nine

  “Tell me that was a trick,” Marie said. Her back was pressed to the wall in the hallway outside Nessa’s workroom, her eyes fixed on the open doorway and the shadows beyond. “Tell me it was a remote control. A hidden speaker.”

  “I’ve instructed you not to lie to me,” Nessa replied. “I choose not to lie to you. No, it wasn’t a trick. It was also not something I did on purpose. The last time I tried that spell, it was…well, it was right after we first met.”

  “And the same thing happened?”

  “No.” Nessa frowned. “I didn’t get that far into the vision before it broke up. I think, doing it together, we…amplified it somehow. The bowl just couldn’t contain the energy coming through.”

  “Coming through from where?”

  “I don’t know. I told you, witchcraft is an art, not a science.”

  Marie pointed a shaking finger at the doorway.

  “Well it sounds like a pretty important message. To both of us, from you. And if you didn’t record it, that means…”

  She trailed off, leaving the conclusion unspoken. Nessa finished the sentence for her.

  “I haven’t recorded it yet.”

  “Time travel,” Marie breathed. “And witchcraft. Jesus, Nessa, this isn’t…this isn’t real. None of this is real.”

  “You saw and heard the exact same thing I did. Two people can’t have the same hallucination. Ergo, it was quite real.”

  Marie’s shoulders slumped. The back of her head thumped against the wall and she closed her eyes.

  “Nessa, you don’t understand. I mean, I love fantasy novels. Novels. Stories. Not real. I live in a world of facts, and logic, and…and voices from the future giving warnings from bowls of ink is not a thing that happens.”
>
  “It just did. Denial is not a refuge. So what are you going to do about it?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Marie,” Nessa told her, “open your eyes.”

  She did. Nessa stood in front of her, half a foot away. Close enough for Marie to feel the warmth of her breath.

  “Look at me,” Nessa said.

  “I am,” Marie whispered.

  “No. Look at me.” Nessa gazed into Marie’s eyes. “Your world of facts and logic just went away. Bye-bye. If you want, you can go chase it. The front door is right down the stairs. I won’t stop you. You’ll probably spend the rest of your life living a lie, wondering what’s hidden in every shadow, wondering what you might have experienced and explored if you’d been brave enough to try, but maybe you’re better at fooling yourself than I think.”

  “Or?”

  Nessa’s plum lips curled into a fishhook smile.

  “Or,” she said, “you stay. With me. And we dive down the rabbit hole hand in hand.”

  Marie’s eyes flicked to the stairwell. Then to Nessa. Back and forth, lingering longer on Nessa’s face each time.

  “I want to stay,” Marie said. “With you.”

  “Very good,” Nessa replied.

  “So…what now?”

  “Now,” Nessa said, contemplating the question. “Now, now, now. Let’s see. We’ve had a lovely dinner, a little magic…whatever am I going to do with you now, Marie?”

  Marie fell silent. Nessa leaned closer. Studying her, their noses nearly brushing, as Nessa raised her hand. Her fingernails closed lightly around Marie’s jaw. Pinching, soft, like five tiny needles.

  “The correct answer to that question,” Nessa murmured, “which I can see written clearly in your eyes, though I’m sure it hasn’t yet found the courage to reach your lips, is that I’m going to do anything I want.”

  “Nessa,” Marie stammered, forcing an awkward smile, “I don’t, I mean, I’m not…you’ve…you’ve got the wrong idea—”

  “Do I?” Nessa let go of her. She took a step back and nodded to the staircase. “Front door’s right down there. I’m not holding you hostage.”