by Heath, Jack
"Is there any chance the library would have made copies?"
Suddenly John looked up at her and then he slapped his hand hard on the tabletop. "God, what an ass I am!" He jammed his hand in his pocket and came out with his cell phone. "I forgot I'd taken a picture of the letter and the drawing." He clicked on his photo file and started paging through to the most recent pictures. "I didn't think I was supposed to photograph anything, but Joe D'Angelo left me alone so I took a couple shots."
He found the photos, then stood and hurried upstairs to his desk where he woke up his computer and plugged in the phone. A couple moments later all three of them were looking at a large image of the drawings he had photographed.
Faust squinted hard at the drawing of the house and the lines that came from it, running outward from each of the gables. Then he looked at the map of the world drawn below.
"What is it?" Amy asked.
After a few more seconds, Faust shook his head. "I think it's part of a map."
"Where would the rest of the map be?" John asked. "I have no idea."
"What's it a map of?"
Faust was quiet for several moments, and then he shook his head again. "Sorry, I don't know." He took a sip of his coffee and turned away from the computer. "What I do know is you need to get over to England as quickly as possible. I don't know what the Coven is planning or why this map was so important to them, but we can't allow any more time to pass. We need to move."
Amy stiffened. "Wait a minute. We have no idea what we're doing. If we go over there, we don't know who or what we're facing. I think it's crazy to just rush in."
Faust spun toward her, his face suddenly twisted with anger. "And if you don't rush in, John's daughter is liable to die!" He jerked his thumb toward John. "Ask him if he's willing wait any longer!"
"Amy," John said. "I have no choice. I have to go."
"No, you don't," Amy shot back. "Not like this!"
The sound of the doorbell made all three of their heads turn toward the staircase. "Who could that be?" Amy asked.
"No idea," John said as he reached into his belt for his .45. He went quickly down the stairs and tiptoed over to stand just to the side of the door. "Who's there?" he asked.
"My name is Lisa Giles."
"What do you want?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder in time to see Amy and Faust coming down the stairs then heading back toward the kitchen.
"I'm sorry to disturb you, but I'd like to talk to you, Mr. Andrews."
"About?"
"About what I think is our common problem?"
John's heart started to beat faster. "What problem is that?" he asked, then held his breath, half expecting bullets to start coming through the door, but not expecting the next words. "The Coven," Lisa Giles said in a low voice.
John looked back at Amy and Father Faust, raising his eyebrows in question. Amy shrugged, and they both stepped out of sight. John paused, and then holding the pistol down by his leg, he reached over and opened the door.
For a second nothing happened, and then a woman stepped into the opening. She was small and slightly built, probably late forties or early fifties, John thought, with curly brown hair, big glasses, and nervous, birdlike movements. Her gaze quickly dropped from his face to his hands. Her eyes widened when she saw the gun. "I'm not a threat, Mr. Andrews." She nodded. "I assume you are Mr. Andrews?"
John nodded and closed the door behind her, turning the deadbolt as he did. "You said we have a common problem."
Lisa Giles stiffened as Amy and Father Faust stepped out from where they had been hiding around the corner. Faust had unbuttoned his coat, and his Roman collar was visible. Lisa Giles scowled.
"I didn't know you had one of them here," she said. "I'll come back another time." She turned and reached for the doorknob.
"Hold, witch!" Faust cried, his voice cracking like a whip.
John looked at the priest in amazement then froze when he saw Faust's gun. It was aimed at the woman. John swore he could see Faust tightening his finger on the trigger.
He held up his hand. "Are you crazy? No!"
Without even thinking about what he was about to do he stepped sideways, blocking Faust's clear shot, and he closed his eyes and tensed, waiting for the impact of a bullet.
A second passed, then two. When John opened his eyes, what he saw next shocked him even more than the sight of Faust's gun. Amy had stepped right behind Faust and had a large chef's knife she must have snatched from the knife block in the kitchen held tight to Faust's throat. John could see the handle of a second knife in Amy's left hand that was prodding the priest in the kidney.
"Drop the gun," Amy hissed.
Faust's eyes were white with shock and fear. "You don't know what you're doing," he snarled. "She's our enemy!"
"Don't move, and don't say another word. Just drop the gun."
Faust's face twisted with helpless fury, but he did as Amy commanded. His gun clattered to the floor.
"Now kick it toward John," Amy snapped.
Faust hesitated, then did as she ordered.
"John, pick up the gun," Amy said.
For a second John didn't move, rather he gaped at her open mouthed. She was acting totally different from the woman he thought he knew.
"John!" Amy snapped.
He snapped out of his trance, went over and picked up Faust's gun. Once he did, Amy took the knives away and shoved Faust forward.
With a blade no longer at his throat, Faust seemed to recover some of his courage. He looked at John, his expression filled with incomprehension. "I saved your life and you treat me like this!"
"You were going to shoot this woman!" John shouted back. "What were you thinking?"
"She's a witch!"
Behind Faust Amy nodded. "Yes, she is, and you're a member of ODX, aren't you?"
John held up a hand for silence, and then he looked between Faust and Lisa Giles, who hadn't said a word since Faust pulled his gun. Unlike Faust, who was full of wild emotions, Lisa Giles seemed understandably shaken yet remarkably calm. She appeared to be such a small, mousy woman; he was amazed she wasn't a trembling wreck.
"Are you one of them?" he asked her after a few seconds.
"I'm not sure what you mean," Giles said. "I am a witch, but I am not part of the Salem Coven. They are my enemy, just as they are yours."
John turned to Faust. "What is ODX?"
Faust pressed his lips together and glared at John. "The group that saved your life," he said after a few moments of silence.
"You've heard of Opus Dei, haven't you, John?" Amy asked.
"Aren't those the guys Dan Brown wrote that great thriller about a couple years ago?"
"Yes, but the real Opus Dei isn't as controversial as Brown made them sound; however, there's an offshoot of Opus Dei called ODX, which is far more radical."
"We believe the world is engaged in a titanic struggle between good and evil," Faust interrupted. "If you think it's radical to battle the Devil, then yes, we're radical."
"But that's not all you battle, is it?" Amy shot back. "You believe that all other religions besides Christianity pose an equal threat, don't you?"
John shook his head. "Father Faust told us that his group is allied with all the other religions."
"It's a lie," Amy said. "Isn't it, Father Faust?"
Faust's eyes were going back and forth between John and Amy. Finally, he settled on John. "This woman," jerking his head toward Lisa Giles, "is a Wiccan. Wiccans use magic," he said, pronouncing the word as if magic was something unimaginably filthy and evil. "They believe in a bunch of spirits, including their horned god—and if he isn't the Devil, what is he?" Faust was nodding as he spoke. "The Wiccans are the Devil's agents."
Lisa Giles cleared her throat. "May I say something?" she asked in what struck John as a remarkably calm tone given the fact that a few second earlier Faust had been preparing to shoot her.
"Go ahead."
"I am a witch, and I am a member of a local
coven of thirteen witches."
On hearing this Faust recoiled, as if proximity would somehow stain his soul.
Giles went on. "It is true we believe in a number of spirits, and it is also true that we attempt to work magic."
"See!" Faust shot back. "I told you. These people are dangerous. Magic is the Devil's work."
"Every good lie has as much truth in it as possible," Lisa Giles went on, ignoring Faust. "There really are people from all the world religions who have united in the struggle against the Satanists, but ODX is not part of that group."
"Don't listen to her," Faust growled.
"I would think you would agree that the use of magic is not inherently evil," Giles went on, speaking to John.
"Why?"
"Because you have used magic."
John looked at Amy and shook his head. "That's not really true about me using magic," he said, turning back to Lisa Giles. "Something happened to me one time, and I don't even know what to call it."
Lisa Giles smiled, and again John found her calmness remarkable. "Call it whatever you wish. We would call what happened through you to be magic, and in fact it is our belief that you are one of the most powerful magic users on the planet."
John shook his head. "There's no way."
"No, John," Amy said, her voice firm. "I was there that night. I saw what you did in the catacombs, and I told Lisa. That's why she's come to speak with you."
Giles glanced at Amy then back to John. "We believe it's vital for you to learn to understand your gift and, if you can, to learn to control it."
"The point is I can't control it," John shot back.
"How do you know?" Lisa Giles insisted. "Do you have any idea what triggers magic and what it really is?"
John shook his head.
"Don't listen to her! Some things are not meant to be controlled," Faust shouted.
John turned to look at the priest. "Some things are triggered by the presence of evil," Faust went on. "Think about it! Your Putnam blood makes it possible for you to sense evil, just like a hunting dog can smell a pheasant."
John closed his eyes and shook his head and felt like Faust's words placed a terrible weight on his shoulders. He wanted to deny them, but he knew they were true. "What did you expect me to do?"
"To fight the Coven!" Faust shouted
"But if I have some kind of power, but I can't control it, what good am I going to be to anybody?"
Lisa Giles cleared her throat again. "Why don't you ask your friend, Father Faust, what was supposed to happen to you in this struggle against the Devil?"
John turned to Faust. "Well?"
Faust raised his chin, and his expression became cold. "If you are truly a magic user, as we also suspect, then in some part of your soul, whether you realize it or not, you are allied with the Devil."
John started to shake his head.
"Deny it all you want," Faust continued. "Mankind is not meant to use magic. It is the stuff of evil and ungodliness. Those who use magic are to be destroyed."
"So if I had agreed to help you, I was supposed to die in the process?"
"You are a magic user."
"And you are a sick sonofabitch, Father Faust," John said.
"Now that you know he intended for you to die, what do you want to do with him?" Giles asked.
John looked at the small woman. Whatever it was about her that just moments ago had struck him as mousy and weak had disappeared, and she now seemed tough-minded and decisive, a woman accustomed to being in charge. "What do you mean by that?"
"If you let him go, he and his associates will try and kill you."
John turned and gazed at Faust for a long moment. The priest said nothing, and he took the man's silence to indicate that what Giles was saying was accurate. Faust would indeed try to kill him, perhaps he would try to kill all of them. He glanced at Amy, who was still holding both knives and who looked as if she would instantly kill the priest if John gave the word.
"Would you really be stupid enough to try and kill me before I fight the Coven? If they're holding my daughter, it doesn't seem like I have any choice where that's concerned."
Still Faust refused to speak.
"So, what was your plan? You'd get me to attack the Coven and wait to see whether I won or I got killed, and then you and your ODX friends would kill whoever survived? In other words, you saved my life yesterday only so you could make sure when I died I would do you some good?"
Faust's mouth twitched, and a flicker of uncertainty seemed to pass across his face. Faust held his gaze but said nothing.
"Still," John went on, "no matter what your reasons, you did save my life, so in turn I'm going to save yours by letting you go. Get out of here. If I see you again, I'll do the same thing to you I did to the Coven leaders. I'm going to learn how to control that power, and I guarantee I'll use it on you."
"Think carefully," Giles began.
John cut her off. "I have."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
JOHN KEPT THE PRIEST'S GUN AND ALSO FISHED the silencer out of Faust's coat pocket, then he walked him to the front door. "One more thing, Faust," he said as he opened the door to let the priest walk out. "I'm saving your life by turning the other cheek the way the Bible says. Think carefully about that, Father Faust. Think about it before you try to kill me in God's name."
Faust looked at him, his expression a contest between anger and something else John couldn't name. He hoped he might see uncertainty or even shame, but he couldn't be sure. Finally Faust gave an imperceptible nod, turned, and stepped out onto the sidewalk where he walked quickly away.
John came back into the house and found Lisa Giles and Amy back in the kitchen where Amy had poured them both mugs of hot coffee. He turned toward Amy. "Time for a little disclosure, perhaps?" he said in a sarcastic voice.
Amy nodded. "Okay."
John glanced at Giles then back to Amy. "Obviously you two aren't strangers."
"No."
"When were you going to tell me you're a Wiccan? Or maybe I should ask why hadn't you told me already?"
"I'm not a practicing Wiccan, but I've been interested in the religion for a long time."
"And you know this woman?"
"Know Lisa Giles? Yes, very well."
"And you told her to come here?"
"I had a suspicion that Faust wasn't telling us the whole truth."
John looked away from her, trying to control the anger and confusion and hurt he felt. "Why didn't you tell me she was coming ahead of time?"
"I didn't know how you'd react to a witch coming to the house. I thought you might suspect she was allied with the Satanists."
John nodded, privately admitting she was exactly right about his reaction. "Why shouldn't I still suspect that?"
Lisa Giles cleared her throat. "May I attempt to explain some things?"
John looked at her, realizing that the woman who had first shown up at his door had been trying to appear as less than she was. Now, she had dropped her guise of insubstan-tiality and appeared alert and in charge, very much like a woman who might be the CEO of a good-sized company. He was actually drawn to her and realized his instincts were to trust Lisa Giles. He went to the counter, poured himself a mug of coffee, and raised it to her in a salute. "Okay, your dime."
Lisa returned his gesture with a formal dip of her head. "Everything I told you a moment ago is true. We Wiccans use magic, at least we attempt to. We believe magic exists in our world, very much like an as-yet-undiscovered science. Many people outside the Wiccan religion believe magic is nonsense, or if it exists at all, it's inherently evil; however their unbelief or dislike doesn't mean either is true.
"I would say the attitude toward magic today is a little bit like the church's attitude toward science back in the 1400s when their theology insisted the earth was flat and also at the center of the universe. Church leaders feared to discover they might be wrong, and they persecuted those who claimed to know differently.
"
So," she went on, "we Wiccans believe that magic exists, but we are the first to admit we are inexpert at manipulating it. The one thing we have is what you might call a heightened sensitivity to magic when it is near us, either in the outer world or in an individual. For example, in your case, I sense your magic," she paused and seemed to search for a word, "profoundly."
John looked at Amy to see her reaction, and she nodded, silently encouraging him not to reject what Lisa was saying. Lisa went on. "If magic were sound, it's as if I have become accustomed to hearing very soft noises, but when you use magic, it's as if I'm hearing a sonic boom."
John started shaking his head. "That's where you're very wrong," he insisted. "I don't use magic. I don't know the first thing about it. I don't care about it, I don't study it, and I've never tried to use it."
"What do you call what you did the other night? That's what I'm talking about."
John glanced at Amy, who was nodding her encouragement, but he wasn't ready to go that far with his trust, not by a long shot. He turned back to Lisa. "I'm not sure what you mean."
"I'm talking about the magical equivalent of a twenty-thousand-pound bomb. Every witch in our coven has been walking around with a migraine headache since it happened."
John shrugged. "I really don't have a clue what you're referring to."
"Please trust me," Lisa insisted. "It's critical for all of us that do."
John looked at her and tried to calm his pulse. Every fiber of his being wanted to reject what she was saying. "Go on," he said.
"Every person, if they have any at all, has an aura that is as utterly unique as their DNA."
John still tried to shrug it off. "You're saying it was such a loud noise, you could be mistaken, right?"
Lisa shook her head. "I'm afraid not. It would be like turning up Frank Sinatra until it was so loud it made people's ears bleed. It would be painful in the extreme, but there would be no mistaking that the voice was Sinatra's."
John took a long sip of coffee and saw that his hands were shaking. He glanced at Amy again. She nodded, clearly wanting him to open up to this woman. "So let's say something did happen," he said. "What do you think it was? I just have to tell you before you answer that it wasn't me doing magic. It was . . . other entities."