Bell, book, and murder

by Edghill, Rosemary

  Sundance's name comes from a long, elaborate, and mostly forgotten joke about mad dogs and Englishmen. You'd say he was painfully normal—except for the fact that his wife left him and took the kids when he went into the broom closet. Beaner is from Brahmin stock—the pahk ya cah in Hahvahd Yahd kind. Gay as a cavalier and a tenor for the Light Opera of Manhattan. His father's somebody in the foreign service and according to Beaner can't make up his mind which is worse: a Pooh-Bah who's a Witch or A Son Of His singing on the public stage.

  The kazoo played Ode to Joy again. Dorje got the door this time —Glitter and the food arrived together. I flopped down on Belle's emotional rescue couch and stretched out.

  And try as I might, I couldn't stop thinking about that other

  coven. Miriam's coven, the one she'd tithed to in blood and bone and tears, the coven that seemed set up to be a mockery of everything I knew the Craft to be. Survivor's guilt, they call it.

  I got back to my apartment late —or early, depending on your point of view. The ritual had gone well, and I'd talked out some of what I felt about Miriam. We all agreed that it was Too Bad she'd gotten involved with rough trade, but that it was Not My Fault, no matter what I'd bought her. I received a stem lecture on borrowing trouble —"Why bother?" said Dorje. "You get so much of it free." —or not borrowing trouble, as the case might be. Plans for the open circle tomorrow night were set. The Cat promised to put it on the NYC Pagan BBS—that's computer bulletin board, for those of us not quite technoliterate.

  When I got in I found my answering machine light was flashing with what turned out to be half a dozen disconnects. This is an anno3^ng but unavoidable complication of having one of the deimn things, and 1 didn't want to listen to it have seizures all night. 1 turned it off and the phone bell down low, and went to bed.

  A long time later I woke up from a vague unpleasant dream of a dentist doing root-canal work to a muted rhythmic bleating. It was still dark outside. After about a dozen rings I identified the sound as my phone.

  After about six more rings I realized it wasn't going to stop, and that somebody must want to reach me pretty badly. My bedside clock said 3:45 a.m. 1 groped over to the phone.

  "Hello?"

  "Miriam doesn't need your help. Call off the ritual. Witch-bitch, or somebody's going to put your eyes out."

  He hung up and 1 hit the light switch and sat there in a small pool of halogen wishing I still smoked. Anything. Useless adrenaline made the inside of my mouth metallic. I replayed the call in my mind.

  Hate. Enough of it to up my heart rate. And not the same voice that had called Miriam's apartment and been so stunned when someone answered.

  I got up and walked, to keep my mind from feeding its memory of the call until it tried to open up a link between me and my caller. 1 put on the tea-water. I opened a beer. I wrote down the date and time and text of the phone call and drank my beer and my tea and watched the clock tick over numerals to 4:38 a.m.

  52 Bell, Book, and Murder

  The caller was the same one responsible for aill those hang-ups. I was morally certain of this on the basis of no evidence. He wanted me to call off the memorial service for Miriaim, as if I could. And he didn't like me or my eyes, which was just too bad for him.

  But there was one little thing that was just too bad for me, and it kept me awake until six a.m. when 1 could reasonably go into the studio early.

  He knew who I was, he knew I was a Witch, and he'd called me at home.

  But my number's unlisted.

  Friday the 22nd had started out just dandy and got better. I was in the studio about seven a.m. Around ten the phone rang.

  "It's for you!" Ray yelled in my direction. He held the phone as if he intended to fling it to the floor. No personal calls on studio time allowed, so anybody calling me had to be stupid or the bearer of bad news.

  I went over and picked up the phone.

  "May I help you?"

  "Bast?" Lace again. My stomach tied itself into knots.

  "Uh, Lace, is this an emergency?" Oh please. Goddess, let it not be.

  Lace took a deep breath. 'There's been somebody in Miriam's apartment. Bast. I think you better see."

  So in the end I had to thank my midnight caller for allowing me to put in all those early-morning hours at Houston Graphics so I could take a nice long lunch hour. I spent the subway ride north practicing my paranoia.

  Lace has my home number. So do about a dozen other people who know me as Bast-the-Witch. Houston Graphics has it, for emergencies, whatever a design studio emergency might be, written right next to the name they use on my paychecks.

  It's on the business cards identifying it as the number for High Tor Graphics, which is the name under which I do my freelance work. None of those clients know me as Bast. In point of cold hard fact, there's nothing anywhere to connect High Tor Graphics with Bast.

  I'd be willing to bet my last pentacle that nobody I knew in the Craft would hand over my number to any stranger asking for Bast's phone number, and my midnight caller was as strange as they come.

  So where had he gotten it? And what possible objection could he have to an entirely benign Neopagan funeral ritual for Miriam Seabrook?

  And exactly how up close and personal did he intend to get?

  Lace was standing in the doorway to Miriam's apartment when I got there.

  "Did you lock the goddamn door?" she demamded as soon as she saw me.

  Lace had worked through her fear very nicely, thank you, and was now on her way to furious.

  "No, I'm the village idiot. Of course I locked it."

  'The hell you did." It came out "hail," from somewhere south of what author Florence King calls the "Smith & Wesson Line." "You just take a looky here."

  She backed up and let me in. I looked around the living room, saw what 1 didn't expect to see, and sat down on the couch. Fast.

  Miriam's apartment had been thoroughly tossed. Books thrown all over the floor, records out of their jackets, tapes unwound, stomped, and thrown about. Pillows slashed. Curtains pulled down. All the pieces of Miriam's altar swept off the bookcase top and smashed. I was glad I'd taken the little Goddess home with me.

  But Miriam's real expensive sound system, her one brand-new and high-ticket purchase, was still sitting right where I'd left it.

  "You left the goddamn door open. Bast!" Lace said again.

  I'd locked it, but when she's like this Lace punches people who contradict her.

  "Was the door locked when you got here?" I asked.

  "Sure it was. I— Oh." Lace looked around the room and back at me. "It was locked," she said. Anger drained out of her like water down the bathtub drain, leaving someone I could talk to.

  "And we had the only keys. Right?"

  Lace wasn't sure. The building super, I knew, had one, and Miriam might have given out others. But 1 couldn't think of anyone who wouldn't just have taken things away.

  "Okay," I said. "Let's look around." Lace wandered into the living room, scuffing through the wreckage. 1 went into the kitchen.

  True, the place was a mess, but not as bad as if it had been tossed by thrill-burglars (who locked up after themselves?). For instance, the plates weren't broken — although everything had been taken out of the cupboards and the refrigerator door had been left open. Somebody had been looking for something.

  54 Bell, Book, and Murder

  The bedroom was the worst.

  The mattress was off the box spring. Both the bedside lamps were smashed—which was pure temper. All the drawers were torn out of the dresser. The closet had been emptied. The two foot-lockers that I'd gone through so carefully on Saturday were tipped up on end, their contents flung around the room.

  "I thought I better come up and look at it today, so we could get the stuff out by the end of the month." Lace came in behind me and was standing looking around, as much stricken as angry. "It was locked."

  Somebody had indeed been looking for something.

  "Lace, what
ever happened to Miriam's athame? Her ritual knife?" I added, just in case Lace was being too Dianic this week to remember what they were called.

  Lace took another step into the room. Something beneath the papers went crunch under her boots. She bent down and picked up part of a porcelain plate. It had brown smudges where Miriam used to bum cone incense on it.

  'They took it."

  It took me a minute to realize this was a question.

  "No. I went through everything when I was here. I found the rest of her tools, but I didn't find her knife. Did she leave it with you?" It was a stupid question, but sometimes lovers do stupid things.

  Lace shrugged irritably. "Forged iron's patriarchal, anyway."

  Maybe it is, but we live in a sexually dimorphic universe and play by the House rules. "Sure, but have you seen her knife?" And I'd rather have my will symbolized by a dagger than a shrub.

  "No, I haven't seen her goddamn altecocker knife! And what I want to know is, who came in here and tore this place up?"

  "And what were they looking for?" I added.

  Lace turned around, mad again and reminding me uncomfortably of a buffalo about to charge. One of the nasty African ones. Lace is frequently silly, and ludicrous, and lives in her own private Idaho, but she is not stupid. As science fiction's patron saint John W. Campbell was so fond of sajmig: "thinks as well as a man but not like one."

  "What were they looking for. Bast?" Lace said dangerously.

  "I don't know." But I did. The Khazar book. Miriam's diairies. Her necklace.

  "And who are they?" Lace added.

  "I'm not sure," I said.

  Lace's face got that flat intent look it does just before she brains some other dyke with a full beer bottle.

  "I'm not," I insisted. "I'm trying to find out—you remember I asked you who she was with when she died?"

  Inflection is all. I wasn't asking Lace who'd been at the apartment, nor yet who Miriam had been romantically involved with. "Who are you with?" in the Community has just one meaning: What coven are you in?

  "You think those Baklava people came here and did this? Pagans wouldn't do this!"

  Oh, my people. For some of us it is still Woodstock time, with the Neopagan Cormnunity replacing the counterculture. And we are aU of one ethos, and would never prey upon one another.

  Even among hippies this idea lasted about fifteen minutes, but Lace would rather believe this hadn't happened at all than that it had been done by a fellow Goddess-worshiper.

  "It has to have been somebody else. And I'm going to find them. And when I do . . ." Lace promised.

  Any Gardnerian knows better. The infighting that's gone on in our branch of the Craft since the sainted Gerald Gardner died makes us look like a bunch of Protestants.

  "Sure," I said for Lace's benefit. "But you know, if she was working with them, maybe her group'd know who it could be. And when I find out for sure, I'll teU you."

  Lace made a noise like a downshifting truck.

  "I promise," I said hastily. "Lace, there isn't any more we can do. We aren't even supposed to be in here. What do you want to do — call the police?"

  It took me two hours to settle Lace down and stop her going door-to-door with a baseball bat. By then she'd caUed some of her friends to come over and help with the cleaning and scavenging, and Miriam's place was full of weU-adjusted women with large muscles.

  I went back to the studio. I had no trouble getting sympathy over my story of a friend whose apartment had been tossed. It's as common as having your apartment searched by the KGB used to be. In the old days. In Russia.

  Russia. Khazar Trad. And a bunch of people starting to look a lot more organized, motivated, and twisted than any Pagans I'd ever seen outside of bad fiction.

  A bunch of people who were looking for me.

  FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 7:00 p.m.

  By seven o'clock Friday night I was a nervous wreck and desperately in need of at least five of the six beers I'd refused to let myself have. For one, it isn't a good idea to ride the subway while impaired because to survive in Fun City requires constant alertness. For the other, it's a damn poor idea to walk into a circle under any influence other than magic. It's disrespectful to the Gods, and it could leave you with your psyche in a mangle.

  How mangled had Miriam's psyche gotten? I shoved the thought aside. No matter what had happened, the Community was going to do right by her tonight.

  Bellflower's place was jammed. Sundance took one look at me and handed me the beer he'd just opened.

  "You could use it," he said. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the dull roar of three dozen people yammering at once.

  'Thanks," I yelled back. I made the beer go away and shook my head when he offered me a refill. Somebody started playing with Belle's sound system and an old Leigh Ann Hussey tape added "The Goddess Done Left Me" to the general noise level.

  "I'm sorry about Miriam," Sundance said.

  "People die," I snapped back, sharper than I'd intended. "Yeah, well, it's harder on Lace," I emended.

  "I think I saw her here," Sundance said, and about then Glitter and The Cat saw me and carried me off.

  "I remember Miriam. She was a good person. She always took time to help you out."

  The speaker was a man, someone I didn't know. Since this was an open circle we were meeting in street clothes. He had on a tie-dyed T-shirt silk-screened with roses and skulls. He passed the talking-stick to the woman on his right.

  "I remember Sunshrike. One time we invited another coven for Sabbat, and Sunshrike made twelve dozen oatmeal raisin cookies. She cleaned up after, too."

  There were about forty people jammed into Belle's living room, making a wobbly oval circle-by-courtesy that filled the living room, the foyer, and wandered into the kitchen. Belle had cast the circle in her best ecumenical style and used the Neopagan Crossing ritual that almost everyone would know, the one that starts: "We are here to say farewell to a friend who must travel far." Then she started the talking-stick around. When it got to you, you said good-bye.

  I'd put myself opposite the altar. The stick had a ways to go before it reached me. I wondered what I'd say.

  I also wondered if any of the people here had called me up real early this morning. Or had a key to Miriam's apartment.

  But I still couldn't figure out a reason. It's true that we're none of us angels, and a lot of people hiding behind some fancy Neopagan or New Age handle are as thoroughly bad-hat as they come. But they're almost always mundanes looking for the money to be made off gulling the marks—not believers themselves.

  Maybe the Neopagans learned from the mistakes of the previous winners in the World Religion Sweepstakes. Maybe a collection of religious practices exalting laissez-faire and everybody finding his own path to divinity just can't spark the moral indignation needed for a pogrom. My personal favorite belief is that we're just too disorganized.

  But the cold fact is that I've never heard of a real case of intramural lawlessness in the Craft or the Community on purely doctrinal grounds. Name-calling and tiffs, yes. Head-tripping like what Miriam had recorded, yes. But never any real-for-true Pagan-to-Pagan police blotter stuff.

  And while my hate call early this morning could be business as usual in the peace-love-and-rock'n'roll Pagan Community, the person-or-people who'd ransacked Miriam's apartment and left behind everything of resale value wasn't.

  58 Bell, Book, and Murder

  But my conviction that all the weirdness that had happened was directly related to Miriam's last religious affiliation barely convinced even me, and I'd known all these people intimately for years. As an actual accusation to bring in the mundane courts, it was hopeless.

  The person on my right bumped me and handed me the talking-stick.

  "I knew Miriam Seabrook. She was a friend. 1 hope she finds what she's looking for. Good-bye, Sunshrike." I passed the stick to the left.

  Everybody hung around after the circle was over. A lot of people had brought cookies or
chips or soda and I'd chipped in $5.00 to the Changing general fund for more. The gathering wasn't solemn like a mundane funeral—more like a wake is supposed to be, I'd guess. Most people here hadn't known Miriam very well, and most of them were still young and flaky enough to think that their death would never come.

  If the Craft has any failings at all as a religion, it's that it doesn't really do a very good job of taking people through the absolute gut-crunching worst that Life cam do. The Lady's mercy was a consolation to me, but I'd be damned hesitant about offering the joys of the Summerland to a mother whose chUd had just been killed by a drunk driver. People tend to forget that the Craft is the newest religion, as well as the oldest. Maybe it's just that the human race has gotten arrogant enough that the phrase "It's God's will, it's for the best," isn't good enough anymore. Maybe it's never been good enough and we're just admitting it now.

  Or maybe the Lady shows Her true face now, as ever, only to those who can manage their lives without a convenient god to blame.

  I don't know. Ask me in fifty years when the Craft starts building churches.

  Lace came over to me with Tollah; Carrie must be minding the Revel. Lace's eyes were red and she hugged me, and we ended up hanging out in a back bedroom at Belle's with a couple other of Miriam's particular friends for a few hours telling each other the ten stupidest things Miriam had ever done.

  'There was this one time—you've got to hear this. Lace; I bet she never told you," a woman named Andre was saying, "when me and Miriam and a bunch of that coven from Fort Lee went out to

  one of the old Pan-Pagam Festivals in Indiana. And for the main circle they had these big thirty-gallon water-cooler jugs up on top of pillars and they'd dumped this chemical in them to make them glow. So the next time I turn around she's walking up to one to get a drink out of it, right?—you know the stuffs poisonous? — and when I stopped her she said she thought it was just water and they were glowing because of the power we raised in circle!"

  "Magic Power of Witchcraft," severad of us said in ragged chorus. It's one of those old Conmiunity jokes: There's a difference in believing in the power of the Lady and thinking you're Samantha of "Bewitched."